Two West Windsor-Plainsboro women — one whose father was a role model for her own community service and another who hopes to be a role model for her daughter and other young women — are among the honorees at the 23rd annual Tribute to Women gala of the YWCA Princeton on Wednesday, March 8.
This year’s Tribute to Women, or TWIN, honorees include Stephanie Wolcott of West Windsor and Pam Garbini of Plainsboro, as well as the two West Windsor companies that employee them, Tyco at 9 Roszel Road and Bovis Lend Lease of 821 Alexander Road.##M:[more]##
Stephanie Wolcott, who is single and lives in Windsor Ponds, was lured to Roszel Road from Chicago two years ago to build Tyco’s new Corporate Citizenship program. She provides strategic direction for Tyco’s investment in both its local and international communities by donating funding, products, and expertise. She sees her role as learning and identifying the latest, most enlightened way to address world issues, and figuring how Tyco can plug into that.
Tyco is a $40 billion, global company that provides products and services in fire and security, electronics, healthcare, and engineered products and services. Tyco and Wolcott crossed paths when she worked for a corporate communications agency in Chicago. Explains Wolcott: “When I started, Tyco had just relocated its headquarters to this area. They didn’t have a strategy for philanthropy and wanted someone without a pre-conceived notion of what type of program was needed. And I was familiar with the company and its lines of businesses.
“What I found in talking to our local community leaders, is that homelessness among the working poor in Mercer County is on the rise. We decided to focus our resources on the working poor.”
According to Wolcott, a complex combination factors is contributing to the problem: education, economic opportunities, lack of public transportation, lack of affordable housing and low pay/high cost of living. “We try to attack the root cause of the problem, and have an issue-based approach.”
Wolcott says that her father, Robert, who is deceased, set a lofty example. Having spent his professional life in the steel industry, in his last position he put together a deal for a Tennessee steel company that saved 200 local jobs. When he died, everyone in the company showed up to pay their respects. “I feel I have to live up to that somehow,” says Wolcott, “and will probably spend my entire life following his example.”
From her mother, Marilyn, Wolcott got a sense for taking chances. Marilyn, who grew up in a small Iowa town of just 50 people, but had the courage to travel to Chicago, where she began a career as an airline flight attendant with Continental and United airlines.
Wolcott also learned community involvement from her mother, In 1994, Wolcott anonymously donated bone marrow to a cancer patient. And her moxie has taken her places, including a stint as a model in the U.S. and Europe for five years, and a year spent in Taiwan. She received a degree in African and Middle Eastern History from Northwestern University.
With an older brother and younger sister, Wolcott believes her position as middle child in her family influenced her well. “Today I have the ability to convene different parties and translate between two groups of people to work toward a common goal.”
For Tyco Wolcott has chosen to support the Mercer Alliance to End Homelessness (serving as its largest corporate contributor); Habitat for Humanity (building a house in Trenton as well as 21 additional houses around the world); and Homefront (by providing six tractor trailers full of diapers for distribution to mothers in need.)
In the international arena, Wolcott looks for programs related to women, such as the Greenbelt movement in Kenya that empowers women through natural resource management and civic education; sustainable farming for the women of Cuetzalan, Mexico; and job-training for divorced women in India.
“”We’ve partnered with the UN High Commission on Refugees for the past three years to provide medical care and protection to Sudanese women in refugee camps in Chad,” says Wolcott. “Our main goal is to empower women and combat the spread of AIDS through social investing. Impoverished people believe that they have no power over anything. Through civic education with their peers, they realize how much power they have over their own lives. Having more say and bargaining power, in their lives leads to a reduction in AIDS. To get them self-sustaining is really the goal.”
In disaster relief programs, Wolcott has directed $1 million in grants and $2 million in product donation to the initial emergency relief in the South Asia Tsunami. Tyco is leading an effort to donate $500,”000 in grants and $2 million in products to Hurricane Katrina victims.
