Oral-History:Karen Bartleson
About Karen Bartleson
IEEE Senior Member, Karen Bartleson, served as the 2017 IEEE President and CEO, and the president of the IEEE Standards Association in 2013 and 2014. Born in Hollywood, California, in 1955, she earned a B.S. in Engineering Science with a concentration in Electronic Engineering from California Polytechnic State University in 1980. She spent her career in the semiconductor industry, specifically in electronic design automation.
In this IEEE oral history, Bartleson recalled: “I started at Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colorado, and all I knew was that I loved math and science. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. One evening the Society for Women Engineers invited all of the young women who were studying math and science to an evening event to talk about engineering, so I went. When they described using math and science to make things and build things and create things, I was instantly hooked. I switched my major to engineering.” These are the roots of a nearly forty-year career in the semiconductor industry, specifically in electronic design and automation.
In April 2016, after more than fifteen years at Synopsys (2000-2016), Bartleson retired as Senior Director, Corporate Programs and Initiatives, where she was responsible for initiatives and programs that increased customer satisfaction through EDA interoperability, standards, higher education and research, and social media engagement. Previously, she held management and research positions as CAD Manager at United Technologies, 1988-1995, and Manager of Logic Analysis at Texas Instruments, 1980-1987.
Bartleson has been extremely active in standards and authored many articles as well as the book, The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards: Practical Insights for Creating Technical Standards (Synopsys Press, 2010). In 2003, she received the Marie R. Pistilli Women in Electronic Design Automation Achievement Award.
About the Interview
KAREN BARTLESON: An Interview conducted by Mary Ann Hellrigel, Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, 16 January 2024
Interview #901 for the Center for the History of Electrical Engineering, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.
Copyright Statement
This manuscript is being made available for research purposes only. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the IEEE History Center. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of IEEE History Center.
Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.
It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:
Karen Bartleson, an oral history conducted in 2024 by Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.
Interview
INTERVIEWEE: Karen Bartleson
INTERVIEWER: Mary Ann Hellrigel
DATE: 16 January 2024
PLACE: Virtual via WebEx
Early life and education
Hellrigel:
Today is January 16, 2024. I am Mary Ann Hellrigel, IEEE History Center Staff, Institutional Historian, [0:00:20] Archivist, and Oral History Program Manager. I am with Karen Bartleson who is the 2017 IEEE President and CEO and the 2012-2013 IEEE Standards Association President. [0:00:40] And you served on the Board of Directors 2013-2014. I don’t mind if you’d like to add anything to your intro?
Bartleson:
I can’t think of anything, but the whole experience was life-changing and an opportunity that I [0:01:00] never dreamed would come along. I’m eternally grateful for all of the chances that IEEE gave to me to participate in their fantastic organization.
Hellrigel:
Well, thank you. I’m going to just start with, if you don’t mind, could you provide us the year you were born and the place you were born.
Bartleson:
[0:01:20] [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Do you mind giving us the exact date? Feel free. I’ve gotten pushback on that from some people.
Bartleson:
I was born in 1955 back when dinosaurs roamed the Earth. I was born in Hollywood, California in a hospital on Sunset Boulevard, believe it or not. But I never became a [0:01:40] movie star, which was fine with me.
Hellrigel:
In the 1950s, that would be the heyday of Hollywood. A lot of glam. If you could tell me a bit about your parents. Maybe your mother’s and father’s names and [0:02:00] their backgrounds.
Bartleson:
My father was John. He was an officer in the Air Force. And my mom, her name was Lori. She studied bacteriology, and then when she got married to my dad, she stayed home and raised her kids. [0:02:20]
Hellrigel:
So, your mother has a college degree.
Bartleson:
In bacteriology.
Hellrigel:
Bacteriology.
Bartleson:
She would have had years and years of studies in order to get back into her field, which had evolved into microbiology, so she did some other little things. That was kind of a big turning point when she got married to my [0:02:40] dad. Back then, his view was that women stayed home and took care of the kids and the home. I always wonder what it would have been like had my mom been able to continue as a scientist in the field that she liked so much.
Hellrigel:
Where did she graduate from?
Bartleson:
From UCLA.
Hellrigel:
Okay, [0:03:00] so a B.S. from UCLA.
Bartleson:
Yes. She actually was working in a lab on some Nobel Prize winning work. I don’t really know the details, just that she was starting to do some fantastic things after she graduated from UCLA.
Hellrigel:
That was [0:03:20] fairly atypical because I guess that she graduated circa early 1950s.
Bartleson:
Yes, it’s interesting because her sister was one of the first computer programmers and my grandmother, so their mother, was [0:03:40] a businesswoman. She worked as an accountant for some major corporations. And so somehow there’s been a history of women doing unusual things in my family. And maybe that gene was passed on to me. Although I like to tell this [0:04:00] story that when I was going to college I had never heard of engineering. I didn’t really know what it was. Growing up as a child, I was fascinated by how things work. Especially, for instance, a car. You put gas in the tank, you turn the key, you step on the pedal, and the car goes. [0:04:20] I asked my dad how does a car work. This is amazing; he said girls don’t need to know that.
Hellrigel:
Oh, wow.
Bartleson:
In my later years, I decided maybe he didn’t know how a car worked either and that’s why he said that [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[0:04:40] How did you feel when you hear that?
Bartleson:
Terrible, but I didn’t pay attention, I continued to do things that I found interesting. I remember my sister and I had identical hair dryers. And mine broke. So, I took hers apart to see how it worked, and she was so mad at me, but I did put it back together, and I fixed my own. [0:05:00] [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
[Laughing].
Bartleson:
When I went to college I started at Colorado State in Fort Collins, Colorado, and all I knew was that I loved math and science. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. One evening the Society for Women Engineers [0:05:20] invited all of the young women who were studying math and science to an evening event to talk about engineering, so I went. When they described using math and science to make things and build things and create things, I was instantly hooked. I switched my major to engineering. [0:05:40]
Hellrigel:
From mathematics?
Bartleson:
I was just in a general studies program, so I didn’t really have a major. I switched from general studies to something more specific. Then I went to my classes, and I looked around the room, [0:06:00] [Laughing] and I said, “Where are the girls?” because I was the only one. I had no idea that I had entered into what was traditionally a man’s field. But I must say, all of the students, my colleagues, were so nice. They were kind to me. They didn’t treat me any differently. [0:06:20] And, it was a really good experience.
I did really well because I liked the material. Some of the boys who were in the classes were there because their dads made them go to school and made them be engineers. They didn’t enjoy it, so they didn’t do as well. This is [0:06:40] kind of a nutty story: I remember I was in a circuits class, and we had an exam coming up one day. Well, I hadn’t been studying. I had been, I don’t know, playing around, [Laughing] so I borrowed this guy’s notes. He took meticulous notes. It was beautiful work. I said, “Can I borrow [0:07:00] them?” And he said sure. So that night I studied his notes. The next day we took the exam. When the professor returned the exams, he said all of us did such a terrible job - the average was 75 percent, and only one person in this class got 100 percent. And he didn’t name who that person was. So [0:07:20] the guy that I borrowed his notes from, he said, “What did you get on the test?” Well, I lied to him and said, “Oh, I didn’t do very well,” because I was the one that got the 100 per cent because of his notes. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
So, you killed the curve; the bell curve.
Bartleson:
I killed the curve, and nobody knew it was me, and I would never admit it. Until this day I feel little bit of [0:07:40] guilt for making him do all the work and then I got the glory [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[Laughing]. You wonder why he didn’t study his notes [Laughing].
Bartleson:
Well, I think he was too busy smoking dope [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh, okay. This is at Colorado State.
Bartleson:
This was at Colorado State. [0:08:00] After about three and a half years, I thought, well, I’m one semester away from graduating and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I knew I was too immature to figure out my career, so I dropped out of school, and I moved to California because [0:08:20] California is cool and that’s where I was born. I spent a year in California, and I knew that I was going to go to Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, but at the time they were not accepting out of state students. The school was packed. Only California residents were allowed to apply, but I didn’t know that when I drove [0:08:40] my little car out to California. Oh my gosh, I needed to be a resident to go to this university. So, I spent a year at community college taking general courses that were fun and interesting and just spending that year becoming a California resident. Then I was able to enter Cal Poly. [0:09:00]
I wanted to study biomedical engineering. They actually had it in their catalog. It was the way that I could help people with engineering. I didn’t want to be a doctor because I knew that if I had a patient who passed away because I couldn’t fix them, I would be devastated. I couldn’t handle that type [0:09:20] of responsibility and emotion. But if I could go into biomedical engineering, I could do similar things but on a different plane. I enrolled in school. I went to sign up for biomedical engineering courses, and they said, “Oh, we don’t offer those courses because we can’t find any [0:09:40] professors to teach them because the field is too new.” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
Yet again I had some decisions to make. The major that I selected was called Engineering Science which was a blend of chemical, civil, mechanical, electrical, and electronic engineering. [0:10:00] You name it, and I got to study all of the fields of engineering. Then I concentrated in the field of electronics. My degree is in Engineering Science, a Bachelor of Engineering Science with an emphasis in electronics. This is interesting, too, I never got a master’s [0:10:20] degree. I never got a PhD. Once I went into the work field, I enjoyed it so much, I was successful, and I didn’t have any desire to go back to school. And, I don’t have any regrets around that because again I ended up going up the management chain. I was able to [0:10:40] do some really great things and I didn’t need a master’s or a PhD for it.
Hellrigel:
Did the companies you worked for try to push you into an MBA at any point?
Bartleson:
No, they didn’t. They were very engineering focused from the leadership down. My first job was at Texas Instruments, and I was [0:11:00] in the Design Automation Department where we were writing computer-aided design tools for designing computer chips.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
We were given a lot of courses to take in various aspects of business, but I was never pushed into an MBA [0:11:20] or anything beyond that.
Hellrigel:
I’m going to back up a little bit and ask a few questions about your pre-college life. For example, questions about your family and if you had any hobbies. Your dad was in the Air Force, so was he career military? That’s why you left California and moved to Colorado with him?
Bartleson:
Yes, we moved [0:11:40] all over. Almost every year or two we would be in a new city, and that was very hard for me because, believe it or not, I was very shy. It was really rough to pick up and have to move, get a new school, get new friends, get everything brand new all the time. [0:12:00] I learned that if I made friends with the least popular kids in the class, they would like me right away. They were desperate to have a friend. Then I would kind of work my way up to getting to know some of the other students, the more popular ones, but I never dropped the ones that I started with. [0:12:20] They were precious to me, so I kept them as friends as well as making other friends. Then we’d pick up and move again. .
Hellrigel:
What are some places where you lived?
Bartleson:
We lived in Big Spring, Texas.
Hellrigel:
Oh, wow.
Bartleson:
We lived in California for a while. We lived in New [0:12:40] Jersey in Princeton. My dad taught at Princeton University in the English Department.
Hellrigel:
Oh, in the English Department?
Bartleson:
In the English Department. Yes.
Hellrigel:
When did that happen?
Bartleson:
That’s why he didn’t know what a car does [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
His undergraduate degree was in literature or…?
Bartleson:
[0:13:00] I really don’t know, but English was his field, and he taught English at the Air Force Academy. After we moved from New Jersey, we moved to Colorado and lived in Colorado Springs. He was teaching at the University, well, it’s the Air Force Academy. [0:13:20] Then when I was ten years old, we were at the Thanksgiving dinner table, and out of the clear blue sky, my father said, “Your mother and I don’t get along, I’m leaving.”
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
He picked up and left. We were shocked [0:13:40] because our parents never fought. They would go into their bedroom and close the door. We knew they were talking. What we didn’t know was that they were fighting. We always wonder if it had been better to know that they weren’t getting along instead of this shock to the system of what do you mean, we don’t understand. [0:14:00] And back then divorce was a bad word, so you were ashamed of yourself and your parents. You didn’t want to tell anybody, so that was pretty rough. I was the oldest.
Hellrigel:
How many children in the family?
Bartleson:
We had four. Three girls and then a boy. [0:14:20] My brother was the youngest. He was five at the time. My father, being the Air Force kind of guy that he was, said to my little brother, “You are the man of the house now. You’re responsible to take care of all the women.” Well, to put a burden like that on a five-year old boy...
Hellrigel:
A kindergartner.
Bartleson:
Yes, a kindergartner. It was really hard. [0:14:40] He managed to get over that. Yet, it took decades for him to not feel responsible for his family. That was just kind of an icky thing to do.
Hellrigel:
It was the Baby Boom era and your parents had four children in five years or so.
Bartleson:
Yes. Yes. My [0:15:00] mom was a converted Catholic, [Laughing] so I mean that explains it and that was their life. In retrospect, and this dawned on me, I don’t know, twenty years ago, maybe because my dad left and my mother was [0:15:20] totally dependent on him - she ended up driving a little school bus and working in a clothing store because he had told her she wasn’t going to be working - I had somehow subconsciously told myself I will not grow up and be dependent on a man like my mother [0:15:40] was, because it really made her life extremely difficult. And because of that, my husband and I - we’ve been married now forty years this year - we’ve been partners.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
I haven’t been dependent on him. He hasn’t been dependent on me. It’s been a [0:16:00] mutually respectful and successful partnership that we’ve had all these years. In a way I thank my dad. Thank you, dad, wherever your spirit is [Laughing], because you gave me the courage and the vision that I would be able to take care of myself as [0:16:20] long as I needed to, and that was a really good thing in retrospect.
Hellrigel:
This is when your mom retooled her degree a little bit?
Bartleson:
She wasn’t able to because it would have taken her way too long. She took a few courses, but to go from bacteriology to microbiology [0:16:40] would be like going from algebra to calculus. It was just too big of a gap. Especially when she had all of us kids to take care of.
Hellrigel:
Right. That’s challenging. Did you have extended family around to help?
Bartleson:
We did [0:17:00]. My mom’s sister lived in California. We really didn’t have anybody close, since we had moved around so much as Air Force kids.
Hellrigel:
Right. Where were your parents from? Did they grow up in the Midwest? Where were they born? [0:17:20]
Bartleson:
My mom was born in Pittsburgh [Laughing], but she did end up spending most of her time in California. My dad was from the East Coast. My grandfather lived in New York City, so they were sort of the East Coast kinds of people and [0:17:40] my grandparents had a dairy farm in Vermont that’s absolutely beautiful. I went back and visited, and I was amazed at how small the place was. [Laughing]. It used to be this mansion and now it was just a regular house. But that’s what happens when you grow up.
Hellrigel:
Yes, things are a [0:18:00] different size.
Bartleson:
My dad’s family, too, was in the publishing business. My grandfather was a book publisher, and I don’t remember the name of his publishing firm. So, that’s where a lot of that English background came from. Then the science background from my mom.
Hellrigel:
[0:18:20] When your dad left, you were ten years old, and your life took a different vector. It seems almost like the women that grew up in the Great Depression that -- so maybe your mother, so like some members of your mother’s generation - [0:18:40] had a similar mindset. Like her sister. What was her name that she went into - the one that went into computers?
Bartleson:
Yes, this is interesting. My mom’s name was Dolores and my aunt’s name was Joy. Dolores means sorrow in Spanish, so Sorrow and Joy. My Aunt Joy [0:19:00] married a wonderful man, never had children, and stayed in the tech field. Then my mom, with sorrow in her life, raised the kids. It’s kind of a contrast that I don’t have the adjectives to describe what that was like. [0:19:20]
Hellrigel:
Right. Your mom then had the stigma because of divorce. At that time, you were living in Colorado Springs and your dad was teaching at the Air Force Academy. Did he keep that job, or did he leave?
Bartleson:
He kept that job. We were living on base [0:19:40] at the Air Force Academy in a base house, and because my parents were divorced, we had to leave the Air Force Academy. We had to leave our home. They let us stay for a little while, but we ended up renting a house in downtown Colorado Springs because we weren’t allowed to live on the Air Force Academy base anymore. [0:20:00]
Hellrigel:
Did you continue to visit the grandparents in Vermont?
Bartleson:
Not after that. That’s an interesting question. I hadn’t thought about that. We really didn’t, not that I recall. Now, [0:20:20] I’m okay. Now everybody knows how old I am, and that means some of my memories are faulty [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, sometimes our memory gets rusty. And what might be important to you now, you didn’t think of asking then. If you’re in Colorado that’s a long way to Vermont. If you didn’t have the money for airfare or a reliable [0:20:40] car, you then might become more Colorado-based.
Bartleson:
Right. My grandmother and my Aunt Joy were living in Southern California, so we did go visit them all the time. We would take the train.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
I know that my grandmother was paying for all of this because when we would get there, usually around [0:21:00] Christmastime, my grandmother would take us shopping to buy new underwear and socks because my mom couldn’t afford it. At the time, we just thought, oh yes, we need underwear, but we didn’t think anything about it. We were young and those things don’t strike you the way they do as an adult. When you think about it, oh my gosh, my [0:21:20] mom didn’t have money to buy us new underwear, that’s really heartbreaking. Fortunately, my grandmother was in a good field. She and my aunt were working women, and they were able to really help her out. I guess that kind of is a different answer to what you asked me earlier. We weren’t physically [0:21:40] close to them, but we certainly had them as a support system.
