homelighting.com

Magazine Online

Women in Lighting

Corbett Lighting’s Ana Hester relates how lighting turned her into an “adrenaline junkie”

To all of my friends in lighting, a happy holiday season and may I be the first to wish you a wonderful 2004.
     It’s with great pleasure that I introduce you to Ana Hester. Ana and I had the pleasure of working together several years ago. I was impressed with this lovely lady’s ability to deal with people and her understanding of design. Ana has many talents and unending energy. She is, in my opinion, a huge asset to our industry.
     I am very proud to bring you Ana:

It’s time to come out of the closet and confess that I am a junkie – an adrenaline junkie, that is.
     My critics will tell you that I ask too many questions, want to fix too many things, argue too many points, find too many angles, fight too many battles, look to beat improbable odds…in short, I am intense, highly driven, have impossible standards, and I am seldom completely happy.
     There is some truth to these allegations. When I am completely happy, it is for a very short period of time. Then I find something that, in my mind, could be improved. The unrealized potential makes me unhappy, so I set about improving it. I do this at work fairly successfully, and I have also tried it with people – with mixed results.
     It is true that I need a highly charged, accomplishment-driven environment where my skills and endurance are pushed to the limit. And what is normal to most, to me, is slightly claustrophobic.
     I wasn’t always like this, you know. I used to be perfectly average…until lighting came along.
     I had a very average upbringing on the other side of the Atlantic, in a small sunny country known for Port wine. In reality, I showed signs of the disease in early years. I was politically active in college and my first real trip as an adult was to Israel, “to find out who was right and who was wrong.” (Twenty-three years later, I am still looking for the answer, having discovered in the meantime those pesky shades of gray.) I also went to law school. This was another bad sign, since it trains one to fall in love with the intellectual excitement of debate.
     At some point, I met a great guy, came to the United States and married him. (Much later, I also discovered that I liked being single much better than being married, but those are other confessions.) For 14 years, the illness was under control. I had “normal jobs” in human services, then human resources. These jobs were frustrating at times, but normal. When we moved to south Florida, I went to work as director of human resources for Fine Art Lamps and became an adrenaline junkie.
     At Fine Art, I was exposed to a thrilling and provoking environment: product of exquisite design, the development process, a vibrant manufacturing organization, a team of peers of incredible creativity, energy level, drive, work ethic, and strength of character. I experienced the “high” you get from reps and customers when the product is a hit.
     What a lethal potion! I was infected by the excitement, the growth, and the challenging new projects and initiatives we carried out daily. I worked at Fine Art for five and one-half years and I have never been cured. When I left to go to Kichler in 1997, I took my budding adrenaline addiction, my cat, and my bags and moved across the country to Los Angeles. I started working for Kichler in LA on the day of the Ambience acquisition. I had taken the job completely on trust. I had only discussed the duties of the position by phone; they were fairly vague, but it sounded perfect for me – to integrate a new acquisition into the larger corporate environment while working with it separately to leverage its uniqueness. Relocate the factory. Grow the resources.
     Since Kichler had a lot of new initiatives going on at the time, I also had the opportunity to make contributions to various projects underway at the Mexican facility in Juarez. At headquarters, I was asked to be part of the selection and implementation of a new state-of-the-art information system that would network all of the company’s divisions. When we hired a general manager for Ambience in California, I moved to Cleveland. I then became product manager for Ambience and later for the Kichler Mirror Company. I continued to work with the Mexican facility on process improvement, manufacturing issues, and human resources. I had a wonderful apartment in Brecksville, but when people chatted me up on planes and asked, “Where do you live?”, I’d reply, “ My address and my things are in Cleveland, but I actually live on Continental Airlines.” Every day was an adrenaline rush; new challenges and opportunities, many different balls up in the air; I had a good time.
     After Kichler, I took a short detour from lighting and moved to Dallas to work as general manager for Montaage, a well-respected name in high-end decorative accessories. General managers have jobs full of adrenaline. They provide the “glue” that makes it possible (it ranges from having toilet paper in the bathrooms to having product on site to ship on time). They work in the proverbial guts of an organization and learn how to run a business. For this skill, I had a very good role model; the time was very well spent.
     Then came an offer from Corbett. Truthfully, the biggest advantage of this Corbett job was that I did not have to move to take it, I was already in Dallas (just kidding!). New play, new stage, new actors (mostly). New skills, new horizons.
     This was my first exposure to China. How can I describe the excitement of working in a country that is developing at supersonic speed? Where those we work with, simultaneously amaze us and frustrate us 500 times a day. Where the impossible happens every day, miracles happen every minute, red lights are “for reference only,” and five to a scooter is normal. Did anyone say adrenaline?
     Earlier this year, I lived in China for 2½ months, coordinating two projects for Corbett. By any standards, I had a luxury apartment in a luxury development, with a bed so hard that a fakir would not be ashamed to lie on it. For friends, I had our China office manager and great legions of devoted mosquitoes that refused to leave my side, especially at night. And I would do it again in a heartbeat.
     We have done so much good work at Corbett; updated an entire product line, regained market share for the company, revitalized the company’s image. We have done it always by breaking away from the product monotony so evident in today’s marketplace while staying true to the company’s tradition of design leadership and quality. If someone asked me to summarize my goal for my current efforts, I would reply: “My goal is the construction (on behalf of the product), of a case that is so compelling, that it renders the sale inevitable.”
     My critics will now roll their eyes and say: “There she goes again.” Hey, listen, critics: A girl’s gotta believe in something….
     I would like to thank Home Lighting & Accessories and Denis Caldora for the opportunity to write this article, but I would like to especially thank Theodore Roosevelt, an inspired man, whom, albeit un-enlightened about many modern topics, believed in the power of the Word and left us no end of good advice:
     To Ana Hester personally, Teddy Roosevelt said: “Live the strenuous life…”
     To Ana Hester’s critics, Teddy Roosevelt said:
     “It is not the critic who counts, nor the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat”
     And finally, to all the “women in lighting,” Teddy Roosevelt said: “Speak softly and carry a big stick…”