WorldCity Business Magazine

The girls of Telecom

by WC

Some stories burst forth. Others, like this one evolve gradually and unexpectedly.

In each edition of this magazine, we take a look at the multinational community of South Florida from a specific angle. Last month, for example, we looked at the top 10 logistics companies. This month, we searched our Who’s Here multinational database for women led companies. We came up with more than 150 examples, or over 12 percent of the total, a startling result. But as we took a closer look at these female CEOs, we came across one amazing success story after another.

And then we noticed an unusual concentration of women running Latin American operations of major telecommunications companies first, Penny Shaffer, head of AT&T Americas for the past four years; then, Elizabeth Garcia, at the helm of Avaya Caribbean and Latin America since 2000; and, finally, the most recent arrival to the ladies power club, Martha Bejar, president, since October 2004, of Nortel Caribbean and Latin America. We couldn’t help but agree with Penny Shaffer’s observation that “The girls are taking over telecom!” Here are their stories.

Martha Bejar / President / Nortel CALA

Have Baby, Will Travel

Martha Bejar is rather small, petite even. But, don’t be fooled. Nothing much fazes this gal.

Last June, Bejar completed an intense three-month advanced management program at Harvard University. One week later her son, Nicolas, was born. And four months after Nicolas arrived to keep 31/2 year-old Sebastian company, she accepted the top job at Nortel Caribbean and Latin America, running a 1,200-person operation that requires her to travel, on average, three days each week. Now, if she is lucky, she sees her sons from Friday to Monday.

Martha shrugs it off: “For me, it’s just one big life and I don’t separate my personal life from my business life. Besides, it was a fabulous opportunity, for me, being Latin, to contribute to the growth of Latin America and to contribute to Nortel. It was a match made in heaven.”

Martha and her family moved to Miami last October after spending four years in Massachussetts, where she initially took over the reins of Aptis, an internet dial-up company that Nortel had purchased during the internet boom, and later returned to run a North American sales division at Nortel. Born in Colombia of Cuban parents, Bejar couldn’t have picked a better time to return to Latin America.

Like most telecom and high-tech companies, Nortel CALA had a good year in 2004. “Last year we started to see the industry solidify. Our customers were a lot more predictable in terms of their investments.”

As for 2005, Bejar, who reports directly to Nortel’s CEO, Bill Owens, says the “opportunities are incredible” as a lot of companies, especially multinationals follow the same trend in the North America and begin to transform their communications platforms from traditional digital networks to internet protocol (IP) networks.

So, what’s it like being a women at the top of a major telecommunications company in Latin America? “To be honest,” says Bejar, “the only time I think about that is when I get asked this question.” She shrugs again. “Look, our customers want the best solutions available and Nortel can provide that. It doesn’t make a difference if you are a man of woman.”

Still, Bejar agrees that having a woman at the top does provide a little cache. “I am good advertisement for the company. People might not remember my name, but they remember that there’s a lady running Nortel.”

Plenty of women, it seems. “Nortel has a lot of female talent,” says Bejar, rhyming off the names of several top women executives in the firm. Bejar and about a dozen more of her top-level colleagues serve on the company’s Women’s Executive Board, which meets quarterly and focuses on “the development of management skills of female talent.” Clearly, that is paying off.

Elizabeth Garcia/President, Caribbean & Latin America/ Avaya

Straight Shooter

If you are woman in the telecom business, how do you get to the top? Easy, says Elizabeth Garcia: “First, you have to want it, then you have to plan; there has to be a career plan. And you’ve got to have successes. Plus you have to ask for it and people have to know you want it. And you have to develop a network within your company. And, in my case, you have to develop a network within Latin America.”

Simple, right?

Garcia, who has been in charge of Avaya’s Caribbean and Latin American operations since the company was spun off from Lucent in 2000, is very comfortable running a regional telecom business that requires her to travel 70 percent of the time. She dismisses any suggestion that being a woman in her position is an “issue”.

“I have been asked before if there are any issues,” says Garcia with businesslike directness, “and the answer is: I have no issues whatsoever.” Garcia is where she is “because I know what I am talking about, I know my business. And I respect my people.”

