Minority Business Leaders:
The American Dream At Work In Queens

By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

A month and a half ago, Crain’s New York Business, published its list of New York’s 100 most powerful minority business leaders. Like much of our city’s media, Crain’s Manhattan-centric view of New York, ignores much of the outer boroughs.

If you’re not with a Fortune 500 company, unless you make headlines you don’t get recognized. It’s similar with the arts, education and many fields of endeavor — there’s Manhattan and then there’s the rest of the city.

Obviously, we see it differently. But that’s not what we focus on today.

When we reviewed Crain’s list of New York’s 100 most powerful minority business leaders, three names jumped out at us. There were three people we knew — friends — business friends, at the least. Three Queens guys — one black, one Asian, and one — Latino jumped off the Manhattan- molded page and stood out yelling Queens to this outerboroughphile. Perhaps there are others on the list that reside or work in our borough, but none as much a part of the community as Floyd Flake, Thomas Chen or Napoleon Barragan.

Floyd Flake

Floyd Flake is the personification of modern black power in our city. As far as this political analyst is concerned, Flake, — not Sharpton, Rangel or any of the dozens of elected African American officials — has the ability to, if he chooses, clearly emerge as the dominant electable citywide or statewide candidate of color in New York. He has and continues to have opportunities to serve our nation at the Cabinet level.

He has, at least for the moment, opted for other callings.

The 11-year Congressional veteran continues to serve as senior pastor of the 10,000 member Allen AME cathedral in Southeast Queens. During Flake’s 25-year tenure at Allen, it has become one of the nation’s foremost Christian churches and nonprofit corporations. The church’s annual operating budget of $29 million, expansive commercial and residential development, 500-student private school founded by Rev. Flake and his wife Elaine which is undergoing significant expansion, and various commercial and social service enterprises have placed it as a national leader among religious, urban development institutions.

Flake serves as President of his alma mater Wilberforce University and of Edison Charter Schools, the nation’s largest schooling company — a $350 million corporation with a capitalization value exceeding $1 billion dollars — making Flake one of the highest-ranking African American corporate executives in America. Edison operates 113 public schools nationwide, either through contracts with Boards of Education or as Charters.

He has authored a book, I’ve seen him preaching on television, and political hopefuls of both parties, from Southeast Queens locals to Presidential candidates attend services at his cathedral seeking his blessing and endorsement.

Not only is Flake clearly one of Queens most influential leaders, he is a national force in politics, religion, education and business, who we will be hearing about for years to come.

Thomas Chen

The Asian community is alive, well, vibrant and growing in Queens. No one typifies that community’s work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit and the commitment to serving his people, as Thomas Chen, founder and CEO of Crystal Windows and Door Systems.

Crain’s selected, — as one of its minority business leaders, — the 47 year-old Chen, “who came to Queens from Taiwan with little more than a drive to succeed.”

Today, Chen’s Crystal Windows employs 340 people nationwide, with about 283 workers in Queens — mostly Asian and Hispanic immigrants who have come to Queens in search of their own dream.

Last year Crystal opened a new $20 million, 165,000 square foot facility in College Point. The building not only houses the company production facilities, it also includes a museum, open to the public on weekends. The Crystal Foundation Art Gallery helps showcase local artists, especially recent immigrants.

Crystal was just awarded a million dollar grant from the New York City Investment Fund, which invests in ventures that generate jobs and promote entrepreneurial activity. The money is to be used for expansion of the company which produced more than 400,000 windows and doors last year.

Chen believes in giving back to the community. Last month he announced the donation of $250,000 over the next five years to establish a scholarship endowment fund with Queensborough Community College — the single largest donation for scholarships in the college’s 43-year history. The scholarships will provide immigrant students with intensive language and culture training to position them for success in the business world and in the American mainstream.

Last year, when I reacquired the Tribune, I was thrilled to have Thomas Chen join us as one of our investors. Thomas is one of those rare individuals who lives the American dream and then dedicates himself to helping others have the same opportunity.

His example is a tribute to the spirit of Queens society.

I’m proud to call him a friend.

Napoleon Barragan

Fifty-five-year-old Napoleon Barragan is another impressive story of the American dream come true. The native of Ecuador moved here with his family in 1969. After a series of factory jobs, he opened a furniture store in Jamaica, Queens.

More than 25 years ago, from that furniture store, Nap demonstrated the drive and marketing genius that created Dial-A-Mattress, his company with more than $100 million in sales and a slogan that was emblazoned on the American consciousness: “Dial M-A-T-T-R-E-S and leave the last ‘S’ off for savings.”

Barragan now sells mattresses in 50 showrooms in the northeast, via phone (1-800-Mattress), and on the internet at mattress.com.

I had the pleasure recently of meeting with Nap in my office. He was there basically to tell me about his desire to help people of Queens learn another language.

Nap had founded a foreign language school when he lived in Colombia before coming to the United States. One of the first applications of his creative management skills in his new home Queens was the development with the help of his church, of a one-on-one language exchange learning program. Through simple classified advertising, Nap would locate and recruit Americans who wanted to learn or practice a foreign language and team them up with immigrants who were fluent in their language of choice and wanted to practice their English in exchange. Nap’s marketing flare was clearly not limited to mattresses.

Nap now intends to revisit that language learning and teaching model on a larger scale. Nap, truly a resident of Queens, understands the soul of our borough. Utilizing the method he developed a quarter of a century ago, he intends to help the people of our multi-cultural wonderland improve their English while American-speaking residents get to explore a new language of their choice.

The languages of our borough are many and the task immense, but Barragan — utilizing his half a dozen Queens showrooms, neighborhood institutions, his knowledge of marketing, advertising and telecommunications — is launching his Free Language program.

If you want to learn a foreign language — for free — while you help someone master their English, 1-800-Mattress will show you the way.

Stop by or call any of their showrooms (for addresses see ad page 17) or fax or mail us a copy of the coupon below — we’ll give it to Nap personally.

Want to learn a language?

Want to live a dream?

Come to Queens.

Napoleon Barragan did.