What is your background? Where did you grow up? Tell us about you. Well, I was born in Des Moines, Iowa, and was adopted as an infant. My adoptive family was here in San Diego, and I grew up in Normal Heights with 5 siblings, 4 of which were also adopted. My mother was a fun person that was always laughing and not taking life too seriously. My father served in the Navy and later became a court reporter. He and I were very close and he was the anchor of our family. My childhood was fairly typical to most kids during the 50s and 60s. We shared rooms, relied on hand me downs, everyone contributed to household chores and we were expected to have good manners. My parents didn’t go to college and none of my siblings ever attended.
How did you begin your career? With so few women in the industry, how did you get started in the factoring business? How did Primary Funding get started? College wasn’t necessarily on my mind, and then I got pregnant and got married at 20. My marriage didn’t work out and at age 22 I found myself a single mother and looking for another job. My best friend Candy Lanza was working at Riveria Finance as an Account Executive and told me about an opening as a filing clerk. I got the job and they had me filing and doing collection calls. Riviera Finance was a Factoring Company based out of Redondo Beach at the time. I worked at Riveria for 9 years and worked my way up to Vice President and Local Manager. I was always good with numbers and enjoyed helping people so factoring was the perfect career for me. Riviera had decided to pull out of the San Diego market, but one of their executives had seen a lot in me and wanted to take a chance. Tony Kinninger, my boss, was interested in starting his own factoring company and wanted me to join him. However, I needed a college degree to appease the investors. So I started night school at National University and got a degree in Accounting. My daughter, Diane was 11 so I had a lot to juggle during this time!
The hard work and lack of sleep during night school paid off, and San Diego Commercial Finance was founded in 1983. I continued this partnership with Tony until 1995 when I decided to go off on my own. We split the portfolio of clients evenly between us. Primary Funding was off and running with 20 clients and my Operations Manager. There weren’t many women in the Factoring industry back then. In all of the industry conferences I attended, I was typically 1 of only 4 women and none of the other women were founders. It was so interesting, but I grew up with 4 brothers and was sort of a tomboy as a kid, so I was comfortable around men and I stood out. People remembered me and it helped as they would think of me and send me factoring opportunities that didn’t work for them. It was a huge advantage in my mind.
You had a massive stroke in 2012, how did this affect your business and what are you doing today? How do you feel about the business today? Yes, I suffered an ischemic stroke on October, 14, 2012. It affected the entire right side of my body and I was not able to form words at all. It was devastating to me and my family. My second daughter, Kelly, was in college and I was divorced from her father. So my two daughters and my son-in-law Jason Severson helped me literally get back on my feet. While I recovered I wasn’t able to run the business and it needed a leader. Luckily my son-in-law had been in banking for 16 years and was able to understand the business and stepped in temporarily at first to make sure things were still operating smoothly. I was improving, but not fast enough to go back to work any time soon. We had to make a decision on whether to find a new leader to run the business or to sell it. I didn’t want to sell the business. I had casual conversations with Jason about joining PFC a year or so before. Fortunately, Jason agreed to take on the role of President and run the business for me. He officially left his job at California Bank & Trust in March of 2013. It was a relief that Primary Funding would still be operating within my family. I had high hopes of recovering enough to come back to run the business with Jason. Unfortunately, I still haven’t been able to get back to working. I miss it every day as I loved what I did and the businesses I was able to help. So many people that had started out like me that had built their businesses on their own. I loved the stories that they shared with me on how they got to where they were. It was my calling in life and I loved it.
Today I live on my own here in San Diego, close to my two grandchildren and have many friends that keep me busy, along with my family. I would love to travel more and will be working on that once we get past the Covid restrictions.
