TAKING CARE AND TAKING CHARGE
Patricia Diaz Dennis finds success in balance

By SUSAN SPEER
Photography LIZ GARZA-WILLIAMS

As a newlywed, Patricia Diaz Dennis had her mind set on being a teacher. Her husband, however, sensed that her heart was somewhere else. A law student at the time, Michael Dennis told his wife, “You’re winning all of the arguments at home. Why don’t you go to law school?” Diaz Dennis decided to let her husband chalk one up in the “win” column and was accepted at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

As with most newly minted lawyers, the first several years of her career were predictable; she began as an associate attorney in a traditional law firm. She was the first woman and the first Hispanic to join their ranks, and she quickly found her niche in labor law. Along the same timeline, she and her husband were also starting their family, and Diaz Dennis learned that the demands of her job and the demands of motherhood were hard to reconcile, even more so in the nearly all-male law practice. She took a corporate job that gave her more time for family and then accepted an offer to lead labor relations for the American Broadcasting Company. She had no way of knowing at the time that the ABC job would later open new doors for her. Diaz Dennis loved labor law but was completely unprepared for the offer that came next: a federal appointment to the National Labor Relations Board in Washington, D.C. To her, the appointment was a huge deal. “I was 36 years old, the first person in my family to attend college, and here I was, going to Washington on a presidential appointment, to shape labor law for the entire country,” she says. “My dad was an Army sergeant, and my mom was a GS- 5 government worker; I was thinking they’d be so impressed.”

She flew her parents to Washington for the swearing in; they were treated to “insider” tours, introductions to high ranking government officials and VIP treatment at the swearing-in ceremony. “I kept waiting for one of them to do something or say something, but none of it impressed them — I couldn’t believe it!” she says. Her mother finally cracked when, back at her new office, an assistant asked a question about Diaz Dennis’ new staff. “She referred to some GS-15 employees — that’s as high as the GS rank goes, and, finally, my mother leaned over and said to my dad, ‘This must be an important job — she has GS- 15s working for her!’”

TIME AND PLACE
It was the 1980s, and Diaz Dennis was in Washington, D.C., at a time when it was good to be a woman in a federal job. “President Reagan appointed a lot of women to positions where women weren’t typically appointed,” she says. She was acutely aware that what she did — and how she did it — mattered. “Women who start their careers first learn quickly that it gets hard when you have children,” she says.

When she brought her infant daughter in to the office, even the women were surprised when Diaz Dennis broke away for a few minutes to breast-feed. “Nobody did that at the time, and I wanted to find ways to let women know that it was OK to have a career and be a mother,” she says. Diaz Dennis was ready to return to California and resume her private career in labor law when she received another federal appointment — this time as the commissioner of the Federal Communications Commission. “I had a reputation as a labor lawyer. This was an entirely different industry,” she says. She knew about the FCC from her broadcasting experience at ABC, but had a vague idea at best that the FCC regulated the phone business. Her husband convinced her that the communications industry was the better path to follow. “He said that labor law was changing and that my options would be limited if I stayed,” she says.

She had a steep learning curve, but dived in headfirst to learn the intricacies of the industry. As exhilarating as her career success was, she also felt the pressure. “Federal appointments are high-profile jobs; I didn’t want to fail,” she says. She didn’t want to fail her family, either. Diaz Dennis and her husband had to make some decisions about work and family life. “We had three young children,” she says. “You can’t have two careers going on without some help, without some sacrifice.” Her husband took the lead with the day-to-day needs of the kids, Diaz Dennis resigned her position with the FCC to return to private practice and corporate law for a couple of years. Then she got a call that would present the next surprising change in direction: another federal appointment, this time as the assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs for the State Department. “The job was incredible,” she says. “I have so much more perspective now, especially about women’s rights around the world."

NEW WORLDVIEW
The post took Diaz Dennis to places where she witnessed situations she could barely comprehend. “I had never seen poverty like I saw in places like Africa and the Middle East,” she says. “I was unprepared for how brutalizing it is … you see women whose bodies are giving out under the weight of hard, physical labor, and at the same time, they’re watching their children get sick and die, and there’s nothing they can do about it. The politics and the legacy of hatred … the kids in these places are growing up with this anger. It’s not something you can ignore.” It was a brief but meaningful time for Diaz Dennis, who returned to corporate law soon after. She and her family moved to San Antonio in the mid-1990s, when she accepted an offer to work for SBC Communications, which, when it merged with AT&T in 2005, became the largest telecommunications company in the United States.Nearly 12 years later, she’s still with AT&T as senior vice president and assistant general counsel, longer than she’s been with any other employer. “My career hasn’t been linear, like most attorneys’; I’ve really zigzagged, which I think has been beneficial,” she says.