Hellrigel:
An extended family, yes.
Bartleson:
Yes, an extended family. Yes, exactly. I was thinking geographically, but actually, it didn’t matter [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
You were linked by the train. Denver has that great monumental train station that is now filled with shops. I guess you left out of Denver. [0:22:00]
Bartleson:
I guess we did. Left out of Denver, and we would go by train overnight. It must have taken a couple of nights at least to get there with stops along the way. I remember the dining car. It was really fun. And they had a dome car with a big glass roof to see out of.
Hellrigel:
Oh, to see along the route as an observation car.
Bartleson:
[0:22:20] We’d go play cards there, and it was really cool. I would love to go back on a train trip again one of these days. It was quite a good way to travel.
Hellrigel:
You’re in school, and I guess education is important because you wanted your financial independence. And you [0:22:40] are drawn to math and science?
Bartleson:
Absolutely. And I always was. When my friends were playing with Barbie dolls, I was playing with dinosaurs and Hot Wheels cars. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Did you have any hobbies? I guess Hot Wheels [0:23:00] cars?
Bartleson:
[Laughing]. Yes.
Hellrigel:
If you collected those, you’d have a little storage box. My brother had a case for his Matchbox Cars and Hot Wheels.
Bartleson:
We loved it. We’d make little racetracks. It was fun. I was in the Girl Scouts, so we did a lot of Girl Scout activities. I learned embroidery, which was fun. I learned crocheting, but I wasn’t [0:23:20] really good. I was good at embroidery: very, very detailed work. But crocheting, not so good, and knitting was worse.
Hellrigel:
Did you play sports?
Bartleson:
No, I was totally not a sports person at all. I would be, fortunately, the second to last person picked for the teams. I wasn’t the last. I wasn’t the worst, [0:23:40] but I was terrible, and I didn’t enjoy it. I didn’t like it one bit, so I never joined any teams. I never really got into any sports. I loved ice skating though. Because ice skating was just a really - a big pleasure for me
Hellrigel:
Well, any skiing?
Bartleson:
[0:24:00] This is before my dad left, he was on ski patrol, so we would go skiing all the time in Vermont, and I hated it [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
It’s cold.
Bartleson:
I was so cold, and I was little. He would send me to ski school with all these [0:24:20] grownups, so I was out of place. I was a little girl. I was cold. I didn’t enjoy it one bit. One day I got brand new release bindings - this was the latest technology in skiing. Yes, so that if you fell, your boots would pop out.
Hellrigel:
They snap in and out?
Bartleson:
Yes, otherwise, people would break their legs. So, I’m [0:24:40] coming down this slope, I’ll never forget the name, it was called The Lord’s Prayer.
Hellrigel:
[Laughing].
Bartleson:
I was going to do some cool turns. So, I did this turn, I fell, my release bindings did not release, and I broke my leg. [Laughing] They took me into the - I forget what it’s called - this ski patrol [0:25:00] place, and they said, “Hey John, guess who we just brought in? We brought in your daughter!” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[Laughing].
Bartleson:
After that I really didn’t like skiing. We still did go, and then as an adult my husband and I would take our kids skiing here in Colorado. I was always [0:25:20] cold and it was just not fun, but the kids loved it so I would go and do my best. But I was never a good skier.
Hellrigel:
Did you have any part-time jobs growing up during high school?
Bartleson:
I sure did. My first job - I was sixteen years old - and I was a [0:25:40] motel maid during the summer. I was cleaning motel rooms for $.75 an hour, which was below minimum wage because the owner of the motel was so cheap that he wouldn’t pay us minimum wage. We had no days off for the entire summer. We worked seven days a week, another girl and me. And I’ll tell you what, [0:26:00] we saw things at that motel that sixteen-year-old girls should never, ever see. I mean it was really awful.
Then one Christmas I worked at UPS, taking in packages at the customer counter, and that was kind of fun. All through my college days I was on work-study [0:26:20] programs. I was doing some kind of data recording or data processing or data something or other with an experimental solar energy panel. It was really neat.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
I worked in a lab at Colorado State where they were studying the [0:26:40] effects of mining tailings.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes, the junk, the waste from the mining processing.
Bartleson:
Yes, the junk that would run off into the rivers. What was happening to the fish, bugs, and everything that lived in the river? My job was to pick apart water [0:27:00] samples to pull out all the bugs, and then we would count the bugs. [Laughing] It was a very weird kind of a job. They were, over time, trying to see if there was damage to the insect life there. One time, I was working with a grad student, and we went up to, I forget what river it [0:27:20] was, but he was going to do this experiment to try to count the trout that were in the river. The way he was doing this, he had some kind of paddles, electrical paddles, that he would put in the water and send an electric shock supposedly to trap the trout. I mean this is really gross. [0:27:40] Supposedly, the trout would be stunned, float to the top, and we could count them. Then they’d wake up, and they’d swim away and be just fine. Well, it didn’t work very well. He ended up sticking the paddles underneath the bank and cooking some of these fish by accident.
Hellrigel:
Killing the fish.
Bartleson:
It was terrible [Laughing]. That was a really [0:28:00] a failed experiment.
Hellrigel:
PETA would not approve.
[Laughter]
Bartleson:
It would not. I’m not sure I approved, but I didn’t have any choice, I needed the job.
Hellrigel:
Right. It is the beginning of the environmental movement and mining is such a major industry in Colorado so that would make [0:28:20] sense that it was a research field.
Bartleson:
Yes. Colorado State, to this day, is involved in some of the most incredible research. I went back there a couple of years ago. They wanted me to visit because they thought I was famous because I was the IEEE President. They took me to all of their labs where they were [0:28:40] doing the little, tiny cube satellites and experimenting with - I can’t even remember all the amazing things that go on at Colorado State.
When I transferred to Cal Poly, that school I cannot say enough good things about it. They’ve always been in the [0:29:00] top few engineering universities in the country. To this day, their philosophy is learn by doing, so we were involved in so many practical activities, not just theoretical schoolwork. I loved that school. [0:29:20] I went back there a few years ago. They had named me Alumna of the Year.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
Again, because they thought I was famous [Laughing]. It was a really wonderful experience to go to all of their labs and see what was going on in the current kinds of fields of study. [0:29:40] It was really great.
Hellrigel:
When you went to college, did you live on campus?
Bartleson:
Yes. For my freshman year, at Colorado State, I lived in the dorms which was a wild experience. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[Laughter]
Bartleson:
I remember that we lived in one of the few dorm buildings [0:30:00] that was co-ed, but when I say co-ed, it was every other floor. Boys, girls, boys, girls. The first semester, the floor below us, who were all boys, half of them flunked out because they’d been partying instead of going to school. So, they all flunked out, and they [0:30:20] probably didn’t belong there in the first place. Then I moved off campus into various apartments with various roommates.
Hellrigel:
When you were there, that was sort of around the time when the military draft was ending, so [0:30:40] they could flunk and not get immediately drafted.
Bartleson:
Oh.
Hellrigel:
They were on the cusp. [The final draft call was in December 1972, and in January 1973, it was announced that the use of the military draft for troops for Vietnam would end.]
Bartleson:
Yes, I never thought about that. Yes. I remember the Vietnam War was going on when I was about sixteen because my dad went over there and was flying [0:31:00] some type of missions. Not combat or anything like that, but other missions because he was a pilot. I remember him writing us letters from Vietnam. Then, yes, I guess a couple of years later, it would have been getting to the end of the draft. [0:31:20]
Hellrigel:
Yes. After three and a half years, what did your mother think when you jumped ship [and left college] with one semester to go?
Bartleson:
[Laughing] I don’t know what she thought. Because I’d been paying for my own college, I had work/study [0:31:40] programs and I had some grants, she didn’t have the attitude that some parents might have, you know, “You’ve wasted my money’” because she couldn’t have afforded to send me to college anyway. When I think about it, she probably was very encouraging to me [0:32:00] to do what I wanted and to follow my dreams because she wasn’t able to do that herself. I imagine she was thinking, “Go for it, Karen. Go do what you want to do to fulfill your life.”
Speaking of following my dreams, [0:32:20] I mentioned earlier, that I used to travel so much with IEEE. I remember being on a plane and there was a man next to me. He was making small talk and asking what I did. I told him, and he said, “Do you have kids?” I said, “Yes, I have two children.” They were probably about eight and nine at the [0:32:40] time. He said, “You have children and you’re flying all over and you’re not with your children? What are you teaching them?” And I said, “I’m teaching them to follow their dreams”.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
I’ll tell you what: he was quiet the rest of the flight, and I was glad because I didn’t need that kind of [0:33:00] judgment. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
No. No. No. And, you were travelling really for work.
Bartleson:
Well, yes.
Hellrigel:
It’s not like you left them home and went on vacation.
Bartleson:
No, absolutely not. We had a nanny who would stay with the kids after school. She was really great. She [0:33:20] was going to be a teacher. My husband was always very participative as a father. As much as I was, if not maybe more sometimes. So, for me to be doing what I thought my life was about, which was contributing to the [0:33:40] benefit of people and the world, that kind of an insult: what are you teaching your children, kind of stuck with me. You know? I have to tell you another quick story about flying, too. I considered it an insult.
Hellrigel:
Yes, Ma’am.
Bartleson:
During my time as President of IEEE, I flew [0:34:00] United Airlines, and they made me Global Services which is the most incredible experience to be treated like royalty. When you’re Global Services, they go all out. They pick you up right as you get off the plane and drive you in a Mercedes around the [0:34:20] tarmac to your next gate and escort you up the back. You get in front of the line. Everybody. I mean it’s really wonderful.
Hellrigel:
You were Global Services because you had so many miles.
Bartleson:
It is a secret formula. It’s not necessarily based on miles. Everybody thinks it’s based on how much money you spend with the [0:34:40] airline, which makes sense. You’re an extremely valuable customer because you spend big bucks with them, so they treat you really well. Since my husband was traveling with me, he was made Global Services also, which was such a treat for him. By then he had retired from industry. [0:35:00] So, we’re on this plane, and we got to fly first class because we’re Global Services, and we’re cool. The flight attendant looked at my husband and she said: “Congratulations for earning Global Services. You’re so important to us, and I’m sure your wife appreciates it, too.” [0:35:20] I was so mad [Laughing]. I was the one that traveled hundreds and hundreds of thousands of miles to earn this, and here they were commenting [on my husband earning Global Service status.] He was quiet. He didn’t know what to say either. That just made me really mad because we are in modern days. [0:35:40]
Hellrigel:
This is probably about 2010 or later?
Bartleson:
This was 2017.
Hellrigel:
That’s right, your presidential year. That’s what I was going to say. Yes, it was 2017, so you wonder. Yes, you wonder.
Bartleson:
You do. I still wonder. [0:36:00] Fortunately, I’m not the kind of person who would say anything or be mean. I’ve always been accused of being too nice. But I still carried that anger, that little bit of, man, I can’t believe this, around in my heart. You can tell. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
You said you were married [0:36:20] forty years, so you were married in 1983, 1984?
Bartleson:
1984.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
Like the book, 1984.
Hellrigel:
Would you mind telling us your husband’s name?
Bartleson:
My husband’s name is Brett with two T’s. [0:36:40] He and I met at Texas Instruments. He graduated from the University of Florida in Gainesville, so he’s a Gator. I graduated from Cal Poly in California. We met in Dallas because we both had our first jobs out of college with TI (Texas Instruments). He was so handsome [0:37:00] [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[Laughing]. You were star struck.
Bartleson:
Oh, it was love at first sight, for me anyway. [Laughing] We worked, as I mentioned, in the Design Automation Department, so a whole bunch of young engineers and programmers. We had so much fun going out as a group. [0:37:20] There were several marriages out of that department. We all got along so well. We all had similar backgrounds and a lot of couples. So, that was pretty cool [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Bartleson is your married name.
Bartleson:
Yes, that’s my husband’s name.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
I don’t know if I ever really [0:37:40] got used to it [Laughing] because it’s an unusual name. My maiden name was Pratt. Like Chris Pratt, the actor.
Hellrigel:
Oh, okay, so that is why sometimes I see you are Karen P. Bartleson.
Bartleson:
Right. Right. I took my maiden name as my middle name. Here’s another [0:38:00] personal story, so you’re getting to know a little bit about my dad [Laughing]. My dad gave me the middle name of Lowell, L-O-W-E-L-L, because that was his father’s name. As a little girl, all my friends had Marie or Mary, so they had these [0:38:20] beautiful middle names. They’d say, “What’s your middle name, Karen?”, and I’d say Lowell. I couldn’t even spell it. What kind of a name is that? [Laughing] When I got married, I took the opportunity to get rid of that horrible middle name and go with my maiden name, so that’s what it turned out.
Hellrigel:
If they were from New England, the Lowells, of Lowell, Massachusetts, [0:38:40] were big in the cotton textile industry. I don’t know if your roots go back to that region.
Bartleson:
I don’t know. That was his first name, [my grandfather,] Lowell Pratt.
Hellrigel:
Oh, okay.
Bartleson:
I don’t know why his parents named him that, or if there was any tie. It’s interesting, I’m not one much for genealogy and family history, so I don’t know.
Hellrigel:
[0:39:00] At one point, I don’t know if I have it written down wrong but you - did you say your father’s name was John?
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
He went by John and not Lowell.
Bartleson:
My grandfather was John Lowell Pratt. My father was [0:39:20] John. Dang, see I told you my memory is faulty. His name was John Clark Pratt, but he went by John. My brother was John Randall Pratt, and he goes by Randy. He doesn’t go by John. But my dad was the one who [gave me Lowell]. All the men in the family were John something, so [0:39:40] he got the John.
Hellrigel:
Your brother and you have two sisters, so there are four children. You went into a STEM field. What did they end up doing?
Bartleson:
My next sister went into geology, so she was a [0:40:00] geologist doing oil exploration. She worked for Phillips Petroleum. She would go out in the field and wear a hard hat and work with the roughnecks to tell them where to drill. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
The rig.
Bartleson:
The rig. So, I had it easy. I’m inside with a bunch of nice men. She’s [0:40:20] outside with the roughnecks, and she really had to hold her own. Of course, they ended up respecting her, but can you imagine this young woman coming into the field to tell these big ol’ guys all about their business? I mean that was really something. Then my next sister was a very troubled person, so [0:40:40] she really struggled throughout her life and never really did a whole lot. My brother, I call him kind of an entrepreneur. He tried all kinds of different things. He had a variety of jobs, definitely. He, [0:41:00] I can’t remember what his degree is in. Right now, he works for a real estate development company in Vermont. He’s like their COO or CFO, taking care of their business. At one point, he was working on some type of an export company in Russia, so he went to [0:41:20] Russia all the time. He’s had a really interesting career. He’s a really interesting guy, just doing all kinds of different things.
Hellrigel:
I guess at this point, you have two children. Are any of them engineers?
Bartleson:
No [Laughing]. It’s funny [phonetic]. My daughter, who [0:41:40] is the most incredible young woman, is a psychologist. She has certificates in marriage and family therapy and drug addiction counseling. She helps people who are just desperate in need of help to [0:42:00] make their lives better. I don’t know how she does it. I would be crushed. I couldn’t. I don’t know. She’s amazing. She would always say, I don’t care how computers work, I just want them to do what I need them to do. Who cares what’s inside a computer? [Laughing]
My [0:42:20] son who was accepted to Colorado School of Mines, along with other universities, took a look at the Colorado School of Mines’ curriculum and said, “Gee, I could study engineering or engineering or engineering or engineering. I’m not studying engineering. I’m not going to Colorado School of [0:42:40] Mines.” He ended up studying psychology also.
I think the reason that both of them studied psychology is they were just interested in the world and how people work. They weren’t quite sure what they would do with it. So, my son ended up going into marketing at a high [tech company]. He actually worked at one of the same companies as me. [0:43:00] He started as an intern and then became a fulltime employee. Right now, he works for Thermo Fisher which is a leading scientific company. Two years ago in his huge position, I don’t know how many people, he was awarded Employee of the Year.
Hellrigel:
Cool.
Bartleson:
It was [0:43:20] really cool. I get goosebumps, I’m so proud of him. Then the next year, last year, he said. “I’m never doing that again. I never want to be Employee of the Year. You have to work too hard. It’s not worth stress and all the energy. I’m not doing it.” So, guess what? This year he again won Employee of the Year [Laughing]. [0:43:40]
Hellrigel:
[Laughing].
Bartleson:
So.
Hellrigel:
Well.
Bartleson:
He and I were talking the other day. He and I have a similar work ethic. We don’t want to do anything halfway; we put our heart and soul into everything that we do. That reflects the way that his work respects him. It’s really great. [0:44:00] My children are just… they’re the best [chuckling].
Hellrigel:
Did they travel with you on any of these IEEE adventures?
