Social Justice - Pioneer Human Services

Social Justice: Pioneer Human Services

Home Base: Seattle, Washington
Year Founded: 1962

Not many corporate vice presidents can tell the kinds of stories that Marla Gese can. Gese -- a handsome woman with neatly bobbed brown hair, who is wearing a perfectly tailored pantsuit and tasteful diamond earrings -- sits sipping coffee in a nondescript beige conference room. As she speaks, it's hard to imagine her living the kind of life that she describes as her past: freebasing enough cocaine to stay awake for 12 days straight, selling a kilo of drugs a day to support her habit, and hiding her stash in the floor of her Datsun. She was arrested five times during an 18-month period and eventually spent 5 years in prison on drug-related charges stemming from a police sting at her house. "It was terrifying," she recalls. "They busted down the doors and came in shouting." She leans across the table and presses two manicured fingernails to the temple of her listener. "Freeze, motherfucker!" she says in a whispered imitation of a cop's command. "That's really true. They really do say that. And you're thinking, 'Jesus, there's a gun pointed to my head!' It's scary stuff."

That's one story from Gese's past. Here's another: Gese, now 40, spent the past six years working her way up from receptionist to vice president of real-estate asset management at Pioneer Human Services, the company that hired her after she got out of jail. As a rent collector and a property manager, she managed to turn around several sites that were losing money in the company's real-estate division and then went on to found Pioneer's construction-services division. What began as a crew of 2 men who worked on 30 Pioneer-owned properties has grown into a team of 45 employees who spend about half of their time bidding for commercial work, such as plumbing and roofing jobs.

"There hasn't been a single challenge that she hasn't been able to meet," says Mike Burns, 57, president and CEO of Pioneer. "She is the perfect example of the amazing things that people can do when they're given a second chance."

Gese's work is also an example of the amazing things that Pioneer has accomplished by giving people like her a second chance. Pioneer is a Seattle-based nonprofit that brings in annual revenues of roughly $52 million. Its mission is to provide employment training, housing, and counseling services to ex-convicts and former drug abusers. Less than 1% of the company's funds comes from "charity." The remaining 99% is generated by the 12 divisions that the company runs (among them, sheet-metal factories, catering services, real-estate management, and product-distribution facilities) -- the same divisions that provide jobs for ex-offenders and recovering addicts. Each of these individual businesses averages an annual return of 13%, which is reinvested in the company. Pioneer is one of the largest self-sustaining nonprofits in the country. But more mind-boggling than the company's financial success is the paradox that is fueling its growth: Pioneer has succeeded as a business by employing society's most marginalized people, many of whom have been deemed unemployable by other companies.

Pioneer measures its success in two ways. It is not enough to be the primary supplier of cargo liners for Boeing, or to run the swank Mezza Café inside the Seattle-based headquarters of Starbucks, or to be the distribution-repackaging center of choice for Hasbro. While serving its corporate customers, Pioneer also serves its internal customers -- the more than 6,000 former criminal offenders and drug addicts who receive Pioneer's help each year, in the form of job training, employment, low-income housing, outpatient counseling, and inpatient treatment. "We've got two bottom lines -- the money and the mission," Burns says. "We give the people who work here a chance to change their lives."

Before joining Pioneer in March 1999, Burns spent 20 years working as a CEO for such traditional companies as Sea Watch International Inc. and Dutch Boy Paints. His roots are not in social service but in the Marine Corps. (He still wears his shoes polished to a high gloss and his hair parted with military precision.) Given his career background and deceptively reserved demeanor, Burns's passion for his new work might surprise some folks. But perhaps it's his establishment-centered background that makes him appreciate what Pioneer accomplishes every day.

"When I first got a call from a headhunter about Pioneer, I wasn't interested," says Burns. "I thought that it was just a bunch of social workers trying to run a business." The headhunter persisted until Burns finally agreed to fly in and meet the management team. "I toured the facilities, and I was impressed," he says. "This was a real business that was putting out real products, and the management team was as good as any that I'd ever worked with.