Powerhouse Beverly Robertson: Elevating Memphis at Every Turn

With a background as an educator, corporate executive, entrepreneur and nonprofit director, Beverly Robertson has delved into every facet of Memphis’ workforce. She rose from a part-time reservations agent at Holiday Inn to become the company’s Director of Internal and External Communications. When the hotel chain moved its headquarters to Atlanta, Beverly and husband Howard realized the time was right to transfer their knowledge to their own company, TRUST Marketing & Communications. Not long after, she was asked to take on leadership of the National Civil Rights Museum, where she spent 18 years and made a dramatic positive impact on the institution. This rich and distinct range of experiences made Beverly uniquely qualified to take on her newest role as interim CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, the advocacy and leadership organization for the Memphis business community. Meet this week’s accomplished FACE of Memphis, Beverly Robertson!

Meet the former President of the National Civil Rights Museum and the current Interim CEO of the Greater Memphis Chamber, Beverly Robertson!

Where were you born and what was your upbringing like?

I was born in Memphis, TN. It was a wonderful upbringing, very much anchored spiritually in the church. We went to the church right down the street, so it was hard for us not to go. We couldn’t make up excuses about that. I was really in the Orange Mound community, the Beltline sector, so I was very close to the Coliseum and the stadium and the fairgrounds. I had all of those things to look forward to. I was the first graduating class at Hanley Elementary, which was newly built at the time, and then I went on to Melrose High School.

What were your first expectations of your career path?

I went to the University of Memphis, where I actually majored in special education. I taught school for three years, then left there to work for Holiday Inn Worldwide. I’d gotten accepted at Columbia University in New York to pursue a vocational rehab degree, and New York went bankrupt the year I was going to go, so I ended up coming back to Memphis. I started a pretty significant rise there in corporate America at Holiday Inn.

What drew you to the marketing industry?

When I was in corporate and I moved out of reservations, I moved into a management training program where I had the opportunity to work in marketing research and development, national advertising, national promotions and eventually worked in strategic planning on the sub and separate brands you now know of as Hampton Inn, Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza and Homewood Suites. Marketing was fascinating, and it was steeped in research, which I always find very interesting.

Says Beverly of her Memphis childhood, “It was a wonderful upbringing, very much anchored spiritually in the church. We went to the church right down the street, so it was hard for us not to go.”

What motivated you and your husband to create your own path in the industry?

We were on a business trip in Florida. We were walking on the beach, and we had this conversation. We’re lending all this expertise — of course, for which we get paid — but if we can do it for corporate America, certainly we can do it for ourselves. We got the bug to become entrepreneurs at that very moment, and decided that because I had a lot of experience in a whole lot of areas, having worked in corporate America for about 19 years, and he had a lot of experience in the media and broadcast industry, because he worked for radio and television, that’s a really great combination for a business.

What were your primary goals when you took on leadership at the National Civil Rights Museum?

When I stepped in to that job, the museum was really more of a local museum. It just didn’t seem appropriate to fit the moniker — the National Civil Rights Museum. For me, one of my goals was to elevate the standing of the institution to where it belonged.

I decided it was important to bring Nelson Mandela to Memphis, and that was a road that I had no idea I was going to go down or that it was going to be quite that difficult. But we achieved that goal.

It took me a while to convince the board that we needed to launch a campaign, and they started with $10 million, and I said that’s never going to do. When I left, I had raised $33 million; $28 million of that was to pay off the renovation, the other $5 or $6 million that we raised was to seed an endowment that we had never had before.

One of Beverly’s driving mantras? “You’ve never lived a perfect day until you’ve done something for someone they could never do for themselves,” she says.

Having seen the National Civil Rights Museum’s journey to an international destination, what do you feel the museum adds specifically to the Memphis character?

It captures an important segment of Memphis history. The sanitation workers’ strike made Memphis the epicenter of the nation during the time the strike took place. It adds a deep-seated historical perspective of the movement and Memphis’ place in the movement. That’s significant because there is no other institution here or elsewhere that does that.

Business growth is critical to Memphis’ success, but it does risk leaving some citizens behind. How can the Chamber influence inclusive progress?

We traditionally have viewed the Chamber as an organization that’s a two-legged stool: government and business. But where is the role of the community? All of us have a role to play if we want Memphis to grow and to prosper, all of us need to be working together to make that happen.

There’s a lot of work that we will be engaged in over this year, and you’ll be able to see how the community will buy in. This has got to be something that everybody begins to feel. Crime goes down, poverty goes down, new businesses want to come, people thrive in this marketplace, and people smile and are happy again. What we’re doing is giving people hope, and that’s what I’d like to see us do more of in conjunction with business, government and community. I think that’s the winning combination.

What is your biggest personal goal for 2019?

In the middle of all of things that I have on my plate, I’ve got to commit to taking better care of myself. I’m a visionary and a person who says that nothing is impossible, and so not only do I say it, I act in that way, so I work very hard. That kind of work ethic requires something and takes something out of you, too. I’ve got to learn to add much more balance, personally.

“Where is the role of the community? All of us have a role to play if we want Memphis to grow and to prosper, all of us need to be working together to make that happen,” says Beverly.

What makes you most proud of Memphis?

Really, the growth and the change that I’ve seen reflected in everything that is happening now — there is a feeling that people have never had about Memphis. The excitement of having that fresh new energy, new eyes looking at Memphis through a new lens, new leadership. Gosh, what’s not to love about Memphis?!

What is your best advice?

You’ve never lived a perfect day until you’ve done something for someone they could never do for themselves.

Other than big things like faith, family and friends, what are three things you can’t live without?

The ability to nurture and create broader relationships and connect with people, the ability to travel and meet lots of new people and go lots of new places and an understanding of the political nuances of this or any job

Thank you, Beverly! To learn more about Beverly and her work with the Greater Memphis Chamber, visit memphischamber.com.

