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Awards & Lists
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| Asha Goyal, Ph.D vice president - Quality IBM Global Services India |
2004 National Women of Color Technology Award Winners
Technologist of the Year
Asha Goyal, Ph.D.
Vice President of Quality
IBM Global Services India
Diversity Leader
Joyce E. Tucker
Vice President, Global Diversity and Employee Rights
The Boeing Company
Businessperson of the Year
Candace S. Matthews
President
Soft Sheen•Carson/Division of L'Oréal
Educational Leadership
Beverly D. Tatum, Ph.D.
President
Spelman College
Sheila Forte-Trammell
HR Learning Consultant, Corporate Learning
IBM Corporation
Community Service
Candi Castleberry-Singleton
Director, Global Inclusion and Employee Environment Center of Expertise
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Corporate Responsibility
Gloria Cyprian-Tanner
Manager, Contracts Administration
Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc.
Managerial Leadership
Jocelyn E. Scott
Engineering Director
DuPont
Jacqueline D. Woods
Vice President, Global Licensing & Pricing Strategy
Oracle Corporation
New Media/IT Leadership
Cathy D. Ross
Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
FedEx Express
Sona Chawla
Executive Vice President, Web Channel Management
Wells Fargo & Company
Research Leadership
Cathy Y. Choi, Ph.D.
Engineering Project Team Leader
Caterpillar Inc.
Technical Innovation
Patty Q. Kuang
Senior Lead Systems Analyst
Corning Incorporated
Jasmin Jijina
Senior Technologist, Advanced Technology Group
General Motors Corporation/OnStar
Product Development/Management
Beverly A. Hodges
Senior Director, Voice Products and Services
Nextel Communications, Inc.
Technical Sales and Marketing
Carmen W. Camacho
Business Developer
EDS U.S. Government Solutions
Professional Achievement
Angela M. Messer
Principal
Booz Allen Hamilton
Maya M. Mullenex
Operations Engineer Senior Staff
Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company
Career Achievement
Ming-Pin Wang, Sc.D.
Principal Staff, Homeland Security Strategic Management/Integration
The MITRE Corporation
Karla Middlebrooks
Director, Corporate Investment and Financial Control
DaimlerChrysler Corporation
President's Award
Patricia A. Newby
President
Xetron (Northrop Grumman Subsidiary)
Lifetime Achievement
Bich-Yen Nguyen
Fellow Technical Staff
Freescale Semiconductor Inc.
Gina F. Adams
Corporate Vice President, Government Affairs
FedEx Corporation
Affirmative Action
Gloria D. Pualani
Corporate Director
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Student Leadership
Angela Grice
Air Traffic Controller Radar Maintenance Technician
U.S. Air Force
Davida M. Clark
College Co-operative Student
GM Powertrain Flint North
Young Professional
Tianna L. Shaw
Manager, Facilities Utilization Office, Life Sciences Division
NASA Ames Research Center
IBM Corporation is justly proud of Asha Goyal, Ph.D., leader of the Quality team at its Global Services India division. Months after signing on in 1999, Dr. Goyal, a highly experienced software designer and manager, propelled her division to become the first IBM unit to achieve recognition as a Software Engineering Institute Capability Maturity Model Level 5 organization. The Institute, housed at Carnegie Mellon University, developed the metric to assess the performance of organizations developing complex commercial software. The fifth level is the highest rating.
Two years later, through Dr. Goyal's leadership, IBM Applications Management Services (part of IBM Global Services) passed another milestone: an International Standards Organization 9001:2000 rating.
The next year, her team won a Level 5 rating under the People Capability Maturity Model and continuing that winning trend, pushed on to a Level 5 rating under the more involved Capability Maturity Model Integrated standard. And if that was not enough, Dr. Goyal, a Six Sigma Black Belt in quality control, led the team to reach that standard, too.
Early Courage
But that's getting ahead of the story, which begins earlier, when Asha Goyal's young body was attacked by the poliomyelitis virus at age two, forever crippling her ability to move around like other people. Jonas Salk's vaccine ended America's polio epidemics during the mid-1950s, but progress was slower in other parts of the world. A spirited child, Asha Goyal simply refused to be prevented from chasing her goals. Brooking no obstacles, she rolled through elementary and secondary school and enrolled at the Indian Institute of Technology at Roorkee, where she became the first woman "topper" -- the highest scoring student -- on the engineering entrance examination. Just getting around campus presented difficulties, and athletic activities might have seemed out of the question. But she persevered, finishing with a "Best Student Gold Medal" and a bachelor's degree in electronics.
"If you can't do something, at least you can enjoy seeing others do it," she says, "just like someone who can't sing can at least enjoy others singing well."
Swimming Past Problems
That can-do attitude manifested in graduate school at the Indian Institute for Technology at Kanpur, where she pursued a master's degree in electrical engineering, then a Ph.D. in computer science. Faced with the need to learn to swim, she took classes and mastered three styles in 15 days, becoming skilled at diving, too. Dr. Goyal was so good she became an instructor, teaching others her techniques.
Campus mobility still presented challenges, so Dr. Goyal, undaunted, set out to develop her own wheeled transport, trying a bicycle, autorickshaws, contraptions made out of hospital equipment, and finally a moped she called Luna. Adding an extra wheel for stability, the young Dr.-to-be Goyal raced around campus, switching to "cycle mode" and dragging it to her destination if engine trouble shut it down en route. Two mechanics, on constant call for emergencies, fashioned a "knife-like" spark-plug cleaner and an adapter that let her use campus air compressors to inflate the tires.
Later, in America, she discovered the automatic transmission, and fell in love with cars. Within a week she could drive, and could go anywhere she wanted.
Unable to take an American car to England on assignment, she hunted up an older transmission from a Morris mini and had it shipped to India for installation in one of the readily available Fiats. Obstacle? What obstacle?
Seeing the World, Her Way
Corporate assignments have taken Dr. Goyal to many countries, and she has vacationed in many others. Eighteen, all told. She's gone up the Swiss Alps by cable car and ridden the rides at Disneyland, and feels her life is no different than anyone else's.
"Just go ahead and do what you want to!" she says.
That also applies in the corporate setting. Beginning at Tata Consultancy Services in 1971, Dr. Goyal quickly established herself as a leader and innovator in software development for the Indian domestic and export markets. Among other projects in a long career, she led an initiative to conceptualize, design, and build a countrywide counterpart to the U.S. FBI National Criminal Information Center, serving national and local police. It was the first of its kind in India.
Another big job was the ab initio conceptualization, design, and building of a computerized patient care system for the health care industry.
In 1994, she moved to Fujitsu ICIM India, as general manager. Over two and a half years, she set up a development facility at Software Technology Park in Noida, India. She also led software export for the health care line of business. She reengineered a legacy health care information system to run with a graphical user interface, providing a win for the customer and the supplier.
In October 1996, Dr. Goyal joined HCL Perot Systems as executive vice president for software development, continuing her rigorous drive to put out the best possible software for clients.
Finally, in 1999, she joined IBM, bringing her can-do attitude and skills with her. Developing an interest in quality control during the 1980s, Dr. Goyal became active with the Institute of Informatics and Communication, Delhi University, South Campus, and is a Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Telecom Engineers, a half-century-old organization awarding government-recognized engineering degrees and taking up educational activities in technical areas. She is the very definition of a "go-getter."
---
A Major-League Will
It is fitting that this year's Technologist of the Year, a natural inventor who began her life climbing over obstacles others barely perceived, is the leadoff hitter in this collection of industrial all-stars. The Class of 2004 National Women of Color Technology Award Winners, as a body, demonstrates a major-league will to climb over obstacles.
Bich-Yen Nguyen is a case in point. Born into privilege in a military family in Southeast Asia at the middle of the 20th century, she was expected to do well. But the death of Nguyen's father, a soldier, left the family destitute. Young Bich-Yen might have expected to go to work to help her mother support her siblings, but family pride said "No!" Mom worked in a military commissary so Bich-Yen could continue at boarding school, then sent her off to college in the U.S. While she was at the University of Texas, married and beginning her own family, the Vietnam War ground to its inexorable close, turning many Vietnamese, including her own mother and siblings, into refugees. Three brothers became "Boat People," escaping over the ocean, and Bich-Yen, who had already begun leading resettlement efforts for her countrymen, rescued her family and helped her brothers go to college, too.
Into the Swirl
Graduating with a B.Sc. in chemical engineering in 1977, the year the Commodore Pet, Apple II, and Radio Shack TRS-80 blew the doors off the data-processing priesthood, Bich-Yen Nguyen dived into the Computer Revolution. Her first job as a plant chemist for the City of Austin didn't keep her long. A little more than two years after starting work, Nguyen joined Motorola's Semiconductor Products Sector, supervising engineers and techs making IC wafers, boosting the quality of film deposition while learning the intricate steps of semiconductor manufacturing.
Four years after signing on, Nguyen had learned enough to become a senior member of the Technical Staff. The results were dramatic: A strong contributor to microprocessor development, she codeveloped and implemented new manufacturing processes, on the way establishing a reliability testing method that ensured products passed qualification tests on time. She also coinvented a silicon-rich nitride process to hike photo resolution in the wafer-making process.
Still going strong, she developing several new devices: a new field-effect transistor power circuit, the TrenchFET, and a polysilicon thin-film transistor static random access memory module with a 10x reduction in "soft" error rates. That brought four patents and two defensive publications. Deep in the guts of chipmaking, she also developed the Pyroclean process for removing metallic contamination during IC fabrication. That brought another two publications, one issued patent, and several presentations inside and outside Motorola.
An initiative to identify and eliminate high-static RAM single-bit failure rates brought a 12-percent improvement in circuit yields and a Motorola Technical Achievement Award. Still another patent came from boosting microminiaturized static RAM production. And on and on.
Patent Powerhouse
In all, Nguyen has produced, either singly or with her team, 55 patents, with another 12 pending. Her team's most recent exploit is a whole new class of devices -- the Multiple Independent Gate FET, which has the potential to cut significantly the number of transistors needed to perform a function in an integrated circuit. She's won Motorola's Distinguished Innovator award and was elected to the Science Advisory Board Associates, an honor reserved for the top 2 percent of Motorola scientists and engineers. Not stopping there, in 2001, Nguyen won the company's highest honor, citation as a Dan Noble Fellow. That air is so rare that less than 5 percent of Science Advisory Board Associates, themselves Motorola's crème de la crème, are named Dan Noble Fellows each year.
In April 2004, as her superiors were preparing her nomination for a Woman of Color Technology Award, Bich-Yen Nguyen and her team presented nine disclosures deemed by Motorola's internal patent committee to be worthy of filing with the Patent and Trademark Office. And she's still not done yet.
Putting the Chips to work
Beverly Ann Hodges works at the customer end of the chip line: Developing the products and services the chips make possible. Motorola, with the then-named AT&T Bell Laboratories, originally developed cell telephony and unleashed a storm into the consumer market, only to see competitors such as Nokia take the lead in market share with slick, California-designed handsets and reliable switchgear. Motorola was thought to be on the ropes until Nextel bought into its iDEN technology and shook up business communications with the "push-to-talk" feature. Motorola roared back into the wireless market with a vengeance as Nextel beat its own path to success.
The selling job for technology products demands a high degree of savvy, both in the how-it-works technical background and in the understanding of customer needs.
