Dena Cordova
Dena Cordova noticed that she was, in her words, “the only girl in the room” among 15 people with whom she was attending a managers’ meeting in January at Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber’s Dallas headquarters. The pro dealer had just promoted Cordova to regional sales director in Colorado Springs, Colo., where 48 employees report to her. That promotion was the culmination so far of an 18-year career during which Cordova hasn’t let gender get in the way of her upward mobility. And in contrast to her mother, who was a teacher for 35 years, Cordova—who describes herself as “very competitive”—hasn’t been content staying put in one job slot or with one company.
Her career began in 1988 as a credit manager with a major building products manufacturer/distributor in Denver, although Cordova says she spent a good part of her five years there trying to move into sales and being thwarted by a general manager who she felt resisted giving women a shot at advancement. That kind of bias, though, has been rare in Cordova’s experience. “I’ve encountered customers who didn’t want to deal with women. I decided early on, though, that I wasn’t going to make this an issue.” She left the company in 1993 and spent the next decade expanding her resume with several building products distributors, gaining experience and contacts at each stop: to MacMillan Bloedel as a purchasing agent; back to the manufacturer briefly as a lumber manager; then to Boise Cascade in March 1998 as a marketing manager in Denver and an account manager in San Diego, where Boise planned to open a distribution center she would have run. That DC never got built, though, and Cordova relocated to Colorado Springs when her husband was offered a job there.
There, she spent three years with Carolina Holdings (now Stock Building Supply) as a sales manager with a staff of 15. Through networking, she came into contact with associates at Foxworth-Galbraith, which has eight yards, two truss plants, and a DC in Colorado. “They had a reputation for being a company of high integrity,” says Cordova. She liked what she saw so much that she joined that dealer in May 2004 as a regional account sales manager, handling more than $23 million in annual sales. Eighteen months later, her boss quit and she was elevated to her current position.
Cordova feels her greatest impact at Foxworth-Galbraith currently is “building our bench” by training its current sales force, and “fostering and mentoring” younger employees, as well as bringing more of them into the company. “That’s really important because not enough people are coming into this business.”
Cordova reports to vice president of sales Ted Sojourner, and sees “the next logical step” for herself as a vice president. But until that happens, “I’m enjoying the heck out of working here.” Foxworth-Galbraith’s corporate culture might be closest to her own management style that favors “consensus gathering,” which could be useful for a company she says is “realizing that they as a team must come up with a [competitive] solution and adapt to customers by sharing best practices.”
