Kathy Bray, president, Denham Resources
Fresno, CA (Dec. 16, 2009) – Kathy Bray thinks of herself as an optimistic person, something she feels has helped her as she faces the challenges of life.“I encourage myself to be happy about whatever I’m doing at the time,” she said.
Bray is a native from Fresno, and a 5th generation California. She grew up in the country, loves animals, including horses, enjoys art, and is a voracious reader. Bray may often be found in the discount center of a Barnes and Noble bookstore.
“I probably read 40 books a month,” Bray said. “I read so fast that I don’t want to spend 30 dollars on a book because I’ll be done with it in less than a week.”
Bray attended California State University, Fresno where she majored in child development. After she graduated, she found that teaching jobs were limited. She ended up taking a teaching job at Teague Elementary School in Highway City, where they wanted to open a class for children who, at the time, were labeled “educationally handicapped.” She believes everyone has a different way of learning, so she prefers the term “learning differences.”
“I think everybody has genius to some degree somehow,” Bray said. “Even the person you may think is the dumbest person in the world has something you can’t do.”
A month before school began, Bray went to the county school’s library and read every book she could to prepare for what she was about to go through with her students. She had the 10 most difficult kids in the school in her class, ages 6-11, and said that it was very difficult at first.
“They were horrible but wonderful,” she said of the students. “I learned to love the bad kids. They have a certain spark in them that’s really quite admirable.”
Bray taught for about four years, and then stayed home for several years after her first child was born. She began working at Denham Resources on a temporary basis in 1977, which was started by her husband Dave Denham’s parents in 1972. Bray and her husband began dating in 1967, and they married in 1971.
When she started at Denham she answered phones and did data entry. She says that over the years she has done every job at the business, including being an executive recruiter, a staffing consultant, and even doing the bookkeeping.
Bray said that Denham’s mission is to make life better for everyone they come into contact with.
“We get people jobs every day, even now,” she said. “And there’s really hardly anything in life that gives you as much dignity as a job. And we change people’s lives every day, and we do it for companies too.”
Like most companies, the current economy has hit Denham hard; it now has a third of the positions it did a couple of years ago. Bray said that because the agricultural industry is suffering, it trickles down to all businesses.
“It’s been hard, very hard,” she said.
On a yearly basis, Denham Resources works with 300-500 companies, but have thousands in its database.
Bray thinks of everyone in the company as a salesperson, and are good at letting people know what they do and what she says they do anywhere else in the area.
“To me, sales is letting companies know what a great job we can do for them, and how much better their lives are going to be if they work with us,” she said.
In her role as president at Denham she acts as an operations manager, making sure everything runs smoothly. Bray deals with and negotiates with customers, and is involved in human resources.
Denham now has 15 staff members. She said that in their industry, the average length of tenure is three years; Denham’s is 13.
“We have a really wonderful staff who believes in what we do,” Bray said.
Bray has been and is involved in many community organizations. She is on the advisory board of Hope Now for Youth, and was president of the board of the Fresno Chamber of Commerce. She is on the board of the Fresno Business Council, as well as the board of Fresno’s United Neighborhoods (F.U.N.), which benefits the city’s Parks and Recreation Department.
Bray doesn’t think of herself as a “girly-girl,” she never gets her nails done or receive facials. She likes being with her four young grandsons and doing “boy things” with them.
“I go outside and dig holes,” she said. “They’re boys, so we play guns a lot.”
Bray’s son Joe Denham and son-in-law Edgar Blunt are involved in the business, and Bray sees them as the future of Denham Resources. The company changes as technology does, taking for instance the addition of social networking Web sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter for marketing. They have made videos of interviewing tips and put them on YouTube, instead of making people physically attend seminars. The videos have received hundreds of thousands of hits, so many that that Google called and asked if they could put advertisements on the videos.
“We’ve tried to stay current on the way we do things, yet still retain the same values,” Bray said.
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