Greater IBMer Julie Shore: A Volunteer SWOOPer

“…..SWOOP just goes in and totally transforms whatever they’re working on….70 women will descend on a property, and it’s transformation, what happens.”

“…It’s like we just swoop in and when we leave, everything is dramatically different.”

Those words come from two women who are part of a Raleigh, N.C. organization called SWOOP: Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects. Does this sound like a group of women you’d like to know? Greater IBMer Julie Shore thinks so: an IBMer for 30 years, Julie has served her community as a member of SWOOP for 17 now.

Julie Shore

Julie sat down with The Greater IBM Connection to share with us her story, and what it’s meant to her to be a part of SWOOP.

The Greater IBM Connection: How long have you worked at IBM?

Julie Shore: More than 30 years.

GIBM: What is your role today, and what are some other positions you’ve held?  

I’m in channel marketing in STG, working with independent software vendors (ISVs) to help them develop for, use and recommend IBM systems to their clients. I’ve also served a variety of roles in channel marketing in SWG, managing various marketing and certification programs and driving channel enablement for direct and indirect sellers.

GIBM: What does your typical day involve – what are some of the responsibilities of your role?

I’m now driving launch activities related to all indirect channels.  So my days are filled with keeping track and pushing progress with all aspects of launch preparation from the perspective of reseller, ISV and SI marketing teams.

GIBM: Tell us about your volunteering with SWOOP. How do you contribute?

I’ve volunteered with SWOOP since its founding in 1996. We have two key focus areas.  SWOOPin’ Saturdays are once-a-month workdays where we help agencies and individuals with large-scale, short-term projects, such as building playgrounds for at-risk kids, renovating a house for someone in a wheelchair, or painting low-income housing units.

SWOOPers in action: a ramp project in progress (Photo courtesy Julie Shore)

I’m often a team leader on carpentry projects, and help with whatever else needs to be done when carpentry is not involved.

The other key focus is our “Ramp It Up!” initiative, which provides wheelchair ramps for people with urgent needs. We work with agencies to identify the projects.  We design and build wooden ramps, and also install removable aluminum ramps for shorter-term requirements.  Our executive director is also an architect and general contractor, so SWOOP brings design and construction expertise that agencies might not otherwise be able to access affordably.

It’s easy to sign up for either or both aspects through our Web site, http://swoop4u.org.

GIBM: How did SWOOP get started, and how did you become involved?

A couple of friends had lots of trees down from Hurricane Fran in 1996.  After cleaning up their own yards, they helped some friends do the same.  It occurred to them that a team of people could accomplish more than just one or two working independently, so the growing group started showing up at the houses of other friends – in fact, my house was SWOOPed in that crazy week after Fran, so I’ve been involved nearly from the beginning.

Over time it got more organized, got an official name (Strong Women Organizing Outrageous Projects) and logo, and was accorded 501(C)(3) nonprofit status in 2001.  We now have approximately 1,400 people on the membership roles.

GIBM: What is the most rewarding aspect of volunteering for you?

Going home with a great sense of accomplishment, and in awe of people’s ability to deal with challenges and crises of everyday life. I also enjoy the camaraderie among SWOOPers, and I always learn a ton and laugh a lot.

GIBM: Raleigh has a large IBM campus – are there other IBMers/Greater IBMers involved with SWOOP?

Yes, I know several IBMers who are current or past SWOOPers – Molly Walters, Sandy Campbell, Holly Tallon Hilbrands and Betty Lynch are some of the local IBMers who are active in SWOOP.  We’re on the local and national approved agency lists for the IBM Employees Charitable Contribution Campaign.

GIBM: Tell us how you use The Greater IBM Connection: what do you get out of it personally?

I access it through LinkedIn.  Mostly I look at the summary e-mails and follow links to interesting or relevant discussions.

GIBM: You mentioned that you’re retiring by the end of this year.  What do you plan to do with the extra time?

Not sure yet. I’m considering several possibilities.

GIBM: Do you plan to stay connected with your IBM friends and colleagues?

Definitely!

GIBM: What else do you do with your spare time?

Golf and woodworking are my outside-of-work passions.

GIBM: What does the future hold for you and what are you most looking forward to?

I want to finish my IBM career with a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment, and go forward from there.

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More from SWOOP – Project videos:

• Passage Home playspace/garden
• Building a fence for a child
• Ramp It Up! projects
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gyw8us_AlA4
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXVS2d_CvLE

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Know a Greater IBMer with a story to share, or want to share your own? Email us at editor.gmail@us.ibm.com and tell us your story.

