Forces of Nature, Forces for Good

How many boards do Rosa Navejar and Rachel Navejar Phillips serve on now or in the past? And between running a successful business in a very competitive, very male-dominated field and serving on all those boards, do they sleep?

I asked them these questions as we sat in the conference room of the Rios Group. The questions, meant seriously, were met with gales of laughter.

Rachel said, “One of my friends jokes that the Navejar hobby is sitting on boards of directors.”

While Rachel’s friend is joking, it’s quite possible that they have served or do serve on every board of every organization in Tarrant County.

If you’re a Fort Worthian and you haven’t heard of Rosa Navejar and Rachel Navejar Phillips, you might be living under a rock. Rosa Navejar is the founder and President of the Rios Group, a subsurface utility engineering and utility coordination firm, and Rachel Navejar Phillips serves as the Business Development Manager. Oh, Rosa is also Rachel’s mother.

For many, working with family members can be challenging. When I was younger, my father fired me after a 45-minute “discussion” about the placement of an address label. (True story.) Not only do Rosa and Rachel run a successful company as Latina women in a field dominated by men, but they also give back to their community every minute of their spare time and every ounce of their considerable energies.

Rosa Navejar was born in Fort Worth, the last of 10 children of laborers, and grew up in the Diamond Hill neighborhood. “Back when I was in high school, I was told that ‘girls like me” are only housewives and mothers,” Rosa said. “We didn’t go to college. We weren’t even allowed to go on college tours; those were for just the young men.”

Now, isn’t that heartbreaking?

Although college obviously wasn’t in the cards for Rosa, she was determined to do something other than become a housewife. “When I was told I would only be a housewife and mother, I was real upset, but that gave me the drive to do something bigger. My father always told us, ‘Con ganas puedes hacer todo.’ Basically, if you have the will, you can do whatever you want. I think that gave me the push to go out and show people I can do more than be a housewife.”

Rosa has certainly shown people that she can be more than a housewife. After a 25-year career in banking, she became the first female President of the Fort Worth Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (FWHCC) and the first Latina Chair of the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce.

“If I wasn’t going to be a housewife, I was supposed to go work on the manufacturing line at Radio Shack in Diamond Hill,” Rosa said. “But instead, I took the bus and went downtown. I walked around, applying at every place I could. First of Fort Worth Bank was the one that hired me, and that’s what started it all.”

Rosa and her husband wanted to give their daughter every opportunity they didn’t have when they were growing up. They built a house in Keller, judging that, at the time, the Keller school district offered more than the Fort Worth school district. “I was raised in Diamond Hill and still have family there, but when we had Rachel, we were living in Keller,” Rosa said.

“We did live in Diamond Hill first,” Rachel interjected.

“Then we moved to the Birdville ISD, and then we built the house in Keller,” Rosa finished.

“The majority of my childhood was spent in Keller,” Rachel said. “Our backyard was basically farm fields – you could see cattle. Now, when I drive to Keller, I get lost because all the development has changed it so much.”

Rachel is a first-generation college graduate with a degree from St. John’s University in Queens, New York. Rosa said, “Her dad and I gave her a choice. We told her she would do elementary, middle, high school, and college. Period.” Both women laugh. “We really wanted her to have the benefits we didn’t have.”

Rachel majored in government at St. John’s. “I wanted to be a pre-law major and then become a lobbyist, but then I took a constitutional law class and said, ‘Nope. This is NOT for me.’ One of my stepbrothers is a very powerful lobbyist in DC, and I would have been constantly comparing myself to him, I think.”

After college, Rachel returned to Fort Worth and began working for the Tarrant Regional Water District (TRWD). By this time, Rosa was running the FWHCC and was a mover in municipal government. Rachel had to prove that she wasn’t just Rosa’s daughter. And sometimes, proving that she wasn’t Rosa’s daughter took courage.

Rosa remembered, “I’ll never forget when I got a phone call telling me that Rachel had walked out of a meeting with [the city manager]. Everyone kept saying, ‘Well, let’s ask Rosa’s daughter her opinion,’ or ‘What does Rosa’s daughter say?’ She kept telling them, ‘My name is Rachel,’ but they didn’t listen. I got a phone call from [the city manager] who said, ‘Your daughter needs to know that she can’t just walk out of a meeting.’ I said, ‘With all due respect, call her by her name. Would you like it if your son was addressed like Rachel was? Call her by her name and let her do her job.’ He said, ‘Oh. You’re right.’”

Rachel added, “It would be so easy to be ‘Rosa’s daughter’ and coast on her reputation, but I needed to earn my own respect.”

Even though they now work together, Rachel is no nepo baby. She worked hard to forge her own career and earned that respect.

“I was at the Water District for about 10 years,” Rachel said. “I oversaw capital improvements on the [Trinity] River. I love the Water District; it taught me so many things, but I asked myself, ‘Do I want to stay here?’ That would be great, but I wanted to try something new, so I actually just quit one day. Scared the hell out of my husband and my mother!”

