Linnet F. Deily, Distinguished Alumni 2001
Linnet Deily says that UTD's combination of international management and business studies made it the obvious choice for her; she since has parlayed those acquired skills into an impressive career.
Ms. Deily's appointment in March by President George W. Bush to serve as ambassador and deputy United States trade representative to the World Trade Organization (WTO) is her most recent accomplishment in a long string of them. Not long before President Bush tapped her to serve, she became, in October 2000, vice chairman in the office of the president for The Charles Schwab Corporation. She also has been a member of the Advisory Council to the Federal Reserve Bank's Board of Governors, and is past national president of the Committee of 200, an international organization for businesswomen. Last year, Fortune magazine named her to its list of "The 50 Most Powerful Women in Business in the United States."
Ms. Deily who earned her Master of Arts degree in International Management from UTD in 1976, says that today she continues to recognize ways in which the School contributed to her outstanding success.
"One of the first courses I took at UTD was International Banking, and it was taught by Dick Backus from the old RepublicBank Dallas," she recalls. "At the end of the course, Dick offered me a summer job at the bank, writing country studies but with the potential that this could lead to a slot in the management training program at the bank."
That summer job provided her with the introduction to international finance that she had been looking for, and the career opportunities that followed have been, in her words, "exceptional."
"UTD provided me an excellent combination of theory and practice as our professors came both from academia as well as the business world," she notes. "I found the grounding in theory followed by the practical reality of the business world to be a superb learning experience and, as a result, felt that my business education at UTD had more immediate usage for me when I completed school."
The fourth-generation Texan now splits her time between WTO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, and her home in California, and contributes considerable amounts of her time to civic causes, including serving as an honorary trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston. She has also served as a director of the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, Catalyst in New York, The Women's Museum in Dallas, and the board of Reliant Energy.
"I have been blessed with great opportunities in life," she says. "My general mantra in life has been to try and work both hard and smart - and to remember always to have fun with what I do. That's worked well for me."
-- Management Vol. 5 No. 1 Autumn 2001, by Paula Felps
