|
BY VICKI TORRES
When the “Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business,” traveling exhibit was on display in Los Angeles, the enterprising women of the National Association of Women Business Owners, Los Angeles Chapter (NAWBO-LA) saw an opportunity and seized it.
They created a fundraising event commemorating 25 years of NAWBO-LA and named 25 outstanding women business owners from across Los Angeles County.
On a September evening, more than 250 guests strolled through Los Angeles’ unique, Byzantine/Egyptian/Spanish-styled Central Library, sipping cocktails, munching hors d’oeuvres, and taking in the touring national exhibit, along with locally produced displays of Los Angeles-area women entrepreneurs of note.
But, the chapter could just as easily displayed a prominently placed placard for itself. The chapter and its members have exercised influence at the state, national and even international levels, racking up a number of impressive accomplishments, including helping create a national certification agency and successfully lobbying for various pieces of California legislation.
NAWBO-LA has spawned other NAWBO chapters and also has been a key player for both national NAWBO and the nine-chapter California-NAWBO. It has made its mark based upon the contributions of scores and scores of women business owners.
NAWBO-LA is one of the largest of approximately 80 NAWBO chapters nationwide, drawing members from more than 210,000 women-owned businesses in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area that employ nearly 364,000 individuals and generate more than $52 billion in annual revenues.
“We’ve had some really extraordinary women over the years,” said Patty DeDominic, NAWBO-LA’s president emeritus and a past national NAWBO president. “I’ve been on a lot of boards over the past 20 years, and NAWBO-LA has been one of the most personally rewarding.”
Yet, the chapter’s history, like the history of women in business in general, is sometimes ignored or forgotten as women push onward to other accomplishments.
A review of NAWBO-LA’s history reflects the struggles and accomplishments that have occurred over the past few decades and that have affected all U.S. women business owners, no matter where they are located. In that way, NAWBO-LA’s history is a reminder of the obstacles women entrepreneurs have faced, just as it is a reminder of women business owners’ accomplishments and the issues still facing them.
Celebrating Los Angeles’ Enterprising Women
|
In September 2004, in alignment with the national traveling exhibition, “Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business,” NAWBO-LA elected to honor its own 25 years of existence by honoring 25 Los Angeles County women business owners and holding a chapter celebration fundraiser.
“Los Angeles has been, historically, a major entrepreneurial seedbed for thriving companies founded and operated by women,” said attorney Cynthia McClain-Hill, NAWBO-LA president. “Los Angeles has many enterprising women of its own, and it seemed appropriate to link to the national exhibit.”
The Schlesinger Library of the Radcliff Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University and the National Heritage Museum in Lexington, MA, organized the national traveling exhibition with cooperation and support from Enterprising Women magazine. The exhibit examines the business lives of 40 women, spanning Colonial America and printer Mary Katherine Goddard to Internet America and E-bay CEO Meg Whitman.
Maria Lourdes Sobrino, a NAWBO-LA member and local honoree, is included in the national exhibit. The founder of Lulu’s Dessert, based in Vernon, CA, Sobrino started her $15-million company by selling 300 cups of prepared gelatin a day.
In choosing its 25 local honorees for the event, NAWBO-LA picked women entrepreneurs whose efforts represent a diversity of accomplishment. Among the women honored:
• Karen Caplan — As the first-born daughter of entrepreneur Frieda Caplan, founder of Frieda’s Inc., Karen began working with produce at the age of 10. In 1986, at age 30, she was promoted to president of the nation’s leading marketer and distributor of specialty produce. She is currently president and CEO of the firm.
• Marcy Carsey — Named one of the 50 greatest women in radio and television, Emmy winner Marcy Carsey is a partner and co-founder of Carsey-Werner-Mandabach, an independently owned television studio. Its current productions include “That ’70s Show” and “Grounded For Life,” and the company also is producing the Oxygen Network’s first scripted series, entitled “Good Girls Don’t…”
• Madelyn Alfano, owner of Maria’s Italian Kitchen, a restaurant chain with locations from Santa Barbara to Pasadena.
• Patty DeDominic, past president of both the national organization and the LA chapter of NAWBO, a member of the State of California board that oversees the workers’ compensation fund, and CEO of The PDQ Careers Group, a $20.7-million temporary placement firm.
• Renee White Fraser, PhD, past NAWBO-LA chapter president and head of Fraser Communications, the largest woman-owned advertising agency in California.