And thank you to Mary Kate Steele of Mary Kate Steele Photography for these fabulous images of Beverly!

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Memphis sports talk show focused on black fans and athletes finds home on SiriusXM

When Larry Robinson and Howard Robertson created a pilot for their sports talk radio program “R&R on Sports” in 2013, something was missing from the marketplace.

“At the time, there were no national syndicated sports radio shows with two African-American male hosts,” Robinson says.

The two Memphians, who have filled that void locally and nationally on terrestrial radio, are taking their broadcast beyond the earthly realm, now beaming their take on sports via satellite, in a new partnership with SiriusXM. Dubbed "A Little R&R," the show is part of the Saturday lineup on Dan Patrick Radio, Channel 211.

They've talked about the opportunity since the show's first episodes.

“For me, that began to be like Charlie Brown, every fall, getting ready to try to kick the football. Every year, he thinks this is the year that he’s gon’ kick the football, and Lucy pulls it out and he falls on his (behind),” Robertson says of the prospect of taking the show to SiriusXM. “We forgot that it ain’t our timetable. Somebody bigger and badder than us is working this stuff out.”

“What most people don’t realize is that this is a G-O-D thang,” Robinson says. “We got this higher power that’s leading the way.”

Alongside the higher power both men credit, management at Sports Byline USA, a San Francisco-based sports radio network, was responsible for making the connection with the world’s leading satellite radio establishment.

Unlike sports shows that focus on daily news items and scores, the show Robertson and Robinson produce includes what they call “ICONversations,” when they invite notable names in black American sports history to discuss evergreen topics pertinent to black athletes and sports fans.

“We were blessed to secure in-depth interviews with folks like Hank Aaron, Jim Brown, Dr. J (Julius Erving), Ken Griffey Jr., Earl ‘The Pearl’ Monroe. I mean, name someone (and we’ve probably talked to them)," Robertson says. "Jim Brown thanked us for an intelligent interview,” he adds in a self-congratulatory tone.

“These were folk who, after it was over, everybody would always tell us, ‘Hey, whenever you need me back, just call me,’” Robertson says. “We absolutely look at it as an opportunity to represent Memphis.”

Robertson, who serves as CEO for Trust Marketing along with his wife and Memphis Chamber of Commerce interim president Beverly Robertson, says he has always wanted to be an ambassador for Memphis.

But his road to finding out how to do that was long and winding.

“From the time I was a kid, I would listen to a lot of radio: WDIA, WMPS, WHBQ, and whatnot. I was all up and down the dial,” Robertson remembers.

"I always wanted to be able to make a living using my imagination. That’s all I knew at the time. I wanted to create stuff. I grew up in the '50s and the '60s. Didn’t nobody do that that looked like me.”

Robertson decided being a lawyer was a safer bet, but after he didn’t get into Georgetown, his law school of choice, he turned down offers from other law schools and decided to re-evaluate his career path.

He came back to Memphis with two job offers. "One was to be a publicist at Stax, the other was to be a copy writer in the fledgling advertising department of a more fledgling company called Federal Express,” he says laughing.

"I always wanted to be able to make a living using my imagination. That’s all I knew at the time. I wanted to create stuff. I grew up in the '50s and the '60s. Didn’t nobody do that that looked like me.”
Howard Robertson, "R&R on Sports" co-host

“In 1973, that was absolutely a no-brainer.”

He chose Stax, seeing the company through the forthcoming decline of its musical heyday.

Larry Robinson, who operates a podcast and radio studio called Kudzukian, produces several other programs that he expects will follow "R&R on Sports" to a home on a larger platform. Among them is the music program “Riffin’ on Jazz” and the social outreach program “Funky Politics.”

Robertson says his radio gig reminds him a lot of the outlet he got on his first job as a part of Memphis’ soul empire.

“The world ended up hearing and appreciating (Stax). That’s the same thing that’s going on at Kudzukian.”

Robinson, a native of Louisville, Kentucky, named the company after the kudzu he saw overtaking walls along a stretch of highway.

"It reminded me of the effect urban culture has had on popular culture. It’s covering it," he says. "It’s made it more palatable to more people. I kept saying, ‘Man, it’s like the kudzukian effect.’”

Also a marketer by trade, he says he simply got tired of the traditional advertising grind. “I was really, really, really bored with the idea of asking somebody to allow me to market their stuff,” he says.

Robinson remembers the moment he conceived the idea to switch gears in 2013, when he was driving home from the Kentucky Derby. He asked God for answers on what to do next with his career.

“The resounding thing that came back was sports radio, and I was thinking, ‘You’re out Your mind. You’re trippin’, God.’”

The next question Robinson asked God was, “Well, who’s gonna do it with me?” And he says the answer he got was immediately Howard Robertson, whom he had befriended after moving to Memphis in the late 1990s.

“And, I was like, ‘Well, who else?’” he says, teasing Robertson.

Robinson describes the program they created as an “intellectual party,” with meticulously curated music to go along with their enthralling conversation.

“We’re really helping to put a mirror on our community, and really show the excellence and the beauty by utilizing the platform to distribute those stories.”
Larry Robinson, "R&R on Radio" co-host

And, while they have a good time on "R&R on Sports," topics such as racism, sexism, domestic violence and financial stability are common discussion points, with sports as the lens for social engagement.

“We’re really helping to put a mirror on our community, and really show the excellence and the beauty by utilizing the platform to distribute those stories,” Robinson says.

You can hear Howard Robertson and Larry Robinson, along with their guests, on "R&R Sports" by tuning into SiriusXM Channel 211, home of the Dan Patrick Show, Saturday at 10 a.m. They are also available on podcast platforms through the Kudzukian website.

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