Bartleson:
No, they were in school. I did, when I was working for the company in California. I haven’t mentioned it yet. I lived in Colorado Springs, but I worked for [0:44:20] a company in California. I would fly back and forth a couple of times a month, and spend five days there, and then come back to Colorado. I did take my daughter to Take Our Daughters to Work Day out in California which was really cool. She got to come with me on those trips. These days, here’s [0:44:40] something else. I don’t mean for this to be therapy for me, but here’s something else that has annoyed me for years and years.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
The event used to be Take Our Daughters to Work Day because girls around the age of nine or so started to have self-esteem problems.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
They weren’t convinced that smart girls were [0:45:00] okay. It wasn’t okay to be successful. So, the Ms. Foundation started Take Our Daughters to Work Day. Over a few years, they turned it into Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day, and I was really mad. I wrote them a letter and said, “Take your son the other 364 days of the year. [0:45:20] This is supposed to be to help the girls. It’s not about children.” Of course, they never answered my letter. That really was a disappointment for me because we couldn’t make our girls special and to help them to know that careers for girls were really a good thing for [0:45:40] them.
Hellrigel:
The focus changed.
Bartleson:
Yes. That’s the world [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Given your interest in that, have you been a member of SWE, the Society of Women Engineers?
Bartleson:
I was definitely a member for a while, and when I was part of IEEE, I was involved with the Women in Engineering Committee.
Hellrigel:
WIE.
Bartleson:
Yes, with WIE. [0:46:00] A lot of initiatives. I remember when I was working at my second job, which was here in Colorado Springs at United Technologies, they had a diversity program. It was probably called equality back then or something. They were trying to teach the [0:46:20] men how to respect women in the workplace. They wanted me to go to this class, and I said, “I don’t need the class, I live it.” They said, “Well, we want you to go to the class so you can set a good example for the guys, and you can answer their questions best.’ So, I went to the class, and I don’t know, it was kind of weird. [Laughing] [0:46:40] Throughout, I have been involved in women’s initiatives. I was on the Board of the National Girls Collaborative Project, which is a really neat organization, and some other things, a variety of activities that support women, so families, as well. It’s just women in general. [0:47:00]
Hellrigel:
We can come back to that. I guess I’ll go chronologically. How did you decide to work for Texas Instruments coming out of Cal Poly San Luis Obispo?
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
I believe it’s not too far from Santa Barbara?
Bartleson:
It’s not. That’s right.
Hellrigel:
I’m a UCSB (University of California, Santa Barbara) graduate with an M.A. in History.
Bartleson:
Oh, that is the [0:47:20] most beautiful campus. Wow. Wow. Yes, right there on the central coast.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
So back, when I graduated in 1980, this was a fabulous time to be an engineering graduate. Companies were clamoring for engineers coming out of school. You go to campus for a job fair [0:47:40] and interview with the companies and then they fly you all over. I ended up with five job offers [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
So, every time I would interview, I’d go and talk to these people, they wanted me so badly. I picked Dallas because I liked the city. [0:48:00] I liked the work. I remember interviewing one place where the engineers’ offices were right next to a fabrication line where they were manufacturing computer chips, and it was all women on the line. I thought, I don’t want to work in an environment as an engineer and see all the women are [0:48:20] doing the basic labor jobs. That just didn’t seem like a good environment for me. I did get a job offer from I guess it was Bell Labs back in New Jersey.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
I was supposed to fly out and visit. They screwed up my travel plans so badly. I [0:48:40] forget what they did, but their travel department somehow messed up my trip. So, I didn’t go. And they said, “Well, we want to offer you a job anyway.” And then I was being kind of… I don’t know, kind of rude I guess, and I thought, well, if you can’t figure out how to fly me to New Jersey then I don’t want to work for you [Laughing]. Just being childish [Laughing]. [0:49:00]
Hellrigel:
Oh, it is a different lifestyle at that point. Murray Hill or Middletown? I’m not quite sure which lab they would have put you in. You already lived in New Jersey. Previously, you lived in Princeton. You’re not exactly a Jersey girl, but [0:49:20] you’ve seen it.
Bartleson:
Yes [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
It’s a different vibe than Dallas.
Bartleson:
Oh, a lot. Dallas was brand new and clean and building up and very exciting. I also interviewed with a company and this one was interesting. I think it was Harris Communications. They would put me on a project. They [0:49:40] said, “We’re going to put satellites into space that will allow people to know exactly where they are at any time. We’re calling it a Global Positioning System.”
Hellrigel:
Oh, GPS.
Bartleson:
Yes, GPS. Now I think, wow, I guess I could have worked on GPS. That would have been kind of cool, but I think it was in Houston or some city that I didn’t care [0:50:00] for so much. I loved the city of Dallas. I liked the manager that interviewed me. There were a lot of young people that I’d be working with. Beautiful glass office building. It was great. It was really, really great.
Hellrigel:
You [0:50:20] were there for, let me check my notes, seven years.
Bartleson:
Yes, almost eight years I was there. Then I was pregnant with my daughter. No, I’m sorry. I was pregnant with my son. My daughter was a little bit over a year old. [0:50:40] I was planning on taking a year off because my husband was going to school, and he was just ready to graduate with his master’s degree. My plan was to stay home and play with the kids for a year and then go back to work. Well, one of my friends who worked at TI in [0:51:00] Dallas moved to Colorado Springs. They called me and said, “Oh, we have a manager’s position open. You would love to come to Colorado Springs. Please interview with us.” It turned out my mom was living in Colorado Springs. So, I interviewed for this job, and it was a manager in the [0:51:20] Computer Aided Design Department, so it was my exact field.
Hellrigel:
Auto CAD.
Bartleson:
Yes. We were writing our own logic simulators back then, or place and route tools. It was really, really good stuff. That was what I was doing at TI also.
Hellrigel:
Oh. And this was United Technologies Microelectronics [0:51:40] Center, UTMC.
Bartleson:
That’s UTMC.
Hellrigel:
A long name.
Bartleson:
Yes, it is. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
Okay. How did you make this jump to management?
Bartleson:
Well, when I was at TI, somehow they sent me to project management courses, and I guess they just thought [0:52:00] I was kind of a leader. I loved working with people and inspiring everybody. They made me a first-level manager there. They offered me the job at UTMC. It was, again, as a first-level manager of, I think, about a dozen people, a dozen engineers. It was really great. But here’s a funny [0:52:20] story. I was six months pregnant when they interviewed me on the phone. They said, “Well, we want you to come to Colorado Springs so we can meet you and you can meet your potential team.” I went to a store, a maternity store, to buy some nice clothes to wear for my interview. The salesperson looked at me and she [0:52:40] said [Laughing], “You’re going on a job interview; you’re not trying to hide this are you?” [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
[Laughing].
Bartleson:
I said, “I’m not trying.” I mean my stomach was huge [Laughing]. So, I had some really nice outfits to wear for my job interview. At the time, the hiring manager asked [0:53:00] our HR department, he said, “Can we make her sign a contract that said that she will come back after the baby’s born?” The HR department said, “Absolutely not. You cannot do that kind of thing.” He said, “But we’re hiring her, she’s going to work for a month, and she’s going on maternity leave. How can we make sure she’s coming back?” They said, [0:53:20] “There’s nothing you can do except trust her.” I had six weeks [maternity leave] off which was not enough time at all.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Synopsys
Bartleson:
And of course, I came right back. It was a good job. I really enjoyed it. There were, of course, and it’s anywhere you go, there were a couple of [0:53:40] incidents that happened but nothing dramatic. We used to go to our annual conference called the Design Automation Conference, DAC. It’s a big deal for our industry. I met someone there who wanted to recruit me to work for this company called [0:54:00] Synopsys. I said, “I don’t want to move to Silicon Valley. It’s too expensive, it’s too crowded, and it’s craziness. I have little kids. I don’t want to do it.” She said, “Well, I’ll tell you what. We will let you work from home, remotely, if you come out to California once or twice a [0:54:20] month.” So, I was one of their first remote employees which was really neat. It was a strange experience where you don’t have an office all of a sudden, and you don’t have people to talk to you on Monday about who won the football game. I had to go through a really big period of adjustment getting used to being all by myself in my basement with [0:54:40] my computer. But to be one of the first remote employees set a good example. Yes, people can be trusted to not be doing their laundry or grocery shopping while, because I hate doing laundry and grocery shopping anyway [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Right.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] That was really neat. I was [0:55:00] there for twenty years, actually, commuting back and forth the entire time.
Hellrigel:
At this point, how many people are you managing? Or are you managing a project?
Bartleson:
I started as a Standards Program Manager with no one. I wasn’t a manager, just managing the program. That’s how I got into standards. [0:55:20] They were looking for someone who would help them open up their interfaces so that their software would work with the software of their competitors, because a design engineer is going to buy a simulator from one company and a place and route program from another company, and they need them to work together. And that’s where the standards [0:55:40] came in, the interfaces. They wanted somebody to help get the company to open up some interfaces. For six months they looked for someone, and everybody refused the job because it really was a terrible job because everybody in your company hated you because they figured if you opened up your interfaces, you were enabling the [0:56:00] competition.
Hellrigel:
Oh, you’re going to lose your IP (intellectual property).
Bartleson:
We were going to leave it open. Oh, yes, they hated me. Some of the engineers threatened me. “You’re going to put us out of business.” “How can you do this?” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. [Laughing]. But our largest customer at the time had shown some charts to us that said, “Here’s what it costs [0:56:20] us to integrate your products with the products of your competitors. And about this point in time, we are spending more money to integrate your products than if we just wrote our own.” So, the threat was there. They said, “We’ll go back and write our own. We don’t need you.” In the long run, what we did in the Standards Program was a really good thing. [0:56:40] There were times when we won business opportunities because we had open interfaces. We led the industry. We knew what we were doing first because it was our interface, so we could stay ahead by years sometimes. In the semiconductor industry to be two years ahead of your competition is [0:57:00] phenomenal. I remember one of our vice presidents saying because of the work that my team and I had done on this one particular standard, that put us two years ahead of our competitors. That was a really big deal that we wouldn’t have had without open standards. --
Hellrigel:
Synopsys sells the semiconductors, but in order to get those parts to work with other [0:57:20] people’s parts, you needed to standardize them? Or am I off?
Bartleson:
No. It’s a little bit different. Synopsys is a computer-aided design company.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
Synopsys sells software, so programs like simulators and things like that. The design engineers then buy those, and they will model their [0:57:40] chips to make sure that everything is going to function before they go off and manufacture them.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
Since they’re very expensive, if you mess things up, and you’re in production, that’s a really bad thing. You can imagine. I think one of the major manufacturers had a bug several years ago that [0:58:00] was infamous. With millions of products out there that had this bug in them, and you really want to avoid that. That’s why you do the simulations and the modeling. You do all that automation ahead of time. Plus, if you have a chip that has millions and [0:58:20] millions, by now it’s billions, of transistors, you know switches, you can’t connect those by hand like we used to back when I started.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes, plug in.
Bartleson:
Yes. Yes, you just plain can’t do that, so you use these automatic programs that will figure out how to connect the wires among all the transistors and then produce a huge data [0:58:40] file that then the manufacturing equipment will know how to connect the individual components as well as actually produce the chips.
Hellrigel:
When you’re going back to San Luis Obispo, Cal Poly, what did you think you were going to do? I mean this university is really [0:59:00] intense intellectually and pretty specialized. You had a degree in Engineering Science so you could have jumped to different fields?
Bartleson:
Yes, I concentrated in electronics because I [0:59:20] thought that was fascinating. Little, tiny things you couldn’t even see. Calculators that we used back then were really slick [Laughing]. But now you look at a mobile phone and you think, well, I guess those calculators weren’t all that cool but [Laughing] in the long run…
Hellrigel:
I had somebody, [0:59:40] because we do exhibits, and I had somebody wanted to they’re like who has a cassette tape and I said do you want -- one that I bought or one that I made.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] Yes.
Hellrigel:
Then they’re like you don’t understand. It’s a tape recorder. And I’m like duh? Yes. It records and [1:00:00] plays, hence tape recorder.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
I gave them a bootleg tape of a recording I made of a CD. I also have tapes I made of vinyl records I own. I wasn’t going to give them the Bruce Springsteen cassette tape bought.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
I have all the old technology from a 1906 Columbia Graphophone that plays cylinder recordings, to a 1914 Edison Diamond Disk record player, to a turn table for LPs, to a boom box that plays CDs and cassette tapes. [1:00:20] The complexity is amazing.
Bartleson:
Oh. I saw this really great presentation. I forget the subject. The presenter had a picture of a little [1:00:40] floppy disk, which they’re not floppy anymore. They used to be when they were big but the little floppy disk. And he said he showed it to his son and his son said, “Cool dad, you 3D printed the save icon!”
Hellrigel:
[Laughing]. And I would be --
Bartleson:
[Laughing] And that would be --
Hellrigel:
I did what? You know?
Bartleson:
[1:01:00] That’s --
Hellrigel:
My first floppy was the size of a 78 record.
Bartleson:
Yes [Laughing]. Yes.
Hellrigel:
I still have all my formats.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] I love to tell people, young people, why there’s a QWERTY keyboard because nobody, when you’re [1:01:20] growing up these days, you don’t know why the letters on your keyboard are arranged in such a funky way. And I was hoping that once we went to computers’ keyboards that we could get rid of QWERTY because it’s really nuts. But there was some attempt to have a [1:01:40] keyboard that would be more intuitive to use so you could type faster, but that would never happen. People are just too used to a QWERTY keyboard. Do you know why? Should I tell everybody why we use a QWERTY?
Hellrigel:
Yes, Ma’am.
Bartleson:
Back in the day when there were mechanical typewriters, with the little keys that would hit the paper, [1:02:00] if you typed too fast, the keys would lock up.
Hellrigel:
Yes, they’d jam.
Bartleson:
The purpose – yes. They’d get all jammed up, so they purposely designed the keyboard to make you type as slowly as you possibly could so that those little keys wouldn’t lock up.
Hellrigel:
And that meant that the levers would be swinging from different places.
Bartleson:
Yes, yes.
Hellrigel:
Because [1:02:20] once you had an older typewriter and it got a little loose, you could get a problem. They would cross and you would have to go in and take them apart. I guess the keyboard was designed, too. Then you just learned how to do it. I don’t even know if they teach keyboarding properly now [1:02:40] because a lot of people are pick and peck.
Bartleson:
Yes, I don’t know because when I was in high school, I went to a very small school. We had a choice. We could take typing and shorthand or chemistry and physics. [Laughing]. So of course, I chose chemistry and physics. [1:03:00] It was to my advantage because then when I was in college and I would have my lab partners, they would say, “Well, you’re the girl, you type up the lab report.” And I’d say, “I don’t know how to type.” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, yes. It was a skill. My high school made the college prep [1:03:20] people take that business course.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
We had to take. Okay, we were strongly encouraged. I don’t recall if it was a half a year or a whole year of typing.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
I learned on a typewriter that didn’t have the letters on the keys.
Bartleson:
Oh, wow. Wow.
Hellrigel:
Yes, a mechanical one, and that was different.
Bartleson:
[1:03:40] Oh, wow.
Hellrigel:
You just had to memorize it. Then your brain just goes, and your fingers go. Which high school did you attend?
Bartleson:
I went to a very small Catholic girl’s school here in Colorado Springs, and it doesn’t exist anymore. [1:04:00] My mom, as a converted Catholic, had sent us to Catholic school once we left the Air Force Academy, so my seventh and eighth grade were at a Catholic school. Then I went to Catholic high school, and that was kind of an interesting experience. [1:04:20] I don’t really… I’ve never -- I’d never thought deeply about what that experience did to me as a person. I did get an extremely good education. There weren’t boys to distract us [Laughing], right? The courses were very high [1:04:40] quality. I got a very good high school education from an academic perspective. But maybe that’s why I was so immature going through college because I hadn’t had a lot of life experiences in high school. We were pretty straight. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Well, and you went to [1:05:00] college. I mean it wasn’t the 1960s, but it was still a little.
Bartleson:
Oh.
Hellrigel:
Testing and…
Bartleson:
Well, and drug use. I had never seen people doing drugs, smoking pot and stuff like that. That was a real shock to me. I’m like, oh my gosh! I was [1:05:20] pretty overwhelmed.
Hellrigel:
Yes, it’s different. Yes. Culture. Certainly. And you’re working at Synopsys and you’re moving up the management chain. And then do you still focus mostly on projects, or do you start to get [1:05:40] a horde of people you have to manage?
Bartleson:
I ended up not managing a huge department. I was a senior director. I can’t remember the number, no more than thirty people, I’m sure. We were developing really interesting programs. Less pro -- [1:06:00] well, no, I -- There was some serious programming going on. We had a group in Armenia, believe it or not. Armenian engineers - software engineers - are meticulous in their coding skills, whereas a lot of American programmers back then were kind of [1:06:20] sloppy. You just try this, if it works, great. Try that, if it works, great. The code the Armenians would write, it would be so clean and so beautiful. Synopsys hired a big department there, and of course, it was very inexpensive to have high quality programmers in Armenia. Part of [1:06:40] my responsibilities was a group there that did the university programs because they needed to train engineers in Armenia too, local talent to come to the company. That department was led by a professor who [1:07:00] was really soft-spoken, and just a really wonderful man. He developed all this curriculum, and he and his employees would teach students who would come from universities. They partnered deeply with the universities there. I oversaw all of their activities. I [1:07:20] helped to translate their documents into, [Laughing] we used to call it, and we said this affectionately, but they would write in Arm-English, so the English was really interesting [Laughing], and I would turn it into more of a more proper English.
