Lori Blaker, this year’s Executive in Residence for Northern Michigan University’s College of Business, gives a public presentation on Thursday in the Northern Center Ballroom. Blaker recently retired as president/CEO of TTi Global, based in downstate Bloomfield Hils. (Journal photo by Christie Mastric)

MARQUETTE — Lori Blaker has achieved tremendous success in the business world, but she’s particularly proud of her work helping women in a place where they sorely need a positive outside influence: Afghanistan.

In fact, it earned her the 2018 Oslo Business for Peace Award, dubbed “the Nobel Prize for Business.”

The newly retired president/CEO of the Bloomfield Hills-based TTi Global and a longtime advocate of gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace recently served as the 2021 Executive in Residence for Northern Michigan University’s College of Business.

Blaker gave a public presentation on Thursday in the Northern Center Ballroom.

Carol Johnson, dean of the NMU College of Business, said at the program, “She cultivated her international business, and along the way, made an amazing difference in many young women’s lives.”

However, Blaker had to get to the point where she had the opportunity to help in that way.

In 1979, Blaker began editing training manuals at her father’s business, S&J Tech Data Service Company, which performed technical writing for automotive companies. S&J later added a training subsidiary, Technical Training Inc., to its portfolio.

Blaker became president in 1991. When TTi and S&J merged to form one company a few years later, she became CEO.

Under Blaker’s leadership, the services of what is now TTi Global were expanded to emphasize high-quality contract personnel and outsourcing, training systems design and e-learning. She also created company-specific, Internet-based instructional programs.

As president/ CEO of TTi Global, Blaker oversaw operations on five continents with offices spanning the globe, from Australia, Brazil and Chile to South Africa, Thailand, the United Kingdom and Venezuela.

Blaker expanded TTi Global’s role in emerging markets by building agreements among government, higher education and manufacturers to upgrade training programs, including successful workforce developments program in Mexico and India. In 2012, she was a part of the first-ever U.S. Department of Commerce trade mission to Afghanistan.

She sold the business and retired at the end of 2020, and decided to live in Marquette.

Failure is an option

Throughout her business career, there were many obstacles, such as a failure of one of her father’s businesses, but many successes.

“Everyone who’s been in business and successful has gone through just as many failures as they have successes,” Blaker said.

However, Blaker said he fell back on his corporate skills, which included writing technical service manuals — but this time for the automotive industry.

“I’ve always said that survival can be a really great motivator,” Blaker said. “Think about what my dad did. He had to switch courses.”

She worked days for her father and nights at a local sports arena, which was the Palace of Auburn Hills, then the home of the Detroit Pistons.

It was demanding.

“I did that for three years,” Blaker said. “I don’t know how I did it but survival, like I said, is a really good motivator, and you get through it.”

However, she eventually approached her dad and became head of a division that designed, developed and delivered training programs — a profitable venture.

Unfortunately, her father died afterward, leaving her to take over the entire business in her early 30s.

“Even though I thought I knew everything, I realized that I didn’t, and when I realized that I didn’t know everything, I got scared to death, and I woke up every day scared to death that I was going to screw up and this whole business was going to go under,” Blaker said. “But I surrounded myself with a lot of good people, and I think I learned one of my life lessons at that time, that it was time for me to put my ego aside and do what I had to do for the good of everyone and for the company.”

That lesson, she stressed, was working with people more knowledgeable than her.

The company eventually evolved to having four development centers around the world.

“What this allowed us to do was basically develop course materials, learning aids, programs, whatever it was we needed, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so we could go to market faster than just about any of our competition,” Blaker said.

It wasn’t, however, about creating individual star employees.

“We don’t have one star in this company,” she said. “We have 2,100 stars and we all rise and fall together, and we’re all working hard and everybody deserves recognition, not just you.”

TTi, Blaker said, had workforce development projects globally, including those in India, the Philippines, Thailand and the Middle East. Vocational education centers focused on teaching automotive skills to young people, and the company worked with manufacturers to employ those individuals.

A few years before her retirement she became involved in what she called “her baby” — a vocational education center in Kabul, Afghanistan, and an automotive center alongside it.

“The young people would come in and learn automotive skills,” Blaker said. “They could then work in the service center like an apprentice to gain the skills that they needed, and then they were free to either go off and start their own business or somewhere else or stay with us, and their education was provided at no charge.”

Blaker hired all women to manage the operation.

“In Afghanistan, as I’m sure you can appreciate, that was unheard of at the time,” she said. “But I had a great group of young women. They were so appreciative of the opportunity to learn.”

Blaker lamented the recent happenings in Afghanistan regarding the Taliban taking over the country.

“We sent all that aid money over there and we neglected a real important point, that people need to work and they need to have a purpose,” Blaker said. “We didn’t quite get there, and that’s a sad thing for me.”

Fortunately, she was able to help most of the the women with their visas to get them out of the country.

One of the highlights of her career was the Oslo Business for Peace Award, which she received because of her work in Afghanistan.

“It just signified that maybe we weren’t on the wrong path after all, and that somebody was actually recognizing the effort and the work that we put into our community service efforts around the world,” Blaker said.

Blaker’s accomplishments also include launching the Metro Detroit Chapter of the U.S. National Committee for UN Women in the fall of 2013, and serving as its first president.

The NMU College of Business’ annual Executive in Residence Program is designed to enrich student learning and faculty development by introducing accomplished leaders to the university community. Since the fall of 1979, it has brought to campus senior corporate executives and professionals, as well as successful entrepreneurs.

Christie Mastric can be reached at 906-228-2500, ext. 250. Her email address is cbleck@miningjournal.net.