Strangely enough, Robert, President and CEO of the Vermont Teddy Bear Co., did not begin her college career as a business student but as a pre-med student at Middlebury College.  After falling ill during her freshman year and being forced to miss a semester of school, however, she decided that pre-med was not the right place for her and eventually settled on a major in French.  Throughout her college career, Robert was actively involved in athletics.  She was a member of the college's varsity lacrosse and field hockey teams, she was a member of the women's ice hockey club, and she was a ski instructor.

Through all of this, she did manage to take one business course---accounting---and she landed her first job out of college at the Bank of Boston, where she was trained in financial statement accounting.  After a year, however, several things occurred that sent her on a different path.  First and foremost, she realized that banking and the whole corporate ladder structure did not mesh with her personality and background.  She had, after all, come from an entrepreneurial background and was already experienced in helping run companies as a board member of both her father's and her husband's family's businesses.  Second, she and her husband moved back to Vermont, where she gave birth to her first of two daughters.

Having a child put Robert on, what she terms, "part-time mode."  She knew that she definitely wanted to have a career in the business field, but she also knew that a full-time career wouldn't be possible for a little while, and so she started pursuing another option: her MBA.  Robert was drawn to the University of Vermont's MBA program for several reasons.  The School of Business Administration did (and still does!) offer late afternoon and evening graduate courses which made it easier for her to structure class time around her family.  She also felt that one of the program's true strengths was its faculty---she knew she would receive as good of an education in the core competency areas of business as she would anywhere else.  To this day, she especially credits Professors Gene Laber, Jim Gatti, and Jack Grinnell for their extreme support and guidance during her three years in the program.

After graduating from UVM, she worked for Vermont Gas Systems as Assistant to the President, doing work in forecasting, budgeting, and restructuring during the company's expansion into the world of PC's.  She left Vermont Gas in 1989 to run Louise McCarren's campaign for Lieutenant Governor.  In 1991, she entered the world of high-tech startups, raising capital for Selectech Limited of Williston to support their efforts in developing the AirMouse pointing device.  She left Selectech by choice when she noticed a growing deviation in her objectives for the company and the engineers' objectives.

With her vast experience in the utilities and technologies sectors, what brought her into the world of retail?  As Robert describes it, she learned about the company through her contacts with the Chairman of AirMouse controls, who also happened to be an investor in Vermont Teddy Bear.  He informed her of the company's need for a Chief Financial Officer and encouraged her to visit the company, and she went on the day that it opened its new headquarters in Shelburne, Vermont.  While there, she met the new Chief Executive Officer, who was impressed by her skills.  She was interviewed the following week and granted the position.  At that time, Vermont Teddy Bear was in deep financial trouble due to poor financial management.  She had an innate sense that the company had a lot of critical mass and a lot of good people, and she knew there had to be a way to use these strengths to turn the company into a viable business.  She help the company avoid bankruptcy by refinancing and prioritizing its accounts.  She became CEO in the fall of 1997 and has devoted her time to developing a company with marketing savvy, financial strength, and manufacturing superiority.

The company has turned around as a result of her strong, solid efforts as well as those of her employees.  She loves her employees because of the creativity and new ideas that they bring to the company, and she boasts that the loose framework that she has helped establish allows for creativity and communication to occur at all levels within Vermont Teddy Bear.  At the same time, she is quick to point out that she runs a very analytical system as well---Vermont Teddy Bear thinks all ideas through carefully and is very cautious about committing its resources.

Robert was recently awarded the 2003 SBA Vermont Small Business Person of the Year Award.  To her, the award is recognition of the success of Vermont Teddy Bear.  As she explains, in this day and age, celebrating the small business reinforces the values of small business in corporate America.  She believes that running a small business allows you to develop and sustain relationships that are much harder to develop in a large business.  It also forces you to recognize your accountability toward your clients and employees.

Robert is a member of the UVM School of Business Administration's Board of Advisors.  As a member, she hopes to be able to participate in Dean DeWitt's vision of bringing the Business School to a whole new level of excellence in education.  She sees a tremendous opportunity for the school to be able to find its own special niche in the world of business schools and is pleased to see the progress that has been made under the new leadership.  She argues that the School of Business Administration belongs somewhere between the Champlain College niche and the Harvard/Stanford niche---its strengths lie in its ability to produce a valuable first-year employee who has a more general rigorous education experience yet with enough specific training to put her in a mid-sized company marketplace.  With her wealth of knowledge and expertise, Elisabeth Robert is a valuable asset to the continuing development of the UVM School of Business Administration program.