InformationWeek

October 9, 2000

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Women In Technology
Linda Sanford, IBM

By Paul McDougall

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he opportunities for women in technology are extraordinary today," says Linda Sanford, IBM's recently appointed senior VP for storage. She should know, given that she's now running a $1 billion business unit that IBM CEO Lou Gerstner has said will be among the company's most important in the years ahead.

Sanford, a 25-year IBM veteran, has spent her entire career with the company. Strong family role models, she says, are what first brought her into a technical career.

"I was fortunate--I grew up with five sisters and we were all math majors," she says.

But not every girl is so fortunate. "With young girls in particular, there's an issue with the image of engineers as something that's not for them," says Sanford, who holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics from St. John's University and a master's in operations research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Linda Sanford Photo by Gary Gelb Sanford is co-chair of the Forum on the Diversity of the Engineering Workforce for the National Academy of engineering. Part of the group's mission is to imprint on young girls the idea that technical professions aren't just for boys. "Engineering is nothing more than problem solving, and girls love to solve problems. Sometimes you need teams to solve a problem, and girls are terrific at facilitating teamwork," Sanford says. She also leads IBM's Women in Technology forum, one of several diversity groups commissioned by Gerstner. Such efforts appear to be paying off. Sanford says a recent forum meeting drew 800 women from various technical disciplines within IBM.

Part of the reason for that, she says, is that technology companies are being forced to open their doors to every available source of talent. "We have a big issue in our country--and, I'd assert, in the world today--because we don't have enough talent in the IT space, whether that be engineering or computer science or just information technology," Sanford says. She's quick to add that women bring more to the IT world than the ability to fill an empty chair: "We're better listeners. It's part of human nature for a woman, quite honestly. It's in the genes."

Like another prominent woman who's been spending a lot of time in New York lately, Sanford is conducting a "listening tour" of her own as she looks to bolster IBM's presence in the red-hot storage market--dominated by EMC Corp. and expected to reach $53 billion by 2003, according to International Data Corp.

Understanding what customers want, Sanford says, has become her top priority since taking over the business in July. Hence, she's racking up air miles aboard IBM's corporate jet as she flies to customer sites. "We're looking to galvanize the industry around open storage networking and become a leader in that business; to do so, we need to deliver what customers are asking for," Sanford says. "Spending time with customers is one of the things I always make religious."

FactFile

Title: Senior VP, storage, IBM

Years at IBM: 25

Previous positions at IBM: Executive assistant to former chairman John Akers; head of Global Industries sales group

Personal status: Single, two children

Hobbies: Playing piano

Future goals: To bring IBM's storage business back into a leadership position.

All of this is in marked contrast to when Sanford first joined IBM. Then, she says, there were few women in technical positions at the company. Still, she didn't feel she was at a disadvantage. "I honestly don't think I had an extra set of challenges to deal with, even though I was the only woman in most of the groups and teams I belonged to." The key to her success? "One of the best pieces of advice I received early on was from a manager who said, 'Just be yourself,'" she says.

Still, Sanford says there were a few occasions when she felt singled out, especially when dealing with foreign cultures in which women at the time were confined mostly to domestic or clerical roles. She recounts a business meeting in Japan in which she was seated furthest away from the other company's top executives, even though she was a key decision maker. "To have to deal with a woman in a position of authority was very different for them." However, Sanford says it wasn't long before the Japanese contingent got a clue. "Every day they moved me a seat closer, until I was sitting next to their top executive," she says. "It was as different an experience for them as it was for me."

Sanford says that at home, broader cultural changes let women succeed in the workplace without having to entirely sacrifice personal lives. For instance, men are more apt to share in domestic life, she says. "I see a marked difference in the new generation of men. I see men in this current generation who very much want to participate in raising their children and have a balanced work-life environment," says Sanford, who has a 22-year-old son and a 19-year-old daughter.

Despite her achievements, Sanford is quick to point out that the IT industry still has work to do when it comes to gender equality. She maintains that IBM is at the forefront of providing equal pay for equal work, but it's a problem elsewhere in the industry. "There are still discrepancies between men and women doing the same job, according to all the data I've seen," Sanford says, noting, however, that the gap is closing--thanks, in no small part, to the efforts of Sanford and other trailblazers.