idreamspeakers | kelly j welborn

idreamspeakers, LLC Boutique PR Firm

Kelly J. Welborn (888) 811-7241 (301) 760-0815 @idreamspeakers kelly@idreamspeakers.com

idreamspeakers represents remarkable and passionate speakers who strive to inspire audiences and generate change through their creativity, ingenuity and fascinating storytelling.

1

Branding + PR + Speaking Engagements

Lewis Johnson, 7x Olympic Commentator

IDREAMSPEAKERS

PR | Branding | Speaking Engagements - Launched ESPN NYC Marathon Broadcaster Lewis Johnson’s World Class Coat Drive after Hurricane Sandy devastated the Northeast. Collected over 600 coats, hats, gloves, scarves and clothing for New York Cares Relief and Boys & Girls Clubs of NY/NJ. Booked speaking engagements reaching 250 Boys & Girls Clubs members.

SPORTS

Speaking Engagements + Social Media Community Leader Irvin Ashford, Jr.

KELLY J. WELBORN EXHIBITIONS EXPERIENCE

PR | Branding | Speaking Engagements - Community Leader Irvin Ashford, Jr. - Developed branding and positioning for speaking platform and articles including features in Dallas Morning News, Rolling Out Magazine and published works.

Business The Dallas Morning News

ADVERTISEMENT

Jobs, real estate & misc.

Classified, 7-9D

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Section D

TURNING IT AROUND

‘The Blind Side,’ Dallas-style Helped by a wealthy family as a kid, Comerica banker gives back

I

rvin Ashford Jr. works in a tailored suit, silk tie, starched French-cuffed shirt and Rolex watch.

The 43-year-old senior vice president of Comerica Bank likes to wear that uniform when he tells his financial literacy classes that he once was poor, scared and hungry.

“Although I’d like to think I’m unique, I’m not. If I can make it, anyone can,” Ashford says. “But you must want it more than anyone else, educate yourself and study more

CHERYL HALL cherylhall@dallasnews.com

than anyone else. You must see around corners.”

He spends much of his time teaching financial literacy to people in low- to moderateincome areas throughout the state.

“I am a bridge between the

community and the bank,” he says, “sort of the chief translator between those two worlds.”

Ashford has never seen the movie The Blind Side from start to finish. But he’s seen enough to know the parallels to his story: A black teenager is plucked from abject poverty by a prosperous white couple in Tennessee who help him fend off racism, discover education and find his way to success.

Gardner and Claudia Smith, retired Tennessee walking horse and Angus breeders,

are Ashford’s “white parents.”

Their two sons and daughter are his older siblings.

But Ashford never cut ties with his black family and friends in the drug-infested projects on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where he lived for the first 14 years of his life.

He was the only child of an unmarried teenage mother.

His father, Irvin Sr., was a drug addict from a middle-class family in Harlem. Irv’s only See BANK Page 4D

Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer

Comerica Bank senior vice president Irvin Ashford Jr. talks with student Charles Jones about his grades at the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy in Dallas.

DMN SMALL BUSINESS ROUNDTABLE

COMMENTARY

Picking up the pace

MITCHELL SCHNURMAN mschnurman@dallasnews.com

City does it right on pensions

I

Barack Obama Leadership Academy Photo credit: Louis DeLuca, Staff Photographer, Dallas Morning News, July 2013

Michael Ainsworth/Staff Photographer

Drew Jones (right) of D. Jones Clothiers saw positive trends for the second half of the year during a roundtable that included small business banker Gerardo Garza (left) and Dr. Michael Schwartz, partner in an orthopedic practice.

Entrepreneurs talk growth, hiring, health care and hurdles

By HANAH CHO

Staff Writer hcho@dallasnews.com

Entrepreneurs Frank McGovern and Niyi “John” Olajide can’t find qualified job candidates fast enough to keep up with business.

Startup founder Drew Jones is also struggling to find the right people to support his expansion.

Despite the uneven economic

recovery nationwide, these North Texas business owners are experiencing rapid growth.

Six entrepreneurs discussed the biggest issues and challenges facing their businesses in a roundtable discussion hosted last week

by The Dallas Morning News. In the aftermath of the recession, discussions centered on sustaining growth, attracting and retaining

the best candidates, and having a positive outlook.

Doing business in the Dallas region boosted their faith. Texas employers added more jobs over the last year than in any other state in the country.

“With the 2008 crash, that’s when a lot of competitors came into the industry, and we had to be smart about our resources,” said

Jones, who founded D. Jones Clothiers, a custom suit maker in Dallas, at the height of the recession.

