Taking a risk landed these Florida businesswomen in the C-suite

The path to the C-suite involved a detour on the career ladder for leading executives at Frontier Communications, WellCare Health Plans, Soma and Pilot Bank.

Each of the businesswomen described the risks they took along the way and other lessons learned during the University of South Florida Women in Leadership & Philanthropy fall symposium.

Their stories about perseverance showed that women increasingly are advancing in roles that historically have been held by executives who are white and male.

Melanie Williams, senior vice president of operations for Frontier Communication’ South Region, was highly successful in the sales side of the telecommunications industry, when her predecessor told her that if she wanted to move forward, she would have to move to a role that was more technical.

“That was a risk for me. I knew everything and then I knew nothing. But I learned and it’s the job I most value because it required me to learn and to continue to learn because I didn’t grow up in that world,” Williams said. “What I did know was that I was a strong leader. I relied on my leadership and my sharing of the knowledge I had to bridge that gap, as well as spend time in the field with employees and learn, learn, learn. It was a huge risk, but it paid off significantly because it was the role that positioned me for the role I have today.”

At Frontier (NASDAQ: FTR), a Norwalk, Connecticut-based telecom, Williams now leads an eight-state organization with more than 2,400 employees.

Rhonda Mims, who is executive vice president and chief public affairs officer at WellCare Health Plans, had been a lawyer for 10 years when she took a leap into the unfamiliar.

“I left the practice of law and went to corporate America,” she said. “I had a cushy job in the Department of Justice, where I could retire in 20 years, and I decided that wasn’t enough for me. The work was challenging. I enjoyed being a litigator. But I also want to make cash. I decided to leave and went to work for Aetna, which was acquired by ING, a global financial services company, and by the time I was done I was appointed to an offer position for a global company and got the experience of traveling internationally with responsibility for work in different companies.”

Mims joined WellCare in August 2016, after 14 years with ING, and a couple of years at a private law firm. She’s now one of three women on the 11-member executive team at WellCare and the only C-level leader at the Tampa managed care company, one of the largest headquartered in the Tampa Bay area.

Rita Lowman, president of Pilot Bank, a Tampa-based community bank, has been a banker for her entire career, with much of her early career spent climbing the ladder at large banks. She had chaired the Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) transition team after the banking giant bought Florida’s Barnett Bank, when Lowman and three other women leaders at Bank of America were asked to “retire.”

Then Bill Klich, who headed Republic Bank in St. Petersburg, asked her to join his executive team and she said yes.

“I took that challenge and since then I have loved community banking. I’ve never gone back. I’ve been offered to go back to larger banks, never have done that. I love the community bank and making a difference,” said Lowman, past chair of the Florida Bankers Association.

Risk doesn’t always work out as anticipated, said Mary van Praag, brand president at Soma, a women’s intimate apparel brand that’s part of Fort Myers-based Chico’s FAS (NYSE: CHS).

“I’d worked seven years for a public company and then I became CEO of a private equity firm. Usually, you’d say that’s an entrepreneurial, scrappy kind of thing, but it was really stressful on me because I didn’t have the resources,” van Praag said. “One night my husband said this job is sucking the life out of you. I realized it wasn’t matching my personal value set.”

She’s been brand president at Soma for just over a year.

“Sometimes when you take a risk it’s not always going to work out the way you think it is. I would say learn from it and make sure you are happy, no matter what,” van Praag said.