A glance at the calendar shows that it’s 2023. So why is there still a dearth of women as high-level executives in the office technology space—or any industry, for that matter? The Helen Reddy “I am woman” train left the station in 1971, yet we’re still waiting for it to arrive. The number of top female executives support the notion we’re falling well short of expectations.
That women are capable of navigating businesses from the corner office suite is an unquestionable given; the fact that they aren’t doing so in even mediocre (let alone meaningful) numbers is sad. A perusal of the 2022 Elite Dealer list revealed 14 women at the top executive level, which is exactly 11%. Several were listed as “principals,” which means they may only have a financial interest in the company and aren’t active in operations. Some are half of husband/wife tandems. Others are family members. Adjustments were made for promotions. Given the unscientific nature of this “study,” we’ll denote a ±3% margin for error, which is hardly encouraging that the true number is significantly higher.
What’s even more sobering is the fact that fewer than five women (out of 123 companies) would be considered non-family members who were hired to lead the company or were later promoted to the top spot. We’ll round it up to 4% (though that’s being generous) while making the allowance that office dealers are largely family-owned and independent. Considering Fortune magazine earlier this year revealed that women now run more than 10% of Fortune 500 companies, it seems female execs are faring much better in the larger corporate realm than they are in the office dealer space.
Fortunately, there are many quality female executives operating at or just below the CEO level who are rock stars in the dealer community. Most of them require no introduction, and chances are you’ve seen several of them delivering presentations at industry events or sat next to them in peer groups. The common thread among them is their propensity for demonstrating leadership skills that have elevated their respective companies to top positions within their respective markets. In this month’s State of the Industry report, we offer six shining examples of female leaders in action—their journeys, leadership style and the opportunities they see for other women who aspire to reach the executive pinnacle.
Dawn Abbuhl
President
Repeat Business Systems
Repeat Business Systems
One could argue that Abbuhl never needed to carve out her place in this industry, but in hindsight, it’s safe to say it was one of the best decisions she ever made. Abbuhl and her husband, John, founded Repeat Business Systems (RBS) in 1987, selling fax machines out of their Albany, New York, headquarters. Their product/service menu grew as technology and the needs of clients continued to evolve. She admits getting “sucked into” the industry, and over the years she’s teetered on the cusp of cutting-edge and bleeding-edge technologies—she has a theoretical blooper reel of offerings that never quite hit the mark. Abbuhl can laugh them off; many of the gambles have paid off handsomely, but the misfires only illustrate her willingness to go off script in finding new ways to serve clients.
What you may not know about Abbuhl: by day, she’s a mild-mannered office dealer proprietor, and by night (and weekends), she’s known as Dr. Dawn Abbuhl, a licensed psychologist with Access Therapy Group and a former preschool special education teacher who works with children under the age of five. Some execs golf in their spare time. Abbuhl counsels children and their families to make positive changes that can enhance and facilitate growth and maturity.
While not intended, the psychology element has served Abbuhl well in not only developing a leadership style, but in understanding people on a deeper level. By no means is she a finished product—continuing education in the areas of motivation and leadership enhances her ability to listen, understand and empathize. As successive generations flow into RBS, she’s come to understand their frame of reference as well as how they communicate and relate to one another. Abbuhl consciously dispels the generational tropes and understands that while baby boomer and Gen Z employees may have markedly different attributes, she seeks to relate to them on a more meaningful, personal basis.
Women need to know that the executive path is very attainable. They may have special skill sets that they didn’t even realize, and that it could make them better leaders than they ever thought.
– Dawn Abbuhl, Repeat Business Systems
“I make sure to get to know each person,” she said. “Every person is motivated differently. Some people [at RBS] are motivated by just selling a lot and being financially successful. Some people are motivated by having autonomy; they want to be able to make decisions, feel good about them and have the respect from me or their supervisor to make those decisions. Winning drives other people, and some want to just be proud of themselves or better for their families. We have every type of person on the planet in this company, and I have to understand their motivations first in order to be an effective leader for them.”
The path to company growth requires providing autonomy to department heads in order to avoid micromanaging. The “letting go” isn’t absolute; department and sub-managers must continue to demonstrate an ability to direct team members until Abbuhl and her immediate directs feel comfortable with their progress in applying taught skills. It’s not a perfect process, but rather an ongoing one.
“Sometimes I step back too soon,” she noted. “Someone makes a mistake, and they come to me saying, ‘Oh boy, I really screwed up. How am I going to fix this?’ But that’s a great learning opportunity, and everyone’s going to make mistakes. As a manager, you always have to be letting go a little bit to see what people have learned and what they need to address from that point on.”
