CAREERS
‘City
of
Roses’
Volume XLVI • Number 12
special edition
Established in 1970
www.portlandobserver.com
Wednesday • March 22, 2017
Growing
Committed to Cultural Diversity
the
Brand
Champions founder
opens vocational school
C hrista M C i ntyre
t he p ortland o bserver
Jamaal Lane’s new office is
spic and span clean with a fresh
coat of paint. Confidently seated
behind a sleek desk with a framed
drawing of black activist and phi-
losopher Dr. Cornel West resting
on the floor, Lane has been too
busy to hang the portrait. But “Ev-
ery day I come into my office,”
he explains, “that picture tells me
why I’m here.”
A long time barber and the
founder of Portland’s upscale
Champions Barbershop, Lane is
growing his brand by opening
Champion’s Barbering Institute,
Inc. (CBI), the only Portland
school dedicated solely to teach-
ing the craft of being a barber,
located at 424 N.E. Killingsworth
St.
The institute opened in Decem-
ber inside an office with plenty of
sunlight, well appointed fixtures,
updated wood features and two
dramatic rows of cushioned black
barber chairs.
Down the hall, all the signs of a
school in session are underway as
four young men sit inside a class-
room watching a projected video
on the art of cutting facial hair.
Shiny new laptops are propped
by
C hrista M C i ntyre /
t he p ortland o bserver
Jamaal Lane, a long time
Portland barber and founder
of Champions Barbershop is
growing his brand by opening
the Champions Barbering Insti-
tute (CBI), a vocational school
for training barbers at 424 N.E.
Killingsworth St.
photo by
open on their desks. A row of
mannequin heads line a shelf: One
with soft 1940’s pin curls, another
with a zigzag fade and a few more
with epic Samson length hair.
The students started classes in
January and in a few more weeks
will start using their skills in real
life, with real customers. After
giving 575 cuts, they can apply
for a state license and start their
career.
Over the last 14 years, Lane has
been sought out for his barbering
abilities. He started off trimming
his own hair and then friends’
hair before taking it up for a liv-
ing in his 20s. He attended the
Beau Monde College of Hair De-
sign, and became the first barber
to work under the well-respected
Portland legend, Reggie Brown.
At Reggie’s Barbershop, Lane
learned the ins and outs of the
trade for five years before he and
a friend opened Champions Bar-
bershop in 2009, a tasteful hybrid
between the old school barber and
a modern, convenience hair salon.
Both Champions and Lane’s
career thrived. But as the need to
employ more barbers grew, Lane
witnessed a trend: Too many of
his prospective hires had invested
a significant amount of money and
time into earning their state bar-
bering license, but weren’t fully
prepared with the right skills to
enter the work place.
“They didn’t get hands-on train-
ing,” he said. “I noticed a watering
down in the industry and schools
weren’t setting the students up for
success.”
C ontinued on p age 4