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my name is wanda sims, I'm the associate managing director for administrative operations, and
i am in my 30th year here at the commission
i dont have family here in the area so when I come to work here the FCC is my family.
you talk about accomplishments its sort of been 1 sided. we always hear about men, and
what they've done and they've done a great job, but we don't so much focus on the work
women have done. i mean we are starting to do that now and i think we outnumber them
now, and i think just to balance it a little bit is what we should do because we have a
history of not doing that.
you know they didnt' do this by themselves. they had a lot of help. so i think when we
celebrate women's history month we get a chance to really focus on that.
we've never had a female chairman. i'm waiting on that. now that we have an african american
president i'm thinking that surely this commission is going to get a female chairman we've had
several female commissioners but not a female chairman and i'm hoping that while i'm still
working we see that because i have seen the agency change in terms of male-female ratio.
i was able to create our first computer help desk the one that we have today and i have
been the voice of the customer saying to the technical team ok, we've got to stop this
now we've got to talk to the customers we've got to ask them what it is to do their jobs
and we have to then supply it and it can't be difficult for them to talk to us and get
it. when they come to us it we can't get them over the head and make it difficult to get
what they want
but one instance i really remember: so i'm put in this management position and i'm sitting
around with them and i'm the only female in the room, i'm there with the CIO and if you
will the king and all the kings men, and i'm sitting there with them, and so they had sort
of not designated seats but when they walked in for staff meetings they sat in the same
seats and there was not a seat for me. and so i would have to sit on this little sofa
on the side when they were all sitting around the table and i thought 'well there's something
wrong with this picture' and i noticed after the meeting all the time they would all go
someplace and i dont know where they would go. and i'd kind of just go back to my office
and not know what's going on.
so i decided i wanted to sit at the table so i got to the meeting early and i just sat
down. and so the shock on their faces when they got in, that someone was sitting at the
table, and i wasn't going to move. I'm part of this management team, I'm your peer, and
so nothing was really said, and so that same day I decided now where did they go everyday
when they'd leave this meeting, they would go to meeting room b. where's meeting room
b? Are you going to meeting room b? Are you going? Are you? And they weren't talking to
me they were talking amongst themselves.
well meeting room b was the bar. what i realized was that regardless of what we'd said in the
meeting, what we'd agreed to, they'd go to meeting room b, and discuss it, and change
it all, and make their own little agreements on what they were going to do and how they
were going to do it, and go off and do it. so that's where the real business was handled.
it's those unsung heroes that i admire. the people that are behind the door, that if it
had not been for them, all the people standing on the stage wouldn't be there. and it's critical
that these people are back there doing these things.
it's not so much that there was a particular person i would say that you would know, but
it really is for all those people, all those women that have been in the background making
the way for others, and we don't even know of them.
so i'm thankful for them that they chose to be in the background, to contribute what they
had to contribute so the rest of us can move forward and be on the stage