Speaking of Rochester; 131; Christine Whitman

How do you do ladies and gentlemen I'm Barbara Connell. This is program is called Speaking of Rochester. On this program we discuss the past of the present and the future to some extent of our community. What makes it what it is and we usually do that with a distinguished citizen of the day we have as a guest on the program. The chairman president and chief executive officer of one of Rochester's fast growing high tech industries a very important part of Rochester's future. And we're very proud to welcome her as a guest. She is Christine Whitman. Christine welcome to the program. Do you have problems being confused with the governor of New Jersey. Absolutely. All the time. And I've always hoped that I would get some special treatment at the Newark airport but I haven't so far. I see well you do travel quite a bit in your work but you I travel all the time and I've been asked in New York and Washington Philadelphia that region has often asked me if I was the governor of New Jersey.

Well. You have a role here that's every bit as important as being a governor I think. And you have an interesting background in that that you've always been a righteous Terry and it's not correct I was born in Fairport. I wasn't born there but I have lived in Fairport since I was a young girl. And and your husband is a teacher in Fairport. He teaches at Brighton high school right now you know as I said each year they're very good. Well now tell us a little something about how you got into business and what's happened to the businesses you've been in since you said you came here. OK well thank you Barbara. I actually didn't plan to become CEO of a company either. I. I began my career at the University of Rochester I worked in the Biochemistry Department there and you had a chemical degree from Syracuse did. I graduated from Syracuse

and began working in the Biochemistry Department there and worked there for five years and then joined the products and became a product manager in the marketing department CV so you stand for something. It stands for Consolidated vacuum Corp and that's the that's the characteristic of it. That's where I was although that I had liked is changed. It's always involve the use of vacuums That's right that's right I joined the company as a product manager in the chemical products division and I worked in the area of vacuum distillation and vacuum pump fluids where we made chemicals that were used in pumps that were used for creating vacuum is vacuum can be used for different things for instance in the salt business it can be used to hasten the evaporation of salt brine pumped up out of the earth. How is it you used been used differently in the different businesses you've been

intimate. That's right. Vacuum which is just reduced pressure is used in where I started in the distillation business we reduce the pressure so that we could distill large molecules without causing thermal degradation or having them break apart and other words if you heated them they would break apart. That's right and that's right want to do that so you used a vacuum instead. That's right and then later as I moved from that product line to other product lines vacuum was used for an evaporation process where you were taking a metal and trying to evaporate the metal in quick and and deposit it on a surface that was located adjacent from it from a source of the metal. And why would you want to put a metal on something to provide conductivity electricity. That's right and there were many uses for.

These processes where you would deposit thin films and one would be in and say optical coating where you were doing a coating of a lens and there are places here in Rochester that do that. There are other applications for thin film deposition where you would want to coat a silicon wafer for making an integrated circuit. Another application for doing deposition would be the architectural glass you see in Windows that uses thin film technology. Well your companies started working for Eastman Kodak where That's right and it was a barren menal vacuum division for Eastman Kodak started in 1034 and went through a whole series of lives as you said to do with the distilling of vitamin E you started with Vitamin A and Vitamin E and distillation products in Rochester and ultimately Eastman Chemical. Now still manufactures products that were manufactured back in the early days of Vitamin E. E. Alpha to call for all my Nicholas to rides

those kinds of products use vacuum distillation rose very complicated stuff and not necessarily get into the details of it but you move from. From vitamins to what next. Well I took over several different product lines within the company of the company provided equipment that used vacuum and there were a number of different applications. One was optical coding equipment and another was making coding equipment for the electronics industry and making starting with evaporation and then going to something called sputtering and thats a method for depositing thin films metals as you mentioned aluminum or titanium copper different types of metals on silicon wafers and today in industry you hear about copper that the big thing is copper because you can. And you can make it faster.

I seize using that copyright and so people are using thin film technology to make the what they call inner Connex in integrated circuits and was very high tech businesses that is involved in the use of clean rooms and things of that chatter where you have to you have to wear a mask and in order to keep impurities from getting into your process for quality control the price is not right. It's the sort of thing that I think average fella like me doesn't understand very much but we know that it involves a lot of very sophisticated equipment and it must involve a great deal of capital investment. It does. And and apparently it's a technique that used in different industries and so you move through a line of products. And what is CBC doing now. Well we make these machines that are used for depositing thin films either on integrated circuits or on the heads in the disk drive of your computer. So if you look at

similar to work with computer chips if you look inside your computer there's a chip which is a microprocessor chip there's a memory chip and there's also something called the disk drive in the disk drive is where you store all the information. Longterm And if you look inside. For example if you press save on your computer it goes the information goes outside your computer. In the short term memory into longer term memory which would be on the disk drive other words you're right on the cutting edge of an indispensable part of this technological drive toward Internet computer work and so forth. Presumably your your product has to be changed constantly to meet the needs of the. That's right. So so you've had to to stay astride the dramatically changing product mix haven't you.

