va Janie Fritzman was a nervous 17-year-old from rural Pennsylvania back in 1960 when she raised her right hand to take the oath of office every new federal employee takes.
In the middle of the swearing-in, the official conducting the ceremony stopped and looked at Fritzman. She was crying.
"He asked 'What is it?' " Fritzman recalls. She was embarrassed that she couldn't hide how much the oath meant to her. She sobbed, "I didn't know it was the same oath the president took!" The other new employees laughed.
That's how Fritzman, now 54, began her civil service career. It's a government-style rags-to-riches story that saw her rise from a GS-2 clerk typist in the U.S. Information Agency's motion picture service, making $3,500 a year, up the General Schedule and into the Senior Executive Service. Her rise culminated earlier this year when she served as acting director of USIA's International Broadcasting Bureau, which includes the world-famous radio service, the Voice of America.
"I have lived the American dream," Fritzman says.
And she still cries when she hears the oath of office.
"It's such an important thing and you're pledging to support your country and the Constitution and everything that's important about it," Fritzman says.
'Put People First'
Looking back over the span of her 37-year career, Fritzman's fingerprints can be found on most of the major initiatives in the U.S. international broadcasting arena. In addition to heading the International Broadcasting Bureau, overseeing a $250 million budget and more than 2,800 employees, she has served as the right-hand woman of three former VOA directors and coordinated VOA's programming.
Fritzman was recently named winner of the seventh annual Government Executive Leadership Award, co-sponsored by the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Society of Public Administration.
She helped separate VOA's overseas correspondents from U.S. embassies abroad, protecting the journalistic creed of objectivity that allows VOA correspondents to report news that may not reflect favorably on the U.S. government. Now VOA correspondents gather news overseas with the same independence as correspondents with private media companies like CNN, the Associated Press and The New York Times. As the administrative officer for VOA's correspondent corps, Fritzman oversaw the openings of VOA bureaus in Beijing, Hong Kong, Rome, Geneva, Islamabad, Cairo and Costa Rica. During the Persian Gulf War, she expanded VOA's coverage in the Middle East to 24 hours a day.
Fritzman drafted the administrative guidelines VOA correspondents use, and worked "behind-the-scenes," as she puts it, to make sure the VOA code of journalistic integrity was enacted into law.
She also reorganized a news division beset with tardiness and infighting. "My personal philosophy is 'put people first,' " Fritzman says. "You are only as good as your staff and the more you support them as a group-no favoritism-they will support you and the mission."
The 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) has agencies focusing on their mission statements and drafting strategic plans. In December 1992, nearly a year before Congress passed GPRA, Fritzman established the Bureau of Broadcasting's Office of Strategic Planning, which developed a baseline strategic plan for international broadcasting. Just as GPRA calls for "stakeholder" participation in strategic planning, the office gathered input from throughout the broadcasting bureau, USIA, other government agencies and the private sector.
Since the Voice of America, Worldnet TV, and Radio and TV Marti-the U.S. broadcasts to Cuba-were consolidated into the International Broadcasting Bureau in 1994, Fritzman has served as chief of staff, director of personnel, administration and budget, and from November 1996 until April as acting director.
As acting director, Fritzman consolidated all the broadcasting services into one building. The consolidation was completed in three months. Now she has returned to her job as director of personnel, administration and budget, where she will help the new bureau director settle in.
But more important than any single accomplishment, say several former and current directors and deputy directors of the Voice of America, are Fritzman's commitment to the mission of international broadcasting-to promote freedom of information and the importance of democratic values to the rest of the world-and her ability to get other people-from political appointees to rank-and-file employees-to understand their role in that mission.
"She's a beloved figure here," VOA deputy director Alan Heil says. "She's just top notch in every respect as a manager and as a person who cares."
"We were more effective in our jobs than we would have been had Janie Fritzman not been there," says former VOA deputy director Robert Coonrod, now chief operating officer at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
Kenneth Tomlinson, a former VOA director and a former editor-in-chief at Readers Digest, says there is nothing Fritzman wouldn't do for VOA.
"She is the most extraordinary person I've ever worked with," Tomlinson says. "She could absorb any amount of work that was thrown at her."
Escaping Harassment
Fritzman transferred to the Voice of America from USIA's motion picture service in 1965, not to enhance her career, but to escape an impossible situation.
"The only reason I ever came to broadcasting was because of sexual harassment," Fritzman says. "I'm sure glad it happened though because otherwise I wouldn't be here."
A superior at USIA kept writing her notes and stopping by the office when no one else was around. Fritzman went to her boss. She still remembers what he said.
" 'Janie, I love you to death, but I have two kids to support. He's my boss. Let me try to find you another job.' And so he did," Fritzman says.
