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Trendsetters: Women Entrepreneurs
10 Floridians Who Mean Business
Women-owned companies account for a third of all Florida businesses. On the following pages are profiles of 10 Florida business owners.
"Like the sun coming up in the east," says Paul Reynolds, director of the Entrepreneurship Research Institute at the Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center at Florida International University. Reynolds, who has studied the prevalence of women starting businesses for more than 20 years, says it's "astonishing how little change there is in that proportion."
Reynolds' figures jibe roughly with data from the Center for Women's Business Research in Washington, which finds that about 31% of privately held businesses in Florida now are majority-owned by women.
That percentage, according to a 2004 study by the center, has risen by nearly five points over the past eight years.
Reynolds' research has uncovered other insights: Women-owned businesses have a tougher time than men-owned businesses surviving the transition from startups to established companies with employees, revenue and profit. "And it's clear (women) have more modest aspirations" for growth, though the goals may be more realistic, he says.
Commenting on the stagnant percentage of startups by women, Reynolds offers this thought: "You can realize that women are a very substantial part of this (business formations), or you can argue women are not as significant as men and we need to do something to fix it."
Other findings from the center's survey:
Florida businesses majority-owned by women total 460,981, generate nearly $79 billion in sales and employ 500,223.
Florida ranks fourth nationally, in line with its population, in the number of businesses majority-owned by women in 2004, according to growth projections and the 1997 Census.
Of the Florida metro areas that rank among the nation's 50 largest in population, here are their rankings in terms of the percentage of private firms that are majority-owned by women:
Orlando, with 32.4%, ranks 13th.
Tampa Bay, with 31.9%, ranks 16th.
West Palm Beach/Boca Raton, with 31.4%, ranks 19th.
Miami, with 28.1%, ranks 41st.
Combining firms that are majority-owned by women with those owned 50-50 by men and women moves Florida and some of its cities up in the national rankings:
Florida rises to third nationally in number of firms, employment and sales.
Including co-owned firms moves the Tampa Bay area to ninth in the top 50. It also means Miami ties with St. Louis for 10th for fastest growth based on an average of growth in the number of firms, employment and sales.
Firms owned equally by men and women in Florida total 255,228, generate $74 billion in sales and employ 512,435.
'Frugal and Entrepreneurial'
In her native Jamaica, Marie Gill's resume presaged a high-powered career. She worked in urban planning on the Kingston waterfront and did PR for P.J. Patterson, then the minister of industry, tourism and trade and later prime minister. She was the only woman on the state-run petroleum company's management team.MARIE GILL
President, CEO / M. Gill & Associates
Miami
Pastime: Listening and dancing to reggae
For camaraderie: The Jamaica USA chamber and her church, the Universal Truth Center for Better Living in Carol City
Writing: A non-fiction book. "It's about what I know, about what is true and not true, about what is good."
South Florida has been Gill's home since the late 1980s. She founded management consultant M. Gill & Associates in 1990 to specialize in marketing and public relations. She does work for Citibank and Miami waterfront retail center Bayside, but much of her work is community and small-business-oriented and for the federal Commerce Department's Minority Business Development Agency and the Miami-Dade Empowerment Zone.
Gill, 59, knew early she wanted to be in business for herself. "My mother taught me to be frugal and entrepreneurial," Gill says. While the circumstances weren't wealthy, "I had a wealth of love and attention." She earned a bachelor's in economics, an MBA and a master's in communications.
In south Florida, she is president of the Jamaica USA Chamber of Commerce. Her service in economic development and support of small businesses has meant honors as the Small Business Administration's Small/Minority Business Advocate of the Year for Florida and earned her a Jim Moran African-American Achievement Award.
Her work hasn't brought riches. Her 10-person firm's annual revenue is less than $2 million. She would have liked $5 million to
$7 million by now. "By the time you look around, another week has passed and you haven't accomplished as much for your own company because you're serving."
But, she adds, "I made my bed, and it's comfortable. I really want to leave a legacy of a fulfilled life. I know that all sounds all flowery, but it's the God's truth."
Supply Side
JEAN MCNALLY
President / EconOffice Products & Supplies
Oldsmar
The business: Projecting $6 million in annual revenue. Supplier of office products and supplies.
Personal migration: Relocated to Florida in 1998 after Danka bought her husband's business in 1995. He left Danka in 1999.
After Boston: "Florida is so much more laid-back. People are more approachable."
Business migration: McNally, 42, helped with her husband's toner business, then started her own electronic Medicaid billing company. Then she decided to match her know-how with office supplies and opened EconOffice in 2000. Third-year revenues were $792,000.
Edge: Service, cost savings and being a woman-owned business seeking federal government work. Most company revenue comes through federal customers, including MacDill Air Force Base, the General Services Administration and Homeland Security Department. Without the woman-owned certification, "I would never be able to compete with the larger companies."
Tip: Identify your weaknesses early and surround yourself with people who make up for them. "You need to be able to open up to other people's ideas without having an ego that's going to do you in."
Looking ahead: Moving beyond the government market to corporate customers. No sale plans. "It's just too exciting right now."