Rosa laughed. “God puts us in places for a reason, and we just need to learn what those reasons are because we’ll carry them into the next part of our lives.”

As Rachel was trying to figure out her next steps, Jonathan Morris was opening the second location of his successful Fort Worth Barber Shop and needed a front desk person. “I thought this would be a good break for me,” Rachel said. “I could take a break and see what I wanted to do next. I worked there for about six months, and it was great. I met so many people who knew nothing about my mother, or me, or the boards we served on, so there was no pressure on me. And it taught me a lot about customer service and the service industry… I have so much respect for the service industry because they put up with so much!”

By this time, Rosa had started the Rios Group. I asked how she went from banking and the FWHCC to running an underground utility engineering and coordination firm. (That means that they work with construction firms to map existing utilities and coordinate with utility companies to facilitate easier and safer construction.)

“Brad Gorrondona was my board chairman [of the FWHCC], and he was looking to divest this group from his company,” Rosa said. “For months, I gave him names of engineers because I assumed you had to be an engineer to run the company. Brad said I needed to buy the group, and I laughed and said no. I’m not an engineer. I don’t have a college degree. They’re introverts, and I’m an extrovert!”

But Brad knew that Rosa was precisely the right person for the job, and he kept at her.

“One day, I was in church, and I was basically asking God for a sign. I realized I was 56 years old, and I didn’t want to look back at 70 thinking ‘what if.’ As I was leaving, I ran into one of the tellers I worked with back in ’91. She introduced me to her family and said, ‘Rosa always took a risk at the bank, and she took the biggest risk when she left the bank to run [the FWHCC].’ I looked up at the Cross and said, ‘Well, I asked for a sign.’”

After Rachel had been at Fort Worth Barber Shop for about six months, she got a call from her mother.

“She said that she was looking for someone to oversee marketing,” Rachel said. “I thought I could do it, so I applied. I applied, and I interviewed, and I got the job.”

I asked how it was to work with her mother.

“We had worked together when I was at the Water District,” Rachel said.

“I helped oversee the fair contracting policy for the Trinity River Project,” Rosa added.

“We had already established a way to work together,” Rachel continued. “I did have to stop calling her ‘Mommy.’ I couldn’t very well say, ‘My mommy says…’ But we had already established boundaries for a working relationship, so I knew that we could do it.”

And boy, have they done it. When Rosa founded the company, it had an office in Fort Worth, with one person in Austin and one person in Houston. The company now boasts five full offices and over 115 employees across Texas. They work on some of the biggest construction projects in the state. But (possibly) more importantly, they hire from the inside and help their employees move up the ladder.

Rachel said, “We love moving crew members from the field into the office.”

Rosa agreed. “We have a former crew member who is now an assistant project manager. We love being able to grow from within and teach the skill sets that our guys need for growth. It helps their families and lets their children see that there are pathways for them.”

It sounds remarkably similar to what Rosa did in banking. After all, as a Latina woman without a college degree, she had to work hard to move up in the banking world. It’s also what she did at the FWHCC, where she grew it from 400 members to over 1,500 members. “My father always taught us to give back,” Rosa said.

She taught Rachel to give back, too. And she taught her daughter to make her own way in the world.

“I understand the privilege I have when doors are opened to me because I’m Rosa’s daughter,” Rachel said. “So, how do I open doors for other people?”

Like her mother, Rachel does it by giving her time and energy to organizations that help our community. She serves on almost as many boards as her mother does. And Rosa couldn’t be prouder of how her daughter has established herself in her own right.

“Can I tell the story?” she asked.

Rachel rolled her eyes but nodded.

“We were doing a music and art festival on the River, raising money for scholarships for the [FWHCC] when she was working for the Water District,” Rosa said. “It was late the night before the festival, and we were all cleaning up and getting ready. Rachel is telling all these men, “Excuse me, you need to get up. Do this. Do that. Get going!’ I said, ‘Rachel Ann! It’s late, and you need to stop talking like that to those gentlemen.’ She looked at me and said, ‘Mom, that’s your crew. This is MY crew, and this is what I have to do to get work done.’”

“I wouldn’t ask them to do anything I wasn’t willing to do,” Rachel clarified.

Rosa continued, “The next morning, we were all there early to set up, and all of her guys were telling me how much they loved Rachel, how great she was, how she was out there at midnight, and how she was there early and bought them breakfast.”

At this point, Rachel looked a little embarrassed. “I was just there with them, doing my job.”

“It was so great to see how she had earned their respect,” Rosa said. “It was so wonderful to see how she’s made herself who she is. I got to see that my daughter has grown up to be her own person. That’s priceless.”

Talk about a proud mom moment. Now, Rachel is just as much of a force for good in Fort Worth as her mother is.

“No, I’m the past,” Rosa grinned. “She’s the future.”