By Sophie Pappas
With a brilliant mane of Mexican curls, Zionsville Town Councilwoman Susana Suarez, 45, strides into Starbucks with her white suit pressed to perfection, and her head held high.
“I walk in with my Ferragamo heels, and my designer bag,” she tells me later. “And I’m driving a Honda Oddesey with a built-in cooler and a vacuum cleaner.”
Thus is the dichotomy of Suarez’s life.
A fiercely strategic figure in the realm of conservatism, Suarez has found the balance between being a mother to her two daughters, a wife to Spanish husband Juan “Kiko” Suarez, and the Vice President of Global Communications and International Affairs for a $2 billion company, Allegion.
“It’s craziness,” she said.
A bridge between borders
Born and raised in Mexico City by her mother, a deemed “southern bell” from the U.S., and her Mexican father, Suarez settled in the U.S. via Cleveland, Ohio at the tender age of 16. It was here, she said, that she first learned to bridge two cultures – two personas.
“In that situation, you either sink or swim. I swam,” she said. “In months I was fluent in English and active. It was a challenge but in life, we underestimate what we are capable of.”
From there, Suarez finished college in Ohio and went on to become a corporate head for Anheuser-Busch Budweiser, in Manhattan.
“To be 30 and single in Manhattan with that job was not bad,” Suarez said.
This would be one of Suarez’s many jewels in her corporate-world crown, all of which eventually led to her to Washington D.C. where she, most notably, worked on the Republican campaign for former President George Bush Sr., when he lost to Bill Clinton.
In 2001, Suarez began getting calls from a man who she calls “a certain governor in Texas,” George W. Bush, Jr., who recruited her to join the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
With little experience in the field of emergency management, Suarez was appointed as Assistant Director with FEMA. Soon after her hire, the Sep. 11 terrorist attack happened.
“We were all in Montana for an emergency management conference when that happened,” Suarez said. “It was such craziness, and then the next week there was a hurricane coming which now nobody remembers.”
Suarez said that her experience with FEMA during 9/11 shaped her skills as a manager who had to find “clarity through the clutter” of an emergency situation.
“I had to pull all my regions together, fast,” she said.
When the Dept. of Homeland Security was formed by President Bush the next year, Suarez knew it was time for her to move on.
“I needed to get out,” she said. “I had my share.”
She went to work for the Peace Corp., where she would later establish a hybrid corp. program between the Mexican and U.S. governments. This was a groundbreaking cooperation between the two governments, and was something that had never been done before.
“It was me bridging two cultures, two philosophies, just as I’ve always done,” she said.
From corporate life to motherhood
After several more senior-level positions around the country – and the world – Suarez met and married her husband, Kiko, when she was 39, and he was 41.
The couple instantly knew they wanted to start a family, but struggled with keeping pregnancies. Suarez is honest about the fact that she had wanted to start a family much younger, but never found the right man to settle down with.
After two miscarriages, Suarez conceived her daughter Sofia, now five.
“At one point you just think maybe this won’t happen, maybe we need to do something or get some help,” Suarez said.
After a bitter struggle to deliver Sofia at age 40, she and her husband moved from their then home in Boston to Indiana.
“I was able to slow down and reassess my life,” Suarez said of the move. “I’m used to the fast pace. But in order to achieve balance, you have to give something up.”
She stayed home with Sofia, and then second daughter Eva, until starting her own corporate communications business, which she ran for nearly five years before moving to Allegion last November.
Suarez has given up positions on five national boards, and said she will likely continue to scale back her roles as a board member for other committees in order to be the best mom she can be.
“You kind of hit a new normal,” she said. “Because we are older, the new thing in our life is our kids. You need to be able to turn off for some days, and that means discipline. No phones, no work. The time might be less but the quality goes up.”
All about Susana
Birthplace: Mexico City, Mexico
Alma Mater: Ohio State
Hobbies: cooking Mexican food, gardening
Best moments to-date: wedding on July 7, 2007, and the birth of daughters Sofia (5) and Eva (2)
