Ex-Secretary Shares Secrets of Her Management Success

Among the hundreds of women thronging The Westin South Coast Plaza on Friday for a short course on climbing the corporate ladder, Kathy Rainey, 38, was something of a celebrity.

Like many of the women at the 10th Annual Conference for Women sponsored by Coastline Community College, Rainey had scratched and clawed her way to management in a company dominated by men. But unlike most of the others, she began as a secretary.

Now a quality assurance manager for Unisys Corp. in Mission Viejo, Rainey was in a position to tell other women how it’s done. At a job seminar Friday that was broadcast on cable television, Rainey regaled an audience of about 75 women with tales of her success. Though she told her story in the jargon of the corporate world, with phrases like “goal setting” and “time management,” it was a language she barely knew when she began her ascent to the top 14 years ago.

Rainey was 24 years old then, and had just moved to Orange County with her husband. She had an associate degree in business management and three years of experience “answering the phone, doing the mail and taking shorthand.”

The only type of work she was suited for at Unisys Corp., a computer firm, was more of the same. Two months into her new job, she realized it wasn’t enough and began casting about for something else to do.

“I tried to figure out how could I get my work done in two hours, so I could do other things,” she said.

After a few weeks of poring through the classifieds, Rainey settled on personnel. She volunteered for every project that came through the Unisys personnel office and eventually took over much of the paper work for the company’s affirmative action program.

Five years later, after she earned a bachelor’s degree in business management by attending night classes, Rainey was promoted. Within a year she was managing the personnel office.

Rainey spent the next three years telling executives at Unisys that they needed to train their managers to work better with employees. It wasn’t long before she became the person responsible for doing that.

It was nice for a while, Rainey said, but after a year of spending 39 out of 40 working hours counseling managers, she decided it was time for a change.

“I had no authority over anybody,” Rainey said. “I said, ‘Give me a real job.’ ”

After a year, she became manager of a quality control division. The people who reported to her were men.

It wasn’t easy. In the beginning, the quality engineers Rainey supervised resented her, she said, because she was a woman and because she had no technical background.

Her first week on the job, one of them walked into her office carrying an enormous pile of specifications.

“He said, ‘When you learn all of this, then I’ll know they made the right decision.’ ”

Rainey promptly threw them in the trash. Then, for the next three months, she dedicated herself to learning everything her engineers did.

“It earned me a great deal of respect,” she said. “Because now they thought if they had a problem, I would know what they were talking about.”