GWC Foundation board member Rachel Ramirez, a successful entrepreneur, preaches the value of giving back
Growing up on a small farm in eastern Washington, Rachel Ramirez recalls telling her parents she wanted to go to college.
“Their idea of me going to college was, ‘Oh that’s great!’” recalls Ramirez, “but it was a surprise because I was the first in my family to want to go to college. I don’t think they understood how important it was to me. They certainly didn’t object, but their assumption was that I’d stay close to home, get a job, and get married.”
Today, Ramirez is a married mother of four children — and a longtime successful Huntington Beach entrepreneur. She runs Performance Excellence Partners (PEP), a multi-million-dollar business whose headquarters are around the corner from Huntington Beach City Hall.
Ramirez also is a product of a community college. And these days, she’s a key connector of business, civic, and educational leaders as well as a big supporter of Golden West College.
“My heart is all about giving back, and it’s all about making a difference,” says Ramirez, who sits on the board of directors of the GWC Foundation.
Ramirez is CEO and president of PEP, which contracts with federal clients — including the U.S. Department of Labor and Department of Energy, among many other agencies — to provide operational support, program/project management, budgeting, and other services.
In addition to her work with the GWC Foundation, Ramirez has, for the past two years, run the Robert Mayer Leadership Academy, a program of the Huntington Beach Chamber of Commerce that a few months ago relocated its offices to the GWC campus.
The nine-month academy develops leadership skills and builds a network of support and opportunities for top-level community leaders.
In fact, GWC President Tim McGrath graduated last year from the Robert Mayer Leadership Academy, now in its 16th year. McGrath returned to this year’s academy, which began in September 2019, as an alumnus to help facilitate a three-day retreat in Big Bear.
Ramirez also went through the academy a few years ago. She took over the academy when its prior director retired.
This year, 23 students are in the academy, which stresses the values of compassion, accountability, vision, personal ethics, commitment, courage, congruence, service, and trusteeship.
“These values are lacking in many of our public leaders today,” Ramirez says, “and I think one of the greatest privileges I have is to work with people who are committed to developing these qualities in themselves.”
She adds: “If I can be just a tiny part of the reason why local government, businesses, and community leaders operate more effectively and with integrity for the purpose of better serving their community, then I’m thrilled to be a part of that. I think it’s an important mission.”
WORKING STUDENT
Ramirez spent the last two years of high school in Anchorage, Alaska, where she also took community college classes. She then moved to San Diego, where she attended another community college.
“I’ve been a working student my whole life,” said Ramirez, who went on to earn her bachelor’s degree in psychology from San Diego State University and a master’s degree in industrial-organizational psychology from Cal State Long Beach, in 1997.
Her education gave her a keen understanding of the psychology of human behavior and motivation in workplace settings, which helped her enormously in her role as a leader in workforce development. It paved the way for her successful career as a contractor for federal agencies.
Two years after earning her master’s degree, while doing contract work for the Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., where she applied quality and continuous improvement principles to the agency, Ramirez incorporated PEP. She worked for the DOL until 2002.
She got married at age 30 and she and her husband, Jaime, relocated to California when she was pregnant with their first son, Ethan, in December 2002. They have lived in Huntington Beach since then. Ethan now is 16. He joins brother Jameson, 15, brother Cooper, 11, and sister Ariana, 6, who Ramirez and her husband adopted from China when she was 2.
Seven years ago, Jaime Ramirez joined his wife at PEP as vice president. Rachel describes this as “a pivotal time because, by being able to share the responsibility of the company, I was able to step out into the community and look for ways to give back.”
“For a while, I was running the company from home. I remember the day when one of my employees lifted the lid on the crockpot to see what we were having for dinner. That’s when my husband said, ‘That’s it, everybody out. You need to grow up and get an office.’”
PEP now has some 40 full-time employees, seven of whom work out of company headquarters in Huntington Beach. Ramirez thrives on activity, “I like crazy busy,” she says with a laugh, “but it has to be crazy busy with a purpose.”
She started volunteering with her community and then turned her attention to her kids’ high school as they got older. She joined the HB Chamber of Commerce seven years ago and the GWC Foundation two years ago. Board members of the GWC Foundation meet every other month.
“My experience at community colleges and state schools helped me understand the importance of quality, affordable education for everyone. And that’s the mission of the Golden West College Foundation. They do some incredible stuff with scholarships.”
“I really take to heart the idea that when much is given, much is expected.”
