The female business leader who’s known as Orange County’s “singing CEO” was honored at the Business Journal’s 22nd annual Women in Business Awards on May 4 at Hotel Irvine (see profiles of the other winners, pages 1, 4, 8 and 11).
Robin Follman-Otta, who transitioned from belting out high notes as an international opera singer to having two companies under her belt, was one of five honorees.
She’s chief executive of Santa Ana-based Markall Inc., a private family business that does fabrication and repair, and chief operating officer of its manufacturing arm, RA Industries LLC, a full-service, female- and minority-owned engineering and fabrication center in operation for more than 60 years.
Markall, which employs about 75, earned the No. 24 spot last year on the Business Journal’s list of Women-Owned Businesses with an estimated $33 million in annual revenue.
Follman-Otta has positioned Markall to build existing markets and pursue new global ones in industries including energy, and aerospace-defense. The company under her lead has expanded its domestic footprint and established a global presence in Norway, Brazil, Germany and Singapore.
“I am truly humbled and privileged to have been honored with the title of one of the 2016 Women in Business awards,” she wrote via email after the event. “Orange County has a tremendous pool of extraordinary women who are visionaries and leaders in the local and global business world. To be highlighted in a manner where there are so many worthy recipients, validates that professional and personal evolvement from one career into another, no matter how diverse the professions are, is possible and appreciated in the modern business world.”
Powerful Voice Put to Work
Follman-Otta is a fifth-generation Orange County resident. She began training as an opera singer at age 5 after impressing her family by singing “Silent Night.”
That same powerful voice also was put to work answering phones at her family’s business at that same age, she recalled at the awards presentation.
Her father, longtime engineer Robert Follman, founded the family business in 1985 in Santa Ana. The center now spans 70,000 square feet.
“There aren’t many women in this field,” Follman-Otta told the Business Journal in October. “But I am used to working in male-dominated fields. … At this point, I have experienced it all.”
From Stage to the Office
Follman-Otta spent almost three decades gracing stages with her operatic voice, singing alongside luminaries such as Andrea Bocelli, performing at prestigious houses such as Seattle Opera, and doing a six-year stint in Asia, including roles with the Singapore Lyric Opera. She later became artistic director of the Orange County School of the Arts, where she also directed the voice conservatory program from 2000 to 2009.
She retired from the arts in 2012 and enrolled in Chapman University’s Executive MBA program with the goal of returning to the family businesses.
Follman-Otta has said her training in the arts was crucial to developing her business prowess.
“When you think about the arts and how people are trained to access emotions quickly and how you need to convey that to a group of thousands—I learned very early on how to navigate the fluctuating emotions in a daily work environment,” she said. “You learn to have a sense of calm in emergency, how to think far ahead to the end result.”
Follman-Otta has described herself as “obsessed” with quality and on-time delivery.
“[Markall has] a 99.85% five-year average quality rating,” she said in October. “That means that just about every single part that leaves this facility is perfect.”
The Markall team also prides itself on providing 100% on-time delivery, she said, as well as high quality ratings from its customers.
Family Lineup
Follman-Otta credits her family for a big part of her success.
“I learned from my mother that nothing should hold you back from your dreams,” she said at the event.
Her older brother, Jack, is vice president of engineering, and her uncle, Thomas Hyland, is chief financial officer of Markall. She credits Jack as the “genius behind the manufacturing” and with inventing cutting-edge uses for industry-standard machinery.
Her younger brother, Adam Follman, owns his own company and works on special projects for Markall.
The Follman family, including some in-laws, work together nearly every day at Markall’s offices, just a couple of blocks from the concrete-banked Santa Ana River.
Follman-Otta, in addition to running two businesses and being a mom, serves on the board of counselors for the Argyros School of Business and Economics at Chapman and on Chapman’s Board of Governors. She also recently joined the Irvine Barclay Theatre board of directors.