Current
In 1979, Mercedes LaPorta bought $15,000 worth of Sylvania lamps and gear and began work as an electrical distributor. Fast forward 25 years. LaPorta's Mercedes Electric still carries Sylvania products, along with Square D and others. Now she has $2.5 million in inventory, and last year her company posted $20 million in revenue.MERCEDES LAPORTA
President / Mercedes Electric Supply
Miami
Summer vacation plans: Italy, for her 30th wedding anniversary, and Las Vegas for a trade convention
Also recommends: Visiting U.S. national parks
Cuba memories: Living in old Havana, close to the Malecon, her dad taking her for walks and going to the Varadero beach
Castro memories: Hiding under the bed, listening to shooting
In the little noticed business of electrical distribution, LaPorta has profited, supplying lights and equipment to the commercial, industrial and high-rise residential markets.
LaPorta, 51, left Cuba at age 6 for Chicago. Her formal education ended with high school, and she became a buyer for the A&P grocery chain. Tired of Chicago winters, she and her husband, Victor, moved their two daughters to Miami in 1979 and started the business, in which Victor is vice president.
While times are good, LaPorta says she recognizes the business cycle and is trying to expand her reach to cushion against slowdowns locally. To that end, she got her business certified as a woman-owned company by the Washington-based Women's Business Enterprise National Council, which she says is opening doors to Fortune 1000 companies. "I'm very passionate about WBENC," she says. She supplies MGM Grand, New York New York and Treasure Island in Las Vegas and also Office Depot facilities. She wants to reach $50 million in revenue in five years.
The industry has been consolidating, but LaPorta says she has no desire to sell. "I'm actually taking some business away from big national chains. Sometimes being an independent is better because you can make on-the-spot decisions. In a big company, you need a lot more people to say yes to something."
Spreading the Word
DIANE BRUNET
President / Brunet-García Multicultural Advertising and Public Relations
Jacksonville
Bio: A Navy brat raised in Atlanta, Brunet attended the Naval Academy before earning her English degree at LaGrange College in Georgia. She dabbled in theater and likes the idea of playwriting, but advertising and PR became her vocation. Brunet, 46, met her Cuba-born husband while they worked at separate advertising firms in Atlanta. Boaters -- her husband is a fisherman -- they moved to Jacksonville to be near the water.
The firm: A 2-year-old, 11-employee tri-lingual marketing shop with $5.3 million in annual billings. Brunet, who heads client services, founded the firm with her husband, creative director and Vice President Jorge Brunet-García, and Chiche Urbano, a Venezuela native who's "chief reality officer" and runs operations and multicultural outreach. The firm caters to U.S. companies trying to reach Hispanics and to Latin companies wanting to do business here.
Clients: Embraer, Interline Brands, the Haskell Co., Florida Department of Health, Florida Prepaid College Board program, and, pro bono, the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art.
On the old days in advertising: "It was an issue to be a woman. Now that's a little different. In Jacksonville, it's more conducive to women- and minority-owned businesses than you would ever imagine."
Cooking Up a Business
Twenty years ago, two Cuba-born women struck up a friendship in Bloomington, Ind., of all places. After completing their MBAs at Indiana University, Celeste De Armas and Corina Mascaro stayed friends as they pursued careers in cities a continent apart. The friendship now is bearing fruit in a new company, Nueva Cocina Foods, a premium Latin foods brand they launched this year in Miami and hope to take to $150 million in revenue in five years.
De Armas left Cuba at age 4 in 1965 and settled in Los Angeles with her family. Mascaro left Cuba in 1960 and wound up in Missouri, where she went to college, getting a master's in romance languages and literature. De Armas spent 17 years working for Carnation, General Mills and Nestle. Mascaro went into banking. On separate tracks, they both arrived in Miami in 1997.
De Armas says that while thinking of what she could pursue outside corporations, she thought of upscale Latin food and discovered Mascaro had the same thoughts. They joined forces on a line of all-natural, convenient packs of seasoning and ingredients aimed beyond the Hispanic buyer.
Mascaro came up with recipes from family, friends and books. "She really has a flair for the culinary side of things," says De Armas, who herself doesn't cook much. They have 14 products -- soups, rices, seasonings -- and want to have 75 to 80 products in five years, Mascaro says.
Their products are in specialty stores, 50 Publix stores and seven Whole Foods. De Armas says the company is now starting to gain distribution in stores in Chicago.
The brand addresses "the growing Latinization of the United States of America," De Armas says.
CORINA MASCARO
Senior vice president / Nueva Cocina
Miami
CELESTE DE ARMAS
President / Nueva Cocina
Miami
Favorite Nueva Cocina product: Paella (De Armas). Black bean soup (Mascaro).
Appeal: "We're making Latin foods accessible. I can make something that's very daunting easily," De Armas says.
A Major Goal
JOANIE SCHIRM
President / Geotechnical and Environmental Consultants
Orlando
Just the facts: The 14-year-old, 32-employee firm has offices in Kissimmee and Orlando. Schirm's firm performs geotechnical engineering, materials testing and inspection. She aims to be the "go-to" firm for high-profile and complex projects that build communities such as bus-rail-airport facilities, the Orlando airport and high-speed rail. It also works on condo towers and downtown redevelopment. Last year, Geotechnical was the Grand Award Winner in the small firm category from the Florida Institute of Consulting Engineers.
