Coal Miner's Daughter

Debra Curtiss faced one of an executive's toughest decisions early in 2003, just a few months into her tenure as the head of a Tampa technology firm.

The company, Peak 10, provides data centers and data storage for businesses in 18 high-end, high-tech centers spread across 10 cities in the Midwest and the Southeast. Curtiss, who came to Peak 10 after management jobs with predecessor companies to Verizon, quickly determined the staff she inherited in Tampa wasn't the right fit to meet the company's ambitious growth plans.

“It's not that they didn't have the skills,” says Curtiss, 52. “They just weren't right for the business at the time.”

So Curtiss essentially replaced the core of Peak 10 Tampa's employee base less than three months into the job. The decision, tough as it was, was a good call in one respect, because many of the new employees remain with the firm today and have led a local growth spurt.

Indeed, Curtiss says 2010 has been “phenomenal” in terms of signing up new clients, considering the recession. So phenomenal, that to handle the demand the company recently built a second data center in its main facility, a few miles north of the Tampa International Airport. That center is now more than 30,000 square feet, with what Curtiss says are millions of dollars worth of hardware and equipment.

The Tampa Bay Technology Forum recognized Curtiss' leadership efforts Nov. 12, when the organization presented her with its 2010 Outstanding Leadership Award. A onetime chair of TBTF, the Tampa Bay Business Journal previously named Curtiss its Business Woman of the Year for Technology.

“She's a very dynamic person who is able to get people's attention,” says Ed Woznicki, a Verizon executive in Tampa, who first met Curtiss more than 20 years ago, when they both worked for GTE Data Services. “I always knew she was going to be a leader somewhere.”

Adds Woznicki: “She's a standup person. When she says she's going to do something, she does it.”

Opened doors

Curtiss was born in West Virginia, the daughter of a coal miner. Curtiss' father, Ralph Owens, Sr., suffered from black lung disease, however, and the family moved to Clearwater when Curtiss was two years old. She has remained in the area ever since.

Owens had an entrepreneurial-inventor side that came alive when he wasn't in a mine, says Curtiss. And Curtiss followed her dad's lead into technology. “It struck a chord with me,” says Curtiss. “I liked the idea that we were solving a puzzle.”

Curtiss faced her first puzzle when she was a 19-year-old University of South Florida student working part-time at a Landmark Union Trust Bank branch in St. Petersburg.

In the early 1980s, Curtiss was assigned to handle the technical aspects of new creation: ATMs.

Curtiss moved from ATMs to telecommunications when she took a job at GTE, now part of Verizon, after she graduated from USF with a degree in management of information systems. Curtiss worked for GTE for 12 years, in a variety of sales and management roles that included worldwide travel. She met and worked with Woznicki at GTE.

“I grew up there,” says Curtiss. “That's where I learned how to be a manager.”

One key lesson Curtiss learned at GTE: The art of being a good listener, not just an order-giver. “That was a big deal, for someone in their 20s — to learn how to listen,” says Curtiss. “That opened a lot of doors for me.”

One door that opened was an upper management position with Intermedia Communications, another telecom company in the Tampa region. Curtiss' assignments with Intermedia included running a team of employees who created sales strategies for the entire company.

That job, however, came to a rather swift end soon after WorldCom bought Intermedia in the late 1990s. WorldCom imploded due to a series of accounting scandals and the remnants of the company are now part of Verizon.

Still, Intermedia was another valuable experience for Curtiss, who did some independent consulting for Tampa area technology firms after WorldCom. One of those jobs led to a permanent role in charge of Peak 10's Tampa facility.

Practice, practice

The listening lesson resonates for Curtiss almost everyday at Peak 10. That's primarily because her job is a mix of supervising 15 employees and being on the front lines of customer service. Both take a deft, yet delicate approach.

Curtiss, therefore, waits before she speaks, to make sure she's heard all points of view. The technique takes a lot of patience and practice.

“It's hard to do sometimes,” says Curtiss. “But it's important to do that so that when you're ready to speak you are going on what you just learned.”

Still, don't mistake patience with passivity. “I'm collaborative,” says Curtiss, “but not to the point of immobility.”

Curtiss also developed her leadership style from self-help and management books. One of her favorites is “Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo from Maslow,” by Chip Conley, a California-based hospitality entrepreneur and business author.

The book, says Curtiss, taught her a lesson about expressing gratitude to employees. The key point is to make sure the rewards are what they want, not what she might think is a good reward. It's the main reason why Peak 10 traded employee Christmas parties for a day at Busch Gardens. The employees wanted fun, she discovered, not formal.

Says Curtiss: “I'm a big believer in constantly reinventing and reinvigorating yourself.”