Success on her own terms. (Jane Evans and includes a related article on tips for corporate climbers)

Success On Her Own Terms

On a career path that has taken her from retailing to investment banking and back, Jane Evans has learned how to mix happiness with life at the top

Jane Evans has a new barometer for success. Hailed by many a corporate recruiter as the woman most likely to become CEO of a major company, Evans has put a twist on her career priorities. "As I get older," she says, "I really think having a good time and a job I really like is more important to me than where I rank in the corporate world."

Some might say it's another case of a hard-driving female executive gone soft. But not a whole lot has changed about Jane Evans since she sprang onto the pages of the corporate who's who at age 25 when she was named president of a multimillion-dollar shoe company. Today, she still stands by her work philosophy: "My career is what I am and it comes first."

Along with the criterion that she enjoy her work, power and challenge were heavily weighted factors in Evan's most recent professional shift. After flirting briefly with a career in investment banking -- Evans was a general partner of the Shansby Group in San Francisco -- she returned to retailing this past June. The position she took on, president and CEO of the InterPacific Retail Group, was no choice for a slacker. Evans oversees some 70 specialty stores scattered throughout Hawaii and the Far East that carry men's and women's designer clothing. She is responsible for developing retail and fashion opportunities and scouting for acquisitions in the Pacific Rim. "This was an opportunity to get back into retailing and involved in a dynamic part of the world," she says.

Although Evans declines to give sales figures for the privately owned company, she says that compared to Monet -- where she held her most recent retailing job -- InterPacific …