Something Had To Give For Tech Super Women
The woman with the purple business suit and matching eyeshadow has
two kids and is married. Her business partner to the left has in a
black and brown suit with colorful pinwheel earrings; she is a single
mom with two children of her own.
From left, Cheryl F. Jones, of Verche
Management Solutions; Karon Mack and her partner Dallah B. Herman,
of Shekinah Koncepts; and Kelly M. Pride, of Pride Law Office, discovered
the benefits of locating their young businesses in an incubator.
To the far right two other women sit. The one with a black and paisley
jacket is married with two kids also. The woman sitting adjacent to
her is wearing a beige jacket and brown pants with a matching scarf
woven around her neck. Her husband is a retired firefighter, and she
is proud to say that she has a daughter that recently graduated from
Spelman College in Atlanta and that her youngest son is not too far
behind.
There is another woman sitting close to the man conducting
the interview. She is far younger than the others and easily interjects
that she has no children and is single.
They sit in a small conference
room in Lanham to discuss the trials and tribulations associated with
being women running small technology firms in government provided
incubator space. "Work and home had merged into one," said
Shawn P. Richmond, president and CEO of Calsha Computer Technologies,
an information technology training company. "I was June Cleaver
and any other television mom that could come to mind. I cooked, cleaned,
and washed the dishes while on the phone with potential clients. It
just got to be too much."
Richmond worked out of her basement
for two years before she applied to get into the incubator. As she
spoke each woman nodded her head in agreement, chiming in with her
own anecdotes. "My cell phone bill was out the yin yang,"
said Cheryl F. Jones, who operates Verche Technologies, a software
company. Jones used her cell phone as an office phone number. She
was reluctant to give out her house number for fear of a family member
answering the phone.
" ... And the dog barks in the background,"
interrupted Kelli Pride, a young lawyer who has rented out incubator
space with the focus of working with startup companies.
"'Honey,
I'm working on a system. I can't cook dinner.' Then he would say 'I
haven't eaten in five days. You're here all day. What's going on?'"
said Karon Mack, co-founder of Shekinah Koncepts, a hardware and software
distributor. "What's going on, what's going on? I'm running a
business."
Her partner, Dallah B. Herman, giggled in agreement
knowing her "sister's" pain.
"We would hit a stride,
get deep into thought, planning ahead for the fiscal year or something,
and then all of sudden you hear them coming in, arriving from school,"
Herman said. " We knew things could not continue as it was. We
went out and found office space, and we were just about to sign off
when we heard about the incubator. It was like a godsend. While the
space here is not free, it is a lot less than what were going to take."
The incubators are run through the Technology Assistance Center, which
is a program operated by the Prince George's County Economic Development
Corp. Along with a receptionist, small business library, meeting rooms,
a conference room, fax and copying machines, the center also provides
business counselors.
Out of the 20 companies which were accepted into
the one-year-old incubator program, seven were minority women owned.
Wanda Plummer, who coordinates the incubator, said, after the decision
was made to open the program, there was some trepidation. "We
were very thrilled to have the number of applicants, but initially
we knew we were going to take on some risk. We are subletting our
space here, so, financially, there is definitely some risk,"
she said. "But there was a demand, there clearly was a demand.
"
All the women come from different walks of life. Dallah, with
her colorful earrings, had her first child when she was 16. She joined
the military at 18. Her mother and aunts took care of her first daughter
while she was away.
Richmond juggled so many responsibilities before
entering the incubator that she felt "I was going to work myself
to death."
Jones operated as a consultant for a number of years
before finally taking the leap.
They say the stress of running a household
and a business has gotten to them at times, but each has orchestrated
their own strategies to relieve it. Pride golfs while Mack takes Monday
off for herself.
"At times, I honestly feel as though the weight
of the world is on my shoulders. It's very hard for me to shut it
off. To close my eyes and take a break, so I have to force myself.
On Monday, that is my day for me away from everything. I unplug the
phone, cut off the cell and just relax," Mack said.
All nodded.
"I literally had to learn how to say no, and, when I did, boy,
the pressure was slowly eroded," said Richmond. "I think
by nature women are nurturers and we are ordained to be a certain
way. So at least with me it took effort to buck the nurturing side
of me."
January 18, 2003 By BOBBY WHITE, Daily Record Business Writer
Copyright © 2003 The Daily Record. All Rights Reserved.
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