Hodges, a graduate of Hampton University with an M.B.A. from Old Dominion University and a Leadership Challenge Certificate from the Wharton Executive Education program, as well as Leading Creatively Certification from the Center for Creative Leadership, leads strategic product marketing. Starting at MCI, she developed wireline products for competition in the "local loop" for business customers. Later, at Bell Atlantic, now Verizon, she leveraged her experience to help lead that Baby Bell to become the first regional telco to enter the long-distance business. At Nextel, she directed the ongoing development and rollout of its most innovative niche offering, Direct Connect, and has launched enhanced voice service products generating more than $200 million in incremental revenue.
Now she leads Nextel's key strategic initiative to maintain its competitive advantage with instant voice communications and directs the strategy for converging voice and data communications as the industry moves into the next-generation wireless technology. Her success is self-evident: Some 95 percent of Fortune 500 companies are Nextel customers.
Driving to the Top, Her Way
It is said, too frequently by people who should know better, that America's newcomers easily outpace Blacks in pursuing education, career growth, and social mobility. But America's doors of opportunity are rarely opened to outsiders of any kind without a struggle. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech reached ears and hearts all over the world, and the Civil Rights campaign brought progress to many other groups besides Blacks. Moreover, as with all such heartfelt myths, believers have to ignore the drive of the freed men and women who pushed for universal public education in the post-Civil War era, founded colleges across the South even as Jim Crow segregation truncated their career access, and marched across the Oregon Trail -- more than 70,000 strong -- in search of a new life in the days of Billy the Kid and Wyatt Earp. Today, 140 years after the Emancipation Proclamation set church bells ringing everywhere, two million Blacks -- more than 35 percent of the college age youth -- are pursuing degrees.
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Many, like Northrop Grumman Corporation's Patricia Newby, work their way through.
Newby joined Westinghouse Defense Systems in Baltimore in 1975, under a college work-study program, placed in a then-innovative initiative to broaden the 110-year-old company's technical work force. She studied mathematics at Morgan State University then mechanical engineering at The Johns Hopkins University, completing her degree in computer science at Loyola College in Maryland.
What happened next astonished her peers and rewarded the foresight of her mentors. Climbing the ranks, learning the business of radar as well as the technology, Newby became the first Black female project manager in the Air Traffic Control sector, changing everyone's perceptions in a formerly all-male environment. She stepped up again to become the first woman supervisory engineer in the company's Command and Control Division, leading engineers in the design of complex military and civilian radar systems.
Winds of Change
Northrop Grumman's acquisition of Defense Systems changed the culture of the company again, and Newby's career took off. She rose to become manager of Air Traffic Control Systems, traveling widely and working closely with government leaders here and in Panama, Peru, Thailand, and Aruba, where the men in charge had had little contact with women in critical business positions. Newby managed the entire business in Panama, directing the customer sell-off of the Panama Air Traffic Control System, including flight check of the radar, data processing, and communications systems, completing the successful transition to operational status.
She continued her educational growth, completing the M.B.A. at Loyola and executive leadership programs at the Wharton School and Harvard Business School, and at the same time served as an organizer and founder of an elementary school at Baltimore's Bethel A.M.E. Church. She also joined WORTHY (WorthWhile to Help High School Youth), a Northrop Grumman initiative to help inner-city youths succeed in college preparatory studies and go on to engineering school. One student she mentored now is enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Newby took on a challenge four years ago that many in Northrop Grumman found daunting: driving change in a troubled subsidiary. Xetron Corporation, a Cincinnati defense subcontractor in electronic systems, was hemorrhaging financially and on the verge of being terminated for default by the prime contractor on a major project. In three years, Newby, then director of Program Operations, saw three different division presidents and had to win over and turn around a technical staff that evolved in a very different culture. She rose to deputy site director then president of the division. Superiors note that one of her first acts was to decline to move into the executive suite, remodeling it for occupation by engineers. The formerly troubled division, under her leadership, now is growing again, its $60-million business taking off.
She Keeps 'Em Flying
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Angela Grice charted an entirely different path, but she also works in Air Traffic Control. Grice, a graduate of the University of Louisiana, finished with dean's list grades.
Grice joined the Air Force in January 2001, and became an enlisted air traffic control radar maintenance technician. Part of the 34th Combat Communications Squadron at Tinker Air Base in Oklahoma, Senior Airman Grice installs, maintains, and repairs fixed and mobile air traffic control systems, weather, ground, and aircraft warning and automatic tracking radar systems. During her first month at Tinker, Grice distinguished herself by becoming the class leader for more than 40 troops, earning the Sharp Troop Award, presented by the First Term Airman Center.
Radar systems always were complex beasts, involving multiple myriads of highly specialized electrical, electronic, mechanical, and sometimes hydraulic circuits, all working interactively to present accurate pictures of things too distant or too obscured by conditions to be visible to even experienced sky-watchers. Today's systems, with their multiple phased array antennas and computer-driven data presentation, are even more so, and installation and maintenance of such systems is at the upper end of the curve of the technical professional's art.
Grice, one of a handful of women who have chosen electronics careers in the Air Force, is the only African-American radar tech in the 3rd Combat Communications Group. In September 2003, Senior Airman Grice deployed to Iraq to work on airport surveillance and precision approach radars installed at Baghdad International Airport. She and an Hispanic coworker were the only two females among the 15 to 20 persons deployed. While there, Grice trained her colleague on electrical and alignment procedures to verify the status of the equipment.
Now back at Tinker, Grice is continuing her education, working toward a second degree in electronics from the Community College of the Air Force. Ultimately, she's aiming for graduate study at Webster University, to earn a master's degree in computer science. Then again, ultimately, no one knows exactly how high she will fly.
Boosting Safety through Telematics
Jasmin Jijina is a research physicist, as comfortable working with a particle accelerator as most engineers are programming a multifunction calculator. But she has left the hallowed halls of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and has put her MIT Ph.D. to work developing solutions for earthbound communications. Specifically, Jijina, a senior technologist for General Motors Corporation's OnStar unit, has become a key driver for pan-industry/governmental committees seeking to upgrade national communications and data-sharing capabilities for auto accidents, highway health emergencies, and public health threats such as terrorism, disease outbreaks, and disaster relief. All in one breath, too.
The tragic events of 9/11 and the anthrax incidents alerted local and national authorities to the need for better communication of data and voice traffic among emergency response units. Among other tasks, Jijina has emerged as a leader in efforts by the federal Centers for Disease Control, the National Academy of Science, National Library of Medicine, and the Federal Communications Commission to create technological resources to enable real-time exchange of health data among fire and police first-responders, hospital emergency medical centers, and state and national health authorities. The idea here is to develop rapid alerting of authorities to public health emergencies through real-time monitoring of emergency room activity, to enable early recognition of broader emergencies arising from bioterrorism, large weather phenomena such as heat waves and smog inversions, disease outbreaks, and accidental large-scale releases of toxic materials into the environment.
Enabling the First-Responders
Telematics, an emerging technology that is a blend of wireless telephony, data communication, and GPS satellite location, is central to that effort. Jijina, representing GM but serving in a broader role that will affect competing telematics providers, wireless carriers, and wired local exchange carriers, is helping to set the standards for data interchange among vehicle automatic crash notification systems, law enforcement, emergency medical services, transportation, fire/rescue services, and hospitals. A paper she cowrote with the executive vice president of a private health care system and the former chair of the National Emergency Number Association's NENA Data Technical Committee has set the ground rules for this collaborative effort. In another pioneering effort, Jijina developed a white paper describing an Emergency Call Routing Solution that neatly integrates telematic service provider call center activity into the national wireless and wireline telephone systems, using the Signaling System 7 protocol. The solution, "agnostic" to the region-specific routing instructions used by the local exchange carrier serving the area in which a vehicle emergency incident occurs, will enable call center personnel to connect quickly and easily to the 911 dispatch center close to the scene, relaying vehicle automatic crash notification data at the same time they initiate voice conference calls to connect the passengers to the 911 dispatchers to discuss the incident.
Developing standards where none exist is heady work. Jijina, who joined GM only three years ago, is clearly up to the task. In those three years, she has been granted five patents, with four others pending, and 10 noteworthy Records of Invention. She also has jumped into OnStar's efforts to leverage content provided by its partners to bring to market a new, more reliable and accurate navigation solution, to serve as the basis for a new family of navigation, traffic, and location-based offerings.
Creating a New Teaching Tool
Angela Messer works with data communications systems, too, on the user side. A principal with Booz Allen Hamilton, she is working to use IT skills to turn today's Army, Army Reserve, and National Guard soldiers into "information warriors."
Familiar with LAN and WAN architectures, Messer began organizing staffers to begin building one of the world's largest networked distance learning setups. From those early precatory steps, Messer's team moved to implementation, adding personnel until it included some 150 full-time equivalents, located in five centers nationwide.
Now, as a principal for Booz Allen Hamilton's Defense Systems Teams, Messer leads business and IT strategy development for Army and National Guard clients. Leading the teams, she manages consulting business across the entire Army market, including the Reserves, National Guard, and major organizations such as the Materiel Command and Defense Acquisition University. In addition, she leads the coordination effort between Booz Allen Hamilton's Homeland Defense and Homeland Security initiatives as they relate to and integrate with the Army market. A former Army officer, Messer, a West Pointer and holder of the master's degree in management from Florida Institute of Technology, is an active member of the National Guard Strategic Advisory Group supporting the Guard's J6 leadership with assistance in aligning its technology strategy with the long-term strategic goals focused on the Guard's changing mission.
Virtuality Virtuoso
Messer is cochair of the Booz Allen Hamilton Technology Focus Group for e-learning, managing more than 80 people with expertise in content management, distributed learning, learning technologies, virtual learning environments, and the virtual workplace.
Messer also has served as program manager for the Defense Acquisition University Virtual Campus, developing the Application Service Provider concept for government-wide virtual university portal services to include e-business, e-commerce, and e-learning solutions. Leading overall strategy and management for the effort's development team, Messer had oversight of systems engineering functions, database management, and software development using Oracle, Cold Fusion, Java, the eXtensible Markup Language, hypertext markup language, and PL/SQL database software.
Earlier, Messer directed several Sylvan Learning Centers that diagnosed, assessed, and designed private education programs for adults and children, attaining a ranking of 12th among 440 Sylvan Learning Centers internationally. Ten years ago, she was ranked second internationally for negotiating the highest sales contracts.
Web Channel Banker
Another expert using computer network skills to advance enterprise goals is Sona Chawla, executive vice president for Web Channel Management at Wells Fargo. Banking has become highly technical, dependent on computers and networks to manage complex, far-flung operations. Here a blend of business skills and technology smarts is de rigueur, and Chawla, a 1990 Wellesley College computer science grad and MIT Sloan School M.B.A., fit right in.
Chawla came to Wells Fargo from Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, where she developed West Coast business development strategies, including a small-business Internet strategy for a leading financial institution, and conducted a customer segmentation analysis for the institution's online brokerage arm. She also helped develop core product offerings for a financial services firm seeking to enter the electronic customer relations marketplace.
