WOMAN OF VISION.

• Author: BRONIKOWSKI, LYNN
• Position: Betsy Bernard - Brief Article

BETSY BERNARD

Betsy Bernard, US West executive vice president/retail markets and the highest-ranking woman in the nation's expansive telecom industry, made it happen. A member of the prestigious International Women's Forum, Bernard invited Sauver and another colleague to join her for the forum's Washington, D.C., meeting.

"The Who's Who of American women were there," recalled Sauver, who worked her way up from sales to US West vice president over a 20-year career. "A roundtable she sponsored was held in Alan Greenspan's conference room -- where he decides interest rates -- and included a woman judge from Israel and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg. It was fantastic, and it said to me that Betsy is in a very strong way committed to women.

Bernard, 44, came to US West two years ago from A VIRNEX Communications Group, a start-up company in California. From the time she was recruited by AT&T during her junior year in college at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., until last March when she was named to the executive team that will run the new Qwest once its merger with US West is completed, Bernard has believed in hard work.

"For years after I got out of college I kept my nose to the grindstone and thought that discrimination against women in the workplace was a thing of the past -- that the feminist movement had taken care of that," said Bernard of her first dozen years in corporate America. "It wasn't until I was in my early 30s that I realized there were a lot fewer of me than them, and I looked around and thought, 'Where are my sisters?"'

They were not to be found, she discovered, not at least until a Justice Department order 20 years ago forced AT&T to open its doors and executive suites to women and minorities.

"I didn't get my feminist voice until my mid-30s," said Bernard. "But when I got it; I got it big and I got it loud. I do believe that when you're in a position where you can make a difference, you have a responsibility to make a difference and to me it is a blessing to make a difference."

She said the industry is "clearly making progress," ticking off such statistics as - 42% of all US West directors are women, while in 1990, women accounted for 30%, and in 1981 only 14%. Among vice presidents and executive directors, 39% are women, while that number was 26% in 1990 and a scant 1% in 1981.

"We're clearly making progress, but we're not even close to my expectations," said Bernard who oversees US West's largest...