Winter 2006

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Why You Should Love Polymers

Where There's Spark

Falling for Shelburne Falls

Where Are They Now?

Lessons in the Sand

Feature

Where There's Spark Maryanne Cataldo ’79

—Charles Creekmore

Maryanne Cataldo is the founder and owner of City Lights Electrical Company, a Canton-based electrical construction company. MARYANNE CATALDO IS THE FOUNDER and owner of City Lights Electrical Company, a Canton-based electrical construction company with more than 200 employees and up to $45 million in annual revenue. Cataldo earned an economics degree from UMass Amherst and an MBA from Harvard. City Lights, the 18th-largest woman-owned business in Massachusetts, has worked for the Central Artery Tunnel Project (a.k.a. the Big Dig), the MBTA, and the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority, among others. In addition, they worked on power reconstruction after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita last autumn. Pushing Paper: I left my job as a junior economist to become a master electrician because I didn’t feel like I was adding value to the world. I thought I could add value by powering buildings and putting up lights. How did I start? I saw a poster saying “Do you want to be an electrician?” and a light went on. What I got out of it was instant gratification. I could see exactly what I had accomplished each day, and that gave me a lot of satisfaction. Working in a Man’s World: Working as a master electrician was probably the most difficult experience of my life, because I was one of the first women in the field. It proved harder than getting an MBA from Harvard. Seizing the Day: When the company I worked for went out of business in 1989, it left all its accounts. Though I was suddenly unemployed, I had the opportunity of a lifetime, and therein City Lights was born. I think one should be ready for opportunity knocking, even at seemingly inopportune times. Luck: Is a combination of hard work, preparation, and taking advantage of an opportunity when it presents itself. What It Takes to Start a Business: I was young enough, old enough, smart enough, and stupid enough to try and start my own business. Thinking Big: One of the first things I did after starting my own business was to go to Harvard Business School. Most construction companies go out of business not for lack of field experience, but for lack of business acumen. I was street-smart, but I lacked financial polish. I felt like I could use more, because I wanted to eventually have a big business. My MBA allowed me to grow the business by giving me a better vision of the “big picture.” Midlife Crisis: Instituting professional management [a multilayered concept for staffing companies] at City Lights in 1997 is what I did for my midlife crisis. I was middle-aged, my business had reached its midlife, and City Lights was just a middle-fiddle company. I was trying to manage everything myself. In order to go to the next level, my company desperately needed professional management, and I needed to let go. By implementing it, I risked the nest egg I already had. Professional management liberated me to do business development and think strategically about the big picture. It also gave me the chutzpah to jump to the next level. Now I have a line of professional management that has allowed us to grow annual revenue from $250,000 in 1989 to $45 million today. Swashbuckling: I’m personally very conservative financially. There’s this image of entrepreneurs as being swashbuckling risk-takers. That’s not me. Role Models: My role models were my aunts and my mother. One aunt was a career CIA employee while my mother was chief clerk for a railroad. I admire them because they were women who were pioneers in their fields. Because of them, as I grew up, I thought a woman could do anything. When I got older, it didn’t even dawn on me that I couldn’t start my own company. I just plunged right in. When my daughter joined my life when I was 38, and my business was going full bore, I looked to my mother and other aunts for guidance. They had such large families, I knew I should be able to easily handle one child. The Secret of My Success: I found opportunity where others wouldn’t look. Oftentimes we would do the down-and-dirty work, where other people in our industry wanted to keep their hands clean. I was a contrarian. So my advice is: Follow your nose. Follow your instinct. The Advantage of Being a Woman: I was more open-minded. I didn’t have a preconceived notion of what an organization should look like. I wanted to build teams. I think a lot of men come in with militaristic viewpoints and create traditional organizations. I think my viewpoint helped City Lights because we work collaboratively here. I was able to find people who were different and build a nontraditional organization. I think our kind of organization is the organization of the future. We’re not trapped in the stereotypes of the past. Chasing Your Dream: My advice to students at UMass Amherst who are about to graduate is to follow your dream, and the money will follow you. Especially when you’re young, forget about the money. http://www.citylightselectrical.com/

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Where There's Spark

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