Earlier, Chawla worked for the Mitchell Madison Group, where as senior engagement manager she led consultants and client staff teams on several big projects:
* Conceptual design of a fixed income electronic trading system for a major financial information provider;
* Definition of customer segments and of product, pricing, and distribution strategy specific to each segment for a major financial information provider;
* Determination of the revenue growth opportunities for a leading online information provider;
* Definition of her company's vision to provide Web-based outsourced procurement services for financial institutions;
* Feasibility assessment to create a consortium of major banks for joint acquisition of market data services and development of inter-bank trading systems;
* Design of a procurement organization for a major investment bank, including definition of job responsibilities, identification of appropriate performance metrics, and creation of reporting systems for monitoring and compliance;
* Conducting enterprise-wide operational cost-reduction diagnostics for major financial institutions.
Joining Wells Fargo in 2000, Chawla quickly put that experience to work. She developed a strategy to evolve WellsFargo.com into a leading Web site that makes it easy for customers to buy financial products and conduct bank transactions online. Self-service tools she implemented include online applications, online customer assistance, single sign-on across major product sites, and a content management system.
Chawla also developed a strategy and process to manage personalized online marketing campaigns. She integrated the customer experience on WellsFargo.com with other bank channels where relevant, at branch offices and call centers. One key example is cross-channel product application status and alerts.
Chawla also introduced Wells Fargo's "next-generation" Spanish Services online resource center for Spanish-speaking and bilingual customers and prospects. Bank Monitor magazine named it the top-ranked Spanish Bank Web Service in 2003.
Not stopping there, Chawla created state-of-the-art online banking services for the visually impaired. Wells Fargo is the only financial institution to have its Web site certified by the National Federation for the Blind. Other accolades for Chawla's work include listing as a Gomez "Top 5 Online Banking Web site," citation by Forrester Research for providing the "Best Financial Services Cross-Channel Experience," a Global Finance Best Customer Integrated Site in North America, and inclusion in the Business Week Web Smart 50.
Space Scientist
Tianna Shaw has ridden an opposite trajectory to that of Jasmin Jijina. Jijina began her career in astrophysics, probing the thermonuclear hearts of stars, but discovered a new fascination for the Earthbound business of communications technology. Shaw, who grew up on the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation in Northern California, majored in biomedical and electrical engineering at the University of Southern California and went into the space program. Shaw also completed an M.Sc. program in biomedical engineering, specializing in medical instrumentation in 1994, but by that time she had begun her career at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and moved on to the NASA Ames Research Center.
At NASA Ames, Shaw manages the Life Sciences Division's Facilities Utilization Office, providing oversight and leadership for a multidisciplinary team of civil servants and contractors supporting investigators' peer-reviewed science projects in the ground-based Center for Gravitational Biology Research. In English, she manages the ground test facility complex and provides expert technical direction for it and oversight of contractor support activities.
The biggest thing she runs is the 20-G centrifuge, which can subject payloads to a force equal to 20 times the Earth's gravitational pull. But that is by no means the only thing she leads.
Technical papers she led or coauthored include a discussion of "Model Reference Adaptive Control of Heart Rate During Wheelchair Ergonometry," for IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology (July 1998), "Shuttle Launch G Forces and Acoustic Loads Using the NASA Ames Research Center 20G Centrifuge," published in Proceedings of the 18th Space Simulation Conference (1994), and "Model Reference Adaptive Control of Heart Rate of a User of a Wheelchair Dynamometer," her California State-Sacramento master's thesis (1994).
An active promoter of Native American access to science careers, Shaw was a founder of the first high school chapter of the American Indian Science and Engineering Society (AISES), and she remained active with the group. In graduate school, she cofounded another AISES chapter and served as president. At NASA Ames, she is the founding chairperson of the Native American Advisory Committee and the current vice president and past president of the California Professional Chapter.
Keeping the Planet Healthy
The science of waste management touches every other discipline, and every other human activity. Ming-Pin Wang, Sc.D., a civil engineer from National Taiwan University, came to the U.S. in 1971 to begin her career at Malcolm Pirnie, Inc. and EBASCO, Inc. But after she completed a master's degree in environmental engineering at Manhattan College two years later, Wang left the private sector for work as a research analyst and doctoral candidate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She earned her doctorate in 1981 and went to Camp Dresser and McKee. There, she got involved with environmental projects that began to shape her career. In 1985, she joined The MITRE Corporation, a not-for-profit enterprise that provides scientific and educational support to federal, state, and local government agencies in a number of areas.
Then, working with nationally known scientists and engineers, Dr. Wang took the lead in major projects for the Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. Soil Conservation Agency, and the U.S. Air Force. The list of projects she spearheaded reads like a laundry list of environmental risk assessment, remediation, and protection activities, but that is not all:
* She developed the Hazard Ranking System, including water pathway and integration of multiple pathways, for the EPA Superfund program. This is EPA's principal ranking system to place uncontrolled hazardous waste sites on the National Priority List, based on relative risk potential to harm human health and the environment.
* She provided technical guidance and review of risk assessments for waste sites in the Air Force Installation Restoration Program, a task made more urgent by the congressionally mandated closing and reuse of military facilities all over the country.
* She set up the standards and completed many risk assessments at McClellan Air Force Base, which has more than 250 sites contributing to the overall risk. She also developed a risk-screening model to establish remediation priorities at the base. That later was incorporated into a Relative Risk Model the Defense Department used to set funding priorities for its broader remediation program.
* Dr. Wang led the risk assessment to support designation of ocean disposal sites for municipal sludge, based on available information about physical oceanography, waste characteristics, existing water quality, and sediment contamination. Going further, she led the technical assistance to the EPA in establishing national water-quality criteria for toxic substances.
* She provided technical assistance to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on its Alternative Concentration Limit methodology for uranium mill tailings.
* She also provided independent review of the quantitative risk assessment for chemical agent disposal facilities for the Army's Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program.
* Working with the National Science Foundation, Dr. Wang developed a model to simulate physical, chemical, and biological processes in lakes and reservoirs, using it to examine the dynamics of biological systems affected by the physical and chemical changes brought on by industrial activity.
* She also developed a chemical and ecological model to evaluate the effects of urban developments on the Key Largo reef for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
* Working with local environmental officials in Sacramento and Cleveland, she developed models to simulate and evaluate the operations of waste water treatment plants and incinerators.
Dr. Wang's list of accomplishments in environmental protection and remediation goes on for page after page. Let it suffice to say she has been a major player in helping governments figure it out in environmental protection, bouncing between MITRE and its offspring, Mitretek Systems, Inc. Today, she also supports the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Emergency Preparedness in its efforts to collaborate with the Department of Homeland Security, state and local governments, and the private sector in a presidentially directed drive to protect the health-critical infrastructure.
Dr. Wang has 27 technical publications and 23 contract reports. Her list of accomplishments goes on and on and on, but you get our drift. In environmental science and remediation, she's the one. Period.
Outside the Box, Lovin' it
As we have seen, environmental studies can lead a scientist to interesting places. Patty Kuang, child of a manufacturing engineer in the People's Republic of China, began her own engineering studies there, continuing through graduate school and joining a Chinese research institute, where she focused on chemically enhanced oil recovery. Four years later, she traveled to Canada, to complete a Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of Ottawa. She remained as a post-doc for two years, then in 1994 joined Microsep International in Vancouver, B.C., developing innovative environmental technology and promoting its adoption in the North American and Asian markets.
So far, no surprises. Just a standard story of career growth for a chemical engineer. Today, however, Dr. Kuang works in IT, developing software that enables other scientists to work faster, better, and smarter at Corning Incorporated. How she got there is an interesting evolution.
Math Leads the Way
In China, Dr. Kuang fell in love with mathematics and excelled in numerical simulations. That expertise grew when she applied her skills to the understanding of petroleum recovery methodology, and at Microsep the good doctor led a team of young engineers exploring water and wastewater treatment, building on skills she learned in oil recovery. In the capitalist West, however, Dr. Kuang also learned to play different roles: researcher, product development manager, consultant engineer, as well as marketing liaison to areas of Taiwan and China.
Dr. Kuang worked through the entire life cycle of product development and innovation, including laboratory experimentation, the scale-up of discoveries into pilot production, developing the design criteria for full-scale production, and development of the marketing plan for product commercialization. Dr. Kuang grew up watching her father work in a government-run industry, but in Canada she learned what it takes to move a large commercial enterprise.
In 1997, Dr. Kuang returned to her technological roots, joining BDM International in Oklahoma, working under a contract at a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory. There she concentrated, again, on chemically enhanced oil recovery. That contract ran out as 1998 ended, and she had to move on.
The burgeoning Computer Revolution caught her eye in 1999, as the Internet explosion rapidly reshaped the business landscape. Dr. Kuang, attracted, jumped in, her earlier development of skills in programming and data analysis paving her way.
Shifting Her Field
Dr. Kuang first served as a consultant at Corning, but after she saw the diverse technologies Corning's staff was pursuing and their corporate work environment, she decided to join up, too.
What Dr. Kuang provides today is a blend of research and technology skills. As a research professional herself, she readily understands the methodology as well as the goals of R&D projects. Her recommenders, Corning's senior technology managers and research leaders, note that she is able to give guidance to younger researchers in how to proceed.
As an expert in computers, she readily grasps the potential of systems to help Corning staffers manage and manipulate information. And as an experienced product developer herself, she has been able to provide critical support to Corning manufacturing teams in applying computer technology to the improved control of manufacturing processes.
Dr. Kuang has seven technical reports, 12 publications, two articles in refereed conference proceedings, and four papers presented at refereed conferences. The reports focus on environmental research and treatment processes, whereas the publications analyze the dynamics of viscous fluid flow through porous media, emulsions formed in alkaline waterflooding, and other topics of interest to geologists, energy companies, and environmental specialists.
Like Dr. Huang's career, it shows a potent mix of skills and abilities.
Air-Capable Manager
Some people are born jumping out of the box. Maya Mullenex, who began life in India, where her father commanded an Indian Air Force wing, appears to be such a person.
After her father retired, the family moved to Israel, and Mullenex grew up there, was drafted, and served in the army. She wanted to see the world and joined El Al Airlines as a flight attendant, ending up in London. A year later, she was in the U.S., a twentysomething with $5,000 and a burning desire to go places.
Her El Al experience landed Mullenex a job at an East Coast travel services firm. As her corporate bio says, "Soon she was managing the reservation center and five branches, implementing training, mentoring, and incentive systems for 90 employees." Three years later, she moved to another firm as director of operational planning and execution, and helped that firm grow to add six branches.
"Then, rather abruptly, I had my eyes opened," she says. "That company hired a young man right out of college to do what I was doing, for more money, and they gave him a car. I realized I wasn't going anywhere without a degree. So, I quit work and enrolled in the local community college."
At Housatonic Community College in Bridgeport, Conn., she earned Phi Theta Kappa honors getting her associate's degree in science, and she won a scholarship to Wesleyan University, where she earned Phi Beta Kappa honors in economics in 1992. Mullenex then completed M.A. studies in economics at the University of Connecticut in 1995 and the M.B.A. at Yale in 1996.
Sikorsky Aircraft Corporation recruited Mullenex into its Executive Leadership Development program, and over the next four years she moved through assignments in aircraft manufacturing and maintenance:
* She benchmarked aftermarket support offered to Gulfstream, Pratt & Whitney, Hamilton Sundstrand, and Bombardier to determine attributes valued by helicopter operators and sources of competitive advantage.
