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September 7th, 2008

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Microsoft's cool Wonder Woman

Others may discuss Gilson's manager prowess, but under it all, she's just a regular Jane

By Dave Faries
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
January 23rd, 2008 issue

KURT VINION/THE PRAGUE POST

American Jane Gilson, in her corporate guise, is equally at home in sports bars, on the slopes and just hanging out. enlarge

The Gilson File

Title: General manager, Microsoft Czech Republic
Appointed: Oct. 11, 2007
Moved here: To serve as business and marketing director, March 2007
Education: University of Wisconsin, Northwestern University
Hometown: Chicago
Previous position: Manager, Microsoft Windows Embedded Division in Redmond, Washington, U.S.A.

One day after Microsoft’s groundbreaking announcement, an unimposing guy named Ted boarded his ČSA flight, grabbing a newspaper as he stepped into the aisle. It took a moment before he settled in and flipped it open.

There, pictured on the front page, was Jane Gilson, the tech giant’s newly appointed general manager for the Czech Republic.

“That’s my wife,” Ted blurted, shaking the full-color image at one of the startled flight attendants.

This doesn’t happen every day, not to a normal couple from the American Midwest. Ted was clearly astonished, and his burst of excitement also shocked a few people on the plane, including ČSA employees.

“They didn’t know quite what to make of it,” Jane Gilson says with a laugh.

A lot of people were surprised when, on Oct. 11, 2007, Microsoft appointed an American to head their operations in the Czech Republic.

An American woman, no less — one new to the country, brought in specifically to manage business operations marketing. In the halls at rival Oracle, people buzzed all day about this unexpected development. But it’s not like the Seattle-based firm selected Gilson on a whim.

Gilson’s resume includes some impressive stats, doubling the company’s Windows Embedded revenue by double digits year after year from 2003 to 2005, for instance. She launched Windows XP Embedded and Windows Embedded CE, single-purpose business solutions.

“She thinks big, is really focused on partners and customer experience and has a great balance between strategic thinking and ability to execute,” explains Vahé Torrosian, Microsoft’s vice president for Central and Eastern Europe, in the clearest business-speak.

“Of course, needless to say she has personal passion for technology and for the promotion of innovation,” he adds.

This person suddenly thrust into the local big business limelight is also just a Plain Jane — husband, two cats, jeans on weekends, that sort of thing. Gilson is not above sipping inexpensive wine or grabbing a burger. She rarely misses Big Ten football games — Wisconsin, specifically — and takes easily to pointed jabs tossed out by opposing fans. Call her beloved Badgers the “Budgies” and the Midwesterner, born in Chicago and educated at UW’s Madison campus, as well as Northwestern, straightens in her chair and brightens into one of those “bring it on” smiles.

Sitting down to chat with her about work and life and sudden fame in the Prague business community is more like a Saturday afternoon in someone’s living room. Pizza comes up, as does football, snowboarding and the joys of Xbox.

“I tried, but I’m just not very good,” Gilson says of console-based game systems — and of snowboarding.

Yet it’s not always easy for an unexpected icon to let down her guard in public.

On Thanksgiving Day, while catching up with friends at a local restaurant and waiting for dinner to begin, a guest from another table overheard the magic word.

“You’re with Microsoft?” he asked while still approaching the table.

“Yes,” the diminutive big boss responded, a twinge of hesitancy in her voice.

“Well,” said the stranger, launching into a description of some dispute between his laptop and her company’s software, unaware he was speaking with the general manager.

She’s careful that way, not really about her identity, but her personal space. There’s a time to simmer in the corporate hot seat, a time to plunge through the details of budget reports. She’s adept at both and, according to those who know her, very precise, as well. A good chunk of each day she dedicates to corporate customers, business partners and all the other tasks required of the one at the helm.

Ultimately, Gilson points out, “I’m responsible for how the business does here” — which is enough to consume most regular folks. Face time at corporate and social gatherings is also part of her new life, from press conferences to seminars to a castle party hosted by President Václav Klaus — rooms full of people wanting to know something more about Microsoft and the woman in charge.

