Lelani S. Bonner, director of training and marketing for the Rhode Island Small Business Development Center, always has been motivated to be better and do more.
“I grew up in a poor family in the middle of an extremely affluent town,” she said in her 40 Under Forty application. Raised in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., she began working at the age of 14 and was the first member of her family to attend college, receiving an associate’s degree in criminal justice from Johnson & Wales University in Providence in 1998.
Anxious to join the work force, she started her own graphic-design business, LBDesign, and established a consistent base of New England clients.
She earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Bryant University in Smithfield in 2006.
While attending school full time, Bonner worked part-time at Leadership Rhode Island for three years, where she was responsible for coordinating events and facilitating training activities. “My most significant accomplishment with Leadership Rhode Island was leading a task force to develop criteria for ensuring that issues of equity and justice were reflected in leadership training,” she said.
At the Small Business Development Center, she provides small businesses and aspiring entrepreneurs with the tools and resources to be successful through a variety of workshops and events. She also has been challenged, effectively marketing the small-business center with, she said, “little to no marketing budget.”
She has been recognized as a “State Star” at the national conference for the Association of Small Business Development Centers, held in Chicago in 2008. In 2009, she served as a panel member for the association’s national conference marketing and communications seminar. She’s been invited to serve as an adjunct professor at the Johnson & Wales University School of Technology, where she hopes to show students “they, too, can do anything they put their minds to.” •
