Twenty-two years later, Auwers, now 56, once again showed she wasn’t afraid of a little change. After 14 years with Houston-based Compaq Computer Corporation’s in-house department, she has become senior vice president, general counsel, and corporate secretary of ABM Industries Inc. ABM, based in San Francisco, might not be a household name. Its family of companies includes a group of facility-services contractors such as ABM Janitorial, Ampco System Parking, and Amtech Elevator. Last year, the company took in more than $2.1 billion in revenue, enough to make it the largest business of its kind listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
At ABM, Auwers will oversee legal operations for all of the company’s operations. ABM’s 62,000 employees work in a variety of settings across the country. Predictably, the company has its fair share of labor disputes, personal injury work, and other employment-related issues. In fact, three weeks into Auwers’s tenure at ABM, a Spokane jury granted a $4 million gender discrimination award to a former ABM employee. The $4 million verdict, which, at press time, ABM planned to appeal, represented one of the largest gender discrimination awards ever granted in the state of Washington.
