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ALUMNI PROFILESComputer Technology (SCT) Corp., a$200 million company based inMalvern, Pa., that provides technologyoutsourcing and software productservices. She and her husband, asenior executive with the U.S. CustomsService, live in McLean, Va.Her previous jobs included 13 yearsat Honeywell, from 1971 to 1984, thelast two as director of industry operations;two years as vice president,merchant banking systems, at BankersTrust; and eight years at Student LoanMarketing Association (Sallie Mae),the last two as senior vice president,systems and new business activities.She has been in the workforce fulltimesince Wharton with the exception ofone year, because, as she puts it, “I wasso unhappy when I wasn’t working.”Along the way, she had three children(and one full-time housekeeper).The oldest, Beth Peck, graduated fromWharton’s MBA program last May andis now a financial analyst in the acquisitionsand divestitures group atDuPont in Wilmington, Del. Beforeattending Wharton, she earned herundergraduate degree in chemistryfrom the University of Virginia andspent five years at Baxter Diagnosticsin Miami.Suzanne Peck didn’t steer herdaughter towards Wharton “in thesense that she held up her own experienceand said, ’This is your life plan,follow in my footsteps,’” says BethPeck. “Her influence was moresubtle. Because of what she has accomplished,I saw that it was possible for awoman to go to Wharton and be verysuccessful in life. She led by examplemore than by deliberate plan.”Beth Peck, who was one of 202women (in a class of 764 students) asopposed to seven, has clearly foundthe business environment hospitable.“So far, working at DuPont has beenwonderful,” she says. “My Whartondegree has opened doors to levels inthe corporation that I didn’t evenknow existed when I worked for Baxter.”She and her husband, anattorney, live in Narberth, Pa.Suzanne Peck’s early career experienceswere, not surprisingly, differentfrom her daughter’s. “I would say thatfor the first 20 years of my career, Iworked with virtually no womenbecause computer technology wascoming out of engineering, whichtended to attract only men,” she says.Although her goal at one point hadbeen to be an advertising copywriter,“I stayed with technology because thepeople were so smart and so honest.But they were not extraordinary communicators.One of the things I coulddo for them was translate. I could putinto business terminology their goalsand the opportunities they saw fortechnology.” ”STEVE POLSKY, W’86:NEW VOICE IN TELECOMMUNICATIONSBack in 1988, when Steve Polsky was working in new productdevelopment at GTE in Dallas, he and his colleagues usedto joke during lunch hours about starting their own companies.Within a year, Polsky had found a partner, left his job, andentered that exhilarating, exhausting process of building acompany out of nothing.Well, not exactly nothing. Polsky had a number of advantagesthat helped him launch VoicePlex Corp., a softwarecompany whose product was a flexible system combiningvoicemail, IVR (interactive voice response) and automatedattendant service capabilities.First, as a graduate of the five-year, dual-degree JeromeFisher Program in Management & Technology, Polsky hadspecialized in both computer science and finance. Second, atGTE he had joined a management training program inengineering that rotated him to laboratories in Florida, Massachusettsand North Carolina and eventually landed him inDallas where he worked on new product introduction in thevoice messaging area.And third, his father Carl Polsky, a tax attorney and practiceprofessor at Wharton, co-guaranteed a $200,000 workingcapital loan to Steve and his partner, Sohail Sattar, also a formerGTE employee. More importantly, he offered his sonadvice that would prove especiallyuseful, such as a) set up thebusiness as a Sub S company andb) make sure from the beginningthat you are audited by a reputableaccounting firm.All that said, Polsky and Sattarspent close to three years workingseven-day weeks, sleepingfour hours a night, and living offbologna and turkey sandwiches,“although as the businessexpanded, we stepped up to TacoBell, and eventually to the OliveGarden,” Polsky adds. He didn’tdraw a salary for two years, but hePOLSKYdid get a break from his roommates.“They never charged me for utilities because theyknew I would never be home to use them,” he says.In hindsight, VoicePlex was the right idea at the right time.“We were selling to an existing market, including banks,which meant that we had proven, established customers,”says Polsky. “And technologically, our competitors were basedContinued on page 2423W HARTON ALUMNI MAGAZINE
