Linda Turner

I'm actually going to attribute my success to Rod Towns, who was the Director of Facilities for Black Eyed Pea. He initially offered me the position of a dispatcher back in the 1990s, and he trusted me, guided me, and provided me the knowledge I needed to eventually become the only person in facilities for Black Eyed Pea. He has continued to support me throughout my entire facilities career - when I came back to Texas from Arizona, he immediately reached out and said he was retiring at LeDuff America and wanted me to come interview for his position. He still stays in touch with me to this day and wishes me a happy birthday. He was the one I looked up to. Now I also have a boss here at Bloomin' Brands, a female director of facilities named Teresa Seibert, and the knowledge that she has and the outlook that she has, being a woman in this position, has helped guide me and provide us a different look from the female's perspective of this position. So I'm contributing my success to Rod Towns and my current boss, Teresa Seibert.

The best career advice I've ever received is to have confidence in myself and the knowledge that I have. Sometimes I don't feel as confident in myself as other people are confident in me, so that's basically the best advice I've ever gotten - being more confident in myself in this position and with the knowledge that I have.

I would tell young women entering this industry to rely on those people around you that have the knowledge and absorb as much as you possibly can. Have faith in yourself that you can do the job. I highly recommend they get connected with RFMA, which is a restaurant facilities maintenance organization - they have courses that can be taken that provide a lot of knowledge if you're just coming in and have a lot to learn. Get as much information as you can and absorb as much as you can from your coworkers. The more you learn, the more confidence you'll have in yourself and feel comfortable doing the job and be successful. It's not easy - it's not easy to expect a woman to understand refrigeration and air conditioning and operations of all different kinds of equipment - so there's a lot of knowledge that, over time, has been built up. I learn something new every day, and I just continue to absorb that new knowledge and move forward with it as I move forward in my job.

The biggest challenge in my field is finding reliable, dependable, competent vendors across all fields and in all markets. Some markets are a little bit more difficult than others because of the remoteness of the location, but that is the biggest hurdle that is constant throughout the year, year after year - finding those vendors that you know you can rely on. And especially being a woman in this field, a lot of times vendors don't think that I have the knowledge, and they try to get things past us that might not be necessary. But with the 15 years' worth of knowledge that I have in this area, plus the operations side of business, I think I have proved myself to my vendors that I know what I'm talking about and I know when something seems accurate or does not. It's difficult being in a male-dominated field as a female, but I'm telling you, there's more and more females getting into this business, which is great to see.

The values that are most important to me in my work and personal life are trustworthiness, honesty, and dependability. Those are probably my top three values.