By Juan C. Ayllon Like corporate golf outings, the hi-fi consumer audio industry has remained one of the last vestiges of a boy’s club, however in this present age, that’s slowly changing. And as with Fortune 500 companies, that's beginning to impact its leadership. For the first time on January 1, 2023, female CEOs broke the 10 percent barrier in terms of Fortune 500 CEOs; historically, it’s hovered around eight percent (Shrm.org). And in a 2021 survey of 70 music companies, 13.9 percent of the Presidents, CEOs, and chairs were women (annenberg.usc.edu). That's good news, says Carol Campbell, who founded Women in Consumer Technology 15 years ago to serve “as a catalyst to empower women in the consumer technology industry.” Campbell continues: “We have seen some remarkable results. We’re thrilled to see more women in leadership roles in our industry and welcome the marketing trend of presenting the magic of high-end audio as a sensory experience appreciated by men and women and, in fact, the whole family.” That's progress, albeit at a glacial pace. A case in point: since January 2022 Anastasia Protopappas has been quietly leading Pass Labs, the high end audio company founded in Auburn, CA in 1991 by the venerable Nelson Pass (the Do-It-Yourself guru and co-founder of Threshold famed for their Stasis amps, with PL, he’s produced the single-ended Aleph series, and X series with their “Super Symmetry” topology for ultra low distortion, as well as building his First Watt minimalist, low power designs on the side). “I consider my Pass Aleph Zero the best amp I ever heard and owned,” Lukasz Fikus, owner of the wildly popular Lampizator audio brand out of Warsaw, Poland, wrote in a Facebook post. Specializing in vacuum tube-based DACs and amplification, he later qualified that statement via email, saying, "Remember: best SOLID STATE amps, not all amps." (You can read more about Pass Labs HERE.) A graduate of UC Davis Graduate School of Management, Ms. Protopappas served as the Finance and HR Leader at Pass Labs and, prior to that, was senior finance manager at Oracle and a senior financial analyst at Hewlett-Packard. Speaking with me over a Google Meet call, she granted me this interview. On how she transitioned to president at Pass Labs: “It was a slow roll. As the story goes, I was born into the audio industry. My mom said that she found out that she was pregnant with me the same day that Nelson and Renee offered her the job of bookkeeper for Threshold. So, she worked for Nelson for many years. I babysat for the D’Agostinos when I was a teenager (Note: Dan D'Agostino was founder and lead engineer of Krell and went onto form his own high end audio company, Dan D'Agostino Master Audio Systems), and now my mother is one of Nelson’s partners in Pass Labs. (Her name is) Barbara Sammut. “Joe Sammut was Nelson’s partner in Threshold and in Pass Labs, too, and he worked for Krell for a lot of years.” During her college years and career leading up to Pass Labs: “As an undergrad, I was at Sacramento State, and I got my MBA at U.C. Davis, and I spent 20 years in corporate finance. So I did 15 years at Hewlett Packard, doing all sorts of different kinds of things–-working with R&D, working with acquisitions, and other kinds of stuff, always in corporate finance. And then, I went to Oracle, a software company for four years, same, similar, doing corporate finance in the sales space. " On how she came to Pass Labs: “By accident. So (she laughs), my mother had come back to work here after my stepdad, Joe, had passed away, and she was sort of lamenting that she missed being retired, and getting to do the things she wanted to do. And I wasn’t loving my job at the time, and so it’s like, ‘Well, I could do your job,’ and she was, you know, doing bookkeeping and payroll and all of that kind of stuff. And so I came here in 2019, and just kept picking up whatever they could throw at me-– basically anything that wasn’t engineering and technical! (she laughs). And then, I think it was a year and a half ago that they made me president.” On Desmond Harrington vacating his position as Pass Labs’ president: "He’s still working with us, but he’s going to be moving to Ireland. So, he and his wife are building a home where he grew up, and he’s sort of been spending part of the year there for the last year or two, and hoping to transition to living there full-time." I ask what part of Ireland is that north or south, as my wife’s from Belfast. “South. Cork, I believe, is the county that he’s in.” On whether female discrimination made it harder to rise through the ranks: “I never thought about it as a difficulty. I think there’s always a way to spin it as a positive because everybody always remembers the one woman in the room when you’re in a room full of engineers! (She chuckles.) And so I just tried to find those things that I could make and turn them into positives." On where she sees Pass Labs going in terms of product development and innovation: "We’re working on new products now. I can’t tell you any of the details, so, but I think they will continue to have Nelson and Wayne’s (Colburn), you know, signature stamps. Like Nelson loves a really simple circuit, and he’ll continue to create designs that are simple and...will continue to be solid state, but we want to bring in some new things that I think people will find really interesting." Any further hints, or would you rather keep that quiet? (She shakes her head, no). “Yeah, too early. " On recent criticism by an ultra high-end audio reviewer on YouTube