COVER STORY
Andrea Brunais
New River Valley artist and writer I was a veteran journalist before taking a corporate job. My sharp, thoughtful new boss saw that I needed civilizing. Journalists are marvelous people, but newsrooms are chaotic. Someone might jump on a desk to make a point, or a balled-up candy wrapper might come flying over your head. Egos are big. Communication is blunt. Thanks to coaching from my boss, Melissa Mackey, I soon said, "How might we approach this differently?" instead of, “Are you insane?” Or "What outside expertise might be needed?" instead of, “I wouldn’t trust so-and-so to pour piss out of a boot without instructions on the heel.” I was thankful that she instilled in me a modicum of diplomacy. (I no longer had to duck because some yahoo was throwing things.)
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Andrea Brunais
Ken Ferris
Founder of three technology companies in the region Dick Popp, who was hired as President of FiberCom in 1987, probably helped me most. He had been a senior executive at a couple of large companies. While I had a solid engineering background, Dick taught me to fully understand the company's financials and how to get the most benefit from them by looking at and assessing the metrics and trends. His mentoring gave me a solid financial background that I used when I started Millennia Systems as well as other businesses I was involved in since 2000. During these years I found that a number of CFOs that I worked with were great at cranking out the numbers but often didn't use metrics or trends and thus didn't fully understand the appropriate actions to take if the numbers were not good.
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Ken Ferris
Kimberly Bratic
Marketing Communications Cal Johnson, the former President/CEO of the YMCA of the Roanoke Valley (now the YMCA of Virginia’s Blue Ridge), is my best boss and a life-long mentor. He is an exceptional people-first leader. He taught me much about leadership communication—specifically, setting a framework for a project, setting benchmarks and expectations. When something got off track, he empowered folks to fix it. He taught me how to lay out a clear argument to win support from board members, colleagues, leaders and more. As a perfectionist, he taught me to know when to let go and know when to call on others for support. He is thoughtful, respectful, emotionally intelligent and all around one of the best humans I know.
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Kimberly Bratic vbFRONT.com / AUGUST 2023 u
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