These 3 women pierced the glass ceiling to make it into the CEO suite at Long Island public companies

The persistent glass ceiling in the corner office might finally be showing some cracks.

Of the 58 Long Island-based public companies analyzed by Newsday, only three, or 5%, have a female CEO. The percentage is similar nationally, where a report found only 7% of the top 3,000 public companies had a female CEO. The three Long Island CEOs — Kara Cannon of Enzo Biochem, Helena Santos of Scientific Industries and Dorith Hakim of CPI Aerostructures — agree the lack of women leading companies is troubling, but also believe a change is inevitable.

"My ability to sit in the CEO seat for a publicly traded company does start to give indication that things are changing," Cannon says. Cannon was named CEO of Enzo, a Farmingdale biotechnology firm, in January after 13 years at the company. The second-highest-ranking executive at Enzo also is a woman — Chief Financial Officer Patricia Eckert. "The CEO is a woman, the CFO is a woman, 50% of our workforce are women and about 40% of my senior staff are women," Cannon says.

Helena Santos is a groundbreaker on Long Island and nationally. She has been CEO of Bohemia lab-equipment maker Scientific Industries since 2002, when few women held any top corporate posts. In 2002, the board of directors was having problems with its CEO and turned to Santos, the company’s CFO. "I probably was at the right place at the right time," she says. "I mean, honestly, they hardly knew that I even existed."

Santos says women can sometimes be pushed into the background because it’s still "a male-dominated world when it comes to the C-suite." Her advice to women is to be visible in the workplace. "It’s not always the most qualified who makes it up to the C-suite, but the one who has the relationships," she says. "It is important that you talk to whoever is the decision-maker by the coffee machine or the water cooler."

Dorith Hakim was named CEO of CPI Aerostructures in 2022. The board of the Edgewood maker of structural assemblies for aircraft tapped her based on her long career at other aerospace companies. "They reached out to me," she says. "It was basically network and relationships and experience."

Hakim believes the CEO barrier will ease as women move from midlevel to senior positions and build networks as she did. "I definitely see it in my pipeline of leadership here at CPI," she says. "There's a lot more female members on the leadership team now than when I started here."

At the recent Farnborough aerospace trade show in London, Hakim was gratified to see many female executives in what has traditionally been a male-dominated industry. "There’s a lot of diversity now at the air show compared to years ago," she said. "I definitely think that the tide is turning."

Enzo’s Cannon says women who have made it to the top of the corporate structure have a responsibility to ease the path for others.

"I make a concerted effort to put a percentage of my time toward giving back on the Island and I look to give back through mentoring young women, mentoring women who are midlevel in their career, so that we know we’re not alone," she says. "And I think that the more we all do that, it’s inevitable that the numbers will rise."