BART Connects: How BART's Small Business Support Services uplifts one trailblazing local business owner
Sandra Escalante pictured above at El Cerrito Plaza Station.
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In the construction world, small business owner Sandra Escalante said she is often referred to as a “unicorn.”
“I’m a woman, a minority, and a member of the LGBT community,” she said recently. “It’s very difficult just to be an employee in the construction world. A business owner? Ha.”
Escalante owns Laner Electric Supply Company, a wholesale distributor of electrical and lighting tools and supplies headquartered in a 16,000-square-foot warehouse in Richmond, Calif. The company is one of 670 small businesses supported by BART’s Small Business Support Services (SBSS), a program operated by BART’s Office of Civil Rights. SBSS provides a variety of free services to small businesses owned by women, minorities, disabled veterans, and members of the LGBT community, that are looking to bid on BART construction contracts or require technical assistance on active BART construction contracts.
Escalante happens to meet every single one of the criteria for participation in SBSS. In addition to working with the program, she also served for multiple years on BART’s Business Advisory Council.
In her interview with BART, Escalante confessed that owning a small business “is not easy,” and all the more so if you’re a woman or minority.
"Programs like SBSS are the beginning of changing mindsets,” she said. “If you don’t change mindsets, nothing will change materially."
Escalante’s path to entrepreneurship has been long, winding, and full of challenges. After leaving an engineering program in the Philippines when she was young, Escalante joined the military. When they found out she was gay, they kicked her out. Escalante then went on to work for the U.S. Postal Service, walking up and down the hills of San Francisco “with a mail bag that was bigger than me.” In time, she landed at a construction management firm as a mail clerk working for $10 an hour. Little by little, she climbed up the industry ladder.
Throughout her career, Escalante said she’s “had to break a lot of glass ceilings." She can share numerous anecdotes of people in the room discriminating against her. When she was helming major companies, she was sometimes mistaken for the secretary, she said. Once, an administrator refused to order her business cards because “only men get them, not women."
Everything she’s experienced in her many decades of experience has only fueled her internal fire. It’s also compelled her to “pay it forward.” In addition to serving on a number of business advisory councils, including BuildOUT California, an LGBT industry association, Escalante is a hands-on mentor for up-and-coming entrepreneurs, many of whom are treading a path trod by Sandra herself.
It's a lot of time and effort, but she believes sharing her knowledge and experience is important.
“If there are people out there that are not just looking out for themselves, the good comes back to them,” Escalante said of her mentoring efforts. “It’s karma. Don’t do things for yourself, and the rest will fall into place.”
Before she took over Laner Electric, Escalante held a series of executive positions in the construction industry. Though she has decades of experience under her belt, Escalante said she’s never stopped learning, especially in her current role as the CEO and president of a small business.
She said BART’s SBSS program, especially its pre-award administrator, Paul Pendergast, has supported her in a variety of ways, including editing capability statements (promotional/marketing documents that advertise a company and its services); advising on ways to secure funding; helping her craft requests for proposals (documents that announce and describe a project to solicit bids); and offering technical support. Pendergast even hired Escalante a coach to help her conquer her stage fright ahead of speaking engagements.
Pendergast said he hasn’t “met many entrepreneurs who have donated as much time as Escalante to advocating for all small businesses.”
“With Sandra, it is always about lifting ‘all boats’ equally,” he said.
Escalante knows well the challenges of owning and operating a business as a woman and a minority. But she’s never given up, even after she experienced a debilitating stroke and heart attack in 2006 that continues to have lasting effects on her.
Her responsibility to her employees keeps her going despite the setbacks, she said, and she’s learned to ask for help when she needs it, including by reaching out to services like SBSS.
"[SBSS] is actually making a difference,” she said in closing. “I hope BART continues to expand it and keeps taking chances on small businesses.”