Tom Whitehurst

Sunday, October 15, 2000

Hispanic women are redefining the term "sweat equity." A couple of weeks ago, when the president of the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce visited Corpus Christi, he identified Hispanic women as the fastest-growing segment of all ethnic groups in the U.S. business community. Hispanic women have created 350,000 new businesses in the past 10 years, he said.
   Those words served as inspiration and validation for the local examples of that trend, including Gloria Perez, chairwoman of the local Hispanic chamber, and Lynda Ramirez, a board member.
   Both Perez and Ramirez hold down full-time jobs while owning and operating businesses on the side. Their businesses are among 120 women-owned or women-run member organizations of the local Hispanic chamber.
   Perez's full-time job is at Southwestern Bell, where she manages the sales and service center. Ramirez is a social worker at Driscoll Children's Hospital. Their workweeks in these jobs usually exceed 40 hours.
   Entrepreneurial spirit
   On the side, Perez owns Chem-Dry carpet cleaning franchises in Corpus Christi and Kingsville, and a carpet and flooring sales business. Ramirez owns New Feminique, a women's fitness center.
   Both women work at their businesses in the early morning hours, before 8 a.m., then drop in during their lunch hours, then again after work. Ramirez says she usually is at the fitness center until 10 p.m.
   Both women have raised their own expectations beyond full-time work at a respectable job, into the entrepreneurial realm.
   "It's exciting, the entrepreneur side," Perez said. "There are so many opportunities. I've got competition, but hey, I've been able to outbid some of the big guys. All of a sudden they're wondering where I came from.
   "There are so many opportunities out there for women. It's for real. It's happening here."
   Passion for job
   But not without a lot of hard work.
   "Gloria and I are each other's support when no one else understands," Ramirez said.
   Work is different, she said, for those who work for themselves and like their work.
   "I think when you enjoy what you do and have an incredible amount of passion for what you do, you enjoy it. It's not like work. If it were, then I would quit."
   Even so, the question remains, how does she do it?
   "I've got an incredible amount of energy," the 34-year-old said.
   She also is single with no children, and wonders how women who have families in addition to full-time jobs achieve what they do.
   Ramirez learned from her mother, a nurse, to value self-sufficiency.
   "My mother just always wanted us to not rely on a man. She never wanted us to marry for convenience. She wanted us to marry for all the right reasons. And I guess she felt that if we were self-reliant, we wouldn't marry for a reason other than love."
   Perez, who's 47, single and has a grown daughter who works for Dell in Austin, relies on a man - her brother, Hector Perez, who operates her businesses full-time. And most of her mentors have been male, she said.
   But she's the boss.
  
  

---

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

---

  © 2000 Corpus Christi Caller Times, a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.