Women at the TOP: Women are underrepresented in telcos' top ranks. But those who have made it agree opportunities have improved dramatically

People who make it to the vice presidential level in today's telephone companies are a rare breed-and rarer still are women who have achieved that rank. Of Ameritech's 67,000 employees, for example, approximately 200 are vice presidents, including 48 female vice presidents.

Among Fortune 500 telcos for 1997, women represented 12.9% of the highest corporate officer level, up from 11.5% in 1996, according to data supplied by Catalyst, a non-profit research organization (Table 1). Telcos are slightly above the Fortune 500 average of 10.6% female officers.

Some point to numbers like this as evidence of a "glass ceiling": While it might appear that nothing prevents women from making it to the top, subtle forms of discrimination still may bar the way. Such critics point to women's' difficulty in tapping into informal, traditionally male networks or a natural tendency for those in power to promote those most like themselves-perhaps not even recognizing such behavior as discrimination.

Those who are less discontent with the status quo claim that few women want the highest spots-or that few women have had the opportunity to develop the requisite skills.

Ask a female telco vice president about the Catalyst numbers, and her answer is likely to be similar to that of Catherine Sloan, vice president of federal affairs for WorldCom.

"I think it's evidence that there has been a glass ceiling," says Sloan, emphasizing the words "has been." "Right now, I don't think it's there any more."

Women traditionally were steered toward stereotypical female positions, including human resources and staff functions, that did not prepare them for the very top positions, says Brian Hailes, managing director for executive recruiting firm Russell Reynolds Associates.

"For the last 10 years, there's been a genuine attempt by the major telcos to develop all talent equally," he says. "In big telcos, women are making it to the executive vice president level and heading business units of several million dollars. I think the time is right for women to break into the top ranks."

A different decade Women who have been in the telecom industry for 10 to 20 years remember when opportunities were more restricted.

Charlotte Denenberg, now chief technology officer and vice president of network technology for Southern New England Telecommunications, graduated No. 1 in her class at Northwestern University and, in the mid-1970s, worked at Bell Laboratories while pursuing her Ph.D. at Illinois Institute of Technology. Initially, Bell Labs tried to steer her toward a position as an associate member of technical staff, but Denenberg held out for the "member of technical staff" title. Although the starting pay was somewhat less than an associate member's, she recognized there was more room for advancement.

"In any generation, there are people who march to their own drumbeat," says Denenberg. "The expectations on me and my own were always 90 degrees out of phase."

At the time when Denenberg completed her higher education, women were expected to work for a few years and then stay home to raise a family. When, after 10 years of marriage, Denenberg was expecting her first child, Bell Labs encouraged her to leave work five months into her pregnancy. When she did finally leave about three weeks before she was due-despite her plans to return to work after the baby's birth-she was given an exit interview.

By the time Denenberg's second child was born 10 years later, she says, attitudes had changed dramatically. By then, she was working on telecom equipment designs for ITT. When a senior manager asked her to go to Europe only a month before the baby was due, she complied. She also returned to her office for a key meeting two weeks after the baby's birth.

It's to a company's own benefit to provide opportunities for women, says Denenberg. "You can't come up with customer solutions that are effective if you don't represent the customers you're serving," she says.

Janice Obuchowski, now vice chairman and executive vice president of NextWave, the PCS start-up she helped found, has held a variety of positions in telecom since receiving her law degree in 1976. While at the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, she was President George Bush's principal communications policy advisor. She also did stints at the FCC and Nynex and founded Freedom Technologies, a telecom consulting firm.

"In the past, companies were more comfortable offering men the developmental risks," says Obuchowski. "If a woman was clearly more qualified, she got the job. But I saw a lot of cases where a man was put in a job, not because he was the most qualified but because he was not qualified and he needed that exposure. It was understood that because this person was moving too fast to master a job that he might drop a few balls. But if they wanted the person to be well-rounded so he could step into a CEO job, they were willing to take the risk."

The generation that is now taking over the telecom business is in its mid-40s and mid-50s, Obuchowski points out. "In the mid-1970s, there were a lot of women entering the pipeline. The pipeline has had plenty of good candidates for the numbers to be a lot higher."

She says the telecom industry can't use the excuse some other industries have used to explain a lack of women at the top: It has not lacked a feeder system.

"Telecom has a heck of a female farm team," says Obuchowski. "It has been a true glass ceiling that has kept [women] from getting to where they ought to be, and I think the progressive companies have seen that and have addressed it."

Some women may not set their sights on the highest-level positions because they are concerned that they will have to sacrifice their family life, Obuchowski concedes. "But it doesn't have to be that way-and that's where I still fault companies," she says.

Some women have found the greatest opportunities with newer, more entrepreneurial companies. At NextWave, Obuchowski is one of four women on a senior management team of 27.

"At established companies, [management] may make assumptions about what a woman is willing to do," says Charla Rath, NextWave's vice president of strategic affiliations. "There's no time for assumptions at our company."