Wolcott, who was nominated for the TWIN award by her boss, Sheri Woodruff, vice president of media relations, says the award was totally unexpected. “Being in the company of the other honorees is amazing. I couldn’t have planned a better position for myself. Someone once said ‘you should be the change you wish to see.’ I’ve always tried to embody that in the decisions that I make and what I do.”
The second WW-P nominee, Pam Garbini, lives with her husband, Steve, and their 13-year old daughter, Grace, in the Walker Gordon Farm development. Both she and her husband work for Bovis Land Lease, a leading company in project management and construction services, which employs 7,”500 people worldwide in 38 countries.
Not only does this couple work for the same company, they share the same boss: Bob Thompson, the principal in charge of the Alexander Road office and also Pam’s nominator for the award.
Garbini says she didn’t know Thompson had nominated her for the TWIN award until she was notified that she had won. “I was kind of shocked, and flattered because I knew one of the other nominees. I was happy that Bob thought enough of my work to nominate me. I think it was on account of the support I give through the company to the community. And my desire to get other employees to jump in. But he makes that very easy to do.”
Garbini’s husband works as a mechanical project manager for Bovis. As a project executive, Garbini oversees several construction projects simultaneously — from conception up to the moment the client moves in. Her specialities are the healthcare, education, and pharmaceutical markets.
Garbini grew up the oldest of five children, in Wilkes Barre, PA. Her father Paul, now deceased, was an English professor. She says that’s probably why she now writes an arcane “word of the day” on her office blackboard for all to see.
Her mother, Alexandra, trained as a classical musician at Julliard but chose to become a bookkeeper and social worker.
As a National Merit Finalist, Garbini was recruited by several major universities and elected to go to Penn State University to study architecture. After the first year she changed her major to a five-year architectural engineering program with a major in construction management.
“I had a fair amount of musical and artistic talent,” says Garbini. “My parents thought I was crazy to become an engineer.” She graduated in 1980 as one of only two women in the country with her degree. “Typically I was the only female in most of my engineering courses in the 1970s.”
While architectural engineering may not be a career that’s typically identified with women, Garbini says today the field is open to and attracts a fair amount of them. “While pregnant with my daughter in 1992, I was in charge of a $50 million addition to St. Elizabeth Hospital. Over 100 workers attended my baby shower.”
At Bovis she serves on a team charged with creating alternative ways for employees to remain incident and injury free. Garbini says she comes at it more from the people, as opposed to the process, angle. “I feel that we have to focus on human behavior just as much as safety methods and policies. In the construction industry, we’re tremendously concerned with worker safety, public safety, and environmental safety. On site, workers have to incorporate safety into their behavior so that it is as automatic as breathing. We strive to train employees not only how to do things, but how not to do something.”
Garbini manages Bovis’ Take Your Child to Work Day and is active with her daughter’s Girl Scout Troop 299. The troop adopted the Trenton Charter School last year for a volunteer project and conducted a book drive to create a school library. In addition to collecting 500 books, the scouts organized and shelved them and purchased a rug and a rocking chair. The girls even lobbied Bovis to match their financial contribution.
As if her calendar wasn’t full enough, Garbini will co-chair, along with Kim Schwing, this year’s Princeton Hospital Fete on June 9 and 10. Anyone who has ever volunteered or even attended the fete can appreciate that planning and orchestrating the three-day extravaganza is a full-time job for at least six months.
When asked why she keeps her plate so full, Garbini replies, “I guess I seek out opportunities to work under pressure.”
Garbini, who celebrates both her 50th birthday and 25th wedding anniversary this year, says, “I’d like to be a role model for girls, and particularly female engineers.” As someone who has worked in the construction industry more than 25 years, she already is.
YWCA Tribute to Women, Hyatt Regency, 609-497-2100. www.ywcaprinceton.org. Honorary chair is Helen Garcia, Merrill Lynch vice president of community leadership. Cocktails and dinner. Register. $125. Wednesday, March 8, 5:15 p.m.
