Every year, NAFE calls for nominations of members for five categories of Women of Excellence Awards, given to women of courage and compassion who have overcome obstacles to achieve success and who give back by helping others. The 2009 year’s roster of women knocked us out and proves once again that NAFE harbors some of the most glorious women in the nation—and now internationally—who are committed to serving and enriching their workplaces, their communities, and the world. 

Breakfast details: Registration begins at 8:00 AM. Event runs from 8:30-10:30 AM.

We celebrate them December 4 at a breakfast at The Times Center, 242 W. 41st St., New York City, hosted by The New York Times Company Women’s Network and sponsored by IBM, Office Depot, State Farm Insurance and WellPoint. Many thanks to all these wonderful companies for supporting NAFE!

Presenting the 2009 NAFE Women of Excellence

Janet Robinson, Woman of Achievement
For many years, NAFE has admired Janet L. Robinson as she has expanded opportunities for women at The New York Times Company while serving as its first woman president and CEO. But what a time to be responsible for a company with 2008 revenues of $2.9B that includes the world’s most prestigious newspaper The New York Times, as well as the International Herald Tribune, The Boston Globe, 15 other daily newspapers! Right now, aren’t most people giving up reading?

Robinson—explaining they’re no longer defined as a “newspaper” company, as they also own WQXR-FM and more than 50 Web sites, including NYTimes.com, Boston.com and About.com—is reassuring: “There is still a strong, loyal base of print readers that continues to grow as new and younger consumers come to appreciate all that a printed newspaper has to offer.” Yet she is realistic: “Media companies must provide their content wherever, whenever and however the consumer wants it. We are a trusted source in print and online and on any platform where we wish to distribute our content. Our cornerstone is quality news and information.” She adds, "Quality news has always been the killer application."  

But I still worry whether my beloved daily paper will show up on my doorstep. “Janet,” says the company’s Chair Arthur O. Sulzberger, Jr., “is guiding us through this incredibly difficult period…creating an organization that can attract sufficient print and online revenues to support world-class journalism.” He admires her “unusual foresight and excellent management” that prepared the company “to grapple with the unprecedented amount of economic and technological disruption.” Sulzberger describes Robinson’s “quiet but fierce resolve” as she is “expanding our core strengths and defending quality journalism.”

Robinson—who came up through the advertising side of the company—first taught school for 11 years and confesses to missing interaction with students.  Her inner teacher now gets expressed in mentoring. “Often, I have found that mentees discover the right answer or uncover the right path by simply talking about an issue with a mentor.  If a mentor listens closely and allows the mentee to reason her own way to a solution, the solution becomes more meaningful to the development of that young person.”  

She encourages young women to work in her industry, which she calls “an ever-changing, exhilarating and intellectually stimulating business. Whether you are a reporter, a Web producer, an advertising sales person, a strategic planner or an accountant, it is an exciting profession with an expansive future.”  She serves on the advisory board for New York Women in Communications, as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, vice chair of the board of the Liberty Science Center, and board member of the Newspaper Association of America.

Proudest accomplishment: “Helping lead a company whose mission and values I admire.”

Biggest obstacle: “Not enough time in the day.”

Advice:  “There is never a perfect time to venture into the unknown.  No matter how much experience you have, taking a risk is always unnerving. But that is often the only way to move forward and the best way to secure your future and your happiness.”

Secret: “To someday play the piano much better than I do right now.”

Jane Poynter, Entrepreneur
Tipping the hat to novelist P.D. James, how’s this for a traditionally “Unsuitable Job for a Woman?” Jane Poynter co-founded and serves as president of Paragon Space Development Corporation in Tucson, an aerospace engineering and technology development company specializing in life support in extreme environments. One particular expertise involves thermal control for orbiting and re-entering spacecraft. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t know a lot of women who do that. 

But I guess after two years (1991-3) as guinea pigs enclosed in Biosphere 2—the mammoth science experiment that simulated life on earth—you’re ready for such work. She and seven others grew their own food and were hungry most of the time (1600-1800 calories per day), dealt with insufficient oxygen, wrestled excess CO2 (and learned how the consequent drop in PH of their “ocean” killed essential organisms), and labored—somewhat unsuccessfully—to get along with each other. She later did marry one of them with whom she hatched the concept for Paragon, now an $8M+ enterprise of 65 people who fashion environments where living things can survive full fathom five deep or eight mile high in earth orbit and beyond. 