• Billie Greer, past founder of the public affairs firm, Greer/Dailey/Minter, and currently director of the Los Angeles Office of Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Among the other Los Angeles-area women entrepreneurs honored during the NAWBO-LA event:
• Martha Diaz Aszkenazy of Pueblo Contracting Services;
• Marci Blaze of The Blaze Company;
• Sue Bohle of The Bohle Company;
• Martha C. de la Torre of El Clasificado;
• Linda Griego of Engine Company 28;
• Sheila Hartman of Financial Independence Company;
• Janice Bryant Howroyd of ACT 1 Personnel Services;
• Toni Erickson Knight of Worldlink;
• Victoria Lowe of Alert Staffing;
• Cynthia McClain-Hill of McClain-Hill Associates;
• Lauren Melendrez of Melendrez Design Associates;
• Mary Micucci of Along Came Mary Productions Inc.;
• Patti Regan of The Regan Group;
• Francie Rehwald of W.I. Simonson Inc-Mercedes-Benz;
• Cristina Rose and Maureen Kindel of Rose & Kindel;
• Anita Santiago of Anita Santiago Advertising;
• Nien-Ling Wacker of Laserfiche Document Imaging; and
• Angela Walton of Melador Technologies, Inc.
|
|
The 1970s: Fighting a Reputation as a Novelty
The national organization was born in 1975. NAWBO founders sought equality of opportunity for women business owners and followed a decade of activism by feminists and those pursuing women’s liberation. NAWBO-LA was created four years later, in 1979, when business owners Carol Filderman Edehlson, Nancy Mills, and Devon Blaine met with half a dozen other women entrepreneurs in Mill’s living room.
“NAWBO was different from other women’s business groups at that time in that it was created as a national lobbying effort,” said Blaine, who now heads The Blaine Group, a Beverly Hills communications agency. “I thought that was important and necessary, and others felt the same way.”
The three women each took a turn as chapter president. But, Blaine recalled, the LA organization struggled in its early years, “like any start-up.” Corporate sponsors were hard to attract, the chapter sometimes ran in the red, and activities consisted of little more than monthly dinner meetings that drew roughly 50 to 100 attendees.
The difficulties were not surprising. After all, women entrepreneurs comprised only 6 percent of all business owners in the United States at the time.
“We were very few, that’s for sure, back in the 1970s,” said Betsy Berkhemer-Credaire, a longtime NAWBO-LA member and co-founder of Berkhemer Clayton, Inc., retained executive search firm. “Many of us were small back then and just starting companies.”
Berkhemer-Credaire recalled that women could not get credit on their own in those days; instead, they had to have a husband, father or some other male co-sign their loan agreements. (To secure her own loan, Berkhemer-Credaire was forced to sign an additional agreement stating that she would not to get pregnant until she had paid back the funds.)
Yet, in some ways, Berkhemer-Credaire said, being a woman business owner could be an advantage, because of the novelty it offered. For instance, being the only woman in a room full of men meant immediate attention, she said, even if many of the comments were along the lines of, “Gee, you’re a woman business owner!”
The 1980s: Working for a Bigger Pie, Building a Case with Data
Women’s rights and the push for passage of the federal Equal Rights Amendment dominated the early 1980s.
In business, the decade saw men-only clubs challenged in lawsuits to finally admit women. Among those required to expand their memberships were the 60-year-old University Club in Pasadena, CA; two dining clubs at Princeton University; the Jaycees; and the Rotary, Lions and Kiwanis Clubs.
During the 1980s, affirmative action policies of the 1960s and 1970s began to evolve into the beginnings of certification and corporate, supplier-diversity programs. But, these changes were just that — the beginnings.
“There were no minority or women’s business programs at the Small Business Administration, and we, along with the Latino and Asian business owners, all of us, were trying to figure out how to organize to create a bigger pie,” said Virginia McBride, NAWBO-LA’s fourth president. “We weren’t able to get contracts with the utilities, and if you wanted to do business with a corporation, good luck!”
In 1986, NAWBO-LA addressed those issues in a national forum when Blaine was appointed co-chair of the California delegation to that year’s White House Conference on Small Business.
“There were so many NAWBO-LA delegates to the conference that I won out over the man who wanted to be state co-chair,” Blaine said.
When publicist Judie Framan volunteered to pitch NAWBO-LA to the media over the next few years, its visibility grew further.
“We got a lot of press, because women business owners were still a novelty,” Framan said.
With the creation in 1988 and 1989 respectively of the National Women’s Business Council and the National Foundation for Women Business Owners (now the Center for Women’s Business Research), national and local statistics on women business owners provided even more opportunities for NAWBO-LA and other chapters around the country to “localize” the national data and increase women business owners’ visibility even more.
At the same time, Los Angeles Times business writer Jane Applegate had started her small-business column and had begun profiling women business owners, providing even more visibility for the issues.
The 1990s: Gaining Long-Overdue Recognition and Clout
The 1990s was when women business owners in this country finally began to come into their own.
By the beginning of the decade, NAWBO-LA had grown to 250 members and served as host for the national conference for NAWBO, which by then listed 40 chapters and 3,500 members nationwide. The organization’s growth on both the national and local levels reflected the growth the country was experiencing in the number of women business owners. In fact, by the mid-1990s, women owned a third of all U.S. businesses (7.7 million firms) and employed more workers in the United States than the Fortune 500 companies employed worldwide.
As women business owners grew as a force, they demanded more accountability.
