LEADERSHIP CORNER
Motorola manager proved herself by letting work speak for itself

Interviewed by David Butts
Advertiser Staff Writer

Job: Vice president and general manager of a division with 220 employees and $400 million in annual sales.
Company: Motorola Inc. in Tempe, Ariz.
Age: 37
High School: Kalani High School
College: University of Hawai'i, degree in electrical engineering
Breakthrough job: In 1994, seven years after joining Motorola, took a job as product manager, deciding to go down management path instead of technical route.

Q. Have you ever felt at a disadvantage in the high-tech industry because you went to school in Hawai'i?

A. I don't feel like I was at a disadvantage. I think the education you get really was pretty close to what you get anywhere else. The specialized senior classes at UH positioned me well to compete. When I meet people in the industry they say UH has a top notch group of students and professors.

Q. Did you run into people who thought UH was a party school?

A. People say you must have gone surfing every day. You always get that when you come to the Mainland. You just have to prove yourself.

Q. What, in layman's terms, do you do?

A. We produce radio frequency power and digital signal processor infrastructure. Radio frequency enables you to transmit information back and forth between the base station and the (mobile phone) handset. Radio frequency is the muscle. Digital signal processor infrastructure is the brains. It runs the algorithms that digitally encode instructions and data to enable the wireless system to work.

Q. Is it difficult being a woman in the electrical engineering field?

A. Oh, God. You are going to have to buy me a beer on that one. It is very tough. It is very competitive. The initial reaction is they don't take me seriously. You've seen my picture. I'm Japanese. I'm 5 foot 2. They figure I must not know what the hell I'm doing. It was, "Maybe they are filling their quota." You just have to prove yourself. In college you prove it with grades. In the job you just have to get the work done.

Q. You travel to Asia. What is it like for you there?

A. They ask you to get the tea. That's the running joke. About the only time you see women on my trips to Japan is when they bring in the tea.

When I went as an engineer, I don't think I met but one female engineer out of hundreds of engineers.

In the early years it made me feel very angry. The higher I go in the corporation, the bigger my title gets, the more respect I get.

It is just the way society is. Everywhere I go. You get it here, too, especially in the late 80s when I first started at Motorola. You just have to focus and get your job done and let your work speak for itself.

Now of the 12 general managers in semiconductors, I'm the only female.

Q. Did Hawai'i prepare you for working in a male environment?

A. Hawai'i helped prepare me for the diversity of people. Growing up Japanese American (I'm fourth generation), you didn't realize that you are a minority. You really have a diverse population in Hawai'i. Coming to a big company based in Chicago, you are already used to working in a diverse environment. I grew up feeling I was in the majority. I learned quickly how it feels to be in a minority when I moved to Phoenix.

It (growing up in Hawai'i) helped me understand how to deal with people from a different background.

I came to the job understanding there are a lot of different people and you have to get along. Our design center is in India, our manufacturing in Malaysia.

Treating people with respect and dignity is important. And the best thing is your differences. In a successful team you need to recognize the differences and use that to your advantage. Not just ethnicity, but also style and thought. You have to be diverse in various different ways. That's when you find your team is the strongest.

I think that was one of the things (about Hawai'i). You tend to listen to people.

Q. Would you work in Hawai'i if you could have the same job you have now?

A. I don't think so because the pace just isn't fast enough for me. If I owned a different business, not in electronics or the high-tech world, I may do that. Maybe it is a perception of mine. I don't know if it is fair. (Here) you are on the go all the time. You are thinking of work all the time.

Q. How is your performance measured?

A. Make the numbers, my financials, sales and operating profits. We get those numbers daily. It is sent to my pager every morning at 7 a.m. If it's not good, I get a call at 7:02 from my boss in Austin.

Taking on... Learning to speak up

I had a hard time in the beginning (at Motorola) because I wouldn't speak up enough. There was another female from India. We would leave these meetings and realize in our heads we figured out a lot to say, but didn't stand up and say it. We would kick ourselves. We made it a point to get our views out there. I forced myself. It was really difficult.

Mentors helped. They realized I could do something before I had the confidence. Those early mentors were out there helping me get my message heard.

When I speak now, knowing how I was, I stay around after and invite people to come up and talk. It is usually the Asians or females who come up after with 10 more questions. They weren't going to stand up in a room of 500 people.