Sandra Yates has climbed to the top of a male dominated corporate world by never taking the easy road. On Friday afternoons in the early 1980s, when most of The Sun newspaper's advertising department had drifted across the road to the Clare (their local watering hole), someone always stayed behind.

One of the 30 men from the now defunct tabloid daily would wait for their boss to finish work so they could escort her to the pub along Sydney's Broadway.

After all, it wasn't the done thing for a lady to walk into a public bar alone.

While she found it funny, Sandra Yates, now the chairwoman of Saatchi & Saatchi, appreciated the chivalrous gesture.

''I still think it's absolutely charming," she said. "I got such a nice note from the former deputy ad manager of The Sun, John Hannaford, just before Christmas, reminding me of the good times.

" He reminded me of the first time someone had waited and dutifully escorted me into the pub. I'd proceeded to drink six schooners and evidently that had made a great impression on them."

Yates, then The Sun's advertising manager, was (with the secretary) one of two women in the department. When she started there, the male staff were "astonished to find themselves working for a woman."

"They handled that pretty well, but it was a shock for us all,'' Yates said. Twenty years on, Yates, 54, is one of the most influential and noteworthy people in the Australian corporate world.

In addition to her role as chairwoman at one of Australia's top advertising agencies, she is chair of the NSW TAFE Commission Board, chair of this year's Sydney Writers' Festival, a member of the AFA (Advertising Federation of Australia) National Board and a member of the AFA Ethics Working Party, a board member of Musica Viva, and she was recently appointed to the board of the Taronga (Zoo) Foundation.

During her career, Yates has been publisher of Time magazine (Australia) and deputy chief executive officer of Fairfax Magazines.

When, in 1998, the State Chamber of Commerce asked 240 business leaders to pick the most powerful women in Australia from a list of 20, Yates was in the top 10. She is also in the Australian Who's Who. It has been a stellar rise through industries (sales and then publishing) which, in the 70s and early 80s, were predominantly male.

And it is all the more admirable because of how it was achieved - through drive, determination, focus, and plain old hard work.

Leaving school at the end of Year 10, Yates, the daughter of a Brisbane market gardener, worked as a secretary, married at 18 and had her first child, Anne, at 20.

By 27, the marriage had ended, Yates's second child, Matthew, was a toddler and she found herself as the sole breadwinner. It was then that her career aspirations began.

"It was a growing realisation that poverty as a lifestyle option is just horrible and that Prince Charming, if not late, was at least seriously delayed and that if it was going to get any better, I'd have to do it myself," she said. "I've never had a cent of government support or a cent of maintenance from the kids' fathers, so trying to keep them on my salary was not an easy thing to do."

"I guess if there's anything that makes me wake up screaming in the middle of the night, it's the fear of poverty because it so limits your options. It's so boring; you can't do anything."

Joining Saatchi & Saatchi as a director in 1996, Yates was appointed chairwoman within the year. "The job," she said, "requires being an independent adviser to the executive of a company - the role is more strategic than operational - and making sure everyone's staying on track and focused.

"The chief executive, David Ansell, is responsible for the day-to-day running of the organisation but the particular things I look after are media, government, and new business and I have a particular responsibility for the Australian Labor Party."

It was Yates's influence that won Saatchi & Saatchi the ALP advertising account for the 1998 Federal election. John Singleton's agency, Singleton, Ogilvy, and Mather, was reportedly shocked to lose the account they had held for 11 years.