A corporate "star" now on her own - Nancy Woodhull

Nation's Business, Jan, 1992 by Sharon Nelton

One of this country's "star" women executives has quit corporate life to join the wave of women entrepreneurs. Nancy Woodhull left Time Publishing Ventures, the new-business division of Time Warner, this past November to launch Nancy Woodhull & Associates Inc., a consulting firm aimed at helping companies enhance profits by increasing their understanding of women as employees and as consumers.

"We need some bridges between the corporate world and the woman's world," says Woodhull, who was executive vice president and editor-in-chief of Southern Progress Corp., a Time Publishing Ventures unit based in Birmingham, Ala. She was previously president of Gannett News Service and of Gannett New Media, the research and development arm of the Gannett Co.

Woodhull already has her first client: her last employer. She will be developing strategies to help Time Publishing understand and attract women readers for its two book-publishing operations and such magazines as Southern Living, Cooking Light Parenting, and Martha Stewart's Living.

In addition, Woodhull has entered into an agreement with American Opinion Research, a national market-research company based in Princeton, N.J., to develop an annual syndicated study to track attitudes and actions among women.

Woodhull says the research on women that's currently available to business generally has at least two problems: It's not in-depth, and it usually represents a point of view, such as that of an advertiser or an interest group.

"What I'm trying to do is get at the facts and do a real examination of women regionally, ethnically, socioeconomically, and so on," says Woodhull, who expects to open offices in Birmingham, New York, and Washington, D.C.

As an entreprenuer, Woodhull says, he is turning her avocation--helping women in the business world--into her vocation. She is president of the National Women's Hall of Fame and a founding co-chair, with Betty Friedan, of Women, Men and Media, a national group that monitors how women are covered in the media.

Her decision to start her own company was partly influenced by the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas controversy. She saw the event as divisive and felt the time was right to launch an enterprise that would counter misunderstanding and confusion in the workplace and bring people closer together.

"I don't think that the Hill-Thomas thing was about sexual harassment," she adds. "I thought it was about control." Women reacted strongly to Hill's charges, she says, because they still feel other people have power over them in the workplace. Workers need to feel that they have control over their own destiny, Woodhull says. As the work force becomes more diverse, she adds, "corporations are going to have to have more comfort with relinquishing a little bit of control so that people do feel as if they have more power over themselves, and they need to assist men and women in working shoulder to shoulder together."

Does Woodhull's new venture signal a personal dissatisfaction with corporate life and her place in it?

"It puts me totally in charge," she answers, "and I'm excited about that."