Leading Ladies
What Will It Profit a Woman…? In the recent election, Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” quote emblemized America’s either-or perspective on economics: We could have Romney’s entrepreneurial spirit or Obama’s generous “socialism,” and never the twain shall meet. Well, folks, here in Durham, N.C., we have a woman who embodies both. Eighteen years ago, Wendy Clark followed her older sister from their hometown of Buffalo, N.Y., to North Carolina. She studied for a year at Wake Forest University and a semester at UNC-Chapel Hill before she quit college to start Carpe Diem Cleaning as a business that makes a difference in the world. From the time she was 4 years old, she had felt an urge to offer her life as a sacrifice of thanks to the Creator. “There was that gift of the eternal that was put in my heart at a young age,” she says. “I knew that life was not about me.” After her dad died when she was 14, grief led to many fights with her mom, and she contemplated suicide. A verse in Lamentations saved her life: “It is good for one to bear the yoke in youth.” Those words gave her the strength to endure her mourning, but they also gave her a long view of her vocation. College, she thought, wouldn’t prepare her for what she felt called to do—build a business that would provide jobs to underprivileged young people. “When I was a kid I hated cleaning. I still do today. But it was worth doing to start a business.” Within five years of launching Carpe Diem, she achieved her goal of employing other people to do the cleaning so she could run the back-office side of the business. Today she has 33 employees and 400 clients throughout North Carolina’s Research Triangle region. Clark takes care of her workers. She has a fleet of eight company cars to get them to and from jobs. She pays above-market wages. Every Thanksgiving, she hires a professional photographer so her staff can have family pictures for the
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holidays. “I want a place where people are loved, accepted, and can have hope,” she says. “I’m a nonprofit person in a for-profit body.” Five years ago, she opened the John O’Daniel Exchange in a World War One-era, 14,500-square-foot, brick warehouse in crimeplagued Northeast Central Durham. What used to house a hosiery mill, then a wholesale farmer’s market, now houses 15 tenants, including grassroots nonprofits like ActionNC, Food and Water Watch, the office for SEEDS youth-education garden, the anti-human trafficking agency Transforming Hope, the refugee-resettlement group World Relief, and the local volunteerism catalysts at DurhamCares. Even though the Exchange also collects rent from a lawyer, design and marketing firms, a flooring contractor, a hair stylist, and a videographer, and even though Carpe Diem grosses over $1 million a year, Clark has chosen to live in the challenged NE Central neighborhood on a moderate income. “I live in the ’hood. I drive an old car. I’ve chosen to live a different lifestyle that helps make that dollar stretch,” she says. “The banker knows my numbers, and they yell at me for how much I give away.” Clark says her profit drive and her big heart are perfectly compatible. In fact, she says, it’s because she invests so much in her businesses that she’s able to do more good. “If more people were able to reach financial
sustainability, we’d be a lot better off,” she says. “If I had been worried all along about getting a paycheck, I would never have been able to build this business.” With her Ron-Swanson-style libertarian spirit, she had a hard time accepting the $177,000 grant from the City of Durham that helped her renovate the Exchange. But the neighborhood needed jobs, and the city needed new tax revenue, so she went for it. “It wasn’t just a handout—it was an investment that would yield them returns,” she eventually reasoned. “I can handle government funding for capital improvements, but I think the day-today operations need to be sustainable.” One of Carpe Diem’s challenges is the language barrier for its mostly Hispanic workforce. “We need more Americans,” she says. “Our biggest competition for employees is the welfare system. There is no motivation to work. Americans don’t want to clean.” She didn’t want to clean either, as an ambitious, entrepreneurial 20-year-old. But she saw it as a path to success. “By building my business, I am taking care of myself and others,” says Clark. “Offering employment is the best way to care for people.” Citing an idea from Francis Schaeffer, she says that if Christian business-people paid their workers more and gave away less to charity, the American economy would be much better off, and more of us would have the freedom to be generous. “The way Christendom is set up right now, it will implode,” she says. For Clark, it’s not profits vs. people, but profits for people.
Wendy Clark
Jesse James DeConto is a writer and musician in Durham, N.C. Find his work at jessejamesdeconto.com.