Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 7, 1994 TAG: 9408250058
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BETH MACY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
She points to the pictures offhandedly at the end of a three-hour interview and, in a rare unguarded moment, says: ``All male, all white.''
Which, actually, is not true.
Beth Doughty is in them all in one of her trademark Talbots suits. She stands out among her local peers - all male, all white - in Washington, D.C., at a meeting of Chamber of Commerce and economic development officials.
She stands out in the other photos, too. A group of businessmen celebrating a company ground-breaking. A group of businessmen celebrating a local company's expansion.
In the second, the men are leaning on gold shovels provided by the organization Doughty heads, the Roanoke Valley Economic Development Partnership. In the third, Doughty is holding up one end of a giant showcase check - a $135,000 state incentive that she personally helped engineer.
As is typical in her job, she also juggled negotiations with the local politicians, company CEOs and vice presidents, local economic developers and her own board of directors in making the deals. All male, mostly white.
She even hand-painted the gold shovels.
Beth Doughty, 39, is arguably the most influential businesswoman in the Roanoke Valley. In her job for 21/2 years, she has lured, courted and helped engineer the relocation or expansion of 13 companies, creating over 2,900 jobs.
``Whether or not this valley grows - and by that I mean in terms of new jobs and new quality jobs - is more in the hands of Beth Doughty than any other single person,'' says Warner Dalhouse, chairman and CEO of First Union of Virginia and a founding member of the partnership. ``She's not just one of the most important businesswomen here, she's one of the most important people, period.''
Widely touted for her marketing skills, she is the Roanoke Valley's top sales person, the region's No. 1 booster. When CEOs from companies in New York and Connecticut consider building a new plant or moving their company headquarters here, it's Doughty who picks them up at the airport and shows them around.
It's Doughty sitting in the hot seat, driving them to industrial sites in Roanoke and its six surrounding municipalities, answering questions about electricity and unemployment rates, air quality, rail sites, local politics and schools.
She can recite the selling price of particular homes in Hunting Hills, which municipalities offer curbside recycling, their crime rates, how much Virginia Tech spends annually on research.
She knows which issue of Parenting magazine named Roanoke one of the top 10 places to raise a family. She can talk about the intricacies of rock quarrying, fiber optics, direct-mail ordering, pipe manufacturing, business forms.
She drives execs from prospective companies - ``prospects,'' they're called - to the Mill Mountain Star in her Ford Crown Victoria (license plate: 1 Valley). She lets them see for themselves that ``It's all one valley, all one economy,'' she says.
All told, Doughty has courted more prospects in the past 21/2 years than the partnership had seen in its prior 8 years of existence: 30 already this year, 35 last year and 35 in 1992.
``You judge a partnership not by the actual deals, which are handled by the governments, but by the number of prospects it lures to the governments. So just look at her numbers - things are going better since I left,'' says Mark Heath, her predecessor in the job and now president of the Carolinas Partnership. Heath tried to lure Doughty away to manage his new marketing team in Charlotte, N.C., but she refused to consider it.
``You can blow smoke in a lot of things when you're trying to sell a product,'' Heath says. ``But in economic development, the prospects you're dealing with are generally smarter than you are, and they know what they want. Beth is very professional, very sharp, she knows it's more an art than a science. She's the most knowledgeable marketing person I've ever worked with - anywhere.''
Just ask Jack Resnick, president and CEO of Transkrit Corp., the company that decided to move its corporate headquarters here last year. Resnick and his top managers personally investigated 26 communities before choosing the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology.
``Most of the [other partnerships] did a very good job - they were responsive and that sort of thing,'' Resnick recalls. ``But if that meant they ran the 100-yard in 10 or 11 seconds, Beth consistently ran it in eight - and made it look very simple. . . . At the end of the day, we knew we could trust her.''
Perhaps even more important, notes Lin Chaff, Doughty is a role model. ``Women in the Roanoke Valley need every woman role model they can get. It's not a conducive atmosphere for women in business.''