Hellrigel:
Did you travel to Armenia?
Bartleson:
I did. [1:07:40] I went a couple of times. It was very, very interesting and eye-opening. It was still a lot of the old Soviet influence. It was a very poor country. They had had I think it was a series of earthquakes.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes.
Bartleson:
[1:08:00] They ended up with very little infrastructure. The people had to cut down the trees to burn for firewood. Part of what our company was doing in Armenia was not only helping the people to get good jobs, good paying jobs, but they would do tree planting ceremonies to [1:08:20] try to help with the deforestation that had happened before. We saw old Soviet structures and old beat-up cars. The employees were just fantastic. I loved them. One time when we were [1:08:40] traveling there, I was going with my boss, I did a lecture at a university in the morning. Then at lunchtime, we stopped and bought this huge bouquet of white roses. I said to my boss, “Why are we buying roses?” He said, “Well, I have no idea.” [1:09:00] After we got the roses, they took us to the Genocide Museum.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes.
Bartleson:
It was the 90th commemoration of the Armenian Genocide. Right now, I’m getting shivers all over. It was a horrible experience for me. You walked in and they were playing [1:09:20] this haunting music. They had pictures, indescribable pictures, and artifacts. Then we walked outside in the back, and they had an eternal flame going where people were laying down the roses and the flowers. There were six feet of flowers that were [1:09:40] rotting from the bottom from the millions of people who came to visit and commemorate. I was sobbing. I mean literally sobbing. It was so devastating for me. We got back in the car and my colleagues said, “Cheer up Karen! You have to give a lecture!” [Laughing] And I’m like, “Then, why did you bring me [1:10:00] to the Genocide Museum before taking me to the university?” When I walked into the university, this huge lecture hall, hundreds of students cheering: “Karen, Karen. You’re here, you’re here!” So, my emotions go from as low as they could be to as high as they could be in a matter of minutes [1:10:20] [Laughing]. I gave my lecture. Then that evening my boss and I were invited to be on a local talk show on TV. The host of the television show spoke Armenian and there was a translator. We would speak English obviously. The host asked me: [1:10:40] “I understand you went to the Genocide Museum. What did you think?” Well, now I knew enough by then to know that if I used the word genocide, that there are people still in the world who don’t believe it was a genocide.
Hellrigel:
The deniers.
Bartleson:
I knew I had to say something really. [1:11:00] I had to do the right thing, so I ended up saying that I was deeply moved about the inhumanities that people can impose on other people. I thought, oh, good, because I didn’t want to start an international incident.
I think it was on that [1:11:20] same trip, speaking of a real faux pas of mine. We were visiting the United Arab Emirates. We were working with the universities in that region, which is a completely different part of the world. Oh my gosh, it’s amazing. But we were having lunch at a university. And the professors, a bunch of [1:11:40] us at the table, the professors were saying, “So, what other universities do you work with in the Middle East?” I said, “Well, let’s see. We work with Jordan. We work with Egypt. We work with Israel.” And these professors got up from the table, and they said, “Israel is not in the Middle East!” [1:12:00] Then they saw my face, and they realized that I didn’t mean anything by it. I was thinking geography. You’re right next door. I wanted to crawl under the table. I mean I thought this is just terrible, but they forgave me because they realized that I was just being really naïve at the time and [1:12:20] didn’t mean anything.
I had studied a little book about culture before I went to the United Arab Emirates, so I knew what to wear. I knew not to show the bottom of my shoe. When you cross your legs, you can’t do that. And always say yes if they give you a little cup of coffee because if you say no that is an [1:12:40] insult to them. So, oh, boy, did I drink a lot of strong [Laughing] cups of coffee. They didn’t say anything about this one mistake that I had made, and it was a big one. Whenever I talk to people about traveling, I give them that message: learn what the local customs are and the local culture and learn what [1:13:00] would offend people. When you go there, don’t do it because you give Americans a bad name, you give yourself a bad name, and you just insult everybody. I think that was one of the most amazing things about traveling is getting to know local customs, tasting local food, and [1:13:20] asking about their weddings and what about this and what about that. It was really, really great.
Hellrigel:
In some cultures, they don’t want you to ask about their family.
Bartleson:
Well right. The first time I went to Japan, this was when I was working at Synopsys. They had told me ahead of time that you won’t be respected because you’re a woman. [1:13:40] All the Japanese businessmen are going to ignore you in the meetings. But I found it was completely the opposite. I was prepared, but it was actually the opposite I think because in our industry it was different. All of the men respected me just as much as anybody else, and I never felt that kind of a cultural [1:14:00] norm as they were trying to describe it to me. It was never that way. It was really great.
Hellrigel:
Until you got on United Airlines [Laughing].
Bartleson:
[Laughing]. Really. And I love United Airlines, by the way, I really do. I think they’re fantastic. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
Yes. Sometimes people don’t think. [1:14:20] For Synopsys, you’re doing a lot of traveling, and you worked there for about twenty years. Were you content with your career?
Bartleson:
Very much so. Very much so. I remembered looking back and someone had given me advice that you should never [1:14:40] go into management or program management or you should always have a line job where you had a product that you were responsible for, a physical product. But I found I didn’t need that. I -- I was well-known throughout the industry. I was well paid. I had opportunities. I was [1:15:00] very, very satisfied. I wouldn’t have done anything different
Hellrigel:
When you joined Synopsys, they were still a fairly young company, too.
Bartleson:
600 employees. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh, wow.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Had they hired a lot of women or still mostly men?
Bartleson:
You know, this was [1:15:20] really cool. The first meeting that I went to at Synopsys, the room had several women in it, in positions of management which was awesome to me. It made me feel very comfortable. There was only one woman, no, there were two, who were in the C-Suite, you know, [1:15:40] the executives.
Hellrigel:
The corporate suite, yes.
Bartleson:
Yes, the corporate at the highest level. So, they were still mostly men, but still the numbers were much better than I’d been used to.
Hellrigel:
At this point, your husband is still working full-time? My [1:16:00] predecessors would ask the women always about the work/life balance. I ask everybody: how did you balance work and life. You said you had a nanny, I guess, when they were little. But if you’re management, how many hours a week are you working? Are you working sixty to seventy hours per week and trying to [1:16:20] balance life?
Bartleson:
I never really did the seventy or sixty-to-seventy hours per week. This might surprise people, but I learned this when I had my first job at TI. We were working on a simulator. And I [1:16:40] would find that I would be there at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, still working. I’d go back the next day and I was working all the time because I wanted to debug the program or add a feature or something. At some point, early on, I thought this is not a good way to live where you’re at work at 2:00 o’clock in the morning, [1:17:00] so I trained myself to not work on the weekends and to go home at a decent hour because I knew the work would still be there the next day. I was never going to be finished with my work. I developed a discipline of not working on weekends regularly. There were occasional weekends [1:17:20] when, of course, we had to finish something or there was a deadline or there was an emergency - although they were never emergencies. Somebody would say, “Karen, it’s an emergency!”, and I would say “Is there any blood?”, and they’d say no. I’d say, “Then it’s not an emergency [Laughing].” Throughout being a manager, I didn’t work the [1:17:40] weekends. I didn’t work the sixty hours, probably more like fifty hours. When I was finished with my day, I would come upstairs, and I would not go back down to my computer until the next morning. It was definitely a discipline for me that I developed.
Hellrigel:
Then you took your [1:18:00] vacation time?
Bartleson:
Absolutely. At the time, Synopsys, well, all the companies, have limits on how many hours you could accrue and then you would lose your vacation time. I thought that’s a crime against humanity to take away my vacation time, so I definitely took my vacations. You have to [1:18:20] plan it around the right time, not in the middle of a release of new products or anything like that.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Bartleson:
I definitely took my vacations, and I spent time with my kids.
Hellrigel:
Did you have the opportunity to do the PTA and sports coaching or whatever with your kids? [1:18:40]
Bartleson:
I didn’t do PTA. I did Girl Scouts, but I was terrible. My neighbor and friend, she was the troop leader, and my daughter was in the troop. I said, “Sure, I’ll come on the camping trip with everybody and be one of the parents that [1:19:00] helps out.” I ended up, instead of helping, playing with the girls. We were having a great time, [Laughing] and my poor friend ended up having to do all the work because I was not helpful at all. I was having too much fun with the girls. Sports, no. No sports. Remember, I hate sports. [Laughing] [1:19:20]
Hellrigel:
Right, but I didn’t know if you were asked to be a coach because sometimes, they’re desperate for a coach. Often, they need two people, and you might just have to show up and take attendance.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] No. One of the things that I always did enjoy and do, to this day, is cooking. Cooking to me is very creative. It’s kind of scientific, too. [1:19:40] We didn’t eat out hardly ever with the kids. We would make good food for them, healthy food. I taught them nutrition. To this day, they read the labels on everything. They eat extremely well. So, that was sort of a work/life balance thing, if you like, for me, because at the end of a long [1:20:00] workday, you think: I spent my whole day working so hard, I didn’t accomplish anything, I feel terrible. You walk in the kitchen, and you create a beautiful, delicious meal for your family, and you sit down together, and that was very much important to us. A family value if you like. [1:20:20] We didn’t eat in front of the TV.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Bartleson:
Nobody had mobile phones, smart phones, so that wasn’t a problem. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, the phone was on the wall.
Bartleson:
Yes. We didn’t answer the phone if it rang during dinner, and it was really just a nice time.
Hellrigel:
In regard to family vacations, were you a Disney World vacation family?
Bartleson:
Yes, we took the [1:20:40] kids to Disney World. It was hugely expensive. I’m sure they still say this to this day: don’t think about it because $20 bills fall out of your pocket every step you take. We spent a fortune. We had a wonderful time. We also did a lot of camping out in the Colorado [1:21:00] Mountains. We’d go camping all the time in the summer with the kids. We loved doing that. Camping, fishing, and hiking.
Hellrigel:
Did you have your own RV or were you tent people?
Bartleson:
We were tent people. We even went when our son Matthew was a baby so we would take the infant and we’d go. It was [1:21:20] great, really great.
Hellrigel:
Wow. That’s a lot of fun.
Bartleson:
Oh, yes.
Joining IEEE
Hellrigel:
I think we could make a jump now to your work in standards [and the IEEE Standards Association]. When did you join IEEE?
Bartleson:
I was actually a student member in the early 1970s. [1:21:40] Then, as typical with students, I did not renew my membership because - and this is a problem for IEEE to this day - you graduate, you [1:22:00] don’t see the value and it’s expensive [Laughing]. You go from a very inexpensive student membership to a very expensive, for a young person, membership. And so, I rejoined the IEEE I guess it would have been in 1988 when I started at… [1:22:20] No, it would have been before that. It would have been in 1995 when I came to work here in Colorado Springs. Again, we were doing computer-aided design, we were writing programs, and we had to use standard interfaces. So, I joined a standards [1:22:40] committee with IEEE and other organizations, and we helped develop the standards.
Hellrigel:
Okay. When you were working as a CAD manager at United Technologies, that was in Colorado Springs?
Bartleson:
Yes, yes.
Hellrigel:
How was the move from Texas to Colorado? [1:23:00]
Bartleson:
[Laughing]. We left Dallas in the middle of an ice storm.
Hellrigel:
Whoa.
Bartleson:
My husband was driving. The moving van came and took my car and all our furniture. My husband took the cat and dog. I took my daughter who was one and my son who wasn’t born yet and I [1:23:20] got on the airplane. I looked down and saw these massive ice floes on all the highways and I said, “Goodbye Dallas, I don’t miss you at all!” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh, boy.
Bartleson:
Then we moved to Colorado, and the problem at the time, this was … …
Hellrigel:
1988?
Bartleson:
1988. The [1:23:40] housing market was horrible, so we could not sell our house in Dallas. We had to end up selling it at a huge loss. I remember writing a check for $20,000 to get rid of our house in Dallas, and at that time that was a lot of money. It was a horrible housing [1:24:00] market. When we got to Colorado, we had no money [Laughing]. We rented a house, a little tiny house, near my office. And remember, I’m pregnant, right? [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, and you’re only in a temporary nest.
Bartleson:
So, we’re in this little house [1:24:20] and the name of the street was White Buffalo Road. My husband said they named the street after you. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Wow. Oh, oh, oh, oh boy.
Bartleson:
Then he went, “Oh my gosh, what did I do?!” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, words will --
Bartleson:
That’s the only thing he’s ever said that he shouldn’t have [1:24:40] [Laughing]. And now it’s really funny, but at the time it was not funny at all. Because I really was a white buffalo [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Some cultures would worship you as the white buffalo.
Bartleson:
[Laughing], [background comment].
Hellrigel:
The move is also a [1:25:00] rough adjustment because your husband had to move jobs, too.
Bartleson:
Yes. He did, too. He went to work for Honeywell in Colorado Springs. We did all the things on the list that are the top stressors: move, get new jobs, have children, all that kind of [1:25:20] stuff. It worked out really well. My mom was here which meant she could spend a lot of time helping with the kids. She would babysit so my husband and I could go out to dinner sometimes. She played games with them. She used to cheat [Laughing] at board games. [1:25:40]
Hellrigel:
Well, you got to let grandma slide.
Bartleson:
Yes, yes, right. [Laughing]. So, so it was really - that aspect was just precious to me to be able to be close to my mom. It was really great, really great.
Hellrigel:
In some ways, it brought you home. I mean you had spent so many years in Colorado Springs. [1:26:00]
Bartleson:
Right, right. Yes. To be back and see the same old restaurants and the same the same streets. Of course, it had been developed like crazy. All the empty places were now housing developments, but it was fine.
Hellrigel:
This is before they built the new Denver airport [1:26:20] out in the middle of nowhere and expanded the Colorado Springs airport.
Bartleson:
Yes. Colorado Springs, it’s a wonderful little airport. It’s awesome.
Hellrigel:
You’re going to work at this company. We’ve already talked about that. While you’re working for these companies, then you’re getting involved in standards and that’s what brings [1:26:40] you back to IEEE.
Bartleson:
To me this is the secret to my being able to contribute so much to IEEE. It’s because it was part of my job. I know one of the things that IEEE members struggle with is how do they contribute their time to [1:27:00] IEEE without compromising their work position. And companies don’t necessarily support employees going off doing things that aren’t directly related to their jobs. But -
Hellrigel:
Especially in industry. Academia it’s a little bit better.
Bartleson:
Right, right.
Hellrigel:
A little different. I don’t know, better, is a value [1:27:20] statement. But it’s different.
Bartleson:
Exactly, exactly.
Hellrigel:
Conferences and publishing. There isn’t as much pressure on you to do that, but Standards is a good niche and you also got in IEEE Standards in the mid-1980s when they’re starting to think more globally. [1:27:40] And you have the global business experience. When you start in Standards, are they mostly IEEE men members?
Bartleson:
Yes, yes, yes. Absolutely [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
IEEE is [1:28:00] still skewed male.
Bartleson:
Yes, it is. It is. And it’s getting old, too.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
When I was IEEE President, my main focus was the Young Professionals. How could we accommodate them? How could we meet their needs so that they would [1:28:20] in turn see value in IEEE? I absolutely adored the Young Professionals. Working with them was so rewarding for me, and to this day they contact me on social media. They send me messages: Happy New Year, how are you, look at my babies. It’s just been so wonderful to have friends [1:28:40] that are that young. Really good friends, too. I love them. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Where you involved with the Rising Stars Conference?
Bartleson:
Yes, absolutely. Yes, yes. I did that a couple of years. There’s a Young Professionals Program and I would go to their annual meetings in various places where [1:29:00] they would set their strategies. I helped them with a business plan so that they could take it to the IEEE Board of Directors for funding.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
They were successful. They ended up getting a very good amount of funding for the programs that they wanted. I coached them on how to handle questions and what kinds of [1:29:20] things that the Board would want to know about. That was really cool. They did such an excellent job. I just can’t say enough good things about them.
Hellrigel:
You mentioned that membership is skewing older.
Bartleson:
I don’t know what the answer is. When [1:29:40] you’re President, you’re President for one year. Of course, you’re involved for a long time, but you’re only President for one year. There’s only so much you can do. You hope that the next President will carry on what you’ve started, but there’s no guarantees. You do the best, the very best you can. [1:30:00] I still get the Young Professionals Newsletter. It seems like they have been sustaining all of their programs, and the program is more mature than it was when it started. I would consider them very successful, and I’m proud to be and honored to be part of [1:30:20] their activities.
IEEE Standards Association
Hellrigel:
Does the IEEE Standards Association have Young Professionals? Or there’s two different --
Bartleson:
Some. Anybody can participate in standards. You don’t even have to be an IEEE member, which is really interesting. A lot of the contributors to IEEE [1:30:40] standards are not members of IEEE.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Bartleson:
It’s a very open environment, really.
Hellrigel:
They’re from companies, mostly industry.
Bartleson:
From industry and sometimes academia, but a lot of industry because that’s where the standards benefit with the products and stuff.
