Every year, outstanding women in the community are honored by Girls, Inc. of Chattanooga with the “Unbought and Unbossed” Award. The Award’s name comes from Shirley Chisolm who coined the phrase and was the first African American woman to run for the United States presidency. The award-winners are chosen and presented by young women involved in Girls Inc. The presentations demonstrate not only the achievements of the awardees but also the hopes and dreams of these high school students. Here are the first in our series publishing their presentations.

Written by Catherine Lemon, Girls Inc. High School Student

Ola Phipps is the owner of self-made business, Lady Bug Extermination Company. Notably, she is the only woman owner of an exterminating company in the state of Tennessee. Recently, she has celebrated the 25^th anniversary of the start of her company. She has won twelve awards; she has been on the board of the Newton Center for Child development for over twenty years; she is a member of the Chattanooga Pest Control Association, of which she served as president and received an award at the end of her term. Also, Lady Bug has been complaint-free with the Better Business Bureau for fifteen years, since it became a member. Beyond all these awards and recognitions, Ola Phipps is the happiest person. She says there is nothing she would rather be doing than killing bugs.

I have never met anyone as happy with herself as Ola is. She is so happy and proud of what she does, it is written all over her. Actually, she has a deal with everyone: if you see Ola not wearing a ladybug, she will give you one hundred dollars. I highly doubt anyone will win that one. She has over three thousand ladybugs.

Ola’s self-determination began as she grew up in Mississippi picking cotton. She saw other kids not having to pick cotton, so she knew cotton was not the only option for her. She wanted something better, and she knew she could get it. Ola attributes her ambition to the things her grandmother taught her. She told her, “If you are going to do something, do it well. Anybody can do anything, but not everyone can do everything well.” As a child, her first career goals were to be either a movie star or a mortician. Her reasoning: there will always be television and people will always be dying. So, at sixteen Ola told her grandmother she would no longer be picking cotton; she ran away to pursue something better, which she did. She found herself a job, which eventually brought her to Chattanooga, where she managed a pizza parlor. It was in the pizza parlor that Ola was introduced to extermination as a business.

Ola started working for a local extermination company. After a few years, she took the exam and obtained an extermination license. She asked her boss for a raise, but he said no. In response, Ola told him she will start her own business. He asked her, “What makes you think you could open a pest control company and succeed when no other woman has done it before; especially a black woman?” Six months after she started Lady Bug Extermination, the company she had previously worked for went out of business.

Ola had tremendous success. She never had to borrow any money at all to start Lady Bug. All of her previous clients switched their support to Ola and her new business (meet Ola once and you would know why). Despite her successes, however, she had obstacles. Since extermination is perceived as a “man’s job,” unfamiliar people would be skeptical towards allowing a woman to do business with them. After one try, though, every single customer came back.

To Ola, “Unbought and Unbossed” means to earn everything independently. This absolutely defines Ola Phipps. She says, “Everything I have earned, I have earned it on my own.” There is nothing she wants to do if she does not do it well. She says that if she could do it all over again, she would only do it sooner. She believes she has gone above and beyond the goals she had as a child. She is not just extremely successful in her career, but she is so admirably content with her life, and it is because of this that she is UnBought and UnBossed.

Written by Morgan McDaniel, Girls Inc. High School Student

Today, I am here to honor Deborah Levine. She was born in Bermuda with her parents and her two brothers. She was a well-behaved and intelligent student. Ms. Levine developed a passion for dance at very young age and started dancing lessons around the age of four. She also took up the violin. In Bermuda, a violin was $5 a year to rent, and it came with free music lessons. She continued playing up until her teenage years. When Ms. Levine was eight, her family moved to Long Island, New York. She began school in America at a second grade level. The other kids made fun of her quite often because of her British dialect, as well as the way she spelled common words. After graduating high school, Ms. Levine enrolled in college. She has spent 9 years overall in various colleges around the world. Ms. Levine has two masters; one in Urban Planning and Policy, the other in Judaic Studies.

She was first hired for four years as a communicator between people of different faiths in Chicago. Ms. Levine then worked for the Black-Jewish Dialogue, where she helped with communications between African-Americans and Jews because of the bad dynamics in the 1980’s. She also helped with the Say No to Hate Collision, which dealt with helping survivors of the Oklahoma bombing cope with their problems. Ms. Levine did this for 5 years. She trained with the FBI and was responsible for protecting the Jewish people.

In 2000 Ms. Levine started the Women Council of Diversity. It was a non-profit organization that brought women of different faiths together to help understand one another’s different perspectives. A year later, she started her business called Communication Prose Ink., which specialized in training people in leadership, communications and damage skills. One great idea after another came along, and she thought she had more to offer. So she started her own online journal called The American Diversity Report. She has 35 different writers across the country, some that she hasn’t even met. She says that by having various writers, “gives her journal flavor of what’s happening around the world in different perspectives.”

When I asked Ms. Levine what Unbought and Unbossed meant to her she said, “You have to train yourself to be creative, daring, and experimental. It’s difficult to have creative freedom when someone who has their own ideas pays your salary.” She continued to say, “Everyone has the potential to be unbought and unbossed; many just settle for less.”
Ms. Levine inspires many, but most still don’t understand how to truly be creative and successful. They think they have set limitations. Ms. Levine suggests keeping a journal and writing down everything that happens to you that day. It improves writing skills and helps relieve stress. She says that, “If something bad happens to you, yeah, you can climb under the covers for 24 hours. But get back up and picture yourself a mess, and then victorious. And then ask yourself, okay what’s next?