Lynda ArtesaniLegal Accountant and Data Migration Specialist at The Proper Trust

Can You Believe This?! Susan Tucker Has Always Been Ahead of Her Time!

12 Sept 2023 · 1 min

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1:03

In this interview excerpt, Susan Tucker recounts her tenure at Payless ShoeSource during a period of rapid expansion when the company was opening a new store each day. She explains how she mastered construction accounting to support the fast-paced store rollouts and subsequently handled the complex leasing requirements for hundreds of locations. Leveraging this experience, Tucker developed a unique skill: translating legal lease contracts into computer-readable SAS code. By converting contractual terms—such as inventory delivery dates—into programmable logic, she could instantly reference and verify obligations during negotiations, effectively turning legal language into actionable software. This story highlights her innovative approach to operational efficiency and data-driven contract management.

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So then I went to work for Payless ShoeSource. We were building a store a day, opening up a store a day at that time. So it was a pretty crazy deal. So understanding how all that construction accounting worked, and then that just naturally led to, oh well, we have to do all these leases for these stores. What skill that I developed when I was doing all that was I developed a skill to turn legal contracts into computer languages. So we would buy, we would go in and buy a chain of stores, like 600 stores. And so I would take that store, like those 600 stores and turn it into a computer language so I could tell. So during the legal negotiations, you were just, you know, okay, this part of the contract says we're going to need to have their inventory on X day. Well, I would know it because I had turned it all into a SAS language. Wow. Turned it from legal language into computer language, you know, into computer programs. So it prompted you to do that?