Voices of Experience: Ann Oka, Senior Vice President, Supply Management, Sodexo Inc.

by Pamela Weinsaft (New York City)  

Shortly after graduating from high school, Ann Oka stuffed her clothes in some garbage bags, packed her record albums in a box and loaded up her $200 Vega for a three-week road trip across country with a high school friend.  Destination: sunny California, where she had lived before her parents had moved her to the East Coast.  The plan was to work for a year, establish residency, and start down the path to becoming a doctor.   

 

Oka, now the senior vice president of supply management at Sodexo Inc., explained, “I’ve always been stubborn, so while my parents were perfectly willing to pay for my college education, in my mind it was something I was going to do on my own.”

 

She spent a year “doing whatever kind of jobs 18-year-olds can get,” including waitressing.   The year on her own before college taught her about independence and self sufficiency.  She added, “It was also about going to new places and new jobs to establish an identity.  The good side of it is that, from a career standpoint, it has allowed me to move around geographically for jobs without being as intimidated as someone who has never done that.” 

 

In the end, Oka found herself lured into chemical engineering. She loved it because “it is the practical side of theoretical science, taking a lot of theoretical stuff and turning into tangible things.”  

 

“I originally thought I wanted to go into medicine because I was a ‘math and sciencey’ girl in high school.  Once at UC Berkley, though, I got a little bit smart and realized chemistry was getting very theoretical.  And, I’m a ‘figure-it-outer’ not a regurgitator, so all the memorization was not my thing.  Also, I started to realize that if I kept going the ‘med route’, I was going to be going to school for 12 more years before I was ever going to be making any money.”

 

After graduation, Oka’s plans to enter the petrochemical industry were shelved in favor of a more economically viable position with Best Foods as a process supervisor in a vegetable oil refinery in Northern California.  “That was a fascinating job because I was the first woman in management in the refinery. I had 55 men—blue collar workers—working for me; they had only just had their first female laborer in the group within the last year.”  She credits her willingness to really listen—a skill honed through years of waitressing—as the reason for her success.  “I would make a pot of coffee and the foremen would come in on their own time to talk about issues that came up during the night and across departments. We would brainstorm and share information. I would then apply my technical knowledge to solve the problems in a way that was not threatening to them.” The approach paid off.  “In the 4 years I was there, we actually increased productivity significantly—by 29% in one of my sub-departments.” 

 

But it was what Oka later learned from one of the foremen that made the success even sweeter. “After the plant shut down, I met with a foreman who told me that before I arrived, the workers had actually had a meeting to decide what they were going to do about [this 24-year old woman coming in to supervise them].  He told me that the men discussed whether to sabotage me. In the end, they had decided they didn’t have to because I would do it to myself. He added that they didn’t realize that this was going to work out and that I was going to be the best manager they’d ever had. Luckily, I had no clue as a naïve new manager that this had gone on.  But it was such a good training ground. I learned that by just being genuine and by treating everybody with respect—listening to them openly—you can get synergies and create big successes.”   

 

Best Foods later moved Oka to Los Angeles to manage a production facility. “I made a whole lot of mayonnaise there,” she laughed.  As a female in the supply chain, she was, in her words, “a bit of a novelty” and started to become well recognized within the company.  She was working incredibly hard, building the capacity in LA to shut down the entire Northern California plant. “I did that very successfully, but as we got to the end of the project, I started to realize that manufacturing was a limited path and, if I stayed there, I would be there forever.  I also realized that running that kind of operation required my attention 24 hours a day and that would not be conducive to having a family.”   

 

She decided that she needed to know more about business to move forward.  In a risky career move, she requested—and received—a demotion to accounting manager. She used the time to learn the business of the company, to have her first child, and to go back to school to earn an MBA. “It ended up being wonderful for me because not only did I have my son, I also had the opportunity to work on streamlining all the office processes, everything from putting in local area networks to optimizing processes.  It was applying a lot of principles from my other job while learning all the financial and accounting aspects.”  She used the time to learn the IT component as well.   

 

Three years later, the company transferred her to corporate headquarters in New Jersey to work in an evolving Shared Service Purchasing organization as financial and IT support liaison.  “I was responsible for establishing all the processes associated with providing the connection to our financial colleagues as well as for all the business process improvements, including SAP implementation and customer satisfaction metrics.”  And it was then, with all the corporate exposure she received, that her career really began to take off within the organization. 

 

Said Oka, “I learned that you can be good at your job but, at the end of the day, good things really start to happen when you have the opportunity to be in front and be able to show what you know. You have to work hard and have to be talented, but it is also about opportunity and exposure.”  

 

Due to the success of   this work, she was asked to take over the purchasing function at the company on an interim basis, placing her in charge of supply management as Director of North American Purchasing.  And, when Unilever purchased  Best Foods in 2000, Oka was asked to stay on as a vice president in supply management. “That job was about bringing together two cultures, reorganization, restructuring, and bringing the team together so that they could act as one…..which is a lot easier to say than to do.  It takes a lot of persistence and keeping people focused forward than focused on the differences.” 

 

As part of Unilever’s executive development program, Oka was selected to  go on a “leadership journey” to the “tundra in Iceland.”  It was there, based on the leadership exercises the executives completed, that Oka came to understand that her life as she was living it was not accurately reflecting her true priority: her family.  

 

“I realized that I was failing at what was most important to me.  It started to gel in my head that it is not about balance [between work and family life] because they are not opposing forces; they are both a part of who I am.  Once I realized that they all fit together, they all had a piece in creating what I needed to be, I could go home and be very clear of what part of me was for work and what part of me was for family. The main difference was being able to make the commitment that when I am with my family, I am 100% with my family.  It is not that my head is at work but my body is with my family. And, when I’m at work, I’m at work.  The authenticity of being able to say it, mean it, and show it, made me leaving all the time for work travel a non-issue [for my son].” 

 

After 20 years with Best Foods/Unilever, Oka left to join Sodexo 6 years ago. “In the 6 years I’ve been here, we, as a team, have redefined Sodexo’s approach to the supply marketplace and increased the value we generate.”  

 

While Oka has never had a formal  mentor, she points to her father, a pioneer in the computer industry, as a source for wise counsel and as a huge influence on her.  “He would talk about work politics. I actually picked up a lot of my business values from those discussions around the dinner table.” 

 

And, although she has had to figure it out for herself along the way, she is doing her best to share what she knows. “I have mentees, some from my prior jobs, some from University, and some within Sodexo.  It allows me to share the things I didn’t get growing up in my career.  Early women in the industry just didn’t have that support system, which made it harder for us.” 

 

She advises women in the industry to “be very connected to who they are, and make sure they are authentic. So much of what happens in your career is about how you are perceived and how you are perceived is in your control.  Being comfortable in your skin – to me, that’s a big part of it.”