Abbuhl doesn’t see a clear solution to increasing the ranks of female executives in the office tech theater, but she feels the modest cadre of women in executive positions will continue to grow and benefit from awareness campaigns. “Women need to know that the executive path is very attainable,” she said. “They may have special skill sets that they didn’t even realize, and that it could make them better leaders than they ever thought.”
Stephanie Keating Phillips
Director of Solutions and Production Print
Advanced Imaging Solutions (AIS)
Advanced Imaging Solutions
Too often, college is viewed as only a vocational vehicle when its true value is as a growth and personal discovery facilitator. Executive leadership programs may be offered at many institutions, but there are numerous other outlets—fraternities, social organizations and athletics, to name a few—that can help develop next-generation leaders.
Phillips emerged from St. Thomas University with a dual degree in elementary education and communications. It became apparent to her not long before graduation day that teaching wasn’t a profession she aspired to any longer. But she had a thirst for coaching and a desire to connect with people in a way that leveraged much of what she was taught about presentations (in the form of lesson plans), public speaking and business classes. Upon graduating, Phillips took a job as a secretary at her father’s new company, AIS, but found it boring. She suggested tagging along with her father to learn the ropes around selling, including cold calling and demonstrating copiers, and it immediately paid dividends from a job satisfaction standpoint.
Sports, perhaps as much as anything, set the tone for Phillips’ foray into a leadership role. As a softball player, she gained more appreciation for the team dynamic and individual success as it applies to a winning outcome for the unit, in addition to supporting other team members in their endeavors. She has an affinity for employee candidates who’ve been down her road.
As I’ve grown as a leader, the biggest thing I’ve changed is becoming a better listener than an answer-giver.
– Stephanie Keating, Phillips Advanced Imaging Solutions
“I loved playing softball, and that provided me with so many different leadership capabilities,” Phillips said. “When you’re a former athlete looking to hire former athletes, you understand how difficult it is to navigate college and the social and academic components with their role on the team. That tells me a lot about the individual, and I think it’s a perfect conduit for a really successful salesperson.”
Phillips believes the best way to connect with team members is through “walking the walk” and leading by example while setting a precedent for expectations. She seeks to model herself after the people she respects, and in doing so, she empowers people to think for themselves without needing to turn to her for every decision. That breeds scenarios in which team members become more confident in their own decision-making and are more apt to feel progressively empowered.
Feedback is a two-way street, and Phillips feels she’s made strides in taking in information, enabling her to be a better leader and more effective seller. “Being able to listen rather than blurting out things is probably one of the toughest skills for salespeople,” she said. “As I’ve grown as a leader, the biggest thing I’ve changed is becoming a better listener than an answer-giver.”
Phillips sees a far clearer path for female leadership opportunities than ever before, and she’s hopeful for the day when helping them achieve their highest aspirations is no longer a talking point. She’s active in Konica Minolta’s Step Together program, launched in 2022 as a way to support and inspire female professional development at the dealer level. An offshoot of the manufacturer’s internal Step Forward initiative, Step Together offers a blend of professional development sessions, guest speakers, networking opportunities and fun/interactive events–all with the purpose of building “intentional leaders.”
“We’re in a good place, but the progress definitely needs to continue,” Phillips added.
Pamela Feld
CEO
Triumph Technology Group
Triumph Technology
Group
Nothing brings a smile to Feld’s face quite like the subject of technology. The company she started from her garage more than 20 years ago, Triumph Technology Group, has shifted its focus considerably over the last 10 years. While it still serves a role as an office dealer, Feld’s passion has found a home in cybersecurity, where she’s certified to consult, train and speak. She loves sharing information and proffering solutions, such as her CEO tech community, for which she is actively seeking additional corporate sponsorship. She also hosts an SMB Tech boot camp, filling an important need she saw in the market to educate business verticals on the best path for making technology an asset as opposed to a threat.
It might not be accurate to term Feld an anomaly as a female in the world of technology, though at one of her recent speaking engagements, there were about a half-dozen women among the 100 in attendance, and three were from Triumph. After 20 years of doing business in the technology world, Feld is surprised the ratio of women hasn’t grown remarkably. Even among her clients attending speaking engagements, there are few females representing companies as CFOs or vice presidents, let alone CEOs.
Not surprisingly, Feld embraces a leadership tact that closely resembles her consultative work with clients, with an emphasis on guiding, mentoring and inspiring. Once team members have been educated and trained, she wants to leave them alone to do their jobs.
“I’m not a micromanager; I want to earn respect and show them the way to achieve excellence and even go beyond that,” she said. “You want them to achieve their best while having a work-life balance, which is really important. I am a perfectionist, so it can be hard to let go sometimes. But I do as much as I can to remove those barriers and let people shine.”
