The Wall Street Journal list
One of the Journal’s 50

Late last year, the Wall Street Journal published a list of “50 Women to Watch” in the world of business. The venerable newspaper wrote that this “new generation of women leaders who grew up watching pioneering women break into the executive suite has moved into the corner offices of some of the world’s largest companies.” UVM alumnae made their mark, earning two spots on the WSJ honor roll: Charlene Begley ’88, a senior vice president at General Electric and former chief executive and president of GE Plastics, and Diane Greene ’76, founder and CEO of the software firm VMware.

VQ recently caught up with Charlene Begley on a morning when she was on her way to New York for GE corporate meetings and between week-long business trips to Brazil and South Africa. She shared her thoughts on the challenges of being a female leader in business, the art of balancing work and family, and UVM lessons that have proven their worth. In the summer issue of Vermont Quarterly, we’ll touch base with Diane Greene.

On being a female leader in business
“The businesses that I’ve worked on in GE are very male-dominated. I ran the transportation business, so we built locomotives, off-highway vehicles. All my customers were men. The rail industry, the mining industry—heavily dominated by men. So my whole career, the meetings I’ve been in, I’ve typically been one of the only women in the room. Relative to GE, there’s been no challenges. If anything, it’s been an advantage because GE has since the start of my career been very focused on having a diverse leadership team. I was fortunate enough to get attention and exposure early in my career. So, no issues within GE, but a different story with some customers. When a Business Week article came out, in ’01 I think, there was a big slant on “Charlene tries not to work weekends.” (Because of her emphasis on protecting family time.) I got calls from three different CEOs of the rail industry: ‘How dare you say that. We’re a 24/7 operation.’ That’s just a minor example, but it’s different. I’ve never let that get in the way, but it’s something that you’re conscious of.”

On stepping up
“From 2001 on, with the promotions I’ve gotten I’ve felt like ‘I’m ready for these.’ But there was a midpoint in my career where I thought, ‘Oh, my god, they’re crazy to put me in this job.’ But I’ve always approached jobs like a college class. Massive cramming in the beginning—get every book I can, learn as much as I can. When you have a leadership position, you have the advantage of being able to call people in your office and say, ‘Teach me about this, teach me about that.’ I’ve always approached every job as a massive learning experience. I ask a thousand questions. I really try to understand the process, how things work, the technology. I get out to customers really early and learn from them what we’re good at, what we need to get better at, what our competitors are better than us at. And so it is just a big cram to try to accelerate the learning.”

On balancing work and family
“That is the most difficult thing that I deal with. My job is hard; spending enough time with our three daughters is harder. With any career, it could easily suck up twenty-four hours every day. It is just a matter of strong prioritization, a lot of advance planning. I don’t have a balance—let me first dispel that. It’s knowing when to let my kids win, when to let GE win, and make very conscious choices. So if there are really important things at school, I’m going to plan around them. When I’m scheduling my global travel—I basically travel 80 percent of the time—I’m very careful so I can be home on weekends. I know it sounds a little nuts to the rest of the world, but it works for our family. In this day and age it is so much easier to stay connected. I’m home with the kids on the weekends; but I’ve also got this Blackberry, so I’m never more than a click away from anything.”

On lessons learned as a student
“I had a great experience at UVM. I worked really hard. I was working three jobs to pay bills. I didn’t have parents who were funding my fun college years, so it was a lot of hard work. My experience at the business school was awesome. Later in life, as I’ve gone through my career at GE, the classes I took at UVM were right on. They were spot on. Whether it was the IT classes, Lauck’s class (Professor Lauck Parke), statistics, Laber’s class (Professor Eugene Laber)— they were absolutely spot on. Obviously, I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time. But as I’ve gone on through my career, I learned a little bit about all of this at UVM. So, in that sense, I couldn’t have asked for a better education.”

On lessons for today’s students
“Learn as much as you can. Ask as many questions as you can. Take a lot of initiative, listen really well, and have a big bias for action. When you see something that doesn’t make sense, get involved in making it better. Don’t wait until you have 100 percent of the facts; when you’ve got enough to move, move. I’ve never questioned ‘Is that my responsibility?’ in any of my jobs, which is one of the reasons, I think, that I’ve advanced quickly. My very first job out of UVM was in the finance management program of GE, and I got involved in a process that had nothing to do with my current job, and that was kind of my first break out of the pack. But I’ve always been that way—you see something that doesn’t make sense, get involved in making it better. So the word I’d use is initiative, bias for action. It makes a big difference. The employee who is curious enough to understand why we do what we do, then cares enough to make it better.”

On work challenges
“Things are never fast enough. We have such ambitious growth plans, and you wish you could run a million miles an hour all the time. I look at my business—I’ve got industrial within GE, a $17 billion business with 73,000 employees and we still don’t have enough market share in China, in India, in Africa, in the Middle East. So my biggest struggle is how to really understand those local markets, how to staff local teams, how to make sure those local teams are really empowered to serve customers locally. Our ability to go fast enough around the world is probably my biggest challenge.”

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