By Valerie Gregory

  Kathy Woolverton's moment of truth came in 1993 when her five-year-old company nearly imploded. Synergy Computer Consulting Ltd., a custom programming and database development firm, was growing steadily when it accepted a fixed bid project with the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD).
  As Woolverton tells it, Synergy and the GVRD systems department seriously underestimated the difficulty of the software project. They had bid $23,000 for a job that cost $150,000 to complete.
  "A six-man-week project turned out to be an eight-man-month project ... and our costs were two to three times what we made. We had every right to walk but made the decision to finish."    But the human price was high - two senior programmers quit from the burnout and the company was in crisis.
   "We had stretched our financial and human resources and were down to the crunch," says Woolverton. "There were just four of us left and it was time to look at the business and where it was headed."
   While some might have hit the wall, she acted on a staff member's suggestion and took the remnants of the company on a retreat to Indian Arm.
   "It was an excellent turning point for the business," says Woolverton. "We were able to get past the emotion and evaluate the business and our goals in a kind of mini focus group."
   Now the company holds retreats twice a year for employees and their families, and is in the midst of yet another expansion.
  It's a measure of Woolverton's management style that she tells this pivotal tale in an understated manner. The 34-year-old Coquitlam native has made big strides in the male-dominated high tech field since she abandoned marine biology in junior college to focus on computer systems.
   "I was in my second year of marine biology at Douglas College and I realized there were more people than jobs," Woolverton says. "So I took some computer courses to balance things out."
   She was soon hooked on the "brain puzzles" computers had to offer and earned her undergraduate degree in business and computer information at Simon Fraser University. It was there that she met John Blackwell, a professor of computer science and the first in a long line of mentors.
   "He made me aware of how everything we were learning applied to everyday life. He took us beyond the academic into the real world," Woolverton says enthusiastically, adding, "I wanted to raise the spectrum of technology and the business side of things caught my eye."
   At the age of 21, she was working as a systems administrator for a major nonprofit organization and trying to teach the mostly middle-aged staff to use computers instead of typewriters.
   "It was a good opportunity for me to get my feet wet and my first exposure to how internal politics can play a destructive role in an organization.
   "I saw how easy it was for one person to abuse power and turn a group of motivated, self-directed people off to the point that they were just putting in time."
   It was a lesson she wouldn't forget when she started her own company four years later. With one potential client who needed a system developed, Woolverton set up shop at home for two weeks - "I decided it was too hard to pack up the dining room table every night" - before moving into a shared office space. Within two days, Woolverton's combination of hard work, optimism and luck paid off. Alcan called and offered her a contract maintaining their plant management system in Kemano, B.C.
   "It was a big leap in size for me and meant a helicopter ride in and out and a week's stay every couple of months for a four-year period," she says. "It was a town of about 300 people in a three-block radius who worked well together and I enjoyed my time there."
   After landing the Alcan job, Synergy grew steadily and Woolverton could barely keep up. She started to hire people, something she'd never considered at first. With four expansions since its inception in 1989 and a full-time staff of 25, the Gastown-based firm is preparing to tear down walls to make more office space.
   Now that the parent company is doing so well - Woolverton plans on doubling it within the next three years - she's focusing on SoftSearch, its software information division. SoftSearch owns a massive database of details on over 115,000 software programs and 20,000 software developers, an achievement Woolverton is clearly proud of.
   "Now that we have some financial breathing room, our goal is to position ourselves as the number-one source of software information in North America and the world through conventional marketing and the Internet," she says. "The next challenge is to bring in the investors. Now that all the test marketing and development is done it's easier for investors to see the results of this market niche."
   Woolverton expects the process to take five years and she's setting her sights high - $10 million plus in sales. To get the money needed to go international, she's developing a strategic alliance program for SoftSearch that would offer the company as a private label service to a few high-profile organizations.
   Niche marketing is also the way Woolverton wants to proceed with OpenRoad Communications, Synergy's newest division. OpenRoad designs complex Web sites and relational databases for intranets and the Internet.
   "The Web is where desktop publishing was four years ago," says Woolverton. "It's experiencing phenomenal growth. A lot of people can get the basic pages out but interaction with people is harder. Our experience in designed Windows programs crosses over to the Web with user-friendly graphics and intuitive design."

