San Diego Metropolitan - 40 Under 40

Alicia R. McLain has no children of her own, yet she spends much of her free time ensuring a positive future for the children of others in her community. “I look back on my own childhood,” she says, recalling parents who were always there for her with support and encouragement.

“I was lucky,” she says of her childhood in Stanton, a little town in Orange County. Her mother worked for TRW. Her father was an Air Force recruiter who could break away from his job to attend his daughter’s ball games and other daytime activities important to a child.

Now, as a senior consultant for professional services at NCR Corp. in San Diego, McLain, 36, is involved in a variety of activities that pass on some of the nurturing she says she enjoyed.

She is an officer locally in the Alliance of Black NCR employees, and she has been honored by and held office in the national Alliance organization. She was named one of the national Alliance 50 Who Make a Difference. In 1996 she helped organize a partnership between a San Diego Montessori school and the NCR Alliance chapter. At this school, “with the whole rainbow” of students, members do everything from “provide materials to cleaning up the school,” she says.

Another activity dear to McLain is Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority’s debutante program for African American high school juniors and seniors. She has chaired that project, which focuses on self-enhancement and career and scholastic development for young women.

McLain moved to San Diego in 1984 to finish her education. She earned her BS in business administration in 1987. In January of 1995 she joined NCR where she was one of the founding leaders of the NCR Southern California Diversity Team. She has been “a catalyst in igniting NCR’s move toward proactive diversity in management and corporate culture change that now ripples across the entire corporation,” wrote Joanne Erceg and Christine Percopo, who nominated her for 40 Under Forty 2000 recognition.

She acknowledges having been “a very active volunteer to help those underrepresented in management.”

Among McLain’s honors are the U.S. Black Engineers Women of Color Technology Award, the USBE Magazine’s Woman of Color Technology Award 98, the NCR Global Diversity Award in 1998 and 1999, and NCR Global Recognition Award in 1999 and 2000.

Those nominating McLain called her “a master of balancing fearless leadership and intelligent risk management” in all that she does, but it is her emphasis on “humor and caring,” they say, that inspires the best from others.