As the first female store manager for Sears Canada Inc. in 1984, and the first female manager of any department store in the country, Ethel Taylor has been working for decades with a lot of weight on her shoulders.
And that weight, from the pressure of being a pioneering woman in business, has sometimes felt as light as a sticky note.
"I would pull a report and [there would be] a little sticky saying, 'you know we're counting on you to do really well,'" she recalls of messages left from other female employees.
"I felt really responsible to make other people successful, to keep the door open."
Ethel Taylor, Sears Canada’s senior vice-president of corporate stores, says her passion for the retail business started in childhood: ‘Other people played hospital and I played store.’ (Tim Fraser for The Globe and Mail)
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From the start of her career with the retail giant, as a management trainee in 1974, to her current role of senior vice-president of corporate store sales, store planning, and resource protection, Ms. Taylor, 55, has continued to carry the torch, blazing the path for women in the retail world.
Today she is honoured in the Corporate Executives category of the Women's Executive Network's annual list of the Top 100 most powerful women in Canada, a recognition she also received from the organization in 2005.
"She's got a wonderful blend of this femininity and almost a mothering [style]. At the same time, you don't screw with Ethel Taylor," says Catharine Fennell, president of Market Yourself Smarter, a career leadership agency that has used Ms. Taylor as an event speaker.
"She leads with strength and she's extremely assertive, without being aggressive," Ms. Fennell adds.
Greg Wallace, who trained as a Sears manager with Ms. Taylor, says it was clear from the start she would end up a leader in the company.
"She was very passionate, very hard working, very keen. You could spot her in the '70s as being someone who was going to be pretty special," he says.
Ms. Taylor showed an evident knack for business while growing up in Midland, Ont. At 16, while volunteering at a sewing centre, she initiated a bridal consulting service out of the shop, helping brides-to-be choose their fabrics and patterns for their dress.
"Other people played hospital and I played store," she recalls.
At 17, when she was the last of four children living at home, her mother died after suffering an aneurysm, leaving a "devastating gap" in the family. "My dad was amazing after my mom died," Ms. Taylor remembers.
"I was the only one left at home. He talked with me a lot, about business and values. My dad had that kind of view that you're responsible as a citizen of the universe. He was very supportive."
Yet her life had changed overnight. "I probably became a much more serious person, more intense," she says.
Ms. Taylor later left home, starting down the path that would lead her to success at Sears, within her community, and as a role model to other women in business.
After receiving a diploma in retail business from what was then Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto, she joined Sears in 1974 as a management trainee at its Mississauga store. Ten years later, after working her way through the Greater Toronto Area as a department manager, merchandise manager and assistant manager, Ms. Taylor landed the pioneering spot as store manager at Sears' Brantford location in 1984.
"It was, in the big scheme of things, probably a junior store. And Ethel very quickly turned that store around," says Mr. Wallace, who was then a manager of Sears' automotive division.
At the time, Sears was preparing to remodel the look of its stores, starting with a revamp of its Mississauga site. Mr. Wallace remembers Ms. Taylor visited the store and returned to Brantford inspired.
"Within six months, with a bunch of paint and a bunch of people inside of the store just copying those things [from Mississauga], Ethel had done a real inexpensive version of that 'store of the future,'" he says.
Almost immediately, he adds, she was sent to manage a much bigger store in Victoria. Ms. Taylor spent 17 years with Sears, eventually moving back to Toronto in 1988, where she worked for the next three years overseeing eastern region outlets.
In 1991, she married and left the company to work as a business and leadership consultant. She had a son, Billy, in 1993.
Four years later, Sears offered her the role of vice-president of retail, a position she felt was "several positions more senior" than what she had when she left the company six years earlier.
Ms. Taylor's have steadily increased; she now oversees all 200 Canadian stores, managing their launch, design, profitability and day-to-day issues.
And, as her father once encouraged, she has also increased her role in the community. She became a guest speaker with Ms. Fennell's leadership program, speaking to hundreds of women, telling her story and nurturing their aspirations. She was a director of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce and sits on the board of the Retail Council of Canada, the Trillium Health Centre's capital fundraising campaign and Sears' National Kids Cancer Ride.
Today, she says, women represent almost half of Sears store managers, up from only five female managers when she rejoined the company 10 years ago. Her leadership during this transition period earned her an invitation to speak at the Global Summit of Women in Berlin earlier this year, which drew more than 1,000 women from more than 90 countries. "Ethel has this amazing warmth that is just not something that you see in most women, particularly in that seniority in the corporate world," says Ms. Fennell about her ability to affect her audience.
That ability, however, doesn't have to come from someone with seniority, Ms. Taylor says. "I think some of my greatest mentors have been people who weren't in business necessarily; they were people who have a good soul … and are able to guide you and come into your life at the right time."
And, though there have been barriers and pressures to overcome throughout her career, Ms. Taylor says it has been that impact on others that has made it worthwhile — just as she was taught.
Special to The Globe and Mail