Chaff, who runs her own public-relations firm, believes Doughty has to work harder and smarter than a man in the same position. ``She has to prove herself every day; we all do. And to run a household with three small children like she does - it's just an incredible accomplishment.''
Though Doughty tries to downplay her position as a role model - preferring not to be a spokeswoman for the cause but to let her work do the talking - it does bother her that she's the only woman in those pictures on her shelf.
The fact that Heath, her predecessor, made more money than she does bothers her, too.
``Young people and women in this community - your parents have to have been born here for you to be a real part of things,'' says an area economic developer who asked not to be identified. ``You have to work extra-extra hard to be accepted.
``Beth is not in the good-old boy network, but they respect her. To be in it, you still have to be a good-old boy.''
Bob Gibson, who frequently brings prospects to Doughty through the Virginia Department of Economic Development, isn't surprised that Doughty often gets left out of the business loop.
``That's the way it is in an old conservative Virginia city; that's old news,'' he says. ``The real story on this thing is that we men have to entertain prospects for lunch and things like that. And then we finish up with people at 4 and go back home or to the hotel to rest and regroup,'' the marketing manager explains.
``Beth has to go out to a tee-ball game, then come back and join us for a reception and dinner. It's just incredible when you think about maintaining that kind of schedule.
``Of course men don't have to do that. We don't even think in those terms.''
On a recent Tuesday evening, Doughty was in full swing. She had ferried a prospect around all day, then rushed from the office at 6 to catch her 11-year-old daughter Allison's Pigtail League softball game.
The Pirates were getting clobbered. It was about to rain all over her new salmon-colored dress. And Doughty had to leave the game early to take the prospect out to dinner at 7:30 p.m.
What troubled her more, though, was the newspaper photographer who showed up to photograph her for this story. Doughty was afraid the other mothers at the game would think she was showing off.
``There's a definite dividing line between women who work outside the house and women who work at home,'' she says later. ``And I think that's too bad - because we're all in the same boat of being women who have too many obstacles to overcome.''
Doughty recalls the uneasiness she felt when she used to drop her son Michael, now 5, off at preschool: ``I was dressed like this and all the other mothers were dressed in sweats. They'd look at me and want to be me, and I'd look at them and want to be them.''
Jan Danahy, a friend and stay-at-home mom, says Doughty struggles constantly to be perfect - at home and at work. ``She's her harshest critic,'' Danahy says. ``She's secure as a mother that she's doing a good job, but she's aware of the division. And it's true: There are sacrifices to both.
``Beth struggles with the fact that she'd like to do both, and very well, and sometimes she questions whether she is.''
Doughty does employ a variety of coping mechanisms. She employs, for instance, Faith Hare, who baby-sits, chauffeurs and generally helps her keep track of the Doughty children and household.
She relies on Faith and her cellular car phone - which she uses constantly to keep up with the kids and the office when she's courting a prospect.
She relies on the restaurants in town that offer ``Kids-eat-free'' nights: ``Monday and Tuesdays it's Ragazzi's, Wednesdays it's Shoney's, Thursdays it's 99-cent hamburgers at Famous Anthony's. . . .''
She and her husband, Doug, assistant sports editor for this newspaper and a workaholic himself, lead a frantic schedule and rarely miss the kids' games or school activities. They ride the kids hard if they forget to address an adult as ``ma'am'' or ``sir,'' and they compete with each other constantly - who can see the most people they know at the city market on a Saturday morning, who can name the six New York Yankees with 2,000 hits in a career (Beth knew five; Doug, six).
Although she shops at Talbots (``but only when there's a sale''), Doughty doesn't look all that comfortable trudging through the industrial parks in a suit, pantyhose and pumps. You can picture her more easily at Kroger wearing sweats, doing the ``supermarket sweep'' with her kids and their friends.
``I make a list and give half to Allison. I always take my kids and half the neighborhood, then we do the sweep: They go through their list, I go through mine, and we race.''