   Interaction is a word one hears a lot in Woolverton's presence. While her demeanor is professional, her choice of colours - a hot pink suit and a bright yellow blouse - reveal a warm and vibrant personality. With a philosophy that declares "business is all about solid personal relationships and holding fast to a strong code of ethics and excellence," it's not surprising that this CEO puts a heavy emphasis on personal service and working through, not around, people.
   "The biggest key to success is being able to listen to clients and talk to them so they can understand the information we're giving them in nontechnical terms and make a decision," says Woolverton. "We almost become a partner in every business we work with. We get our clients to sit down in a room, everyone from senior management to the people who will be using the computer systems day to day, and listen to their input. We realize the biggest part of our support calls is helping users find something in a manual, but a strategic knowledge of their business helps us streamline and optimize the systems they use."
   Not all clients are perfect and some are downright strange. One man took a hammer to a computer two days after he bought it despite Synergy's best efforts to calm him, recalls Woolverton. But not much rattles her. Two-thirds of her business involves picking up projects other people didn't finish. Combine that with often being the only woman on the job - Woolverton estimates only 20 per cent of high tech companies are run by women - and she's used to facing challenges.
   "Probably my style is different because I'm a woman," she says. "I may be less of a dictator and listen more. It helped my consulting business in the beginning because I was a novelty, but some potential investors under the immigration entrepreneur program told me they couldn't work under a woman," and were reluctant to invest in Synergy.

   The eldest of five siblings, Woolverton says her desire to have a family actually led her to start her own business. She wanted her work to be flexible and under her control.
   With Stewart, her husband of 11 years, Woolverton has a two-year-old son, Andy.
  The couple met at Douglas College, and Woolverton credits the AutoCad drafter for being a good sounding board and extremely supportive of her company.
   And having a child adds balance to her life. "It forces me to leave the office and his energy level is a real charge at the end of the day."
   The former competitive swimmer and coach still gets in the pool regularly, but gave up water polo when her son was born. She enjoys travelling and exploring foreign countries, preferring to wander through rural areas to "get a feel for what it would be like to live there." Woolverton and her husband spent a month in central Mexico in their early twenties after accepting a homestay billet from UNESCO.

   Woolverton is modest about being a role model for women considering a career in the burgeoning high tech industry.
   "The only way to succeed is to keep learning and pushing yourself. You have to take a new technology and master it every two years.
  "Some of that determination comes out of the SoftSearch side of things when I kept bringing financial plans to investors and they kept telling me my plans were good but that I hadn't been there before. But I knew exactly where I was going and how to get there. I keep all the pieces of the puzzle in my head and make sure the people I'm working with know what they are as well."
   Woolverton has been active in high tech associations for 15 years - she was recently elected to the board of directors of the Technology Industries Association of B.C., and served three terms as vice-president of the Independent Computer Consulting Association - and considers her participation a vital learning and networking tool.
  James Topham of the accounting firm KPMG has known Woolverton for seven years although he's never used any of her systems.
   He says he was "astounded" by the size of SoftSearch's database. "She is unquestionably a leader in her field because she has the great database, but if she's unknown, is she a real leader? She has intellectual property but she's mainly a service provider and that's a more difficult category to fund."
   Astrid Levelt is president of The Marketing Department, which specializes in technology marketing and is doing strategic planning work for SoftSearch. She went on a retreat with Woolverton last May a few weeks after meeting her and was impressed by her business acumen and skill with people.
   "Kathy hasn't had a lot of recognition and she's so deserving. She has an amazing rapport with her staff, which is important in an industry where your assets walk out the door every day," says Levelt. "She's not your typical tech person. She has a very down-to-earth attitude about business plus a good grasp of the world and a service mentality and respect for her clients that aren't common in the industry. I work with a lot of people and I don't know anyone else like her."
   As for SoftSearch, Levelt thinks Woolverton is well ahead of the game.
   "She's selling solutions, not just a database. She conceptualized it before other companies but didn't have the money to market it. Kathy has taken all the risks and she will be rewarded."

- Business in Vancouver, March 11-17 , 1997.