Hellrigel:
[1:31:00] In the mid-1980s, you’re working on standards that would benefit your company or that your company was involved with?
Bartleson:
Yes. Even way back when I started at TI (Texas Instruments) in 1980, in order to design or to simulate [1:31:20] a model of a computer chip - an integrated circuit, everybody calls them computer chips, but it’s an integrated circuit - you had to describe the behavior of the circuit that you were trying to build. I want my circuit to ring a cellphone, or I want my circuit to run my thermostat. And to describe that [1:31:40] to the computer, you needed a language which was a standard and you would write in this language. Dear Computer -- oh, well you’d never say that but [Laughing]: Dear Computer: please design me something that will set my thermostat between 68 and 69 during the day and go down at night, so you use [1:32:00] specifics. You specify all of this in a language. They called it a Hardware Description Language. You’re describing the hardware that you’re trying to design, and TI - who was involved in that with IBM and one other major company, was trying to develop a new language actually for the government. The government wanted to be able to [1:32:20] document in a language the parts of an aircraft, for instance, yes. So, that’s where this language was born. We were starting to develop it back then. Then when I moved to United Technologies, we had pieces of software, simulators and place and [1:32:39] route and test programs. Those interfaces, you’d have to pass the data from the simulator to the test program to that place and route. Those interfaces were all standards and that’s where I got much more heavily involved in IEEE standards. They’re basically file formats, if you like. So, languages, [1:33:00] hardware description languages, you describe the chip and then file formats where you pass data from one program to the next.
Hellrigel:
I know that they’re working on different standards, so you’d have a committee on a particular product standard. There were the wireless phone people. You’re the computer chip people. [1:33:20] Are you meeting in person? What is the task?
Bartleson:
Yes. We used to meet in person a lot. This was back before the days of Zoom, videoconferencing, and things like that. We would often meet by teleconference, a phone call; lots and lots of [1:33:40] phone calls. Face to face was important, we always thought because you can… one of - one thing to understand - oh, so I’m going to take a sidetrack here, a little sidebar.
Hellrigel:
That’s fine.
Bartleson:
I wrote a book. The only book I ever wrote is called The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards. These were all of the things I learned in these standards committees that I [1:34:00] wanted to pass on to other people so that they wouldn’t make the same mistakes that I did, and they wouldn’t be subjected to the same stresses that I was. But anyway. One of the things that I learned that I put in this book is that those committees are extremely competitive. Everybody there is out to beat the other guy. We’re not there to be friends. We’re there as [1:34:20] competitors, and you really had to understand that.
Hellrigel:
Why were they competing, just for prestige or --
Bartleson:
No, for money.
Hellrigel:
Oh, for money.
Bartleson:
It’s for business. So, I’m trying to think of something that [1:34:40] would be familiar to the general population. Okay. Let’s say, everybody knows Wi-Fi. That’s a good example for these kinds of things. Let’s say I’m on a committee and we are going to invent the Wi-Fi standard.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
And I happen to have a product that I’m developing, and I know that if the Wi-Fi standard [1:35:00] has this little feature in it, my product is going to be much better than anybody else’s. So, I’m fighting on that committee to get that little feature into that Wi-Fi standard for a new product. The guy next to me is doing the same for his product that’s competing with mine. So, we’re all trying to get the standard to be better for us and worse for the other guys in the [1:35:20] room. The reason that face to face was important is because you could look them in the eye and you could tell are they lying and what’s going on here. The face to face was very important for body language and understanding people’s agendas. [1:35:40]
Hellrigel:
I think that’s where you got into the ethics of it a little bit.
Bartleson:
Actually, the ethics came much later. The current Director of Standards, Konstantinos Karachalios, is an amazing man. A visionary if you like. He [1:36:00] has started many initiatives in the IEEE Standards Association, one of which was to create standards around ethical design of autonomous systems. People say AI, but AI has a lot of different meanings, so they call it autonomous systems. His idea - his vision - [1:36:20] was if we have standards and standard ways of measuring benefits of - I’ll say AI for convenience, even though it’s sort of a misnomer - if we have standards for what you should do as you’re developing AI to protect humanity or to benefit humanity, then we will have ethical [1:36:40] designs going on in this new world of AI, which was fabulous. As President of the IEEE Standards Association at the time, I really wanted to get involved as he developed this whole program. It’s really cool. They produced a couple of years ago, a book called Ethically Aligned Design, EAD. [1:37:00] I was the editor-in-chief. I edited every line in this big book. I forget how many pages it is. The book was kind of crowdsourced. There were over 120 authors from fields like, well certainly, from ethics, from science, from math, [1:37:20] from legal. There were lawyers on the committees and philosophers. I learned about the Ubuntu philosophy from Africa. I mean it was a fabulous project. Each chapter addresses a different aspect of designing ethically anything you’re [1:37:40] doing with AI, with robots, and product development, so that you help people as opposed to just thinking about business. It’s about the people, it’s not about the product. That was a cool, cool program.
Hellrigel:
And you think through the application of the product.
Bartleson:
Yes, [1:38:00] yes. The idea is to think about what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, and how it’s going to help before you just sit down and design it. My favorite movie of all time is Jurassic Park, the first, the original Jurassic Park. And in there, the guy Jeff Goldblum is playing, [1:38:20] the mathematician, he says, and this is not a direct quote, but he says just because we can do it, doesn’t mean we should. That was one of the papers that I wrote when I was in college. It was all about just because we can, doesn’t mean we should, so I had that [1:38:40] in me sort of for all these years so then when, the IEEE Standards Association started that ethically aligned design and tech ethics and stuff that, it was really up my alley.
Hellrigel:
You pretty quickly become a part of the Governance. I saw a reference that you were a member of [1:39:00] Governance from 1996 to 2014, so eighteen years, almost twenty years. What does that mean?
Bartleson:
Well, that means I’m old. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
No, but what is Governance? It’s like the Board of Directors?
Bartleson:
There’s a [1:39:20] kind of a hierarchy in IEEE Standards Association. There is in every standards organization. It’s important because there needs to be a lot of checks and balances before you use a standard that’s going to be widespread and have safety implications and business implications. So, at the lowest [1:39:40] level you have the [IEEE] standards committees themselves where all the work is being done. Above that you have other committees that look at patent laws, that look at process. Was it a fair and open process? Did anybody cheat? We have committees that are looking at [1:40:00] all the different aspects of the standards’ development. Above them you have then a Board of Directors. And above them you have a Board of Governors. The Board of Directors is looking at more the process and the actual production of the [1:40:20] standards, if you like. The Board of Governors looks out for the business of the standards of the organization, because it is a business.
Hellrigel:
Yes, well the revenue -- stream. I don’t know all the terminology but PUBs [Publications], Standards, and Conferences are revenue makers for IEEE.
Bartleson:
The standards. Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. They’re like business units. [1:40:40] They do have income. The Board of Governors oversees all of that, too.
I started off with I forget which committee I joined first. Well, above the standards committees. I served on some of those, and then I went up to the Board of Directors, and then I went up to the Board of Governors. And once you become the President of the [1:41:00] IEEE Standards Association, that automatically gives you a seat on the IEEE Board of Directors. The big board. So that’s when I began sitting on the big Board of Directors and got to know them. I got to know even more about IEEE and its pervasiveness, if you like [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
You are elected to [1:41:20] become a member of the Board of Governance and then Standards, the members of the IEEE Standards Association have to elect you?
Bartleson:
The President is elected. Most of the committees are just appointed by the higher level [1:41:40] committees. There’s a committee to appoint people [Laughing]. I’ve been on that committee.
Hellrigel:
The Nominations Committee [the Nominations and Appointments Committee (N&A)] or something.
Bartleson:
The Nominations Committee, yes. There’s a Nominations Committee for the IEEE Standards Association. There’s a Nominations Committee for the big IEEE. I’ve been on [1:42:00] both of those. It’s a hard job because you’re asking people to volunteer a lot of their time and energy.
IEEE Presidency
Hellrigel:
How much time are you spending on this IEEE work? You’re still a big poohbah at Synopsys and you have your volunteer work with IEEE. Does this tear you in too many [1:42:20] directions?
Bartleson:
No. This is interesting. This is the sad - but just fine - ending to my career at Synopsys. Right as I had won the election and I was about to become the [2016] President-elect of IEEE, I got a new boss. He called me into his office, and he said: “I’m so [1:42:40] glad you won that election because your position has been eliminated and you’re not going to work here anymore.” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh, so you were getting riffed or whatever the term might be.
Bartleson:
I was getting fired.
Hellrigel:
Forced out?
Bartleson:
Yes, I was getting fired [Laughing]. That gave me this perfect [1:43:00] opportunity to not have to be involved with Synopsys anymore and go full-time with IEEE. It was a really beautiful time to have that happen actually, and I didn’t look back. Oh, I was really sad and unhappy for about three months, I think. Then I realized, well this is [1:43:20] dumb. Why am I wasting my emotional energy on something like being angry at a company? I mean, big deal. I got over it right away and started my tenure as IEEE President-elect and then the President and then the Past President and on. It was great.
Hellrigel:
You ran against, [1:43:40] Fred Mintzer [Frederick C. Mintzer], who I know from the IEEE Foundation.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Some of the elections are so close. This election you were successful by [1:44:00] roughly figuring 4,500 votes. Do you think this was because you were well-known in IEEE Standards?
Bartleson:
Honestly, I don’t know why it was, because the truth of the matter [1:44:20] is, only, what, about 10 percent of IEEE members vote.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
So, okay. And out of those however many 10, 15, 20,000 members who vote, you’re not able to reach them all. You don’t get to know them. We visited all of the Regions. We went to [1:44:40] conferences. We went to committee meetings. We would present our platforms and do Q&A, and that was a really fun experience. Fred [Mintzer] and I did all those things all over the world. But most of the voters in IEEE are going to open that ballot, they’re going to look at your picture, and they’re going to read your [1:45:00] statement.
Hellrigel:
Your biography, too.
Bartleson:
Yes, your candidate statement and your bio.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
They’re going to pick. Whether it was my industry background, whether it was standards work, I don’t know what it was. Howard Michel, the 2015 IEEE President called me. He was the [1:45:20] President before Barry Shoop. Barry was the President before me. We were a trio. Oh my god, we were great. But anyway. When Howard Michel called me, I was in the airport in San Francisco. He said, “Karen, I’m really sorry. You won the election [Laughing].”
Hellrigel:
Oh, this is the official call. You are the 2016 IEEE President-elect.
Bartleson:
Exactly. [1:45:40]
Hellrigel:
He calls and says you’ll be on the hot seat in 2017 as the IEEE President.
Bartleson:
Exactly [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
What’s your reaction?
Bartleson:
Well, I was really surprised. I actually had no desire to [1:46:00] become President of IEEE. When the Nominations Committee [the Nominations and Appointments Committee (N&A)] first contacted me, they sent me an email and said your name came up, we’d like you to consider running for President of IEEE. I wrote to them, and I said thank you, but I am not at all interested. I have a full-time job. I have kids. I have no desire to [1:46:20] run. So, a couple of months went by, and they wrote to me again. They said we really, really want you to consider this. I thought, oh my gosh, these guys are serious [Laughing]. So, I went to my upper management at the time and told them that IEEE was interested in having me run for President. [1:46:40] And, they said, “You have to, Karen, you have to. You have to try this because IEEE is prestigious. It will bring visibility to our company.” They were extremely supportive of me.
I have to tell this story. I learned a very important lesson. [1:47:00] I had met with one of the vice presidents who said to me: if you are elected IEEE President, we will pay your salary for a year. You can go and devote your entire time to IEEE. We’ll figure out how to keep your group going, and you can be full-time IEEE. [1:47:20] This was in a verbal conversation. It was in a one-on-one meeting. I went back to my office thinking, this is great. So, I won the election, and then I said, “Well, you promised me that you were going to pay my salary and now you’re telling me I don’t have a job.” This vice president said, “I never said that. I didn’t say [1:47:40] that.” My mistake. I want all the young people to know; I want everybody to know this. My mistake was not to write that down. I should have gone back to my office and sent an email. Dear Vice President: thank you for promising this. I really appreciate it. Karen Bartleson. Then I would have a paper trail. As it was, I had [1:48:00] not, and I didn’t have a leg to stand on. Anyway [Laughing]. That’s my story. And I forget why I was telling that story.
Hellrigel:
Well, the company supported you and now that you were elected, you had conveniently become unemployed. [1:48:20] So, you could take up the responsibilities, the real burden of being a, one of the Three Ps. The incoming president or I guess the future president is the title. The proper title is you were elected the IEEE President in the 2015 election.
Bartleson:
It’s President-elect.
Hellrigel:
President-elect. You’re working with, [1:48:40] Howard Michel, who’s Past President or the 2015 IEEE President, and later the Past President in 2016 when you are officially the IEEE President-elect. Then President-elect at that point in October 2015 when you are elected is Barry Shoop. That’s your first group of the Three Ps.
Bartleson:
Oh, and the three of us got along so well, and [1:49:00] we heard this comment from so many people. We were unique in the way that we worked together and how we shared agendas and how we supported each other. We were really in it together. [Laughing]. I [1:49:20] think it was my husband, when I told him about the Three Ps, he said it’s Plunder. Oh, now I can’t remember. The Three Ps were something about plunder, and pillage and… Oh, I should have thought of this before. But anyway, behind the scenes we [1:49:40] called each other Plunder and Pillage and …[Pilfer][Laughing].
Hellrigel:
My joke is that they’re Three Ps, but they’re not always in the same pod.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
But you’re conveniently in the same pod.
Bartleson:
We were.
Hellrigel:
Did you know these two gentlemen beforehand?
Bartleson:
[1:50:00] No.
Hellrigel:
Yes, because they’re not from Standards.
Bartleson:
They’re not from Standards so I never knew them. But we clicked so well. Howard and Barry were good friends, and I don’t remember how they got to know each other. Then they just welcomed me with open arms. I remember Howard taking me out to dinner [1:50:20] to tell me before the election started to give me some advice. They were just the greatest. Absolutely, the greatest.
Hellrigel:
You accept the challenge of running, and there are two candidates the year you [1:50:40] ran. You enjoyed the travel. When you’re traveling and campaigning, who’s paying for that? Am I supposed to ask?
Bartleson:
Oh, that’s fine. Oh, IEEE pays.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
Yes. They paid for all of the President’s travel. and during the year that you are President they also pay for [1:51:00] your spouse, for your companion, to travel with you because they know how difficult it is to be on the road in all those different countries all the time. So, to have your spouse or your companion with you is important to your mental and physical health. So, yes, IEEE paid for it all. I don’t know how the budgets were. [1:51:20] I don’t know if the regions chipped in or if it was a -
Hellrigel:
Oh, I’m sure they very well might have a recipe or formula for sharing expenses.
Bartleson:
Yes, I’m sure they did, too [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Are there any enjoyable campaign trips? Trips that stick out?
Bartleson:
Oh, yes. They were all [1:51:40] great. And they were very intense, too, I must say. I think it was Region…. Where - what region is Pakistan in? See, I can’t remember anything anymore.
Hellrigel:
That would be Region 8.
Bartleson:
Region 8. Okay, so we went for a Region 8 meeting and the room was full. Great, big, huge table -
Hellrigel:
Correction, I think it is Region 10 [1:52:00]. I’d have to look at a map. Yes, it is Region 10.
Bartleson:
It could be. Well, good, now I don’t feel so bad [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, I had to look it up, and yes, it is Region 10.
Bartleson:
Yes. So, Fred [Mintzer] and I were seated sort of in the middle of all these people surrounding us to pepper us with questions. I found it fun because you never [1:52:20] knew what they were going to ask you. You had to think so fast. And come up with all of these answers. One question, and I’m kind of paraphrasing -and we would take turns going first, and then the other candidate would get a chance to answer the same question - the question was: [1:52:40] why is IEEE not accepting our local currency so we can pay our membership dues in Pakistan? Fred went first, and he said, “I don’t know.” [Laughing]. I was so glad. I said, “I don’t know either [Laughing].” [1:53:00]
Hellrigel:
Yes, it probably has something to do with the U.S. State Department and international business.
Bartleson:
I do remember, we went back and figured it out. We had to determine what the deal was, but now I don’t remember what it was. But there were all kinds of these questions that were really [1:53:20] interesting. I went to a lot of universities, too, to give a lot of presentations and lectures. They, the students, would ask me outrageous questions, and I loved every moment of it because I never expected to be asked [these questions].
Hellrigel:
What would they ask? About jobs?
Bartleson:
Oh, [1:53:40] they would ask about jobs and what’s the IEEE, careers, and all the basic stuff. But I remember one student asking me how much money they needed to save for their retirement. And I thought [Laughing], I have no idea.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
Yes. How about this one? A student asked me, [1:54:00]” What do I do if someone I know is being sexually harassed by a professor?”
Hellrigel:
Yes, we’ve got a mechanism.
Bartleson:
Yes, I talked to them about, I’m sure there’s a process in the university and all that kind of stuff. But what troubled me about the question, not only its face value, [1:54:20] that was a very disturbing question, but disturbing in that that student was asking me, a complete stranger who’s talking about standards or some dumb thing, and hadn’t either known about the right thing to do or hadn’t been able to, which was my biggest fear that maybe they’d tried and been unsuccessful and [1:54:40] whether it had happened to that student or one of their friends or one of their associates, I really don’t know. But it was just really [unsettling].
