Column: The power of an open mind
“Retirement is both dusk and dawn ”¦ the end of one career and the beginning of a new one.”
That is the closing sentence of the retirement message that Carol Wilder-Tamme has posted on the website of the Darien Chamber of Commerce. Although her 10-year tenure as the chapter”™s president ends May 15, if the past is prologue she will continue to make a lasting impact in her next venture.
At first glance, when one looks at Wilder-Tamme”™s career, there doesn”™t seem to be anything in her background that would suggest how effective she would be in bringing the chamber into the 21st century.
“In 2004, when I came here, a key board member did not have an email address and I needed to drive to the library to add or change a member on the website because we did not have a database,” she said. “Today, from my desk, I write three blogs and reach out to businesses on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and anyone can find us on the Web because of our very high SEO ranking.”
From a beginning of spotty emails and a lackluster website, Wilder-Tamme leaves behind a striking online “calling card” and an inviting portal to the chamber.
She knew that if the chamber was to remain relevant in the digital era, she needed to find and manage the resources to accomplish the task ”” and, along the way, learn something that would make her the tech-savvy business person she is today.
That “take charge/make it happen” ability was evidenced at the start of her career when she was hired as the first female director of food services/nutrition for the 1,000-bed Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, responsible for supervising 250 employees who provided food to a large patient population, a tall order itself. But, she was presented with the biggest challenge yet when all the patients needed to be moved in a single day to a newly constructed hospital across the street from the old one without interrupting food service.
“It was a huge logistical undertaking,” she said. ”On the morning of the move, we fed breakfast to patients and needed to have the next meal ready for them when they moved into their new accommodations later that day.”
It was an accomplishment in her long career that taught her a valuable lesson. “You need to have and know how to work with a team to accomplish huge tasks,” she said. “It holds true for any job.”
Later, in a dramatic career change resulting from an overseas business opportunity for her husband, she and her family, including two children moved to Indonesia. She quickly adjusted to an entirely different culture and way of life in a non-Western country. She was also appointed marketing director of the Jakarta International Community Center with the responsibility of working with CEOs of international companies to provide weeklong, in-depth orientations for employees and spouses. What made her effective at the new job, especially when she lectured before groups of new arrivals, was her ability to draw on and share her personal experiences because, like the audience, she knew what it felt like to be a new kid on the street in Jakarta.
When she returned to the U.S., Wilder-Tamme resumed her original career focus in the health care sector. Her most recent position before the chamber appointment was as director of the women, infants and children program for the Norwalk Health Department.
As she prepares to move on, Wilder-Tamme offers this advice to her successor: “Keep an open mind, learn to prioritize and, most of all, take advantage of the best minds in Darien as there so many of them who will be able to help you.”
And what”™s next for her? She will devote more time as editor and writer on her NutritionFreshOnline.com blog, extolling the benefits of eating healthy and providing tips to prepare dishes with fresh, natural foods.
But her activity as a registered dietitian is buzzing not only in hyperspace. Closer to home is a coffee shop, Darien Doughnut, where some time ago, she told the owner that he should also provide customers frequenting a nearby yoga studio with healthy options, specifically high-protein, low-sugar breakfast cookies. He did and named the new items in honor of her: Carol”™s Breakfast Cookies. The owner is Bill Tamme, her husband.
The Winners Circle focuses on successful female entrepreneurs and on successful attorneys, male and female. Submit suggestions to Bill Fallon: bfallon@westfairinc.com.