UPDATE:

The third show of “Tips to the Top” can now be heard on VoiceAmerica!

President of Women & Company, Linda Descano shares how women's attitude towards money has shifted in the recent year, based on their report "Women and Affluence 2010: The Era of Financial Responsibility". Zelda Greenberg, author of "The Art of Bouncing Back", shares why she wrote the book, and how you can "bounce back" from any of life's struggles if you understand her 7 "bounce points".

Next week’s guests will be Janice Bryant Howroyd, CEO of the largest privately owned staffing company, ACT-1 and Mildred Antenor, Professor of Women's Studies at Seton Hall, and Founder of Communicating Women. Both women have had their share of struggles, but are extremely successful today and make it a mission to help other women.

Listen every Thursday morning 8AM PT, 11AM ET to Thomasina Tafur’s “Tips to the Top” to inspire you to achieve more and be your best!

Thomasina Tafur, a former FedEx senior manager who climbed the corporate ladder for 20 years, is now delivering her successful business acumen to the next generation of women leaders.

She brings her wealth of experience in strategic business marketing, grasp of corporate cultures, and serious understanding of the Venus-Mars gender-image realities to professional women. Thomasina Tafur Consulting offers valuable and effective advice and guidance to women climbing to the top inside and outside the company. Thomasina Tafur Consulting can make the difference for women who want to achieve and optimize their professional success.

Thomasina Tafur Consulting includes project-specific retainers, entrepreneurial launches, and ongoing executive coaching. Engage Thomasina directly to prepare your female managers for greater roles. If you wish to become a female leader yourself, Thomasina can be hired by individuals as well.

Overnight Success

Thomasina Tafur
SeniorManager
Western Region, Market Council
FedEx Corp., Memphis, Tenn.

Look up "Type A" in the dictionary and you'll find a picture of Thomasina Tafur. She leaves the house early, works most Saturdays, is active in her church, plays golf, follows UM football and mentors a group of female colleagues. Perhaps the best example of her intensity, however, is that she planned her wedding and had the highest sales numbers in her region while completing her MBA. As she says, "I like to keep very busy."

As a senior manager for the Western region of the FedEx Market Council, a four-year-old division within FedEx Express, Tafur is in charge of fostering communication among all of the division's operating companies. She covers 15 markets, so she might be in Nevada one day to discuss specific accounts with decision makers, and in Texas the next, brainstorming about how to keep a local market strong.

Tafur jokingly says she has “purple blood,” since she's been with FedEx since college. She started in customer service, became a facilitator, and then moved to Florida to become a district sales manager and complete her MBA. Next stop was corporate sales manager for the state of Florida, where she handled such large accounts as Chico's, Burger King and UM.

“Since I had worked primarily in sales, my classes helped me understand finance and operations,” Tafur says. “It helped me to think more strategically and mathematically.” She adds that her teachers were excellent, especially Economics Professor Michael Connolly, whom she calls “wise, humble and sweet.” and Business Law Chair and Professor Rene Sacasas, "a tough professor who taught me a lot about contract law."

After getting her MBA, Tafur mentored two UM undergraduates through the School's Mentor Program. "Both women were business majors,” she says. "We'd meet and talk about being a woman in the workplace, how to move up the ladder, what to consider. I tried to help guide them.”

Today she mentors a group of women in her division. "As I grow older and wiser, I feel it's our responsibility. Even if I never go higher, it's my obligation to share what I learned with younger women so they don't make the same mistakes. We need to do a better job of banding together."

By Ellen Ullman, reprinted from Business Miami, Winter 2006 Photography Steve Jones/GPA