* She served as program manager for commercial customer service. In that post, she designed an aftermarket distribution system to deliver services customers were demanding. The system leveraged customer investments in service infrastructure and skills, and led to a $65-million acquisition of an aftermarket competitor.
* She became a project manager for agile manufacturing operations, developing problem-solving mechanisms for line and project managers. She became operations manager for the Israel Blackhawk program, directly responsible for cost, quality, and schedule performance of the operations team, managing the timely coordination of paper, parts, process, and people required for the $100-million program.
* Then she became the first woman and the first Executive Leadership candidate to run a line in 20 years as the operations manager for Sikorsky's Depot Level Maintenance Line, Assembly Flight Operations.
By the time she left, she was manager of aftermarket programs and strategies, with a thorough understanding of the myriad details of supply chain management and support for a major systems integrator such as an airplane manufacturer.
That experience stood her in good stead at Indalex Aluminum Solutions, where she managed plants. In one exploit, she moved an entire manufacturing job from a smaller plant to a larger one, preserving the customer relations and maintaining quality.
Lockheed Martin Corporation recruited her for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, in which she serves as an industrial engineer senior staff. Mullenex is responsible for management and technical operations, including development of control processes for the aircraft's production. The job requires expert knowledge of planning, scheduling, earned value, work instructions, material point-of-use status and visibility, team roles and responsibilities, and quality systems, as well as extensive lean management background and experience: in other words, all of the things she learned at Sikorsky, and tried out at Indalex Aluminum.
Lockheed Martin is making a big bet on her mastery of those skills, on a project to develop an aircraft intended to be the first-ever ground-up design to succeed in the very different roles required of U.S. Navy carrier planes, U.S. Air Force air superiority fighters, and U.S. Marine Corps ground attack/close air support fighters.
Quite a journey, for an Indian Air Force brat who grew up on a kibbutz.
Old Technology, New Ideas
Diesel engines have been around for a century. But readers who think they are merely "old" technology with little potential for dramatic improvements in efficiency should meet Dr. Cathy Choi, a computer-savvy mechanical engineer who is rewriting the record books on how Caterpillar diesel power will move the earth.
Dr. Choi, a 1990 graduate of Iowa State University, completed her master's degree and Ph.D. education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison as the 20th century was about to end. Her research, on engine experiments with oxygenated fuels, involved use of numerical computations using a multidimensional computer model to describe and analyze the effects of fuel composition on combustion processes, and it produced groundbreaking results.
Among other things, Dr. Choi demonstrated that use of multiple injections with oxygenated fuel brought dramatic reductions in soot, with no significant penalty in NOx emissions. She found that only small amounts of oxygen are required to get the benefits and that the chemical composition of the fuel was less important than the amount of oxygen.
Ahem. If that sound esoteric, remember that diesels power almost all of the mass-transit buses running around the world, as well as many modern oceangoing cargo vessels, just about all of the heavy earth-moving, road-building, and construction equipment our technology-using society depends on for progress in the 21st century.
Real-World Proof of Concepts
Not surprisingly, Caterpillar recruited Dr. Choi in 1999 as an engineering project team leader in its Technology and Solutions Division. Consumer products such as passenger autos are seeing important emissions improvements from new technologies such as the common rail injection system, but Dr. Choi and her team are deep inside the engine cylinder itself, pushing back the frontiers of combustion technology. As John Amdall, Caterpillar's director of research and technology put it in a letter, diesel emissions were cut by 90 percent from 1988 to 2002, but because of continuing environmental concern, engine emissions will have to fall another 90 percent by 2007: "The analogy that we use is that after running the marathon to make the first 90 percent reduction...we are finding ourselves not at the finish line, but at the starting line to do it again -- only this time it will be a sprint."
Caterpillar's answer has been its new Advanced Combustion Emissions Reduction Technology (ACERT). Dr. Choi directly contributed to the ACERT breakthroughs with her work in diesel engine combustion modeling and her technical knowledge of emissions technologies.
Moreover, Dr. Choi, a Six Sigma Black Belt, demonstrated even more leadership in applying the Six Sigma principles to the research process. Among other exploits, she and her team built a software suite, Computational Aerodynamics and Thermodynamics in 3 Dimensions (CAT3D), an engine simulation tool that evaluates engine technology concepts virtually and accurately, eliminating the need to build and test new engine designs to test them.
The development was significant: CAT3D eliminated $4.7 million in pretax costs associated with Caterpillar's C12 bridge engine, and one plant used CAT3D to change from the expensive and difficult-to-package exhaust gas recirculation system to ACERT technology on its naturally aspirated Tier 3 product.
The innovation has such broad applicability that Caterpillar signed a deal to commercialize the software with the consulting firm Convergent Thinking, which worked on it with Dr. Choi's team. The deal provides for joint ownership of the CAT3D package and a sharing of sales and consulting revenue from its use. Convergent Thinking will continue to develop the product to Caterpillar's specifications, while Caterpillar will market the product.
"We think this technology has features the rest of the world will really want," says Caterpillar's Eric Fluga, technical manager in the Technology and Solutions Division. "This project was a high-risk effort that we're confident will turn into high-reward results. It has huge potential to move to other markets."
All this from a mechanical engineer working on -- gasp -- diesels? Stay tuned.
Student Go-Getter
Davida Clark is just beginning her climb into the corporate ranks, as a junior electrical engineering major at Kettering University and a co-op student working her way through assignments at General Motors Powertrain Division in Flint, Mich.
Clark participated in Project Lead the Way, an engineering-oriented program at Southwestern Academy, her high school, and GM sponsored her for a special Kettering summer program in math and science. GM uses the program, Academically Interested Minorities, to recruit college students for internships and co-op programs.
Clark won honors in her freshman year at Kettering, including a Freshman Academic Excellence Award and the Urban League's 16th Annual Minorities in Higher Education Award, given by the presidents of five local colleges in Flint. She was selected recently to join the Kappa Mu Epsilon National Honor Society.
Clark also has been a member of the Genessee Area Skills Center's Robotics Team, vying for top honors in local, regional, and national competitions in robotics design, construction, and operation. Her team won an award for Best Engineer/Student Ratio, and she plans to assist as a student advisor to the team sponsored by GM Powertrain Flint North in the F.I.R.S.T. Robotics Competition in 2004/2005.
Last year, she was chosen by Kettering University and General Motors as a Sullivan Fellow. The fellowships were formed in partnership with the United Negro College Fund, and Fellows participate in workshops devoted to the Global Sullivan Principles, propounded by the late Rev. Dr. Leon Sullivan to:
* Support economic, social, and political justice by companies wherever they do business;
* Support human rights and encourage equal opportunity at all levels of employment, including racial and gender diversity on decision-making committees and boards;
* Train and advance disadvantaged workers for technical, supervisory, and management opportunities; and
* Assist with greater tolerance and understanding among peoples, thereby helping improve the quality of life for communities, workers, and children with dignity and equality.
Personally carrying out the Sullivan Principles, Clark has served as an inspirational speaker at the Genessee Area Skills Center Technology Center and the Wade H. McCree Scholarship Program at the University of Michigan Flint campus. She also has volunteered at the Flint Cultural Center during its annual Children's Celebration and Summer Family Celebration, and at the Salem Housing Project.
Clark spent two weeks last year volunteering at the Disability Network Technology Center, helping client access Internet resources and choose adaptive devices to make living easier.
As if that were not enough, she is a Study Table Tutor and a participant in the Society of Women Engineers. She tutors a high school student under the Kagle Mentoring Program, elementary students in reading and language skills through a program called Helping One Student to Succeed (H.O.S.T.S.), and helps raise funds for the Children's Dream Center.
"It gives me a thrill to help others understand a problem or a process and be able to apply that knowledge," she says. "I want them to know that the only limit they have is within themselves."
Right on to the young lady.
Steady Climber
You can look far and wide and not find many Black women running $100-million budgets. Look a little harder, and you will find a precious few who lead technology research and development for an entire company. Look at Fortune 500 companies in the weight class of DuPont, and the few will get very much fewer.
Jocelyn E. Scott, a Midwesterner who polished her education on both coasts, is described by her colleagues as "a charismatic leader with strong technical, business, and interpersonal strengths." What else could you expect from a woman whose 450 direct reports develop and commercialize the thousands of DuPont products and processes known throughout the world?
Scott grew up in the Chicago area, and journeyed to Stanford for her B.Sc. in chemical engineering. She then hopped across the country to MIT, completing a master's degree in chemical engineering and staying an extra year for still more intensive engineering study.
She joined DuPont in 1984 and stayed for her entire career, first working in the imaging, automotive products, and advanced fiber systems businesses. In 1991, she stepped up to management responsibilities at DuPont's Mount Clemens, Mich., auto products facility as operations supervisor for quality control and reliability. With 90 direct reports, she was the first woman to hold such a position at DuPont.
Scott moved up again, first to Research and Development supervisor for automotive products, and then to engineering planning manager in Wilmington, Del. Steps up continued: manager of the engineering field program in 1997; business engineering manager, site maintenance manager, utilities and engineering manager for the Hopewell DuPont Teijin Films facility two years later.
In 2001, she moved to headquarters as executive assistant to the chairman and CEO, Chad Holliday, during a particularly intense period of corporate change: DuPont was significantly restructuring its business, divesting the fibers business completely. It's one thing to do good work and receive steady promotions in a corporation that works like a machine, but quite another when the top executives are doing surgery on the whole enterprise, reshaping market strategies to suit the new business model. And when you are one of those doing the surgery, "intense" can be a major understatement.
Scott came through that highly charged project the way she handled her other assignments, with the skill and élan that got her promoted in the first place.
Now she runs an organization that, if it were spun off from its parent, would place her as chief technology officer for an entity with annual sales nearing the $1-billion mark.
Her next step? We'll have to wait and see.
Aggressive Procurement in Diversity
Fortune magazine said it best: American industry is really a collection of 40,000 small suppliers, working to provide parts for a much smaller number of big systems integrators.
Nowhere is this truer than in the defense industry, where the main skill set of the largest manufacturers is systems integration. Their most capable designs depend almost as much on the performance of smaller subcontractors in completing the electronic subsystems, control mechanisms, subassemblies, and other items that make up the big-ticket products they sell.
Gloria Pualani plays a key role in that supply train, serving as director of Corporate and Sector Socio-Economic Business Programs for Northrop Grumman Corporation. Pualani, a 1976 graduate of California State University at Los Angeles who later completed studies in purchasing at UCLA and in 1989 earned an M.B.A. from the National University in San Diego, has worked at Northrop Grumman since 1981.
Pualani has long experience in corporate purchasing, which involves lots of contact with government agencies as well as with would-be suppliers. She administered the Electronic Systems Integration Division's Small Business Office from 1984 to 1989 before moving to corporate manager of small business programs.
Northrop Grumman, like all large government contractors, is keenly aware of the congressional mandate to include firms owned by underserved and disadvantaged minority and female entrepreneurs among the subcontractors it relies on. The Small Business Act of 1978, the Defense Authorization Act provisions of the Veterans Entrepreneurship and Small Business Development Act of 1999, and Federal Acquisitions Regulations all provide policy direction on what must be done, and the Small Business Administration Advocacy Office has oversight. Thus, Pualani's office continues to increase in responsibility.
According to her superiors, federal officials, and observers from outside the company, she handles the responsibility ably and with a verve.
