Staff Members Learn Secrets to Success at UCSD’s First Women’s Conference

Ioana Patringenaru | March 16, 2009

Define your career goals. Overcome your fears and seek out mentors. Find and maintain balance in your life. Build and protect your reputation.

These were some of the pieces of advice that veteran UC San Diego employees gave to more than 400 UC San Diego staff members during the campus’ first Women’s Conference Wednesday at the Price East Center Ballroom.

Chancellor Marye Anne Fox welcomed more than 400 UCSD staff members to the campus' first Women's Conference.

“This inaugural conference is all about empowerment,” Chancellor Marye Anne Fox told an overflow audience Wednesday. “We’re asking you to take charge of your destiny, and we want to provide you with the tools to take your career to the next level.”

Fox encouraged staff members to network and get to know at least one person in the room. She also advised them to seek feedback. “Criticism is one of the kindest things we can do for each other, if you think of it that way,” she said.

Fox then introduced the conference’s keynote speaker, Mary Hart, a former UCSD staff member who recently retired after serving as the director of operations and administration at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Hart worked for the university for more than 33 years and was promoted 11 times.

Hart’s journey has been an unconventional one. She was married at 18, became a mother at 19 and divorced at 21, she said. She soon found herself broke and relying on $200 a month of state aid. She remembers telling her sister: “I’ve got to pull myself up by the bootstraps. I’ve got to have a career.”

Mary Hart, a former UCSD staff member with more than 33 years of experience, shared her life story as Wednesday's keynote speaker.

She found a job skills training program that taught her clerical skills and placed her with the Office of Graduate Studies at UCSD, where she worked as a receptionist. Over the next 33 years, Hart worked in four different departments, slowly climbing the career ladder to become a management services officer and later a director.

“I got my education at UCSD,” she said. “I rubbed shoulders with some of the brightest people on the planet.”

On the way, she said she learned five basic principles that allowed her to build her career. The first is to define your career goals, she said, adding it could take some time. It took her five years to figure out that she wanted to be a business officer, she also said. She advised staff members to be patient and avoid hop-scotching around between positions, which would flag them as lacking stability.

In order to reach their goals, she advised staff members to define the risks they face and overcome their fears. With each of her job moves, she was warned of potential pitfalls. But she assessed the risk and made a change. “The greatest barrier to success is the fear of failure,” she said.

As someone who started out in the business world as single mother, Hart also said she really strives to find and maintain balance in her life. When she worked in the chemistry department, she lost some staff members and started putting in 10-hour days and weekend shifts. She was able to make new hires, but kept her schedule. Soon, her personal life started falling apart, she said. She decided to readjust her priorities. “Your friends and your family will be there a long time after the job is gone,” she said.

Debbie Ambrose, staff co-chair of the campus' Committee on the Status of Women, said she hoped the conference would help empower staff members.

But she also learned to build and maintain her reputation at work. She learned that she would be judged on her actions more than on her words, she said. As a manager, she learned to be honest and to live up to her mistakes.

As a business officer in the bioengineering department, she had approved a process that resulted in faulty budget reporting. It led the bioengineering chair to believe the department had a positive cash flow when it was actually running a sizeable deficit. Hart took responsibility—and said she thought she would lose her job. She didn’t. She added that to this day she considers the department’s chair as a mentor.

Finally, Hart said she learned to plan a graceful exit from each of her jobs. Leave the job in as good a shape as you would like to find it, she advised. She warned staff members against burning bridges. “The university is a very big place, but it’s a small community,” she said.

For the remainder of the conference, staff members listened to two panels of female employees discussing strategies and tools for professional development and personal success stories. The event also included a resource fair.

During a break, staff member Xochitl Villanueva said she found Hart’s speech very useful, especially the five steps to success she outlined. The office manager in Auxiliary Plant and Services said she had already been following these very principles. “I feel like I’m on the right track,” she said.