Insights From WEST Leadership Awards Recipients

by Christiana DelloRusso, PhD

August 20, 2008

 

The four women honored by Women Entrepreneurs in Science and Technology at its first annual Awards Celebration* in June all spoke about the importance of risk, persistence, and passion in their success.  They also stressed the help they received from other women in the “thin air” atmosphere that exists at the top of science and technology business. 

 

Abbie Celniker’s leap to industry was supported by only a single academic advisor.  That’s all she needed to break out on a career path that has included executive roles at Genentech, Wyeth Ayerst Reseach, Millenium Pharmaceuticals, and the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research, where she was Head of the Program Office.  One of her biggest challenges was leaving a company run almost entirely by women for a larger company known for its traditional European structure.  After 25 years in the industry she has kept an open mind and learned throughout.  Her thoughts on taking risks included:

  • Follow through with initiative and passion, even when you make mistakes from which you don’t know how to recover.
  • Every single person you meet is a potential mentor.
  • Always be looking for opportunities to drive yourself and your projects forward with passion. 

 

Irene Greif was the first woman to earn a PhD from MIT in computer science, and one of the first technology leaders to bring social and computer scientists together.  At Lotus, she used her academic experience to streamline the company’s research efforts (and formed Lotus Research in 1992).  Later, as web 2.0 altered conventional software testing, she had to shift practices that she herself had instituted at the company and force a less conservative approach to product development.  Today she is the Director of the Collaborative User Experience Group at the IBM Watson Research Center.  Her advice included:

  • A successful intrapreneur (someone who uses entrepreneurial thinking within a larger organization) realizes that different ways of thinking will work at different times.
  • You can effect profound change within an organization using both risky and conservative ideas.
  • It helps to love your work

 

Ivana Magovcevic-Liebisch’s father denied her pursuit of a dream career in fashion design.  Although she also loved science, after getting a PhD from Harvard she had the honest realization that she “sucked in the lab,” which led her onward towards a JD at Suffolk, all while working as a technical specialist in patent law.  Those years weren’t easy, and she confesses to many mistakes, but what she learned from them was key to the unbridled momentum that led to her position as Executive Vice President of Administration and General Counsel at Dyax Corporation.  Her advice included:

  • Definitely ask for things
  • Don’t assume that the answer will always be “no.”
  • It’s ok to wear fabulous shoes

 

ML Mackey’s success ebbed and flowed during the early years of starting her company, Beacon Interactive Systems, with her husband in the kitchen of their small apartment.  Her ability to solve software problems for clients, and her true love of her work, led the company to profitability, survival of the 2001 bust, and now new government contracts.   Her advice to budding entrepreneurs included:

  • Stray true to what you love to do. It will help you solve problems in compelling ways.
  • When going head-to-head with bigger companies, you may win, but it may not be cost effective.
  • When challenges arise, you just keep going.

 

*The first annual WEST Leadership Awards Celebration was held on June 4th in Boston, MA. The event was sponsored by Foley Hoag, Ricerca Biosciences, LLC, Accounting Management Solutions, Boston Private Bank & Trust, and FORTUNE Personnel Consultants of Newburyport.