Who Is Giving Thanks For You Today?

What - and who - are you thankful for today? None of us got where we are on our own steam. If you're anything like us, you've been influenced, inspired, mentored, challenged, educated, and given a shot to try something new by countless people throughout your life.

Yolanda Cuevas, founder, president and CEO of Cuevas Distribution Inc., a laboratory, medical and safety supply distribution company in Fort Worth, has won just about every business award out there. The 2008 Latina Style Business Series for Latina Style magazine recently honored her as Latina Entrepreneur of the Year. The youngest of 13 children born to Mexican immigrants who worked as migrant farm workers in Texas, Cuevas spent her earliest years picking cotton, tomatoes, cabbage and cucumbers. Her biggest dream? She wanted to work in an air-conditioned office one day.

Cuevas's story is being told today by the Fort Worth Business Press and it's worth a read. What jumps out at me is the long list of people she credits with helping her succeed.  At the top of the list are her parents and, especially, her mom:

“I...learned a hard work ethic from my parents,” Cuevas said. “They saw to it that, hopefully, we would have a better life than they had and what their parents had. That’s the American dream.” 

Cuevas, whose mother was her role model, said she and her siblings never knew they were poor because they had “a lot of love and companionship and we didn’t miss out on many things.” 

“We didn’t know those were hard times,” she said. To earn extra money for the family, Cuevas said she went door to door selling her mother’s crocheted doilies. That experience, she said, taught her about sales and how to communicate with the public. 

“My mother told us that working hard was nothing to be ashamed of or embarrassed about,” Cuevas said. “She said the shame was in not working. It was just a job, she told us, and eventually we would work our way out of the fields.”

But Cuevas also talks about the role her first husband played in her life, a customer she encountered during an early banking job, and former Texas Governor Ann Richards. 

Who are you giving thanks for this week?

And, maybe just as important, who is giving thanks for you?