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Working from the Heartland |
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Evelyn Self
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In a corporate environment, you can be productive, you can work from your heart, you can stick to your own true values and beliefs. |
Box seats, limousines, opening nights are part of Evelyn's working life. But only a small part. What nourishes her daily, however, is the opportunity she has to pick up the ringing telephone, give advice to organizations, schools and humanitarian projects on how they can leverage the assets they already have and expand their own potential. A check might be helpful here. But perhaps a name and phone number out of her massive resource list might be more valuable in the long run. Or a fresh way of looking at a particular problem might net a better solution.
"I spend far more time giving ideas, suggestions and brainstorming," she says. "The beauty of my work is being able to say, 'I can't give you dollars but maybe I can give you time and connections.' Then I can link them to other people and organizations who are able to help. You can do a lot by taking time to sit and talk."
"Talking things through can lead you to some wonderful outcomes," she says. "That's part of what we've lost in society. We don't really want to give our time, we don't want to sit down and try to help others. We're quite often feeling overburdened, too stressed, too busy. The clock is always nipping at our heels. But I find that out of my need to serve others, somehow there is always a few more minutes in the day."
She says: "I love the fact that I'm dealing with issues that have to do with healing society's ills. Sure, I'm doing a plan; I set goals every year and every day. But instead of looking at a marketing plan or strategizing how to achieve the goal or interact with the next department, I'm dealing with community issues that others tend not to be even aware of. Addressing human needs and making a difference. That's what excites me."
Evelyn's accoutrements of current success provide few hints of her personal background -- except, perhaps, the warm, nonjudgmental demeanor that is her trademark way of interacting with people equally up and down the ranks of the world's societies. The child of an itinerant Baptist minister and his wife who accompanied him on his travels, Evelyn was raised on a Mississippi farm by her aunt, Big Mama, and Uncle Taylor. In retrospect, she says, the demanding farm life which produced the food they ate, resulted in some neglect of the children. But she remembers the years fondly and is still sad from the day those times came to an abrupt end when she was 10.
"When Big Mama died. I felt like my world had ended," she recalls. "I was absolutely devastated. Here was the one person I knew and loved and could always count on."
"I can remember the day we had the funeral and we went to bury her. When the first shovel of dirt fell on the coffin, I just clawed at it. I wanted to be buried with her. I just felt there could be no life after her. She was the sweetest. She always would find a place for me, always a little time, even though life was hard on the farm. I remember going out and helping her plant cucumbers, peas, beans and potatoes and then dig them up in the fall. We had 'potato banks' then. In the fall when you harvest the potatoes, you would put them in the bank, cover them with straw and you could keep and protect your potatoes all winter. They won't sprout. They stay cool They won't freeze."
"I was cooking at age seven. My Uncle Taylor and I would get up at around 5 in the morning. He would make a fire in the fireplace and he would make a mound of hot coals, put on a pot of coffee, like making coffee in a camp. Of course, the coffee turned to mud. I would have half a cup of mud and half a cup of milk with my Uncle Taylor and then we would take care of the animals."
But Uncle Taylor wasn't prepared to take care of Evelyn and her younger sister and brother when Big Mama died. Coincidentally her father received his first permanent church at the same time. So after the funeral she and her siblings climbed into a car with a father they saw only now and then, and headed for Idaho to begin a life utterly foreign to the young girl.
In a saga that is all too common in America , Evelyn's life from then on was marked by her father's alcoholism and then abuse from her husband. By the time she was in her early 20s she had two daughters of her own, a mind of her own, and a will of her own. So she she took her two little girls and left.
"I could end up either being dead with this man or I could take my children and go and live my life," she says. "I told the people I worked for that I had to leave, that I wanted to quit. That was the Coleman Company, and I had been so happy there."
Arriving in Berkeley , California to live with her brother-in-law and his family, Evelyn found a job in three days. She had begun a new life, but the old one trailed her. And she discovered the support system of the new company she worked for, Mervyn's Department Store.
"My husband's name was on the car loan, and I awoke one morning to find it had been repossessed during the night," she said. "There I was, with two daughters and 17 miles away from my work destination. But the people I worked with were wonderful, they all pulled together to get me to and from work for several weeks."
"Someone who was watching over me brought me this guy I now call my husband to work at this place. He heard about my plight, offered me his car to use, and let me have it for several months without even asking for it back."
When she was transferred to San Diego, her new friend, Bob Self, helped her find a place to live (across the street from where the new store was being built, and only a couple of blocks from the children's school) and then quit his job to come try life in San Diego himself.
Her work continued to return her to the human resources field and she eventually left Mervyn's to work in a medical equipment company, where she was when Warner-Lambert acquired the small firm. From there she was hired by corporate headquarters to head up its affirmative action program in Morris Plains , New Jersey . And then from there she was appointed to direct the company's community affairs.
"The man who had that job before me had it for over 20 years," she says. "When he was getting ready to leave, he was asked who he knew in the community who would be a good replacement for him. He said, 'you don't have to look outside the company, she's right here. And her name is Evelyn Self.'"
"I never worked in this area before," she says. "I certainly never dealt with these amounts of money, all these evening events and public appearances. But he believed in me and thought I could do it. For that I will be forever grateful."
In Evelyn's work she not only grants corporate funds to charitable organizations whose missions fit Warner-Lambert's contributions program, but she also inspires the rest of Warner-Lambert's employees to contribute time, money and resources in the community -- providing them with a way to feel good and connected through their own initiatives matched with the added financial and networking power of Warner-Lambert. Over the 1997 holidays, for example, the Warner-Lambert headquarters employees donated to Salvation Army's Christmas Tree an average of two gifts per person.
"People love to work with me," she says. "They're always asking how they can help me with this project, or volunteer with that project. How many people can walk down their hall at work and find people wanting to help you do what you do every day? I have them lined up!"
"In a corporate environment, you can be productive, you can work from your heart, you can stick to your own true values and beliefs. And you can spend your career getting the job done that interests you. I'm very blessed in that I have all the things in a job that I could want for self-satisfaction and that produces the changes I want to make in this world."
Copyright 2005 by Martha Finney. All rights reserved.