In California, in 1992, NAWBO-LA President Carolyn Denny sought a state version of the 1988 federal Women’s Business Ownership Act to collect data on women business owners and discover why the state had missed its 5 percent contracting goal for women-owned businesses, issuing only 1.5 percent of its contracts to women. The measure succeeded with the backing of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, the Los Angeles Commission on the Status of Women, the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, and the California Restaurant Association, a coalition that demonstrated the rising political clout of women entrepreneurs.
Women business owners were making gains in media exposure, too. In 1994, NAWBO-LA nominated columnist Jane Applegate for her reporting on women entrepreneurs and their issues and the U.S. Small Business Administration agreed, naming Applegate its National Media Advocate of the Year for her small-business coverage.
Banks and other lending institutions also began to recognize the power of women entrepreneurs. The Bank of America and Wells Fargo created billion-dollar loan programs specifically targeting women entrepreneurs.
NAWBO-LA activities throughout the 1990s reflected the growing influence of women business owners as both a political and an economic force.
• Politicians — The annual NAWBO-LA Awards luncheon began to draw record attendances of 1,200 and attract such high-level politicians as California Gov. Pete Wilson, California Lt. Gov. Gray Davis, and Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan as speakers. Local city council members and state legislators begin to attend regularly.
• UN conference — For the first time, the issue of women and business was addressed at the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing, China, in 1995. NAWBO sent a delegation to the Non-Governmental Organizations conference, which included national NAWBO president Patty DeDominic and two NAWBO-LA members who created a database of 60 similar women’s entrepreneurial associations worldwide.
• White House conference — At the 1995 White House Conference on Small Business, NAWBO-LA members made up a good portion of the national NAWBO delegation and were a sophisticated lobbying force, ensuring that women’s business issues were part of the 60-point recommendations sent to Congress.
• International Business conference — Women business owners from 40 countries met for a week in Los Angeles in 1996 after NAWBO-LA won a bid to host the weeklong, 43rd FCEM (Femmes Chefs D’Entreprise Du Monde) World Congress. Cooperation from the City of Los Angeles and the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development signaled recognition, not only of women business owners, but also of their growing international expansion. NAWBO-LA followed up with a business conference that year focusing on international business.
• Certification program — NAWBO-LA partnered with the Women’s Business Owners Corp. to help create a national certification program for women business owners.
• Enterprising Women — Approached by the editor of the Los Angeles Business Journal about creating a national business magazine addressing women’s business issues, a group of NAWBO-LA members created the first Enterprising Women. The magazine debuted as a bi-monthly with corporate support from AT&T. It focused on leadership, technical assistance, and contracting opportunities for women business owners. (The trademark rights to the name were sold to its current owners in 1999, and the magazine was re-launched in May 2000 in the format you see today.)
• Spin-off NAWBO chapters — Following the example of NAWBO-LA, women business owners in outlying regions untied to create their own separate NAWBO chapters (Orange County, Ventura County, the Inland Empire, and Desert Cities).
2000 and Beyond: Adopting New Efficiencies, Facing New Issues
Since the beginning of 2000, mirroring the growing sophistication of women business owners and the organizations serving them, NAWBO-LA has established itself on a more professional footing with a downtown office and paid staff members. Currently, NAWBO-LA employs an executive director, two staff members, and an intern.
The chapter also has created an educational nonprofit, the Enterprise Institute of NAWBO-LA, to carry out its entrepreneurial educational work and to provide a tax-deductible basis for corporations that wish to support that work.
The organization also has continued its political thrust. Recently, it collaborated with NAWBO-California to secure passage of a state measure that will study the problem of misclassification of independent contractors as employees. The state’s employment development department imposes fines, back taxes, and legal fees, after the fact, on corporations and businesses that have teamed with these consultants and smaller companies, many of which often are women owned.
“In the 21st Century, ad hoc partnerships are one of the key ways businesses grow and obtain additional work,” explained Cynthia McClain-Hill, immediate past NAWBO-LA president and a veteran lobbyist who worked on the issue. “But, the state has actually discouraged businesses from working together. So, we asked for an analysis of the problem.”
NAWBO-LA, through its nonprofit Enterprise Institute, also is focusing on finding ways in which to increase the number of women serving on corporate boards. Currently, women represent only 13.6 percent of the directors of Fortune 1,000 companies, yet they make 80 percent of the purchasing decisions in this country. The Enterprise Institute held an October 2004 educational forum on this problem, bringing in speakers from national groups that focus on training women to serve on corporate boards.
Today, this active chapter, like the women business owners who are its members, is plunging ahead with new work and new issues. It seems that there’s always more work to be done in paving the way for the next generation of women entrepreneurs.
VICKI TORRES provides editing, writing and public relations services as Vicki Torres/creative communication, which is based in Los Angeles. She can be contacted at 818-997-4180 (e-mail: votorres@pacbell.net).
(This article is reprinted from the Winter 2005 edition of Enterprising Women magazine. Copyright 2005 Enterprising Women Inc. Reproduction in whole or part is prohibited, except by express permission of the publisher.)
|