Hellrigel:
This was a female student?
Bartleson:
I don’t remember to be honest with you. It could have been. It could have been a [1:55:00] male. I don’t remember. Whatever student it was didn’t strike me about them so much as their question, so I didn’t remember whether it was a man or a woman.
Hellrigel:
Yes, that’s a challenging question and situation.
Bartleson:
It really was. There were fun questions, too, but those [1:55:20] two, in particular, are ones that stand out for me. [Small audio glitch] What do I say where my answer could influence the life of a young person?
Hellrigel:
In the situation it is also are you wearing the hat of IEEE and speaking on behalf of IEEE or are you [1:55:40] wearing the Karen hat and speaking on behalf of yourself.
Bartleson:
Yes. And that was something that throughout my entire tenure with IEEE I had to be very conscious of. Am I speaking as myself or am I’m speaking with the perspective of IEEE? I think fortunately for [1:56:00] me, my values align with those of IEEE, so I don’t recall regularly saying: this is me, it’s not IEEE. I’m sure I had to do that at some point.
Hellrigel:
I found a document that was released in February 2017 [1:56:20] that was a special message that you made.
Bartleson:
Oh. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Am I supposed to ask why that was? Now there’s so many political hot issues and staff and members sometimes ask me why doesn’t IEEE say this, why doesn’t IEEE say something on that? I’ve been [1:56:40] working at home a lot on oral histories, so since October of 2023, so I haven’t been in the office too much. Can you comment on that 2017 special message? Why did you have to make that statement?
Bartleson:
Yes. I certainly can. There was nothing secret [1:57:00] about what we were doing at the time. So, remember February, we had just had an election.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
The United States had a new president who had the position of shutting down immigration, and he [1:57:20] was not favorable for people from other countries coming to the U.S. There was a demand from IEEE members that we say something. IEEE has members from other countries. IEEE is essentially in every country in the world. They, [1:57:40] the members from other countries, were saying this means we might not be able to come to conferences in the United States. We might not be able to participate.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
We might not be able to do the things with IEEE as a global organization that we need to do. We don’t have borders as engineers. We don’t build [1:58:00] walls as engineers, we build bridges. We need the IEEE to say something. I was President so it fell onto my shoulders. I met with our legal counsel, who’s amazing, I love this woman, [Eileen Lach]. I met with the executive director, [Jim Prendergast]. I met [1:58:20] with the other Ps. I met with a group, and we sat down and worked extremely hard to come up with a statement. We knew that we can’t criticize individuals. We can’t - well, I don’t know, it was it was really, really difficult. The other thing we knew was that we had to [1:58:40] make an immediate statement. We couldn’t wait. There’s a rule in the IEEE that the President can make a statement without getting the Board’s approval because we knew if we had to get approval from the Board, it would take months and by then our statement would be a “me too” at best and [1:59:00] ineffective and just ridiculed at worse. We had to make an immediate statement. That’s why it came out in February. We worked on it and worked on it and worked on it. We crafted it and I published it. It was right there on the home page of the IEEE website.
Hellrigel:
It was called a Special [1:59:20] Message.
Bartleson:
Yes, that’s what we called it. A Special Message, that’s what we called it. The feedback I got was fascinating. Of course, everybody who responded was very emotional and [1:59:40] very adamant or whatever. A third of the people said: “You are the greatest President ever for saying this, we admire you, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. You did the right thing. You’re IEEE all through. We think you’re great.” [2:00:00] Another third of them said: “You are the most despicable President we’ve ever had, how dare you.” They would rave about their political views. “You’re horrible - blah, blah - you should resign.” All this kind of stuff. The third group is the most interesting. They said: “You are a [2:00:20] coward because your statement was so weak. You didn’t put the right message out there. You ran away from the real issue.” So, I was either a hero, or a villain or a coward [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Or a skunk, yes.
Bartleson:
In equal parts. I thought, well, I guess I was successful because [2:00:40] [Laughing] clearly everybody is equally as unhappy or happy with me. [Laughing] That’s how I started my presidency, by the way.
Hellrigel:
Yes, you’re one month into your term.
Bartleson:
I’m one month in. Oh my god, what have I gotten into [Laughing]?
Hellrigel:
I’ve been working with some people in IEEE-USA [2:01:00] and the IEEE Computer Society and with a group in Russia with computer history. Some people imply, oh, IEEE still thinks it’s an American institution. This is very [2:01:20] complex. There seems to be tension. The reality is that we’re not an American institution. We are incorporated in the state of New York. We’re a business, well, legally we’re a -not-for-profit organization. We are global and we are incorporated in the United States.
Bartleson:
Well, there’s other aspects, [2:01:40] too, that make the people that are outside of the USA think that it’s an American based company or organization. I’ll give you one good example, and this could be fixed. In my opinion, this is straightforward. It’s a big project with a very straightforward thing that needs to be fixed. People talk about it, and [2:02:00] for some reason they can’t make it happen. The way our Regions are set up in the IEEE, for a global organization, is wrong. You don’t have all of the Regions in the United States and then one massive one, like Region 10, with Australia that has nothing to do with, all the [2:02:20] other – Africa. You know what I mean? These are different regions: culturally, geographically, religiously. They’re just different. The whole region map needs to be redrawn.
Hellrigel:
They’re dividing Region 10 into two regions. One seems like it will be focused around China and the other around India. But they still have the Australia issue. [2:02:40] Region 8 is very complex with Africa and Europe and parts of Southwest Asia, “the Middle East”, that’s what I’m not quite sure. I think Pakistan is Region 10 because it’s Asia. But to geographers the “Middle East” is really Southwest Asia. As a historian and geographer, I look at parts of Region 8 and I see it as part of the colonialism diaspora.
Bartleson:
Yes. But so anyway, that’s one example. One of the implications of the way that the regions are set is on the Board of [2:03:20] Directors. Regional directors get to vote, so the United States has many more votes than any other Region. That’s just one example of why there are other things besides the business that are affected by these regions.
Hellrigel:
It’s a challenge
Bartleson:
Yes, [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
When you became IEEE President, you were interested in the Young Professionals, but what were some of [2:04:00] the other points in your game plan?
Bartleson:
Another aspect, and this was carried on with Barry [Shoop] and Howard [Michel] was the idea that IEEE’s focus on industry needed to be improved. And that whole problem that I had mentioned much [2:04:20] earlier about IEEE members who worked for a company, who work in industry, how can they serve the IEEE and their own company at the same time. How does IEEE bring value to companies to support their employees, in joining and participating in the IEEE? So, there was industry, there [2:04:40] certainly was Women in Engineering (WIE). All of WIE is really cool. I didn’t have to do a whole lot there.
One of the things that we tried very hard, when I was President-elect, and Barry was President and Howard was Past [2:05:00] President, we tried to restructure the Board of Directors to be more effective and more efficient. The Board of Directors is really large. There are thirty-one members. And so, to try to do business with thirty-one members is [2:05:20] really complicated.
Hellrigel:
Unwieldy.
Bartleson:
Unwieldy, thank you. So, we proposed a structure that was much more efficient. It would be like three bodies that would interact. A lot of us worked extremely hard on that and it was a beautiful model in my opinion. In order to [2:05:40] make that change, we had to change the Constitution, so we put a Constitutional amendment on the ballot. Oh my gosh, talk about political [Laughing]. It was like the United States election. Camps and [2:06:00] websites and threats and name-calling. It was really ugly. False information being passed around. Ultimately, the voters who read all of the stuff were confused and they said, no, we’re not going to do this. Unfortunately, all that effort was for naught and I’m sure it’s all archived [2:06:20] somewhere.
Hellrigel:
Yes, some of that material will be archived. However, often that’s difficult because as the Institutional Historian even I don’t get access to Board of Directors’ minutes. Asking for access has gotten me nowhere, so it’s been a struggle to document IEEE history, especially more recent history. The annual reports list key events, so they are helpful for sketching a basic outline.
Shortly after I started my post at the IEEE History Center in January 2016, I picked up some information on recent controversies and campaigns to change the constitution and other issues. [2:06:40] I learned about the bureaucracy of getting that passed. Some people want to streamline it [the Board of Directors] to decrease expenses. Especially since, [2:07:00] COVID, we have had more virtual meetings and people are starting to question the need for numerous face-to-face, or in person, meetings. How many face-to-face meetings do you really need? Can you get the business accomplished with a virtual meeting? How many people do you really need to be flying around the world?
Bartleson:
Yes. When we were proposing the model there was [2:07:20] an efficiency and there was a cost savings as well. But mostly it was to be able to be more agile. I guess agile is a good word.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Bartleson:
Where we could make better decisions and we could move forward faster and we could just perform better in smaller groups that were [2:07:40] more focused on aspects of the business.
Hellrigel:
I don’t remember all the details, but would it be more in line with like a technical activities group, a PUBs group, and a conference group? Were you going --
Bartleson:
No, I think it was more - I’m trying to remember, too, this was [2:08:00] way back. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
I can look it up.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
I’m trying to figure out how to chunk, or organize, activities and the overlap.
Bartleson:
Yes, I think it was sort of like part that was all about governance and rules, and stuff like that, and maybe about the business, and then [2:08:20] maybe about the technology or something, but three major aspects of IEEE that that would be addressed separately within. We’d put the conduits in place so that there was plenty of overlap. There was plenty of communication going on.
Hellrigel:
Now, you have this international issue. You have the [2:08:40] Constitutional amendment issue. At what point do you say, I just need to go home? [Laughing].
Bartleson:
Well, oh, so I probably said that right away with the Special Message, and then I said it again and again. I said it again when I was personally being [2:09:00] sued by someone who was under house arrest by the FBI [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
[I was sued] along with the Board of Directors. [Laughing]. Are you kidding me? Somebody who’s being accused of criminal activity is drawing me into a lawsuit. My name, my personal name. I’ve never been involved in a personal [2:09:20] lawsuit in my entire life. And that went on and on and on. This guy had stolen hundreds of thousands of dollars from IEEE and from the university that he worked for, and we had proof. The FBI was supposed to arrest him, and they didn’t, and this ended up that he got off scot-free. He got to keep our [2:09:40] money. When we were going to make sure that he could not be an IEEE member anymore because IEEE members are not allowed to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars fraudulently from the IEEE. We told him we were going to have a meeting. We’re going to talk about your [2:10:00] membership. He turned around and filed a lawsuit saying we were breaking our bylaws because nowhere in the bylaws did we write out anything like this because we, nobody, ever thought about it. So, we went to court. We went to try to settle. It was really amazing and not in a good way. [2:10:20]
Hellrigel:
Yes, as IEEE staff, I vaguely remember a legal case, but I do not remember the details. However, I recall it was one of those moments when you say, you can’t make this stuff up.
Bartleson:
I know. I know [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Recently, I started my ninth year at IEEE and the past few years there seems to be a focus on ethics.
Bartleson:
Yes. Yes. Yes.
Hellrigel:
Shortly before I joined the staff, IEEE created a permanent Legal or Compliance Department. Previously, they contracted out legal work. Eileen Lach was the head of that department. [2:11:00] [Lach was the General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of IEEE and General Counsel of the IEEE Foundation from November 2011 to November 2022.]
Bartleson:
Eilene, she’s the one I adore. I absolutely worship her [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
That was a challenge. I also recall that some people were questioning IEEE’s non-profit status. Those [2:11:20] were three tumultuous things.
Bartleson:
Well, I have a fourth one for you. And then that’s enough.
Hellrigel:
Okay. We’ll talk about fun stuff afterward.
Bartleson:
As I was transferring away from the presidency of IEEE Standards to the real [2:11:40] IEEE presidency, IEEE Standards was updating their patent policy at the request of the U.S. government as well as the EU, because what was going on in industry is companies were filing patent infringement cases based on standards just because.
Hellrigel:
To tie it up? [2:11:40]
Bartleson:
Pardon?
Hellrigel:
To tie it up?
Bartleson:
Yes. So, there’s a concept, it’s called an essential patent. If I create - let’s say I create a Wi-Fi standard and I have a patent, and in order for anybody to implement Wi-Fi, they’re going to infringe on my patent, so I’m going to sue them. That’s what you’re not allowed to [2:12:20] do. You can’t do that. However, there’s all these massive patent lawsuits going on. The U.S. Courts, I think it was the Department of Justice, came to IEEE and said can you please fix your patent policy, so these cases are stopped before they come to us? The EU said the same thing. We’ve had enough. You’ve got to help us. So, [2:12:40] we worked really hard on updating our patent policy. It had to go for a vote to the IEEE Standards Board, the Board of Governors, for approval. The companies who were notorious for filing these lawsuits and making millions and millions and millions of dollars on [2:13:00] suing people who used a standard they had their patent infringed upon, launched this massive campaign against the updates. They approached the IEEE Board of Directors, and at that point the IEEE Board of Directors stepped in and said, “This is pretty serious. We’re [2:13:20] going to have to approve it at the IEEE level, not just at the Standards level.” So, yet another massive war. There were major corporations on both sides. The people who were against the [2:13:40] patent policy update would go to universities and post posters, anti-campaign posters. They took our tagline, our messaging, stating Standards for the Benefit of Humanity and inserted [2:14:00] some nasty thing in there for the detriment of humanity or something. And they had this all over the Internet. They had meetings. They had; oh, it was unbelievable. Then equally, on the other side, major corporations in favor that had been taken advantage of, [2:14:20] and they were very supportive of our patent policy. So, we had a Board meeting in New Orleans. I’ll never forget this, and this is where I got to know Eileen Lach because she had to get involved because it was extremely important. So, we go to this Board meeting, and we’re at [2:14:40] the big convention center or whatever in New Orleans. Maybe it’s a hotel. It was a hotel. The night before, the group that was against the patent policy, created and printed up these binders that had all this propaganda in it about if [2:15:00] IEEE passes this patent policy, all these terrible things are going to happen. Prior to the meeting, I actually had a guy come into my office and I said, ‘We’re not going to talk about the patent policy. He says, “Okay, we won’t.” And immediately he starts talking about the patent policy. He said, “Karen, if you let this patent policy pass, you [2:15:20] will destroy the IEEE; the IEEE will be no more.” I said, “I don’t want to talk about it, go away.” Later on, that day I thought, sure, me, one little one woman, has the power to take down the world’s largest professional society [Laughing].
I was feeling pretty good about myself at that point [2:15:40] [Laughing]. But anyway. At the meeting, the night before in the hotel, they, the opposition, printed up these binders and they slid them under the doors, the individual hotel room doors of every Board member. They actually had some of the hotel staff, the housekeeping staff, bring them into their hotel rooms to put them on the [2:16:00] dressers. Now there was an article, I think, I forget, it was a huge publication, I forget which one it was, but the article started off with “In the dark of the night…” They had security video of this happening where they’re passing out these binders, [Laughing] and [2:16:20] the hotel somehow had given room numbers of Board members. This is a privacy invasion. [Laughing]. It totally backfired because the Board members were angry at that point. You know, “How dare you come into my hotel room with your propaganda?!” We ended up passing the patent policy. It was updated. [2:16:40] [Laughing]. Eileen [Lach] and I remember walking into that hotel room. We went back later, a few years later, for another Board meeting, and she and I said this place gives us the creeps [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, that’s weird. I mean it makes you [2:17:00] wonder if the NSA or the CIA is behind the other door with these clandestine invasions of rooms. It sounds like antics during the McCarthy Era.
Bartleson:
Exactly. It’s the -
Hellrigel:
You might also wonder if there are any microphones or bugs somewhere.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[2:17:20] Do you know if the people behind these things are still IEEE members? Or were they -
Bartleson:
Oh, absolutely. Oh, absolutely, and they’re running for positions on the Boards. They absolutely are [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Well, I guess due to the legal cases we are not naming names? [2:17:40]
Bartleson:
Mm-hmm.
Hellrigel:
It’s a challenge. And I think, well, Jim Prendergast is the Executive Director and COO, the head of IEEE staff at this point and he’s about ready to segue off into retirement in January 2018. [2:18:00] Then Steve Welby comes on, so that’s another major change that you’re looking at. That’s another transition. And somewhere around that time Eileen Lach is - is going to leave and Sophie [Sophia Muirhead] will come be the new head of the Legal/Compliance Department. That might be a [2:18:20] couple of years later. I have to check the dates.
Bartleson:
That was a couple of years later, yes, because Eilene was there with me the entire time.
Hellrigel:
But that’s a major transition and you have the search for Prendergast’s replacement going on. I would say it is a fifth big thing, not a bad thing, but a big thing during your years as one of the Three Ps.
Bartleson:
Well, it was a very big thing. The day we were [2:18:40] interviewing the final candidates, and we were doing it in person - I forget where we were, oh, we were in New York City, I think. It was my birthday [Laughing]. And, I said, “I’m doing this on my birthday!” [Laughing] They bought me a cake, and that was kind of cool.