Women may be held back from traditional telcos' top ranks because they may lack international experience, says Andy Steinem, principal for executive recruiting firm Dahl-Morrow International. "There are certain areas where it's tougher for women to do business culturally," says Steinem, adding that women without international experience may find better opportunities with competitive local exchange carriers, where international experience is less crucial.

Smaller, entrepreneurial companies sometimes grow rapidly, generating opportunities for employees. WorldCom, which had been fourth in a long-distance market dominated by the "Big Three," gained tremendous attention over the last year as a result of numerous acquisitions, including a plan to merge with MCI. Although WorldCom still may be an entrepreneurial company, it is certainly no longer small.

Sloan, who previously worked for CompTel, the long-distance trade association, and a telecom consulting firm, is enthusiastic about her experiences at WorldCom. "With an entrepreneurial company, there are more areas to do exciting new things that get recognized," she says.

No risk, no reward Women who have reached the vice president level or higher in the telecom industry have followed many different paths (see sidebar). Some have hopped from job to job, while others have spent their entire career at one or two companies. Although many of the top women at Fortune 500 telcos began their careers in telecom, many key women at smaller, more entrepreneurial companies came to telecom from other industries.

Not surprisingly, top-ranking women say they work very hard. Another success factor they all seem to agree on is the importance of taking risks.

"I like going where there's more risk and higher reward," says Valeri Marks, who was named president of Ameritech's Interactive Media Services Group last summer.

Marks has been with the carrier throughout her 17-year career, changing positions every two years. With an undergraduate degree in math and computer science and an MBA in marketing, Marks was a product manager for ISDN when it was a new technology and later created a sales channel to go after the small business market. She was also involved in setting up a new unit to handle competitors and in organizing the company's Internet operation, which continues to be her primary responsibility.

"It always amazes me how some people are afraid to make a decision. They want to analyze all the risk out of it," says Marks. "So many times, organizations want someone who will decide and just do it. People want someone to lead. They want someone to step up and make the decision."

Cynthia Andreotti, now senior vice president of global accounts for MCI, recounts taking a risk at age 23 when she was working in sales for Northwestern Bell, Minnesota, which was still part of AT&T in the early 1980s.

One of Andreotti's accounts was Dayton-Hudson. When the retailer's executive vice president of marketing expressed a need to differentiate the company's bridal registry, Andreotti suggested a touch-screen terminal that customers could use to look up each bride and groom. The client loved the idea, but AT&T's productmanagers were not interested in building the product, and Andreotti's management advised her to drop it.

Undaunted, Andreotti flew to Illinois to visit Teletype Corp., AT&T's manufacturing arm. After two and a half hours, Andreotti managed to persuade a key Teletype executive to invest $100,000 in building a prototype, and eventually the product became part of AT&T's line.

Taking the risk gained Andreotti recognition throughout AT&T. "It was the first time a salesperson brought a product to the product line," she says. "Now all these product people wanted to talk to me about everything."

Through such "thinking outside the box," as Andreotti calls it, she was the first woman to be AT&T's No. 1 salesperson, exceeding her quota by 492%. AT&T's senior management chose her to chair the board of director's council of leaders, which involved going to company headquarters once a month to provide input to senior management about pricing, service offerings and organizational structure.

The company was getting ready to move Andreotti to New Jersey when she got a call from an executive recruiter who said, "There are other companies out there that really want to talk to you."

Andreotti wasn't interested, but the recruiter tried again later, this time saying, "They're not looking for somebody like you. They're looking for you."

It was 1990, and MCI did not have much market share in the Midwest, nor did Sprint, says Andreotti. Their explanation was, "AT&T has this woman in Minneapolis who owns all the business," she says.

Andreotti finally agreed to meet with the people from MCI. "They convinced me that it would be more fun to grow market share than hold onto it," she says.

In keeping with her non-compete agreement, Andreotti originally was assigned to the West Coast. Each year, however, her territory was expanded. It now encompasses the entire U.S., and Andreotti has more than 1200 sales and service personnel reporting to her.

"My career objective is to be the first chairman of the board, and I don't feel I'm in a situation where I can't attain that," says Andreotti.

Be yourself As recently as the 1980s, career advice for women was full of do's and don'ts that rivaled Victorian etiquette books in their level of detail: Do wear a navy blue suit with a white blouse and flesh-tone hosiery. Don't put family photos on your desk, or people may think you're not serious about your job.

Ironically, today's top female executives don't seem to have been overly concerned about following such advice. Many of them are quick to credit their families-their husbands and children, as well as their own parents-with helping them reach success.

SNET's Denenberg is an only child of two Holocaust survivors. "I'm blessed," says Denenberg. "My parents had a vision of self-sufficiency, and they instilled in me that learning is lifelong." From the age of five, she expected to at least get a bachelor's degree.

"I never tried to be a man. I've always been me," says Denenberg. "'To thine own self be true' doesn't mean you have to be abrasive."

Earlier in her career, "saluting and marching" was very popular, Denenberg says. "I was always unafraid of pointing out the great abysses we were about to march [into]," she says.

