The era of celebrating female business leaders as an oddity or exception is thankfully far in the past.
Nevertheless, many successful women in business employ an arsenal of traits such as emotional intelligence, empathy and listening skills that in many cases can help to position them for success in high-level business leadership roles.
That was a consensus of a Monday panel discussion on “Women in Business” hosted by the Jack Welch School of Business at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield. The panel included two women who ascended to the top in family businesses, and two others who worked their way up through the ranks.
Cindi Bigelow is president and CEO of Fairfield-based Bigelow Tea, the enterprise her grandmother started during World War II when she (by accident, the legend goes) hit upon the mixture of ingredients that would become the company’s signature brew, Constant Comment Tea.
Bigelow said many females in business are handicapped both by a predilection to risk-aversion — and a natural reticence, even in the workplace. Women who may be vying for corporate leadership roles, she said, often “don’t want to make mistakes,” she said, so they may be less inclined to take a chance a male peer might regard as a worthwhile gamble.
To rise to the top in their organizations women frequently “have to be the best communicator, the most articulate and the most observant” presence in the management ranks, added Bigelow, who plays a highly public role for her company that extends to a personal presence in Bigelow advertising campaigns.
The most intriguing presence on the panel was also the one with a Sacred Heart connection: Suzanne Greco, who retired in May as CEO of Subway International, the Milford-headquartered franchising giant.
‘Just Fred’s sister’
Greco was the younger sister of Subway founder Fred DeLuca, who started the company as a teenager in 1965 to earn money for college (NHB, October). Greco worked at the company as a “sandwich artist” as a teen before enrolling at Sacred Heart, where she intended to major in accounting before she discovered that she “despised” it. So she dropped out of college to pursue a career as a dance instructor in New York, returning a decade later to the family business.
“So here I am — no four-year degree, being a female and coming out of the arts,” Greco recalled. “I was the stereotype of, ‘She couldn’t possibly know anything — she’s just Fred’s sister.’” Nevertheless Greco stuck it out in a succession of management roles leading to the top job after her brother passed away in late 2015.
“I would say anybody sitting here, just keep at it — don’t take that break” from your intended career path, Greco said. “Because it took me forever to gain the credibility in the office and with my peers. I had to gain my own credibility. My brother didn’t make it easy for me.”
Panelist Elizabeth Hiza is chief of staff for financial services firm Barnum Financial Group. But she began her career at Milford razor-maker Schick doing “market research — standing behind a two-way mirror watching men and women shave,” she recalled. She found Barnum Financial through a Monster.com job search, but after going to work there “hated it so much I would cry on the drive home,” she recounted.
Hiza persevered and rose into the management ranks in part through a reliance on “emotional intelligence, which is rare in the financial services industry,” she said. As a manager, she has since discovered, “You can get more out of people [employees] if you appeal more to their emotions,” she said.
Tauck Travel President Jennifer Tombaugh’s part-time job with the student travel agency fostered a lifelong affinity for the travel industry. She began working at Tauck in 2000 and became the first non-Tauck-family-member chief executive five years ago.
Today the Wilton firm, started 93 years ago as a New England motor coach tour company, has grown into a worldwide travel provider with a fourth generation of Taucks involved in the business. Just not in the top job.
Contact Michael C. Bingham at mbingham@newhavenbiz.com