Infographic: Patent Ideas, by IBMer Jessica Ramirez

What do you think, IBM alumni? (Cartoon by IBM’s Jessica W. Ramirez,  a user experience designer. Check out what Jessica has to say on her personal blog.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Related:

IBMblr: Marking 20 Years of Patent Leadership

20 Years of Patents

 

- Posted by Regan Kelly

The 12 Types of Social Media Users: Which One Are You? (Infographic)

When it comes to how you use social media, are you a lurker? Or more like a Ghost, a Changeling, or a Peacock? Which one are YOU? (Infographic by firstdirect.com)

- Posted by Regan Kelly

50 Years of Innovation: IBM Honors 2013 Fellows

Program celebrates its 50th anniversary as eight new fellows join a distinguished tradition of excellence and innovation

IBM CEO Ginni Rometty today marked the 50th anniversary of the IBM Fellows program by honoring eight new IBMers with the company’s highest technical distinction. Only 246 individuals have earned this designation in the company’s history, 85 of whom are active employees.

Slideshow: Meet the 2013 Fellows

“As we have for half a century, IBM is today honoring its most outstanding technologists and their contributions to computing and society,” said Rometty, IBM chairman, president and chief executive officer.

“Like all IBM Fellows, members of the class of 2013 are recognized leaders in the global technical community. In 2013, this leadership will be focused on IBM growth markets, where each of this year’s fellows will serve as an ambassador and resource to a different country.”  These countries include Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Ethiopia, Kenya, Morocco, New Zealand, Nigeria and South Africa.

Infographic: The IBM Fellows Program, 50 Years of Innovation

In the past, IBM Fellows, a group that includes five Nobel Prize winners, fostered some of the company’s most stunning technical breakthroughs – from the Fortran computing language to the systems that helped put the first man on the moon to the Scanning Tunneling Microscope, the first instrument to image atoms.

– Dinesh Verma, IBM Research

In announcing the program 50 years ago, Thomas Watson Jr. said, “We want to recognize outstanding scientific, engineering, programming and systems people who have made a record over a long period of time for sustained achievement. ”   The class of 2013 reflects Watson’s vision. Together, they are adding to IBM’s legacy of innovation leadership and laying the foundation for a smarter planet.

Learn more about the IBM Fellows, class of 2013

Read the press release

Dr. Gardiner Tucker

A Smarter Planet blog post by IBM Fellows founder Dr. Gardiner Tucker

Posted by Regan Kelly

The Cell Phone Turns 40

Four decades ago today,  April 3, in 1973, on Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, a man named Martin Cooper placed the first cell phone call, with a telephonic gadget that was to change history. That device was the world’s first handheld mobile phone, and Cooper had invited reporters to watch him make its first public call.

Martin Cooper. Photo, thedailybeast.com

New Yorkers stopped and gaped. The phone was not only cordless, it was small and light — a mere 10 inches long and weighing only 2 1/2 pounds.

What came next, by humorist Sean Macaulay.

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Related:

Mobile Commerce

IBM MobileFirst: Put Your Business in Motion

IBM Mobile Apps

Follow Official IBM Mobile Twitter: @ibmmobile

Posted by Regan Kelly

Just for Fun: Vintage Social Networking

Cartoon by John Atkinson – follow him on Twitter: @WrongHands1

Video Tour: Capturing the Character of the IBM Brand

- from VSAPartners.org

In this two-minute video tour, the roots of the IBM brand are traced to the company’s management of its character. It is narrated by Jon Iwata, IBM Senior Vice President, Marketing and Communications.

“IBM on Brand” draws from the VSA Partners’ brand agency’s long collaboration with IBM, which now spans nearly 20 years. It’s part of a series of short films created by VSA to capture the current thinking behind leadership brands — specifically, their origins and intent, audiences and ingredients, and business or societal impact.

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What did you think of the video? Let us know in the Leave a Reply box.

 

 

- Posted by Regan Kelly

Infographic: Who’s Really On Your Conference Call?

Wherever you work, this infographic might look familiar. (Cartoon by IBM’s Jessica W. Ramirez,  a user experience designer. Check out what Jessica has to say on her personal blog.)

Client Experience: Value One – Dedication to Every Client’s Success

The March 2013 for The Greater IBM Connection is ‘client experience’.

In honor of the March theme focus on Client Experience, I thought it might be nice to post this link to an IBM Archives Web Site exhibit focused on classic stories of IBM client service. The company from its very beginning has made service a watchword for each and every IBMer. And when you do that, great things can happen. Enjoy!

