A VISION FULFILLED

A debut biography focuses on a Missouri entrepreneur.

In this book, Pulley tells the life story of Patti Penny, founder of a staffing company that does hundreds of millions of dollars in business. The volume follows a traditional chronological format, opening with Penny’s birth in rural Missouri in the early days of World War II. Penny’s childhood was complicated by her often contentious relationship with her mother, which led to the girl’s spending long stretches of time living with her grandmother, who provided the foundation for her upbringing. After finishing high school, Penny decided to make her own way in the nearby city of Springfield, where she had an active but frugal social life while holding a variety of jobs. Penny married a man named Al after a few months of dating, and his instinct for frugality meshed well with her ambition and sense of independence. Although Penny worked part time after her two children were born—after being forced to leave one employer as soon as her pregnancy began to show—a job was both financially and personally important to her, and she found her niche in the personnel departments of manufacturers and hospitals. She returned to school to earn a bachelor’s degree as a nontraditional student, and, with Al’s encouragement, she used her hiring and management experience to launch her own staffing firm, which succeeded and grew within Missouri and beyond. The book balances the personal and professional threads of Penny’s life effectively, presenting a well-rounded portrait. Pulley has an eye for detail (Penny and Al wed on Dec. 31, 1960, so they could claim the marriage on that year’s taxes) and does a good job of drawing the story’s disparate elements together. While the text’s more analytical asides may seem forced (for instance, attributing Penny’s understanding of business to her mother’s often lavish spending), on the whole, the biography succeeds through its close narrative perspective that allows Penny to share the key moments of her life. Penny and her friends and family collaborated closely with the author on the work, a process he describes in the foreword.

An intriguing and informative account of one woman’s triumphant career path.