"He changed the mind-set of the company," said David Adelman, who analyzes Kellogg for Morgan Stanley. "Seven years ago, Kellogg was waffling. It had lost all momentum as a business. ... Now, it has industry-leading sales growth."

In Washington, Gutierrez's nomination Monday to be Bush's second secretary of commerce was a surprise. Neither a confidant of the president's nor a prominent political operative or fund-raiser, the Kellogg chief executive breaks the mold of recent commerce heads.

To those who have watched his company, Gutierrez has been a marvel.

"He has this ability to focus in on the key issues, to talk to people about their concerns, weigh out the options and make the right decisions," said Ronald Larson, a professor of marketing at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo and a former Kellogg marketing researcher. Carlos Gutierrez Age: 51; born Nov. 4, 1953, in Havana

Education: Studied business administration at the Monterrey Institute of Technology in Queretaro, Mexico.

Experience: Kellogg Co.: chairman, 2000-04; chief executive, 1999-2004; president, 1998-2000; chief operating officer, 1998-99; other positions, 1990-98; president and chief executive, Kellogg Canada, 1989-90; general manager, Kellogg de Mexico, 1984-89; manager, international marketing services, 1983-84; supervisor, Latin American marketing services, 1982-83; sales representative, various sales and marketing positions, Kellogg de Mexico, 1975-82.

In September, Fortune magazine waxed about Gutierrez's "disarming charisma, steely resolve, and ... utter lack of pretension," hailing him as "arguably the most powerful Hispanic-American in business today."

Gutierrez's father was a successful pineapple merchant in Havana who, in 1960, was deemed an enemy of Fidel Castro's state. As Hispanic Magazine put it earlier this year, "While many Cubans speak of coming to the United States with little more than pocket change and the clothes on their back, Pedro and Olga Gutierrez and their two sons were able to leave with $2,000 and 22 suitcases."

Gutierrez's business acumen appears beyond dispute. He worked his way up from an entry-level delivery and sales job in Mexico City at age 20 to be general manager of Kellogg's Mexican operations at age 30. When he took over the company in 1999, he shifted the measure of success from tons of cereal sold to the value of the products on Kellogg's shelves, Adelman said.

Kellogg bought the Keebler cookie company and snapped up diet-conscious Kashi to begin marketing health foods.

Four months into the top job, Gutierrez announced the closing of the company's cereal plant in its hometown of Battle Creek, Mich., eliminating 550 jobs and plowing the savings into product development and marketing.

"That was a very difficult thing to do," Adelman said, "but it was the right thing to do for the company."

Kellogg stock has risen from $30.61 a share when he took over in April 1999 to close yesterday at $44.48.

John Engler, a former governor of Michigan who worked with Gutierrez, said he was a natural choice for commerce secretary. Assignments in Mexico, Asia and Canada exposed Gutierrez to many of the most pressing trade issues. "He is clearly the most international leader that Commerce has ever had," Engler said.

But even admirers expressed bewilderment at his decision to move to the Commerce Department, a hodgepodge agency that controls the Census Bureau, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Many of those agencies will probably be on the chopping block when Bush unveils his 2006 budget request in February. Moreover, manufacturers — especially textile and furniture makers — have been pressuring the department to take a firmer stand against international competitors, while the White House presses forward with an aggressive free-trade agenda, including a yet-to-be ratified Central American Free Trade Agreement and a push to create a hemisphere-wide free-trade zone.

This spring, Gutierrez was rumored to be on the short list to take over Coca-Cola until he took his name out of consideration.

"He had been considered for a number of companies that were far bigger than Kellogg's, and he always bowed out," Larson said. "I guess this must have been an opportunity he couldn't turn down."

Washington Post staff researcher Richard Drezen contributed to this report

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