Hellrigel:
The IEEE President’s Office [2:19:00] at 3 Park Avenue has a great view of New York. I was working there one day, and every other place was taken up, so I asked to work in that space. I just kind of snuck in there and then I turned around and I was like, oh my gosh, the view. The vista going uptown is quite phenomenal.
Bartleson:
[Background comment]. I didn’t get to [2:19:20] go in that office [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
It is designated as the President of IEEE’s office at the 3 Park Avenue IEEE office. I don’t know when that was designated. The President of IEEE has an office in Piscataway, too.
Bartleson:
That’s the one that I was in whenever I was there.
Hellrigel:
You have all of this going on. Were there [2:19:40] any positive memories?
Bartleson:
Oh, for sure. Little things like - I don’t know if everybody is familiar with Reddit - I used to use Reddit because it was a cool thing. On Reddit they had a [2:20:00] subgroup, they call it a subreddit, that was called AMA, Ask Me Anything. People would go on there and say, “I’m so and so, ask me anything.” Then you’d get this stream of questions, and you would interact with people. So, for some crazy reason I went on and I said, “I am the IEEE [2:20:20] President, ask me anything.” Well, I got some pretty, really weird questions, and I got a lot of complaints and all this normal stuff. But I got one message from a student at the university in Thunder Bay, Canada. He said, “Are you really the President? Would you come and speak with our [2:20:40] student body?” Well, I’ll be darned if I didn’t write to respond. I said, “Yes, I really am.” I looked him up. He looked me up. He said, “You really are the President; would you come and visit us?” On the last leg of some international trip, I was on to various countries, I went to this tiny little place in Canada. It was cold. It was [2:21:00] snowing. They treated me like a queen. They shut down all the classes for the day. The professors spent all day with me. The students took me out for dinner the night before, and of course I had poutine. They took me to their favorite doughnut shop and toured me around. They had me talking to everybody. Just [2:21:21] the other day I got a message again from one of those students who was telling me about how his career had progressed and that he was now in a field that I - he - he went into biomedical engineering because he remembered my story where I said I wanted to and couldn’t. It was precious. Absolutely precious. [2:21:40]
Before I went to Africa Eileen [Lach] told me it will change your life, and she was absolutely right. To go there and sit next to the first ladies of the Presidents of African countries, in this [2:22:00] huge auditorium, this big presentation, it was a conference called Transform Africa. Africa wants to - and I was reading about it -- more about this recently, too - instead of going through the Industrial Age and development and all that kind of stuff, they want to leapfrog and go straight to the digital economy. [2:22:20] There’s training involved and education and infrastructure and things like that. I was at this conference, and I was asked to be one of the keynote speakers. And they’re broadcasting it, I don’t know where, the audience is thousands of people and dignitaries. Oh, it was amazing. I gave a speech, and I told myself, I’m [2:22:40] not going to cry, because my speech was the one that I had developed early on in my President year that talked about the value of IEEE and engineers and the benefit to humanity. It has the lines in it stating that as engineers we [2:23:00] don’t build walls, we build bridges. We have no borders. Everybody is welcome. We respect everybody. It was my statement on behalf of IEEE that I did not support shutting the borders of the United States. I had to do this because I knew I was going to various countries, and they wanted to know, because I was the IEEE [2:23:20] President, what does she think about the changing U.S. administration. It’s a long speech. I think it’s probably like fifteen minutes, fifteen to twenty minutes. I was to be in that situation, knowing that you’re [2:23:40] maybe influencing people’s lives and making powerful, powerful statements that are kind of scary, too. [Laughing] It was marvelous. Towards the very, very end, there’s a quote. I can’t do it now because I will burst into tears [Laughing]. But I [2:24:00] quoted a famous U.S. politician that says remember that you are powerful and deserving of every opportunity in the world to succeed. That’s where I wavered, just a little bit, and nobody knew it except I think Howard [Michel] [2:24:20] and a couple of people in the audience. Do you know Gordon Day by any chance?
Hellrigel:
Yes, I’m going to interview him for his IEEE presidential oral history later this year.
Bartleson:
Yes, Gordon, he’s another Colorado IEEE Past President by the way [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, I’ve got my list.
Bartleson:
Yes, yes. He’s awesome. Afterwards, he said, “Karen, I could tell you got choked up at the end.” Nobody else noticed, but just a couple of people who were close to me. [2:24:40] So, from that phenomenon to a little tiny university in Canada, meeting the most amazing people and making friends everywhere, and eating spectacularly gross food [Laughing]…
Hellrigel:
Oh, my. [2:25:00]
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, someone told me that they were somewhere, and everybody was passing around certain drinks and they were not a drinker.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] It’s hard. I was going to [2:25:20] visit Korea. I forget what I was doing, presenting something. The regional director wrote me an email and he said, “Have you ever been to Korea before, and do you like Korean food?” I wrote back and I said, “I’ve been to Korea, and I love [2:25:40] Korean food. The only thing I did not try was live baby octopus.”
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
When I had been there before, they had this buffet, and they had live baby octopus on the buffet, and some of these guys, they would put the whole thing in in their mouths and the tentacles would go up their chin -
Hellrigel:
Ugh. I have had octopus and squid, but it was not alive.
Bartleson:
I mean it was [2:26:00] horrible. In my email I wrote that, “the only thing I didn’t try was live baby octopus because the tentacles go up your chin. As we say in the U.S., Ewww.” So, I get to Korea. He picks us up. My husband was with me, too. He picked us up and he says, “Hey Karen, guess what’s for [2:26:20] dinner? It’s live baby octopus.” And I’m like ha-ha-ha, you’re so funny. Well, that night we get to dinner, and we’re sitting around this big table, and everybody is excited. “Karen, we got you live baby octopus for dinner because we read your email. Your email said the only thing you didn’t [2:26:40] get to try was live baby octopus.” and, whooo... [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
They were giving you the opportunity.
Bartleson:
No, they took it the wrong way. They [Laughing] --
Hellrigel:
Right, right, because they were going to give you the opportunity to do it.
Bartleson:
They were so excited. It was really expensive, too. It was coming out of their entertainment budget or something. [2:27:00] They’re thrilled that they’re going to give me this [Laughing] horrible, and I’m thinking oh my god. I knew I had to eat it because I would humiliate myself. They would be so disappointed, and it would be awful if I didn’t. So, I picked it up. Oh, and I said, “Is it still alive?” And they said, “Oh, yes, because it’s more expensive that way.” [2:27:20] It’s cut up into little pieces, but still, when you poke it with your chopsticks, it squirms around. So, I go to pick up this piece and put it in my mouth and they said, “Oh, but wait, be careful because the suction cups can stick to the roof of your mouth.” [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
[Laughing]. And your husband was on this trip.
Bartleson:
[2:27:40] He’s sitting next to me.
Hellrigel:
Did he have to eat it, too?
Bartleson:
He did. He didn’t mind it as much as I did. But then it came with these really like spicy hot peppers, too, because it didn’t have any flavor. It was just gross. I was polite, and I ate as much as I possibly could. Those hot peppers kind of made you forget [2:28:00] [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
That’s a cultural experience.
Bartleson:
Then I tell everybody be very careful what you write in your email, or you might have to eat a live baby octopus.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Yes, you might have to write, I tried everything, and I chose not to try this.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, they were probably looking forward to it. [2:28:20] This is cool because she wants to try this. She got to do everything else except…
Bartleson:
Except, … [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Do you know how many days you were travelling? You spent three years as one of the Three Ps. These are really big travel years as the President-elect, President, and Past President of IEEE. [2:28:40] Are they equally chaotic?
Bartleson:
President is the most chaotic. I think President-elect, when you’re warming up, is the most overwhelming because you have so much to learn. [2:29:00] I mean you have to learn things you never knew you’d have to learn. So that whole first year, it is what’s my agenda going to be? How does this work? There is so much information you need to absorb. I forget how much travel I did that year. Then as President I traveled more than 400,000 miles in one [2:29:20] year. I was gone from home for 270 days. Then as Past President, you kind of feel a sense of relief and a sense of accomplishment. You think, wow, I did it. That year I traveled oh, more than [2:29:40] 200,000, maybe almost 300,000 miles as Past President. It was lots and lots of travel. I counted that I visited 63 countries which doesn’t sound like a lot because there’s 190 -
Hellrigel:
As Past President or in totality?
Bartleson:
In totality. It [2:30:00] was amazing. Frankly, I got kind of burned out because I’d been to every place on Earth that I would want to be except for Egypt, which of course I can’t go to now. Egypt is one country that I would love to visit someday to experience the pyramids and things like that and the Egyptian culture. [2:30:20]
Hellrigel:
When you’re doing all this traveling, I think Providence More’s group is helping arrange your travel. Who helped you with the travel plans and arrangements?
Bartleson:
There was one person. She’s [2:30:40] retired now. She would do all of my travel arrangements. She actually used to work for United Airlines, so she knew the secrets of how to get into the system and rebook things and take care of everything. She made all the hotel reservations. She asked your preferences. If I would go [2:31:00] somewhere - I’m a big water drinker because I live in Colorado and it’s so dry - so they would make sure that I had a case of bottled water wherever I went.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
Yes. She did everything. She would even file my expense reports, which was really cool. I just had to organize my receipts and make sure that I documented everything.
Hellrigel:
Right. [2:31:20]
Bartleson:
Then she would submit the expense reports. Oh, I was so spoiled. It was so great [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
And would you mind sharing her name?
Bartleson:
Oh, not at all. Kathy Burke.
Hellrigel:
Oh, I know her. [Kathy Burke’s title was Executive Administrator to IEEE Presidents. She was in Corporate Activities.]
Bartleson:
Yes. She is such a delight, and she also helped arrange each President’s retreat. I don’t know if they still do this, [2:31:40] but each President would have a retreat in January with the Board of Directors.
Hellrigel:
Yes. I think they’re in Jamaica now for the 2024 retreat. It is the beginning of the year big planning meeting.
Bartleson:
Wow. Oh, good. I felt really bad for the Presidents during COVID because they couldn’t do any of this stuff. My [2:32:00] retreat was in Hawaii because I love it there. At first everybody said, “Oh, what about the optics, going to Hawaii for your meeting?” But IEEE has conferences there all the time. IEEE has a huge presence in Hawaii, so we went there. My theme for the year was going to be [2:32:20] focusing on the Young Professionals, so instead of inviting a bunch of old people like me, [Laughing], the Board was all there, but I invited twelve Young Professionals from around the world, from different countries so we could hear directly from them their experiences, their needs, and their visions for the future of the [2:32:40] IEEE. To have twelve, a dozen, Young Professionals with me was so great and in the most beautiful setting ever. It was funny because the place we stayed was outside of Honolulu, and I loved it because it was quiet and [2:33:00] peaceful. We could concentrate on our work and everything. Well, the Young Professionals thought it was really boring because there was nothing to do, so they’d rent cars and drive into Honolulu for the night [Laughing] and go out and see the town and then come back [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, give them a few more years and they might prefer the quiet and peaceful locale.
Bartleson:
[2:33:20] Yes, I would happily [phonetic] -- yes.
Hellrigel:
A few years of committee work might make them appreciate quite down time.
Bartleson:
[Laughing]. Yes.
Hellrigel:
You focused on the Young Professionals. Did you achieve what you intended to do?
Bartleson:
I did. I think I was [2:33:40] hoping that there’d be this big focus going forward. We actually had a Board seat for a Young Professional, a kind of honorary Board seat. I don’t think that exists anymore. In terms of them, as I mentioned earlier, getting funding - and that it was a good amount of funding, too - it wasn’t just here’s $1,000, [2:34:00] go buy a pizza. It was serious funding for serious programs, and to see that still in action is very satisfying. So yes, I feel like I did accomplish what I wanted.
Hellrigel:
When you were IEEE President was there anything you wanted to do that, you didn’t get to do?
Bartleson:
Oh, probably a million [2:34:21] things. Someone asked me once, did that year as President go by super-duper fast? Did it just fly by? I said, “Actually, it did not. It felt like five years. There was so much to do, every single day, the whole time, so somehow time [2:34:40] expanded for me. It felt like a lifetime because there was so much stuff. It was really great.” But, no, I don’t think there’s anything. Obviously, I would have loved to have changed the Board structure. I would have [2:35:00] loved to have done certain things like that, but one of my philosophies, too, is I don’t look back. And I don’t have regrets because having regrets doesn’t do any good at all. It just makes you feel terrible about yourself. You can’t change it.
Hellrigel:
Oh.
Bartleson:
You can’t go back in time. You can certainly learn [2:35:20] from things and go forward. I don’t look back and say, oh, I regret this, or I regret that. I just don’t do that. Hopefully, my children, I’ve taught them that, too. I don’t know, we’ll see. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Well, yes, deal with the moment at hand. Some of the life experts say live in the moment [2:35:40]
Bartleson:
Oh, yes, yes. All the new mindfulness training. I do that a lot these days, every day, some mindfulness meditations. It’s all about seeing, feeling, knowing what’s happening to you all the time. Of course, that doesn’t happen, but when it does, you go wow. You know? There’s - I have this fake flower thing in front of me that’s really [2:36:00] cool and there’s a little bird in there [Laughing].
Retirement, IEEE activities post-presidency
Hellrigel:
Now that you’ve retired and you’re not on the Board of Directors anymore, are you still active in IEEE?
Bartleson:
Occasionally. Occasionally, I’ll do a project for the IEEE Standards Association in particular. A while [2:36:20] ago they developed a training program, an online training program, for the chairs of standards committees, and I helped write all the content for that. And that was really fun. So, I do occasionally, but honestly [Laughing], I am enjoying relaxing and doing [2:36:40] what I want to when I want to with no alarm clocks and no schedules. The first year after, I guess it would be 2019, after I really wasn’t doing much officially with IEEE, one afternoon I found myself reading a book, all afternoon, for four hours, all I did was [2:37:00] read a book. It got to be 5:00 o’clock and I said, “Oh, man, I haven’t done anything except read this book.” Then I stopped and I thought, Wait a minute. During my whole career, raising my children, all I wanted to be able to do was sit down and read a book. Now I can, and I like it [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, your time is your own now. [2:37:20]
Bartleson:
Oh, I’m reading a lot. I watch too much Netflix. I’ve been cooking some amazing food that I love. I bought beautiful new cookware. It’s black and gold. I’m enjoying my time. I haven’t mentioned my granddaughter yet. I have to mention my granddaughter. She’s three.
Hellrigel:
Okay. Now you can focus [2:37:40] on family and you have a granddaughter.
Bartleson:
Anyway, I got distracted. She’s three and she’s just incredible. She lives two hours away from us, so we’re actually going to go visit them again next week. I spend time with my sister. She lives nearby, too. My friend lives across the [2:38:00] street, and we go to lunch all the time and just talk for three hours. So, it’s quite a contrast, and I enjoy it. I really do. When I look back at all of the things that I have done, I just think, How on earth did I survive? How did I manage? How did I do [2:38:20] that? So, it’s a feeling of, now’s the time to take a little rest. [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes. yes, there’s some people that were Past Presidents, one in particular, who ran for office again. I don’t think it was [2:38:40] successful, I don’t remember. But it seems like taking a step to get back in the fray.
Bartleson:
Oh, yes. A lot of when I was on the Board, a lot of the members had been Past Presidents, and they would go back on the board as region directors or something like that.
Hellrigel:
yes.
Bartleson:
Barry [Shoop] and I used to always say, when this term is over, “We’re [2:39:00] done. We’re not coming back. We’re going to move on.” I think part of the reason too is that I did so much, and it’s somebody else’s turn now.
Hellrigel:
I’m in the History Center so I have to ask a couple of history questions. Did you go to any of the Milestone dedications?
Bartleson:
Oh, absolutely. I went to lots of [2:39:20] them, and they are so special. To this day, for instance, every time I see a Honda commercial, I think, “Oh, we gave a Milestone to Honda.” When we were there, we got to see a little demonstration of their autonomous robots. I got to go out on their racetrack - [2:39:40] not racetrack but their test track - and drive one of their new cars. They let me do that.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
Yes. And - and so every milestone. We gave one for the Panama Canal, so we got to visit the Panama Canal. That was really good, and that was really cool. Oh, [2:40:00] the invention of the HD television camera. We got to go to the television station in Japan. Yes, we visited the TV station. I mean that was so darned cool. And, yes, I did a lot of those [2:40:20] [IEEE] Milestones. The other thing that I did a lot of were the Technical Field Awards which were given to individuals, sometimes teams, but largely individuals with these unbelievable accomplishments. They would come up on stage, and I would present them with a plaque and a handshake. And it was such a pleasure to [2:40:40] recognize the work of these people that everybody in the civilized world takes advantage of every day, and they’ve never heard of these people before and they never get recognized. And so that was really special to get up on stage with them. They were celebrities in my mind.
Hellrigel:
Yes. [2:41:00] I’m going to do an oral history with Martin Cooper. I hope.
Bartleson:
Oh, wow.
Hellrigel:
I hope to record an oral history with Martin Cooper about the cellphone and then his wife Arlene Harris. She worked and the Jitterbug, the pay as you go phone marketed for seniors.
Bartleson:
Yes, yes, I know what you’re talking [2:41:20] about. Yes, that’s so great. That’s so great.
