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Small Is Beautiful
New CBIA chair to focus on small businesses,
more business-friendly legislation
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Business New Haven
1/12/1998
By: Susan Banfield
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Carol Wallace was raised to care about small
business.
Cooper Instruments of Middletown, a 120-employee manufacturer of thermometers for the food services and heating, cooling and air-conditioning industries, was her family's business. Her father, Floyd Wallace Jr., was president. Carol Wallace, who has succeeded her father as president and chief executive officer of Cooper, was elected chairman of the Connecticut Business & Industry Association (CBIA) at the group's December board of directors' meeting. She brings to the chairmanship of the state's largest business organization her concern for the welfare of Connecticut's small businesses.
Wallace is a graduate of Middlebury (Vt.) College, where she earned a bachelor's degree in biology. “I thought I would go into something like forestry management, but the field was glutted,” she recalls. She wound up spending a year with Dunn & Bradstreet instead.
This was followed by a year at Cooper Instruments working for her father. But “I thought I'd better earn wings of my own,” Wallace says, which led her to spend the next 20 years working for a variety of firms, including Hughes Aircraft Corp. and Union Pump Co. in Michigan.
Wallace returned to Cooper in 1991. “I came on board in strategic planning, segued from there into marketing. I moved into the presidency in 1994,” she says. As president, Wallace has been trying to push the company more into exports, and has focused more on food safety issues.
Carol Wallace joined CBIA the same year she returned to Cooper - 1991. Her father had been a founder and suggested she also get involved. Since joining, Wallace has worked for a greater voice for small business.
Kenneth Decko, CBIA's president and CEO, is not concerned that Wallace's approach will be one-sided. “She has a very diverse background,” he says. “She worked for a large corporation and now heads up a small manufacturing company. She sees the big picture.”
Decko also points out another of Wallace's strengths and probable focal areas: her concern with advancing legislation that is more favorable to business. “She is interested in getting business people more involved in the legislative process,” he says.
“I want to help the legislature understand that business and industry in toto are not the entities represented,” Wallace says, explaining her approach to getting more business-friendly laws passed. “We are responsible entities, who take care of our communities and make significant contributions to the quality of life.” If the way legislators perceive the business community were changed, Wallace says, “then I think appropriate legislation would follow.”
Wallace will serve as CBIA chairman for a one-year term. She succeeds Bernard M. Fox, recently retired president and CEO of the Northeast Utilities system. Wallace also serves on the New England Advisory Board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as well as the board and executive committee of the Middlesex County Chamber of Commerce. She is vice chairman of the board of directors of Gaylord Hospital, a director of Scott & Daniels Inc., and is involved in the Department of Economic & Community Development's Cluster Initiative, where she is involved in “improving things from a regulatory perspective.”
- Susan Banfield
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