Vaughns, Cleopatra 1940–

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Cleopatra Vaughns 1940–

Nurse, businesswoman, and business management consultant

When Cleopatra Vaughns grew up during the 1940s and 1950s, few career opportunities were offered to women. African-American women could expect even less in the way of higher education and advancement in the business world. But Vaughns had an advantage: she grew up with the example of her hardworking mother who managed to conduct a successful career while raising her daughter on her own. Both to please her mother and to prove her own skills and abilities, Vaughns worked hard to overcome barriers and achieve success and respect in her own career.

Born on September 2, 1940, in Houston, Texas, Vaughns was the only child of Ferdinand and Helen Lucas. Her parents divorced when young Cleopatra was a child, and she and her mother moved to Oakland, California. Ferdinand Lucas was a barber who not only owned his own barber shop, but also ran several eating and entertainment establishments, called nightclubs. Helen Lucas worked as an interior decorator for several major department stores, designing the artistic displays that were meant to attract customers and encourage them to buy the stores’ merchandise. She was a college graduate and taught her daughter to place great importance on schoolwork. Vaughns adored and respected her mother, and one way she showed it was to pay close attention to her studies at her Catholic co-ed boarding school, St. Peter Claver Academy in Texas.

She graduated when she was only fifteen years old with grades high enough to qualify for a full scholarship to a private college. However, when she went with her mother for an interview at the school, the administrators were surprised and dismayed to see that the excellent student they had accepted had brown skin. They withdrew the scholarship, giving Vaughns one of her first bitter lessons in racial discrimination.

Vaughns did not abandon her plans for higher education. With her mother’s continued encouragement, she applied and was accepted in a three-year program of study at the Providence College of Nursing. After graduating from Providence, Vaughns took her first job as a registered nurse at Camp Timberlock, a California Girl Scout camp. The job had sounded appealing until the city-bred Vaughns learned that she was expected to sleep in the woods with the campers. She declined, and spent the summer living in the camp infirmary.

Vaughns continued her education at the University of California at Berkeley, where she earned a bachelor’s of science degree in nursing education. While attending the University of California at Berkeley, she worked as a private duty nurse and as a house-call screening nurse, speaking to patients on the phone, helping those she could and setting up house visits from doctors for those who needed them. Though she could do the work ably, she did not find it challenging or rewarding. She had entered the field of nursing chiefly because it was one of the occupations thought to be acceptable for women at the time. However, she began to think that her real skills lay elsewhere—in the world of business.

At a Glance…

Born Cleopatra Lucas on September 2, 1940, in Houston, Texas; married (divorced); children: Phillip. Education: Providence College of Nursing, RN, 1958; University of California at Berkley, BS, nursing education, 1960.

Career: Private duty nursing; screening nurse for house calls; The Ivy Shoppe, owner and operator apparel store; Blue Shield of California, claims examiner; Blue Shield of California, claims processing manager; Blue Shield of California, sales and marketing manager; Blue Shield of California, government relations manager; Blue Shield of California, marketing relations manager; Blue Shield of California, community relations manager; Vaughns and Vaughns Associates, management and community relations consultant.

Selected memberships: International Museum of Women, board of directors; San Francisco Giants Community Fund; San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau; The National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, national president, 1999-2003.

Selected awards: Sojourner Truth Award, 1990; United Way Shepherd Award, 1991; Woman Who Could Be President, San Francisco League of Women Voters, 2000; Cleopatra Vaughns Day proclaimed by mayor of San Francisco, 2000; Soroptimists Woman of Distinction Award, 2004.

Addresses: 6114 La Salle Avenue, Suite 289, Oakland, CA 94611.

Inspired by her mother’s experiences working in department stores, and aided by her new husband, who was a Certified Public Accountant, Vaughns opened her own business in Oakland, a clothing store called the Ivy Shoppe. She and her husband ran their “ready-to-wear” business for six years. The Ivy Shoppe was very successful, and Vaughns had ambitions to expand the business when city development brought bad news. A new rapid transit system would be built in the area, forcing Vaughns’ shop to move. It is often hard for small businesses to survive such displacement, and Vaughns found herself once again looking for a job as a nurse.

While looking through employment advertisements, she saw that Blue Shield of California, a healthcare insurance organization, was seeking nurses to work examining claims. Claims are like bills for medical expenses, sent to an insurance company by doctors’ offices and hospitals. The company evaluates the claim and decides if it will pay the bill. Vaughns was hired as a claims examiner, and she hoped that when she showed the company how well she worked that she would be promoted to higher positions.

However, as she well knew from her early experience of losing her scholarship, sometimes it takes more than hard work to achieve success. Sometimes it takes white skin. Vaughns worked for Blue Sheild of California for thirty years, often feeling that it was only her resilience, that is, her persistence and her ability to adjust to difficult situations, that kept her there. She was promoted to supervisor of the Claims Processing Unit, but though she worked hard and held several responsible positions with the company, she received no more promotions to a higher position.

After working as manager of Claims Processing, Vaughns moved into the Sales and Marketing section of the company, then into Government Relations where she became the link between company policy and government regulations. She then worked in Marketing Relations and finally in Community Relations. However, these job changes were not promotions, but what are called “lateral” or sideways moves, where she moved into a similar job in another department.

Through her years of working for Blue Shield of California, Vaughns learned how deeply racial bias can be embedded in corporate institutions. Even though she had a fairly secure position with the company, Vaughns felt that she had to fight for each gain she made, and she strongly believed that this was because she was African American. She observed many white employees rise to higher positions much more easily than she had been able to do. She had learned the value of hard work from her mother, but her own experience had taught her that hard work did not always bring respect. In fact, as she began to work in professional organizations, charitable organizations, and clubs, she often felt she was more respected outside the workplace that in it.

During the 1990s, Blue Shield of California underwent a major reorganization, and Vaughns’ position was eliminated. Rather than move to another city for a job within the corporation, she retired. However, she continued to show the same energy and enjoyment of hard work that had marked her business career. She established her own company, Vaughns and Vaughns Associates, to help and advise companies in the areas of business management and community relations. Motivated by her work in government and community relations while involved in healthcare services, she became involved in several local business and government groups. In the late 1990s she became the first woman chair of the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau, and in 2000 Mayor Willie Brown of San Francisco named her to the board of directors of the Municipal Transportation Agency, where she became chair in 2004.

Vaughns also became involved in the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (NANBPWC). The NANBPWC was formed during the mid 1930s by black businesswomen Emma Odessa Young and Ollie Chin Porter, who both belonged to the New York Club of Business and Professional Women. Many cities in the United States had clubs where black women in business could meet to gain support and share business opportunities. In 1934 Young had the idea of uniting the many regional clubs in one national organization which could have more influence, and in 1935, Porter began the work of reaching out to clubs across the nation. By the beginning of the twenty-first century there were more than 200 Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs, not only in the United States, but also in the Caribbean and in the African nations of Ghana and Nigeria. NANBPWC still provide a place for black women professionals to meet and support each other, and they also organize education and leadership programs and perform many other social services. Vaughns served as national president of the NANBPWC from 1999 to 2003. Vaughns continues to search for ways to encourage and support other black women as they navigate their own ways through the business world.