by Kristen Hare

Donna K. Martin greets the Ameren employees around her to the sound of plates clinking after the United Way Kickoff breakfast and the premiere of Ameren Idol, a successful company-made spoof of television's American Idol.

"Great work," she tells one of the men responsible for the video.

As people stop by to say hello to Martin on their way out, she listens, nodding silently. She leans in, smiling. Her hands fan out - long, manicured fingernails waving as she speaks.

"Every year, they just outdo themselves," a colleague tells her. Martin agrees.

And though she doesn't say it, every year, she outdoes herself, too.

Martin, 61, exchanged the restlessness she felt behind the desk as a second-grade teacher for worldwide travels, and now a top-floor office with a wall of windows, offering a view of Ameren's entrance and the streets of St. Louis beyond. Each year, she works harder, longer and takes on more challenges as a senior vice president and chief human resources officer.

Human resources is about payroll, yes, administrative paperwork, rules and policies. But it's also about unleashing the potential in others, Martin says.

And that is her ongoing mission - finding people's best - including her own.

Career woman

Three floor-to-ceiling windows open out on a rainy day in Martin's office, where a collection of hard hats rest along the top of a bookshelf. Martin wears them when out in the field.

But it's the objects along the windowsill that tell Martin's story best: an orange-red folk art Dala horse from Stockholm, Sweden, and a rooster from Barcelona, a framed plaque with a red dress from Winning Women, for which Martin serves on the board, and a small, orange foam safety cone that reads "Ameren."

What's absent is chalk, a blackboard, books and a smaller view of the world - all signs of a time in Martin's life where little else seemed possible.

"I had not a whole lot of concept of what one could do in the world," Martin says.

Donna Bottrell grew up the only child of Dale and Louise Bottrell, an accountant and a homemaker, in Decatur, Ill.

Though it was just the three of them, her family was close, working on chores together, sharing rare, special times out to eat, attending First Christian Church and spending time with nearby grandparents.

Martin excelled in school, encouraged by her parents, played the flute and was active in her church youth group.

But as she grew, Martin realized her choices were few: teacher, nurse or secretary. Martin knew she didn't want to be a nurse or secretary.

"So it was be a teacher."

She attended Eastern Illinois University and received her bachelor's degree in elementary education. In 1968, Martin began work as a second-grade teacher in a small village near Woodstock.

During that time, Martin's friends were also teachers, and one often spoke about a great skier she'd met on the slopes. Though she already was dating someone, one Friday night, her friend wanted Martin to meet that great skier.

"So we drove down, and I met him," Martin says. "And that was it."

That skier, Bill Martin, was a widower and father. Eventually, the two married, and Martin adopted her husband's son, Jim.

Martin taught for three and a half years, and in that time, she met a woman who challenged her to see a world beyond nurses, teachers and secretaries. The wife of a fellow teacher, Darlene Hoffman, a college guidance counselor, was bright, capable and she didn't see the world in terms of limitations.

Inspired by Hoffman's work, Martin's world widened beyond the classroom.

"It just opened up my mind," Martin says. "There's nothing that you really can't do."

Taking a personal interest in Hoffman's job, Martin soon enrolled in graduate school to become a career educator. She received her master's in guidance and counseling from Northern Illinois University. She worked as a career guidance coordinator, bridging the world of work with education and helping bring curricula into schools that would teach children that what they learned had meaning.

The job was a bridge for Martin, too. She went on to work for the Illinois Office of Education.

But there was still more out there.

"All my work had been around career development for other people," she says. "But I wasn't developing my own career." After 10 years in education, Martin looked around, and soon she was approached by a telephone company

"Have you ever thought about working for a company?" Martin remembers being asked.

She hadn't, but that didn't stop her.

Company woman

Martin had no concept of the work that awaited her but soon began as a market manager of Chesapeake & Potomac Telephone Company in Rockville, Md. She worked with C&P Telephone for Maryland, Virginia, Washington D.C., and West Virginia.

"That's kind of where it all began."

And that's where Martin stayed put for 15 years, both for C&P and Bell Atlantic, which merged with C&P. During that time, though, she held 12 different jobs within the company, from marketing to field sales.

The experience continued broadening her perspectives, bringing her into the field of human resources, with which she often felt frustrated while in field sales.

As a manager, Martin had no voice in who was hired for open positions. She wanted to be a part of the process, she told H.R.