MIAMI Continued from page 15in the Air Force for six years, serving in both Vietnam and thenin Panama, where he met his wife. They have two children, ason, 13, and a daughter, 12, and live in South Coral Gables.After Wharton, Miller worked for United California Bankfirst in Los Angeles and then in Rio de Janeiro. In 1978 hemoved to Panama as a credit manager for First National Bankof Boston. In 1981 he joined Groupo Harari, managing theirreal estate properties in Panama and the U.S. until 1987, whenhe joined Banco Disa as acting general manager. He movedto Atlantic Security in 1990.OSCAR RAMIREZ, WG’76PRESIDENT, BOLIVAR TRADING COMPANYWhen Oscar Ramirez and his father were looking to start a newcompany, they contacted friends, studied the market, anddecided on Bolivar Trading. That was in 1986, and today, theFAVORITE RESTAURANTFabios(in Fort Lauderdale)rsHyattF AVORITEH OTEL$6 million Miami-based companysells petroleum equipment, includingtanks, underground pipe, leakdetection systems, lube equipment,carwashes and gasolinestations, to major oil companies—Shell, Texaco and Exxon, amongothers —throughout CentralAmerica, the Caribbean and South America.The company has 10 employees in Miami and another 30employees in seven offices in Central America.Ramirez was born and raised in Nicaragua and educated inthe U.S. at Georgia Tech and Wharton. In 1976 he went towork for his father’s bank in Panama, and seven years laterbecame vice president of another family business, ColacoInternational, a debt collection company. Today, in additionto his responsibilities as president of Bolivar Trading, he ispresident of both Colaco and Bolivar International, a holdingcompany in Panama.His wife, whom he met at Georgia Tech, is American. Theyand their two children, ages 17 and 18, live in Fort Lauderdale.His business, Ramirez says, “is changing all the time. Thereare always new technologies being implemented, especiallynow that gas stations are being built that are environmentallysafe. So every year, the equipment is constantly beingupgraded.“The other challenge is finding good people, primarily engineers,who have contacts in different countries and know howto use and install the new technology.” ”RESEARCH WIRE Continued from page 21these alternative measures.$4Christopher D. Ittner, David F. Larcker, and Madhav V. Rajan;The Choice of Performance Measures in Annual Bonus ContractsIN HIGHER EDUCATION,QUALITY PAYS LONG-TERM DIVIDENDSAttending a higher quality college can increase one’sfuture wages by as much as 20 percent, according to astudy led by Kermit Daniel, assistant professor of public policyand management. The study compared the earnings ofmen who had similar backgrounds, but who attended collegesof different quality. More than 500 four-year collegesand universities were ranked on a quality scale accordingto such factors as student-faculty ratio, percentage of facultywith PhDs, and per-student spending rates.“While there is talk of spending cuts in higher educationthat would result in lower faculty-to-student ratios and lessper-student spending,” Daniel says, “our research suggeststhat these proposed cuts would have a negative impact onthe future wage earnings of college graduates.” The studyalso found that the wages of black men vary more byquality of college than the wages of whites, while a raciallydiverse student body increases the earnings of bothblack and white male students. In addition, the authors,controlling for quality, found no evidence that attending aprivate university vs. a public university would increasefuture wages.$4Kermit Daniel, Dan Black, and Jeffrey Smith; College Quality andthe Wages of Young Men ”P OLSKY Continued from page 23on proprietary systems. Because of advances in computers,we could base our product on standard computing platforms,which meant it was cheaper and gave us more flexibility andmore choices of technologies to integrate.”VoicePlex also benefited from relationships with existingcompanies. For example, GTE eventually agreed to marketthe company’s product, which led to clients like Zale Corp.and Texaco. From 1990 to 1993, the company grew an averageof 300 percent a year, hired eight employees and movedto a bigger office.In August 1994, when VoicePlex sales were $4.4 millionand the company had 23 employees, Polsky and Sattar soldout to InterVoice, a leader in interactive voice response systemsbased in Dallas, for $8 million and 255,000 shares ofcommon stock. “We were essentially a very small companyselling to very large companies, at a time when the industrywas consolidating,” says Polsky whose official title was chiefoperating officer and executive vice president. “We neededa financial underpinning, which meant either going publicor finding a partner or buyer. The best solution was selling.”Polsky now works for InterVoice as vice president of operationsfor the telecommunications systems division.“It’s an exciting process to start your own company,” hesays. “But it has difficult moments and very tough decisionshave to be made along the way. I recently saw a sign that saysit all: ‘The road to success is mostly made up of detours.’” ”24W INTER 1996
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Page 11 and 12: FEATUREMark D. Smith, MD, WG’89:e
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