“Because of that, we paved a whole new vision for what custom clothing looks like. Now that people are comfortable spending, I only see it being positive for the See SMALL Page 5D

AT A GLANCE The panelists

Frank McGovern

Gerardo Garza

Drew Jones

Founded Dallas-based Clearview Energy in 2006. Last year, the retail electric and gas company was named the fastest-growing private company in the Dallas area by Inc. magazine. It generated $29.3 million in revenue in 2011.

Dallas-based senior vice president at BBVA Compass.

Garza works with entrepreneurs, business owners and companies across the region.

He has also worked in corporate and investment banking for BBVA.

Founded D. Jones Clothiers, a custom suit maker in Dallas that uses a patented 40-point measuring system.

Since launching in 2008, the startup has grown to five employees. It’s on track to more than double last year’s sales.

Niyi “John” Olajide Founded Axxess, a Dallas technology company serving the home health care industry in Dallas, in 2007. The 55-employee company generated $8 million in revenue last year.

Sonali Rathi-Pramanik Co-owner of Plano-based Pranaa Ayurveda Spa and Yoga, which opened in 2007. The 24-employee business generates annual revenue of less than $500,000.

See DALLAS Page 7D

SCOTT BURNS scott@scottburns.com

Retirement: Do you have its number?

A

Dr. Michael Schwartz Orthopedic surgeon and president of the executive board of OrthoTexas Physicians and Surgeons, a 25-physician orthopedic group with seven clinics in Denton and Collin counties.

Older workers: A live chat Join business writers Pamela Yip and Sheryl Jean as they discuss the unique challenges facing older workers who have been left behind in the job market. Are we witnessing age discrimination? Why isn’t anyone talk-

n so many ways, Dallas is not Detroit, the bankrupt city.

But both appeared to have healthy pensions for employees, firefighters and police — until Detroit suddenly didn’t.

Unfunded liabilities in Detroit’s pensions were “substantially understated,” according to a review by the emergency manager. He put their deficit at $3.5 billion, more than five times the amount reported earlier.

As a result, pensions account for almost 20 percent of Detroit’s bankruptcy debt. The city wants significant cuts in monthly payments to 21,000 retirees, and unions are fighting back hard.

ing about this? Pamela and Sheryl will tackle these questions and more with a panel of readers with fresh experience in this challenging job market. Join the chat at noon on Monday at live.dallasnews.com.

USTIN — Getting the right answer to the wrong question isn’t helpful. So I’ve come to visit with Marlena Lee, a young Ph.D. at the headquarters of Dimensional Fund Advisors. I want to find out how she works her way through the complicated problem of retirement savings.

Lee is part of the brain trust Dimensional Fund Advisors assembled for its entry into the place where most of us save and hold our money: defined contribution plans like 401(k)s and 403(b)s. I’ve come because the dismal failure of 401(k) plans has been widely trumpeted over the last year despite the fact that the poverty rate among seniors has been dropping steadily for more than three decades.

See SAVING Page 7D

. . . . . . . .

D1 07-28-2013 Set: 18:24:20 Sent by: klueb@dallasnews.com Business

4D

dallasnews.com

Sunday, July 28, 2013

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN

The Dallas Morning News

“In my [old] neighborhood, when you disappear for a long time, you’re either dead or you’ve gone to prison.”

Irvin Ashford Jr.

Bank VP pays it forward Continued from Page 1D

Photo Credit: Change Happens! non-profit organization

interaction with him was when his father occasionally showed up at his grandmother’s house.

His father vanished when Irv was 14 and was declared legally dead seven years later.

Fortunately, Ashford has an uncle — his mother’s brother and his hero — who taught him to read and grounded him in morals.

Every few years when Ashford goes to New York, his first stop is the Baruch Houses projects to see his uncle, other relatives and friends.

“When I go back, it reminds me of how far I’ve come and yet how much I’m still at home,” Ashford says. “My African-American family in New York knows Irv went away and did good, but they don’t necessarily know what good is.”

His uniform in New York is a T-shirt, hoodie, belted jeans, Timberland boots and a Yankees ball cap.

Some of his childhood friends will ask him, “When did they let you out?”

“In my neighborhood, when you disappear for a long time, you’re either dead or you’ve gone to prison.”

Aptitude test Ashford’s life took a dramatic turn when he was 13, thanks to a Twinkie party.

That’s what the Boys Club of New York offered as a reward to kids in the projects who agreed to take an aptitude test.

And heck yeah, Ashford loved Twinkies. Still does.

He scored so well that the Boys Club asked him to take the test again just to make certain it wasn’t a fluke.

It wasn’t, and the organization invited him to attend its summer program for inner-city kids at The Webb School, a private boarding school in Bell Buckle, Tenn., population 500.

“I was free — free to eat three meals every day, free to watch cable TV unencumbered, plenty of outdoor activities. But mainly I was free to learn,” Ashford says. “Education when you grow up poor and in the inner city isn’t first and foremost on your mind. Safety is.”

