PSU Magazine Winter 1998

r) J _j ~~~J_j_j_I trouble," she says. "So I share the financial situation with them. If employees who are involved in the nitty-gritty of the business understand what the situation is, they can often provide the solutions." J nner steel has served Fellman well. A dozen years ago, happily ensconced in domestic life-wife, mother of two young sons, civically active-Fellman learned she would lose her husband to a brain tumor. Realizing that her undergraduate degree in history and a few distant years of teaching were not the recipe for her family's financial stability, she headed back to school. Fellman entered Portland State's Master of Business Administration program and in 1985 graduated with a 4.0 in her business classes. "Everyone has always assumed I'm an attorney or told me I should be one," says Fellman. "So when I went back to school I considered law, but I thought having an MBA would give me more options when I graduated." From her options, Fellman chose management consulting, seeing herself helping companies get organized. She quickly discovered that merely consulting wasn't enough. "I found out, when I did my student projects, that as a consultant you can give the best advice in the world-but it may never get implemented." And that, she found, was very frustrating. After she graduated, Fellman decided that she would only take clients that allowed her full decision– making authority-she had to be hired as an interim CEO. Typically she's on board six to 12 months, just long enough to set the ship on an even keel, then she gracefully fades away. She has no interest, she says, in staying once the immediate challenge is met. Her early marketing involved "talk– ing to everyone I could about what I wanted to do," she says. One of Fellman's early clients provides an example of what she could do when a corporation gave her the chance to put their money where her mouth was. Called in to help a floundering manufacturing business, Fellman found a company that had lost money for three straight years, a poorly trained staff in disarray, and the IRS ready to force the company to shut down. Working 80 to 100 hours a week, she negotiated new creditor agreements, increased sales, improved morale, cut delivery times in half, and restored profitability. It was a success that set the tone for Fellman's career. In the next 11 years she took on another 16 clients in fields as diverse as health care, transporta– tion, and retailing. Ten of her clients are still in operation under the same ownership. "Sometimes people call too late," says Fellman. "Then the best you can do is an orderly liquidation or sale of the company." Still, the successes have been consistent enough that lenders routinely recommend her to their troubled clients. Her most recent turnaround shows why. r- ML Inc., a Portland company that manufactures used in microbiological testing, had posted a net loss of $1.6 million, couldn't cover its checks, and faced increasingly unsympathetic suppliers. At the not-so-gentle urging of the bank, CEO Ron Torland asked Fellman for a meeting. Two days later Fellman took the reins. What she found was a family– controlled business that had dominated regional sales and had expanded into Canadian markets. She also discovered the company had no departmental budgets, inadequate accounting controls, and no clear strategic plan. Marshaling the key managers, Fellman set in motion the game plan Companies in deep trouble can call upon this alumna for help. By Melissa Steineger that after 14 months saw the company list profits of $206,000. Based on her work and that of her hand-picked successor, PML has seen its stock, which traded for as little as 31 cents a share, soar to almost $2.50 a share. And corporate profits recently hit $669,000, the largest in company history. With PML safely in the black again, Fellman, as she always does, rode off into the sunset-more than ready to relax after battle-like conditions and her work– sleep-work-sleep-work regime. ,....J ven though the field is domi– .,...1 nated by men (Fellman 11111!1_... • knows of only a handful of other women who step in as interim CEOs), she has never felt even the shadow of sexism. "Turnaround is a very results-oriented business," says Fellman. "The numbers will tell you whether the person is any good– gender doesn't matter." In the future she hopes to work with larger companies and perhaps one day return to her civic roots. Her taste of local politics as a Beaverton City Council member in the 1970s whetted her appetite for more. ''I'd love to work as a political activist," she says. "But it doesn't pay." So for now, Fellman will continue to help struggling companies survive. But hired gun, emergency room doctor, turnaround specialist-what– ever her designation, Renee Fellman hasn't really traveled that far from her first career. "I taught history to eighth-graders– you could say they were my first turnaround projects," she says. "And believe me, if you can handle a class of eighth-graders, you can handle a turn– around." D (Melissa Steineger, a Portland freelance writer, wrote the article "Clone Another Ewe?," which appeared in the fall 1997 PSU Magazine.) WINTER 1998 PSU MAGAZINE 17