She leaves Doug at home because he puts kitty litter in the cart just to see if she notices. They don't have a cat.
When Doughty gives a television interview for her job, the only thing she wants to know afterward is: ``Did I look fat?'' Her idea of the perfect exercise is stationary bicycling - ``because I can sit on my butt, read People magazine and watch `Roseanne' reruns at the same time.'' She gave up on exercise after working out at the Roanoke Athletic Club for a year and still not losing an ounce.
Too many schmooze dinners at Alexander's, too little time.
Creatures of habit, the Doughtys go to the exact same spot in Cape May, N.J., to vacation each summer - ``because I don't have time to look for another place to go,'' Beth says.
She gets defensive when disparaging remarks are made about New Jersey, where she grew up and where her father was controller for American Tobacco Co. Her family moved from the small town of Cranford, N.J., to Richmond when she was in high school, a move that introduced her to the University of Virginia, where she majored in art history and where she met Doug.
Doughty's two role models are her mom and a woman named Dorothy Kerr, who gave her her first job out of college, first as a receptionist, then as an account executive. (Doughty still types all her own letters - at 90 words a minute.)
Kerr was a single mother who ran her own Washington, D.C., ad agency ``and led a very frantic life,'' Doughty recalls. ``She's probably not a good role model when I think about it.''
Doughty's mother, she says, ``was a really good mother. I try to base how I treat my kids on her. Of course, she didn't work; she had all day long to go to the grocery.
``My memory of my childhood is how clean my mother was. I talked to her this morning and, at 72, she was on her knees scrubbing the floor. I tell my kids the memory they'll have of their mother was that she was always late.''
Doughty, who employs a house-keeping service, tries to compensate for the time she misses with her kids by teaching their Sunday School classes at St. John's Episcopal Church, by volunteering as school room mother, by serving as assistant coach for 6-year-old Carrie's Mighty Mites softball team.
She doesn't kick her 5-year-old son, Michael, out of bed with her when he gets scared in the middle of the night. In fact, her baby-sitter Faith says, ``sometimes I catch her sleeping in the bunk bed with him.''
What's the very hardest thing about being Beth Doughty?
``Sometimes," Doughty says, "one of the kids will say to me, 'Faith. . .uh, I mean Mom. . .' ''
When Beth Doughty was a child and something happened in town or at school that she didn't understand, her mom would explain it by saying, ``That's politics.''
``I always thought politics was Democrats versus Republicans. I never really got it,'' she says. ``Not until I got this job did I really understand what my mom meant.''
Actually, Doughty got a substantial taste of Roanoke politics during her 11 years of working for John Lambert Associates, first as account executive and later as creative director and vice president. She handled his biggest accounts, including the regional partnership, Community Hospital and Erlanger Medical Center in Chattanooga, Tenn.
Doughty had just returned to work after having her third child in 1989, when she and Lambert met for lunch one day at the Shenandoah Club.
``He was telling me about how he was gonna bring this wonderful guy in he'd found to be his No. 2 person. And I kept telling him, `I can do the job.'
``And finally he said, `You won't be able to handle that responsibility with three kids.' ''
``It was one of those defining moments,'' Doughty describes over lunch at Howard's Soup Kitchen. ``It was one of those things where you always remember where you were at the time.''
Asked to retell the incident in a later interview at her office, Doughty hesitates, saying she'd prefer it not appear in the newspaper. Then she puts her fist down and recounts the incident anyway. ``I just knew it wasn't fair,'' she adds.
Doughty immediately started looking for another job. Five months later, she was working for Heath, managing the partnership's marketing efforts.
Asked about the incident, Lambert insisted it never happened. ``I did bring in someone new to the business whose primary business was new accounts,'' he said after a very long pause. ``But Beth was always No. 2 while she was here.''
Lin Chaff worries that discriminatory attitudes among businessmen will prevent other female talents from emerging in Roanoke. ``Roanoke suffers from the good-old boy network syndrome, and the only losers in the end will be the good-old boys.
