BusinessReport.com

Ask attorney Gayle Jackson about what’s changed for women and minorities over the past 25 years, and she delivers a deliberately paced, upbeat oratory on hard work, perseverance and forgiveness.

“Every time I’ve ever had to fight off adversity, it’s been a good thing,” says Jackson, 44. “We’re not really where we should be, but I feel accepted in the business community. It’s OK now for me to succeed.”

Jackson launched Precision Title Company in 2004 after a decade-long, public-sector legal career largely spent advocating for victims of sex crimes and domestic violence.

Becoming a lawyer had been a lifelong dream, even though she had no lawyers in her family and lacked mentors. She attended LSU’s Paul M. Hebert Law Center on scholarship, worked for then-Attorney General Richard Ieyoub and won roles on high-profile nonprofit boards and several community awards.

But she says she never would have gone to law school had she not been sacked from a job in the media “for no reason” in the late 1980s. “My father told me I wasn’t the first person to feel the sting of discrimination,” she says. “He gave me one night to cry, and said, ‘This is now your opportunity to go to law school and soar.’”

As a black woman, Jackson experiences a Baton Rouge significantly different from that of her parents, gas station owners repeatedly turned down for loans despite spotless credit, she says. Today, more women and minorities have forged their way into entrepreneurship, profitable careers and financial stability.

The corporate world is beginning to move beyond so-called “show pony” diversity. Rather than settling for quotas, international companies understand the value of building an ethic of diversity today to compete in the future.

Different sets of challenges still exist for women and minorities—women try to balance work and family and blacks struggle with racism—but there is palpable optimism both nationwide and in Baton Rouge. Jackson says it’s not acceptance she struggles with anymore; it’s identity. She says her business is often typecast as “the black title company.”

“I don’t get that,” she says. “I don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m black, and I’m going to my black title company.’”

The U.S. Census’ last major study on women- and minority-owned enterprises, the 2002 Survey of Business Owners, showed growth well beyond the national average for women-, black-, Asian- and Hispanic-owned businesses. Women-owned companies grew by 20% between 1997 and 2002, with nearly 6.5 million businesses generating more than $940 billion annually.

The same report found black-owned businesses grew by 45%, bringing the total up to 1.2 million companies that earned $88.8 billion a year.

While black-owned businesses grew at a faster rate than those owned by women, 44% were confined to five states: New York, California, Florida, Georgia and Texas.

That’s not surprising, says Eric Lewis, 34, president of the 140-member Black Chamber of Commerce. The Baton Rouge native spent the first part of his career as an electrical engineer for Texas Instruments in Dallas, where he saw a robust community of black-owned businesses.

“There was a higher number of minority-owned businesses there, and I found that kind of disturbing,” he says. “In California, you find Hispanic, Asian and Filipino chambers of commerce and more. But in Baton Rouge, the idea of minority-owned businesses had been a repulsive topic that people didn’t want to talk about.”

Lewis returned home a few years ago and started a company, Ephod Business Solutions, to provide temporary management and technical assistance to small businesses.

He also became involved in the Black Chamber of Commerce, launched originally in 2004 as the North Baton Rouge Chamber. A year later, it broadened its geographic scope and became one of the 190 affiliate chapters of the national Black Chamber of Commerce.

The group is about to launch a five-year, $1 million fundraising campaign to build a business resource center for fledgling companies and entrepreneurs. Lewis says the center will offer business basics and instruction on navigating federal set-asides and state incentive programs.

It’s a step toward creating an infrastructure in Baton Rouge like the kind that exists in major cities, he says. “If you look at places like Atlanta, they were built up around federal funding opportunities. Without that culture in place, we missed out on a lot,” Lewis says. “That being said, a lot has changed in the last three years.”

For example, the Baton Rouge Black Chamber received $85,000 this year from the City-Parish Minority Business Opportunity Center, launched by Mayor Kip Holden. The funds support the completion of a marketing study on minority-owned businesses in the area. It is data Lewis says will be available to businesses that want to contract with minority enterprises.

Kean Miller is one such company. Attorney Maureen Harbourt, who sits on the firm’s diversity task force, says the firm has broadened its approach to creating a diverse culture. It’s not just about hiring minorities; it’s establishing an overall ethic.

“We do business with a lot of people,” she says. “We’d like to develop a contact list of minority-owned businesses.”

Furthermore, the firm has established a new three-day program to expose women and minorities still in school to the process of becoming a lawyer.

Harbourt’s interest in diversity issues is well-placed. She entered law in 1983 and was one of the first women hired by the firm. Kean Miller, she says, was always ahead of its time regarding female hires. Today, almost 40% of Kean Miller’s attorneys are female and 29% of its partners are women, significantly higher than most other firms statewide.

But groups beyond the firm’s doors, she says, needed to catch up.

“Clients could be a problem sometimes,” she says. “Sometimes intentionally and sometimes unwittingly.”

In the ’80s, she remembers a client standing too close to her in the elevator and making suggestive comments. In those days, female attorneys often felt the need to drag along male colleagues if they had lunch with male clients, she recalls.

“That’s all pretty much disappeared,” Harbourt says.

In 2006, almost half of all students enrolled at the LSU Law Center were women, a trend that’s been building since Harbourt graduated. The shift is apparent. Harbourt says a female colleague recently attended a public utilities hearing and noticed the normally male-dominated room had completely flipped. All of the people in the room, including the attorneys, clients and judge, were female.

Still, the picture’s not all rosy. On average, women in Louisiana still earn less than their male counterparts—68 cents for every dollar—and women with children or aging parents struggle with balancing career and family. Companies are slowly carving out different options to accommodate female employees.

“Flexibility has definitely grown over the years,” Harbourt says, “and women are less afraid to ask.”