IBM Exec Goes Nonprofit
By Bill Spring
Just a few years ago, Nancy Hayes was a well-paid businesswoman in a top post at IBM, and still on the way up. But Hayes wanted to make a difference in the world. And when she decided to take a radical new career path, it wasn't about changing what she was doing, but why she was doing it.
In 1997, she left IBM and took her skills to The STARBRIGHT Foundation (www.STARBRIGHT.org). Chaired by film director Steven Spielberg and Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf, the nonprofit integrates the fields of pediatric health care, technology and entertainment/media to improve the lives of seriously ill children and teens. By joining the company as CEO, Hayes found a more meaningful life and proved that good management can do as much for a nonprofit as it can for a business.
Hayes enrolled at the University of Dayton in 1969, a year when anti-establishment attitudes were pervasive.
"At the time," Hayes remembers, "most people were in liberal arts, and we were going to go save the world. So we really disdained things like business, engineering and math."
In this spirit, Hayes chose to major in English literature. "After a couple of years," she explains, "I realized I needed something practical as well." So she spilt her major between English and marketing.
After graduating in 1973, Hayes worked in customer service for Blue Cross/Blue Shield. Dissatisfied, she started attending night school to earn an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago, a degree she knew would serve as her passport to bigger and better things.
Her big break came in 1977, when IBM hired her as a marketing representative. Over the next 20 years, Hayes' hard work and business sense earned her many promotions, with the corresponding increases in responsibility and pay.
"It was very satisfying, as far as a sense of accomplishment," said Hayes, "and what motivated me was people feeling that I was doing a good job."
By 1995, Hayes was IBM's general manager for international operations and worldwide sales and services, where her decisions directly affected 130,000 employees.
But her climb up the corporate ladder had not come without sacrifices.
"I moved nine times in 12 years," she explains. Hopping across the country made it hard to pursue relationships outside of work. Hayes became, as she puts it, "married to the job."
Wanting a sense of personal fulfillment that IBM couldn't offer, Hayes wondered about applying her business skills toward an altruistic cause. She decided that nonprofits could be rebuilt with business blueprints from the for-profit world, and set out to find the right fit. Co-workers at IBM and board members from major nonprofits were skeptical that a leader from the high-stakes business world could make the transition to a charity, but the people at STARBRIGHT felt otherwise, and welcomed Hayes and her ideas.
"It was a talented, young team," she says, "but they were seeking leadership." So, in 1997, at the age of 46, she passed on two choice promotions at IBM to become CEO of STARBRIGHT.
With Hayes' help, STARBRIGHT created partnerships with Fortune 500 companies and built relationships with many large organizations within the world of children's health care. They partnered with AOL and Dell to connect seriously ill children through a private online network in almost a hundred hospitals and thousands of homes, produced videotapes that help kids deal with being in hospitals and are working on an X-Men comic book to help children with disfiguring burns gain the confidence to interact with others.
"We have some very special kids. The thing that strikes us all is how emotionally strong most of these children are." Knowing that kids benefit every time she meets with an executive, forms a deal with a corporation or picks up the phone to raise money has made all the difference.
Now that STARBRIGHT is doing so well, Hayes is thinking about moving on. She's confident that her staff can carry on, and wants to offer her skills and experience to other social service nonprofits.
Her advice to other businesspeople thinking about making the move to a nonprofit is to not worry about the cut in pay. "I've found that you can make a decent living," she says, "and the rewards are significant."
As for Hayes, she's making the kind of difference that her fellow college freshmen in 1969 were hoping to make, and she has her for-profit corporate background to thank.
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