Such a response was not always welcomed, but Denenberg's input often was valued.

Some qualities that traditionally have been associated with women are beginning to be appreciated in managers in general, she says. She proudly describes "nurturing" as part of her managerial style.

While at ITT, Denenberg was involved in hiring 200 people. When the company divested itself of its telecom operations in the mid-1980s, those people and hundreds others who would be displaced were on her conscience. She initially connected with SNET in an attempt to find work for some of those people.

Charles Harrison, SNET's vice president of network technology who has since retired, saw that such technical people would be an asset. Not only did he hire some of them, he asked Denenberg to help run the operation. She is now in charge of starting new technical operations, standardizing them and handing them off to the company mainstream.

Key projects have included moving the network from a single-vendor to multivendor environment, getting the company into the Internet business and installing a hybrid/fiber coax network throughout the state of Connecticut. Denenberg is responsible for several hundred employees and has found that communication is critical.

"I spent years trying to get people to stop saluting," says Denenberg. "I never expected to be talking as much as I talk."

She's quick to point out, though, that communication is dialogue. "At least 50% of the time, my mouth is shut," says Denenberg.

She adds that cooperation and teamwork are more important now than ever. "Nobody can play their own game now. Nobody is a stovepipe."

Although Ameritech's Marks doesn't use the word "nurturing," she, too, shows a willingness to help others with their careers. She recently became involved in the Mentium 1000 program, which matches businesswomen with more experienced male and female mentors at other companies. As a mentor, Marks will meet once a month with her mentee to offer advice.

Despite the low yet upward-trending numbers for women at the officer level, another recent Catalyst study reveals that telecommunications may be more progressive than other industries in at least one area: With average weekly earnings of $989, female managers in communications and utilities are paid more than women managers in many other industries.

The telecom industry also may have a relatively high percentage of African-American women managers (Figure 1). Compared with 5% of all white male managers, 7% of female African-American managers surveyed work in communications and utilities-although few have yet to break into the very top ranks.

Most female telco executives encourage young women to consider a telecom career and to learn technology.

"This could be such a great field because there's more demand than qualified people," says Marks.

One route to the top that has been popular for women is through regulatory affairs.

"It melds a lot of aspects of game theory and interpersonal dynamics," says Janice Obuchowski, vice chairman and executive vice president of NextWave, who began her career as a lawyer. She points to Ivan Seidenberg, now chairman designate of Bell Atlantic, as someone who rose to the top after working in regulatory affairs earlier in his career.

"To do it well, you have to be able to understand corporate strategy and package it," says Obuchowski.

While some women in the regulatory area have law degrees, that is not always a requirement.

Heather Gold, now president of the Association of Local Telecommunications Services, wanted to be a doctor until she got a D-plus in freshman chemistry. Instead, she pursued a degree in economics, followed by an MBA. She worked in mergers and acquisitions for Anheuser-Busch before joining Satellite Business Systems as a financial analyst in 1984. Swamped with access tariffs, the company moved personnel from its finance and budget departments into the regulatory area-and Gold has been involved in telecom regulatory issues ever since.

Before joining ALTS, she was with Sprint and Allnet, and she also served as vice president of industry affairs for CompTel. Key activities at ALTS have included promoting the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act and fighting incumbent local exchange carrier petitions to offer long-distance service.

Janis Stahlhut, now vice president of regulatory and government affairs for Time-Warner Cable, wanted to be a baseball player as a child and later worked in arts administration before getting a master's degree of science in telecommunications at the University of Colorado. After graduation, she was hired by Mountain Bell, which later became part of U S West, and was put on the "fast track," getting exposure to various parts of the business.

In 1988, Stahlhut moved to U S West's federal regulatory office in Washington and when U S West invested in Time Warner, she made the move to cable TV, continuing to specialize in telecom issues. She likes the entrepreneurial spirit at Time Warner and, like other top-ranking women, uses the term "thinking outside the box" to describe a critical component of success.

As vice president and general manager of the mid-Atlantic and Midwest regions for NextWave, Marybeth Griswold Frasier is one of several women on the company's senior management team-including Obuchowski and Vice President of Strategic Affiliations Charla Rath-who worked in regulatory affairs early in their careers and later branched out into broader areas of responsibility. While working in government relations at Sprint, Frasier made it known that she wanted to be a general manager.

A key step toward that goal was to direct Sprint's FTS2000 program, where she earned recognition by managing a lucrative government contract. From there, Frasier moved into operations, turning around an unprofitable unit at Sprint and later moving to NextWave, where she is responsible for the buildout and management of the company's wireless network within her region.

Government is ahead of industry in promoting women to top positions, says NextWave's Obuchowski. She points to the FCC, which currently has two female commissioners out of five.

That imbalance between government and industry could mean even more corporate opportunities for women in regulatory affairs.

"It's dawned on companies that are interfacing with the FCC that [a shortage of top women] is not very politic," says Obuchowski.