A letter from Steve Sutton, Northrop Grumman's legislative affairs officer, puts it into perspective. U.S. Rep. William Jefferson (D-La.) had asked Sutton to look into the claim by a small company, Champion Industries, that it had been rejected from presenting its credentials to do business with the defense giant. Sutton contacted Pualani, who met with Champion's CEO, verified the complaint and evaluated Champion's capabilities to do contract work. Impressed, Pualani set up a tour and meetings with key personnel in several Northrop Grumman business sectors. Given its chance, Champion won a machining contract and has been judged excellent in performance.
"Gloria's actions were superb," Sutton wrote. She kept me updated on her progress over nearly a year of activities. This enabled me to let the Congressman know that we were taking his request very seriously. Not unnoticed were Gloria's compassion, enthusiasm, and wherewithal in wanting to do the right thing. She certainly succeeded."
Keith L. Morton, Champion's president, seconded that. His own letter, noting that small businesses were having difficulty in connecting with the major aircraft manufacturers, said that, "Of all the Small Business Liaison Officers with whom I have come into contact over the years, Gloria Pualani is one of the most committed individuals I have ever met. She is extraordinarily dedicated to the principles of diversity inclusion and genuinely feels that minority suppliers deserve the same opportunities as other suppliers. But she does not stop there. She actually follows through to make sure the supplier has every available opportunity."
Pualani has been cited by the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund as a 1996 Black Women of Achievement Honoree and also has received a Corporate Mentor Award from the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development.
Stratospheric Strategizer
When corporations put you in charge of the revenue stream, you and all observers can be bottom-line sure that the promotion had nothing to do with tokenism.
Jacqueline Woods, vice president of Global Licensing and Pricing Strategy for Oracle Corporation, is one of the most influential female executives in the company. But that probably understates her role:
* Woods negotiates multimillion-dollar deals: A $300-million contract with the government of the United Kingdom in fiscal 2003 is a case in point;
* Woods directed the Oracle/Dell Initiative, a joint venture worth $20 million in incremental revenue quarterly;
* Woods drove Oracle's eBusiness standardization initiative, producing savings totaling $1 billion since 2001;
* Woods launched the Standard Edition One licensing model, aimed at penetrating the small-to-medium-sized enterprise market;
* She promoted improved adoption of online sales via simplified licensing, producing triple- digit growth year to year;
* She created a Customer Advocacy Program to smooth resolution of customer issues. As Fortune magazine noted in 2002, the complexity of modern technologies and the ways businesses use them makes database pricing one of the toughest jobs around, and Woods is the one who answers and resolves customer complaints;
* As Ebony says, another Woods-led initiative in 2002 made Oracle the first major enterprise software company to provide comprehensive guidelines on its global pricing and licensing, via its Software Investment Guide. And as Oracle Senior Vice President Thomas Kurian put it, that drove the industry: "Her strategic thinking around complicated pricing models has been exemplary and worthy of replication (as seen by our competitors). The innovative, transparent licensing practices created by Jacqueline have by and large shaped industry best practices."
So let's amend the earlier statement: Jacqueline Woods is one of the most influential executives in the software business.
Managerial Journey
How she got there is an interesting story. Woods, a 1985 managerial economics graduate of the University of California at Davis, joined GTE Corporation, now a part of Verizon, as an accounting supervisor, working her way up the financial ladder. Then, in 1991, Woods became senior marketing and business planning analyst, responsible for developing, tracking and managing some 230 sales and service budget centers with nearly 700 employees, revenue totaling $118 million, incurred expenses of $40 million, and material expenditures of $31 million. She initiated and directed an internal consulting project for a wholly owned subsidiary and also met regularly with headquarters staff to provide monthly product forecasts, with a 98-percent accuracy rate. She worked with the general manager to develop strategic objectives.
Similar responsibilities grew, as Woods' flair for marketing strategy showed up in the results.
She went to graduate school, completing her M.B.A. at the University of Southern California, concentrating on marketing and venture management. She was named marketing assessment manager in 1993, developing the entire strategy for Eastern Area markets, from concept to implementation, for GTE's premier accounts. Sales in the target markets increased more than 10 percent. She also built solution-oriented account plans for sales personnel, producing 20-percent sales growth. Sales of voice and data products totaled $50 million a year.
Woods moved to Ameritech in 1995, as a senior product manager and then director of product management for customer premises equipment. That $630-million business ran product lines including Type I, II, and III telephones, attendant consoles, key telephone systems, wired and wireless Private Branch Exchange systems, Telemanagement applications, voicemail, and data. She introduced 12 new products in 1996, generating incremental revenue of $30 million. She also rolled out three new technologies to alternate channels, adding $4 million in new sales.
Woods managed to increase profit margins on all products by five to 10 points by reducing fulfillment costs, streamlining the product portfolio, and boosting operating efficiencies. Her year-to-date 1996 revenue growth over 1995 exceeded industry targets by 32 percent, bettering corporate goals by 8 percent.
Woods also increased market share. Her 1996 Customer Premises Unit Product Fair, rolled out through a five-state region to more than 500 sales and support personnel, sparked a jump of 9 percent in sales rates in the quarter following the fair.
Still going strong, Woods prepared a seamless business strategy. The Customer Premises Unit PyraMID, or Product Management Intelligence Database, was a modeling tool specifically designed to link strategy to customer needs, processes, and systems. The incremental revenue expectation from use of the tool was 5 percent, but actual results reached 8 percent.
In the end, it really was no gamble for Oracle to hire Woods into levels of authority where she affected the corporate bottom line. She had already demonstrated, amply, that she could handle it.
Helping Businesses Get Jobs
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Gloria Cyprian-Tanner is a corporate leader of a different sort. The Southern University grad and Webster University M.B.A. began her career directing the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program for the Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport. She developed and managed the process to certify disadvantaged businesses' eligibility for contracts under federal Transportation Act minority set-aside mandates, preparing grantee performance reports and all reports of contract awards.
This included coordinating, maintaining, and analyzing statistical data for the FAA, Urban Mass Transportation Administration, and Small Business Administration. Proof of her performance came early: After her first six months, disadvantaged business participation grew by 700 percent.
Cyprian-Tanner was the airport's contract administrator between 1986 and 1989, handling contracts for architectural services, engineering consulting and construction jobs.
A letter from the former president of the Fort Worth Black Chamber of Commerce outlines her diligence: "For more than 10 years we observed Gloria relentlessly devoting time to teach minority and women business enterprises contracting concepts and business strategies necessary to successfully compete for business opportunities in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. She exhibited an unwavering spirit of commitment for inclusion...she implemented seminars and workshops, and structured educational sessions that were held twice monthly (before lettings of large construction projects or issuance of Request for Proposals) at times that were most convenient for M/WBEs to attend.... In addition, she made herself available to M/WBEs when there were direct requests for personal assistance. M/WBEs were provided information on marketing their firms to large companies, joint venturing to enhance their capabilities, and the importance of being versatile. As a result of her efforts, there were many awards of contracts [and] several members of the Fort Worth Black Chamber of Commerce graduated from Small/Disadvantaged Business Enterprise status (average $17 million or more in three years).
"The D/FW Intergovernmental Group was structured by Gloria and Sandra Davis, her colleague at the City of Fort Worth to support and enhance M/WBE participation in business opportunities in the D/FW Metroplex. Gloria encouraged and thus challenged participants in the group, Cities of Dallas and Arlington, Dallas Independent School District, Dallas Community College to sacrifice their time and adopt the spirit of inclusion and economic development-enrichment of M/WBEs."
Jumping the Track, Slightly
Still in Dallas in 1993, she jumped to the for-profit business, as participation compliance manager for a Parsons Brinckerhoff Inc./Morrison Knudsen Corporation team serving as architects, engineers, and construction managers for the ill-fated Superconducting Super Collider particle accelerator. The project eventually ran afoul of congressional budget-cutters, but while it ran, Cyprian-Tanner managed outreach efforts that contributed to contracts to small and disadvantaged businesses for more than $49 million over a three-year period. Cyprian-Tanner finished that stint as lead subcontract administrator, with broader responsibilities concerning the use of subcontractors of all sizes.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas moved on to other work, taking Cyprian-Tanner along.
In 1995, as the firm was project manager for the City of Austin, converting Bergstrom Air Force Base into Austin Bergstrom International Airport, Cyprian-Tanner was a senior contract administrator, a key manager developing contract procedures; planning project activities; assisting in development of and managing project scope, selections, and sealed bidding and awards; and managing contract budgets and contract close-out.
Four years later, Cyprian-Tanner was in Columbia, S.C., where Parsons Brinckerhoff was program and construction manager to the state Transportation Department to build and improve roads, put in highways, bridges and other infrastructure in the state's eastern section. Cyprian-Tanner, now manager of Contract Administration, worked to raise the number of minority and women engineers who qualified for professional engineer certification. Among other efforts, she established a partnership between her firm's Columbia office and historically Black South Carolina State University, whose civil engineering technology students are invited to participate in Parsons Brinckerhoff internships to help prepare them for the rigorous state examinations. But Cyprian-Tanner did not stop there.
Dr. James A. Anderson, P.E., dean of Engineering Technology and Sciences, called Cyprian-Tanner a "pillar of strength" serving on a six-year-old Task Force on the Development of Civil Engineering Education and Professional Registration. She helped write a major report to the state on the task force's efforts; worked tirelessly to organize on-campus financial, technical, and professional support for presentations to the students during annual Engineers Week activities; authored subcontracts to S.C. State to provide internships for the students; and worked with Dean Anderson on contract proposals the university submitted to the South Carolina Department of Transportation.
"She exhibited a high level of proficiency and professionalism in providing guidance for proposal submittals and evaluations," the dean said.
Now Cyprian-Tanner is contracts manager for a Parsons Brinckerhoff job as design and construction managers for North Carolina's Triangle Transit Authority to build a 35-mile regional rail system, including a Rail Operations and Maintenance Facility and 16 stations linking Durham, Research Triangle Park, Morrisville, Cary, and Raleigh. North Carolina's first commuter rail system ultimately will cost $800 million and, when finished, will carry 28,000 passengers a day.
Toby Duffell, PB corporate staffing manager, noted that, "Gloria is one of Parsons Brinckerhoff's leading contracts managers. She has held positions of increasing responsibility through her career, which spans more than 20 years. She has used her management skills in dealing with bids of nearly half a billion dollars in size and routinely deals with contractors, subcontractors, and suppliers on multimillion-dollar contracts in the highly aggressive world of construction, where claims of cost are the order of the day.... What is humbling is to observe her perpetually fresh and spirited attitude to her work, a clear indication of real strength of character."
And she still works for minority inclusion in all of those contracts.
Winning the Work
Carmen Camacho works the other side of contract negotiations: Bringing in the revenues. Camacho, vice president of sales and marketing for EDS' U.S. Government Solutions business, manages the process of writing proposals for computer services, assembling teams ranging in size from 25 to 100 to plan solutions to compl
Winning the Work
Carmen Camacho works the other side of contract negotiations: Bringing in the revenues. Camacho, vice president of sales and marketing for EDS' U.S. Government Solutions business, manages the process of writing proposals for computer services, assembling teams ranging in size from 25 to 100 to plan solutions to complex IT problems.
