Two take the lead in businesses run by women and minorities
Elaine Osgood found herself looking for a third career in the mid-1980s. A former Worcester schoolteacher-turned-social worker who investigated child abuse cases for the state, she decided it was time for a change.
"My expertise was child sexual abuse," Osgood said. "I think after a while you lose your edge. It's pretty intense. It was probably on some level depressing me."
Osgood, with no business experience behind her, opened a Uniglobe travel franchise in Milford in 1986. Eighteen years later, the company -- now known as Atlas Travel International -- has grown to 55 employees and has a second location in Lexington.
This month, Atlas Travel was pegged as the 14th-largest women-led business in Massachusetts by the Center for Women's Leadership at Babson College and the Commonwealth Institute. It's the third year the company has made the list.
Atlas Travel reported $56 million in revenue in 2003 and is on target to bring in $65 million this year, according to Osgood. The company, now affiliated with Atlanta-based WorldTravel BTI, generates about 80 percent of its business from corporate travel.
"I started the business with one employee and no customers," said Osgood, 50. "I went out and made phone calls and cold calls and scheduled appointments. We grew the business one customer at a time."
As president and chief executive, the Upton resident today focuses on company strategy, sales, and marketing to consumers who have become more savvy about booking vacations through the Internet.
"It really does challenge me and brings out the creativity in terms of trying to figure out day to day how to do what we do better," she said. "I do spend a lot of time with our customers, making sure they're happy. I think we take it to the nth degree. This past year, over 65 percent of our new corporate business was the result of referrals."
Osgood, who describes her leadership style as hands-off, welcomes being singled out as a female entrepreneur.
"I think it's nice that women are receiving this recognition," she said. "We're businesspeople. Men and women do business a little differently. They have different styles for the most part, but I think there's brilliance on both sides of the genders.
"It seems the men primarily focus on the numbers, where I think the women focus on the softer side of the business, like the relationships," Osgood continued. "I guess my philosophy has always been if you take care of the customers and the employees, then the numbers will always be there."
Before training her sights on the business world, Osgood had considered falling back on her master's degree in psychology and opening a private practice. But, she says, she decided she'd had enough of "that negativity."
"When I looked at my choices, I thought: Do I want to be greasy and get oil all over me from Jiffy Lube, do I want to sell movies, or do I want to sell the world," Osgood said. "Travel was probably the most alluring and sexy thing that I looked at."
Osgood financed the franchise by borrowing money from relatives, mortgaging her home, and securing a Small Business Administration loan.
"I had to really encourage the franchiser to allow me into the system, because I didn't have enough money," she said. "I convinced them that I wouldn't fail. They ended up loaning me money the first year."
Osgood, who with her husband adopted a young girl from Russia two years ago, is spending less time on her company these days. She has cut back on her 60-hour-plus work week to spend more time with her family.
"She's given us some balance," Osgood said, referring to her daughter. "Before, I was just so all about the business."
ENCOURAGING DIVERSITY IN BUSINESS -- When Wil Spencer was trying to choose a digital camera for his wife, he narrowed his choices to two models. For the tie-breaking decision, he turned his comparative shopping to DiversityInc.com to look at the manufacturers' records when it comes to diversity.
"If one manufacturer is higher than another, it helps me solve the problem," Spencer said. "I do it now without thinking. I want to reward companies that are deliberately trying to reinforce the minority economy."
Spencer is vice president of diversity alliance programs at TAC Worldwide Companies, a technical staffing firm in Dedham that employs some 20,000 contractors a year. He helps clients draw on the resources of minority-owned staffing businesses and shapes the TAC program that helps those businesses grow.
"It's certainly the most rewarding job that I've had in the last eight years," said Spencer, who started as a consultant at TAC in August 2003 and was hired full time that December. "I have the potential to have at least some impact on the economy in the minority community."
This month, the 56-year-old Hopkinton resident was named to the board of directors of the New England Minority Supplier Development Council, a Boston nonprofit formed in 1975 to help minority-owned firms enter the mainstream economy. The council has 350 supplier members and almost 100 corporate members.
The minority population is expected to account for nearly 90 percent of the country's total population growth from 1995 to 2050, according to the federal Minority Business Development Agency. The combined number of minorities is expected to surpass the nonminority population sometime around 2050.
Companies realize if they want credibility among those potential customers, they must buy from their communities and help build their capital and purchasing power.
"It's purely economic," he said. "The largest segment of new customers available to the telecommunications industry comes from the minority community. These customers are a lot more sophisticated now. They can, for example, go to the Web and find report cards on businesses . . . specifically what are they spending in the diversity community."
TAC Worldwide has formed a partnership with Staffing Solutions Inc., a minority-owned staffing firm in Boston with 11 full-time employees. It plans to add other companies, including women-owned businesses, to its diversity alliance program in the future.
"Our goal is to form an alliance in such a way that our partner makes money, we make money, and our partner grows at a rate at which they could never grow alone," Spencer said.
Spencer previously held executive positions with minority technology firms. He was VP of software engineering for Potomac Systems Engineering Inc. in Arlington, Va., and senior vice president of Computer Technology Services Inc. in Rockville, Md.
"That was where I got to learn the ups and downs of forming alliances, sitting on the minority side of the table, so to speak," he said. "I've gotten really a specific understanding of the challenges of making a minority firm work."
AROUND THE TOWNS -- Newton resident Zhiping "Paul" Chen recently won a 2005 Dodge Magnum RT. Chen was one of 17,000 entrants who estimated how many balls were stuffed into that model at the New England Auto Show in November. Guesses ranged from 50 to 5,000 balls, but Chen came in on target with his guess of 229. A medical researcher at 