GIRL POWER
The experiences Diaz Dennis had in her last government
job reconnected her to a familiar touchstone. “My dad was in the Army, so we moved a lot, but I did have a chance to be a Brownie when we were stationed in North Carolina. I’ve always believed that girls who get into scouting develop confidence and characterthat will help them make good decisions as they grow up and start their careers and families,” she says. “What I saw in other parts of the world made me love Girl Scouts even more, because ofwhat it does for girls.”Her affinity for scouting led her up the volunteer ranks in the organization, and in 2005, she was appointed chair of the national board of directors for Girl Scouts of the USA — the first Hispanic woman in Girl Scouting’s highest position. Diaz Dennis is still proud to be a Girl Scout. She displays Girl Scout Cookie art in her office, right alongside her law degree, photographs of her shaking hands with presidents and other mementos of an extraordinary career.

She now tries to channel her State Department experiences into something she can apply to the lives of young girls in this country. As the organization prepares to observe its centennial anniversary in just a few years, Diaz Dennis says that one of her objectives is to make sure the organization is still relevant in today’s world. To do this, she explains, Girl Scouts must be able to capture the attention of girls who might not normally be exposed to Girl Scouts — particularly Hispanic girls — and get them hooked on scouting. “We have to get into the neighborhoods where scouting has never been before,” she says. “So many young girls in the inner city don’t even know about Girl Scouts. If your mom or grandmother never did it, and your friends in the neighborhood aren’t in Girl Scouts, how would you know about it? It would be easy to believe that it’s for some other girl, in some other part of town,” she says. Diaz Dennis is convinced that getting more girls into scouting could be the thing that changes their lives. “We wouldn’t have the drop-out and teen pregnancy rates we have today if we can get these girls into scouting, because they would have the confidence to make good decisions for themselves,” she declares.

VOICES CARRY
Her goals for the Girl Scouts have a lot of parallels to her identity as an attorney and businesswoman who also happens to be Hispanic. Diaz Dennis believes that women in general, but particularly women who fall into racial or ethnic minority groups, have several disadvantages in the workplace. Statistically lower educational attainment and pay disparity are two wellreported factors, but she says that women also hit the glass ceiling because of issues that are hard to find in most textbooks. “The workplace culture is still not family-friendly,” she says. “Women are now deciding that it’s not worth it to have a career that financially supports the family, but shortchanges them on everything else.

To keep women in the organization, that needs to change, and women need to speak up.” She adds that statistically, the challenges are greater for Latinas. A survey by Catalyst — a corporate researcher focusing on the issues of women in the workplace — revealed that more Hispanic women cite family commitments as a barrier to advancement than any other ethnic group. “The work-life balance hits women harder than it hits men, and culturally, Hispanic families rely on the women to care for the family, making it even more difficult,” she says. Another Catalyst survey, titled U.S. Business Leaders Exposed, backs up her claim, indicating that the adage, “women take care, while men take charge” is a top barrier for women in the workplace.

Diaz Dennis says that another roadblock women encounter at work is the lack of professional mentoring, or sponsorship relationships with influential people — advancement techniques men are unafraid to use. “Life isn’t a meritocracy —we do not get promoted because we deserve it, or because we did a good job,” she says. Rather, she describes it as a matter of exposure to the right people and being in the right place at the right time. “One of the reasons that we still see so many men where they are as executives and board members is because they all know each other,” she explains. “When an opportunity comes up, they recommend the people they know for the position.” She suggests taking a cue from the other team: “Men advance, in part, because they enjoy risk.

Women need to get more comfortable doing that. We’re socialized to please, and risk doesn’t fit with what we’ve been conditioned to do.” She attributes part of the problem to women not wanting to appear vulnerable in an office setting, remarking, “We’ve always had to work harder to prove ourselves, and to do that, we feel like we have to appear capable, or else we’ll fulfill that stereotype that women can’t do the job. We need to help each other a little more.” Diaz Dennis also says that women contribute to their own stress levels. She says, “When a man is asked to do something, he just does it, but women ponder the request, and sometimes, we overthink it. We’re more prepared than we think we are.”