Minority & Sma
‘City o /
Roses’
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Volume XXXX, Number 38
2010
sp ecia l
coverage issue
hseruer years
or
•^community service
Established in 1970
Committed to Cultural Diversity
w w w .p o rtla n d o b s e rv e r.c o m
Wednesday • September 29. 2010
Passing
Torch
Successful minority
entrepreneurship
with family ties
J ake T homas
T he P ortland O bserver
by
In 1981 a young executive named Sam Brooks
was working for the Oregon Employment Depart­
ment when he decided to take a gamble and open
up his own staffing agency after getting strong
support from a handful of friends.
He took out the money he had saved up for
retirement, which was somewhere between
$ 14,000 and $24,000, and opened up Brooks Tem­
porary Associates, the state’s first minority-owned
employment agency.
Since then, he and his wife, Margaret, have
established the Brooks Staffing as a reputable
company that employs 200 people in five states.
But Sam and Margaret Brooks are preparing to
fade into the backdrop of the company as they
pass the reigns to their daughter, Simone.
Simone Brooks, 35, will be steadily taking over
the day-to-day management of the company dur­
ing the next year and a half. But deciding to take
over the family business was something Brooks
came to reluctantly. .
Starting the business from scratch wasn’t easy,
and getting the company (now called Brooks
Staffing, which is a division of S. Brooks and
Associates) to where it is now took lots of sweat
equity and many long hours.
The company, which graduated from a Small
Business Administration program for minority
businesses years ago, has remained steady even in
the turbulent economy with a strong mix of private
continued
on page 4
photo by
M ark W ashington /T he P ortland O bserver
Northeast Portland s Brooks Temporary Associates is a successful minority-owned company led by Sam Brooks his
wife Margaret (left) and daughter, Simone.