By Phoebe Wall Howard
Detroit Free Press
WWR Article Summary (tl;dr) Lori Baker is CEO of TTi Global, a staffing, training and recruiting consulting firm with more than 2,000 employees. She will be honored May 16 in Norway with the 2018 Oslo Business for Peace Award for being a champion of inclusion and gender equality. Baker created an automotive service center and school-to-work training center in Kabul, Afghanistan, that teaches job skills to women as well as men.
Detroit Free Press
Lori Blaker married at 18, gave birth to four boys, and ended up a single mom who dropped out of Oakland (Mich.) University. She supported her family as a typist working for her father’s auto business that began in their Shelby Township basement.
When he died unexpectedly, her life changed forever.
Now, at age 60, Blaker runs a thriving company that operates on five continents. And a team of Nobel peace and economics prize winners have just given Blaker the 2018 Oslo Business for Peace Award, which went to Tesla CEO Elon Musk last year and Virgin Group founder Sir Richard Branson in 2014.
“It’s kind of crazy, isn’t it?” Blaker said. “This award is absolutely unbelievable. It’s overwhelming.”
She is being honored for opening an automotive service center and school-to-work training center in Kabul, Afghanistan, that teaches job skills to women as well as men.
She also opened a general job training center in a rural area outside of Bangalore, India, that graduates hospitality workers, customer service specialists and retail sales clerks. They are two of many projects she leads worldwide to train women in business and create sustainable business opportunities in conflict and non-conflict zones.
“A hungry man is a desperate man. A hungry man is a dangerous man,” Blaker said. “And the plight of women there, in Afghanistan? In order to get aid, the government had to make rape illegal and punishable as a crime. Until then, nobody thought twice.”
She has brought women to stay in her home in Metamora, to live and job-shadow. She created special training programs for Afghan women to learn management skills in an industry that would traditionally bar them.
“Do I watch out for other women in the industry? Damn right, I do. It’s our obligation,” Blaker said.
Then she went on to explain her passion and outspoken commitment.
“The struggles that I faced being in the automotive industry back in the 1980s? There were very few women. It was a real challenge. Being a single mom. Trying to run a business. Traveling internationally and still trying to take care of my boys. When I got my first huge contract, I was walking out of the customer’s office building and I overheard a group of guys to the side. One said, ‘Look at her. She just won a contract, and we all know how she got that one.’ My heart just sunk. I thought, ‘You know? I worked so hard to win this project.’ ”
She paused and then continued, “The comments, the times you’re groped. You wouldn’t believe what it was like back then.”
Blaker is now CEO of TTi Global, a staffing, training and recruiting consulting firm with more than 2,000 employees. She will be honored May 16 in Norway as a champion of inclusion and gender equality.
Her work in automotive training captured the attention of judges, said Dag Dyrdal, managing director of the Oslo-based Business for Peace Foundation, which honors “business leaders who apply their business energy ethically and responsibly, creating economic and societal value.”
Back in the day, no one would’ve expected to see things unfold for Blaker the way they have.
She grew up one of four sisters, “pretty much all tomboys” with her parents, John and Shirley Brzezinski, an aerospace engineer and a stay-at-home mom. She read all the time.
“My whole life, all I ever wanted to do was travel and see the world,” Blaker recalled. “I would read the Sunday newspaper and read all the travel columns and all the stories about these far-off places around the world. I would clip coupons and send away for free brochures. I would put our phone number down and we had travel agents calling the house. It drove my mother crazy.”
All she could think about was leaving her tiny community just east of Rochester and see what was out in the world.
“I married very young and had my first son at 21. I never did get to finish my degree,” Blaker said. “I was helping out my dad and worked in every area of the company. We started developing service manuals for automotive companies, Ford Motor, in particular. My father did the technical writing and I did all the typing on an old typewriter. I used a lot of correction tape.”
When electronics grew more sophisticated, car companies asked the small family business to start providing more manuals and then design training programs for technicians. That was Lori Blaker’s area of expertise, training people.
“At the end of ’91, Dad and Mom went to Florida for the winter. They came back in April and Dad died a few days later. It was pretty freaky,” she said. “If it hadn’t been for my mom and my older sister, helping with the kids, well …. ”
In those days, the company had 20 to30 employees and a few million dollars in revenue. It grew by adding overseas training operations that began with China in 1994. Today, TTi Global is a $79 million operation.
Her clients around the world have called and written notes of congratulations.
Pieter Maritz, general manager of Nissan Middle East in Dubai, has worked with Blaker for three years designing and deploying challenging assignments on tight deadlines. He e-mailed the Free Press that he is not at all surprised by news of the award.
“She literally moves mountains,” Maritz said. “And she is a very humble person, truly.”
Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson, a friend and mentor, has worked on business initiatives with Blaker for a decade. He joked about being nervous if she ever planned to run for the seat he has held for 25 years.
“She takes on these huge efforts and brings them home,” he said. “Last I saw her, she was deeply involved with (the effort to stop) sex trafficking of young girls. And now this award from Oslo.”
In addition to Blaker, the Oslo judges this year honored Edgar Montenegro, CEO of Corpocampo, for creating jobs in production and distribution of acai berries and palm hearts through sustainable farming practices for female-headed households in the Putumayo Jungle in Colombia; and Martin Naughton, founder of Glen Dimplex Group, for negotiating cross-border trade and renewable energy solutions in Ireland.
“Being a CEO, running a business, you can do that and still have a heart,” Blaker said. “So many companies and leaders seem to forget that. It’s our duty as leaders to lead by example.”
Since, her programs have trained hundreds in India and provided support to nearly 100 in Afghanistan. It took two years of “monumental” effort to get set up in the Mideast.
The visible impact on those who benefit strengthens her resolve.
“You wouldn’t believe the women, young and old, I’ve met,” Blaker said. “When you see them look up with amazement in their eyes because you are actually stopping to help them, or talk to them, or ask them about their life _ the smiles you get can just make your day, your week, your life worthwhile.”
While the Nobel Prize carries with it a cash award, the Business for Peace prize does not.
“I tell you, if there was one, I need some additional equipment for the shop in Kabul,” Blaker said, laughing. “We need a wheel alignment kit and car washing equipment.”