that Pass Labs doesn’t make a lot of changes, like a Plinius design that switches from the hot-running Class A to the cooler temperature Class A/B if it's on more than 15 to 20 minutes without detecting a signal: “Yeah, there’s some thoughts (on that). The trick is, I think, to make it usable for the way people want to hear the music. Alright, there’s some people who want to do critical listening, and want to be in Class A all the time. And, there’s people that want background music some of the time, and we know that there’s some people that want one of those at different times, and so it might be possible...there might be a product where it could be ‘you choose.’" On lessons she’s learned from Nelson, Wayne, Desmond Harrington, Kent English and others at Pass Labs: "I think that...more than any other company I’ve worked with, and probably a lot of companies I’ve dealt with, we take really good care of our customers, and that is always Number One. And we’re always willing to do whatever we can to make sure that our customers are happy. We still repair products that are 20 and 30 years old now, and people still love them! And we are more than happy to do whatever we can to keep those products selling. If we ever have warranty issues, we’re always happy to take care of those as quickly and as painlessly as possible for customers. "And I think that is something that Nelson has really made sure that this company does. You know, when it comes to repairing old products that are out of warranty, we’re not making money on those; we’re just kind of covering costs and making sure that we can keep doing that. It’s not a profit center, you know what I mean? We just want to make sure that people keep loving their Pass products. I think that’s always been the main, repeated mantra here." On any stories she’d like to share about Nelson and the Pass Labs crew: “I’m sure I do. Nelson loves to tell good stories. I don’t remember Nelson from when I was little, but I’ve known Desmond since I was 12, I think, since he worked at Krell. And, um, he spent most of his holidays with us because his family was in Ireland and he didn’t always go home for the holidays, so we always got to have Desmond with us for…Christmas, and we’d always tease him that he needed to annunciate because sometimes he’d talk too fast and too soft in that Irish, little, um–-” JA: “Oh, the drawl, yes?” “Yes! I’m sure that you’re familiar with that, too! (She laughs.) JA: Sometimes, you’ve got to go, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you; what was it?’ "I’m trying to think if there’s any good stories…none of them are coming to me. Nope. "We have a lot of little sayings around here. Kent (English) is great about, you know, reminding me of things like, ‘we’re not dealing with dangling eyeballs, so we don’t stress about things; we move on!’ ‘You can make the coolest products, but it’s no good if nobody wants it,’ There’s all these little sayings that we use all the time." On her personal audiophile journey: “I’m working on it. Kent and I are doing our ‘Listening Fridays’ together so I can work on it. I have a little bit of a stereo at home with some cast-off pieces, but so I’m working more on my critical listening skills." On whether she has a good work/life balance at Pass Labs or if she’s working 80 hours a week: (She laughs). “No, it’s a wonderful balance. You know, we’re up here. In Auburn, I live close by. My fun hobby has been raising service dogs for Canine Companions. And so the last three years, I’ve had a puppy with me that has come into the office that has got to be trained with all the employees and stuff like that, so it’s been fun, it’s been a nice relaxing place most of the time!" JA: Any last thoughts? "I'm hoping to keep Pass Labs great at what it has always been great at--making wonderful sounding products that our customers love!" JA: Well thanks so much. Personally, I’ve loved the Pass Labs products at my house that I use for personal pleasure, for listening, and watching movies; my wife’s a big movie buff, so we love the quality it brings to the experience. “Well that’s great. Have you had a chance to get into the HPA-1 yet?" (That's their headphone amp that’s currently in for review.)
JA: Yes, I’ve been listening and I’ve been comparing two different headphones right now – the Dan Clark Ether 2 and…(the Stealth). You can definitely hear the differences. I was curious (as to) what’s the difference between a $2,000 headphone versus a four, and you can hear some of that; it brings it out. It definitely has more weight to it than the headphone amp that I’ve been using, so I’m really liking that–-it's a really nice balance. It seems to reflect that house sound that Pass Labs brings to its products. “Yeah, yeah, good!” And if that pleasant exchange with Anastasia Protopappas is a hint of things to come, who wouldn't welcome the fresh infusion of ideas and broadened perspective afforded by a more inclusive and holistic approach to the hobby and leadership of high fidelity audio?
1 Comment
Kent English
8/17/2023 12:20:57 pm
What brought me to Pass Laboratories was the unique corporate culture that Nelson created after Threshold. Nelson's vision was a company that was more community than corporate. Nelson has always stressed that he strives to be more like himself everyday, and likewise with the company. Anastasia has done much to continue and expand that vision, It's all about community: the staff, our trading partners and our end users.
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