Right now, Paragon is building spacesuits and space shuttle radiator systems to keep people cool and breathing. But what’s the wackiest they’ve done? Poynter thinks it’s a project that never saw the light of day that they started to design for Marlon Brando to capture car exhaust by sucking it into the road, powered by the energy of the cars passing over. “We worked only at the air purification side of that idea, taking exhaust and using the microbes in soil to clean it. We should get back on that.” 

Poynter co-founded Queen of Green Properties LLC, which remodels buildings for sustainability, and The Local Trust, a community-based carbon offset nonprofit organization. She serves as president of the Global Sports Alliance USA that brings sports and the environment together; and she co-chaired The Four Corners Summit on Sustainable Cities.  

Also an author, she has penned two books, The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2 and the soon-to-be-released Champions for Change: Athletes Making a Difference, speaking out on climate change and sustainability. In it, she tells some scary stories about our planet. “One skier said the snow was so bad at the Canadian World Championship that they had only a thin stripe of white on a green meadow.” Even worse: “One hyper-endurance swimmer, to promote awareness, swam across the North Pole. You’re not supposed to be able do that.”

Proudest accomplishment: “Building stuff for the space shuttle.”

Biggest obstacle:  “Credibility; I was young and often the only women in aerospace; but that’s also great, too, because they remember you.”

Advice:  “Build relationships inside and outside your company. You get around the female credibility thing through relationships.”

“Determination,” says Campbell. “It’s so important for us to make a difference.” 

Born in inner city St. Louis, Missouri, she and two siblings were raised by a single mother. “She kept us grounded. To come home with less than an A was unacceptable, and she made sure we respected our neighbors. We lived in a two family flat, with 12 uncles and aunts downstairs. We had sense of community, despite the poverty and violence around us. When I think about balancing work and family, I think…If my mother and my grandma could do it, it surely I can!”

Campbell left the inner city to earn a BA at Drake University and then an MA from Illinois State in organizational communications; she’s now working on her Ph.D. 

But she never forgets her beginnings. To help young people, she co-founded M.A.P.S. (Mentoring and Providing Scholarships) that offers disadvantaged high school seniors year-long mentoring, with the motto “Each one reach one.” Campbell has brought in the mayor and other community leaders to talk on topics like avoiding debt, speaking properly, or showing up on time and dressing appropriately, “like not wearing three earrings for the interview at McDonald’s,” says Campbell. At the end of school year, the students receive scholarships. 

“My inner city roots mean I can serve as an example, I can tell them it doesn’t matter where you grew up. I had gangs around me, and I succeeded. It’s about your determination.” For that program, she received a presidential “point of light” award. 

Selected for President Obama’s Team Captains for the 2009 inauguration, she waxes enthusiastic: “Fifty of us were on the mall at 3 a.m., organizing volunteers. Then people swarmed in, all races and creeds, the elderly with their walkers, and it was cold! It was amazing to see what America is about: all these different faces coming together. Everyone was valued that day.” 

Proudest accomplishment: “Winning the Dr. Martin Luther King Award for community service and social justice.”

Biggest obstacle: “Being raised by a single mother in the inner city.”

Advice:  “Develop an action plan for both your personal and professional lives and do not allow negative influences to hinder goals and aspirations.”

Secret:  “P.U.S.H. (Pray Until Something Happens). Before difficult decisions, I stop to pray for guidance and direction.  

An undiagnosed dyslexic through junior high, Davis learned early “to find creative solutions to my educational obstacles, advocating for myself, negotiating with teachers.” In law school, she focused on disability rights and then joined the mayor’s office as assistant counsel and senior policy advisor, a desk job handling policy related to the disabled.

Davis’ life changed with a three a.m. phone call telling her that 64 deaf Mexicans were discovered in Queens who’d been kidnapped and held in a slave ring. “I was called because I was the cross-trained liaison from that office. I didn’t go home for a number of weeks thereafter.” She then worked to integrate the needs of “whoever fell out of the norm and required a unique response into overall emergency management for the City.” Her work helped transform special needs issues from an afterthought to part of inclusive emergency management.

On 9/11, she was working as special needs advisor for planning, response, and recovery at Mayor Giuliani’s emergency headquarters at 7 World Trade Center. She tells the story: “I was on the ground when the towers came down, separated from the logistics team and without communications capability. Normally I’d be point person for health and medical or human services, but now I was on the front lines.” She improvised a response for the elderly and special needs people in the area, knowing the buildings where they lived. “We found construction workers, brought the Red Cross over, and tag-teamed. One of us would knock on doors to coax people out, and then pass them to the Hulk Hogan guy who could get them down the stairs to buses. We worked on the fly, using everything we knew.”

