Libby Williams spends her days making sure Santa Monica’s economic engine is fully fueled.
Williams, 36, is the westside regional manager for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit organization whose mission is to attract and retain businesses in Los Angeles County. In addition to her full-time job with the LAEDC, Williams also volunteers for the Westside Economic Collaborative, a regional nonprofit group within Los Angeles County that seeks to further the economic interests of local municipalities such as Santa Monica.
Her work helped facilitate Yahoo’s move to Santa Monica. Yahoo signed a 10-year lease to occupy 229,728 square feet of office space in the Colorado Center, which will be renamed Yahoo Center. The $100 million deal with complex owner Equity Office is the largest and most expensive for Santa Monica in recent years. Yahoo is expected to begin its expansion into its new offices in August, a big boost to the local economy.
Williams was born and raised in Riverside. Her mother, Deborah, gave birth to Williams when she was 16. Seeking a career in clothing design, Williams’ mother attended the Fashion Institute in Los Angeles, which left Williams to be raised mostly by her grandmother, Betty. Williams’ father, Gary, was not in the picture much during Williams’ upbringing. He was in and out of jail, mostly for problems related to substance abuse.
Williams attended Riverside Christian Day School until after eighth grade, when she told her grandmother she wanted to go to a public school “where they have a real football team, not just a flag-football team.” She graduated from high school in 1986 and attended Cal State Long Beach. She did her undergraduate work in black studies and political science, and completed her bachelor’s degree in 1991. She proceeded directly to graduate school, where she obtained her master’s degree in public administration, also from Cal State Long Beach, in 1993.
Williams was a Coro fellow, a prestigious one-year program that fostered her leadership skills and enabled her to take part in nine internships related to public administration. Several California leaders, including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, also have been Coro fellows.
Williams has been married for three years to Tyri Williams, who attended the University of California at Santa Cruz and has a background in sociology.
The Williamses bought a home in December in Inglewood. They have no children yet, but Williams said that is likely in the plans.
Here, the Daily Press caught up with Williams to talk business.
How did you get where you are today? “Going to private school gave me a good foundation for high school. I was involve with everything. I was in student government. I was a cheerleader. I wanted to be a physical therapist, so I started writing for a local newspaper and covering all of the high school sports, the soccer games, the baseball games. Every sport. I had to learn about them so I could write about them. I was glad to do it.
“From there I intended to go to UCLA. I took a tour on campus and thought, ‘This is a little city.’ I felt overwhelmed. It was-n’t for me. Cal State Long Beach was a back-up plan. It had the same amount of students, but if felt more comfortable. I thought, this was where I want to go. My mom was a little disappointed. She wanted me to be a Bruin. But Long Beach was the best thing for me. It was a great educational experience, more so outside the classroom than inside.
“I planned on being a physical therapist, but when I took my first biology class in college, we covered all the biology I learned in high school in about the first two days. Then I thought about college physics, and realized I was going to need to re-evaluate. I knew I was not destined to be in the natural sciences. I started thinking sociology, or political science.
“My mother realized I should be involved with business, but I never realized it until later. I received my undergraduate degree in black studies with a minor in political science. The economy was bad, and I thought, ‘What can I do to defer these student loans?’ I liked public policy, so I went to grad school. It’s pretty well-respected now, but I still wish I had an MBA. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the public or the private sector, a business background and understanding is important in everything you do. Some of these nonprofit groups, they have such great ideas, but a lot of times they fail because the people running them don’t have a good business acumen.
“The Coro program is what helped me realize how LA works. It’s what got me into economic development. It’s set up like nine mini internships. There is one in community service, one in nonprofit organizations, one in the private sector, one in an election campaign, one in government, even one in media.
“The media internship was pretty cool. I was paired up with a staff writer at a newspaper in Long Beach. I would follow him to the scene, see how he writes his articles. Then I would sit with the editors and be one of the four people to figure out which articles would be above the fold. I’d look at the paper the next day and be like ‘I chose that one.’ That was cool.
“My government assignment was with the LA County Sheriff’s Office. It was really interesting. We were supposed to go through and investigate what was going on... this was in the early ’90s when everything was going on (with the riots) and morale was low in the department, and we had to make a presentation to the sheriff’s office and let them know what we thought about it.”
“Our office has a staff of about 35.”
What do you do? “I manage the westside business development for the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. My territory is Santa Monica, Malibu, Beverly Hills, Century City, West Hollywood, West LA. There are nine regions. This region is the most prosperous and the most visible. Our San Gabriel region has 26 cities, the largest.
“After school, I worked for a small business magazine at the mayor’s office for the LA development company, which was kind of like the LA development bank, a non-traditional lender. Our focus was on urban businesses and trying to help them. I did that for a year before I was hired by the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp. I’ve been there almost 10 years now. I thought I would be there three or four years, but that’s not how it’s turned out. I have a lot of friends. I love my friends. But I think of all of us, I’m the only one who stayed in one place. All of the rest of them have moved around in their jobs.
