Oak Hill Corporation: Management

Jo Beth Metzger began developing local-area networking technology in the early '80s, before anybody realized they needed their computers networked. As an engineer, she was at the forefront of developing Token Ring, FDDI, Gigabit Ethernet and Ethernet-to-the-home technologies, and creating network-bridging, switching and network-adapter products. She has worked for Ungermann-Bass, Telebit, Network Peripherals and Cisco Systems.

Jo Beth loves startups and small companies because each person is so important to the successful operation of the business. Running a company Jo-Beth- style is the same as developing products -- it's all inputs, outputs and algorithms, combined with good communication. She understands the process from engineering to customer service.

After leaving Cisco, founding her own networking company and helping a couple of small companies get off the ground, she took a break from her 70 to 80-hour work weeks in 2002 to focus on her family. But when Val Swisher needed some support last year to take Oak Hill to the next level, Jo Beth was attracted to the small dynamic company with integrity as its bottom line.

Jo Beth sees her role at Oak Hill as "earthquake retrofitting" -- assessing where support is needed on legal and contractual issues, and strengthening financial and operations processes as the company grows.

One of her passions is bringing girls into the science field and keeping them there. She mentors female engineering students at Stanford University and Santa Clara University. And she works with middle -school girls to keep them interested in science and tech at an age when it's no longer cool to be smart.

She loves spending time with her 13-year-old daughter and has moved her mom to California to live near her. In the last three years, she's been working on her golf game and in her leisure time (what's that?) she plays whenever she can.