Association Needs Diverse Membership
Phyllis Hill Slater, the newly installed president of the National Association of Women Business Owners, made her personal goals clear at a recent membership meeting in Orlando, Fla.:
“We have not brought women of color into the fold of the women’s business movement,” said Hill Slater, the first black to serve as president of the 10,000-member organization. “We have to push for more and more minority participation in the ranks.”
To meet that goal, Hill Slater called on all 69 NAWBO chapters to draft plans to increase “membership through diversity.” She challenged: “Let’s get busy and do some outreach and make people feel welcome.”
Hill Slater admitted that she was worried about how the 400 women at the Florida membership meeting would react to her bold new agenda for NAWBO. “They rallied around me - it was unbelievable,” she said.
The time is right for NAWBO to be extending its reach to women of color, who now own 13 percent of all women-owned businesses. They employ 1.7 million workers and generate more than $184 billion in annual sales, according to research funded by IBM and conducted by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners, NAWBO’s research arm.
Between 1987 and 1996, the number of minority-women-owned firms increased by 153 percent, and employment grew by 276 percent. The number of firms owned by Hispanic women more than tripled, while the number of companies owned by black, Asian and American Indian women doubled.
The study, based on U.S. Census Bureau information, estimates that in 1996, black women owned 405,200 firms, Hispanic women owned 382,200 and 305,700 were owned by women of Asian, American Indian or Alaska Native heritage. California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, Virginia, Maryland and New Jersey are homes to the most minority women-owned firms.
Although Hill Slater is the only black member of the NAWBO board, the chapters are more ethnically diverse. In recent years, she said blacks have served as chapter presidents in Chicago, Dallas, Washington, D.C., Richmond, Va., and Nashville, Tenn. The San Francisco group has had a Chinese-American president, and a Japanese-American business owner heads the Los Angeles chapter.
“A lot of blacks see the South as being more progressive, as opposed to the North,” noted Hill Slater, who has been fighting on the front lines of the women’s movement for more than 25 years. For example, she said, the Lexington, Ken., chapter invited minority business women to attend their installation dinner free of charge. The event was held at a club that few women of color had ever visited before.
Meanwhile, Hill Slater, a high-profile business and civic leader on Long Island, N.Y., has been active in the national small-business arena for years. She served as a delegate to all three White House small business conferences. She also co-founded the Women Business Owners Corporation, an online procurement site and certification group for women-owned businesses.
She’s also owner and president of Hill Slater Inc., an engineering and architectural support systems company based in Great Neck, N.Y. The firm, founded by her father, now has 23 employees. Her daughter and partner, Gina, currently handles the day-to-day operations.
With Gina at the helm, Hill Slater plans to work into the “wee hours of the morning” on behalf of NAWBO. “My motivation for doing this is because as the mother of three daughters, I want them not to have to fight as hard as I did,” she said. “If I do this work now, it will be easier for my 8-year-old granddaughter, Amber, to use NAWBO as a social club because we’ve fought all the battles.” To find a NAWBO chapter in your area, call the headquarters in Maryland at: (301) 608-2590.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Jane Applegate Los Angeles Times