We like to say we have to reinvent ourselves every several years. Where is your plan and how big is the employment there. We have a plant here in Rochester on Lee Road. On the west side and there are about two hundred twenty people working in that plant. We have about 50 people working in Fremont California. They have another 25 people working in Dallas Texas and we just finished the merger of a company in Alexandria Virginia and there's another hundred twenty people there. And so you're growing company. And the people you hire have to be very educated skilled and heavily trained. We hire many different types of engineering expertise. As for example we have software engineers we have mechanical and electrical engineering people as well as material scientists and individuals who specialize in physics. Can you get the kind of skills you need.

It's a challenge. It's a it's a tight market. The software engineering field is is is very popular right now and very difficult to recruit people with the appropriate skills. So we've been working closely with the local schools with our ITN University Rochester Gena CEO Cornell Clarkson RPI and developing a pipeline of students that we can then bring into the organization. You have to have a skilled workforce to be able to glean enough workers for your own needs. That's right. It's just as one of the things about Rochester. Yeah it's a great it's a great community of high tech people. It is a challenge to recruit experienced people to this region and I think it's because the world doesn't know what a high tech community Rochester is. So when you go to California or Texas or some other high tech regions and you try to recruit people to this area it is and an educational process to to

show them what other high tech companies are here. And that's probably one of the reasons you have to do a heavy promoting him in the colleges in this area. That's right. Right because people don't want to come to the Org.. That's right. Now I assume you have come to some conclusions about that. I have some strong feelings about the future of New York and the future of Rochester. Yeah I think I think that we have a challenge ahead of us and an opportunity I always like to say these are opportunities for the business leaders in this community to come together and put some strategies in place and long term strategies to help with economic development in this region I think that we were seeing an out migration of younger people from this region because they're going to the high tech companies in other parts of the country. And it's it's a challenge for this community to make sure that we grow and nurture the high tech industry here in the region so we can create that enthusiasm to recruit more people to the region.

Business in general has been leaving New York state because it's a high tech state. Is that particularly true of the high tech industries or are they more likely to stay than others. Well I think if you look at where high tech industries start you look at areas around. Strong educational regions and if you think about the Silicon Valley region you think about the Boston Rosen those regions are high tech so area so it's interesting. When a company is just starting out it's all about people not as much about the tax base as you get bigger you start worrying more about the tax base but if you think about it when a company's starting up they're not usually paying any taxes because they're not making any money. Is America safe. No I would I would say that the United States is showing that we are more productive than the rest of the world right now our productivity levels are higher than

anywhere else in the world right now. When I was a well one reason I think is we work many more hours. If you think about Europe there's longer vacations in Europe. And I I think that computer technology that's been embraced in the United States faster than other parts of the world has helped with our overall production with technology is one of the goose's that laid the golden Absolutely. Technology is there and computers and the peripherals are really helping the productivity of American workers. No question about on the other hand it's a race. Absolutely. And one one challenge I think we have in the United States is that there aren't enough people going into the math and science area. And so if you look that there's been a decline in role in electrical engineering. And so it's required that we recruit from outside the United States because there just aren't enough people being graduated from the U.S. schools in in the type of high tech

areas so it I think it is a concern that we all face. However women are beginning to go into this area to a greater degree than they used to in the past are they not. I think that generally we're pretty good students compared to many in colleges. I think there's still. There's a lot of work to be done to encourage women to go into the technology area the manufacturing areas. If you if you look at the the numbers of engineering students that are being graduated the number of women particularly in Electrical and Mechanical Engineering are still relatively low. More women are going into chemistry biology sciences but not so much in the engineering area. Do you have any theories about why you've been so successful in this high tech area. It's I think it's been his choice as usual to find a woman CEO. Much less

in a very very complicated technological industry. As I was just about to say I think it's a matter of been Durance and being willing to solve the tough problems. It takes it takes someone who's willing to put the time into it. And not everybody is willing it you know running a company is not for everyone. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to do that so you have to make some choices. It's been described to me as a workaholic. But you're also interested community aren't you. Yeah yeah. And if you focus particular part of the life of the community well I have I have certainly tried to. Work in the United Way. Boris was famous for as you know so I've tried to contribute as much as I can there and I've

also been active with high technology of Rochester trying to encourage a young startup companies to become involved in this area. Well there's high technology to Rochester I haven't heard of that organization. OK it's part of the Chamber of Commerce. Yes. So you're working through the Chamber of Commerce I'm working with the chamber very grammar and also the industrial management council. Both Tom Mooney and Sandy Parker are doing a really nice job. We have the Visitors Association of Greater Rochester visitors associated with that. They are doing a very nice job trying to promote the region as well. So whenever I can I have tried to help and the mayor. I've been promoting the music fest this summer. Oh good. That's a great that's taking your hobby of yours is it. Well I think that we have to make it fun for the types of

people who like to work in high technology they like music they like culture you know work hard play hard go classical music buff yourself. I like music I like classical music and jazz as well so. Do you have with all these activities you have time for much family life. I have two children I have a son Zachary who's 12 and he's at the Pittsford middle school. And he likes to play lacrosse. Probably getting ready for the lacrosse game right now. High tech with me and my daughter Kim is a freshman at the University of Illinois and she's studying bio engineering the same sort of thing that you were originally. Well we'll see. And you and your husband is absorbed with his teaching. He teaches physics at Brighton high school and he has I'm very proud that he has been able to recruit lots and lots of physics students. At Brighton they have an enormous enrollment in physics which I think I always

