Empowering others is part of Baranco’s success
Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Lisa R. Schoolcraft Staff writer
Being a small-business owner in a down economy is nothing new to Juanita Baranco. That’s how she got her start in Atlanta.
Baranco, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Baranco Automotive Group, got her start in the car business when she and her husband, Gregory, purchased the former Smith-Johnson Pontiac dealership in East Point in 1978, just in time for a recession.
The deal reached with General Motors Corp. called for the Barancos to move the dealership out of East Point and build a new facility in Decatur.
“It was impossible,” she said. “I don’t understand to this day how we pulled it off.”
MARTA’s move to buy the former East Point dealership site for its rail line helped, Baranco said.
A Louisiana native, Baranco and her husband moved to Atlanta to buy the dealership. She saw it as a way to gain economic parity for African-Americans.
“I still have a passion for women business owners and African-American business owners,” she said.
Arlethia Perry-Johnson, Kennesaw State University’s special assistant to the president for external affairs, knows that firsthand.
“I really learned civic service from her and what that should look like,” said Perry-Johnson, who met Baranco in 1994 when Perry-Johnson was interviewing for a job with the Board of Regents in Atlanta. Baranco was a board member at the time.
Baranco’s list of civic and community service is long.
She has served as a director of Cox Radio since 2003 and is a member of the board of directors of Southern Co. and the board of trustees of Clark Atlanta University.
Baranco has also served on the boards of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the John H. Harland Co.
Baranco was the first African-American woman to serve as chairman of the Board of Regents.
“She’s very empowering and motivating,” Perry-Johnson said. “And she’s very supportive of women in the workplace.”
Baranco has been a mentor to countless people, particularly women, through the years, said Perry-Johnson.
“Juanita says to women, ‘You don’t deserve to sit at the table if you aren’t willing to make change,’ ” Perry Johnson said. “I’ve tried to live by that. You don’t deserve the opportunity if you are not going to affect positive change.”
Becky Blalock, senior vice president and chief information officer of Southern Co., met Baranco in 1997, when Baranco was on a panel to discuss leadership for the Leadership Atlanta class.
She told Blalock’s class that leadership is not given, it is taken.
“Don’t wait for someone to make it happen. Leadership is about figuring out how to make it happen. It was very empowering to hear her say those words,” Blalock recalled.
Baranco is willing to make change and stand up to make things around her better, Blalock said.
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