Ask Robert D. Blackwell Sr. '66, how he grew the company of which he is president and CEO — Chicago-based Blackwell Consulting Services — from a four-person office in 1992 into a trailblazing information technology and management consulting firm in just 10 years, and he answers, "Determination, hard work" and something unexpected: "diversity."
“By ‘diversity’,” he explains, “I don’t mean that clichéd spiel about giving some poor disadvantaged kid a break.”
Instead, he’s talking about selecting employees from a worldwide talent pool.
“The computer business is global, so it makes sense to have a global workforce,” he comments. “BCS makes it a point to employ a lot of people — and by ‘a lot,’ I mean more than five — from Russia, Venezuela, India, The Philippines, South Africa and Ireland, for example. Half our employees are female and almost half are African-American.”
Over the almost 40 years Blackwell Sr. has been in the business arena, he says he’s learned that South Africans of all colors are talented negotiators, that natives of Ireland write especially well, that women of all races are excellent project managers, and so on, and he believes in diversity so much that he counts it among his company’s long-term strategies.
Any concerns about stereotyping fall by the wayside when set against these results: Today, BCS employs a talent pool of some 250 people; boasts more than 100 national customers; has offices in Chicago, Boston, Cincinnati, Atlanta and Bloomington, Ill.; and realized net sales of $29 million in 2002.
BCS’s client roster, which includes Aeon Insurance Group, State Farm Insurance, Waste Management, ABN Amro, Cincinnati Public Schools, the University of California and Northeastern University of Boston, is just as diverse. On any given workday, BCS collaborates with perhaps 20 clients to tailor large, complex websites to the needs of each, so successfully that BCS has become the largest minority-owned business in the Midwest.
“I’ve always been motivated,” Blackwell remarks, “but I learned about working hard when I came up against Josephine Fugate, who was my algebra teacher at Wichita State.”
Having come to WSU from Bryn Mawr, Penn., on athletic scholarship, Blackwell was a starting linebacker and center for the football team. “I played football pretty well,” he says, “and I unfortunately had that stereotypical jock attitude — academics, shall we say, came second.”
He quickly found out that Fugate, now WSU dean emeritus of women, didn’t tolerate slipshod course work. “She challenged me,” Blackwell remembers. “She saved me. She was always there for me, at the university and afterwards. If I had no other reason to love WSU, it would be her.” He still returns to Wichita now and then to see Fugate and Jim Rhatigan, now dean emeritus of students.
It was Fugate who paved the way for his first job, as an IBM systems engineer in 1966 — IBM-Kansas’ first African-American employee — which got him in on the ground floor of the computer revolution. She says, “As a liberal arts major, Bob was a perfect fit for the new field of computers.”
In 1970, he was hired away by Ken Orr ’60, who was then-head of computer operations for the state of Kansas and who, as an incoming member of the football team, had known all-Missouri Valley Conference player Blackwell briefly at Wichita State.
Orr, now the founder and president of the Topeka-based Ken Orr Institute, remarks, “Bob may be the world’s best salesman, but beyond that, he may be the world’s best sales manager, which is a much harder job. Selling is talent, but explaining how to sell is tough. He’s the champ.”
When Orr left a couple of years later, IBM invited salesman Blackwell back; he subsequently became a sales manager and then a branch manager, building his expertise in management and marketing there for another 20 years. “That tells you how good he is,” says Orr. “IBM seldom asks anyone who leaves to return.”
And even though the two businessmen compete in the same arena, they remain close friends. “Bob would be successful in any business,” Orr comments. “He’s thorough, his brain is always in high gear, he turns things over in his mind a hundred times. It’s amazing to see him in action.”
Late in his career at IBM, Blackwell’s son, Robert Blackwell Jr., convinced his sales-whiz father to again and finally leave IBM and join him at Bytewise, a computer technology company he had founded. “I was a great techie,” Blackwell Jr. says with a chuckle, “in need of a great salesman.”
Pooling their strengths, they renamed the company Blackwell Consulting Services in 1992 — and forged ahead, building on the contacts Blackwell Sr. had made over the years he had worked in Chicago for IBM. However, by 1995, the waters in the father-and-son talent pool had become a little choppy.
“Both my father and I have strong personalities,” says Blackwell Jr., “and it was difficult to disagree with him — the only man I’ve ever looked up to — so I sold him my half of the company and we split.”
Sort of. Blackwell Sr. moved BCS up a few floors in the building and his self-described serial-entrepreneur son sub-leased the vacated space and promptly started up Electronic Knowledge Interchange, a company which today spiritedly competes with BCS and which recently made the list of top Chicago minority-owned firms. Blackwell Jr. says with a laugh, “This town is big enough for the both of us, but the office wasn’t!”
Today, their relationship thrives, and both companies have successfully weathered the recent economic downturn in the IT field. Says Blackwell Sr., “Since we’re in the same building, we can see each other every day. Our families couldn’t be closer, and I couldn’t be more proud of my son.”
Blackwell Jr. agrees: “My father is my top advisor and still my premier role model.”
Robert Blackwell Sr. continues to prove that a talent-pooled alliance is the ultimate plan for business — and for life.
Blackwell Consulting Services: Business Profile
Stats: 250 employees; 2002 net sales $29 million
Locale: Chicago-based; Remote offices in Atlanta, Ga.; Bloomington, Ill.; Cincinnati, Ohio.
Clients include: Industrial Fortune 1000 companies (50 percent in insurance sector); municipal governments (Chicago Public Schools, parking enforcement); higher education (U.S. Naval Academy, UCLA); utilities industry.
President and CEO: Robert D. Blackwell Sr. ’66, WSU psychology major and starting linebacker. IBM-Kansas’ first African-American employee back when “no one knew anything about computers.” Split in 1992 to found BCS with his son. Also sits on the board of the Illinois Institute of Technology and actively supports the Arts and Business Council, the Joel Hall Dance Company (past president), the Neighborhood Writing Alliance (chairman of the board) and the ETA Creative Arts Foundation (chairman of the board).
Awards: 2001 National Minority Technology Firm of the Year by the United States Department of Commerce.
