Busy Villanova mom jumps back into work as president of Full Circle

Published: Wednesday, March 25, 2015

EXTON & Alicia Williams has come Full Circle. The busy wife and mother jumped in feet first after becoming president and CEO of Full Circle, an Exton-based training company, in 2013.

Williams, 42, of Villanova, had stayed at home with her three sons and worked as a stay-at-home mom and freelance interior designer for 11 years, so it was quite a change to be running a business.

Once Williams decided to return to the workforce, her husband, Denean Williams, who is the vice president, who had sold his hedge fund Cameron Capital Management, the couple decided to find a small business to buy. They worked with a business broker to find a new business to purchase and through the broker they found Full Circle, whose former owner, Karin Estapani, wanted to retire, Williams said.

“We both picked the same business out of a list of 20,” she said.

“We’re all supporting each other in the company,” she said. “Once my youngest son was in school full time and was comfortable, it was time for me to look for a new opportunity. I didn’t necessarily want to go back into design. I thought I’d move into something else.” Williams, a graduate of Drexel University, had also been in sales and was a sales manager before starting her family.

“What we were looking for was an established business,” said Williams. “And before me it was a woman-owned business.” However, it took eight months to finish the deal because they had to wait for their small business loan to go through, she said.

“We met our staff the day of settlement for the first time,” in October 2013, she said. “That was interesting. They looked very shocked…We went in with good energy and they had good energy, too. That was a Friday. We said, ‘We hope they come back on Monday.’ But they were all there on Monday. I feel like we have the best staff in the world.”

There are four full-time staff members and numerous trainers who are contractors. “We were learning,” she said. “Many times they were patient with us. I love, love, love my staff…Our goal is to grow the business (but) we maintain this environment. We’re conscientious. We look after one another. We respect one another…and the staff was great.”

But plunging into work again was not easy.

“It has been hard,” said Williams. “It’s a complete change for me in many ways.”  “It’s a business with many fine details so it’s a constant learning experience. And we hired a nanny at first and I felt I was losing touch with the kids. So we let go of our nanny and I redid my schedule so that I could be home in time for my children. When they get off the bus, I’m there.”

Her sons are Cameron, 13, Gaven, 11, and Joshua, 8, and all attend Radnor Township schools.

“That is important to me and to them,” she said. “And they’re in everything, in two sports, theater and piano so they’re everywhere. And I am the person driving them all over. It’s exhausting but it’s better than when you have a nanny. I felt detached and not home.”

“I didn’t have that time to spend with my children so it was really tough,” she said. Now, “it’s a more familiar face than not coming home.”

“Our goal was to grow the business and take it from a really small business to a broader business,” said Williams, who brims with enthusiasm. They have a state-of-the art training facility in Exton, but they began to pursue another location, as well. They partnered with Pierce College in Philadelphia to use their classrooms for Full Circle training. Pierce is a night school and “all of our courses are run during the day so their classrooms were empty,” she said.

“They were looking to use their space during the day,” she said. They booked their first classes at Pierce in September. “Part of the reason it’s done so well is we do a lot of business with the local counties, with the local county Careerlink, which is like the unemployment offices for Pennsylvania. We train people that need to be retooled and put back to work. We teach them the skills they need to pursue a new field. Or sometimes in the field they are in, we give them new current skills,” she added.

Full Circle has contracts to train unemployed workers with Chester, Delaware, Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. They are also pursuing work with Bucks County.

“We do remote training (for companies) so we’ll go on site anywhere,” she added.

Full Circle teaches all Microsoft programs, Sequel (SQL) and Crystal.

“We also have medical courses,” she said. “We are a recognized, accredited school in Pennsylvania. We have seven approved programs and three are medical programs.” These are Medical Coding and Billing, Certified Medical Administrative Assistant, and Electronic Health Records. We also have website design, she said.

“We have a very talented graphic designer who teaches that program,” said Williams. This includes Flash and all the Adobe products.

“They get nationally recognized certificates, which is great,” she said. “It’s very helpful for their resume and getting them out. Those program students also get a resume reinvention workshop. We take their current resume, if they have one, and we teach them how to market themselves.”

“Resumes used to be a list of what a person has done,” she said. “Now it’s what you can do for a company. We’re teaching them how to present themselves.”

Full Circle also helps its students with job search and interview skills, she said.

“You’re helping people, giving them new skills,” she said. “There is a certain sense of accomplishment when people finish any of the courses. And we have great instructors that really care about the students’ learning.”

Courses start at $225, although the counties pay for unemployed people to take the classes. Most of the classes are one or two days, but the medical classes are 12 weeks. Full Circle also earned its 8A certification through the Small Business Administration, she said. That allows them to compete for “big federal contracts” as a woman or minority owned businesses, she said.

“Which is very exciting,” she said. “It could really change Full Circle if we could land one of those big federal contracts. That was really, big.”

They are also certified under the G.I. Bill, she said.  “So we’re able to train vets, as well,” she said. “They are eligible for those same seven programs.”

“One of our big philosophies is customization,” she said. A company can ask that its employees learn a certain level of Excel or Word, she said. “We can customize it into one training package for them,” Williams said.

The company website offers support and tutoring for students, she said. For more information go to:www.fullcirclecomputing.com

Full article:  Link

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