TEWKSBURY - Her British accent is still palpable enough that she gets teased around the office.
So it's probably best that her employees not get a gander at that old photo of her in a white barrister's wig, evincing a Rumpole-like readiness to argue a case at the Old Bailey.
But Deborah Ellinger is sufficiently Americanized to understand the attachments that form between people and pets in her adopted country. In fact, her business depends on it. And lately business is booming.
Ellinger, 48, is the chief executive officer of Wellness/Old Mother Hubbard, Inc., a natural pet-food company that promises "uncompromising nutrition" for Rover, Spot, and Fluffy through a "holistic" approach. The firm expects to rake in more than $100 million in revenues this year, a 40 percent increase over last year.
There was a time not that long ago when Ellinger knew only enough about pet food to feed her own dog. "I was pretty ignorant," she acknowledges. But now she can - and will - discourse at great length on why white rice is actually better than brown rice as an ingredient in cat food (it lowers the level of magnesium in the diet, which combats feline lower urinary tract disease).
"This business is unique," she explains as her dog, Dazzle, sprawls at her feet underneath a conference table. "A lot of people are really fanatical about their pet's diet. Customers go to great lengths to understand every single component that's in their pet's food."
Ellinger, too, tends toward an all-or-nothing commitment to a challenge once she takes it on. When she was a student at Cambridge University in the late 1970s, her balky old Datsun kept breaking down. A friend mentioned that the on-campus Officers Training Corps, the British military's equivalent of ROTC, offered courses in auto mechanics. So Ellinger promptly joined, learning not just how to fix her car but also how to fire a rifle with enough skill that she became a competitive marksman .
"It was something I did on a lark," she says. "If I'd really thought about it, I probably wouldn't have done it."
Yet she seems anything but impulsive. Her undergraduate response to her car problems, while perhaps extreme, can be seen as an early sign of the pragmatic, problem-solving approach that has marked her business career. Ellinger's manner is open and businesslike at the same time, conveying the sense of an executive who fosters collegiality but is also resolutely attuned to the bottom line.
"She's intelligent enough to pick out situations where if you do a good job you can be very successful," says Tom Stamberg, the founder and former CEO of
Climbing the ladder
Ellinger has traveled a winding but determined path to the top of Wellness, where she became CEO six months ago. Since she moved to the United States from England in 1980, she has held executive positions at Mellon Bank, Boston Consulting Group, Staples, and
When Ellinger is asked why that is, and whether there is still a "glass ceiling" for women, she replies: "I don't think 'glass ceiling' is quite the right term. But there are obstacles that are unique for women. Women find it hard to ask. They don't ask for the promotion; they don't ask for more money." She gives a slight smile, then adds: "I've never been shy about asking."
She may get that from her mother, who attended the London School of Economics in the 1940s, a time when few women did so, and who helped coordinate the movement of supplies during World War II. Her mother, who spent most of her postwar life as a homemaker and who died 10 years ago, felt vindicated by her daughter's climb through the corporate ranks. "If she had grown up in a different time, she might have done things differently," Ellinger says.
Ellinger had a prototypical upper-class British childhood. At age 10, she left her home in Cambridge to board at the exclusive Bedales School, where her classmates included Daniel Day-Lewis. She played lacrosse and tennis, ran cross-country, and was skilled at math and physics, which won her admission to Cambridge, one of the world's most prestigious universities, which happens to be located in her hometown.
After a year, finding her math professors less than scintillating, she switched to the study of law. She finished a three-year program in two years, but upon graduation decided that a law career was not for her after all. But what was? The world of business, she concluded. Finding a job in her economically sluggish homeland in 1980, though, was an uphill struggle. "I couldn't find a job in Britain," she recalls. "You would think, graduating from Cambridge, you would have your pick, but it was dismal."
An unusual business
So she turned her attention to the United States, which seemed culturally inclined to reward the kind of burning ambitions Ellinger had. Her parents had already moved to Pittsburgh, and soon she moved there herself to take a job as an in-house consultant at Mellon Bank. By 27 she was a vice president. Next stop was the Boston Consulting Group, where she rose to partner, and which brought her to the Boston area in 1994. By then she had married Vernon Ellinger, whom she had met at Mellon Bank, and with whom she had begun a family. (They have two daughters, 16 and 14.)
Eight years ago, Ellinger got onto an even faster track. An acquaintance told her at a party that Staples was looking for a senior vice president for strategy. She was dubious that she was qualified but met with Stemberg, whereupon she bluntly told him: "I don't know retailing." Stemberg hired her anyway, and she oversaw the redesign of Staples stores across the country. After two years, Ellinger moved on to CVS, where she helped build up the company's website as an executive vice president from 2001 to 2003, until she was recruited to be chief operating officer at Wellness. Six months ago she was named CEO.
It is an unusual business, unlike any of the others where Ellinger has worked. It's safe to say that none of her previous companies had an employee affectionately nicknamed "the guru of doo-doo" (so named for his ability to analyze every detail of the canine digestive process in hopes of creating a nutritious dog food). As the boss, Ellinger has to be attuned not just to her 120 employees but also to finicky pet owners, veterinarians, groomers, and breeders, not to mention the owners of the 6,200 independent pet stores in the United States and Canada that carry the Wellness products.
But she has experience in hitting what she aims at. When Ellinger describes the attributes that made her successful at target shooting in college, she might also, in a way, be talking about her business career: "You've got to be incredibly calm; you've got to get your breathing right; you've got to be focused."
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com.
