Dr Sally Rabi, Founder & CEO of Intellectus Education, Top 10 Women CEOs of 2022 Profile

Nina Martin
CEO
Graham, Inc.


Dr Sally Rabi, Founder & CEO of Intellectus Education, Top 10 Women CEOs of 2022

“Building A Bright Future”

Graham, Inc. was founded in 1984 as a woman-owned company by the former owner, Ruth Graham, to provide organizations with the qualified office professionals and Sign Language Interpreters they need. When Nina Martin joined the company in 2012, she began as a Recruiter using her previous experience as a corporate training instructor who taught downsized AT&T employees how to get a new jobs. What she found at Graham was a small business with a big heart. Graham has always believed in growing their people to maximize their potential. Nina quickly worked to serve customers from two angles – requesters who needed professionals and jobseekers who needed good work.

Alongside the dedicated team at Graham, Nina quickly became an expert at fulfilling recruitment, Sign Language, and staffing needs. Using her in-depth knowledge of career transition training to help improve job seeker resumes, coach workers for interviews, and successfully place people in jobs, Nina was promoted to Regional Manager, then Executive Vice President of Operations, and eventually CEO. Six years later, in 2018, when Nina became the majority owner of the company alongside the CFO co-owner, she retook the helm as a woman CEO, leading Graham back to its roots as a hard-working woman-owned small business.

Nina’s story represents the epitome of “promotion from within,” which is a testament to the former owners’ belief in maximizing each person’s leadership potential. Now heading the entire company with an incredible team of workers, contractors, temporary employees, and Sign Language Interpreters, Nina believes Graham can continue its strong tradition of finding the right person for the right job every time. Whether the client is a local small business, a large government agency, or an international non-governmental organization, Graham recruits people with compassion and competence, removing the headache of hiring clients. Nina is committed to fostering exceptional customer experience so that every requester and every worker feels valued and cared for from the first interaction with Graham. Nina is deeply committed to reading and learning about good business leadership and business development from great thinkers. She feels honored every day to lead her team of Graham professionals. She supports her people with the ideology that “family always comes first” – the company’s programs and services can only be delivered successfully if the team is functioning well with the life encouragement and moral support they need outside the office.

Nina is a lifelong learner who constantly reads books by great thinkers and encourages her staff to read and apply their knowledge. She is a true believer in what John Maxwell described as seeing the “seed of success inside others” with a desire to help them reach their potential. For her team at Graham, Nina is humbled by the realization that the future of Graham is a future that her people share. “You and our company share a future!” is something Nina regularly states in All-Hands meetings and individual conversations. For this reason, Nina eagerly strives to work one-on-one with each of her team members to guide their career roadmap so that the shared future will be bright and beautiful.

One of its most significant achievements of Graham is that they were able to shift seamlessly when everything went virtual into having the workers telework remotely for clients. Nina and her team saw that many clients, particularly in the Sign Language interpreting industry, were willing to receive services such as Sign Language interpreting remotely via virtual platforms. For example, it used to be automatically expected that all Sign Language interpreting services for a meeting would take place in person at the site of the meeting. Now, Graham has adapted to allow virtual interpreting so that communication access can be provided online for Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing clients. So many times in the past, if an Interpreter were not available to come in person, the Deaf client would receive no service and be left without communication access.

The future of Graham is inspiring as they just started recruiting IT professionals for NASA, serving a small business partner of theirs that oversees a significant contract worth upwards of $400 million US dollars. On the Sign Language side, right at this moment, Graham is about to start serving a large international corporation with their Sign Language services. “We will be establishing a Coaching and Training program for new Sign Language Interpreters just starting out in the field of interpreting,” elucidates Nina. “For USAID, we are currently gathering resumes of displaced Ukrainians intending to place them in jobs that would help rebuild their country through USAID projects.” WL


Company

Graham, Inc.

Management

Nina Martin
CEO
Graham, Inc.

Description

Our team provides state, federal, and international government contract management, as well as consulting for international development and surge staffing and temp needs. As an economically disadvantaged woman owned 8(a) small business, holding GSA schedules and blanket purchase orders for various agencies, we stand ready to serve your project.


Women CEOs Special Magazine