Camacho, who came to the U.S. mainland from Puerto Rico speaking little English, has worked at EDS more than 20 years. Starting out in the word processing pool, she took college classes part time and also took advantage of EDS' in-house training programs. She rose to become an LAN administrator then an office automation analyst, helping EDS clients determine the best technology solutions to support their missions. Later, as a proposal manager, she led teams winning contracts with the Defense Department and the Government of Mexico.
In Mexico, Camacho even participated in an investigation, helping uncover serious Customs violations. Back in the U.S., Camacho led a team that won a contract to support the Department of Education's Federal Direct Student Loan Program, an account still in EDS' portfolio. Working as a business analyst, Camacho supported financial applications and provided training for Celumovil, an industry leader in mobile communications in Bogota, Columbia.
Today, Camacho manages "pursuit" teams to create end-to-end business solutions for large and strategic proposals. The multi-discipline teams develop pricing strategies and presentations, and participate in client discussions. Camacho is the leader in developing the sales strategy, keeping EDS' upper management informed on the progress. She pulls together the resources: EDS technical and business personnel, subcontractor firms that provide important service offerings, lawyers, and writers to produce required documents, etc. She coordinates all client interaction, a job that requires reviewing and responding to requests for proposal, requests for information, and other solicitations.
She keeps EDS' proposals fully compliant with client specifications and legal requirements and gets each reviewed and signed off by top EDS executives and stakeholders. She also is the point person answering client questions, providing clarifications and revised proposals, and leading client meetings.
One critical job for her is developing and enforcing calendars to deliver on-time proposals. That requires good communications with the internal team as well as with external contractors. Camacho works closely with large and small subcontractors, coordinating their participation in proposal development and helping them win contracts and deliver their capabilities in the federal marketplace.
As EDS itself says, Camacho performs a mission-critical role in the high-pressure, competitive world of IT services.
Camacho almost always works with small and disadvantaged, women-owned, and veteran-owned business partners in the government marketplace, where requirements for minority and disadvantaged business participation are mandated by law. A charter member of her division's Diversity Council, she is an active participant in the company's award-winning Mentor Protégé initiative supporting the Department of Defense. EDS actively mentors six carefully selected firms and involves them in its business initiatives.
For a Department of Housing and Urban Development contract, Camacho worked with Force 3, a minority-owned, small, disadvantaged business that won the 2003 Nunn-Perry Award with EDS. The award recognizes superior mentor-protégé relationships.
For a large Air Force proposal, Camacho worked with many small businesses on the EDS team to provide a comprehensive package of services. Her team included Automation Precision Technology, LLC (APT), a veteran-owned, small, disadvantaged business. This relationship also was recognized with a Nunn-Perry Award for 2004.
On a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives contract win, Camacho relied heavily on Development Technical Systems, Inc., a small, disadvantaged business that assisted with development of the solution and crafting of the proposal.
The bottom-line measure of her effectiveness is dollar value. EDS says that in 2003, Camacho-led teams won six contracts for a total of more than $1.2 billion in value, significantly contributing to EDS U.S. Government Services division's best-ever year.
Diversity as a Product
No less than 23 letters of support accompanied the nomination package of Sheila Forte-Trammell, a diversity manager who turned IBM Corporation's policy of supporting diversity into a product line, with measurable outputs and lots of testimonials from satisfied customers.
"To know our markets and serve them well requires that we understand them," according to an IBM internal pronunciamento. "And understanding comes from employing and retaining people who represent those markets."
Forte-Trammell, who began at IBM as a programmer librarian in 1977, progressed through steps as a human resources leader, from senior recruiting specialist to senior placement counselor, compensation administrator, personal service specialist, and resource program manager, developing an intimate feel for the true workings of corporate culture: the unspoken policies, mores, and attitudes that have as much sway on corporate activity as the more overt statements of policy and intent.
Early on, Forte-Trammell was a team leader for cooperative and professional programs. She created a "Best Fit" team for difficult placement cases and played a leadership role for major mission moves from various locations to Research Triangle Park, IBM's biggest manufacturing and development site. Early on, she was instrumental in launching the Programmer Retraining Program, to keep technical specialists up to date in a rapidly changing technology environment.
She trained managers at all levels on IBM's salary program, a job that gave her responsibility for the executive management area, a population ranging from 800 to 1,500 employees. Forte-Trammell developed recognition programs, chaired a site award review board with executives, and reviewed and approved awards.
As a personal services specialist, she researched and responded to employee concerns and issues related to benefits administration, communicating regularly with executives. She also developed training packages for managers and employees.
Later, she led a team in relocating the IBM PC company from several sites to Research Triangle. She also managed IBM's largest INROADS program.
Diversity Council Founder
People like Forte-Trammell are the glue that holds things together in a corporate behemoth like IBM. So it should be no surprise that one of her first acts as Diversity Program manager was creating Research Triangle Park's first Diversity Council. Going further, she created a diversity executive sponsor team and developed several site-wide programs, such as the Multicultural Workforce Study, Multicultural Leadership Institute, and a Heritage Festival that brought in nationally known speakers to address issues important to racial and ethnic minorities. Not stopping there, Forte-Trammell reached out to other companies, sharing IBM's diversity strategy with their executives and with the academic community.
Multicultural Programmer
Still later, through the Multicultural People in Technology Project Office, Forte-Trammell created still more programs:
The Multicultural Women's Leadership Institute provides managerial training, mentoring, and networking opportunities for female employees, whose managers also are invited to attend. It begins with an orientation, then a keynote speaker or panel discussion follows, as an "appetizer" for the main course. A master facilitator introduces the faculty and gives an overview of the study modules, with objectives, learning points, operating norms, and administrative details, and describes what's expected of participants. Modules cover the "Diversity Imperative, based on IBM's two-day Diversity Imperative Workshop; a "Quantum Leap Skill Achievement" workshop on assertiveness, empowerment, and building alliances; "Leveraging Your Communications"; a Mid-Institute Review; "Bridging the Gender Gap: Different Voices, Different Worlds"; "The Wellness Factor: Investment in Performance"; "Creating Successful Career Strategies"; and a graduation/finale, which participants' managers also are expected to attend.
An important feature is the follow-through and measurement process, designed to be an ongoing, interwoven part of the Institute. At orientation, participants are introduced to their responsibility to develop blueprints for their successes during and after the classroom sessions. This includes dialogue with immediate supervisors and one-on-one, face-to-face coaching, 30 days after the final session. Participants also are directed to choose mentor/peers and partner with them for mentoring and coaching.
Since 2001, Forte-Trammell and her colleagues have conducted five Institutes and this year began a Multicultural Men's Institute, modeled on the Women's Institute after focus group input from multicultural managers and non-managers.
Did we say Forte-Trammell is tireless? Her recommenders say she is, and it appears she is also relentless.
Finagling the Ph.D.s
Several young Ph.D.s, recently hired, began getting together informally to relax over lunch. Forte-Trammel happened onto this group, and before they knew it she had turned their meetings into a Ph.D. Vitality Program, intended to help new Black, Hispanic, and Native American Ph.D.s make a smooth transition into the IBM corporate culture she had learned so well as a human resources specialist. It's guiding principles are for members to:
* Be a support system for one another and collaborate with peers on technical matters;
* Be exposed to resources and tools to help them shorten the learning curve and adjustment from academia into IBM;
* Get help understanding very early in their careers how to build competitive technical portfolios;
* Receive technical, professional coaching and mentoring opportunities.
"Within months of the formation of the group," Forte-Trammell writes, "measurable results were evident. Members of the team began to file patents, publish technical reports, return to their alma maters to help recruit other technical Ph.D.s of color; they shadowed Dr. Mark Dean -- VP and IBM Fellow -- for two days.... Since then, several have been promoted into management in record time, some have had significant job changes and have attained second-level plateaus in filing patents. The Ph.D. Vitality Program has been expanded to eight IBM sites."
Forte-Trammell also helped midwife the iMentoru Program at North Carolina Central University, to help outstanding juniors and seniors acquire technical and professional development skills through exposure to the IBM workplace. Students who complete iMentoru get credits toward graduation. Forte-Trammell, who helped develop the curriculum and offered professional development seminars, made sure the program was designed to be easily replicated at other historically Black colleges and universities.
"To date," she says, "I am mentoring 25 individuals."
Tireless? You bet.
A Work/Life-Child Care and Elder Care seminar organized by Forte-Trammell was sold not only to the Research Triangle site manager but to executives at other nearby companies. Forte-Trammell led the team, supported by IBM employees and individuals from SAS Institute Inc., Nortel Networks, GlaxoSmithKline, North Carolina Equity, Inc., and the state governor's office. The program ran in two successive years and included a presentation by IBM's Ted Childs -- vice president of Global Workforce Diversity -- of a "significant" corporate donation to then-Gov. James B. Hunt's Smart Start program.
Mentoring, Mentoring, Mentoring
Did we say tireless? It's probably not a strong enough word. A Black Technical Leaders Forum Forte-Trammell created in 2002 was inspired by a statement from IBM Senior Vice President of Technology and Manufacturing Nick Donofrio: "The hallmark of IBM's success through the years has been the tremendous depth and breadth of our technical community."
"This statement," Forte-Trammell wrote, "was a major catalyst of my vision to form the first forum of this nature where the primary principle is built on 'self help' and 'lift as you climb.' The tenet of this program is to bring together Black IBM Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, Senior Technical Staff Members and Certified Architects who are considered to be a very select group of technical leaders within IBM to:
"* Maximize the contribution of Black technical employees to IBM by leveraging the experience of each other and the link to the Black Constituency.
"* Improve the diversity of the technical leadership ranks by playing a personal role in helping to develop a pipeline for the next generation of Black Technical Leaders in IBM."
"The process," Forte-Trammell wrote, "required executives from the respective Business Units to identify less tenured, high-potential Black technical employees to be mentored by the Black technical leaders."
Thirty-eight were identified and matched with leaders based on technical areas of emphasis, career interest, and business unit. Plans are under way to add more, and IBM considers it an important retention tool.
There are other exploits, too. But let it suffice to say that Sheila Forte-Trammell is one of those rare individuals who have been able to take a corporate mandate on diversity from inspiring words to institutional process, with measurable benefits for the corporation as well as the specific individuals involved in her initiatives.
She's working as a human resources learning consultant now, having seen to it that her initiatives are truly institutionalized. Her main focus is to deploy the IBM Foundational Competencies program in the five major business units of the Manufacturing and Technology organization, spread over a vast region, including Asia. But she's already educated the entire company about how to leverage diversity. We can expect nothing less than excellent performance and interesting new ideas coming out of this new role.
Engineering the Finances
The business of making automobiles, like aircraft manufacturing, is a mastery exercise in systems integration. A vehicle assembly works is the nexus tying together multiple supply chains for everything from electronic circuit boards and wiring harnesses to drive-line and suspension subassemblies, chassis, body parts, and tires to paints, coatings, nuts, and bolts.
Karla Middlebrooks is director of Corporate Investment and Financial Control for DaimlerChrysler Corporation, up to her armpits in strategic forecasting for the capital spending program by which DaimlerChrysler keeps its carmaking facilities at state-of-the-art capability. But state-of-the-art capability and state-of-the-art efficiency are not the same thing. A Harvard M.B.A. like Middlebrooks can run the numbers in multiple dimensions on what to buy and why, but without the engineering degree she earned at Northwestern University -- and the intense, analytical approach to technology development that it supports -- performing at her level would be extremely difficult.
