Smiling at the top

Boston Business Journal 
Once, many years ago, Fay Donohue sat in a roomful of executives as part of an advisory group. When it came time to decide who would act as secretary for the meeting, all eyes turned to Donohue, the only woman in the room. She was a vice president at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts at the time.

Her response: “I’ll be happy to take notes. Then next time, we’ll rotate.” It’s that combination of grace and tenacity that propelled Donohue to helm Delta Dental of Massachusetts. She says it comes from her mother.

“There was always the idea that if you had talents to contribute to society, it’s your obligation to use them,” Donohue said. She is the oldest of three daughters of two Navy officers. Her parents were the first two Navy officers to ever marry, because her mother was one of the historic first wave of female Navy officers who were trained in 1942 at Mount Holyoke College. Donohue said her mother’s superiors tried to bend the rules to allow her to wear a traditional gown for the wedding, but Donohue’s mother was having none of it. “She said, ‘I’m proud to be a navy officer. I want to wear my dress white uniform,’” Donohue said.

Fay Donohue has served as CEO of Delta Dental of Massachusetts since 2007 and previously served as president, as well as chief operating officer, of Delta Dental in the five preceding years. At Delta Dental, she has been instrumental in driving the company’s growth. Delta Dental is largest dental benefits provider in Massachusetts, serving 2 million members. In its annual report, Delta Dental executives wrote that despite large numbers of employer layoffs in 2009, Delta Dental retained 97 percent of its members and added 281 new customer groups last year. Delta Dental posted 2009 premium revenue of $302 million.

Donohue didn’t start out in health care. After graduating from Bryn Mawr College in 1973, she found herself married to a graduate student and pounding the pavement for any kind of job she could get. She ended up at the old New England Telephone. “They said, ‘Are you willing to do anything, even work in the plant?’ And I said, ‘yes!’” She became a supervisor in the phone installation and repair division, and she loved the business part of the job, if not the technology.

She then moved on to Blue Cross, where she first worked in the marketing department, and then as a consumer ombudsman. She called them “nice staff jobs,” with no responsibility for profit and loss. She said she had some wonderful mentors, who pulled her aside and said, “You’d better get in line” — meaning, in line to climb the ladder to the top. So she moved to an operations job, and then decided to get an MBA. When she finished her degree and was given a promotion, “it was strongly suggested not to keep a picture of my daughter on my desk.” As in, why remind colleagues that you are a mother?

Donohue was a vice president at Blue Cross in 1993 when she was tapped for a similar role at Lawrence-based Chartwell Home Therapies. She joined Delta Dental in 1995.

Donohue has served on a total of eight boards of directors, including the National Institute of Children’s Health Quality, and the board of American Dental Partners. Donohue was a former vice chair of the Foundation for Education in Lincoln Sudbury, and has served on the boards of the National Association of Dental Plans and the Campfire Boys and Girls Clubs. She currently serves as a trustee of the Mass Eye and Ear Infirmary, the Massachusetts Taxpayers Association, and as a member of the board of Operation A.B.L.E., whose mission is to provide employment and training opportunities to mature workers 45 and older from diverse backgrounds.

So Donohue spends time outside work mentoring other women leaders. She also loves to travel, and when she does, she doesn’t go lie on a beach. She takes on, and loves best, challenging destinations like Istanbul, Mexico City and former Soviet republics. Donohue studied European and Russian History while at Bryn Mawr, and spoke Russian well enough to study at the University of Moscow in 1971. Her passion for that part of the world might influence the next chapter of her life, her former Blue Cross colleague Karen Quigley surmises.

Now with three daughters of her own, she marvels both at how far society has come in extending opportunities to a wider swath of the population, and how much terrain there is still left to traverse. She points out that all three daughters chose colleges that did not admit women when she was in school. But she’s also frustrated at what she sees as some recent backsliding, when it comes to catapulting women into powerful positions. “I think how can this be — where are the women on boards, in the C-suite? It’s getting worse, not better.”

Julie M. Donnelly can be reached at juliedonnelly@bizjournals.com