Employee of the Month
Lisa Siciliani
Charged with Localization and Marketing Development Lisa Siciliani
skillfully combines creativity and strategic analysis. She is responsible
for the evolving design of the RMTC web site, production of holiday
videos, a recently introduced new ad campaign, and much, much more. Lisa’s
profile follows in her own words....
The Word is Tump
Tump is one of my favorite Southern words, and if you’re unfamiliar
with this term, it may be used to suggest that Billy watch out before he
tumps that tea over or “Hey, I was the only one that didn’t tump my
tube over in the river today!” I was born in a part of the bayou state,
Louisiana, which is at a sort of cultural convergence. There are
influences of the old Deep South with its soft lilting drawl, the Cajuns,
where English is liberally sprinkled with French and people born of hills
and hard times who speak with a bit of a twang and know words like tump. I
love being from Louisiana and get homesick sometimes for sunrises on the
levee watching the blue herons fish, fragrant magnolias as big as dinner
plates, and Spanish moss draped from cypress trees. The great food and
music is just lagniappe.
A Gypsy Is Born
I may not have cornered the market on unusual jobs, but I’ve had a fair
sample. I’ve done field work, factory work, restaurant work, social work,
office work, retail work and design work. They were indoors, outdoors,
after school, during the summer, around college classes, just until I
moved, getting started after I moved, second jobs, fits a child’s school
schedule, and finally REAL jobs. The one that gets the most laughs
is the fishing lure painting job in Arkansas when I was just out of high
school. Yep, if you’ve ever looked at a fishing lure, you certainly
probably never wondered how it was painted. Started out small, just
painting the eyes (really) and worked my way up to spray gun work.
Sometimes I’d have one of those surreal moments and just bust up laughing.
I was 19 and couldn’t see my destiny in the woods of Arkansas painting
lures so I sold what I could, gave away the rest and bought two plane
tickets to California—one for me and one for my cat.
Hey, Come Listen to This!
The 10 years I spent in California were great, but not at all what I
expected. My only experience of the state were the visits we made to Los
Angeles and San Diego when I was growing up. My plane landed in the middle
of the San Joaquin valley and there wasn’t even a hint of an ocean
anywhere in sight. I eventually lived in the Bay Area and outside of Napa.
California blew my horizons wide open, getting to know people from all
over the world and I reveled in all of the different cultures. The native
Californian kids thought I was pretty exotic, too. “Hey, come listen to
this—Lisa, say something!” I can, however, still introduce myself in
Farsi, albeit with a Southern accent.
Oh, What the Hay
I started college. You know, you’re young, have no idea what to do and
everybody else is going to school. So I somehow landed a job at a junior
college school farm, had a great boss who was Basque and decided to major
in Animal Science. (I didn’t even know sheep were born with tails, so he
really had his work cut out.) That brings me to a fun (if not the most
lucrative) job training horses—one of my employers paid me partially in
fresh goat’s milk. I had a lovely daughter and it was great being able to
take her to work with me in the summer. She’s still the sun that rises and
sets and now that she’s grown, doesn’t even mind having too many names to
fit on anything because her mama couldn’t make up her mind. I blame it on
the California influence.
But It Never Rains Here In the Summer
I just couldn’t imagine my daughter not knowing what it felt like to
play in the summer rain, eat shrimp until you had to lay flat, listen to
live blues and Cajun music or at least once in her life, live in a place
where you know your neighbors and your teacher at school might give you a
lift home if it was too hot to walk. So we moved and I continued college
in Louisiana, changing majors to, well, to something else—hey, how about
business—that’s practical. Eventually, after only 6 ½ years of full time
college, I plopped down in my advisor’s office and ask if I qualified for
a degree in anything, because “I’m ready to graduate.” Miracle worker that
he was, he cobbled my mish-mash of management, social science, history and
assorted animal science classes like beef production into something. I
don’t know how useful knowing the names of pig breeds were in my first
real job, retail store management, but they didn’t specify what the
degree was in, just that you have one.
The Gypsy Hangs Up Her Wings
It was time to find better opportunities and I had friends here in
Austin that loved it so my daughter, The Honey, flew the nest for college
and Mama packed up the full-sized, chicken-wire horse (couldn’t leave
that art project behind) and headed for Austin. With the luck of
the Irish, I found a job working as a word processor in a translation
company as soon as I arrived. That was six years ago and I’m still with
that translation company.
I’ve had interesting work and worked with great people before, but
McElroy, hands down, combines attributes that make work fulfilling,
challenging and a pleasure. I am proud to work for such a progressive and
professional business organization. I feel fortunate to be able to grow
within this company—I’ve used so many of my experiences and what may
loosely be termed talents. My work is varied and creative, from
researching industry trends to developing marketing materials. Austin is a
great place to live. When I’m not working, I dig in the dirt (there IS
room for another plant in the yard), still listen to music and still
dabble in my weird art projects.
And Austin isn’t so far from my bayous that I can’t get back to
visit.
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Engineers learning not to burp at business
meetings
Software professional Sudhir Udayakanth, who heads a company managing
web content, lost a foreign client when one of his Indian engineers
repeatedly burped at the negotiating table.
So he set up an academy seven months ago in India’s technology hub of
Bangalore to train code writers and engineers on how to dress, communicate
and mingle in professional settings.
Udayakanth, 29, is among a new crop of about a dozen trainers who groom
Indian code writers, often travelling to the US and Europe, to get
comfortable with a new culture and be knowledgeable about socializing
skills.
“Indian code writers have the skill sets and a lot of talent but the
finishing touch is missing,” Udayakanth, sitting at a downtown apartment
converted into an office, told reporters.
Social terror
“Most of the time when I am with a foreign client I am on the edge
of my seat as I fear my colleagues will commit a social blunder. He may
bum a cigarette or pick his tooth and burp aloud. I have lost quite a few
clients because of this,” he said.
India has the largest pool of English-speaking IT professionals after
the US. Most major foreign information technology firms such as Microsoft,
Intel, Dell, Oracle and IBM have bases in the country.
An army of engineering graduates, willing to work for one-eighth of the
salaries of their counterparts in the US and Europe, have fueled the
software revolution in India.
More than 60,000 Indian software engineers worked in the US in 2001. In
the current year about 30,000 will head there, according to India’s
premier IT lobby, the National Association of Software and Service
Companies.
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