One of her first acts was to reach out to executives. Rather than respond to her, they were more likely to ask their lawyers why she was making contact.

"I couldn’t get CEOs to return our phone calls," Dominguez said in an August 28 roundtable with reporters. She stepped down three days later, at the end of her five-year appointment. Naomi Earp, EEOC vice chair, became chair September 1.

Dominguez eventually was able to get through to business leaders. She went on to establish the EEOC Freedom to Compete Awards, which annually highlight best diversity practices.

"If we don’t have communication at the highest levels, we’re not going to get as far as we do if we talk to the top-line executives," she says.

The approach, as typified by the awards, appealed to large companies like McDonald’s. CEO Jim Skinner and three of his company’s high-ranking human resource executives came to Washington, D.C., this summer to accept an award for the company’s diversity networks.

"For McDonald’s, today marks a meaningful milestone," Skinner said at a ceremony at EEOC headquarters.

Dominguez also sent messages to corporate America through enforcement. This spring, the EEOC voted to emphasize combating systemic discrimination–bias that occurs across organizations and industries.

"No (employment) decision happens in a vacuum," Dominguez says. "We’re seeing charges filed against one employer in multiple areas."

Another way of getting the attention of businesses is by pursuing high-profile cases like the EEOC’s $54 million sexual discrimination settlement with Morgan Stanley.

Dominguez is proud of "strategic enforcement and litigation," which she says produced $1.5 billion in recovery for discrimination victims, a record for a five-year period.

"We need to put our resources in the areas where they will make the biggest difference," she says.

In an effort to marshal EEOC time and money, Dominguez reduced middle management and put more field staff in growing regions like Las Vegas. She also set up a national call center to improve customer service.

But the American Federation of Government Employees asserts that Dominguez’s reorganization has systematically weakened the agency. It says that the EEOC has lost 20 percent of its staff and has imposed a hiring freeze since 2001, contributing to a backlog of 48,000 cases. The agency counters that its inventory is 39,000 cases. In addition, the union decries Bush administration efforts to cut EEOC funding by $4 million.

"The things we have seen her do in the name of reform have set the agency back," says Gabrielle Martin, president of the National Council of EEOC Locals.

Dominguez disputes that conclusion. "Every metric, every indicator of performance says the complete opposite of that," she says.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.