Chamber U:Lisa Pineiro, SBA Small Business Person of the Year (Membership)

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Join us in hearing from Lisa Pineiro, a North Carolina native who in 2009 was named the SBA Small Business Person Of The Year, introduced President Obama in the East Room at the White House and continued to head WOmen @ Work, a nonprofit that encourages young women to get involved in traditionally male-dominated construction careers.

You won’t want to miss your opportunity to listen to her story, gain some insight and ask questions of one of Durham’s most active and successful female businesswomen.  

  
About Lisa Pineiro:

Like most small business owners, things haven’t been highway-smooth for Lisa Pineiro. But with a mix of hard-wired confidence and a deep appreciation for the talents of working women and men, Pineiro has succeeded in a series of businesses, during two turbulent economic periods in the United States. Her belief in others -- especially young people -- has made her ubiquitous in corporate civic-mindedness nationally and in the Triangle region of North Carolina.

Pineiro, now 35, is president of Technical Services Inc., a privately held electrical training and recruiting firm in Durham, N.C. She founded the company in 1998, after working for a construction staffing firm that simply wasn’t providing the quality of service that Pineiro felt was sufficient.

Born in Ohio, Lisa is the older of two daughters born to Tony and Anne Armen. The family later moved to Charlotte, N.C., where Lisa grew up. Her parents forged her business drive. “My mom is the ultimate women’s libber,” she says. “She’s all about girl power. So that’s how I was raised. My dad, now -- he taught me how to use it.”

Lisa graduated from East Mecklenburg High School in 1992 and was married later that year. The young Army couple soon found themselves deployed to Germany. Trained in cosmetology in high school, Lisa took further training in that country and worked as a hairstylist first off post and later owned her own beauty salon on the military base. She also became a mother, to Darby, one of her four children.

Back in the States, the marriage ended. Lisa needed a good-paying job to support her daughter, and found a job with a construction staffing firm. The work clicked, but the company was badly run. Pineiro wrote a business plan for a similar enterprise, the plan was so well crafted that her parents offered to finance the endeavor. With their $45,000 loan, Pineiro started TSI. She repaid the loan, with interest, in six months. Only later would she learn that her parents raised the cash by taking a second mortgage on their home. She invited a former co-worker to join her as a 10% partner at the inception of TSI but was faced with a huge challenge and a valuable lesson when she became a victim of [the partner’s] fraud, embezzlement, and forgery. A criminal and civil trial ensued and Pineiro fought to keep her business alive.

TSI recovered until 9/11 and the tech bubble burst early in this decade. Building activity tanked. She opened an Edy’s ice cream parlor (and later a second one) to keep TSI afloat. For two years she scooped desserts while raising her daughter and keeping TSI running from the store room of the parlor. During this time, she began dating her husband, Frank Pineiro, a project manager for an electrical contractor. Frank now works at TSI.

The current downturn in the U.S. economy is slowing construction again. But Pineiro may be better insulated this time. She recently acquired RTP Electrical Services, LLC, a company that does the electrical work for national and international technology and pharmaceutical companies in Durham’s Research Triangle Park.

In 2008, Pineiro received Enterprising Women magazine’s National Enterprising Woman of the Year Award, and her firm was named the Greater Durham Business of Excellence. In 2009, she was named North Carolina’s SBA Small Business Person of the Year, in addition, her company is ranked 20^th in the top 100 small businesses of North Carolina.

Locally, Pineiro founded Southern High School WOmen @ Work, a program that encourages girls to enroll in a traditionally male-dominated construction “school-within-a-school” at Southern High. She is a member of the board of the school, called the Construction and Architectural Design Academy. She is vice president of the nonprofit Durham Careers in Construction, a group made up mostly of construction professionals that educates young, at-risk kids in public schools about the wide array of lucrative careers in construction.

The Pineiros live in Durham, where they raise three daughters and a son. 

 About Chamber U: Chamber U is a new, innovative initiative of the Greater Durham Chamber of Commerce designed to address critical topics and to help prepare Chamber members to meet the ever-changing demands of the workplace.  These once-a-week (each Wednesday at 8:30 a.m.) educational opportunities provide members with valuable tools and information they can take back to their businesses and utilize to help them achieve the success they desire. The program provides individualized growth and development opportunities for entry level to executive leadership covering the entire gamut from "nuts & bolts" to "visionary thinking." It’s free and open to all Durham Chamber members.                              

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