Melissa Bradley

Melissa Bradley got her MBA, took a job in corporate America, and hated every hour she spent there. Then, she decided to design her future. She created a company that works with Fortune 500 companies to help them build community development projects. She created an investment division that looks to fund business ventures of women under the age of 35. She is living the dream (although sleeping sometimes less than four hours a night) and loving it.

How did you learn how to start your own business?

Trial and error. I got a finance degree at Georgetown. I read a lot of books, talked to a lot of people.

What kind of books?

Tom Peter's books. I read "How To Be Your Own Boss" by a woman named Sandy, but it was clearly geared toward women. I read Entrepreneur, Success, Enterprise, those kind of things. A lot of the information was really garnered just by talking to other people who have been through it.

I went to the SBA and had some challenges. They wouldn't give me any money. They told me I was 21, I was Black, and I was a woman, so there was no way I was going to make it in the financial service industry. I was like, "OK thanks."

Are there unique problems for women who are trying to start their own businesss?

Oh, definitely. I think obviously from a capitalization standpoint, we're still very much steered toward debt, which is a problem in really being able to take a company to scale and really have community impact. I think that there are still a lot of perceptions about the capacity of women: They're sensitive, and they're emotional, and they're not reliable, and God forbid if they have kids...they're not going to come through. So there is still a perception that in some ways will prohibit women from getting major contracts, from getting access to certain types of venues or meetings.

Is it harder or easier for women graduating from college in 1999 than it was for you?

Both. It's easier in that when I came out of school the options were assistance and the options for finding women entrepreneur role models were less than now. So I think there is greater visibility of women. Not the best, but greater. You're beginning to see more and more women, like a Candice Carpenter or a Debra Shaw, or somebody who has exceeded a million dollars, that are relatively accessible and releases information about themselves, which I didn't have. In some ways there's more information that could make it easier. However, it's harder because the challenges are still there around just the traditional education of women.

Sexism and all the isms period are certainly on the rise, and by just sheer numbers it's going to be harder from a competitive perspective. More and more women are going to college and graduating, but hence, just by the nature of capitalism, only so many are going to make it through the hallways. However, when I came out people thought I was really crazy to start my own business. Now it's, "Oh, that's a cool thing to do right now."

Why are isms on the rise?

There was a lull of acceptance. There was a lull of people of color. There was a lull that women -- we began to see success stories and we got lax. We got comfortable with, "Oh look, somebody made it. It wasn't me, but somebody made it." And we began to have this false sense of reality that doors were opening. Well, the reality was they opened and they shut.

When did that happen?

Probably the mid to latter '90s. Clearly political tides had that effect because conservatism was on the rise. Then also from an economic standpoint, while the economy has continued to do well, it's the wealthy that have done well. Women aren't typically among the wealthy. It's just the nature of households and that kind of thing. Then people of color clearly are often not the wealthiest. So again, there has been this belief that people are making it, but folks on the bottom, or folks who are struggling to get access aren't getting it.Those people say, "OK, it's there for me," but when they do try to take advantage of it, they realize that the pool is shrinking. It's the ebb and the flow and it's gone now.

I think isms are on the rise because it's just more comfortable. People are comfortable with saying what they've been thinking all along because nobody is really challenging on that. I'm in New York City now. Obviously, the police brutality means that stuff has been happening all along. But there was the time when people became conscious of it because all of a sudden you were afraid that you were going to be videotaped. But then, it kind of went away, and now all of a sudden it's emerging again. Unfortunately, oftentimes, any ism is often not corrected unless you bring attention to it.