InformationWeek
Defining The Business Value Of Technology
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October 9, 2000 |
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Women In Technology
Chris Cournoyer , Lotus Development
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wo years ago, Northeastern University in Boston invited alumna Chris Cournoyer to give the commencement speech to its graduating class. Cournoyer, who received a master's degree in economics from Northeastern in 1975, cited a Gartner Group statistic that says most people have three careers in their lifetime. The message came from firsthand experience. At the time, Cournoyer had already reached the self-defined pinnacle of her second career, having been promoted to CIO at Lotus Development Corp. in 1996.Cournoyer's first career was as an economist, but work on her economics dissertation sparked a new interest--business technology. So in the early 1980s, Cournoyer shifted gears to take her first job in IT as a business systems analyst at Wang Laboratories. Even from the early days of her second career, Cournoyer, 48, has aimed high.
"Every career move I made was aimed at becoming a CIO," she says. "There were very few women in IS in 1982, but there were also very few women economists." So, the transition from economics to technology felt natural to Cournoyer. "I've always been mathematically and technically oriented, and as an economist, you understand the end to end of business," including the role of technology, she says.
When Cournoyer joined Wang, the use of IT internally at the company was fairly new, and Cournoyer learned quickly that people in IT were valued for their skills, regardless of gender. "Generally, the trend in IS is that skills are always in short supply. IS provides an opportunity to be judged on technical merit," she says. Cournoyer's particular background in economics allowed her to take her business knowledge and translate project requirements "so the techies could understand it."
Cournoyer's nine-year career in Wang's IT organization was boosted even further by the fact that Wang itself was a technology vendor. "High-tech companies are fast-moving, attract younger people, and have a fair amount of turnover," she says. That, she adds, made it a little easier for her to move ahead, even when she left to have children.
Cournoyer was already an IS manager at Wang when her two children were born. After each birth, Cournoyer took a six-month maternity leave. But after the birth of her second child, Cournoyer decided to go to a part-time schedule for three years. "Part-time included working another 10 hours at home each week" without pay, she says, and without complaining. The extra work at home enabled her to handle her job effectively while spending more time with her children. "It was just a trade-off, and not much different from working 50 hours but getting paid for 40," she says. The fact that Wang valued her skills made it easy to negotiate the part-time arrangement, Cournoyer adds.
Throughout her career, Cournoyer says, she has been paid equitably to her male counterparts. "I've never felt any level of discrimination as a woman," she says. She attributes this to her skills and to working at progressive companies with solid human-resources policies.
Cournoyer left Wang to accept an offer at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman as director of IS, where she managed a global IS organization and oversaw the communication company's transition from legacy systems to client-server applications. In 1994, she joined Lotus as director of worldwide applications, and was promoted to VP and CIO two years later.
At Lotus, which has been an IBM subsidiary since 1995, Cournoyer found a company that offers employees formal programs for benefits that helped Cournoyer earlier in her career, including flex time and mentoring. While Cournoyer was never an official protege in a mentoring program, at every step in her career she says she forged friendships with individuals whom she respected and considered mentors. Until joining Lotus, all her mentors had been male, "mainly because there were no other women at higher levels," she says.
Cournoyer met two women executives at Lotus who served as strong professional role models. Now-retired June Rokoff, former VP of development, and Deb Besner, former VP of worldwide sales and now CEO of Brass Ring Systems, struggled with many of the same life issues as Cournoyer--namely balancing work with family and heavy travel. "Mentoring Chris was simple because she has fabulous instincts, and I only encouraged her to follow those instincts," Besner says. "She's a rare breed of CIO who seeks to thoroughly understand the business context before applying technology solutions."
These women, as well as Cournoyer's other mentors, provided advice that helped Cournoyer polish her skills as she ascended professionally. "As you move up to the next level, the leadership skills you need are different," she says. "At the director level, you need good project-management skills. As you step up as a VP, you need to envision where an organization is going and how to provide the group with a clear picture of that."
When Lotus promoted Cournoyer to CIO, she had achieved a position that was 15 years in the making. "I said, 'Ah, I'm there,'" says Cournoyer. But that settled feeling didn't last long. "My second week as CIO, my husband jokingly asked me if I was nervous. I asked him why. He said, 'You don't know what you're doing next.' I told him it would probably take me three years to figure out this job."
| FactFile |
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Title: CIO and senior VP of E-business services and technologies at Lotus Development Corp. Years at Lotus: Six Previous positions at Lotus: Director of worldwide applications Previous positions at other companies: Director of IS at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman; IS manager at Wang Laboratories Education: Bachelor of science degree from University of Massachusetts, Lowell; masterıs degree in economics from Northeastern University; attended Massachusetts Institute of Technologyıs Executive Education Program Personal status: Married for 19 years; two children Hobbies: Gardening, sailing, spending time at vacation home in Cape Cod Future goals: Become chief operating officer
No. of high-level female execs at Lotus: Five
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Despite Cournoyer's professional achievements, she says her life's greatest accomplishment has been raising two "very well-balanced children." She openly shares the credit for this success with her husband of 19 years, a professor of computer science at Boston University who has worked part-time for years to help balance the needs of their children with Cournoyer's hectic schedule.
Although Cournoyer says she has more control over her travel now than she did earlier in her career, she's still required to trek to IBM's facilities in Somers, N.Y., several times a week. When working on her home turf at Lotus' Cambridge, Mass., offices, Cournoyer leaves her house in North Reading, Mass., at 7:15 in the morning and gets into the office by 8. She leaves her office at 6:30 p.m. and arrives home in time for homework, but usually not for dinner. Cournoyer sets aside two hours in the evening to reconnect with her kids, and after they go to bed, she catches up on E-mail.
On the road, Cournoyer calls and E-mails her 14-year-old daughter and 11-year-old son daily. While Cournoyer admits her career has forced her to miss some family rituals--such as dinner together most nights--she says she's become a good role model for her children. "My daughter wants to be a CEO," she says. Her son's gregarious personality makes him well-suited for a "good VP of sales and marketing," she says with a laugh.
As for Cournoyer's next career--should she pursue a fourth--she'd like to be a chief operating officer. "There are so many opportunities at IBM," she says. While IBM and Lotus have a larger percentage of women in executive positions than many other companies, according to Working Mother magazine, Cournoyer says the best is yet to come for women who are interested in pursuing IT careers. "More women have been coming in over the last 10 or 15 years. It just takes a long time for these people to bubble up" to the top ranks, she says.
While there are more women in IT today than there were when Cournoyer entered the field, she speculates that the continued low ratio of women to men is rooted in part in cultural quirks. "It's still intimidating for some women brought up in traditional families to go into an occupation that's predominantly male. It's an inhibitor. It certainly was a consideration for me for a time," she says. But, obviously, not anymore.
Continue on to profile of Ann Livermore, Hewlett-Packard
Return to profile of Anne Perlman, Lotus Development
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