Two days before Labor Day, the boarding school called to offer him a work/study scholarship for the 10th grade. “It took me 1.2 seconds to say yes,” he says.

Two days after that, the 14-yearold arrived in Tennessee with his worldly possessions — two shirts, two pairs of pants and $500 from his uncle.

He figured he would need permission slips, so Ashford had his mother sign every page of a notebook so that he could fill out what he needed permission for and hand it in.

“It’s Southern, rich, hot and rural, and I’m black from New York City,” he recalls. “But I loved being out of New York City and away from the craziness.”

Then he found he was facing craziness in another form.

Unlike the other boys, he didn’t have a blazer, which meant he was taunted by mean-spirited classmates who also were unrelenting in their use of the N-word.

By November, he was ready to call it quits.

“It’s hard to be taken out of your environment and be put into an overtly hostile one,” he says. “Back at home, everybody’s poor, and that’s something you’re conditioned to.”

One afternoon, he was playing basketball when an older white man in the bleachers started yelling at him to pass the ball.

“He came up to me after the game and the first words out of his mouth were something to the effect of: ‘Hey, I understand somebody’s messing with you. From this day forward, nobody’s going to mess with you again.’ Only he didn’t say mess,” Ashford says. “Then he says, ‘If I have to call the governor, I’m going to call the governor. But we’re going to make something happen around here.’ I’m looking at him a little perplexed, because I have no idea who he is.”

Then the man says tells Ashford he’ll pick him up Friday at 4 o’clock, and don’t be late.

“He handed me his business card that says Gardner Smith, Eastfield

Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer

Comerica banker Irvin Ashford Jr. talks with students at the Barack Obama Male Leadership Academy in Dallas. He tells his audiences, “Although I’d like to think I’m unique, I’m not. If I can make it, anyone can. But you must … educate yourself and study. … You must see around corners.”

Ashford didn’t know colors beyond the primary ones. Claudia taught him the shades of a big box of Crayolas and the importance of social graces. She says he could still use a primer or two on the latter.

“My mom is the paragon of civility,” he says. “She taught me not to always use my size or my intellect to intimidate people, but to sit back and relax. In the 30 years that I’ve known her, she’s only called me Honey or Darling, except when I’m in trouble.

Then I’m Irvin Ashford Jr.” More than anything, Ashford says his parents taught him self-sufficiency. “They gave me plenty of love and guidance, but they had definite expectations.”

Gardner and Claudia Smith, retired Tennessee walking horse and Angus breeders, are Ashford’s “white parents.” The wealthy couple, vacationing in 2003 with Ashford in the Bahamas, helped him fend off racism, discover education and find his way to success.

BACKGROUND Irvin Ashford Jr. Age: 43 Title: Senior vice president of community development and external affairs for Comerica Bank, Texas market

Born: Beth Israel Hospital, New York Resides: Downtown Dallas Education: The Webb School, Bell Buckle, Tenn., 1987; bachelor’s degree in religion from Oberlin College, 1991; master’s in public affairs from the University of Texas, 1994; MBA in management, University of Dallas, 2000 Fellowships: Woodrow Wilson International Studies and Public Policy, 1992; American Marshall, 2001; U.S. delegate, British-American Project, 2007 Civic boards: Greater Dallas Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, PeopleFund, Kym’s Kids and Nova Charter Academy

Farms, and he turned around and left.”

Ashford’s street savvy told him that this imposing white guy wasn’t working an angle. “So on Friday at 4 o’clock, I signed myself out with my mother’s signature and I left.

“That was the beginning of my transformation.”

Million miles away It turned out that Smith’s son was a teammate who’d told him about Ashford being verbally assaulted at school.

Smith laughs when he hears Ashford’s version of their first encounter: “There were a few words that I probably shouldn’t have used to a 14-yearold boy.”

The Smiths were social-register transplants from New York. Gardner had sold a successful insurance com-

Louis DeLuca/Staff Photographer

pany. Claudia’s grandfather was assistant secretary of the treasury for President William McKinley and helped form the Federal Reserve system. They had moved to Shelbyville, Tenn., to raise horses on a 400acre ranch.

The driveway to their estate was nearly a mile long and a million miles away from Ashford’s past at the Baruch Houses projects.

One weekend led to another. The Smiths became Mom and Pop. “Pop has always been my greatest mentor. He’s taught me to value education,” Ashford says. “He’ll still send me a book this thick on Tuesday and say, ‘Read this by Friday so we can discuss it.’ ” Claudia’s fondest memory is serving Ashford broccoli for the first time.

“I think it was the first green thing he’d ever eaten in his life,” she says.

“That’s still his favorite.”

