There is no glass ceiling in Helen Bulwik’s world of retail management, corporate growth and investment hobnobbing.
Yet despite her good fortune in the professional world, this only child of Holocaust survivors is painfully aware that both life and prosperity can be fleeting.
She takes neither for granted in her constant quest to rescue troubled businesses from the brink of bankruptcy as CEO of the Oakland-based firm Seagate International.
Bulwik’s survival instincts have been recognized by the San Francisco business elite. She was recently named the first woman president of the Association for Corporate Growth, a professional fraternity that promotes business development, mergers and acquisitions.
Joe Meissner, an association past president, called Bulwik “a talented manager, a retail guru and a world-class turnaround consultant.”
“She is our first [female] president in what used to be an old boys’ club. Helen has already done a lot to increase the diversity.”
Less than 10 percent of the international investment club’s local chapter was female before Bulwik’s July promotion. There were nearly 200 members in the group and only 14 were women. Since July, Bulwik has recruited about 30 new members, half of them female. She has also brought in formerly unrepresented industries — retail, apparel manufacturing and asset-based lending.
Although women are scarce in the organization, Bulwik notes that there is no shortage of Jews.
“In the investment community in general, there are a lot of Jews” who are “active, committed people wanting to do good, building business and development. Hopefully, they bring it back to the Jewish community.”
Bulwik says she takes her Jewish values to work every day. She believes that economic prosperity is necessary for tikkun olam, the healing of the world.
When rescuing failing companies from the quagmires of debt, “We don’t tear anything down,” but rather “build companies and create jobs,” she says. “The association is about the same thing. It comes down to economic health. These are Jewish principles.”
As the head of Seagate, Bulwik travels around the world to save troubled companies. She recalls visiting Montana, Kansas and East Asia, where she found herself in communities with no Jewish population.
“I’ve walked into companies where the highest-level woman in the company was clerical, and here I come — five-foot-two, female and Jewish — into redneckland. It’s shocking to them.”
Bulwik said it usually takes a few months for her colleagues in such areas to get to know her.
“They [eventually] discover that I don’t have horns and I’m not a moneygrubber. That’s when I have the most fun.”
She particularly enjoys herself when someone who has never met a Jew asks her about Judaism. She likes to take new clients to synagogue — that is, when one can be found.
Bulwik also is active in the local Jewish community. She has served on the boards of the Jewish Federation of the Greater East Bay, Agency for Jewish Education, U.C. Berkeley Hillel and East Bay Jewish Community Relations Council.
Because her German-born parents lost their families to the Holocaust, Bulwik says she considers both life and her life’s work precious.
“Every day [it] becomes incredibly important to do something. We’re all here for a reason. I try to do what’s right and not get sidetracked.
“I’ve been able to touch thousands of people and make their lives better,” she said. “I look at it as a gift.”