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AmCham president audits success

ČR's top businesswoman looks to unite chambers

By Michael Heitmann
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
November 14th, 2007 issue

VLADIMÍR WEISS/THE PRAGUE POST
Magdalena Souček opened Arthur Andersen's new office in the Czech Republic shortly after 1989.
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THE SOUČEK FILE

Job title: Managing partner, Risk Management Division, Ernst & Young; president, American Chamber of Commerce
Nationality: Czech, American
Age: 46
Previous position: Partner, Arthur Andersen
Family: Daughter, 12

Magdalena Souček is an avid golfer, but she hardly finds time to play a round these days. Golf courses aren’t the best place for discussing business anyway, she says.
“Although women are supposed to be good at multitasking, when you’re really playing golf, you have to concentrate,” she says. “I don’t think you can have a very good business conversation [on the course].”
But, in general, Souček, a partner at the auditor Ernst & Young and president of the American Chamber of Commerce, does well at juggling multiple tasks. That’s one of the reasons she was named businesswoman of the year last month by the business daily Hospodářské noviny (HN).
At Ernst & Young, Souček oversees risk advisory services in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and Slovenia. And, since January 2006, she has helped guide the American Chamber, the first point of contact for many entrepreneurs setting up businesses in the country.
While Souček, 46, has long been highly listed in HN’s annual rankings, this is the first time she has taken the poll’s top position. The paper’s jury of nine experts from the business community especially appreciated the enthusiasm and skill Souček has brought to the American Chamber since taking over its presidency.
Most vital to Souček’s leadership is how she cushions and couches what is a driving, straightforward style, according to Vladimira Papirnik, managing partner at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey and member of the chamber’s board of directors.
“She faces problems head on and is very straightforward and at the same time diplomatic in how she approaches dealing with people,” Papirnik says.
Souček will need all of those leadership skills on her current project: increasing the American Chamber’s influence by joining forces with other countries’ chambers, mainly the German, Nordic and Dutch missions.
“What we are trying to do is increase the cooperation among all the chambers, so that there is a single voice that speaks on behalf of the members and provides a better partner to the Czech side,” Souček says. “We want to be able to get as many other chambers on board as possible. When it actually moves past the planning stage, we will invite everybody to join.”
The American Chamber has one main mission, and that’s to make running a business in the Czech Republic easier, which it does by lobbying for changes in the country’s laws and regulations.
“We’re quite proud about some of the things that have happened already, like the bankruptcy law and the new Commercial Code,” Souček says, though sometimes these changes are slow to trickle down to everyday business.
“The law may actually be good, but the way it’s being interpreted by the individual judges may not always be satisfactory,” she says.
Up the ladder
Souček has been with Ernst & Young since 2002, when it merged with Arthur Andersen, the company she originally joined in Boston as a business school graduate. Right after the 1989 revolution, she established Andersen’s new office in the Czech Republic.
“Those were pioneering times,” she says. “It was exciting when things were changing to come back and build something.”
Those flush times are over, of course, and today her office works like any other in the world, she adds. This extends to her working hours, which often stretch into the evening.
“It’s not a 9-to-5 job. It’s a career. And if you’re into a career then you have to be ready to work those extra hours,” she says.
Even though the glass ceiling that kept women out of top management positions in the past has long been broken at multinational companies, not all of Souček’s peers are as dedicated to grabbing the brass ring.
“We hire the same amount of women as men, maybe even some more women,” she says. “But, as you go up the ladder, the numbers get smaller. And I think they get smaller because of choices. Because as a woman you debate, ‘Are you going to do family or are you going to pursue a career? Or are you going to try to combine both?’ And combining the two is difficult.”
With a 12-year-old daughter, Souček is well acquainted with these problems. The country needs to improve its services catering to working women, such as daycare, she says, adding that the current options are far worse than in the West.
However long they may decide to focus on their career, after university women are far more prepared for the business world, according to Souček.
“As graduates, they are more pulled together, they are better dressed. They know what they want and present themselves well,” she says. “But I am a believer in differences between men and women. Each has their own strengths. And in a team you have to mix both.”

Michael Heitmann can be reached at mheitmann@praguepost.com


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