KEY POINTS:
"Hell-loh Fran O'Sullivan!"
That throaty laugh at the other end of the telephone is disconcertingly familiar.
Damn!
This woman not only has my moniker. She's even got my trademark laugh - slightly more husky and overlaid with a delightful American drawl.
It was one of those snap moments.
Frances K O'Sullivan - "Fran" since she shrugged off "Francie" early on (like me) - is chief operating officer at the product group of Lenovo, the world's third largest PC company.
She has been in New Zealand to lecture on women and technology at the Auckland University of Technology, which is on track to become a Lenovo "think pad" university.
Fran wants to inspire more young women to follow in her footsteps by becoming an engineer. "I've had so much fun," she says.
But she's horrified to find the number of female engineering graduates is declining.
The spiel she gives youngsters is convincing.
"I say, 'can you imagine life without - your cellphone or text messaging?' All those things that weren't even invented when I went to college."
"That's what's so much fun about engineering. You can really see - especially young girls' - eyes go 'wow! I can do that. I can make your life easier or more entertaining.' It doesn't have to be some obscure lab work that you can't talk about to your neighbour. Engineering can be real fun projects."
It was the AUT's communications adviser who first spruiked the notion of a "Fran O'Sullivan on Fran O'Sullivan" interview.
I am under orders not to give up too much of my weekends for work. But I've been intrigued about Fran O'Sullivan ever since I angled to get an appointment with Microsoft chief executive Helen Robinson this year, to be greeted with astonishment by her PA who kept insisting "we've already got a roundtable with you in the diary". Fran O'Sullivan didn't make the trip down to Auckland that time. Sadly, her husband died.
But I already knew about her. I've been following her career ever since she began to crop up when I Googled my name to find 43,700 mentions.
An earlier Fran O'Sullivan - the one who runs an Irish bloodstock business in Co Kildare - has now dropped off the international radar so we now have the brand to ourselves.
Fran O'Sullivan had also been amused by the coincidence and has read some of my articles.
Luckily for her my subjects are so far removed from the field of technology that I doubt she will ever face the need to make explanations to the SEC, or elsewhere if foolish shareholders do a Google and get suspicious she is pumping Lenovo's stock.
Fran O'Sullivan's 26-year career was launched at IBM where she was sent as an engineer on assignment to Nasa's space shuttle programme for the first launch of the space shuttle Columbia in 1981.
"I had so much fun. The astronauts were headquartered in the building I worked in. They were on sleeping schedules and would be sent home at 2 o'clock.
"There was no computer work at home then so we would go to the beach. Now with technology you're basically in touch 24/7. It was great to be part of such a big project - that first wave. Your heart swelled. It was something you were proud of."
O'Sullivan's talents were quickly recognised by IBM who earmarked her for management.
She refused initial offers stating she wanted to become lead engineer of the department but the company wouldn't take no for an answer and transferred her to Raleigh in North Carolina. "The personal computer was still in its infancy when I transferred down to IBM from Cape Canaveral.
"I went through a fast introduction to technology, the big scare in the year 2000 with Y2K, now it's into a sharemarket consolidation but we just keep innovating with new engineering features. It's just been a great ride."
Right now her focus is her job at Lenovo - a real East meets West experiment.
Lenovo, for those not up with the play, is an extraordinary story. The subsidiary of Beijing's Legend Holdings bought IBM's PC business three years ago.
BusinessWeek described the unusual deal as IBM outsourcing its PC business to Lenovo, and Lenovo outsourcing much of its management and sale to IBM.
The upshot is that Lenovo these days is nearly 40 per cent owned by public shareholders, 42 per cent by Legend Holdings, 8 per cent by IBM and 10 per cent by other tech and private equity companies.
Because the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a Chinese government agency, owns 6 per cent of Legend Holdings, effectively the Chinese Government owns about 27.5 per cent of Lenovo and is the largest shareholder.
Fran O'Sullivan was transferred again.
She describes Lenovo as a virtual reality company - operations are split between the US, Japan and China.
"From a human point of view we have zero business hour overlaps between our East Coast US and the Japan and China teams.
"We do have night call and early morning calls - but what I did for our team is say 'OK, it's part of what our jobs are. We're going to have night calls but we're going to close down on Friday at noon and have a two-and-a-half day weekend every weekend'."
There are clear business advantages to Lenovo's operational structure. "As long as you get an email off before bedtime to say 'hey we need this', when you wake up in the morning it's done. But you do have to be efficient and on your toes."
O'Sullivan's "very young" team of Chinese engineers are "very competitive and want to have the best designed and innovative products".
"It's just amazing to be getting ready for the Olympics alone providing all the computers and servers to run all the IT.
"It's a first-class engineering operation - it's pretty amazing to watch."
But Fran O'Sullivan has not managed to pick up Mandarin yet.
"I find it incredibly difficult - I am tone deaf," she says. Me too.
When we spoke last Sunday morning, Fran O'Sullivan had been up since 6am - out for a run to Auckland's Domain to see the "beautiful city".
I'd been up at a similar time, blasting loud classical music while I work out with weights.
I don't run - which is where the comparisons should end.
But no - she asks me why I don't use an IBM Think Pad instead of an HP laptop.
HP makes good business applications, I reply.
But Fran turns out to be right. A Think Pad - particularly a tablet application - is more suited to my current needs.
Fran club
You want to join the Fran Club? Here's what you have to do:
* Get up early and stay up (life's for the swift and strong).
* Take no prisoners.
* Think handsome, not pretty (life is not a beauty contest - thank God).
