Video: Black Woman, Determined Entrepreneur 0:50:30 -

Martha Williams was honored for starting a 660,000 square foot plastics plant in southwest Chicago. She grew up in the Robert Taylor public housing project. She was poor and got a minimum wage job in a suburb. She road a bus two-hours each way to her job at a plastics plant. She studied plastics at a library, went to work early, and stayed late to talk to molders and other floor workers to learn the trade. She worked her way up to become plant manager where she ran into the glass ceiling.

In 1991 she was the first female owner of a plastics company. One of her prized products is a plastic ornament storage box. When sales turned down and her partner pulled out, the company was forced into bankruptcy.

She found a new partner and bought out the bankrupt company. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1998, got treatment, and continued. She was determined to stay in the city because when she was young she had to ride the bus two hours each way to work in the suburbs. She met a community organizer and agreed to take an industrial park with a $20,000,000 clean up liability. With $13,000,000 in low interest loans and $14,000,000 in tax incentive financing, she started the plant all over again with job training programs.