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FEATURE | ||
Back to Facility Manager
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The good news is that Robyn Williams stands five-foot-three and looks younger than her age. The bad news is that when Robyn Williams started her public assembly facility career she stood fivefoot- three and looked younger than her age. “I would meet the road managers as they came into the building and they would literally look over my head and ask for the ‘man in charge,’” she recalls. “Fortunately, most of the folks I worked with early in my career were very professional and could recognize the fact I was very capable in doing my job.” by R.V. Baugus
One thing Robyn Williams will not tell you is that she is a leader, even though she is one.Williams is of the school that leaders become such by action and deed and not by words. “I don’t think most leaders set out to be leaders,” she says. “I don’t think Carol Wallace, Ray Ward, Mike Kelly, Jimmy Earl and others said,‘I’m going to do such-and-such for IAAM because I want to be a leader.’ “I think they all saw opportunities to better our Association and industry and took steps to make that happen. That’s leadership. Leadership is really about involvement and serving and providing direction. It’s about providing a means to change the things that need changing and achieving the things that need to be achieved. Leaders do that. “I got involved in the industry because I wanted more visibility for women and minorities. I wanted the performing arts to play a bigger role in the Association. I wanted to increase the educational opportunities for all of us so we could take facility management to the next level.” Words spoken like a true leader.
How Do I Get A Job Like That? But after becoming involved in theater productions in high school, Williams got off her saddle for the last time and prepared to raise the curtain on a newfound love. She would go on to graduate with a degree in technical theater from Western Illinois University and did graduate work in theater design at Texas Tech University. While in Lubbock, she went to the circus at the Lubbock Memorial Coliseum and saw a friend running a follow spot. “How do I get a job like that?” the inquisitive Williams asked her friend. “I went to see Bill Brannon, who was the technical director for the Coliseum, and the next thing I know I’m on the crew and working events as a stagehand,” she says. One foot firmly entrenched in the door, Williams still was not certain what the future held. “I was never aware that this could be a career path for someone with a theatrical background,” she says. “In graduate school, theater students were discouraged from taking on jobs outside of the theater department. I suppose they wanted to keep us working on the university productions and not lose us to real paying jobs at the local venues. “I was certainly surprised how things were being done in the everyday event world versus what we were learning in a classroom. It’s not that the classroom education wasn’t valuable, I just had to learn what parts to keep and what parts to throw out the window because they didn’t apply.” When Williams started as the technical director for the Lubbock Memorial Convention Center in 1980, she still did not envision public assembly facility management as a career. “I saw the position more as a temporary stint until I got a ‘real’ job as a lighting designer for some dance company,” says Williams. “Little did I know that a few short years later I’d have an opportunity to move into facility operations and after that, I’d never look back.”
The Defining Moment
“Van McVay was the director of the Lubbock Convention Center then and asked me to apply for this opening, ”she says.“As my background was strictly technical theater I thought he was nuts asking me to apply for a job that oversaw the custodial and maintenance crews. I didn’t know a thing about that sort of stuff, but he felt I could be taught the things I didn’t know and saw in me managerial strengths that he felt were what he needed in this area.” Interestingly, it was when Williams was sent to HVAC and custodial management schools that she “fell in love with this side of the business and knew that this was the career for me.” Working as a female in the industry in the early 1980s provided separate challenges. Williams is quick to point out that those challenges were not of the self-pitying, “poor me” sort. “I probably had to work a little harder to prove that I knew what I was doing, but that seems true in most professions, doesn’t it?” she says. Williams’ hard work netted a series of promotions that would soon move her around the United States. She left Lubbock in 1990 to become director of theater district facilities for the Wortham Theater Center, Jones Hall for the Performing Arts, the Houston Music Hall and Houston Coliseum. In April 1997, Williams joined the staff of the North Carolina Blumenthal Performing Arts Center and Spirit Square Center for the Arts and Education in Charlotte as theater and building operations director and ultimately vice president of operations and real estate.
Even in becoming busier,Williams has made time to stay active in the industry and within IAAM. She earned her Certified Facilities Executive (CFE) designation in 1997 and has not slowed down since then. “The CFE is our mark of excellence in the industry,” says Williams. “Anyone who has gone through the process knows how hard they had to work to get it and how well earned it is. I saw achieving my CFE as the next step in my own professional development. “Will it get you more money? A better job? Maybe. Competition being what it is these days, I’d say you need whatever edge you can get over the next guy. I wanted to be the best facility manager I could be and going for the CFE was a challenge I thought I needed to take on to validate that. “I’m extremely proud to be a CFE. Those who scoff at it, I think are probably just scared they won’t make it through the process. It’s a very confidential process, though, and there are great resources to help get you through. You don’t become a top manager because you never failed. You become a top manager because you failed often, learned from those failures and kept at it.” Williams has augmented her CFE by becoming involved in other areas of professional development leadership, including service on a number of committees. Since earning her designation, Williams has been on the Board of Directors, Executive Committee, Board of Regents, Board of Education, Certification Board, Safety and Security Task Force, Annual Conference Planning Committee, Performing Arts Committee and Leadership Advisory Institute, to name a few. The lessons Williams has learned since those formative years in Lubbock are ones that she dispenses to people who work for and with her. “Get involved in the industry and make education and training a priority,” she says. “It’s easy to develop a sort of inbred style of management if you never get out into the world and see what the best and brightest in the industry are up to. What a shame that it’s often travel and training that are the first things cut in a budget crunch.
“When the going gets tough you need the best trained, cutting edge,
innovative work force you can possibly have. When it comes time to cut a
budget, trav Whether it is championing the industry to others, proving a work ethic or volunteering for a committee assignment, look on that front line for Robyn Williams. You will not have to look far. |
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©
2002-2005
International Association of Assembly Managers |
"
Talk
to anyone who knows Robyn Williams and her passion for her work, the
industry and willingness to volunteer and they will tell you she is much
more than capable in doing her job. She has risen through the ranks in her
25- year industry career to the position she now holds as executive director
of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts in Portland, OR. 
In
September 2000, she assumed her current position of executive director for
the Portland Center for the Performing Arts, consisting of the Arlene
Schnitzer Concert Hall,Keller Auditorium and the Winningstad and Newmark
Theaters. 
el
and training is the last thing I’ll cut. I want to see training happening at
all levels of our organization—not just at the top. I think the Chapter
meetings that are popping up in a few cities are a great way to give the
front line folks a sense of what our industry is all about.” 