"Angela Gittens takeoff follows escape from a would-be career in criminology"

Monday, November 4, 2002

Takeoff follows escape from a would-be career in criminology
The Miami (FL) Herald


Angela Gittens once planned a career behind barbed wire, as a prison
warden. Though her professional life has taken quite a different turn,
those who know her say she's always shown a talent for taking charge.

Gittens was born and raised in New York City, the middle child of three
siblings. Her parents were both college graduates: Her father worked for
the state labor department, and her mother was a secretary while Gittens
was growing up. Her mother later became a teacher and earned her Ph.D.
at age 68.

''So tenacity runs in the family,'' Gittens said.

At an early age, Gittens also was exposed to culture, with excursions to
the opera, theater and restaurants.

''We may not have had much money, but it didn't mean poverty like it
seems to mean now,'' she said. ``In those days, black people had a hard
time finding jobs at that level.''

Gittens attended public school and graduated from high school at 16. She
took her first job during the summer she was 14, as a mother's helper to
a woman with foster children with disabilities.

Then she worked her way through Fairleigh Dickinson University in
Madison, N.J., supplementing scholarship and grant money. She performed
various jobs, such as dispersing laundry for the company that served the
university's dormitories.

She chose Fairleigh Dickinson, she said, for its criminology program --
within its sociology department -- after reading in Lovejoy's College
Guide that students stood a better chance of winning scholarships if
they chose less popular fields of study.

''To me, criminology was a prison warden,'' Gittens said, laughing. ``I
was 15.''

After college, she entered a Ph.D. program in medical-care organization
at the University of Michigan but left after three years, short of
completing the dissertation.

Anxious, she said, to get into the working world, she landed a job as an
analyst at the New York Health and Hospitals Corporation and worked
there for eight years, rising to assistant vice president for finance.
That's when a former boss recruited her to San Francisco General
Hospital, where she stayed for five years.

Then, in 1983, Gittens saw a new opportunity. She was recruited to San
Francisco International Airport while the airline industry was
undergoing major change, the result of deregulation.

She was hired as deputy for business and finance -- the fifth person to
take the job in 18 months.

''This was a business she was born to be in,'' said Lou Turpen, who
hired Gittens and, as airport director, was her boss.

''She is really a very talented person, with an incredible intellect,''
he said, ``and absorbed the business and its nuances very quickly.''

One of four deputies, Gittens stayed at San Francisco International for
10 years, during which time, she said, the airport improved its bond
rating, lowered its costs and increased revenue, boosted minority
participation in concessions and contracts, and pumped up concession
revenue.

In 1993, she was asked to lead Hartsfield Atlanta Airport as its general
manager. Her immediate predecessor had been indicted on allegations of
taking bribes from concessionaires.

With the 1996 Olympic Games approaching, the Atlanta airport needed to
revamp its tired concessions, which she found to be suffering from
outdated facilities and concepts and a lack of variety, not to mention
high prices.

Under her supervision, contracts were rebid with new rules, price
controls, and more variety. The result: more revenue.

''It was a complete success,'' she said.

She also oversaw a $250 million renovation program finished in time for
the Olympics. The upgrade included a new parking garage, a new
international concourse and new airfield lighting.

A CLASH OVER DIRT 

But when her contract expired in 1998, then-Mayor Bill Campbell, who had
taken office after Gittens' hiring, appointed someone else to the job.

The issue, according to Gittens: ``Were contracts going to be bid and
awarded fairly, or were the results going to be predetermined? And we
had a difference of opinion on that.''

The dispute culminated in a clash over a major dirt deal for a proposed
fifth runway, Gittens said.

The mayor, she said, wanted to award a multimillion-dollar contract for
millions of cubic yards of dirt on a no-bid, sole-source basis. Gittens
wanted it bid.

Campbell, who is also an attorney and is now a radio commentator and
vice president of Edwards Broadcasting, refutes that account.

''Each and every one of these spurious allegations from Ms. Gittens,''
he said, ``are patently false, have not a shred of truth to them. And,
really, it is just, unfortunately, sort of a bitter response from an
employee who was replaced.''

Gittens was simply not able to move the fifth runway project along, he
said.

MAYOR PROBED 

''This is a job that not only requires enormous skills and competence
for the operation of the busiest airport in the world, but it also
requires that you be a diplomat,'' Campbell said.

``It must be painfully obvious to the people in Miami that, whatever
else her skill set may be in terms of running an airport, diplomacy is
not among the skills she possesses.''

(The former mayor and the contractor in question have since faced a
federal corruption investigation. Last year, the contractor pleaded
guilty to having violated federal banking laws by concealing $130,000 in
illegal contributions to Campbell's campaign. Campbell has not been
charged. He maintains that he has no knowledge of the illegal
contributions.)

After leaving the Atlanta airport, Gittens became vice president of
Airport Group International, an airport-management firm now called TBI
Management Company.

After about three years there, she was recruited to come to Miami.

''Some may say I go and cause trouble,'' Gittens recently told a
graduating class of the Black Executive Forum's Batten Fellows.

''But the real deal,'' she said, ``is that trouble causes a receptivity
to change.''


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