Proud parents He’s not legally adopted, but the Smiths are clearly his proud parents.

“What Irv’s accomplished is 99.9 percent from within him,” says Gardner, 82. “His mother and I did very, very little. This was a flower that was going to bloom. All it needed was a little water and a little sun. When the water just rose too high, and he needed a little bailing out, we would help.”

By the time he graduated from Webb, Ashford’s classmates considered him the rich black kid.

Ashford got a scholarship to Oberlin College in Ohio. He followed his undergraduate degree in religion with a master’s in public affairs from the University of Texas at Austin and an MBA in management from the University of Dallas in 2000.

He joined Comerica 10 days after getting his MBA. “Irv is the person who, when he walks into a room, everyone wants to go up and welcome,” says Jon Bilstrom, executive vice president of Comerica Inc. Ashford directs community development and external affairs, overseeing the bank’s investments in microloan pools and managing its relationships with nonprofits and ethnic chambers of commerce around the state.

Pat Faubion, president of Comerica Bank, Texas market, says it’s a vital role for the bank and him personally. “Irv helps me think about the world differently. He helps me understand important issues from a different perspective.”

“I am an investment banker of sorts, although I do not invest in stock or bonds,” Ashford says.

“I help the bank invest in people and programs that help communities, businesses and individuals be more successful. How do we bridge the gap between the haves and havenots, help people with their American dream? I am still working on the answer.”

Adding a dash of dignity Banker advises aspiring barbecue entrepreneur, gets a meal out of deal

By CHERYL HALL

Staff Writer cherylhall@dallasnews.com

Keith Price, executive director of Dallas’ Austin Street Center, says Irvin Ashford Jr.’s financial literacy classes are crucial to the shelter’s efforts to get residents back into society.

Take Freddie Lewis, for example.

Lewis, who moved into the center nearly two years ago, wants to open a barbecue restaurant. “I’m trying to get everything in order, and financial courses is definitely something I need to do,” the 54-year-old says.

Lewis hopes to get money from one of the area’s microlenders and needs Ashford’s help.

But first Ashford wanted to know whether Lewis could cook.

Price had Lewis make barbecue pork ribs, chicken, links and beans using only makings found in the shelter’s pantry.

Both Ashford and Price were impressed.

“We don’t have all the ingredients or the pit that he would use,” Price says. “I’m telling you, it rocked.”

“It was astounding given where the food came from,” Ashford says. “Freddie’s a long way from opening a restaurant.

But maybe he buys a food truck and serves barbecue on the street from it. Or maybe he doesn’t make it as an owner but makes it as a chef. There would be dignity in that.

“That’s what the poor need more than anything. Dignity.”

“That’s what the poor need more than anything.

Dignity.”

Irvin Ashford Jr.

D4 07-28-2013 Set: 18:26:26 Sent by: klueb@dallasnews.com Business

Big Things Happen Here, BIG DALLAS, City of Dallas Dallas Convention and Visitor’s Bureau, August 2013

BLACK YELLOW MAGENTA CYAN

COMMUNITY

Speaker’s Bureau + Social Media

D/FW American Marketing Association

KELLY J. WELBORN EXHIBITIONS EXPERIENCE

Booked speaking engagements to reach 700 member Marketing and Business professionals in the Dallas/Ft. Worth region with an emphasis on multi-cultural marketing.

D/FW American Marketing Association Multi-Cultural Special Interest Group

NON-PROFIT

Cultural Art + PR + Social Media

Spelman College Museum of Fine Art

KELLY J. WELBORN EXPERIENCE

Launched social media presence and integrated e-mail marketing to drive attendance to current exhibitions and Patron events (i.e. Artist Talks, Wine Tastings). Implemented PR campaign to heighten awareness of the Museum Director.

NON-PROFIT

Multi-Cultural Exhibitions + events High Museum of Art

KELLY J. WELBORN EXPERIENCE

Managed Marketing, Advertising and events driving traffic to permanent and special exhibitions. Designed marketing campaigns targeting international audiences and partnered with City of Atlanta and advertising partners.

NON-PROFIT

Email Marketing Usalon Atlanta

KELLY J. WELBORN EXHIBITIONS EXPERIENCE

Developed speaking engagements to reach Marketing and Business Developed targeted to heighten awarenessand and professionals in the e-communications DFW region interested in the execution profile of new changes with Usalon Atlanta, a boutique hair salon measurement of successful multi-cultural marketing. Booked multicatering to high profile clientele. cultural marketing experts, email marketing and managed social media including Twitter @DFWAMA_MCSIG and LinkedIn.

BEAUTY

Connect with idreamspeakers!

Twitter

Google +

LinkedIn

YouTube

Pinterest

kelly@idreamspeakers.com

Instagram