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About 9,000 miles from American shores, Georgia native Mary L. Harris calls the shots. As CEO of J.M. Products SA (Pty) Ltd., with 21 full-time employees and 100 sales and merchandising agents, Harris heads up a company that manufactures and distributes ethnic haircare products in South Africa, Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola, Ghana, and other African nations.
After more than a year of political wrangling, searing debate, and vitriolic protests, President Barack Obama took a historic step toward making medical treatment available for all Americans when his healthcare reform package passed both houses of Congress. Even though he asserted that the legislation he signed into law in late March—the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010—“isn’t radical reform but it is major reform,†it clearly intends to surgically transform the nation’s healthcare system.
Thompson hospitality was in crisis mode. Founded a few months earlier in 1992 when CEO Warren M. Thompson negotiated a leveraged buyout of 31 Big Boy restaurants from Marriott Corp., the fledgling company was neck-deep in debt. Herndon, Virginia-based Thompson Hospitality Corp. (No. 12 on the BE industrial/service companies list with $321 million in revenues) acquired the Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia restaurants for $13.1 million. THC also raised $1.9 million in capital from about 25 investors, and Thompson anted up about $100,000 of his own cash to convert the locations into Shoney’s restaurants. But the transaction wasn’t going according to plan.
Tondalah Stroud never imagined that as a 37-year-old married mother she’d be sleeping in her childhood bedroom in suburban Chicago. But when she and her husband, Walter, 46, found themselves upside down in their mortgage and saddled with more than $20,000 in credit card debt, mounting medical bills, and two monthly car payments totaling $1,400, moving in with her mother seemed like the most cost-effective option.
Despite the mantras of “Never give up†and “Keep fighting†that many achievers subscribe to, hundreds of thousands of Americans shut down businesses, end relationships, or close the doors on some type of dream each year. Did all these people lack faith and courage to follow through? No.
