Age: 42

Self portrait: "Highly organized, innovative, strategic, and analytical. I integrate information quickly and effectively."

Favorite Book: The Bible. "God's words not only guide me to make decisions but also comfort me during difficult times."

Favorite Business Book: "Pour Your Heart Into It" by Howard Schultz, chairman and chief executive of Starbucks. "It describes how Starbucks built a company one cup at a time. It showed me how to turn passion into profit. I admire Howard's persistence of acting his dreams and imagination with open eyes. He transformed a commodity product — coffee — into 'Starbucks' around the world."

Favorite Website: www.kidsvotinghawaii.org, which allows students from kindergarten through 12th grade to vote in all races by computer from Oct. 22 through Nov. 5. Ingamells is vice chairwoman of Kids Voting Hawai'i.

Most remembered mentor: Ken Sandefur, the founder of AT&T Hawai'i who retired June 30th. "He knew the business and always kept the big picture in mind. He cared for his people and never left one person behind."

Best part of the job: "Having the best people surround me at work. We have a great team. Our management team is diverse, committed, and thrives to win as a team."

Worst part of the job: "This is a tough question. I love my job. There is so much to do. I just hope to have more hours in a day. From meetings, appointments, conference calls with staff in East Coast to West Coast... I would like to spend more time with the frontline employees. I want to talk to them more. ... They represent the company and they have good market intelligence by talking to our customers directly."

Trademark expressions: "Work hard, play hard." ... "What's your plan?"

Best decision as a leader: Bringing a call center to Hawai'i instead of having it based on the Mainland. Local customers benefited, jobs were created and operational spending dropped.

Worst decision as a leader: "Hiring the wrong person for the wrong job in the early stage of my career. ... In a big company there are a lot of corporate cultures and a lot of people aren't able to adapt. My bad decision was hiring somebody who was eager to learn but was unable to deal with a big corporate culture. It was difficult for me to see that person struggle. As a result I learned to hire people who are fast learners, are smart and always want to improve the processes and always want to excel and are open and willing to change. ... We did coach this person and got them to understand that they were not comfortable in a big company. They're now a successful manager at a small company."

What I worry about most is: "I don't worry about anything now. Things are not in your control. Tomorrow is not something you can predict. The ongoing changes in the telecom industry and the 9/11 event reminded me once again that I need to give my best for everything I do today, say thanks to my fellow workers everyday, and tell my husband and my son that I love them every chance that I have. ..."

Most difficult challenge: "It is difficult to develop a long-term strategy these days. With new technological, competitive and demographic forces, we now have to alter fundamentally the way our organizations do business. I guess strategic innovation is the new wealth; therefore, we need to develop a strategy that is adaptive.

"Experimentation seems a must in this ever-changing environment. It sounds ridiculous but the more a company experiments, the faster it can accumulate insights on which strategies are likely to work. This contradicts the old saying of having a 5-year and a 10-year strategic plan. ... The goal is not to develop 'perfect' strategies but to develop strategies that are directionally correct, and then progressively refine them through rapid experimentation and adjustment."