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REACHING FOR THE TOP By MARTA BACZYNSKY In 1990 the XXII Convention of the National Women's League of America honored several young professional Ukrainian American women with the “Young Women Achievers Awards” . The criteria for this distinction required the recipients to be outstanding in their chosen professions, exhibiting qualities of excellence in per formance and leadership. One of the young women thus recognized was Roxanne Decyk, then a rising executive with the title of Senior Vice President at Navistar Inter national, formerly Harvester Corp., the giant construction equipment manufacturing company. In April 1996 Working Woman, the popular maga zine for America’s businesswomen, featured Decyk on the cover, as well as in an article “The Front Runners" by Tom Dunkel. The author writes about high-ranking corporate women and asks the question “who will be the first to run a major U.S. corporation and what quali fications and achivements will a woman need to become the Fortune 1000’s first appointed female chief execu tive?” High on his list of several candidates is Roxanne Decyk, vice president of corporate planning with Amoco Corporation in Chicago, IL. It is interesting to note that in the U.S. there are only two women Fortune 1000 CEO’s and only because they own their companies. From interviews with busi ness leaders and executive recruiters Working Woman has compiled a list of seventeen names, Decyk’s among them, who were mentioned most often as “women with the best shot at the top spot." . Roxanne Decyk comes to her high position at Amoco with the right credentials. She is a graduate of the Uni versity of Illinois in Urbana with a dual major in English literature and advertising. In 1977 she graduated from Marquette University Law School, J.D. (magna cm laude), where she was editor in chief of the Law Review. For several years she worked as an attorney and in 1981 Decyk joined Navistar International, where for ten years she held various positions on the executive level. At Amoco since 1991, Decyk, in charge of corporate plan ning, is responsible for the indentification and analysis of company-wide strategic issues (external and internal) and the development of corporate responses to them. According to Tom Dunkel, there is a great demand for executives who “ not only teach their workers new skills, but actually change their behavior. That’s why Roxanne Decyk is on the short list of so many executive recruiters” . Decyk, writes the author, was part of Navistar’s crisis-management team in 1988, whose job was to revamp the company’s relationship with its inde pendent distributors who sold trucks and other the heavy moving equipment manufactured by the company. Because the company and the dealers had many differ ences of opinion on critical business objectives, con tinues Dunkel, the crisis team prepared strategies for mutual growth and development. Roxanne Decyk, writes the author, wanted to implement them, therefore “she volunteered to be senior VP of distribution.” Navistar never had a woman in a senior operations position, which required working with its 600 dealers, Dunkel informs the reader. “ It took three-quarters of a year to convince people that it would be a risk worth taking,” says Decyk, “ but in the end they said yes, and I got the job.” Under her management the overhaul of the company/dealer relationship was successfully imple mented and sales of vehicles and parts began to escalate. In his article Tom Dunkel cites what is important and particularly what works as a propellent on the cor porate ladder toward that last top rung. There are poin ters taken from interviews with women executives, which he quotes in his article, and data from a study by Caty- lyst (a nonprofit organization promoting women’s busi ness interests) Women in Corporate Leadership: Pro Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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