Discipline. Excellence. Innovation.

During the recession in 1988, I was 27 years old with $5,000 in the bank. I didn’t have a 401K retirement plan, own a home, or have a rock-solid game plan to acquire either. But I took a chance on myself and resigned my job at an Atlanta-based architectural firm and became a freelance graphic designer. Two years later, while the economy continued to tank, my former co-worker and I partnered to start Jones Worley Design, a strategic marketing communications and signage design firm in Atlanta. 

Although my family was bewildered, my parents had nourished me with the tools I needed to be successful. A proud “Grady baby,” I grew up on a dirt road in Ellenwood, Georgia, in DeKalb County. I graduated from Georgia State University with a degree in graphic design, riding two buses and a train to and from school when MARTA fares were only 15 cents.

Growing up, my parents instilled family values in me and my three sisters, values that made us faith-filled. My mother taught us love and how to make simple things grand experiences. My dad was a maverick — a man of many talents. As a child, I watched him work for hours building custom furniture for our home and for his clients. He used his creativity and skills as a master carpenter to build and restore beautiful furniture to perfection. I would often ride with him when he delivered the finished product to his clients and saw the joy in their faces and in his. That’s the feeling I wanted to give to my clients that money could not buy.

As an artist, I sold my first five paintings at age 15. With that entrepreneurial spirit, I knew that my creative talent and foundational values to be disciplined, to provide excellent work for clients, and to continue to be innovative by always growing and expanding my skills would be the North Star that would guide my career. I also learned that those values would withstand changes in politics and the socioeconomic climate like the ones women and people of color are facing today.

Two of my many mentors taught me that early on. One was Asa Hilliard, an esteemed Pan-Africanist educator, historian, and psychologist at Georgia State. The other was my uncle Dr. Major Jones, who was president of Gammon Theological Seminary at the Atlanta University Center and who attended Boston University with Martin Luther King, Jr. They both impressed upon me that being a woman and an African American might open doors of opportunity, but to keep those doors open would require my discipline to be reliable and perform beyond client expectations, the drive to be excellent by becoming a subject matter-expert in my field, and the ability to branch out and expand my services by being innovative.

In 1992, one of my first major projects I was awarded after opening Jones Worley was for Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to provide wayfinding strategy and signage design for Concourse E.  Shortly thereafter, my firm was selected to be part of the six-member team tasked with branding the Centennial Olympic Games. Our work also included creating experiential streetscape graphics for multiple street corridors, designing wayfinding and signage design for six Olympic stadiums, designing a one-of-a-kind look for an Olympic poster, and documenting the final EEOP report showcasing the number of small and minority-owned businesses that participated in planning the Games for the first time in its history.

By the time the Games were over, Jones Worley had been awarded more than 30 contracts and partnered with global architectural and engineering firms. More aviation and transit marketing communications contracts followed, as did wayfinding and signage design for transportation, civic, corporate and government offices, public spaces, and mixed-use developments.

In 2004, MARTA gave my firm 54 days to name and brand the first 100-percent transit payment system conversion in North America – the Breeze Card. That singular project positioned Jones Worley to brand and guide the implementation of transit payment systems for eight other transportation authorities throughout the country – more than any marketing communications firm in the US. Currently, working with the Jacksonville Transportation Authority, Jones Worley is guiding the naming and branding of the first autonomous vehicles in revenue service.

However, owning a small business hasn’t been easy. There have been countless sleepless nights, contract opportunities not awarded, times when outstanding payables exceeded our receivables, and downsizing some aspects of the agency while expanding or creating others.

Yet, as a young entrepreneur, the business acumen I adopted from my relationships with seasoned business owners and executive leaders like Beverly Tyler, Oscar Harris, Herman J. Russell, Robert Brown, Karen Duckett, Ingrid Sanders-Jones, Roger Neuenschwander, Xernona Clayton and Michael Leven helped me grow professionally and navigate challenges I faced along the way.

No one gets where they’re going by themselves. If those people had not helped me build a portfolio, I wouldn’t have had one to open other doors. I feel like I’m standing on their shoulders because they taught me lessons and gave me opportunities when others would not. It is by the grace of God that they were in my life.

Perseverance has been a constant. As most business owners know, you must be resilient when going through the hard times to be able to experience and celebrate the victories. For Jones Worley that has meant networking, building and sustaining relationships, being laser-focused on providing excellent client service, and having the flexibility to be innovative for 35 years. I have watched us grow from infancy to an industry leader in transportation with a portfolio of 35 airports and airlines and 32 transit authorities from California to Florida.

Our clients also include global-reaching Fortune 500 corporations, educational institutions, entertainment venues, hotels, healthcare, and much more. I bought out my partner more than 20 years ago but kept “Worley” as part of the name because it was part of our unblemished brand.

Jones Worley has been shaken by economic uncertainty, shifts in industry trends, a world pandemic, and a retreat in practices and principles that helped level the playing field for women and people of color. But our relationships and reputation keep us in the game.

When I talk to other entrepreneurs and young people I mentor who wonder where they will go from here I tell them, forward.  Keep moving forward. To paraphrase the words of Martin Luther King, “If you can’t fly, run. If you can’t run, walk.  If you can’t walk, crawl. But whatever you do, keep moving forward.”