In 2002, Davis founded EAD & Associates, which advises FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, and also works with local and state agencies, nursing homes, and home-based care associations on emergency planning. During Katrina, her firm sent rapid assessment teams to four Gulf states to report special needs impacts to the federal authorities.
 
Davis served as the first director of the National Organization on Disability’s Emergency Preparedness Initiative; she co-chairs the National Hurricane Conference Health Care/Special Needs Committee; and she chairs the International Association for Emergency Managers. One of her proudest assignments came when called to brief the Obama transition team on special needs in emergency management. Even with this full plate, Davis finds time help women get established in her field.

Proudest accomplishment: “Every year, the company gives out more pro-bono hours than billable hours, but stays profitable.”

Biggest obstacle: “A late diagnosis of dyslexia.”

Advice:  “Be willing to come off your track and go after an opportunity you didn’t plan for.”

She did her undergraduate work in Italy and earned her Masters degree in Holland, then returned to Poland—now part of the European Union and a changed economic climate—and started MPack, a company that produces tubes for cosmetics, detergents, groceries, and pharmaceuticals.

“It was a challenge as a woman in a male business,” says Darowska. “I worked with low-skilled men who weren’t very happy listening to a young woman telling them what to do. If I was going to verify that everyone’s doing the right thing, I had to know what they were doing, so I learned how the machines work and how production is done and quickly passed that obstacle.” She was able to get some of her father’s cosmetics customers as her first buyers.

Darowska has grown the company to 60 employees and now has “the right people for production, the right customer base, and the right guy making strategic decisions,” a director who manages the day-to-day operations. Then she got married and had a baby boy, and “things changed.  I take him into the office, but mostly I can coordinate everything from home.” Her retired father watches the baby when his daughter takes off for meetings.

With MPack running smoothly, Darowska is finding a new challenge at her husband’s company, Power Boats Poland. “Since I have this entrepreneurial thing in my blood,” she says, “I was interested in what my husband was doing and suggested I start coming to his office, which is like a sales point with a showroom, out in the country. My factory is typical factory – huge. Here it’s like a holiday.” She has set to work organizing the company. “They were good sales guys, but didn’t know about hiring and training and organizing staff, getting it clean and running. Making production efficient – that’s how you earn money. When the margin is small, you need to be efficient or you quickly fall behind. My goal now is to create the strongest motor yachts company in the country.” She adds, “I’m not the owner, I’m a wife. But it’s a challenge for me.”

Biggest obstacle:  “Building credibility and finding mentors.”

Advice:  Her father owned a printing company – and in that entrepreneurial environment, “I never thought about working for someone else.” 

Moving to Thompson Media, she supervised billing, earned her MBA in accounting and finance, and advanced to director of financial planning and analysis. Then Primedia hired her as VP of finance at About.com, acquired shortly thereafter by The New York Times Company.

She now oversees online investments for About Group, which offers internet searches for information, goods and services, and she holds the title of Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President, Emerging Platforms.

“Competing with white men as a minority and a female has been hard,” she says. “I’ve been in situations where I’ve made a decision based on industry research and facts, but my CEO would go with my male counterpart who had nothing, no facts.” She developed a strategy: “It’s a matter of execution. You work twice as hard as men and then you gain their respect.” She finds things easing up with more women in the industry, “but it’s still a challenge. Men can just walk into a company as CEO, but women spend years proving themselves inside the organization to get there.”

Loving her job, Jean finds dealing with the current economy a challenge, but she says that “based on talks with advertisers, things are picking up and I see a light for growth in Q4. We’re still running a high margin business. Companies with a strong bottom line like About will make it through. Cautious is a new rule: I am cautiously optimistic.” 

Janet Robinson, president & CEO of The New York Times Company, calls Jean “a shining light in our digital operation and a role model for many women across the company.” She praises Jean’s dexterous balancing of expansion on the Web and “financial caution in this time of economic turmoil and seismic change in the media industry. Success on the Internet is critical to our future, and her role has become increasingly important.” Jean now has responsibility for new acquisitions Caloriecount.about.com, CompareHealthCare.com, and ConsumerSearch.com, not to mention her two children, an 11 year-old boy and a 15-year old girl “who still likes me,” she adds with joy. They live on Long Island with a 3-year old Yorkshire terrier named Kobe, so named because “we like basketball.” 

Proudest accomplishment: “The sale of About.com to The New York Times Company.”

Biggest obstacle:  “Being a female and minority in the finance profession.”

Advice: “Always execute your goals (short and long-term); the ability to execute will determine your success at work and at home.”