• IBM Archives:  Value One – Dedication to Every Client’s Success

by Paul Lasewicz,
IBM Corporate Archivist

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Related links:

• IBM Our Values
• IBM Values At Work

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The March 2013 theme for The Greater IBM Connection is ”client experience”.

IBM’s First Woman Executive: IBM Pioneering Woman (Part 2)

Anne Van Vechten with a non-niblick at the 1939 Hundred Percent Club.

This post is a continuation of the March 8 post, “IBM’s Pioneering Woman: Anne Van Vechten” in honor of International Women’s Day on March 8, 2013.

In 1935, the headiness of the praise IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson, Sr., heaped on his “great pioneer woman,” Anne Van Vechten, and her 24 fellow graduates of IBM’s first co-ed Systems Service School didn’t last long. Despite Watson’s thoughtfulness at the graduation dinner, providing each of them with a corsage, a box of Whitman’s Samplers, and a carton of cigarettes, he struggled with getting them accepted by the organization.

For whatever reasons, Watson’s warning in his commencement address about his personal interest in seeing the women of Systems Service Class No. 126 succeed was largely disregarded by the organization. Anne later recalled that there were mutterings: “The old man is off his rocker. … These girls won’t last long. … This is a tough man’s organization.”

It certainly was. And Watson was the toughest. When after a few months he still found resistance in the field sales management organization to the meaningful use of the women, he allegedly ordered the dismissal of all but one of the 67 male graduates of Systems Service Class No. 125, the one survivor later recollected in his memoirs. If true, it was a brutal message to the organization, one that accelerated culture change by demonstrating that Watson was extremely serious about growing the role and contributions of women in the company. And even if it wasn’t true, the rumor alone would alert people that their jobs could be on the line if they continued to resist. Anne later recalled that it took about two years before the men of the IBM sales organization decided that the “girls” were here to stay.

Anne’s own road was a little less bumpy. That September, just a month after graduation, Watson again surprised Anne by naming her the Secretary of Education of the Women’s Division. He did so in typical Watson fashion. With her on the dais at a large graduation event, he announced that – completely unbeknownst to her – that he was appointing her to lead women’s education at IBM. Anne later recalled that the shock of the appointment, and of having to give an impromptu acceptance speech in front of 1000 people, actually cured her of a slight stuttering problem she had.

This was a valuable side benefit to her promotion, because Watson had made the new role an executive position … back when there were only a handful of positions at IBM that were considered executive. As a result, she was based in headquarters and attended all the top strategy and policy meetings of the company. The executives didn’t know what to make of Watson’s “great pioneer woman”, and she wasn’t quite sure herself … still just 21-years-old, she didn’t know what her role at these meetings was to be. But she was up to speed on all of IBM’s activities in the era, from the use of IBM equipment in a medical study in Cleveland that identified improper administration of anesthesia as a leading cause of surgical deaths, to the IBM’s fingerprint cards played in the FBI’s search for John Dillinger.

Over the next few years, Anne expanded her role at headquarters. In addition to overseeing the women’s education program, where she traveled extensively recruiting prospective candidates and visiting IBM field locations to oversee the integration of co-ed graduates into office organizations, she became a go-to special projects person for Watson. She researched charitable donation requests, found job placements for disabled graduates of IBM training schools, and helped oversee the staffing at IBM exhibits at the New York World’s Fair and San Francisco Golden Gate Exposition.

Anne also handled social arrangements for IBM customers and other VIPs who visited New York City. Watson took great pride in IBM’s abilities to host visitors, and Anne quickly found a role in that activity. Tall and athletic, with youthful good looks and quick with a joke, she met and attended social events like dinners  at the Waldorf with some of the most famous people in the world – explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd, airline industry entrepreneur Juan Trippe, New Dealer James Farley, opera star Lawrence Tibbett, and a host of European royalty.

Anne left IBM in 1943 when she married Douglas Coupe, a serviceman. Her post-IBM life is perhaps best left for another blog post. But I’ll leave you a clue about what it would touch on. The NY State Golf Association Senior Women’s Amateur Championship trophy is named the Anne Coupe Cup. So it’s fitting to close here with a quote from Anne as she looked forward optimistically to her career with IBM. “I feel that life offers so much and that the rough spots can be gotten out of with a little courage and a good niblick shot.”

by Paul Lasewicz,
IBM Corporate Archivist