On second thought, if the supporters who prepared Middlebrooks' award submission package are to be believed, keeping up with her might be an extreme challenge anyway. She keeps her finger on so many pulses, charging into difficult problem areas and creating order where chaos had ruled, inventing new ways to do things when no available fixes seem extant, it is no wonder this engineer continues to rise and prosper as a financial manager.
Industrial Engineer Middlebrooks graduated from Northwestern in 1980 and quickly proceeded to Harvard Business School. In 1984, she joined Chrysler Corporation as a financial analyst, working in Product Development to analyze small-car profitability during a time of upheaval in the auto industry. Lee Iacocca's successful bid for government help to finance the company's attempt to remake itself -- and his famous television pitch that made him a media star -- brought public attention to the critical survival issues facing U.S. automakers in an era of intense competition from offshore manufacturers.
Figure It Out, or Else
Profitability analyses were on the front burner, in an environment when competitors were using "just in time" parts supply programs and statistical quality control procedures to reduce the cost of making automobiles dramatically, while pouring well-made vehicles into the American market. Middlebrooks, hired as a financial analyst under the Advanced Degree Development Program, was in the thick of the battle to reinvent efficiency in U.S. automaking, moving through different areas to get a comprehensive picture of how it all worked, as she helped develop new ways of doing things.
Reshaping the supply lines was a paramount job for automakers, and at Chrysler she coordinated business plan development, developed cash forecasting models, and analyzed opportunities to push more of the component manufacturing out to business partners.
For manufacturing divisions, Middlebrooks developed a new automated system for producing key performance reports. In Corporate Planning, she analyzed the performance of companies as possible candidates for diversification efforts, including the acquisition of Electrospace.
Promoted to senior analyst in 1988, Middlebrooks began competitive analyses of the financial performance of the Big Three automakers, studies that by 2000 were expanded to include marketing cost analysis of price competition against Japanese automakers as well as U.S. firms.
In 1994, as senior manager for information technology hardware planning and financial control, Middlebrooks managed IT expenses and capital budgets. She led a corporate-wide automation standards team and developed a consolidated purchasing and replacement process for personal computers. If this seems a small thing, recall that at several thousand dollars a pop, the thousands of networked PCs on the desks of tens of thousands of white-collar workers, shop-floor personnel, and warehouse workers add up to a gigantic capital budget problem for everybody but computer makers. Middlebrooks cut the automaker's costs by implementing a process to recycle used computers, and she chaired the IT measurement team. She also worked with senior IT managers to redefine the deployment cycle time metrics and streamline the project reporting system.
Responsibilities increased as her performance sharpened. In 1996, Middlebrooks was senior manager for Truck Product Finance, and the next year she was controller for Mopar Parts, a $4-billion operation. There, she helped achieve aggressive profit targets, supporting Canadian and global integration activities. In one exploit, she implemented a Risk Assessment Management Program (RAMP) and drove system improvements that avoided $3.3 million in tax penalties.
Tall Orders
In 2000-02, as director of marketing cost analysis, Middlebrooks served six months as acting vice president for Sales and Marketing, leading a cross-functional pricing work team that identified potential pricing opportunities tracking competitors' price actions. She also revised the product pricing process for timing efficiency and developed a net price metric.
Superiors note that Middlebrooks has been a mentor to large numbers of young men and women, voluntarily participating in the DaimlerChrysler African American Network, the Finance Mentoring Program, and the corporate-wide perspectives mentoring effort. She has provided leadership to DaimlerChrysler's talent acquisition initiatives for the Advanced Degree Program that hired her, and she has taken a leadership role in promoting DaimlerChrysler's support of the National Black MBA Association, including sole sponsorship of the National Black MBA Case Study Competition, with one happy result of filling the company's pipeline with top minority candidates. A recipient of the 2000 National Eagle Leadership Award, presented to high-achieving Black and Latino executives by CareerFOCUS magazine and the National Eagle Leadership Institute, Middlebrooks is also active in the Institute's national touring events program. Keep up with her? What's that?
Silicon Valley Role Designer
A letter by one of Canzata "Candi" Castleberry-Singleton's supporters quoted Ralph Waldo Emerson in describing her approach to corporate change: Don't go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Castleberry-Singleton, a champion sales team leader at Xerox Corporation, turned into a champion of inclusive employment policies when she began connecting the dots between the metrics of diversity inclusion and the value proposition of "Cultural Acumen." At Xerox, she was a founding member of the National Black Employee Association and found ways to partner with corporate leaders to address the issues facing Black employees. She worked steadily to see that executive slates included members drawn from a truly diverse talent pool, using her people skills to persuade top executives to take personal ownership of diversity initiatives, driving to integrate inclusive thinking and practices into the corporate culture.
Castleberry-Singleton was selected as one of a very few among 40,000 employees for the Xerox "Emerging Leader Program," a prestigious in-house career development academy. She was nominated for the A. Barry Rand Award, even after leaving Xerox, and won a special award, created just for her, from the National Black Employee Association for 12 years of dedicated service to the advancement of diversity.
As Sun Microsystems' director of global inclusion, Castleberry-Singleton has been described as not only a role model for other employees but a role designer.
In two years, she has taught many in the corporation how diversity aligns with the corporation's business goals, using a four-part strategy:
* Increase access to and utilization of more diverse talent throughout the company;
* Integrate the concept of "Cultural Acumen" into Sun's leadership competencies;
* Enhance Sun's reputation and brand recognition as a company that values diversity;
* Expand Sun's existent employee network to include greater international representation.
The impact of that strategy reaches far beyond the Silicon Valley, in a company with operations and employees working in 40 countries. A letter from Gary Gilligan, global director of training and development delivery, put it this way:
"Candi has been really strategic in getting the message across to Sun management to stress why embracing diversity and inclusion is a business differentiator. She has been very strategic about not positioning this as a compliance, or nice to do, but has been very hard-headed about getting the message across to managers as to why this is good for our business.
"Candi has been very realistic in devising a clear, measured, achievable, doable strategy that gets Sun where it needs to be. Again the approach is hard-headed and pragmatic, and each step makes business sense, no flavor of 'nice to do' about any element -- all 'must do' stuff.
"Candi has assembled and continues to motivate a highly motivated and multitalented team. She has been unswerving in demonstrating the values and behaviors that she wants us at Sun to embrace, and this shows in the energy and dedication demonstrated by her team members.
"Candi has been clear on measures and milestones, so we are in no doubt as to where Sun stands and what is being achieved."
Chris Sennett, manager of Sun University-United Kingdom, summed up his response to a Castleberry-Singleton talk on diversity:
"In general I think there is less focus outside the U.S. on inclusion because we don't have the same awareness as the folks there. But after listening to you, anyone would 'get' awareness. Your 'Imagine a World' piece brought a lump to my throat...."
Marc Loupe, Sun's vice president of finance, said that in his 17 years at the company, Castleberry-Singleton was the only person who was able to mobilize the company to:
* Recognize the value proposition of a global inclusion/diversity program;
* Meld the social, business, and moral responsibility of inclusion within the existing culture yet ensure the company does not lose its well-cherished identity;
* Modify its corporate state values to include global inclusion/diversity as one additional tenet of doing business within the company's boundaries;
* Embed global inclusion/diversity into the annual operating plan (and this is not a simplistic endeavor);
* Bridge the gaps between the executive vice president hierarchy and the many "disaffected" employees who yearned for proper representation as legitimate entities/groups....
"In my capacity as Executive Diversity Council member, I have witnessed Candi leverage key executive stakeholders to take on initiatives they could personalize, and thereby adamantly support a global inclusion/diversity program. That type of approach ensured success. Among these initiatives, there were programs which required the company to significantly distribute either dollars or in-kind contributions to the community through initiative stakeholder programs. In my particular case, I was able to organize the Black Employee Network and distribute dollars (through a committee) to the communities of a professional, academic, and social nature. This approach had never been done in Sun's history...."
Among other external duties, Castleberry-Singleton is an inaugural member of The Conference Board's Diversity Business Council, a group of diversity executives representing Fortune 500 companies. Michael Wheeler, Conference Board program director, said that, "From day one, Candi was a valuable contributor and clear leader in the group. As cochair, she has led this group through substantive, and sometimes challenging topics.... Candi's leadership has also been demonstrated as a lead speaker in three of The Conference Board's national conferences. Her presentations are always original, customized, thoroughly researched, and powerfully delivered. She talks with authority and gains immediate credibility and respect."
Diversity, Full Circle
Joyce Tucker describes her life almost as a series of happy accidents, but there is, as always, more to the story.
Tucker, now vice president for Global Diversity and Employee Rights for The Boeing Company, recounts fondly the story of how her uncle taught her to be a problem-solver, using the problem of a lawn mower that would not start.
"My uncle was a physician, and he wanted us [Tucker and her sister] to know how to think," she said. "I didn't realize what he was doing at the time, but it was preparing me to go beyond what I thought I could do. He wouldn't accept the limitations I had put on myself. He challenged us to solve problems and to believe that we could accomplish anything we set our minds to. I still believe in this today."
That belief carried her through a fight over racial discrimination on a state job in Illinois, when Tucker did not win a promotion to which she felt entitled. Tucker was working for the state Department of Mental Health, and the person sent to hear her case, the department's chief labor relations officer, decided that she had, in fact, suffered discrimination. He was more impressed with her presentation of the case, however, and offered her a job in labor relations.
Tucker, a licensed attorney, also had fought a housing discrimination case at the same time.
"When that concluded successfully," she said, "I knew I had found my life's work."
Tucker rose to Cabinet level in Illinois, appointed by Gov. James R. Thompson as director of the state Department of Human Rights, where she got plenty of experience at her life's work. Former President George H.W. Bush plucked her from Illinois to join the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and she was still on the job when President-incoming Bill Clinton took over, and she stayed until 1996.
Tucker, a graduate of the John Marshall Law School and a board member of the National Conference for Community and Justice, has spent more than 28 years working in affirmative action. One large case involvement came when she was named a federal court-appointed consent-decree monitor, overseeing compliance in a landmark $34-million settlement in a U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission lawsuit against Mitsubishi Motor Manufacturing of America.
Tucker went out on her own as president of Tucker Spearman and Associates, a consulting company specializing in Equal Employment Opportunity and diversity management, with clients among the Fortune 500 companies.
After making a presentation before corporate executives, Boeing asked her to come on board. The company had a good history: It pursued the young Wayman Whiting after he graduated from historically Black Prairie View A&M in 1952, before civil rights campaigns began to dominate the national headlines, and put him to work on critical airliner projects. A line of other Black engineers and executives such as Arlington Carter and Walt Braithwaite also found strong support, resulting in the progress that brought them to the attention of the Black Engineer of the Year Awards Selection Panel.
Tucker signed on and has come full circle, from fighting discrimination to writing rules and enforcing them to open the workplace for Americans of color, to working at high levels to make sure the rules are properly obeyed, in a company determined to be a leader in diversity effort.
Not bad at all, for a girl who learned early on that the way to fix problems is to go after them.
Prepping the Next Generation
Spelman College President Beverly D. Tatum, Ph.D. is running one of America's top colleges, an institution that, billed as a "liberal arts" college, has significant links to the technology enterprise:
* A NASA Women in Science and Engineering Scholars program has sent more than 150 Spelman women to graduate programs and careers in science, engineering, and mathematics through scholarships, undergraduate research, and academic enrichment.
