By Anupreeta Das
When Tracy Britt arrived in Omaha, Neb., in 2009 to meet with
Warren Buffett, she brought a Harvard M.B.A., a glittering resume
and a boatload of ambition. But she also brought the famed investor
a gift to highlight their shared Midwestern roots: a bushel of corn
and a batch of tomatoes.
The seed Ms. Britt planted that day yielded quick results: a job
for Ms. Britt as Mr. Buffett's "financial assistant" at Berkshire
Hathaway Inc. (BRKA, BRKB) Almost four years later, it has
blossomed further, with Ms. Britt emerging as one of Mr. Buffett's
top lieutenants and even serving as chairman of four companies
within his $284 billion conglomerate.
Ms. Britt, 28 years old and more than five decades younger than
her boss, occupies a role unlike any other within Berkshire. With
an office next to Mr. Buffett's at Berkshire's headquarters, Ms.
Britt helps with financial research, accompanies Mr. Buffett to
meetings and occasionally drives him around town. The billionaire
gradually tacked on additional responsibilities.
The firms in which she serves as chairman, including
building-products company Johns Manville Corp. and paint
manufacturer Benjamin Moore & Co., total more than $4 billion
in annual sales. In March, a few weeks after Berkshire and
Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital said they would buy ketchup
maker H.J. Heinz & Co. for $23 billion, Mr. Buffett sent Ms.
Britt to Brazil, according to people familiar with the matter.
The deal was Berkshire's largest acquisition since 2010, and Mr.
Buffett wanted her to know more about 3G's operations, including
how the Brazilian firm had turned around Burger King Worldwide Inc.
(BKW), the people said.
Ms. Britt is one of the executives the 82-year-old Mr. Buffett
is grooming for senior positions after he steps down, say people
familiar with the matter and Berkshire analysts. And she isn't the
first person that he picked out of relative obscurity: His
investment managers, Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, were little-known
hedge-fund managers before Mr. Buffett tapped them to handle big
slices of Berkshire money.
Ms. Britt is also one of the most influential women within
Berkshire, which has three women directors on a 13-member board and
five women CEOs out of 81 operating companies.
Ms. Britt "takes care of all kinds of things that come up," Mr.
Buffett told college students in Omaha last month.
Ms. Britt and Mr. Buffett declined to comment on her role at the
company.
Others familiar with the company say Ms. Britt is increasingly
serving as a conduit between Mr. Buffett and the chief executives
of Berkshire's various businesses.
Although Mr. Buffett is famously hands-off when it comes to
running Berkshire's far-flung units, some CEOs had requested more
interaction with each other, wanting to tap other executives as a
resource to learn about management practices and other potential
ways to collaborate, according to people familiar with those
discussions. Ms. Britt facilitated some of those discussions and
arranged Berkshire's first-ever CEO roundtable on the sidelines of
the annual meeting in May.
"She's got this wealth of information about what's going on at
the Berkshire portfolio companies," said Sam Taylor, chief
executive of Oriental Trading Co., an online retailer that
Berkshire bought in November. "She knows exactly what's going on
and where Warren's head is at."
Mr. Taylor, 52 years old, said Ms. Britt is "wise beyond her
years."
Others say she always has stood out among her peers.
Janet Hanson, the founder of 85 Broads, a global networking
community for women in business and finance, remembers Ms. Britt
from when she interned at Ms. Hanson's investment firm as an
undergraduate. "She had some sort of internal guiding system that
was propelling her forward," Ms. Hanson said. "She was on rocket
fuel...this was a gal who was going to get what she wanted."
That summer, Ms. Hanson asked her interns to pick stocks they
knew as consumers and thought were good investments. While some of
her peers picked highfliers like BlackBerry maker Research In
Motion Ltd. (BB.T, BBRY), among Ms. Britt's picks was Anglo-Dutch
consumer company Unilever PLC (ULVR.LN, UL), the maker of Dove
skin-care products and Lipton tea, the type of nuts-and-bolts
company that Mr. Buffett has acquired at Berkshire.
Ms. Britt grew up on a family farm--Britt's Garden Acres,
outside of Manhattan, Kan.--that produces more than 40 different
types of fruits and vegetables ranging from radishes to
rhubarb.
She first met Mr. Buffett in 2006 after she arranged a trip to
Omaha with Harvard classmates from an organization she co-founded,
called Smart Woman Securities, which helps women learn about
investing.
Some analysts and Berkshire observers said they see Ms. Britt
becoming a top Berkshire executive in the next decade, potentially
performing managerial functions such as fixing troubled businesses
or negotiating deals, similar to what David Sokol previously
did.
Mr. Sokol is a former Berkshire business manager who was
considered a protege of Mr. Buffett's. He resigned in 2011 after
disclosures that he had personally bought shares in chemicals
company Lubrizol Corp. not long before recommending that Mr.
Buffett buy it. Regulators investigated but decided this year not
to take any action against Mr. Sokol. Mr. Sokol's lawyer has said
that his client didn't violate the law or any Berkshire policy at
any time, or intend to personally profit at the expense of his
former employer or its shareholders.
"She's stepped into the role of Sokol," said Robert Miles, who
teaches a course on Mr. Buffett's investing style and has written
three books on Berkshire.
For Ms. Britt, none of this is a complete surprise.
In a recent blog post for Lean In, an online community created
by Facebook Inc. (FB) Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg as
part of her campaign to get women to pursue their ambitions, Ms.
Britt shared a line from a business-school assignment she had
penned to imagine where she would be at the 10-year reunion. She
wrote, "My goal is to work with a great investor, who even more
importantly is a wonderful teacher and mentor."
Write to Anupreeta Das at anupreeta.das@wsj.com
Subscribe to WSJ: http://online.wsj.com?mod=djnwires