Page 39 - BusinessWest September 5, 2022

Linda Dulye says the Dulye Leadership Conference has evolved over the years, but its mission remains unchanged — to help young people gain the skills and confidence needed to thrive in an ever-changing workplace.
“I got my hands dirty, and I got humbled by both my parents,” she went on. “I never had cushy jobs, and I had to earn my promotions; I never wanted to be the kid that was the boss’s kid. I learned how to love work, and that’s impor- tant; I love what I do, and my parents loved what they did.”
Growing up, she worked in both businesses, starting with her mother’s shop when she was
8. By age 13, she was writing obituaries for her father’s papers “back when writers wrote the obituaries, not the funeral homes,” before mov- ing on to the police beat and other assignments.
Meanwhile, her mother’s entrepreneurial spirit and willingness to go where women tradi-
tionally didn’t go, job-wise, certainly inspired her throughout her career.
“My mother was a novelty — there weren’t a lot of women business owners at that time, and I learned a lot from her,” she recalled. “Most of the industries I was in were male-dominated, and I learned how to express my views in a confident way and how to form relationships with people who were going to be very judgmental of me, because I’m the token female out there, so I have to prove myself a little bit more.”
But there was something else she took from her mother that stayed with her through all her various career stops and especially when she went into business for herself.
“She could look at a cloudy sky and always find that patch of blue,” Dulye said. “And it was finding that patch of blue every day — in your work, in your life — that stuck with me. Sitting in rooms where people would ask me when I was going to be serving the coffee, even though I was part of the leadership team at the table, was pret- ty typical — but I always looked for that patch of blue.”
Dulye didn’t want to go back to either of her parents’ businesses after graduating from Syra- cuse University, so she went to work for a daily newspaper in suburban Philadelphia called the Bulletin. Her real ambition, she told Business- West, was to be a sports journalist, but at the time, the field was mostly closed to women, so she stayed on the news side, while maintaining a love of sports that can be seen in the terminology she uses and references to getting employees into the game and off the bench.
Fast-forwarding a little, Dulye, seeking a better-paying profession, eventually segued into corporate communications, starting at Drew Uni- versity while earning her master’s degree. With a desire to work for large corporations, she went to work for GE in Pittsfield and later New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
She joined the company in the late ’80s, at a time of dramatic downsizing, a period that pro- vided several critical learning experiences she would apply later in her career.
“There’s was lots of learning about culture, about people, about effective leadership, about communication — you were communicat-
ing some of the toughest messages ever,” she recalled, adding that she worked for tough boss- es, including Jack Welch, who were “ahead of
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