CSC Board Chair Pam Wheelock ’81 tells emerging women leaders to learn to make their voices heard

Is Minnesota Sports and Entertainment where you thought you would end up?

I've been here about five and a half years, which must rival about as long as I've been anywhere in a current job. I've been really fortunate to have some great opportunities in life and to be at the right place at the right time.

I’m not one of those who knew at age 15 exactly what I wanted to do with my life and had a game plan all laid out. So my career has taken me to some places that I would not have been able to predict. It's been challenging and fun.

You were among three sisters who came to St. Kate’s. What was that like?
I was a little reluctant to go where my two older sisters were because we have seven children in my family — all very close in age. I had had enough of “Oh, you are so-and-so's younger sister” in high school!

I really wanted to go to St. John’s, but I was the wrong gender, so I was going to go to St. Ben’s. But they ran out of on-campus housing.

So I thought, maybe I’ll wait a year. And bless my mother who said: “You're not waiting a year. You're going to get used to having an income, and you'll never end up going college. You’ve got to go somewhere now, and if you want to transfer at the end of the year, that's fine.”

So, I decided to go to St. Kate’s for a year and then transfer. But I instantly loved it. It was a great experience for me. It was the right environment and the right size, and I loved being in the Twin Cities.

It's where I began to blossom. I graduated in 1981 with a history major.

What or who influenced your career?
One of the most instructive years was working for Tim Penny when he was a member of Congress. Tim got very involved in the federal budget and thinking about economic issues. So part of my tenure there involved working with him on those economicissues on which he was spending time.

In working toward my master’s degree in applied economics at Marquette, I found an affinity with certain elements of economic theory. I think history and economics could be grouped together in the social sciences. It's really about human behavior in relationships and understanding what influences an action or a particular course.

I've always been most interested in the broad perspective but based on the understanding of the details, and that has served me well.

You have to do a lot of detail work to understand trends. That ability to do the soup-to-nuts work — all the little data entries that end up in the big economic projections and thinking about prioritization and key elements — that kind of broad-range thinking.

Whether you are the CFO of the state of Minnesota or in an organization like Minnesota Sports and Entertainment, that is where you add your value.

What was your path to Jesse Ventura’s gubernatorial staff?
Following graduate school, I came to work for the state of Minnesota in the department of finance and in 1992 joined Mayor Jim Scheibel’s staff as the city budget director.

Norm Coleman asked me to stay on as his mayoral chief of staff, so I worked in his office as deputy mayor and then as the director of planning and economic development for the city of St. Paul.

Following Jesse Ventura's gubernatorial election win, I was “on loan” from the city and joined professionals from the University of Minnesota to help the governor-elect in put together his first proposed budget during the transition. During that process I got to know Ventura, and at some point he asked me to become the commissioner of finance.

So what was being inside the Ventura administration like?
I had some really great colleagues. Most interesting for me was the diversity of that team.

It wasn't just that you had competent people — you had competent people who under any other circumstances wouldn't be in a gubernatorial administration together. Ted Mondale and Charley Weaver would never be in the same administration except for an Independence Party governor. The breadth of thinking that occurred might not have happened for a governor who had a deeply defined platform.

Just the fact that you had such a diverse group of people discussing and debating those issues led to public policy decisions that you wouldn't have had under either a Democrat or a Republican.

Ventura was a fabulous boss. The things that got done because he was governor will never be fully appreciated because there is no established process to advance and promote that legacy. Politicians on both sides have a lot of reasons to diminish and discredit what happened during his administration.

His challenge was never really being able to accept what he had to give up personally in order to hold that office. I don't think he expected or realized it would be 24/7 and that it would impinge on his personal life the way it did.

You've always worked “with the boys,” as it were, in traditionally male-dominated fields or professions.
That's largely been true. Working in different areas of economic planning and development, and even being in a lot of meetings with attorneys, there were many occasions where I was the only female in the room. But that slowly has changed and is still changing.

Did going to a women's college work against you?
There's always that debate — are you sheltering women from reality? For me, it was a transformational experience. I came from a small dairy farm in southern Minnesota, without a very good understanding of what opportunities were available and what I could do.

The supportive environment with faculty and staff who care about your personal development helped me understand what opportunities were available. To see so many female role models and confident senior executives was a great experience for me.

Were you raised to believe that college is important?
Neither of my parents had gone to college, and it was important to them that we'd do that. I was fortunate to go to school at a time when society had strong commitment to higher education. Even though I had scholarships and financial aid, I worked hard at three part-time jobs.

We can argue about whether education is changing, but I do think financial aid programs define what it means to be part of a society. It means investing in those who aren't related to you, and whom you may never meet, so they have the opportunity to make a meaningful investment in societal stability and community development.

What was attractive about MSE?
Minnesota Sports and Entertainment is the parent company. Obviously, the Minnesota Wild is the part that people know best, but the organization is much more complex.

We have the company that manages the Xcel Energy Center and River Centre and have a 70 percent interest in the company that does the premium food service in both. MSE also still owns an indoor lacrosse team and an American hockey league team.

Being responsible for multiple businesses has been fun and challenging. It involves strategic planning and developing growth opportunities.

MSE is a very public private company — both in terms of visibility and in terms of its relationship with its landlord, the city of St. Paul, which owns the Xcel arena. In that way, it's been a logical and easy transition for me from the public sector to the private sector.

I love working in downtown St. Paul, I love the people I work with, and I think it's a great organization. It really is a values-based organization. We spend a lot of time talking about our relationship with our own employees and our fans, as well as our responsibility as a corporate citizen in the community.

To what do you attribute your career opportunities?
I've never been one to plan my professional life, and I'm probably not going to start at this point. I think you miss some great, unexpected opportunities if you are that focused.

I think a lot of people underestimate core skills and values: your work ethic, an ability to communicate and work well with others, being both dependable and able to put aside ego and do whatever needs to get done.

When we look at hiring people it's more about their values and our assessment of their attributes then it is about their prior work experience.

Clearly if you can get all that together, great. But it's more important to ask : Are you a good thinker? Are you a good communicator? Can you work well with others? Are you willing to work hard? Are you going to be there when I need you to be there? Those are the underpinnings of success.

Is that why a history major ended up at the Minnesota Wild?
Creative thinking, perseverance, it's those qualities that people underestimate. Those give you the foundation you need to be successful.

Those qualities get you in the door, give you the opportunity and make you a valued member of the team. They get you into interesting and maybe even highly confidential discussions where you can demonstrate the value you add with your creative thinking and your experience. There is a lot to be said for basic core values.

Benno Groenveld is a Twin Cities-based freelance writer.