Dorothy Kret
president of dk advocates
Dorothy Kret is president of dk Advocates, a company that has provided motivated, well-trained and qualified employees to businesses in Arizona for more than 20 years.
Born in Newark, N.J., Kret’s family came to Phoenix when she was 3 years old. Later, she recalls her mother watching TV coverage of the 1967 Newark race riot, turning to Kret and saying, “That building that’s burning is the hospital where you were born.” Kret lived in the Phoenix area until she attended the University of Arizona in 1972.
She was the oldest of six children in a political family. “Dad was in state legislature and Mom never met a committee she didn’t like,” Kret recalls. “Mom was a leader in the PTA for 20 years and ultimately received an honorary degree.”
Kret’s father, David B. Kret, served in the state Senate until he died in 1979. He wrote legislation that created special education and gifted education programs in the state.
Kret recalls there were always political people around.
“They talked about issues. They disagreed passionately and stayed friends. Much of that honest, passionate discussion, absent personal attacks has been lost,” she says.
A neighbor in the Phoenix area affected Kret’s choice of careers.
“Claude Sr., who lived at the end of our street, died of muscular dystrophy. Shortly thereafter, his two sons exhibited symptoms. Rusty, who I considered a fourth brother, began walking with a limp and by high school was in an electric wheel chair,” she says.
Kret remembers a discussion the two of them had regarding the motion picture “2001: A Space Odyssey” when a third person joined in. But the wheelchair made the new arrival uncomfortable and he wouldn’t look at Rusty. Kret got upset and told him, “Why don’t you ask him; his legs don’t work but his head’s OK?”
That experience would make her keenly aware of issues surrounding people with disabilities.
Kret’s first job in Tucson was working in a bookstore on Fourth Avenue. She went on to become head of the Fourth Avenue Merchants Association where she founded the Fourth Avenue Street Fair. She also met her husband Michael Lex in the process. From there, Kret moved to the Beacon Foundation finding employment for clients in their sheltered workshop. There she would have “her epiphany.”
“I went out to a prospective employer who manufactured computer keyboards to ask about jobs that people with disabilities could perform,” she remembers. “He opened his Rolodex to ‘H’ for handicapped, pulled out 30 business cards from social service agencies and threw them at me asking how the heck he should know!”
Kret was humiliated because he was right.
“I sat in my car realizing I was making the same mistake as everyone else. I knew I had to approach this work from a business perspective,” she said.
Six weeks later, Kret returned to thank the person who had thrown the business cards and wound up placing six employees with a job coach to replace 200,000 defective springs in their keyboards.
“They gave us a small table in the hallway. After a week they told us that we were staying,” she said. “He could tell when we were there because our people were so focused on their work they changed the atmosphere on the manufacturing floor.”
Kret started her consulting company in 1983. She acted as a job broker — just her and an assistant helping place employees with disabilities.
After two years in a consulting role, the business moved from sheltered workshops to community-based placements — groups of people working onsite with job coaches. At this point, state officials switched her contract from consulting to service provider.
“Within six months, I had more than a hundred clients and a staff of 12 in Phoenix,” she said.
To succeed Kret advises, “You need a clear vision of how you fit into the world as you know it and how you would like it to be. You need to model the behaviors you want to elicit. Staff pays more attention to what you do and say than what you tell them to do.”
In her business in the current economy Kret prescribes optimism: “Our job developers must remember that often we serve clients at a low point. We have to dwell on what people can do; not what they can’t and place people in careers that fit their skills and their lives.”
Among the skills Kret values most: “Juggling — keeping all the plates in the air. You need to continually monitor cash and staffing. You have to balance people struggling with personal problems with deadlines and clients waiting to be served.”
Kret cherishes her work.
“I’ve met so many incredibly courageous people, people with disabilities who don’t let the disability get them down, who choose to take care of themselves.” At the same time she cautions: “People romanticize owning their own company. There’s so much you can’t control.”
If anything keeps her up at night, it’s cash flow and the economy.
“We made promises when things were good. We have to make numbers and outcomes in a lot of our programs and it hasn’t been easy.”
If you’re considering your own business Kret advises, “Be strong and have a solid family relationship. Michael and the kids keep me grounded and often do without me during the hours I spend working at home, at night and on the weekends.”
Kret is inspired by the people they serve. When they are out of crisis, “I get to see people succeed that are living up to their potential. That’s why I do what I do, why we do what we do, what keeps us going.”
Kret wants you to know that their mission is to help people become employable and employed. For employers, dk Advocates is serious about quality control.
“We make sure the person we refer can do the job and fit your culture — someone who will care about your company as much as you do.”
Originally published in Inside Tucson Business on March 05, 2010 and written by Gary Hirsh.