Ann Cuiellette Marr makes human resources decisions for a $7.2 billion company based in St. Louis County with almost 4,000 employees around the world, including offices in Brazil, Mexico, Singapore, China, England, India and the Netherlands. But it all started with a guy who was dating the best friend of one of her sisters in New Orleans.
That guy was Arnold W. Donald, who is now CEO of Carnival Corporation. He made his way from New Orleans to St. Louis first, and when his family friend Ann later moved to town as a trailing spouse and settled in, he suggested she go to work for his friend David Steward, who had recently founded World Wide Technology.
At that time, the only thing “world-wide” about the company Steward founded with Jim Kavanaugh was its vision. Marr said the company had 130 employees then and was doing $150 million in business – fractions of the numbers for her employer at the time, Enterprise Holdings, where she was human resources manager for St. Louis operations.
“I went to talk to Dave and Jim, and next thing I was leaving Enterprise,” Marr said. “It was crazy. I was leaving the largest car rental company in the United States for what was almost a start-up.”
Donald made the introduction because he knew that Steward and Kavanaugh intended to grow their company and needed a human resources executive like Marr. But she was surprised at the totality of their need in this area.
She inherited one part-time human resources employee. As for human resources policy, their virtually was none. “It was a blank sheet of paper,” Marr said.
She is a risk-taker at heart, and figured if she didn’t succeed she would eventually find another job. But the company co-founders made her believe that they and she would not fail.
“Dave is so genuine, heartfelt, such a spiritual person, I easily felt very at home with him,” Marr said. “Jim was such a dynamic, passionate guy. When he talked about how he wanted to grow the company, I wanted to be a part of that.”
Marr described the company as “a systems integrations and value added reseller.” Asked to put it more plainly, she said, “We help companies innovate their businesses. We go in and make businesses more effective and more efficient.”
Nicole Tate, a utilities business development manager at WWT (and a black woman who claims Malcolm X as an inspiration), explained it well in a video posted on the company site. “We help our customers better utilize their technology,” she said, “and get more revenue out of their assets.”
A “game changer” in the company’s explosive growth, Marr said, was a major contract from Cingular (now AT&T) which led WWT to expand in Edwardsville. “We made a huge investment in a facility where we manage all the parts for AT&T that go into those big, tall towers,” Marr said. “It’s still today a huge piece of our business.”
Marr said the company recently made a very different move that promises to be its next game-changer when it acquired Asynchrony, a software company that specializes in mobile applications, last June for an undisclosed sum. That company brought 240 employees into WWT, and Marr said there are now more than 300 in that department.
“This is different than what we have done,” she said of the new mobile app line. “It will be a differentiator for us. Everything is an app now.”
Marr said the company has grown steadily, in part, because it has navigated economic downturns successfully. After the mortgage-backed securities debacle of 2007, she said, WWT did not lay anyone off, but the company also stopped hiring and went a year without offering raises.
“We kept training people,” she said, “so when the economy came back, as it always does, we would still be ready to go.”
She said Steward and Kavanaugh had candid conversations with employees throughout the downturn, and that kept people loyal to the company. “People are empowered when the CEO tells it like it is,” she said. “People have confidence in that. Even if it is bad news, they are hearing it from the source.”
Core values
That relates to the company’s core values, which are listed on the white board in her office, basic stuff like trust, humility, embracing change, having a passionate work ethic, being a team player, acting with honesty, integrity. The company describes this as the “Path to Success.”
“When we are hiring, we look at the core values along with other qualifications,” Marr said. “You can be brilliant, but if you don’t work well in a team you won’t last here.”
The company also hands out a kind of playbook to every new employee, who is compelled to read “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team” by Patrick Lencioni. Like finding the company’s core values listed on the white board in her office, when Marr was asked for a copy of the book she produced one immediately from the shelf behind her desk.
The company’s economic success is evident in its revenues, but Marr is just as proud of the company’s regular ranking in “Best Places to Work” polls and reports. Among many other similar recognitions, WWT has made Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For for the past five years in a row.
“It’s all about the culture,” she said. “You have to make people feel engaged and empowered in a team environment.”
Her own culture as a native of New Orleans is surviving in this corporate environment. On the wall of her modest, uncluttered corner office, facing the door, hangs a carnival mask. One shelf has copies of her book that she likes to sign and give to guests, “Classic Creole: A Celebration of Food and Family” (Southeast Missouri State University Press, 2011), published under her maiden name, Ann Cuiellette.
The twelfth of 13 children, she grew up cooking with her mother, Baylissa Cuiellette, and her grandmother, Manuella Morris, both now deceased. She got a little more serious about her cooking when a friend challenged her to offer a home-cooked Creole meal as an auction item. She now has a spread sheet of all of the successful people who have paid good money – as much as $11,000 one year – to a local charity for the privilege of having her cook her family recipes in their homes.
“I have now cooked in some fabulous kitchens,” she said. Sam and Marilyn Fox’s kitchen was especially memorable. “That was the biggest kitchen I have ever seen,” she said. “My husband hates it. I come home from these things and say, ‘Look at this kitchen.’”
However, she dedicated the book to her husband, Craig Marr (an attorney), and their two daughters, Eve, 30, and Mia, 27.
It was the devastating tragedy of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 that inspired her to collect her family recipes and stories into a book. “I had this folder with things falling out of it, all these little pieces of paper,” she said. “Katrina motivated me to do something with it.”
It’s a rich book, and not only in the recipes.
“Our family legacy was deeply rooted in our connection to the great Voodoo Queen of New Orleans – Marie Laveau. My great-grandmother, Seliniere Glapion, was one of the offspring of the great Marie Laveau,” she writes.
“Superstitions and traditions were prevalent, and there were times when my mother would create a ‘cure’ for an illness by wrapping herbs in a cheese cloth, dipping it in tea, then placing it under your pillow at night. You accepted the gesture, didn’t ask questions about the ritual and were amazed at the results.”
Certainly, the value of having a functional team around you was something she learned from her family before she came to St. Louis or wrote the WWT human resources policy from scratch.
“Being in this large family defines who I am, how I treat people, my work ethic and respect for the dignity of others,” she said. “I have five older sisters. I’m the youngest daughter – I’ll always be in a sorority and I will never be its president. And I have seven brothers. Nobody messes with someone who has seven brothers!”
That large family and their festive atmosphere attracted people to the Cuiellette house. “We always seemed to have others gather around the table for dinner or just to be a part of the party-like atmosphere that existed in our house,” she writes in her book.
WWT would eventually benefit from this good food and energy, since one of those many party-goers, Arnold Donald, would eventually connect her with the company.
“Arnold used to come to the house,” Marr said. “Everybody was always welcome, and everybody always came to our house.”