"Nobody had ever rattled their cage like that before," Martin says.

Before long, Martin did all her own hiring and requested to do the same for other divisions. H.R. wanted her with them, but Martin wasn't interested.

"Why would I ever want to go to H.R.?"

She soon found out - with exciting new highs and lows she'd learn from each step of the way.

Moving woman

In a new position with Bell Atlantic, Martin performed human resources functions for the group by default, she says.

"I began to find that it was a great place for me to put together all my skills and learning," she says.

"She's very much a people person," Bill Martin agrees. "And I think that's why she gravitated to human resources once she got into the business arena."

Martin became the head of human resources for Bell Atlantic Business Services, the company's largest subsidiary. She held that position for two and a half years, fixing what seemed like a broken system.

After years with the same company, creating and watching real change happen, Martin asked herself one day, What more can I do here?

As she looked for something else, a call from a head hunter came to her with interest from Baxter/Biotech Group, an international pharmaceutical company. Martin had no experience in international work.

"But they decided to take a chance on me," she says.

In 1994, Martin went to Baxter, located in Deerfield, Ill., north of Chicago.

Soon, she took her first working trip abroad, to Baxter's European headquarters just outside Munich, Germany. Things looked so different, ultramodern, but even more memorable, Martin found a friend. Franz Landsberger reported to her, and the two spoke every week. His goal was to teach her something new about his culture during those times.

Soon, Martin and Landsberger's family became close, and she spent weekends with them, once hiking in the Alps.

Business worked differently in Europe, Martin learned. In the United States, companies could express their corporate values and expect employees to live them.

In European culture, she found, you couldn't approach things that way.

Instead, successful work took successful relationships, and Martin learned to help people understand how their personal values matched corporate values.

During this time, Bill, a refrigeration engineer, owned his own business, which made it possible for him to move with Martin for her career.

She also met Tom Brown, an executive coach who remains a friend. Brown, who has watched Martin grow and develop over the years, sees a few reasons for her success.

"She is an extremely competent person," he says. "In this day and age ... that's becoming more and more of a rarity. She knows her stuff, and she's on top of it."

Martin's also optimistic, energetic and resilient, he says.

In a little more than four years, Martin worked with the executive leadership team to restructure the business. During her tenure, the company went from bringing in $1 billion in revenue to $4 billion. It grew from 4,500 employees, she says, to 9,000. The company made mergers and acquisitions and soon separated into two organizations.

She also spent 50 percent to 75 percent of her time out of country, working in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan, among other places.

"She spoke no foreign languages," Martin's husband says. "But yet she was able to communicate well with the people she was working with and bond with them. Her ability to establish a rapport with people on the fast track amazes me even today."

Martin had the option of managing the entire H.R. department, but another head hunter came calling.

Soon, Martin led global H.R. for Monsanto in St. Louis, and her travels continued.

In 1998, she walked through the streets of Mumbai, India, amid great crowds of people and the thick, oily smell of too many vehicles. People passing reached out to touch her.

At first, Martin shrunk back.

"You'll be OK," the colleagues walking with her reassured. "You're the only American, the only woman. You just look different than anything people here have seen."

Martin relaxed, and soon found warm, wonderful people who opened up and shared their culture and helped her experience something new. It was the best way to learn, she thought.

Things at Monsanto weren't so good, though. After just three months, they announced a merger with another company. Over the next five months, Martin says, she watched the deal fall apart. She was among the first invited to leave, which was OK, she says. She'd already written herself out of the budget.

Martin went to Peapack, N.J., to lead North American H.R. for Pharmacia, but it merged with Monsanto five months later. Quickly, Martin saw the culture wasn't where she wanted to be.

Networking, Martin soon found what she now calls the opportunity of a lifetime.

World's woman

From classroom to phone company to pharmaceuticals, Martin's employers might have had little in common, but they all had people.

That was Martin's business.

"Not making them happier with their lot in life," Bill says, "but helping them find where they can be happy and productive."

For Martin, that place became an Australian pharmaceutical company.

In 2000, Martin moved to Paramus, N.J., to work with the CEO of Faulding Pharmaceuticals as the senior vice president of human resources.

"It was truly exciting," she says.

The company, based in Adelaide, Australia, had holdings across the globe, and Martin now spent 60 percent to 70 percent of her time out of the country.