Too many women are having to choose between having a family and moving up the executive ladder while not working a ridiculous number of hours.
– Pamela Feld, Triumph Technology Group
Feld has made her presence felt far beyond Triumph’s Tustin, California, home. She’s involved in organizations including Women in Cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Academy for Women, and is a past president for the International Technology Council. She’s certified in cybersecurity assessment training from Webster University, serves on the leadership advisory council for the Women in Public Policy, and is the regional chair for WBEC-West as part of the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council. She’s also become an in-demand speaker in the technology space.
She’d like to see more educational programs and ongoing mentorship initiatives to help move the needle on female executive numbers. These need not be female-to-female mentoring vehicles, Feld noted, as men bear as much responsibility in helping foster future generations of C-level female executives.
“It’s important that we embrace new ways of inviting women to the party and not be afraid of including them,” Feld noted. “On the socio-economical side, I don’t think enough is being done for low-income, minority students or women. We have too many tech jobs in this country going unfilled, especially in cybersecurity areas. I’d love to be a part of creating more opportunities, and I’m doing what I can in a small way. But we need to work harder for the next generation, because we should be much farther ahead than we are now. And equal pay remains a problem.
“We also need to do more to make work environments family-friendly. Too many women are having to choose between having a family and moving up the executive ladder while not working a ridiculous number of hours. I’ve been fortunate to make it work, but there are a lot of women who can’t navigate the work-life balance in the organizations they serve.”
Christie Wakefield
Director Marketing/Technology
Pacific Office Automation
Pacific Office Automation
With a BA in social sciences from Washington State University, Wakefield had no earthly clue as to what direction she wanted her career to take. She’d been working three jobs in the Seattle region until getting approached for an open sales position. Wakefield’s first test was to hunt down 50 leads; actually, the real test was first figuring out what was a lead.
The setback was temporary. Wakefield hit the call list with furious aplomb and worked tirelessly around the clock to secure as much business as possible. She joined IKON Office Solutions in 2009, where her relentless attack in prospecting quickly catapulted her from rep to sales manager, followed by regional sales oversight. When IKON was absorbed by Ricoh, she became a field marketing manager for the OEM’s West region. What started as a fallback until Wakefield could finish graduate school (she later picked up her MBA from WSU) led to a significant role in the dealer space and eventually to a position with Pacific Office Automation.
“Leadership is about influence,” Wakefield observed. “Whether you’re motivating a peer or putting your head down and powering through a mountain of work, you’re setting an example for someone around you. Choosing to lead means you’re influential in guiding an organization to a common goal and you take personal responsibility to achieve it.”
Reaching that common goal requires a collaborative approach she embraces. Setting an example is critical, as she follows the mantra that “the speed of the leader sets the speed of the pack.” That’s evidenced by a willingness to do anything one would ask someone else to take on. And she’s not reluctant to admit that she leads with heart.
I try wholeheartedly to speak with compassion and listen with empathy. I believe those qualities make a person a leader.
– Christie Wakefield, Pacific Office Automation
“Emotions attached to leadership isn’t always a bad thing,” Wakefield noted. “I care about the team and the company. I try wholeheartedly to speak with compassion and listen with empathy. I believe those qualities make a person a leader.”
Wakefield believes the industry has made considerable strides in supporting women in executive career aspirations; during her nearly 15 years, she’s seen a marked growth of female dealer principals who are “crushing it” on both the dealer and manufacturer end. Victory shows a viable path for those motivated to excel, she believes.
Wakefield was recently invited to attend CRN’s Women of the Channel. It’s a prime example of like-minded individuals seeking to support each other. The opportunities, she says, are there for the taking.
“Motivated people will always find a way, and fortunately there are more and more leadership conferences popping up and peer groups to join for those with career aspirations looking for support,” she said. “There’s so much to gain from attending events that highlight what’s possible by showcasing powerful female role models and their experiences.”
Susie Woodhull
CEO
Woodhull LLC
Woodhull LLC
How does a stockbroker from Dayton, Ohio, find her way into the office dealer world as a top executive? It wasn’t quite a linear journey for Susie Woodhull. A year after marrying Jay Woodhull, her father-in-law, Jim, asked if she’d be interested in selling OCR scanners for his office dealer company, which she did for a few years. After Jay took over the business from his father, he asked Susie to take control of the company’s service and admin functions while he spearheaded sales.
Jay eventually sold the company to Alco Standard (later IKON Office Solutions), and the Woodhulls decided to leave the company. But Susie had become totally immersed in the industry and wanted to revive the company name. So she purchased a Gestetner (now Ricoh) dealer and grew the firm from less than $1 million in 2001 to its current level of $25 million, backed by 75 employees, including two of the original firm’s executives and her son, Robert (Jay left the industry).
