When Air Force
brat Cathy Nichols turned ten, her father left the military and moved
the family to a house without electricity in rural Maine. Nichols
grew up in semipoverty, working every summer to earn money for
clothes and knowing that once she was eighteen, there would be no
more help from home. "I wanted to escape, to make something of
myself," she recalls. "Back then, other than to be successful
someday, my biggest dream was to go to Disneyland. I never did."
Years later, however, Nichols finds herself overseeing a fantasy world where she's been asked to reign - the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park, home of the highly acclaimed City Walk, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park attractions. Named chairman and CEO of Universal Studios Recreation Group in June, Nichols is back in Los Angeles on a July afternoon after a whirlwind schedule of world travel. Seated in her spacious office, which looks out on the park, Nichols pauses to reflect on her career.
Thanks to scholarship assistance, Nichols was able to attend both Cornell and, later, Harvard Business School. "In a way, the HBS experience foreshadowed my theme park job - the campus environment had definite Jurassic Park overtones," Nichols recalls with a hearty laugh. It seems that on her first day at the School, a male student asked her how she could feel good about enrolling at HBS. Wasn't she depriving a man, probably one with a family to support, of the position she occupied?
"At first, I thought he was kidding," Nichols says, "and then I realized he was serious." Although a few such Jurassic-like creatures roamed the School back then, Nichols notes that "women students got through such encounters by doing a lot of bonding - with men as well as other women. I made some great friends."
Despite the culture shock, Nichols credits HBS with providing excellent skills and training for her subsequent career: consulting. After graduation and work as an investment banker in New York and Los Angeles, on a lark Nichols interviewed with McKinsey's L.A. office, which at the time had no women. She spent the next 22 years there, becoming the first woman senior partner in the firm's history. But Nichols had always known that she wanted to run a business herself. And, as McKinsey had expanded, she no longer had the same sense of building a firm that she had enjoyed during her early years with the company. When the opportunity at Universal came along, Nichols was ready for a change. "It's absolutely perfect for me," she says. "And it's also a lot of fun."
It will also be demanding. Universal Studios Florida is undergoing a multibillion-dollar expansion, plans for a theme park in Japan are well under way, and several other potential sites in Asia and Europe are being investigated. For Nichols, who is responsible for 8,000 employees and capital expansion projects exceeding $4 billion, overseeing this phenomenal growth, continually refining the attractions, and enhancing the guest experience while keeping an eye on capital costs are among the major challenges ahead. Of her goals, Nichols observes, "My desire is to build something I'm proud of - an excellent management team, a great product, and a significant value creation vehicle for Universal." Worlds apart from the backwoods of Maine, she's poised once again to succeed, by making reality out of fantasy.
by Thomas Frick