"I cannot tell you what she did or how she did it," Martin's husband says. But when Martin came home from trips abroad, he adds, she bubbled over with excitement.

At a board of directors meeting, the CEO received a standing ovation - a rarity from boards, Martin says.

That was Thursday morning. By the next Tuesday, the company was in the middle of a hostile takeover.

"So life changed rather dramatically," Martin says.

The Melbourne-based business taking over wasn't interested in the branch of business where Martin worked. The company also wasn't much interested in H.R., so Martin helped adjust benefit packages for the employees officials planned to keep. She continued working with the company through the transition for another six months.

Again, opportunities presented themselves - though not exactly ones she'd been looking for.

Martin said she'd never come back to St. Louis. She wouldn't work for a utility company again. She didn't want a job that wasn't global.

But the chance to head H.R. at Ameren was open, and Martin could see what needed to be done. In 2002, she moved to St. Louis to work for a utility company in a job that wasn't global.

Here, she found an H.R. organization that was disconnected from the company, where employees in the division tried not to mention they were with H.R.

Martin's work was cut out for her. She was about to attempt a transformation.

Power woman

At the utility company that serves about 3.2 million customers with electricity and natural gas, Martin helped her colleagues see a little light of their own.

She worked to restore credibility to the H.R. team, to bring human resources into the senior leadership group, where it hadn't been before. She moved the culture toward diversity and inclusion, she says, and revamped compensation, benefits, development and hiring to better fit multi-generational workers' needs.

Though she's led the initiatives, Martin did none of this by herself, she says. Instead, she does what she does best - works with people and finds ways to get the best out of them.

"To her, the human resources job is never just about numbers," Martin's husband says. "It's first about the people and what they need and what she can do to help them."

"She does speak so much from the heart," says Chris Iselin, a vice president at Ameren Energy Resources. "That's one of the reasons that she's a good leader. She can really reach people's hearts."

She also works as a mentor to other women in the company. When she first started at Ameren, women made up 18 percent of the workforce. It's slowly risen to 21 percent, but there are more female officers than ever, including three vice presidents. Martin is the only female senior executive.

"She's that good with sizing up what people need to do, what their strengths and weaknesses are and moving them gently but firmly in the right direction," Brown says.

Among the many things that keep her busy, Martin serves as a board chair of Winning Women, a board member of the Center of Creative Arts, chair of the Women's Leadership Giving Initiative for the United Way, a board member of the American Heart Association, and a board trustee for Webster University.

"She's a real dynamo," says Michelle Esswein, founder, president and CEO of Winning Women. Martin is engaging, Esswein says, bringing strength, energy, leadership, integrity and serving as a true role model.

"Once she's your friend, she's really your friend for life."

There's a lot of energy in that little body, Esswein adds.

To get the best out of herself, Martin finds balance in her incredibly busy life. She gets to work by 6:30 most mornings and often doesn't leave until late evenings. She works out and eats well. And she allows herself crash time, either in her home on the ocean in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, or just sinking into a good book and letting the rest drain away.

"She's so much a people person," Martin's husband says, "but she does need to get away."

Martin's husband insists she make time for herself, and her relationship with him is a key to her success, she says. Being around positive people is too.

Also important to Martin is her family: son, Jim; daughter-in-law, Lori; and her grandchildren, Matt, 20; Sean, 17; and Erin, 14.

Martin sees them as often as she can, about once a month.

Energized woman

Look back at her life, and Martin hasn't stayed in one place for too long - a few years teaching, 15 at Bell Atlantic but in 12 different jobs. Her work has evolved and led her to more challenges in more challenging places.

The constant, though, is always that she's needed - a little like Mary Poppins in a stylish pantsuit.

And her work at Ameren isn't finished, yet, she says. She knows she's making a difference, and that goal will always guide her.

At the United Way breakfast, Martin hangs around until the room is almost empty, sharing out a few more hugs and handshakes.

Then, she makes her way back to her office, through hallways filled with people she knows by name.

Around those hallways hang banners. They read: "People are the foundation of our success and key to achieving our vision."

Martin's one of those people, and she has a long day ahead: meetings, tours, paperwork, budgets.

Her power supply seems infinite.

"When you really love what you do," she says, "when you really care about it, then you have the energy."

Article appears as published in the St. Louis Woman Magazine 2008/november issue.