Corporate Family Solutions Fills Expanding Niche
One year out of college and trying to enter IBM’s management training program in 1968, Marguerite Sallee was told “No” because she was a woman, newly married and likely to quit soon and have babies.
Today, Sallee is president and chief executive of Nashville-based Corporate Family Solutions, one of the nation’s top players in the fastest-growing segment of the child-care industry.
Founded in 1987 with Bob Keeshan (television’s Captain Kangaroo) and former U.S. Education Secretary and Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander, the company develops and manages workplace child-care centers for businesses and corporations. Its clients include Sears, Toyota, Turner Broadcasting, Campbell Soup, Texas Instruments, Carnival Cruise Lines, banks and hospitals.
“I have always felt that the struggle with child care was an underappreciated struggle, and that women have suffered in silence and carried the burden by themselves for too many years,” said Sallee, who had to find her own solutions as a divorced mother of two.
“It’s exciting for me to see the business community appreciate the contributions that mothers can make in the work force and the willingness to share in that responsibility.”
Sallee was drafted to preach that message and oversee the company’s mission. But it was a conversation between Alexander and Keeshan that sparked the business. Keeshan had just visited a workplace child-care center in Virginia and was bubbling over with enthusiasm when he came to Tennessee to give a speech in 1986, as Alexander’s term as governor was coming to a close.
“I’ll never forget it,” chuckled the 50-year-old Sallee, who served in Alexander’s Cabinet as human services commissioner. “One day the governor said to me, ‘How would you like to go into business with Captain Kangaroo?’ ”
It was the furthest thing from her mind at the time. “I had worked for years in the public sector on behalf of families, children and child health. Yet, this did seem like an idea whose time had come,” she said.
Known in the beginning as Corporate Child Care, the firm lined up local clients. Then Sallee hit the road to pitch the idea to the nation’s corporate executives.
The reception was cold.
“Their mothers hadn’t worked and, for the most part, their wives did not work,” Sallee recalled. “They were totally oblivious to what it takes to get two or three children ready for school or child care in the morning and get to work on time and be unruffled and productive and focused.”
Today, doors don’t slam shut in her face as often. And companies call Sallee instead of vice versa. The reason, she says, is that many of today’s chief executives now have daughters who are working mothers themselves.
“Suddenly, the problem is real. . . . Today’s corporate decision-makers are more aware of the stresses and strains of the average working parent trying to piece together solutions to make it work.”
The company hit pay dirt in 1989 when Marriott signed on as a minority shareholder. Corporate Child Care would serve Marriott food service clients across the country, giving it a national foothold.
By 1994, the business had $30 million in revenue. That jumped to $50 million the following year when the company joined with Morristown, N.J.-based Resources for Child Care Management in a merger that Sallee called “the Disney/ABC equivalent in our industry.” The merger bolstered their clientele to 78 programs in 23 states and prompted a new company name for an expanding mission.
“Corporate Family Solutions reflects how this niche has evolved over the years and the new partnership I see today between employers and their employees,” Sallee said. “Employers see more and more that helping their employees manage work and families successfully creates a win-win and that there is a return on an investment in these programs.”
Under CFS’ approach, companies subsidize child-care programs by providing the facility and equipment and paying CFS a fee to manage the program. Each center is not-for-profit, and the staffing costs are paid for by parents who use it.
Services have expanded to workplace kindergartens, before- and after-school care, summer camps, get-well centers for mildly ill children and backup care for snow days, holidays and emergencies. There are family resource centers offering books, videotapes, parenting seminars and other support services for working parents.
It’s also exploring elder care for employees with aging parents. “The extended family is less and less available to help, so again corporate America is having to bridge the gap,” Sallee said.