``They will lose because young people and women look for an atmosphere that welcomes them as partners, and when women and young people don't find that atmosphere, they go elsewhere.''
Women like Doughty stay in Roanoke - even though they could make more money elsewhere - out of commitment to the area, Chaff believes. ``The subliminal reason is that we're doing it for our daughters. We're not going to allow them to face that same atmosphere; we're going to change things. It may come slowly, it may come kicking and screaming, but I think we are making a dent.''
Doughty won't say how much she earns, though she confirms that her salary is substantially lower than Heath's was as partnership director.
Says Heath, who is reported to have earned well over $70,000: ``It's not my business what the partnership leaders pay Beth, but if she's not making as much as I made, the Roanoke Valley is getting the best deal in the country.
``If they think for a minute that Beth Doughty can't go anywhere in the country she wants, that's a big mistake.''
Dalhouse, who helped recruit Heath and has served on the partnership's board, agrees: ``Of course it's not fair. It's really kinda dumb. . . . Except for having a newspaper-writer husband who is satisfied for the time being, she could make a whole lot more money than she's making now working somewhere else. She's got the reputation.''
Doughty downplays the salary issue, explaining that Heath had more economic-development experience than she did, that he's a certified economic developer and she's not (though she adds that certification would be a waste of her time).
``Nationally, women's salaries are lower; that's just the way it is,'' she says. ``I don't see myself as blazing a trail. I prefer to let my work ethic speak for me. I feel a responsibility to make it better for my daughters - but by showing rather than talking it up.''
What Doughty prefers to do is concentrate on her job, improving her marketing materials week by week, increasing her prospect numbers month by month, bringing in more Roanoke Valley jobs year after year.
``My goal really is to do the best job I can here, to learn from each prospect,'' she says. ``Also, it would be nice to clean off my desk.''
Doughty's job would be easier if she had more prepared industrial sites to sell and more funding to market them. ``The key element missing in Roanoke is the product,'' Heath says. ``Because Roanoke's got as good a quality of life as there is in the country. But if you don't have the sites and the infrastructure, they will go somewhere else.
``It's `If you build it, they will come.' In Charlotte, we built a huge airport before we had the airline, built a huge coliseum before we had a pro team. It worked here; it'll work in Roanoke.''
Dalhouse believes the partnership should have three times its current funding level of $615,000, which comes from the seven local governments it serves and private contributions.
The fact that Doughty is a woman may play into some of the funding difficulties, he acknowledges. ``In some quarters there is a mild uneasiness about whether or not it's best to have a woman in that job.
``But among the people who understand the highly sophisticated, very subtle nuances of economic development work, Beth has no problem being accepted and recognized. In fact, I think she's almost universally admired.''
The hesitancy of some businessmen to embrace Doughty is borne of the ``same kind of squishy uneasiness that a lot of men have about the role of women in the modern world,'' Dalhouse adds. ``And I have heard those comments said about the partnership. People don't wanna personalize it; they're too polite.
``But of course we all know there's a woman running it. To me, the bottom line should always be: Is she producing or is she not? The fact of the matter is, she is.''
Doughty tries not to let the politics detract her. But, like the kid picked last when choosing sides for basketball, being left out of the loop does hurt - especially when you're one of the best players on the court. An example:
Each year, the Chamber of Commerce sponsors an outing to The Homestead, wherein local businessmen - including Heath, when he headed the partnership - charter a bus and spend the day playing tennis and golf.
Doughty has never been invited to join. A person putting together the invitation list even called her once for her list of local company executives, which she promptly sent over. And still, no invitation.
``I'm not stewing over it, I just think it says a lot about the community. I mean, maybe it's not a female thing; maybe they just don't like me.''
Would she go if she were invited?
``Well, it is networking, and a lot of business is networking. But. . . nah, probably not,'' she says.
``I'd rather stay in the office and get stuff done.''
by CNB