One thing Whitney Austin remembers about that morning is noticing the spider web patterns on the glass revolving door at 38 Fountain Square. A rock had hit her car window recently and it made a similar pattern, so she thought little else of it.
She noticed, too, the people in the square waving to get her attention, trying to stop her from walking into the building. Absorbed in a conference call on her cellphone, she paid them no mind and walked straight into the line of fire.
That day, nearly a month ago, Austin became one of two surviving victims of
“There’s no logical explanation for why I survived and others didn’t,” she said in a phone interview Tuesday from her home in Louisville, Ky. “Everybody would handle it differently, but for me, what was most natural was to fight. If you survived, you have a responsibility to move forward with your story and do everything you can to make a difference with gun violence.”
Austin, 37, a product manager in charge of developing unsecured digital loans, spoke to American Banker after dropping her two young children off at school and settling in with the family’s new kitten cuddled up next to her. She and her family named the kitten Al, she said, for Al Staples, the Cincinnati police officer who helped Austin to safety after the shooter was killed in a gunfight with police.
In recounting her story, Austin was matter-of-fact, projecting more composure than anybody could reasonably expect from someone who recently experienced such trauma. Though she was shot 12 times, with multiple bullet wounds to her chest, Austin escaped that day with no vital organs damaged. She is working to regain the full use of her right arm and must undergo more arm surgery before she can return to work.
“It’s painful to not be able to brush your teeth or feed yourself all that well,” she said. “But that’s a small price to pay. I was shot 12 times, and somehow I survived. I’m physically strong and I’m mentally strong, so really every day has been better than the last.”
Perhaps because she never saw the shooter or the carnage while slumped at the bottom of that revolving door, Austin said, she has been able to focus more on her way forward than on the events of that day. She wants to help others, and she wants to achieve a better work-life balance.
And she would also like to overhaul Fifth Third’s policy on conference calls, but more on that later.
Austin’s Fifth Third family, as she’s dubbed her colleagues, really turned out for her after the shooting. Her boss and previous boss both were waiting for her in the hospital lobby after she was stitched back together. Friends and family sent care packages, paid her visits and sent good old-fashioned cards containing prayers and well wishes.
Working with the National Compassion Fund, the Fifth Third Foundation also donated $1 million to start the Cincinnati Strong Foundation to help other victims of the shooting and their families. Brian Sarver, a contractor with CBRE, was the other victim who survived. The three killed were Luis Calderon, a finance manager for the bank’s commercial line of business; Richard Newcomer, a contractor with Gilbane Building Co.; and Prudhvi Raj Kandepi, a contractor with TEK Systems. Authorities have yet to determine the motive of the shooter, Omar Santa Perez.
Fifth Third
"This has to stop — we have to find a way to stop the gun violence in this country," CEO Greg Carmichael told The Cincinnati Enquirer the day after the Sept. 6 tragedy. "I don't have the answers, but we have to find a path forward."
For Austin, that path forward involves WhitneyStrong, a new charitable foundation she’s formed to help other victims of gun violence and pursue bipartisan solutions to reduce gun violence in America. Austin does not have the answers yet either — though she doesn’t believe that eradicating guns is a realistic goal — but she is pursuing those answers with all the precision and thoroughness of the product manager that she is.
“I pull in data, I pull in experts, I’m very certain about what it is I’m pursuing before I publicly announce it, and that is exactly the approach that I’m taking with the WhitneyStrong Foundation,” she said.
She has also decided to take a different approach to work-life balance. Before, she would do whatever she could to optimize her work day, sometimes starting with a to-do list of 20 or more items. When she returns to work, she will set three key priorities for herself every day.
“Anything else that gets accomplished, that’s wonderful, but I’m not going to hold myself to, ‘I’m going to do 20 things’ because that is not realistic and it’s not healthy to have that much focus on your job,” she said. “I think I will be better at work-life balance. We’ll see what happens in reality.”
Certainly, Austin is already a hero to many of her colleagues at Fifth Third, but she will be twice the hero if she accomplishes another goal of hers: capping conference calls at 15 minutes or less.
That morning, Austin had listened to a podcast on her way into work, in which an executive at a big bank discussed how it had cut conference calls down to 15 minutes. If every key player arrives on time and prepared, then executives should easily be able to reach a decision in that time frame. Before she walked into the building that day, she was excited to pitch the idea to her own manager, thinking about how this could free up so much time to get real work done.
She hasn’t forgotten, either.
With the laughter of someone who’s been given a new lease on life, Austin said, “I’ll take on both gun violence and conference calls.”
