David Maialetti / Philadelphia Daily News
Cathy Avgiris, the voice behind Comcast's digital voice services.
Big ideas and the people behind them
Cathy Avgiris
After helping pioneer Internet offerings, she now runs the company's digital voice services.
The big idea: Most recently, to take on the phone companies.
Comcast Corp. started offering digital voice services three years ago and now has 5.2 million customers, making it the country's fourth-largest residential phone company.
For making that happen - "it's been a really crazy ride," she said - Avgiris recently was lauded by Pink magazine as one of the nation's 15 most innovative businesswomen.
Avgiris also has been officially named a Wonder Woman by a cable TV trade journal, although her sons, 18 and 23, "sometimes don't think I'm wonderful," she said. "But that's OK."
The big idea 2.0: Later this year, Comcast plans to offer what it calls an "enhanced cordless phone" that, among other features, will let customers check and respond to e-mail from their home phone's handset.
With two sons and two household PCs, "I get about 13 seconds a month on the computer," she said. She thinks the new feature should appeal to others who have been shut out from screen time.
Forks in her career - and forklifts: Avgiris studied accounting at City University of New York, then worked for the Big Eight accounting firm Touche Ross (before the merger with Deloitte) in Manhattan and then Philadelphia.
At 28, she became chief financial officer for a small forklift manufacturer in Horsham - "a very sexy business," she deadpans - where she enjoyed the 11/2-mile commute from her house and the range of tasks that crossed her desk. Among other things, she handled both investor and human relations.
She joined Comcast in 1992 as a field executive for a succession of territories, doing a cross-continental commute from Philly to oversee operations in places such as Orange County, Calif., where she launched one of Comcast's first digital-cable services. More recently, as an architect of the strategy to expand the company's high-speed Internet service, she helped build that side of the business - now with more than 14 million customers.
The view from the top: Today, Avgiris works on the 53d floor of the new 58-story Comcast Center.
Her desk faces away from the windows, and while she occasionally glances over her shoulder at the view, she says she'll never plaster her face against the glass and look down. "I'm not a heights person."
Baklava mama: Avgiris' parents immigrated to the United States from Greece, and she grew up in Brooklyn. She and her husband, John, and their sons all speak Greek fluently, and Avgiris is president of the women's philanthropic organization at the Church of the Annunciation in Elkins Park. Among other duties, she was in charge of the baklava operations at the parish's four-day Greek festival in May.
For its annual beach vacation, the family travels to the Greek island of Mytiline, where Avgiris' mother-in-law lives. "Once you've experienced swimming in the Mediterranean, the Jersey Shore just doesn't cut it," she said.
Where she was when the lights went out on Tony Soprano: On the edge of her seat. Even now, a year later, Avgiris grips the sides of her chair when she recalls the series-ending blackout.
In her rational mind, she says she knew that the cable hadn't gone out. Still, her lizard brain panicked. "Then the credits came up, and it was like, 'Oh, thank God!' "
Big idea she wishes she'd had: This insight, from the Greek philosopher Aristotle: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit."
