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There are many things that Chicago is synonymous with. For example presidential elect Barack Obama, sports figures such as Michael Jordan, the Sears Tower, and the famous deep dish pizza.

The high level of diversification that Chicago has to offer contributes to Chicago’s distinction as being the most balanced economy in the United States. Regarded as the second largest business district in the U.S., it is no wonder why it would attract the likes of Cheryl Mayberry McKissack, Founder and CEO of Nia Enterprises. Nia itself means purpose in Swahili, it is one of the seven principles of Kwanzaa.

Chicago creates the perfect atmosphere for Nia Enterprises, an online publisher that also offers research and marketing services since being founded in January 2000. Cheryl McKissack is a well established business women and an Associate Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Our interview was delayed as she has taken full advantage of the opportunity to attend the Democratic National Convention. You can hear the excitement in her voice as she talks about her experience and the interview soon takes an unexpected twist. The roles suddenly reverse and as the new interviewee, I find myself talking about my background! As I explain the reason I started businessempiremag.com McKissack eagerly gives sound business advice. The trend of learning from our conversation lingers throughout the entire interview even as the focus shifts towards her business experiences.

McKissack is a native of Seattle, Washington, but has spent a large majority of her adulthood in Chicago. After receiving her undergraduate degree from Seattle University in two and a half years she took a trip to Europe, originally planning to attend law school after her return. The need for money changed McKissack’s plans causing her to start her corporate career with IBM in Seattle. She had originally planned to only stay long enough to get herself squared away financially, but ended up spending 14 years with IBM, starting in administrative positions before moving to sales and marketing. “It was one of the best training grounds,” says McKissack. “Sometimes I tell entrepreneurs that the best thing for them to do may be to work in a corporate environment. It is not necessarily because they will learn everything you need to be a successful entrepreneur but companies such as IBM, train you well to be able to handle situations you will face. Moreover, you are learning on someone else’s dime—yet you should be able to provide value in return for your company.” During her time with IBM, McKissack received valuable insight into setting achievable goals, organization skills, how to convey sale ideas, and how to track information during IBM’s six to eight month training period.

Even though McKissack was happy with her IBM career but wanting to explore other entrepreneurial opportunities, McKissack left IBM and co-founded One Moment in Time with another IBM Colleague. The company, One Moment in Time allowed women to affordably rent evening wear for special occasions.

In her corporate career she has served as the Worldwide Senior Vice President and General Manager for Open Port Technology and was also the Vice President for the America’s as a founding member of the Network Systems Division for 3Com, formerly known as U.S. Robotics. Within 5 years McKissack had helped grow sales from 100 million to 2 billion, before the company was eventually sold for just over 7 billion.

Spending time with two entrepreneurial companies McKissack knew that she did not want to go back into a corporate career but wanted a venture that focused on her core interest of being technology based and involved in collecting data. However, it was the first time in her life that McKissack decided to combine her professional career with a community focus. Even with few people of African American descent being involved with technology based ventures at the time, McKissack gave birth to Nia Enterprises.

After speaking with several colleagues that worked in corporate environments about the exchange of data, McKissack found that many companies didn’t have a systematic approach on how to bring new products to an ethnic community. Moreover, larger research companies made her aware of the difficulty they had retrieving consumer driven information from ethnic communities. The companies openly admitted that they often had new products and services that were not fully integrated into the ethnic market. Being aware of the need McKissack started a website called NiaOnline that looked to provide information of value to its target audience, African American women and their families. The first year was spent building a quality customer relationship before NiaOnline looked to have its readers give data feedback. McKissack and her business partner originally used their own money to fund the business before seeking venture capitalists, bank financing and strategic partners. They had the opportunity to be involved with Springboard, an organization focused on women entrepreneurs. Springboard selects a small handful of businesses to present their concept to venture capitalists. Out of more than four hundred business concepts, McKissack was chosen to present NiaOnline, along with twenty four others who pitched their business concepts. The presentation opportunity brought about a positive response which included suggestions on how to further develop their business concept and interest from some of the venture capitalists.  With a strategic alliance now in place, her first client ended up being a multi-year contract with Daimler Chrysler.

Eight years later the business concept has changed dramatically to accommodate the changes within the industry. When Nia Enterprises first started, very little research was done through the internet. Now, 35 percent of all research is done online with expectations of that number being over 50 percent within the next five to ten years. McKissack has also had to abide by new laws that were put into effect about ways in which she could market her business. “With the way travel expenses are going up being able to do research online is very convenient,” McKissack said. “However it is not a total substitute for traditional research and depending on the project I often suggest for individuals to do a mix or choose one or the other.” Just a few years ago Nia Enterprises made the decision to outsource their programming efforts to GMI (Global Market Institute), a large global research company. This decision to partner with GMI has allowed Nia Enterprises to use state of the art technology tools, enhancing the capability to take on any project.

With more original online content focused on African American women than anyone else, McKissack decided to take that content and build NiaPedia, which is the largest free online library with content for African American women of its kind. McKissack’s newest product is the Nia lifestyle guides, a series of daily lifestyle guides for women of color. To distinguish Nia Enterprises, McKissack decided to build the largest Consumer Advisory Panel with over 150,000 African American household members. “As an entrepreneur you have to keep evolving. You have to watch what is going on in the market place, determine where your products and services fit in, and be ready to adapt when things change—because things will change. You should focus on the things that your company does well,” says McKissack.

Even with the great success in her business endeavors thus far, McKissack still takes advantage of every opportunity she can to give back to her community. She uses the example of how she helped raise $20 million in venture funding for one of the technology ventures, to help me understand how to judge expectations. McKissack has been a professor on entrepreneurship at the Kellogg School of Management since 2005, after being convinced by director Steven Rogers. Along with teaching McKissack also speaks at conferences and has sat on corporate boards for nine years. When it comes to success she says, “First and foremost, be passionate about what you want to do! You have to be passionate and be certain about what you want to do because there are going to be ups and downs. You have to take that passion at different points and allow it to get you to the next level.” Even though she has achieved many accomplishments, McKissack feels that learning to re-invent her-self is a key to success. She actually continues to learn through her efforts in teaching from the business ideas her students present for class projects.

But settling into retirement is far from the plans that McKissack can see for herself in the future. She takes great pride being involved with civic organizations that compliment her interests. She just recently joined the University of Chicago’s hospital board because she was interested in health care and how it is effects ethnic communities. “I’m not done yet, I still have a few good years left,” says McKissack. “I haven’t finished a lot of the things I want to do. I have a very high curiosity level that will keep me going so I don’t know what my future holds.”

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