A sexual harassment case today would not likely result in a similar outcome. In fact, many incidents Fritzman experienced over the years at VOA would not likely happen today.
For a news director's birthday party during the 1960s, Fritzman's colleagues convinced her to wear a bikini top, hold a bunch of scarves that said "Voice of America," and jump out of a paper birthday cake.
As Fritzman got into the cake, she figured she'd jump out for the news director and a few other people in the office, run out of the room, and that would be it. But things did not go exactly as planned.
"Everybody started singing 'Happy Birthday,' but then I heard that the director was there and the deputy director was there and a lot of people I didn't expect to be there," Fritzman says. "So I jumped out, threw the scarves and jumped off of the table and ran into the next room. See, that kind of thing doesn't happen anymore. We're really all conservative now."
Moving Up
Fritzman has brushed elbows with well-known celebrities and the government elite over the years.
Fritzman got the chance a couple times to fly down to President Lyndon Johnson's Texas ranch, and recalls that once when she talked to him, she "dropped a cigarette somewhere I shouldn't have."
Willis Conover, the deejay whose VOA jazz hour, "Music USA," had an estimated Eastern bloc audience of 30 million at the height of the Cold War, used to pay Fritzman to type things and drive him around.
"He didn't drive. So you'd have to drive him to the liquor store to get a bottle and cigarettes and then drive him home. But he paid me the going rate," Fritzman says.
Though she was raising a family and often moonlighted to support them, Fritzman dedicated herself to learning the ins and outs of the Voice of America. She took the 12-volume Manual of Administration home with her at night, one volume at a time, and virtually memorized it.
"I'd read it at night before I went to bed so I knew all the rules. I knew the rules better than the boss did. I could cite chapter and verse almost," Fritzman says. By becoming an expert in the operations of her organization, Fritzman gradually ascended the administrative ladder.
She worked in every segment of the broadcasting bureau-engineering, programming, administration, budget and, finally, management.
"Janie was a support person for executives for many years before she became an executive herself," Tomlinson says. Broadcasting has many factions, he says. Not only can the dozens of cultural and linguistic groups in the agency sometimes clash, but the various offices and departments can also get territorial. Add to that the influx of political appointees every few years, and the bureau can become a difficult place to get everyone to work together. But people listen to Fritzman.
"It was stunning to me how universally revered she was," Tomlinson says.
Lorraine Mullen, Fritzman's cousin and lifelong friend, as well as a contracting officer at the bureau, says she can't walk down the agency's halls with Fritzman without being stopped by someone who wants to talk to her.
"It's like walking down the hall with the queen of England," Mullen says. "She's a bit of a mother hen."
Many of the political appointees who have passed through VOA admire her, not only for her encyclopedic knowledge of broadcasting, but also for the way she relates to people.
"She has a colorful way of telling you what to do," Coonrod says.
Coonrod recalls afternoon work sessions in Fritzman's office when the two of them and one or two other managers at VOA would gather to plow through work, chain smoking the whole time.
"We used to get a lot of work done," Coonrod says.
Chase Untermeyer, then VOA's director, would open Fritzman's door, letting a cloud of smoke billow into the hall.
"Club Fritzman," Untermeyer called it.
Untermeyer was a straight arrow, Fritzman says, appointed by Bush in 1991 to head VOA. He would walk into Fritzman's office, pull a piece of scotch tape off the roll, and pick lint off her office floor with it. Fritzman was worried that her "free spirit" would get her in trouble.
"People said to me, 'Boy, lady, you better mend your ways,' " Fritzman says. One day, Untermeyer asked Fritzman why she wasn't acting like her normal, free-spirited self. Ever since then, Fritzman says, she's "let it all hang out."
Vision and Caring
After 37 years in the civil service, Fritzman still is in the office by 7 a.m., even though she drives two hours every morning from Virginia to the bureau's Washington headquarters. She stays into the evening, putting in 10- to 12-hour days.
But Fritzman plans to retire in the fall. She will leave just as the International Broadcasting Bureau readies itself to be folded into the State Department.
Her talents may be missed when USIA becomes part of the State Department. In 1994, when VOA and the other broadcasting services were consolidated, Fritzman mixed toughness and diplomacy to get employees to work together.
"We worked with a whole lot of people who didn't want to be together, but were," Fritzman recalls. Now the International Broadcasting Bureau is centralized in one building, thanks to Fritzman's efforts.
"It's the combination of her vision and her caring that make her a particularly effective manager," VOA deputy director Heil says.
That same combination enabled her to raise a family, work night jobs, master her field and rise from the bottom of the civil service to the top.
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