Marisol Romany: Hello everyone. We are here with Paula Sullivan from the Wright Resource Group, who provides professional development for businesses and completed the Goldman Sachs 10K program 2019.
Miss Sullivan, we are delighted to have you here today to share your success story with our board of directors. Please tell us about your experience with Dallas College from being part of the Goldman Sachs program to being awarded a contract by workforce development to train small and diverse businesses, to working with other Goldman Sachs alumni. How has this impacted your accompany?
Paula Sullivan: Hello, Ms. Romany. Thank you so much for allowing Wright Resource Group to be showcased today to share with you our journey with the Dallas College. We are so honored to be able to share this story. It's been a long journey, but a wonderful journey. A journey that has taught us how to work within institutions to grow our business, but at the same time help others and build relationships.
When we started this journey, it was a journey that entailed working with the individual campuses, doing some professional development, asking to come in and be Panel, be panelist, to come in and talk to students to help entrepreneurs who were on an entrepreneurial journey or in a class. And as we grew, we built relationships. And that's what it's been all about.
Fortunately enough, we had the opportunity to build relationships and ultimately build, build a significant contract. That has been quite rewarding to our business. It all started when we were asked to come in and do training for companies, which is what we do.
Wright Resource group is a workforce cultivating company that really focuses on looking at businesses, cultivate workforce development through recruitment and retaining employees and all of that is wrapped around training. And so we were asked often to come in and train companies who needed leadership development training. And we were so honored.
But what we kept asking is how would these companies paying for this training? Well, we've learned that they're paying them through different state funding opportunities that is available to businesses in the state of Texas. And we worked that and that's where the magic happened. We realized we had companies, the college had the contracts and the training, the funding opportunities. And we could bring that all together to make a win-win for both the college, for the company and ultimately for Wright Resource Group. And so we were very proud to ask that question and then get a contract. Our very first contract with Dallas College was quite significant. We were extremely happy, but I do emphasize that it was a journey. We built relations with the workforce development team and most recently with Tim Samuel is in the Ascend Institute where we are able to do just that, utilize our training where we are now a training provider through Dallas College. And we also were able to bring businesses to the college to help them get the training that they so need. This all evolved as we were building, continuing to build relationships.
And then came Goldman Sachs. What a wonderful opportunity under Cristin Thomas. That opportunity took our business to the next level. But oh, by the way, we graduated in 2019, December 2019, and we had to pivot in 2020 because of COVID. But what we learned as a business going through Goldman Sachs is the reason why we were able to sustain and grow from COVID. And that has really helped us because we had to pivot, we had to go online, we had to change so much the learning that we received and how a business should run even in turbulent times was absolutely phenomenal. I'm here to say that I don't only have business partners at Dallas College. I have friends. Over the past 13 years, it has been a wonderful journey that I hope continues for the next 20 years and beyond. And oh, by the way, I hope that this message helps someone else. The things that they need to realize is they have to be patient. They must persevere. They have to plan. They have to be proactive. And most of all you have to build relationships. And I promise those are winning components to gaining grand opportunities and contract opportunities with Dallas College.
Marisol Romany: Thank you so much. Ms. Sullivan, thank you for sharing your business experience with us. At Dallas College we are committed to providing equal access to business opportunities, too small and diverse businesses in support of the economic development of our community. We wish you and the Wright Resource Group much success in future endeavors. Thank you.