Who’s to argue with that? Or with Garcia’s results?

In 2004, she grew the business 18 percent and expects similar results this year. “Life is definitely better in Latin America these days,” she says. “Despite all the challenges, I still think Latin America is the land of opportunity.”

As is the case for Nortel, one of the biggest opportunities for Avaya is in internet telephony, which is starting to take off in the region, especially in Mexico. The other major opportunity is call centers, in which Avaya is a leader around the world. “It used to be that all the call centers were going to India, but that market is saturated,” says Garcia. “We are seeing a lot of companies deciding to put their main call center in Latin America.” But, she adds, “we still need to sell Latin America better.”

Born in Cuba, Garcia arrived to the U.S. when she was five years old. She has spent 25 years in the telecommunications industry, with Southern Bell, AT&T, Lucent and Avaya, with the last 12 years focused on Latin America.

Over the next few years, Garcia expects to see more women emerge as industry leaders. “There are more and more women in the technology field and that means more women will have the opportunity to move up.”

Like Nortel and AT&T, Avaya already has a strong contingent of female top executives. “Avaya embraces diversity,” says Garcia, but it’s the women, themselves, who have earned the recognition. “Just like the men, [these women] are there because of their experience, their talent and the successes they have had.”

Penny Shaffer/VP Americas/AT&T

Iron Fist + Open Heart

Penny Shaffer, who has been running the Americas division at AT&T Global Services for the past four years out of her Coral Gables office, is the epitome of a “lifer.” Not only has she been with AT&T for her entire career, 26 years, but both her parents worked at and retired from AT&T.

But while she has stayed within the same company virtually all her life, the company has shown her the whole world. Shaffer started in a sales and marketing position in the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia, and has since moved nine times with AT&T, including posts in Dublin, Madrid and Mexico City.

She arrived in Miami which she vows to never leave; “now that I have sand between my toes” as regional managing director for AT&T’s Business and Cusumer Operations. Three years later, she was picked to head up the entire Americas region, which includes Canada, as well as all of Latin America and the Caribbean. Today, she runs an operation with 15 major offices and 800 employees, 75 of those located here in South Florida. As she travels throughout her territory between 50 and 60 percent of the time, it helps, she says, to be “single and footloose”.

When asked about her the key to her success, Shaffer, who has a doctorate in international business administration from Kennedy- Western University in Maryland, has a clear theory which she had obviously done some thinking about: “People expect a certain amount of precision, predictability and reliability from a technology company. But there is perception about Latin America a misperception, I think that it can’t function with precision, predictability and reliability. So how do you bring that kind of spirit to a territory which doesn’t have that as a core value? My view is that you have to do that with any iron fist and an open heart. And I think it is easier for woman to combine those two things. A man can do the iron fist, but it’s harder to do the open heart.”

Shaffer has required a good measure of both qualities over the past four years. In addition to the upheaval of the telecom markets and the constant volatility of Latin America, Shaffer has also had to manage a series of tumultuous changes within AT&T. They included the beginning and demise of Concert, the global association with British Telecom, the start-up and sell-off of AT&T Latin America (a separate company from AT&T Global Services) to Telmex, the restructuring and divestiture of AT&T Canada and the acquisition of IBM Global Network. “This was a mosaic that we pulled together into a successful picture,” says Shaffer.

This past year was particularly satisfying. “With more growth and investment from our multinational clients, we grew by double digits last year,” she says.

The latest challenge, of course, is the recent announcement that SBC Communications will buy AT&T for $16 billion. Shaffer expects that deal will take another 12 months to be fully approved and confirmed by the various authorities and regulators. When it is done, says Shaffer, it is unlikely to interfere with AT&T’s current business in Latin America. SBC has no direct presence in the region, so there are no problems of overlapping coverage or structures. “AT&T’s global network was one of the aspects that made it attractive for SBC to merge the two companies,” says Shaffer. “So I don’t expect anything to disrupt the global network.”

For the foreseeable future, it will be business as usual for AT&T Americas. And the prospects for 2005, says Shaffer, are even better than 2004. “The only challenge will be to keep everyone’s attention where it belongs, to keep people from getting distracted by the regulatory process that will be going on in the background.”