My sister, brother and I all attended Beverly public schools. At 15, my first job was at Harborlight House, a home for low-income older adults, where I did everything from serving tea to cleaning toilets. Then I worked at a local department store, cutting window shades to size.
When I was a junior in high school, one of my teachers drove me by her alma mater, now Bridgewater State University. That’s where I applied. I graduated in 1989 with a degree in communications. I held a quick succession of jobs, working as a receptionist and as a clerk and then as a Harborlight fund-raiser — and would keep a connection with Harborlight all my life. Then, in December that year, I found a job as a clerk at the Copyright Clearance Center, which was then in an old mill building in Salem, Mass.
I filed and typed letters, and, simply because I had a lot of energy, I sometimes vacuumed the office. The company handled requests from libraries for permission to lend articles or companies seeking to use copyrighted material for research. We had about 30 employees, and a lot of our communication was via fax machine.
I thought that I would keep the job for about a year and move on, but the copyright area began evolving from a back-room specialty to a basis of corporate competition. There were, and still are, a lot of challenges in helping businesses and academic institutions quickly access and license copyright-protected materials and compensate publishers and creators for the use of their content. New developments in technology are changing the way we all use such material.
I moved up in the company as it grew and helped with the relocation to new quarters in Danvers. In 1996, I helped lead a project to organize copyright data so we could respond quickly and efficiently to permission requests.
In 1992, I married Glen Johnstone, an architect. We are raising three children, the last of whom was born in 2004, the same year I was promoted to executive vice president and chief operating officer. I sometimes joke that I have a fourth child: the executive M.B.A. I earned from Northeastern University in Boston in June 2001.
In 2007, the center’s C.E.O., Joseph Alen, retired, and I was named to replace him. My challenge has been to change the company from a licensing agent for print materials to one offering global licensing solutions for all media, including images, blogs and e-books. We now have a staff of more than 300.
Many people are surprised that I have been with the same employer for so long — 23 years — but I have always felt that there are new challenges. I get chances to use my expertise more broadly by serving, for example, on the board of the International Federation of Reproduction Rights Organizations, the global licensing group.
And I’ve been able to maintain close ties with my community and family. My parents, who celebrate their 50th anniversary this year, recently moved into a single-floor home behind our house so we can help them as they grow older.
I have continued to work closely with Harborlight, where I was chairwoman from 2004 to 2007. Since 2008, I have served as a director of Harborlight Community Partners, which offers low-income housing regionally. It is extremely rewarding to help people find a safe and affordable place to live.
As told to Elizabeth Olson.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/jobs/copyright-clearance-centers-chief-on-a-23-year-career.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
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