From law firms, auto dealerships and manufacturing, the all-male era of leadership is becoming history

By Paula Burkes Erickson

Published: September 14, 2006

Soon after Brooke Murphy joined Crowe & Dunlevy in 1975, the Oklahoma City law firm had a function in what was then a men-only dining room of the Petroleum Club downtown. The club informed the firm Murphy could not attend.

Fred Dunlevy told the club that if she couldn't come, he'd cancel the event and withdraw the firm's membership. Murphy went to the function and the men-only policy soon went by the wayside.

Today, Murphy serves as the second woman president of Crowe & Dunlevy, crowning a career that began as a first-grade schoolteacher.

"All the men in my family were lawyers, and I always wanted to be one too," Murphy said. "But it never occurred to women of my era to do anything but get married and pursue a supportive career."

When she became a lawyer in 1975, women attorneys in the city were few.

"Clients initially had a hard time with me as a female civil litigator, and some still do," Murphy said. But Crowe & Dunlevy has always been supportive, she said.

Her elder son was 3 when she joined the firm and her younger son was born in 1981 -- the year Murphy became the firm's first woman partner.

Recently, Murphy gathered with other businesswomen for breakfast at the Petroleum Club, atop the Chase building.

Just as the view of the city's landscape has changed in the past several years, so has its business scene.

Where the good-ol' boy, cigar-smoking, oil and gas environment once was the norm in Oklahoma, today women are taking the helm at companies across a variety of industries, including many traditionally dominated by men.

For example, it's a woman who holds the general manager position at Remington Park Casino and at a Dodge dealership in Tulsa.

Like Brooke Murphy, Denise Suttles, chief executive officer of Oklahoma City Clinic and the managed care company GlobalHealth Inc., started their careers in a stereotypically woman's role. Raised with eight siblings in rural Missouri, she became a nurse and eventually a nurse educator and manager.

But to make the money she wanted, Suttles realized she had to pursue hospital administration. Her career took off 15 years ago when she was recruited by a large doctors' group to help direct operations and manage specialty care.

In 1995, she was hired to help lead a publicly traded Colorado-based hospital company and in 1996 came to the Oklahoma City Clinic where, in June 2003, she helped develop GlobalHealth. The company is among the 50 fastest growing firms in greater Oklahoma City, jumping from $300,000 in annual revenues in 2003 to $38 million last year.

Over her career, Suttles frequently has been the sole woman at meetings.

"I learned early on to get to meetings before they started, so I could get a seat at the table," Suttles said. "Otherwise, there were men who thought I was there to serve the coffee, and I wanted to avoid feeding into that expectation."

Amy Polonchek, interim executive director of the Oklahoma Commerce Department and an economist by training, also has been in situations where she was the only woman in boardrooms.

"I usually don't notice until halfway through," she said. "I think you get better results with a mixture of people -- young and old, male and female, and from different backgrounds."

Generally women are good at building relationships, finding common ground for solutions and bringing out issues, said Polonchek, who is the first economist to lead the Commerce Department.

But women may feel pressure to excel and burst through the ranks, said Brenda Sanchez, general manager of Remington Park Casino.

"But as long as I pull my weight, people are happy," she said. Profit and morale among her co-workers speak for themselves, Sanchez said.

Sanchez started in the casino industry 11 years ago as restaurant supervisor for Harrah's Casino in Black Hawk, Colo. She quickly worked her way up the ranks, gaining a broad range of experience in casino management, including security, slot operations, personnel management, accounting, inventory, marketing and information technology.

"I love the atmosphere of casinos -- the lights, noise, dinging, people clapping hands and yelling," Sanchez said.

Aside from Harrah's, she worked for three other well-known casinos in Colorado and a Las Vegas-based consultant before joining Remington, owned by Canada-based Magna Entertainment Corp., six weeks before opening Nov. 21. She manages 300 employees.

Though studies show women influence 60 percentor more of automobile purchases, the industry historically hasn't been accepting of women as employers or consumers. But that's changing, Yvonne Hovell said.

Hovell should know. She bought the East Tulsa Dodge dealership in 2001 and serves as general manager.

"Women buyers tell me they come here because it's woman-owned," Hovell said. Two members of her sales team also are women.

A former owner-operator of a pharmacy, Hovell took over her husband's established Crysler-Plymouth dealership in Green Bay, Wis., when he died of cancer in 1998. She sold the business and bought the Tulsa dealership because she wanted to sell trucks in a larger market with better weather.

Isabel Chancellor, president of IngenuitE software consulting firm in Oklahoma City, and Cheryl Cohenour, president of CRC & Associates environmental and hazardous waste consulting firm in Tulsa, have found the best way to break through the glass ceiling is to work for themselves.

"That way you can be the best you can be and no one can put limits on you," Chancellor said.

Born in Texas, Chancellor lived in Mexico until she was 7 and knew no English when she moved back to Corpus Christi. But with a burning determination to excel, she went on to graduate as valedictorian of a high school class of 250 and earn a scholarship to college. Her four-year-old company, which she runs with her husband, has annual revenues of $1.6 million and employs 12.

Cohenour started her company 18 years ago. A single mother to her then 10-year-old daughter, she was tired of traveling so much as a chemist for Williams Brothers Engineering Labs, which had been bought by Ashland, Ky.-based Ashland Inc., and wanted a more flexible schedule. Today, she employs 12, has clients worldwide and annual revenues of $3 million.

Even after years in the industry, Cohenour still encounters male subcontractors who call her "Sugar" or "Baby," or don't want to work for or take directions from a woman.

"I just laugh it off," she said. "I know after I prove myself, I'll gain their confidence."

Dana Weber, president and chief operating officer of Webco Industries Inc., did just that. She started working at the company, which was founded by her father in 1969, part time at age 13 and full time at 20.

"I fell in love with it from the beginning ... the idea of making something," Weber said.

Webco primarily manufactures carbon steel tubing for heat exchangers for refineries, boilers at power generation plants, appliances, cars, exercise equipment and other applications. The company, which has international business, and manufacturing and distribution facilities in Oklahoma, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois, employs 900 and has annual revenues of $300 million.

Weber said her rise to Webco's president in 1995 just evolved.

"I took this opportunity and that opportunity and eventually president became the opportunity," she said.

Weber has two pieces of advice for women aspiring to leadership positions: "Always do the best you can and what you know is right," and "Do whatever you can to keep people from working for difficult and unfair bosses."

Weber said she endured a miserable three-year stint under a critical boss who thought she couldn't do anything right.

"I suspect he felt threatened by me because I was the boss' daughter," she said. "But it doesn't matter why. I learned from the experience, and I'm better for it."