PricillaTate

Priscilla Tate, Executive Director Technology Managers Forum

by Peg Townsend

THE PATH TO SUCCESS IS PAVED WITH FAILURES...

Priscilla Tate knows what it feels like to sign a stack of papers mortgaging your home so that you can start a new business.

She knows what it feels like to ask your family for money. How it feels to buy groceries with a credit card because it didn't require a minimum monthly payment.

What's like to look out over an empty conference room that was supposed to be filled with people and have a crack as big as an earthquake fault open up in your heart.

Tate knows what it feels like because she's been through it all.

She had to borrow, fight, push and work long hours to finally create the highly regarded Technology Manager's Forum, a professional association that links up technology providers with customers.

Today, the firm sponsors three conferences each year to bring together these two groups and provide information. It has a corporate advisory board that meets five times a year to give information technology professionals and providers a chance to exchange views. It also does research on important issues in technology information.

Sitting in a Palm Springs, Calif., hotel room after a long day at one of the many conferences she attends, Tate is the picture of success: groomed blond hair, manicured fingernails, classic suit.

But Tate, says, she always remembers the lessons she learned getting here.

"You have to have failures, before you can succeed," she says.

Tate grew up in Dallas, Texas, the youngest daughter of a manufacturing representative and a well-bred mother who taught Sunday School and prepared book-review presentations for clubs in the city.

In high school, Tate sang in the choir, was voted most likely to succeed, and was a copy editor of the yearbook staff.

"That was the year we did the annual in free verse," Tate says with a laugh, remembering their coverage of the basketball team's bid for a state championship.

"It was: 'ball in air, crowd roar,'" Tate says.

"My dad looked at it and said 'you didn't even give the score.'"

Tate also became a member of a folk-singing group called the New Generation Singers, but when it came time to choose between singing and college, she chose Duke University.

"The group went on 'The Mike Douglas Show' without me and did a tour of Vietnam," Tate says.

She always wondered what would have happened if she had stayed with the group, but when it had a reunion 25 years later, not one member was still in show business.

"So much for that," she says.

Tate's choice to go to college turned out to be the right one and she went on to win a Fullbright Scholarship, study in Berlin and get a masters degree in art history.

But it was a telephone sweatshop that changed her life.

Going to graduate school by day and working the phones by night, she got an assignment doing political research for Lou Harris Polls.

She had a list of high-powered religious leaders, politicians, reporters and business executives, and an assignment: Ask them their opinion of information processing.

She worked the phones for three days and when she was finished she knew what she was going to do.

"I never marched on Washington. I never slept in the quad. But I thought, 'this is one revolution I'm going to join,'" says Tate, 51.

So she got a job with a spin-off company of Citicorp that made and sold executive workstations and her course was set.

She learned a lot about the new technology and, as she says, "got married, became a blonde and went to work on Wall Street as a technology manager."

It was an exciting time, she remembers.

"We were at the forefront of a revolution."

Because she could write, Tate went to work for PC Magazine, but after a year, she says, "I was out on my ear."

She was at a crossroads.

"Once you're a journalist you don't fit the corporate mold anymore," Tate says. "And journalism's pay scale is shockingly low."

She began organizing conferences for a user group she had joined and found out she was good at it. Soon, her volunteer work blossomed into a job and she became part of a national conference and research organization.

But when it came time to renew her contract, the company balked at the amount of money they were paying her. They negotiated a deal but when it came time to pay her year's salary, the company refused, Tate says.

She pursued the binding arbitration clause in her contract and eventually won, but the firm went bankrupt and she never received a dime.

"It was an enormous price just to know I was right," Tate says.

She struck out on her own.

"When I was doing this in '94-'95, I couldn't have gotten a loan," Tate says in a voice that still carries the hint of a soft Texas accent. "They wouldn't give a loan to a woman. I couldn't even get a line of credit."

But she charged on.

Tate got a nest egg together, got her credit cards, hired some Columbia University graduate students and began organizing a technology conference of her own.

The hotel where she had a contract only had one week to give her for her conference: It included Labor Day and two major Jewish holidays.

Tate went ahead with her plans, but things went from bad to worse. Her graduate students had to go back to school and she found out about a competing conference at the same time.

"I realized," says Tate with a sigh, "no one was going to show up."

They didn't.

Tate was heartbroken, "but I guess I have survivor instincts," she says.

"I don't think anyone talks about their first year in business with fond memories. I think it took years off my life."

The credit cards came out again and, then, Tate met a business friend of hers who invited her to breakfast.

She dusted off her best suit, told him that not as many people had come to her fall conference as she had hoped and then smiled when he offered to bankroll her next conference.

That next conference was a success and it springboarded Tate into more and bigger gatherings.

Today, the Technology Managers Forum has an active membership of more than 400 information technology directors and managers, and a website at www.techforum.com.

Tate still puts in long hours - 12-hour days are the norm - but when she can, she heads to her old farmhouse in the Berkshires to relax and unwind - maybe read a mystery or work in her garden.

Her house is filled with antiques she has collected and she loves to have friends over. They'll sit in the dining room with its aqua blue wainscoting, crystal chandelier and china, and talk about politics or Internet security or just tell stories.

On weekends, she'll work in her sprawling garden or inspect the 80 trees she has planted on her five acres of land.

"I'm happy," Tate says. "Although sometimes I wish I didn't have to work so hard...and I'd really like to quiet that voice inside of me that says 'you can always have a disaster.'"

But Tate knows now what failure means.

It's just one more step toward success.

A FEW MORE MINUTES WITH PRISCILLA TATE:

What's your favorite quote?

TATE: "It's fun being part of history; what better thing can you do in your life than try to change the world." from wireless communications pioneer Dr. Martin Cooper.

If you could choose a different profession what would it be?

TATE: Antique and art collector and scholar. That's a profession, but not a living.

What lessons have you learned that would be valuable to women beginning their careers in technology?

TATE: Pay for good advice and then learn to listen to your own voice. That would be my business advice. For women choosing corporate life, know this: It is not how well you do the job, but whose side you are on. Second rule, no matter how hard you work, you will never get promoted unless you make it impossible for management to do otherwise.