* The Undergraduate Students Awards for Research program provides research experiences, scholarships, and mentoring support to encourage students to pursue graduate science, engineering, and math studies.
* Spelman is a partner in the Georgia Space Grant Consortium, which supports Spelman's Office of Science, Engineering and Technical Careers in providing activities to promote science, engineering, and math careers.
* A Department of Energy grant established Spelman's Center for Environmental Science, Education and Research, designed to boost faculty and student interest in environmental research.
* Energy Department funding also supports training and research on bioremediation in the ongoing cleanup at the Savannah River nuclear facility.
* Title III grants from the U.S. Department of Education from 1989 to today have supported development of the Computer and Information Science program in acquisition of computer equipment, installation of a wide-area network, and establishment of an electronic mathematics laboratory, as well as directed support for the Department of Media and Information Technology.
* Defense Department funding established the Program in Physical Sciences, which offers training opportunities to pre-freshmen and post-freshman-year students majoring in chemistry or physics, including dual-degree engineering majors, to prepare them for futures in physical sciences and related fields such as materials, chemical physics, biophysics, etc.
* The National Institute of General Medical Science has provided research support through the Support for Continuous Research Excellence (SCORE) program for 20 years. SCORE aims to develop biomedical research faculty at minority-serving institutions and increase representation of minorities in biomedical research.
* An EPA grant enabled Spelman to enhance the education of environmental students with an Environmental Task Force.
The Spelman science, engineering, and mathematics program, begun in the 1970s, is offered through the Departments of Biology, Chemistry, Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science. Total program enrollment in 2002-03 was 536 students -- a third of its student body -- and instructional support comes through 47 full-time faculty and 20 administrative, technical, and support personnel. Students also can complete majors in environmental science and degrees in engineering through Spelman's Dual Degree Engineering Program, administered through agreements with 12 engineering schools.
Academic units are supported by the Office of Science, Engineering and Technical Careers; the Office of Health Careers; the Office of Media and Information Technology; the Center for Molecular Biology; and the Center for Scientific Applications of Mathematics.
Dr. Tatum, the former dean of Mount Holyoke College and a nationally renowned clinical psychologist and author, arrived in 2002, selected after a national search for a president to lead Spelman into the 21st century. Joining the college, Dr. Tatum immediately began working to strengthen its science programs.
Controlling the Data and Dollars
The overnight transportation industry is heavily dependent on modern technology. It uses trucks and jet air transports, requiring a major infrastructure establishment to keep everything running optimally. It could not exist without state-of-the-art materials-handling gear to move items swiftly through depots and transshipment points. Its lifeblood runs through computer networks, for order input and printing of waybills; for parcel tracking and rapid reporting of vehicle movements; for billing and credit transfers between customers' bank and credit-card accounts to the shipping company's accounts; and for data tracking and load-factor analysis.
Chief financial officers have changed their role in Corporate America from mere number crunchers to hands-on executives. As Cathy Ross, senior vice president and CFO of FedEx Express, says, "You've got to understand what the business is about, what the competition is about, and where the industry is going over the next few years."
Especially today, when many manufacturing corporations in the U.S. and worldwide are using the vast, flying armadas of overnight express companies as mobile warehouses. Just-in-time manufacturing, developed by Henry Ford's River Rouge plant complex during the 1930s but turned into a strategic advantage by Japanese consumer-products manufacturers during the 1970s and '80s, gave birth in America to full-fledged logistics management, under which transportation companies have become integral partners of manufacturing enterprises.
Ross, who joined FedEx in 1984 as a senior financial analyst, has watched that evolution as a participant.
She earned her accounting degree from Christian Brothers University in 1978 and went to Memphis State University for her M.B.A., finishing in 1982.
Her first job was at paper manufacturer Kimberly-Clark Corporation. Then she moved on to Buckeye Cellulose Corporation, then a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, as an accountant and manager. From that early experience in manufacturing concerns, she moved on to Memphis-based FedEx and now is responsible for its financial affairs and planning worldwide.
Ross' duties include strategic planning, financial and capital planning, accounting, reporting and financial services, as well as information business systems and technical services.
That last is worth revisiting. As CFO magazine reports, Ross and Joel Halvorson, FedEx' manager of financial systems, found that company business analysts were spending far too much time trying to get their hands on important data. That left less time to analyze it.
The problem was that, while the corporate financial planning group supported 10 divisions, all data filtered through a shared mainframe computer, and each division relied on customized planning and reporting systems focused on data subsets. Efforts to take a macro view required manual integration.
FedEx analysts were trying to help boost profitability by studying operational data, seeking ways to save money or capitalize on opportunities. They might need to reach into one system that tracked revenue, another that tracked pickup and delivery data, and a third that covered employee pay. Different units defined operational metrics differently, making the analysis more difficult.
Ross and Halvorson brought in a consultant firm in 1999 to help guide the effort to build a data warehouse to eliminate the bottlenecks. FedEx identified 16 key sources of data to feed the warehouse hub. The mainframe is still in use: When a FedEx driver scans a package, the data go straight to the mainframe. But when a business analyst calls for the data, they come from the data warehouse, tapping in through the company intranet.
As happens when a new technology permeates an organization, the data warehouse has become popular with other groups in FedEx. CFO says that not only has the warehouse system cut analysts' time in gathering data, its software is so easy to use that groups beyond the Finance Department have demanded access as well.
Ross, a member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority and Delta Sigma Pi professional fraternity, has been active or served on the boards of the Memphis Food Bank, the Women's Foundation of Greater Memphis, Christian Brothers University Alumni Association, Habitat for Humanity, and the American Cancer Society. She has been recognized as the Corporate Financial Manager of the Year and received FedEx Five Star Awards in 1993, 1996, 1999, and 2003.
Transportation Lawyer
Ross' colleague, Gina Adams, corporate vice president for government affairs, has been a lifelong transportation lawyer. Adams, a 1980 graduate of American University, went to Howard University School of Law and served as a Law Journal editor from 1982 to 1983, as well as supervising student attorney for the Labor Law Clinic and a member of the Howard Law School Admission Committee. Adams published two articles on labor law and next moved over to complete master of law study in international and comparative law at Georgetown University Law Center. After graduation, she won a position in the U.S. Department of Transportation's Attorney Honors program.
That yearlong rotational assignment taught Adams a lot about the major issues in transportation law and how the department's operating units dealt with them, as well as exposing her to the policy organizations, lobbyists, and congressional staffers involved in oversight. Adams then became an attorney advisor in USDOT's Office of the Assistant General Counsel for International Law, serving as counsel to various U.S. delegations that negotiated international aviation, trade, and maritime agreements with foreign countries. She provided legal analyses and advice concerning rights and responsibilities under existing multilateral and bilateral agreements, drafted and evaluated various proposals and agreements, presented the U.S. legal position on transportation issues, and contributed to policy development in negotiations between the Department of Transportation and foreign governments.
In 1992, Adams was selected to become a Department of Transportation Fellow, participating in a program developed in conjunction with the Council for Excellence in Government to enhance the leadership and managerial skill of top-performing employees. She also taught international and substantive law in George Washington University's Legal Assistant program.
All of this provided critical training to her about what it takes to organize and maintain a national transportation infrastructure.
Adams then joined FedEx, where she participates in critical aviation negotiations with FedEx' most important trading partners, including Japan, the United Kingdom, China, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and France. She also oversees and advises on the critical legislative issues affecting FedEx Corporation and its operating companies, including cargo security legislation and legislation affecting the financial state of the airline industry. Finally, she directs FedEx' Political Action Campaign, which helps support candidates and members of Congress who support issues important to FedEx and its operating companies.
Attorney Adams received the FedEx Five Star Award in 2003, given to individuals who exemplify the spirit of teamwork and superior performance. It is FedEx' highest employee achievement award.
Running the Whole Show
The bottom line in business is determined by the way the boss handles it. This year's Businessperson of the Year, Candace S. Matthews, has been president of cosmetics maker Soft Sheen-Carson, a division of L'Oréal, since 2001. Matthews, a Carnegie Mellon University metallurgical engineering and administrative and management science graduate and holder of the M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business, took over just three years after L'Oréal USA acquired the Chicago-based Soft Sheen Products in 1998, one year after it also acquired Carson Products, another maker of ethnic hair and skin care products based in Savannah, Ga. L'Oréal had merged the two firms in August 2000, making L'Oréal the world leader in hair-care products for people of African descent.
That is no accident: According to Sister 2 Sister magazine, Black women in America account for more than 30 percent of the spending in the $4-billion hair care market. When you add in the markets in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Africa, it becomes clear that cosmetic products for Blacks is a growth industry.
The first order of business was upgrading the capital facilities. In May 2002, Soft Sheen-Carson occupied its newly renovated headquarters in the former Johnson Products building. The company had spent more than $8 million acquiring and renovating this facility, located on Chicago's South Side. It houses some 200 employees who make up the marketing, sales, finance, and MIS departments, as well as the Soft Sheen-Carson concept salon.
Matthews had joined L'Oréal after a career in the consumer products industry. Former Kraft Foods Inc. executive Ann Fudge first recruited Matthews to work for General Mills, Inc. She also held senior managerial positions at The Coca-Cola Company, as vice president, new product and package innovation, and as managing director, non-cola brands. Before joining Coca-Cola, she held senior marketing roles with CIBA Vision Corporation; Bausch & Lomb, Oral Care Division; and Procter & Gamble Cosmetics & Fragrance Division, before coming to L'Oréal.
The Paris-headquartered L'Oréal has operations in many countries, and Soft Sheen-Carson has a big presence in South Africa as well as the U.S. President Matthews has profit-and-loss responsibility for several product lines: Dark & Lovely and Optimum Care relaxers; Wave Nouveau and Care Free Curl professional wave systems; Dark & Lovely and Karizma hair coloring kits; Dark & Natural Hair Color for men; and Magic Shave and Sportin' Waves for men.
She oversees marketing, sales, finance, human resources, and distribution of the products. Her domain is "literally, everything that it takes to get our product from concept to market, and the growth of the division in the future," she told Sister 2 Sister.
To read more about The Stars Come Out see The Stars Come Out in the USBE News archive.
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A virtual spokesperson for black technology, BlackEngineer aspires to serve as leading news and information provider on the advancements in black technology with deep insights into black engineering, black entrepreneurs, black education, and historically black colleges and universities (HBCU). In fact, BlackEngineer is one of the very few to promote the achievements of black technology. The Black engineer of the year awards (BEYA) is one of our successful ventures to promote black technology, progress and achievements made in black technology, and the sentiments of the Black community in the US, the UK, Caribbean, and Africa.
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Black technology entrepreneurs are increasingly providing the horsepower that drives the global economy. Over the last two decades, black entrepreneurs have created more jobs, and contributed much more to the economic expansion of the Black community as a whole, than any black pastor or politician. Black entrepreneurs are taking risks and building businesses that generate economic growth and increase prosperity in underserved areas, as more minority-owned and minority-focused businesses emerge, willing to serve the financial needs of Black entrepreneurs. US Black Engineer & Information Technology magazine's annual list of Top Black Technology Entrepreneurs reflects the expanding scope of leading Black entrepreneurs in information technology, homeland security, and defense.
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