UPDATE:

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

There are several myths about making your customers loyal to your business. Listen to my interview with Lerszan Aksoy, Associate Professor of Marketing at Fordham University in New York, as we discuss the myths of the cost to keeping clients versus gaining new clients and why you shouldn’t try to buy customer loyalty. In second interview with Carrie Coghill Kuntz, author of numerous business books and finance guru, we discuss how young couples can make sound financial decisions and why women should increase their investing IQ.

This week I’ll interview Bridget Brennan, CEO of business strategy firm Female Factor and author of acclaimed book “Why She Buys”. We’ll learn more about the female consumer. And Amy Nichols, founder and CEO of Dogtopia, a place where pets are valued as family and where dogs enjoy endless playtime and spa treatments in a positive environment. We’ll discuss how she turned her passion into a business and you can too!

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