Bruce S. Gordon 1946–

Business executive

At a Glance …

Sources

Bruce S. Gordon’s career in the telephone business has spanned an era of tremendous changes in technology, and Gordon’s expertise has helped make his longtime employer, Verizon Communications, one of the most successful companies in the communications industry. As president of the retail markets group for the largest phone company in the United States, Gordon has worked to keep Verizon’s customers from straying in a highly competitive field. In 2002 he was named one of Fortune magazine’s “50 Most Powerful Black Executives.” Verizon’s chief executive officer, Ivan Seidenberg, contributed to a profile of Gordon that was featured in the magazine Black Enterprise. He told the magazine that Gordon “is an extraordinary executive whose marketing instincts and skills are unsurpassed.” Seidenberg told the article’s author, Cassandra Hayes, “We start off with a leg up on the competition because we have him leading our customer care efforts.”

Born on February 15, 1946, Gordon grew up in Camden, New Jersey, in a strict household headed by two educators. He studied at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania, where he also played wide receiver on its football team. Gordon wanted to live in the city, and after his graduation in 1968 he applied for a management trainee post with the local phone company in Philadelphia. He accepted an offer from Bell of Pennsylvania—though he had no desire to make a career there, he told Nadirah Sabir, another writer for Black Enterprise. He explained, “I had this fear that if I stayed, I would be doing the same job my entire life.”

At the time, Bell of Pennsylvania was part of the government-supervised telephone industry, much like a public utility; there was one company providing the service to consumers, and its rates were regulated. But Gordon recalled in the Black Enterprise interview with Hayes, “Soon after I came into the Bell system, there were talks to convert the monopoly into a competitive business. The whole energy level picked up.” Gordon ended his management training by accepting a job as a business office manager in 1970. He also fulfilled his political interests by writing a weekly column for a suburban Philadelphia paper, on subjects that often touched on some of the more contentious race issues of the day. At one point, he even considered leaving Bell in order to run an

At a Glance …

Born on February 15, 1946, in Camden, NJ; son of Walter (a teacher) and Violet (a teacher) Gordon; married Genie Alston, February 20, 1970 (divorced); children: Taurin. Education: Gettysburg College, BA, 1968; Bell Advance Management program, University of Illinois, 1981; Wharton Executive Management program, University of Pennsylvania; Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, MS, 1988.

Career: Bell of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, held various positions, 1968–85, including general manager for marketing and sales, 1985, vice president for marketing, 1988–; Bell Atlantic Network Services, group president for retail, 1993–; retail markets group president for Verizon Communications, New York, NY, 2000–.

Memberships: Alliance of Black Managers; Toastmasters International; Urban League, director, 1984–86; Inroads of Philadelphia, United Negro College Fund Telethon, 1985–86.

Awards: Alfred P. Sloan fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987; Executive of the Year, Black Enterprise magazine, 1998.

Addresses: Office —Verizon Communications, 1095 Ave. of the Americas, New York, NY 10036–6797.

alternative urban school in Philadelphia, although he changed his mind just before handing in his resignation. “I wasn’t a traditional person,” he described himself at the time to Hayes. “Being a child of the ‘60s, I had a natural resistance to the status quo.”

Gordon’s determined personality almost ended his career in its infancy. There was a rumor that he was going to be fired, but a sales general manager and friend of Gordon’s at Bell stepped in and requested that he be transferred to the sales department. Gordon told Hayes in Black Enterprise that his mentor “was Jewish and felt that he had also been a victim of discrimination. He liked that I was a black guy who had a lot to say about the business, and we connected on those terms.” Gordon spent two years as a marketing sales manager before becoming a personnel supervisor in 1974. His career advanced quickly, and he held various management positions over the next decade, eventually becoming general manager for marketing and sales in 1985. In the interim, Bell of Pennsylvania was undergoing a transformation. Under existing antitrust laws, its parent company, AT&T, had been ordered to dissolve its local and long-distance phone companies, and in 1985 the deregulation resulted in the creation of seven regional “Bell” phone companies. The former Bell of Pennsylvania became the Bell Atlantic Corporation.

Bell Atlantic provided phone service for some 12 million customers from New Jersey to Maryland, and Gordon’s keen business sense fit well with the new era. The phone company was suddenly forced to compete for customers, and Gordon worked with those under him in order to set and meet goals. After he became vice president for marketing in 1988, he was able to bring about even greater changes. He initiated retail kiosks, and greatly improved customer service—once a thorny problem for AT&T/Bell. For example, research showed that the 9,000 employees in Bell Atlantic’s call center who answered incoming customer service or repair calls were picking up only 70% of them in the first 20 seconds. Gordon set a goal of 90% within that time frame, and looked for ways to meet the goal without simply adding more employees. He found that call center employees were often away at seminars, or just not at their desks. Within two months, Bell Atlantic hit the 90% mark.

But Gordon soon realized that the root of the problem might go even deeper. “I had to decide whether the people who got us to this point in history could take us forward,” he told Sabir in the Black Enterprise interview. Gordon won approval to restructure the way in which employees could advance within the company. He announced that all positions were open to every employee, and that all had to compete for such jobs, which resulted in a 20% turnover of staff. Gordon also worked hard to ensure that he was personally as accessible as everyone else. He turned down a private manager’s office, preferring to work on the same floor as many of his employees, because “information gets filtered when you’re up there, and you cut yourself off,” he told Black Enterprise.

Gordon was named group president for retail markets in 1993, and four years later was put in charge of a historic changeover, when Bell Atlantic and NYNEX, the New York and New England phone system, merged. The $26 billion deal gave Bell Atlantic millions of new customers from New York to Maine, and made it the number two telecommunications company in the United States. Gordon headed up the all-important integration team for the new merger, which entailed changing the logos on phone booths, buildings, directories, and even some 28 million monthly statements mailed to customers. It was a swift, successful changeover, according to focus-group studies, and helped earn Gordon Black Enterprise’s Executive of the Year honor in 1998.

In June of 2000, Bell Atlantic merged with GTE, and both names were jettisoned in favor of “Verizon.” Gordon remained as president of the retail markets group as the company grew, and continued to work within the company to help others. He founded a mentoring and networking group for African Americans at Verizon, and has been active in several charitable causes, including the Urban League and the United Negro College Fund. Divorced and the parent of a grown son, he has realized that he is sometimes perceived as too driven and intense. He explained to Hayes in Black Enterprise that twentieth-century German novelist Hermann Hesse’s classic tale of Buddhist spirituality, Siddhartha, had helped him immensely. “As I moved through the business, taking on more responsibility,” Gordon reflected, “the book taught me that having balance in my life will make me a better person.”

Sources

Periodicals

Advertising Age, October 8, 2001, p. S27.

Black Enterprise, May 1995, p. 55; September 1998, p. 84.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), July 11, 2002, p. 38.

On-line

“Key Executives,” Verizon, http://newscenter.verizon.com/speeches/bio_gordon.vtml (May 22, 2003).

“Most Powerful Black Executives,” Fortune www.fortune.com/fortune/blackpower/snapshot/O,15307,6,00.html (May 22, 2003).

“Verizon’s Bold Broadband Upgrade,” Business Week, http://asia.businessweek.com:/print/technology/content/mar2003/tc20030319_4016_tc024.htm ?tc (May 22, 2003).

—Carol Brennan