Hellrigel:
I met them at the Marconi Society Gala.
Bartleson:
Oh.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
Yes, we’ve got to meet so many amazing people. I got to meet Vint Cerf, no less.
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes.
Bartleson:
I got to meet so many, so many amazing people. [2:41:40] Tim Berners-Lee, oh my goodness. He’s the inventor of the World Wide Web. We were doing an interview with Forbes magazine actually. It was a video interview. I’m thinking how did I get here [Laughing]? How did I go from shy little [2:42:00] Karen to interviewing with Forbes magazine Tim Berners-Lee? I couldn’t understand a word he was saying [Laughing] because all of the concepts he was talking about were way over my head.
Hellrigel:
[Laughing]. Yes. I got a series of interviews I’ve been doing with the Super Conductivity [2:42:20] people, [the IEEE Council on Superconductivity], the high-end physics. I said I find it unsettling even though I won a physics award in high school because it’s invisible. [Laughing]. You can’t see it.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
My research is mostly on power plants and domestic [2:42:40] appliances, and early electrification pre-World War II. I said I can look at a sewing machine, I can see it.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] Yes, exactly.
Hellrigel:
I guess you have no regrets then about taking the IEEE presidency?
Bartleson:
Not at all. Besides my family, which of course always is [2:43:00] first, it was the most incredible experience of my life. Yes, it was the best thing I ever did.
Hellrigel:
Let’s see, do you have any patents?
Bartleson:
No. I didn’t go through the product development phase of my career. I stayed more the [2:43:20] management in programs and things like that.
Hellrigel:
Right, right.
Bartleson:
No patents, no Ph.D.
Hellrigel:
Then you have some publications and probably your comrades will find that your 2010 book, The Ten Commandments [The Ten Commandments for Effective Standards: Practical Insights for Creating Technical Standards], is very useful for the IEEE Standards Association and training the [2:43:40] next generation of leaders.
Bartleson:
Yes, I have countless publications out there, [including] magazine articles and [conference] papers and things like that. Lots and lots. I loved to write, so I really enjoyed writing articles.
Hellrigel:
Do they focus mostly on [2:44:00] standards?
Bartleson:
At first, they did, but then when I was IEEE President they focused on all kinds of different things.
Hellrigel:
Yes, I’ve got a list of twelve publications noted in IEEE Xplore.
Bartleson:
Ah, yes. Yes.
Hellrigel:
I can go into IEEE Xplore and read the synopsis of each publication [and two were open access, so I read them.] [2:44:20] If you have other papers and speeches that that you want to preserve, we can also add them to your biographical entry in ETHW (Engineering and Technology History Wiki). I also noticed that you have a fairly short Wikipedia [2:44:40] entry. It’s a little short.
Bartleson:
I didn’t even know I had a Wikipedia entry.
Hellrigel:
Yes, you do.
Bartleson:
I don’t know one day, why I discovered it, but I thought, oh my goodness, I have a Wikipedia entry [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
The author kind of scooped a biographical piece, maybe from your [2:45:00] webpage at Synopsys.
Bartleson:
[Laughing], Yes, yes, because it sounded like that.
Hellrigel:
Today, I looked at your entry on ETHW. I added a little information, including your university graduation date. [2:45:20] I was thinking about the graduation date to give me an idea of your cohort, which cohort you are with.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Around the time you became active with the IEEE Standards Association, IEEE was celebrating its centennial, and Richard Gowen was the President in 1984. [2:45:40] Earlier in his career he taught at the Air Force Academy, so maybe he was teaching at the academy when your dad taught there. Later he was President at South Dakota School of Mines and Technology. He lived in South [2:46:00] Dakota. Maybe he and your dad taught at the Air Force Academy at the same time. I have to check the dates.
Did you have any IEEE people as your mentors? It sounds like Howard Michel was a mentor.
Bartleson:
Howard and Barry for sure. [2:46:20] But, there were so many people who were supportive and helpful from various aspects. The IEEE is so big that no one person can comprehend all of it. So, I would depend on [2:46:40] people from MGA and people from TAB, of course, and PUBs, and everything. And certainly Eileen [Lach] was up there with the Three Ps and Jim Prendergast, too, just helping me with life lessons and how to navigate the waters of IEEE. [2:47:00] Yes, lots and lots and lots.
Reflections, closing remarks
Hellrigel:
I don’t know if there’s anything we did not cover?
Bartleson:
Well, I can’t think of anything. We’ve talked about the accomplishments that I’ve shared with people. Talked about some of [2:47:20] the failures [Laughing]. Talked about the challenges. The highs and the lows and…hmm.
Hellrigel:
Did you get to travel to China or Russia?
Bartleson:
I’ve been through Russia, through Moscow, but that doesn’t count as [2:47:40] visiting Russia. But China, certainly.
Hellrigel:
And I guess a question. I don’t know if I should ask it or not. There have been far fewer women who’ve been presidents of IEEE. Is there a little group where you kind of chatted with each other [2:48:00] or…?
Bartleson:
Well, so I was the third.
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
Martha Sloan, whom I’ve never met. I’ve read all about her, but I’ve never met her. Then there was Leah Jamieson, and Leah and I cross paths every once in a while. But it wasn’t like a little club [2:48:20] kind of a thing. Kathy [Susan Kathy Land] and I haven’t been in touch since we were on the Board together.
Hellrigel:
Yes, Kathy Land, [the 2021 IEEE President].
Bartleson:
Yes, Kathy Land. There isn’t a little group.
Hellrigel:
Okay, I was just curious.
Bartleson:
Yes, yes.
Hellrigel:
Because you’re spread out, too [2:48:40] and [you would not have operated together as the Three Ps.
Bartleson:
Well, we were spread out physically and spread out in time.
Hellrigel:
You also had different intellectual specializations, different technical specializations.
Bartleson:
Right. Kathy’s field is so different from mine. My field is industry, and Leah’s is academia. [2:49:00] There’s a ton of mutual respect, I know, in the sense of thank goodness there’s another one of us out there. But we didn’t become close friends or comrades or anything like that. Probably just because of the difference in time, and locations, and those things.
Hellrigel:
[2:49:20] And generations.
Bartleson:
Yes, generations, absolutely. Yes.
Hellrigel:
Now we’ve got, Kathleen Kramer from Region 6 who will be the 2024 President-elect.
Bartleson:
Did she win the election?
Hellrigel:
Yes, as far as I know.
Bartleson:
Oh, I hope so. I think the world of her. I worked with [2:49:40] her for years on the Board, and she is really great. She is great. So. Good. I kept meaning to go back and check the results and... I don’t know [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, yes. As the IEEE’s Institutional Historian and Archivist, I have to keep track of those things. I think Mary Ellen Randall is a candidate for the 2025 IEEE President-elect.
Bartleson:
Oh, she’s another great one. Yes, she was on the Board with [2:50:00] me for a long time. Maybe there is some momentum being built because between Leah and me, I forgot how many years there were. There were quite a few years --
Hellrigel:
Yes.
Bartleson:
And there were just a few years between me and Kathy [Land] and now a few years [to Kathleen Kraemer]. Yes, so maybe some -- [2:50:20] so maybe there is some good momentum being built. I like that. Yes, that makes me happy. I’m glad you told me that. [Laughing]
Hellrigel:
Yes. So, I keep track of that and then sometimes I’ll hear from them. I congratulated Kathleen Kraemer via LinkedIn which is a very useful way of [2:50:40] keeping track of things and finding people because sometimes their IEEE the email box is so full of so much IEEE stuff that your message gets lost in the shuffle. .
Bartleson:
Yes, my IEEE email box filled up, and I couldn’t receive or send any email at all [2:51:00] because they lowered the quota which you can have without having to pay extra. I ended up deleting pretty much all of my IEEE email to make room. That was right about the time that I heard from you because I was afraid that I was going to miss your emails.
Hellrigel:
Then that’s why I went through LinkedIn to get you.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
[2:51:20] I think Google is also looking for revenue because I’ve been getting e-mail messages from them regarding my personal Gmail account, claiming it is almost at capacity, so buy more capacity.
Bartleson:
Exactly.
Hellrigel:
At IEEE we lose our email every three years on the staff [2:51:40] because it gets deleted.
Bartleson:
Oh, yes. I remember hearing about that. At Synopsys they started doing that, too, deleting your email on purpose so that there wouldn’t be any evidence because there’s a lot of lawsuits that go on in the software industry.
Hellrigel:
Right.
Bartleson:
[Laughing] and so -
Hellrigel:
I have [2:52:00] to save them as PDFs for different projects
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
My current project is expanding the IEEE President’s Oral History Collection for IEEE 140th anniversary. This year I might record more oral histories of Marconi Fellows. Since the COVID pandemic I have been recording most oral histories using WebEx. Thank you for agreeing to record your oral history via WebEx.
[2:52:20] Today, I’ve got I think enough on you. If there’s anything that I didn’t cover, you will notice it while reviewing the transcript, we could do part two if you want. Perhaps thirty minutes or whatever time is warranted.
Bartleson:
Okay.
Hellrigel:
Then I can also build out [2:52:40] your ETHW page. I don’t know what happens to your papers, like your speeches, if you have any particular speeches that you liked. We can attach them as PDFs or something. I’ll have to ask Nathan Brewer my colleague how to best do it.
Bartleson:
The one [2:53:00] that - that I was talking about that I gave in Africa, I actually gave it all the time, I probably still have that text.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
I probably do somewhere. Yes, that would be the only one that I would really - that really meant something to [2:53:20] me. The rest were nice, but that was the good one [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes. And then I don’t know if you have a photo, you would want us to use to post with your ETHW entry and your oral history. We could take a snap of this, but if you have a [2:53:40] PR or a favorite photo from your presidential service or something.
Bartleson:
I have my one when I was president, but the problem is that’s a long time ago and I don’t look like that anymore [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
We could do a few. I don’t know if there are any photos of the octopus or -
Bartleson:
[Laughing]. [2:54:00]
Hellrigel:
That would be funny. One gentleman [Bishnu Atal] sent me photographs of his home in India.
Bartleson:
Oh, wow.
Hellrigel:
His childhood home in India.
Bartleson:
I could send you a picture from Hawaii where I’m wearing a flower in my hair or something. I didn’t mention this, and you don’t need to include [2:54:20] this in the video, but these days, I spend five months a year on Kauai.
Hellrigel:
Wow.
Bartleson:
It is really fantastic. Yes, I leave in two weeks, and I will be gone until July 4tth. That’s sort of special for me as I might be able to find you a photo of me in Hawaii. [2:54:40]
Hellrigel:
That fits in with Tom Coughlin. He takes quite pride in the Hawaiian shirts that he has for IEEE events.
Bartleson:
Oh, he does [Laughing] – and he used to get …
Hellrigel:
We have your challenge coin.
Bartleson:
Oh, wow.
Hellrigel:
Shoop started that and you gave me a challenge coin and I think we have that in the archives. I’ll have to double check. I don’t know if [2:55:00] that practice continues.
Bartleson:
I think it died. Jim Jefferies did one.
Hellrigel:
Yes. [Barry Shoop, you, and Jim Jefferies issued IEEE presidential challenge coins.]
Bartleson:
Mine was so elaborate. There’s a story behind every little image or every little icon or whatever you call it. The whole thing is full of messages, and [2:55:20] all about the IEEE. I bet those coins were so cool. I still have maybe a handful. I would give them out wherever I went, and people were crazy about them. The Young Professionals would post pictures holding their coin, “Look what I have, look what I have!” [2:55:40] Security at the Kenya Airport confiscated my luggage because I had those there. And I had to go to the airport at 3:00 o’clock in the morning all by myself, forfeit my passport, and sit in their customs office for hours while they were interrogating me: What are these, what - blah, blah, [2:56:00] blah. They ended up having - I had to pay $200 or something because they considered them gifts. They have these weird ways of extorting money from travelers [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, import tax on gifts.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Yes, that’s frightening.
Bartleson:
[2:56:20] I’m walking through the airport all by myself in the middle of the night. And I’d see groups of people in the parking lot, for instance. And I’d think, oh my god, am I about to become a victim of something. It was fine, nothing happened. But to go into a security officer’s office, and he said you need to give me your [2:56:40] passport, and I’ll give you a badge to sneak in the back door of the baggage claim area where you go into this office with all these people. It was really scary.
Hellrigel:
There was no IEEE person you could have dragged with you?
Bartleson:
No. No. I’m trying to think. I would have had to [2:57:00] wake up somebody in the middle of the night. The hotel was extremely helpful. They drove me to the airport and back. They were the ones that tracked down where my luggage was because my luggage simply didn’t arrive. The hotel staff kept calling the airport, and they had connections and they figured it out: “Oh, [2:57:20] yes, it’s stuck in customs.” I couldn’t figure out why until I got there, and they asked what’s this, what are these coins? But, yes, those coins are really cool.
Hellrigel:
Did you travel with fewer coins to other countries?
Bartleson:
No, [Laughing] because they were just the neatest thing ever. [2:57:40] I’d bring a bunch and hand them out. They were such a success. Thanks to Barry Shoop because I didn’t know anything about it. It’s like a military tradition, and that’s why he started it. He did his coin and I said, “Oh, I’ve got to do that, too.”
Hellrigel:
Yes, because I think I got yours. I don’t know if you were [2:58:00] President when the Medal of Honor Interactive Display was dedicated. It’s on the basement floor [by the IEEE Archives and meetings rooms at the 445 Hoes Lane building in Piscataway]. I remember you gave a speech at the opening.
Bartleson:
Yes, I was there. Yes, that was me.
Hellrigel:
So, I got your coin that day.
Bartleson:
Yes, yes.
Hellrigel:
I gave a little talk on the Medal of [2:58:20] Honor and the Edison Medal.
Bartleson:
Yes.
Hellrigel:
Since its installation, I added more content to that exhibit.
Bartleson:
Good, oh, good.
Hellrigel:
Now we are [the IEEE History Center] trying to put together and exhibit. We are working with Award on a traveling exhibit to go to the Awards banquet in Boston. It is the big IEEE Awards annual event. [2:58:40] big awards summit.
Bartleson:
Okay.
Hellrigel:
I forget the official name. The IEEE VIC Summit.
Bartleson:
Oh, that’s a real deal.
Hellrigel:
If you have any other biographical information, I could work with you to expand your ETHW footprint. But we could worry about that [2:59:00] after your vacation.
Bartleson:
Okay, yes. I think pretty much everything I’ve been up to is on my LinkedIn profile.
Hellrigel:
Okay.
Bartleson:
It’s the various, the little boards that I’ve served on.
Hellrigel:
I might segue and just for now create a little chronology in there. Like [2:59:20] LinkedIn, this job for this, this, this, this. Then we could work on the narrative before pages are lost or what have you.
Bartleson:
Yes. Yes, I don’t know what’s happened to all the articles that I wrote. They’re out there somewhere. All the little publications.
Hellrigel:
Yes. Well, I could, [2:59:40] see if I could get a rough bibliography. I don’t know if you have an old resume that would list them.
Bartleson:
I have a list, but I think it’s out of date. It was a long list, too.
Hellrigel:
I could talk to Nathan Brewer, my colleague, to see if we could just [3:00:00] append that as a PDF because links to things break down. So, I think if we do a PDF, someone could click on the document, and it will pop up. This might be the most useful way.
Bartleson:
Okay. Now I’m up to three things to remember, so I have to [3:00:20] write them down.
Hellrigel:
As we talked, I’ve got notes all over the place on my original notes. I think we’ve covered most everything, and we can fill in a few holes going forward. If necessary, we could have another session after your vacation. It shouldn’t be [3:00:40] tundra-like in Colorado when you return.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
You’ve earned your retirement and vacation.
Bartleson:
Who knows?
Hellrigel:
You’ve earned your respite.
Bartleson:
It was funny, the other night when it was, I don’t know, 15 below or something here, I looked up the temperature at my condo on Kauai and it was [3:01:00] 57. Those people are freezing at 57 [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Oh, yes. When I went graduate school at UCSB, my roommate who’s from Southern California had winter clothing and gloves and all that and I had a sweatshirt.
Bartleson:
[Laughing].
Hellrigel:
I was like this Santa Barbara weather [3:01:20] is inconsequential compared to New Jersey.
Bartleson:
Maybe if it’s 80 degrees, that’s too much, it’s too hot. I’m not going outside [Laughing].
Hellrigel:
Yes, yes. It is. Well, I will let you go then.
Bartleson:
All right.
Hellrigel:
If [3:01:40] there are any other problems, we can deal with them as we go along.
Bartleson:
Sounds good. My email is working now so you can email me.
Hellrigel:
Okay. Thanks for everything.
Bartleson:
Yes, it’s all fine.
Hellrigel:
Thank you very much.
Bartleson:
Yes, thank you for the opportunity. I really appreciate it, and Happy New Year.
Hellrigel:
Happy New Year and enjoy your trip.
Bartleson:
Thank you, I will. [3:02:00]
Hellrigel:
Okay, have a good evening.
Bartleson:
You, too, bye, bye.
Hellrigel:
Bye. We spent three hours talking. Thank you.