“We were growing so quickly from the day we started; our heads were spinning,” she related. “Once we got to about $17-$18 million, we said, hey, let’s stop and smell the roses. We’ve had a compound growth rate of 15-17% and managed to adapt to it. Looking back, had I known how much work it would take and considering that our kids were so young when I started the company, I might have been scared off.”
Leading by example has long been the thrust for Woodhull. She pictures herself as more of an in-the-trenches commander than a figurehead providing guidance from the corner suite. If that behavior and success is impactful and inspirational enough to compel team members to follow suit, then Woodhull has accomplished the job she intended.
At our company picnic recently, I told our employees that if they ever decide to start their own business, I pray that they’re lucky like me to have people who jump on board with you and share the journey.
– Susie Woodhull, Woodhull LLC
Woodhull believes incorporating team members’ ideas and suggestions into her decision-making process is essential to being an inclusive leader and understanding the consensus of her unit. Occasionally, she’ll opt to go in a different direction, which isn’t a decision she takes lightly.
“When you make those types of judgment calls and take the lead, it’s important to be right,” Woodhull added. “You want to earn the honor to invoke that power again in the future.
“I’m not a micromanager; that tends to turn people off. People want to be seen and heard. At our company picnic recently, I told our employees that if they ever decide to start their own business, I pray that they’re lucky like me to have people who jump on board with you and share the journey.”
She cited The Cannata Report’s annual Women Influencers feature as a positive showcase of the industry’s top female leaders, yet she believes more can be done to champion the cause of leadership development for women. “I find that report enlightening, but there aren’t too many examples of recognizing enough women,” Woodhull said. “The good thing is, we seem to have a lot more women owners than there were when I first got into the business. Progress is being made.”
Lauren Hanna
Vice President of Sales
Blue Technologies
Blue Technologies
It started out innocently enough: the father-daughter combination of Paul and Lauren Hanna met at an expensive steakhouse to discuss her future job options. She’d wanted to get his opinion on two employment offers she’d been weighing. Instead, the elder Hanna suggested she come work for his company, Blue Technologies.
While the idea had crossed her mind, she was also cognizant of her father’s disdain for perceived nepotism. She would have to produce. However, a behavioral analysis performed on her by celebrated industry consultant Mike Riordan confirmed that not only would she make an ideal salesperson, but that she also boasted the quality attributes of an executive. Winning the company’s annual sales leader award in her first full year effectively put to rest any “daddy ball” murmurs, and her penchant for being a quick study in areas such as production print, enterprise accounts and managed IT only further validated her ascension to vice president of sales during a 13-year journey.
For Hanna, leadership is about ensuring individuals and teams have a full understanding of the company’s strategic goals and are aligned with them. “Leadership means a lot of different things at different times,” she said. “The number-one goal is uniting that team. It’s making sure that your goals are communicated, reiterated, reinforced and reevaluated regularly. I love finding new customers and writing new business, but building that layer of leadership and learning from team members is all part of the unification piece.”
We live in a world where it’s become commonplace to point out everyone’s flaws, blame other people and point out the worst in everything.
– Lauren Hanna, Blue Technologies
There’s nothing Hanna loves more than face-to-face interactions. The trend of virtual meetings make her cringe. “Death by email” and incessant meetings without purpose are among her other pet peeves. She loves taking a hands-on approach with team members, but not in a micromanaging sense. Hanna wants to be a sounding board for ideas or an extra set of hands for an involved project. And as a newer parent, her maternal instincts have triggered the desire to continuously nurture young team members as they ascend through the organization.
“I’m really motivated to discover the potential in someone,” she said. “We live in a world where it’s become commonplace to point out everyone’s flaws, blame other people and point out the worst in everything. Especially on social media—it’s all negative. When I look at my team members, I try to find positive things they don’t see in themselves. I’ll give them a task, and when they say they’re not good at something, I’ll say I know they have it in them to take on the challenge. You’re not a good leader if you can’t make other people, and yourself, better.”
Supporting females in their quest to grow their careers certainly doesn’t fall just on the shoulders of other women, and Hanna is proud of the fact that her team (both men and women) takes an active role in empowering them. She feels it’s also important to help longtime female employees re-evaluate their positions within the company and assess whether they’d be better served, from a professional development standpoint, in a different role with the firm.
Networking is essential. Hanna seeks to have her female IT engineers and project managers avail themselves of networking events outside the normal workday and build their circle. Documenting employee performance and providing feedback on how they can become stronger employees and leverage the resources at their disposal are key to reaching the next level.
“At the end of the day, building up that confidence is the biggest thing,” she said.
