Stepping up: Golden State ushers in new CEO
It’s not easy being a female CEO in the lumber business. But Jessica Scerri (pronounced sherry), who now runs Golden State Lumber in Northern California, will just have to deal with usual stereotypes while guiding the company through a yet-to-recover West Coast housing market. Her father, company founder Lee Nobmann, retired on April 1, and Scerri was more than ready to take over the reins. She has been working at the business since she was 13 years old, helping answer the phones, processing invoices and credits, and during the college years, getting her girlfriends summer jobs.
“We had so much fun,” she recalls, adding, “The contractors made it an interesting atmosphere.”
But the job got serious for Scerri when she realized it was time to start a career. After graduating from college and living in Los Angeles, Scerri returned to her home-town, where her father suggested she take on a project for him. It was instituting a “perpetual” inventory system that allowed the yards to check their stock in real time. One project led to another, and soon Scerri was reconciling bank statements and doing data entry.
In an interview with Home Channel News, the 31-year-old executive—now married, with a three year old son—talks about her plans for the Petaluma-based pro dealer, which reported sales of $240 million for 2009. Scerri is more than a little familiar with P&L statements now, but it wasn’t always that way. When the film and theater major found herself struggling with the company’s general ledger, it was hard to envision a day when she would be in charge of four lumberyards, two sales offices, and 300 employees, several of them uncles and cousins.
Home Channel News: “At what point did they drop you into operations?”
Scerri: “I was put at our Sierra Point Lumber location as general manager. I was in that position for three years. It’s very busy, with a lot of walk-in traffic. It was the hardest thing I had done [so far]. I was definitely scared. But after about six months, I was hooked. I knew that I was going to be in this business for the rest of my life.”
HCN: “How would you describe your management style?”
Scerri: “Very different from my dad’s. We work so well together, but we are so different in the way we do things. In the beginning, I had to rely on the experts on my team. It made me more collaborative and it [shaped] my management style. My dad didn’t have a team like that when he was starting out.”
HCN: “How did you prepare for the CEO job?”
Scerri: “For the past two years [as executive VP] I’ve been working with all of the locations, focusing on operations, processes and procedures, trying to standardize some stuff and make us more efficient as a whole. I’ve also been taking some things off my dad’s desk, so we could start the transition.”
HCN: “Handing over the keys is tough.”
LUMBER WOMEN OF THE WEST COASTWomen have been felling trees and running sawmills in the Western United States since the early 1800s. While the lumber business has always been a male-dominated industry, plenty of women found themselves at the helms of their family’s lumberyards in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Here are just a few pioneers who proved that a 2x4 recognizes no gender.
Kathleen Patterson Central Valley Builders Supply St. Helena. Calif.
The first female president of the Lumber Association of California found herself thrust unexpectedly in a leadership role in 1992, when her husband, Bob Patterson, died unexpectedly. But Kathleen Patterson guided the Napa Valley pro dealer through 11 years of growth, retiring in 2003. The original lumberyard had expanded to three locations by then. Her son Stephen now serves as president of the company.
Helen Jo Whitsell CEO, Copeland Lumber Yards Portland, Ore.
When Helen Jo Whitsell decided to retire in 1999, after 39 years in the lumber business, she had trained a number of lumberyard managers who are now scattered throughout the industry. “She ran a very tight ship,” recalled Clay Rossman, who now works at Pine Tree Lumber in Escondido, Calif. At one point, Copeland Lumber, founded by Whitsell’s father, operated 72 yards that stretched from Washington to Arizona. They were eventually liquidated or sold off.
Becky Hibbert, Jane Hadley and Molly Snyder Hibbert Lumber Co. Davis, Calif.
Hibbert Lumber Co. in Central California is run by three sisters: Becky Hibbert, Jane Hadley and Molly Snyder. Their parents started the retail lumberyard in 1947, and their grandfather worked in the logging industry. The women behind the women are hardware manager Carla Knee, hired in 1966, and controller Nancy Grimes, now in her 36th year.
Scerri: “My dad’s done an amazing job of stepping back. I was surprised at how well he did it. We talk every day. But when he gets an itch, he’s been coming to me, and to our new COO instead of getting involved himself.”
HCN: “You mentioned before that you’ve been trying to standardize some procedures. Can you elaborate?”
Scerri: “Our locations all started at different times with everyone doing their own thing. They work independently of each other and they have that friendly competition between them. I’ve always felt that we could be more efficient as a whole if we could utilize each other, learning best practices like shipping more efficiently. Making sure that if the job is closer to another location, we’re [shipping from] that location.
HCN: “The housing recovery has yet to arrive in California, as you know. What are your plans for the rest of 2010?”
Scerri: “All we can do is try and gain market share and put our face out there and let everyone know we’re here to stay. We’ve had to make cuts and changes that were very difficult, but it’s made us more efficient. If we can be good in this time, we can be great at a better time.”