In 1973, as CRN’s first and sole employee as director of Washington affairs, Annette Dickinson, Phd, recently recalled, “It is a fact, often I was the only woman in the room.”
With the councils’ member company presidents and vice presidents always men, Dickinson was the one and only woman in the boardroom. “But I really didn’t give it much thought at the time. It didn’t bother me. The men were easy to work with and travel with. I think it’s the nature of this industry; I was fortunate enough to work with great people.”
Though Marjorie Fine, executive vice president, general counsel and secretary with Shaklee (Pleasanton, CA), served as CRN’s board chair from 2007 until last year, the board is still comprised overwhelmingly by males, Dickinson pointed out. In Washington, however, “now the congressional staff is evenly split; there are a lot of women. That wasn’t necessarily the case in the past either,” she added.
In CRN’s early years, “the whole spectrum of the industry was true believers, Dickinson said. “It wasn’t just a business for them. The natural industry is a business that tends to attract those kinds of people … passionate types.
“The whole industry is much more businesslike now. Even smaller companies are, and they will go on to be more businesslike because of new rules and requirements such as GMPs and business dealings on a global basis. But they are still true believers.”
That mindset also benefits the industry with remarkable support from its consumers, Dickinson added. “They also tend to be true believers in natural. They buy the whole idea about dietary supplements and a healthy lifestyle, and they want to pick and choose the supplements they take. That’s the basis for the legislation CRN is involved in. It’s unusual for an industry to have that kind of grassroots support behind it. They speak up time after time. Some say the industry orchestrates that. Yes, but you can’t create that from scratch. It needs to come from the heart of the people.”
