Building from scratch: Beverly Hannah Jones laid the blueprint for her own enterprise.

Beverly Hannah Jones did not become an architect by design. As a pre-med student at Michigan State University, she began taking a few elective courses in drafting. Then one day she noticed she was well into advanced drafting classes.

"That's when I discovered where my heart was," recalls Jones. And when she decided to switch her major to architecture, she also made another important decision: She wanted to own her own firm.

Today, Jones is president and CEO of Hannah & Associates Inc., one of only 10 African American female-owned architectural firms in the country.

Nationwide, some 70 African American women are licensed by the American Institute of Architects, although many unlicensed female architects work in the profession.

"I think one mistake we make sometimes is we go to school and are trained to work for somebody else," says the 36-year-old Detroit native. "I always wanted to work for myself. I knew I needed to be a good designer, but I knew I also had to understand how to run the business."

With that in mind, Jones switched from Michigan State to Lawrence Technological University, where she chose the professional practice architectural track over a course of study that merely focused on design.

There she also learned about writing and presenting proposals, marketing a firm and the basics of finances and bookkeeping. After receiving her bachelor of science in architecture in 1985, Jones joined Albert Kahn Associates Inc. as a junior architect. During her eight years at the firm, Jones earned her bachelor of architecture degree and completed the grueling nine-part, 35-hour examination to become licensed.

In 1992, she left the prestigious, 100-year-old Albert Kahn to join a smaller architectural and engineering firm in Pontiac, Mich. It was a strategic move. "The smaller firm gave me the missing piece--how to run a business," says Jones, who was given the opportunity to directly manage projects and to run the day-to-day operations of the office.

A year later, Jones launched her own firm with a contract to design a 1,000-seat sanctuary for the Friendship Baptist Church in Lansing, Mich.

Now, three years later, her firm employs 12 people and its client list includes public and private agencies across Michigan and in other states. Hannah & Associates' project costs have grown from $1 million in its first year to $5 million last year. She has also collaborated with her former employer, Albert Kahn, to get in on several multimillion dollar projects for the automotive industry.

Jones' next goal is to break into the hotel and entertainment industry, one of the fastest growing areas for commercial development. "Getting projects is a challenge because you don't have the network," she says. "Once I get the opportunity to work with a client and they see my talent and skills, I've not had any problem with repeat clients. But the hardest part is getting that introduction to the market."

And, she acknowledges, it's lonely at the top of this white male-dominated profession. "I'm the only black female in the Midwest with my own [architectural] firm. There are just no other black females to go to."

For sisterly support, she says, she leans on her mother, Ethel Hannah, a retired school guidance counselor. "She's been the base of it all for me," says Jones. "When I was pursuing architecture, I told my mother, `I don't know anybody in this field.' She said, `You know the Maker of all of it.' So I have prayed and doors have opened, and I have met people who have helped me along the way."