For anyone that has spent a little time thinking about the HR profession, the story of Anne Mulcahy at Xerox is certainly an outlier. Remember -- She's the one who went from leading Xerox's HR function right into the CEO job. This does not happen often. Equally impressive is the turnaround that she led driving Xerox from deep red ink back to profitability.
Take some time and learn from this interview from the New York Times. It would be nice to see more HR pro's jumping across the aisle into the CEO role.