encourage when we have our children's day at students I make them take a vow that they're going to take physics. So future students for him the physics is very much with us. Well it it you know you need to take physics so that you know how things work. I once was in Washington with a group of lawyers who asked me how their computer worked our there their. Calculator worked and I thought do we should all know how our calculators were. I think I'm not surprised lawyers said that I'm a lawyer myself. Christine looking ahead what was the great problem we have to solve if we are to continue to be a successful community. I really think economic development is the fundamental challenge that this community faces. We have many challenges either obviously education and and I think that

are the education of our youth is very very important. But I think that the the first challenge we have is making sure that we have the economic base here to be able to support all the activities that we're working on all. I mean we've built some wonderful infrastructure if you look around this if you go downtown you can see that it really is a lot of work being done in this community making it a great much nicer place to live. What I'm worried about is that there won't be enough businesses here to support the number of people who want to be here. And I think you said earlier that people don't understand what Gen Rochester is. Because they associate it with New York and think of New York as an area that's of the area. And we have marketing is pretty admirable in marketing the area. When I travel. I travel around the country all the time and when I travel to other parts of the region they don't know who Rochester is at all. No one

thinks of Rochester as a high tech community outside of Rochester. In Rochester we know what we have. We have some wonderful companies here but but the rest of the world doesn't see us the way we do here. We think of ourselves as fortunate to be in an area like western New York and to achieve what we've achieved but we don't realize that it's very important that other people understand that too. So marketing does become marketing the area that's very important right. It's a real challenge for recruiting people to this area. It's a huge challenge and takes a tremendous amount of time but once they get here they love it. And no one ever wants to leave. Do you travel a lot trying to attract employees. We have a high tech workforce here. But but you can't really. Expect everybody to come from right in this area can you.

Yeah the challenge you face when you're growing a business very rapidly you need to hire people who've done it before in your same industry. And so we you know we can get some wonderful students fresh out of school but if you're growing you need the managers and the managers in the industry the specific industry that you're in. So those are the ones that we have a hard time getting here and and I think we're not the only company many of the high tech companies have a hard time recruiting those seasoned experienced managers to the area. And then if you can't get those you know the best managers then then it's difficult for them to set the direction for the people. The more junior people are coming in and learning. Let's look at your business specifically the U.S. the road clear ahead. Are you likely to change product again as time goes on. You do have to be in a position to grasp the opportunity if it comes along don't you. Yes. Our customers introduce new products every six months.

So every time they introduce you not to put out new models yeah and a new disk drive or our a new computer or need new characteristics for the parts that make it up. And our machines do the material science for them so they may put a new material in the stack of thin films that they are using to make their chip go faster or make their head read the disk faster. It's usually faster cheaper smaller. Any of those things are what our customers are driving for. And so we have to figure out how we're going to provide the manufacturing equipment so they can produce those products first. And so if we can't provide that there may be some other company in the world who can and we have to constantly be at the forefront of technology with the solution that those customers want so that we continue to be their supplier. It's pretty hard to see the ultimate future of the computer industry isn't it is there

it is changing so fast. I've heard it said that we double the amount of knowledge available in the world every 10 years or. That doesn't mean we're necessarily getting wiser but it means that we're we have to have the capacity to handle a great many more facts. But it's a huge opportunity because the amount of information in this world that is in digital format is really very small right now and so all of that all that paper all those words all those images are going to be transformed to digital and those all have to be stored somewhere. So there's lots of opportunity for companies that are in this. If I were that I'm on the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian and we're trying to digitize our collection to give us outreach beyond Washington. Absolutely there is a great cause that's going to take a long time to do that so. So there isn't necessarily that point beyond which there is no one in the computer industry to continue

to to try to do things faster and better all the time. I don't think anybody is ready to go back to the old ways anymore. Well that's a great challenge for you. And it means you have to be thoroughly familiar with what's going on. Not just able to administer your own business but but able to predict its future and be prepared to grasp that future doesn't it. That's the trick isn't it. We've got to have a lot of very highly educated people willing to take. Risks in a changing world and in a world that says it's so global now that we have to have people in our organization from all over the world that understand the culture you sell all over the world we do. We sell about 40 percent of our products go to Asia and Europe that's in the great Rochester tradition too and that's right that's right where they were the biggest export of community per

capita. So we had to say yes so we have to be able to know how to sell in other parts of the world. Well we wish you luck in this thank you growing challenge. It's a fascinating world as you see it and as we see it if we understand it well I'm sure you know it. Thank you very much for being on our program today friends our guest has been Christine Whitman the chief executive officer of CVC. Who makes complicated things for a very complicated world. We're thank you for being with us Jim. Thank you for being with us also. This is Barbara Kopple speaking of Rochester. If you'd like a copy of this program send 995 to WXXI post

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