She added that after evaluating the work of its Olympic team after the Nagano Winter Games in 1998, Browne Sanders stayed with the unit two years later in Sydney. "She was very good at seeking out people in power to get their advice and say, very upfront, `OK, what do I have to do to get to the next stage?"' Primrose-Smith said. "She would bluntly say, `What do I need to do to improve?'"
Solid references
Another supervisor at IBM, George Conte, described Browne Sanders as "incredibly ambitious, with a tremendous ability to work with other people."
She was recruited to the Garden by Mills in 2000 to be the Knicks' vice president for marketing and was promoted to senior vice president in 2002. She said in her lawsuit that in 2002 and 2003, she received the highest possible rating, a "5," on her company evaluations; Garden policy at the time was that her supervisor, Mills, and Dolan both signed the evaluation.
But last March, after a year in which she made accusations against Thomas, her evaluation fell to a "4."
She was the person in charge of finding new ways to sell Knicks tickets after years of sellouts gave way to empty seats. And Thomas reportedly refused to let her use Knicks players in a current advertising campaign; instead, the campaign uses a series of life-sized cardboard cutouts devised by an outside agency.
"I always found Anucha to be a serious-minded, sober executive, very conscientious in her work and very dedicated to advancing the image and prestige of the New York Knicks," said Seth Abraham, the former president of Madison Square Garden/Radio City Entertainment. "While we did not always agree on marketing strategies, her opinions were always reasoned and well thought-out."
The ugliness of her sexual harassment accusations against Thomas surprised Chambers-Duckmann and Perrelli.
"I do not question her integrity," Chambers-Duckmann said, "and I see no reason for her to make things up."
Perrelli added: "I'd be totally shocked if anything came out to show that she wasn't telling the truth. This is a class individual. I had to do a double-take when I saw it on television."
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