Twist: Schirm, 56, is an engineering firm owner who isn't an engineer. She did market research and rose through administration at Law Engineering in Atlanta. She became a founding member of the Atlanta office of another firm and opened its Florida operation in 1982.
Additional twist: She was raised in Indialantic by a father of Jewish heritage, a Czech army doctor who fled from the Nazis to China, where he met and proposed after a week to Schirm's mother, a teacher and daughter of missionary parents. Schirm was born in Chattahoochee.
Pride and joy: Leading for six years the landing and hosting of the 1994 soccer World Cup games in Orlando. "It was very, very wonderful. It was a wonderful experience for Orlando, and we came together as a city." She also met her husband, Roger Neiswender, then Orange County's administrator, now Orlando's transportation director, through the World Cup.
Quote: "It's like any other profession or career you're in. You have to earn that respect. You're not anointed with it."
Summer plans: A home exchange with a family from a small Normandy town.
On the Move
MARYAM GHYABI
President, CEO / Ghyabi & Associates
Jacksonville
Just the facts: The 10-year-old, 50-person civil engineering firm posts $5 million in annual revenue and has offices in Jacksonville, Ormond Beach, Orlando and DeLand. Ghyabi hopes to expand into south Florida and Tampa Bay. The firm's work includes transportation planning and environmental engineering.
Twist: An Iranian, Ghyabi left her parents behind and emigrated as a teenager in 1978 to attend the University of Central Florida, arriving on July 4th. "I had to learn to survive. I didn't have any time to be a rebellious teenager." She majored in civil engineering because she believed it wouldn't take much capital to start her own business. She has a master's in transportation engineering and has served on several state and local planning and transportation boards and groups. "My life is pretty much dedicated to transportation and economic development."
Pride and joy: The I-4 bridge over the St. Johns River, which opened this year. Ghyabi, 45, says she put her life on hold for two and a half years to advocate and chair a coalition pushing for construction of the $200-million bridge. Her firm did no work on the project, lest a perceived conflict tarnish her effort, she says. "My bridge -- you have to see it. It's gorgeous."
Quote: "I take transportation funding very seriously. I can go on about that for hours. Economic prosperity needs good roads."
Fourth of July plans: Watch fireworks in Daytona Beach. "I really celebrate the Constitution of this country."
Modest Plans
TRUDI WILLIAMS
CEO / TKW Consulting Engineers
Fort Myers
Just the facts: Founded in 1989, Williams' 50-person firm is based in Fort Myers and has an Orlando office. Half of the firm's revenue comes from structural work, and the other half from civil and environmental engineering and science. The firm had $5.5 million in gross billings last year, and she projects $7 million this year.
Twist: "I never intended to grow like this," says Williams, 51. She makes it sound like she backed into everything -- persuaded, for instance, to submit an application for a gubernatorial appointment to the South Florida Water Management District board, which she went on to chair from 2001 to 2003. She sounds the same about the Legislature, where she just completed her first term and believes she is the first woman engineer. Born in Canada, she moved to then "desolate" Cape Coral as a 13-year-old. She became an engineer, she says, "on a dare." She was a nurse going to med school when a man named Don Williams, who has become her husband of 25 years, told her she didn't have a logical enough mind for the math and physics that engineers require.
Pride and joy: Three bills she sponsored passed in her first session. One called for an engineering school at Florida Gulf Coast University, another continued the sales tax exemption for solar energy equipment and a third eliminated redundancy by having the state alone handle wetlands permitting on small parcels. Both the state and Army Corps had been doing permitting.
Summer plans: An annual weeklong trip to a Wyoming dude ranch.
Sidetracked
MARNI ROBINS
Into each life, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote, some rain must fall.
Some get a deluge.
Marni Robins, a veteran of country club hospitality work, was employed at a country club and studying business and information technology at FAU when she saw a niche for reservation software for dinners and events. She founded Gardenia Systems in June 2000. The tech bubble was bursting but Robins had promise. Her business joined FAU's incubator, bringing introductions to people such as Boca tech entrepreneur Scott Adams. A protege program brought her mentoring from Fort Lauderdale software success Citrix Systems. In 2002, the year she finished her bachelor's, she won FAU's business plan competition and received $10,000. She had her picture in the newspapers.
She worked full time to test and finish her product and made her first sale in September 2002.
She's only made one other. Robins labored on an upgrade to an online version and also to modify it as a standalone product for uses such as brides who are planning weddings. While working through that, she visited a hospitality tech trade show. "There was a lot of competition. It was somewhat disheartening," she recalls.
Then, Robins' husband, David, was diagnosed with brain cancer. She's taken a job as activities director at a Delray Beach country club. She would like to sell her company and its software. "I still think my product and software, the code and logic we developed, would be a wonderful fit for a company that doesn't have a reservations system. It would also be very good for a web company that wanted to have reservations." She hasn't had much time to find a buyer. "At this point in time, my first priority is to my family. I guess everything happens for a reason."
