North Lawndale Employment Network

Staff

Executive Director, North Lawndale Employment Network & Chief Executive Officer, Sweet Beginnings, LLC

Brenda Palms Barber, Chief Executive Officer of the North Lawndale Employment Network, an urban workforce development agency, and founding social entrepreneur and CEO of Sweet Beginnings, LLC, a social enterprise using urban beekeeping to create jobs for those with significant barriers to employment, has served as President and CEO of NLEN since its founding in 1999. She launched NLEN’s wholly owned subsidiary social enterprise, Sweet Beginnings, in 2004 to ensure its hardest to employ clients could get jobs and gain a history of employment.

Under Brenda’s leadership, NLEN has grown from two to 48 employees and generates an annual budget in excess of $5.2 million. Today, NLEN serves more than 2,500 people per year. Sweet Beginnings has expanded from a cottage industry to distribution at more than 43 Mariano stores, both O’Hare and Midway airports, and has been awarded one of the first Benefit Chicago loans for social impact businesses.

NLEN has received numerous awards including one of the first MacArthur Foundation Awards for Creative and Effective Institutions (2006) and the prestigious Bank of America Neighborhood Builders Award (2015) and the 2018 Citi Foundation Community Progress Makers and recently the 2019 Google Impact Challenge award. Brenda has raised the national profile of NLEN, Sweet Beginnings, and the plight of people with barriers to employment through extensive media coverage including CNN, the NBC Today Show, CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley, a TEDWomen Documentary, and Lifetime. Brenda has published in the Wall Street Journal and appeared on ABC7 Windy City Live as a 4-Star Chicagoan. In recognition of her innovation and commitment to helping those in need, Congressman Danny Davis awarded Brenda the Cardiss Collins Trailblazer Award (2013).

Brenda is a graduate of Harvard’s Strategic Perspectives in Non-Profit Management program and the Chicago Urban League’s nextOne entrepreneurship program, which included classes at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. She holds a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management from the Spertus Institute in Chicago.

Robert Miller

Chief Operating Officer, Sweet Beginnings

Robert Miller is the Chief Operating Officer Sweet Beginnings LLC. Sweet Beginnings, LLC is a social enterprise and subsidiary of the North Lawndale Employment Network which was created as an earned income strategy to generate jobs for former offenders upon their release from prison and to facilitate their return to the community.

Miller is responsible for profitability and day-to-day operations and the management of Sweet Beginnings LLC playing a heavy role in all elements of the business to include distribution, marketing, sales, supply chain and logistics, and capacity planning. He works closely with the CEO in establishing metrics to manage key elements of Sweet Beginning’s operational performance required to meet both customer and financial expectations.

He brings more than 20 years of management experience in industrial supply distribution as a successful business leader with a track record for designing and implementing initiatives that improve business performance. Areas of expertise include employee development, organizational development, continuous improvement, change management, and leadership development.

His background includes over a 20-year career with W.W. Grainger where he held various operations and management positions. He is also founded Performance Focused Consulting and Coaching, a management consulting firm that helps small and mid-size businesses improve their performance by developing their people and improving their processes.

Miller is an Adjunct Professor at DeVry University where he teaches business management. He holds a MBA with a Human Resources Emphasis from Keller Graduate School of Business.

Alex Garcia

Controller & Director of Operations

Alex Garcia, Director of Finance & Administration, has been serving as NLEN’s Director of Finance since August 2014 beginning as a consultant. Alex has over 10 year of non-profit finance-related experience and has managed dozens of multi-million dollar business for which he provided budget analysis, project proposals and counsel on financial matters associated with company-wide viability.

Alex defines and implements the infrastructure and systems needed to support substantial growth for NLEN through streamlined administrative and financial systems, including accounting, legal, information technology, human resources, and physical infrastructure.

As a member of the Senior Management Team, Alex is involved in strategic planning, evaluation, and professional development initiatives.

Staff

North Lawndale Employment Network

Building. Believing. Beginning.