“My job is to not only to attract businesses to Los Angeles, but also make sure they stay here. A lot of companies are moving to Arizona, so I try to help them get over their obstacles so they stay here. I do what I can to make sure the companies here are seamless, smooth, as they go through the processes.
“The LAEDC gets about $500,000 a year from the board of supervisors. We also receive money from our investors. We are a membership-based organization, so the majors help us out, like B of A, Wells Fargo. Santa Monica, actually, is a member of the LAEDC, so they pay annual dues, too. That’s because Santa Monica understands that if the whole economy is doing well then, they, too, are doing well.
It’s the trickle-down effect. We also have property near the 105 Freeway which we sell and brings us money. The LAX Courthouse, that land used to be ours. The county sold it to us, then we sold it back. We’re able to live off some of the interest with the LAEDC’s portfolio from its real estate.
“We have a great consulting end that has been building up and brings us revenue. One of the things we recently did was look at Wal-Mart and how it affects the local economy. We did it, not from the union’s perspective, just in terms of the money and jobs it was bringing in. The study looked favorable to Wal-Mart, which, of course, no one wanted to hear. We did a study on the airport, and UCLA, how its research programs affect businesses in California.
“We work a lot with the schools. SMC is one of the best. SMC staff can meet with companies, find out what their needs are, and quickly turn around a program that will get their students jobs. It’s one of the best schools in the area for that. We love that about them. They have programs over there that are industry targeted. They have a great health care program. If you have someone interested in health care, you can start them off in a job and introduce them to the career ladder, and that’s what we’re looking at. How can we get people up the ladder so when a spot opens they can fill it.
“We took over the World Trade Association about four or five years back, so that gives us tie ins with the international business community.
Tell us about your husband. “Tyri worked at the LA County office of education. He taught the kids on probation or just out of juvenile hall. He always says, ‘These kids aren’t bad, they’re just the ones that got caught.’
“But he always wanted to be a fire-fighter, since he was 3, so now he’s on with Compton and he’s training to be a good paramedic, doing his internship in Pasadena. He’ll be done with that in June, and he’ll probably get on with Compton.
“We just bought a house in December. It’s nice and spacious. Three bathrooms. Jets in the bathtub. A modern kitchen. We have a downstairs office with our desks right next to each other. It’s really cute. But we’re still doing a lot of work on the house, so I go to Home Depot all the time. I know the guys in the paint department by name. I really do.
“We have no kids. Yet. My mom’s always asking us, ‘Are you ready yet?’ And we keep telling her, ‘We’re getting there, we’re getting there.’
“I’d like to have one and adopt two more. He’d rather have two and adopt one. Part of the reason we want to have kids and adopt is because we really want to raise a loving family, something that neither of us always had.
“I hope we have a boy first, because he really wants a boy, and I want two adopted girls and give them a wonderful home, maybe between the ages of 3 and 6. When I was a kid I played with Barbie dolls and always pretended Barbie had an adopted daughter. I wasn’t adopted. I just liked to pretend Barbie and Ken had an adopted daughter. That’s just the way I always thought. I never thought about having my own child. My mother couldn’t figure it out.”
How did you and your husband meet? “We met in 1997, four years before we started dating, at the Long Beach Jazz Festival. I go with the same people every year. We’ve been doing that for about 10 years now. We meet in the morning, sit and talk and catch up on each other’s lives. One year this woman’s like, ‘I’m going to bring my son out here,’ and we’re like, ‘That’s OK, bring your son.’ The next year she brought her son. He was cool, blended in well our whole group. It was a great time. Every time we met one of us were always in a relationship. The first year, he was married and I was in a relationship. The next year, he was getting a divorce and I was married. The year after that, I was getting a divorce and he was married, then the year after that, I was divorced and he was getting out of a relationship.
“We hung out at the Jazz Fest, and we started talking on the phone. I called to invite him to an event in West Hollywood, and he was playing me off like I was one of his boys. I knew he was with his girlfriend, and I invited her, too, but I didn’t like how he was playing me off, so we got off the phone and he called me later, and I told him to never call me again. So, he e-mailed me. He broke up with the girl a week later, and that’s how it started.”
How did he propose to you? “We were at the Playboy Jazz Festival in Pasadena. Both of our family and friends were there. They were between sets on stage, and one of the organizers said they were going to call prize winners, and they called ‘Elizabeth Thompson.’ Everyone calls me Libby, and I was thinking, ‘Elizabeth Thompson is such a generic name, there’s a million of them out there, they’re not calling me.’ Now I can see in hindsight that he was getting nervous because I wasn’t approaching the stage. They called my name again, but I refused to go on stage, thinking it wasn’t me. There were a lot of people there. Then my girlfriend grabbed my hand and said, ‘You know what? I’m going to walk you up here, and whatever you get, I get half.’ She dragged me to the front of the stage, and when the organizer said, ‘Elizabeth Thompson?’ and he moved back and Tyri came on stage. That’s when I knew what was happening. He got on his knees, said a lot of nice things to me, none of which I could hear because I was screaming I was so excited.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 16, 2005. Read the original PDF.