“It’s been interesting,” she says. “When I go to events, people know who I am.”

So Gilson defiantly clings to time: friend time and, more importantly, Jane-and-Ted time. On Thanksgiving, she graciously takes the gentleman’s card and promises to have one of the local Microsoft technicians call, returning attention quickly to her group.

Don’t misunderstand this little incident. Daily encounters now require composure, tact and a touch of caution. Everything Gilson does in public may, in someone’s mind, reflect on the company. She’s not at all arrogant, shy or wary by nature. In fact, Gilson says of this precarious public role, “It’s a lot of fun. I even like meeting with press, believe it or not.”

The media besieged her initially — the first non-Czech appointed to represent Microsoft in the Czech Republic, a female boss in a doubly male-dominated world. She transferred here to direct business operations marketing in March 2007. A few months later, the GM position fell vacant.

The questions were predictable: American, a woman, both generated a lot of interest. “But,” Gilson explains, “the conversation will shift,” eventually, “to what’s going on in business, to ‘how’s the product release going?’ ”

“It did bring the media’s attention,” Torrosian adds. This, in turn, provided Microsoft with an opportunity “to be vocal about our growth plan, willingness to enhance the local partner ecosystem and our investments in the Czech Republic.”

Despite Gilson’s status as a newcomer to Central Europe, she’s an old hand at corporate marketing, slipping without hesitation from conversations about pizza and football into the minutiae of Windows Embedded systems, the kind of serious, point-by-point detail that makes techies spring to life and the rest of us drift somewhere close to the neighborhood of somnolence.

Yet Gilson never set out to work in the IT world.

“Living in Chicago, there weren’t a lot of tech companies,” she explains. Her forte, instead, was the nefarious art of marketing — identifying customers, luring them to a brand, building loyalty. With companies like KPMG Peat Marwick, however, she gained experience with electronic databases and all the secrets they yield about customer behavior if manipulated in just the right way.

“I started to see the power of technology,” she recalls.

In a strange way, Gilson traces her interest in the Czech Republic to childhood days in Illinois. “There were a lot of Czechs in Chicago,” she points out, including one of her close friends. The suburban enclave of Berwyn hosts a Bohemian museum that she visited for a junior high project. “I just never thought I’d be sitting here.”

A year ago, Gilson lived in Redmond, Washington, where she was responsible for product management marketing, alliances with business partners and client-side awareness of Windows’ advantages. She has made a number of rapid adjustments: learning all Microsoft’s product lines, becoming a public figure, starting Czech-language courses, navigating a unique culture and city.

The first snow drew her to Old Town Square, just to bask in the dusting of bright powder on old facades. Like so many people who have moved to Prague, she still has random “Wow, I live here” moments.

Then she chuckles, thinking about her fear of those treacherous encounters between heels and cobblestones, or the first time she tried to open the door of her apartment.

“I’m turning and turning [the key],” she recalls. “I couldn’t figure it out.”

Gilson shakes her head and laughs. Once again, the serious professional, the one who can squint at rows and rows of numbers and spot a missing decimal, the one responsible for Microsoft’s future in the Czech Republic, fades into the background.

The story about Ted, the ČSA flight and her newspaper photo comes up again. Now and again, he refers to her as Jana Gilsonová, the Czech-ified name plastered in that front-page caption. They both grin naturally every time he brings it up.

She’s just Jane, a normal Midwesterner. Years ago, during the dot.com days when her start-up company failed, Gilson felt compelled to return as much money to investors as possible — $15 million worth.

“That’s part of the adventure, being open and finding the humor in a lot of things,” she says.

“You have to be true to yourself, first and foremost.”

Hard-nosed, groundbreaking business leader or the type of person you can kick back with? On a trip to headquarters in Paris, Gilson sends a text message. She can’t believe she has sprinkled sugar on her McDonald’s hash browns.

Dave Faries can be reached at dfaries@praguepost.com

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