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Agent's mentoring helps youths get 'career ready'

Wednesday, January 15, 2003

By Donald I. Hammonds, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Call Grace Robinson a pioneer.

Call her determined.

	Grace Robinson, an insurance agent, helps young people through Tomorrow's Future, a mentoring, entrepreneurial and job training program she founded in 1992. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

But above all else, call her compassionate.

When Robinson started her business 21 years ago, she became the first African-American woman in Western Pennsylvania to operate a State Farm Insurance agency.

It wasn't easy, said Robinson, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh and a resident of Churchill, but she stuck to her guns despite the hurdles.

Yet it's her work on behalf of teens and young adults that makes her proudest.

Robinson is the founder of Tomorrow's Future, a mentoring, entrepreneurial and job training program.

More than 200 teens have gone through the six-week program that meets once a week after school at Point Park College. The program, which began in 1992, includes sessions on communications, business writing, dressing for success and public speaking. PNC Bank also presents a workshop on managing money.

For developing this program and making young people "career ready," Robinson is one of seven Community Champions being honored with a Jefferson Award, considered the Nobel Prize of volunteerism. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, AT&T Broadband and Eat'n Park, with help from the United Way, sponsor Community Champions, a program of the national Jefferson Awards.

The public and workers in the nonprofit community nominated the 47 people who became Community Champions, featured in public service ads last year in the PG and AT&T cable stations. From that number, judges chose the Jefferson Award recipients. They will receive a medallion and $1,000 for the nonprofit organization of their choice. At 7 p.m. Jan. 23, they will be recognized at a reception and ceremony in Carnegie Music Hall, Oakland.

"She's a real role model for the children," said Mary E. Jones of Monroeville, who nominated Robinson for recognition. "Children will ask her questions and things that they won't discuss with their parents. They can always depend on Mrs. Robinson."

Jason Rush, a junior at Penn Hills High School, agrees. He completed the program last year and values the business contacts he made. He hopes to start his own business and go into real estate.

"Mrs. Robinson was really helpful and really into what she was doing," Rush said. "A lot of people aren't like that, but -- wow -- Miss Grace -- I was just so impressed that somebody like her would devote so much time to us. She was there every week. She was the first one there and was really very understanding."

Jamie Bennett of Stanton Heights is another program graduate and a junior computer science major at Pitt. Her contact with Robinson didn't end when she completed Tomorrow's Future.

"Mrs. Robinson has always been there for me, even though I'm in my third year of college. She's sort of a surrogate mother for me. I was extremely shy when I went into the program, and I'm much better at public speaking than I ever was before. She helped me find out who I was."

Robinson said that when she celebrated her 10th anniversary in business, "I asked myself what would I do now. My first thought was to give back to the community and do it by way of youth. That's my life's work. I developed a passion for working with youth."

She said the need for Tomorrow's Future was obvious.

"They come just so unprepared for job interviews, and they have low self-esteem -- which is a big part of the problem. I just knew I had to do something."

She said she learned compassion for others at an early age while living in Jackson, Ala.

"My neighbor was a little girl who was a special needs child. She became one of my best girlfriends, but seeing her struggle and how the other kids would tease her, I just always wanted to help her in whatever way I could," Robinson said.

These days, she helps others through Tomorrow's Future. Each year, she selects a program graduate to work as an intern in her Shadyside office. She wants to make their entry into the business world easier than it was for her.

"It was very, very difficult," she said of her early days. When you're a woman, people "are always questioning your credibility. 'Are you really able to handle this?' "

What really bothered her was that almost everyone ignored the fact that it was she, not her husband, who was starting the business.

"They wanted to know what your husband did, and he had to sign off on everything," she said of her husband, Daniel, a program specialist with Allegheny County's Children, Youth and Families. "It was very tough because even though you were the one who would be responsible for paying everything, it was your husband they were concerned about."

The couple has two adult daughters, Danielle and Vachelle Robinson.

Robinson was determined to make her business a success.

She's been chosen by State Farm as a Merit Agent, a Millionaire Club qualifier and a Legion of Honor Agent. The state Department of Community and Economic Development recognized her as a Minority Business Pioneer last year.

In 2001, the Minority Enterprise Corp. nominated her as the Minority Entrepreneur of the Year during their 12th Annual Pillar Awards Celebration. And as one of the founding members of the African American Chamber of Commerce, she is its vice chair.

As though work, family and Tomorrow's Future were not enough to fill Robinson's days, she has been involved in so many community and volunteer projects that it would take pages to complete the list.

She has served on the board of directors of a number of organizations, including the PNC Bank Urban Advisory Board, National Association of Women Business Owners, the Greater Pittsburgh Chamber of Commerce, the Greater Pittsburgh Commission for Women and the Women Power Committee.

Currently, she is on the boards of the African American Entrepreneur Forum, the Urban League of Pittsburgh and the YWCA of Pittsburgh.

How has she managed to do it all?

"Finding one's passion has to be one of the greatest gifts that one can have," she said.

Duquesne Light is donating $1,000 to Tomorrow's Future in honor of Robinson.