An excerpt from the book How to Be a Woman in Technology
By Cheryl O’Donoghue, MS
This is the fifth in a series of articles where I share chapter excerpts from each of the fifteen fascinating women who participated in my latest book project—How to Be a Woman in Technology (while Focusing on What Matters Most).
Chapter 6 features the extraordinary Tina Gravel. When I first interviewed Tina, she took my breath away. Her vibrancy and passion knocked me back a couple of steps, and then she disarmed me with an exceedingly high-level of honesty about her own operating style and lessons learned. Tina’s candor is quite rare…and very appealing.
As you read Tina’s chapter, a number of themes will emerge to help you be more self-aware, more courageous, more willing to stretch your capabilities, more willing to learn new subjects, more comfortable in selling your strengths, and more determined to put yourself in the driver’s seat of your own life. Truly, you are in for a treat here. Let’s start off by exploring how Tina got into tech in the first place. It’s quite the story!
Now, here’s the excerpt:
Looking back to the 80s, 90s, and 00s, few women started their careers in tech with the intent to land a job working with a technology company. Most will tell you they “fell into” the field or entered into it in a rather circuitous fashion. Tina Gravel describes her path to tech as being “a very strange story.”
Even though Tina had an early interest in technology, as she neared graduation from college, she wasn’t quite sure what career path was best for her. She decided to apply to a few law schools and was accepted. “I paid for my first semester and was getting ready to go to law school while every little cell of my body was saying ‘don’t do it, you can’t go forward with this,’” Tina recalls.
Tina honored her intuition and did not go to law school. She knew what she had to do next—get employed. She picked up the telephone and called the president of Mobil Chemical, a good friend’s dad. “I told him, I’m not going to law school, I need a job, and I need your help,” says Tina. “He was amazing. He wrote letters introducing me to other business people and companies. He also happened to mention that from what he knew of me, he thought I would probably like sales.”
That’s exactly when the seed was planted that eventually led to Tina being in high-tech sales. She didn’t see herself as a programmer, but she was excited about the idea of computers and wanted to be involved in some meaningful way. With her newfound career focus, she interviewed with IBM, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and other companies that were considered to be “tech” companies at the time. Unfortunately, they did not return her interest.
In the meantime, Tina was offered a job made possible from that same friend who worked at Mobil Chemical and thought she could excel in sales. The offer, which she took, was not for a tech job though. The position entailed selling a new product that would revolutionize the supermarket industry and, in due course, every retail business on the planet—plastic shopping bags. At the time, no one had heard of plastic bags, and it was Tina’s job to convince just about every grocery store on the east coast that plastic was the way to go. Not only did she sell the bags, her success was due in large part to how she sold them. “I had never touched a power tool in my life. I had to drill in the hardware to hold the bag rack, set the bag system up, and train the people on how to use the bags and how to overcome objections.”
“I feel badly about it now because I feel responsible in a way for causing all these bags to be in the system,” Tina admits. “I didn’t know about the environmental consequences at the time.” Her success selling plastic grocery bag systems in the East resulted in a promotion to lead her own sales territory one year after starting and a transfer to one of the company’s largest markets—Chicago.
Once in Chicago, Tina felt the pull to the tech industry again. She went back to the people with whom she originally interviewed before she took the job with Mobil Chemical. She cold-called them, emailed them, and asked them for another interview opportunity. She had some sales experience under her belt and knew better how she could contribute to these companies. She received two job offers from the very same people who had once turned her down—IBM and DEC. Surprisingly, she ended up not taking either of the two offers. Why? Because her ability to take the initiative, move out of her comfort zone, and talk to strangers led to an even better job prospect.
“I was coming back from a business trip and stopped at a popular restaurant near O’Hare airport,” remembers Tina. “I struck up a conversation with this gentleman who asked me about my work. I told him I had two job offers and was considering taking on a new position in tech with either IBM or DEC. And he says to me ‘why haven’t you interviewed with us?’”
Tina came to learn that “us” was…..(continued)
To read Tina’s complete chapter, How to Be a Woman in Technology is available on Amazon. All royalty payments earned from book sales are donated to Mission Sisters Who Work to help fund the nonprofit’s book donations, emotional intelligence and self-empowerment programs, and scholarships for women in business- and STEM-related fields.
Cheryl O’Donoghue, MS is a businessperson, author, and emotional intelligence leadership champion. In 2016 she began a series of personal and professional reinvention “reboots” which led to her leave her career as a healthcare executive. She gave away most of her worldly possessions, moved out west to be closer to family, and began to write emotional intelligence and self-empowerment books for women in business. How to Be a Woman in Business (while Being True to Yourself) was published in 2018. In 2019, Cheryl’s second book How to Be a Woman in Technology (while Focusing on What Matters Most) was released; currently she is in the process of publishing her third book—How to Be an Emotionally Intelligent Leader (while Crushing Your Goals). Cheryl is president of Emotional Intelligence Leadership Resources—a training company that transforms organizations and the results they achieve through proven emotional intelligence leadership practices. Also, in 2018 she co-founded the nonprofit Mission Sisters Who Work. Mission Sisters provides self-empowerment books and emotional intelligence training to all women, as well as scholarships to women and girls interested in business and STEM-related careers who could benefit from a hand up. Philanthropy has played a prominent role throughout Cheryl’s life. One hundred percent of the royalties earned from her book sales go to women served by Mission Sisters Who Work, in addition to a portion of all earnings from her work through Emotional Intelligence Leadership Resources.
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