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Juanita 'Busy Bee' Britton
Busy Bee established her first business when she was only
ten years old. She spent her summers selling
lemonade on the corner of her family home in Detroit, MI.
By the time she was 13, the business was so successful
that Busy Bee farmed out the cookie-cutter operation to
six neighborhood corners. Long before franchising became
popular, Busy Bee had the street smarts to know that this
was the way to go.
And she went from strength to strength. At 15, she
became the business manager of a high school social club
-- planning dances, trips and even concerts with several
national acts. At 16, she was head cashier at her
neighborhood McDonald's and at 17, as an undergraduate
student of political science, Busy Bee coordinated and
paid for her first solo international trip as an exchange
student to Ewha Woman’s University in Seoul, South Korea.
In 1980, Busy Bee graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in
International Relations and Education from Western
Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI. She returned
to Detroit, as she had promised her high school principal,
to teach for a year. She then moved to Washington, DC,
where she attended Howard University, earning a Masters in
Public Affairs.
Shortly after graduating, she landed a competitive
internship in the Office of the US Trade Representative
during the Reagan administration. Busy Bee has held
positions overseas with the US State Department in Dakar,
Senegal. She has also assisted on several special
assignments during Presidents George Herbert Walker Bush
and William Clinton administrations. Busy Bee’s
exciting career has allowed her to enjoy a wide range of
consulting and management- levels roles in the governments
of the District of Columbia as well as in federal
positions.
The popular East Coast
BZB Holiday Gift &
Art Show, the African American Department Store, is
Busy Bee's brainchild. Thousands of enthusiastic patrons
do their holiday shopping with artisans, designers, and
entrepreneurs over four weekends in November and December.
This ‘Shop til ya
Drop’ event will celebrate its 22nd year
during the 2012 Christmas holiday season. Busy Bee
credits the show's extraordinary success to the loyal
support of her mother, Georgiann Austin, her brother,
Donald, her two ‘adopted’ daughters, Robin Adams &
Danielle Koon, and a host of employees, volunteers and
long-time friends.
A driven entrepreneur and community leader, Busy Bee
operates several business ventures simultaneously.
In addition to the
BZB Holiday Gift & Art Show, Busy Bee also owns and
operates the Anacostia Art Gallery & Boutique in Southeast
Washington, DC. Another successful enterprise is BZB
International Tours, an educational and recreational
travel service. Then there's ‘Up,
Up and Away’, a program that educates young people by
exposing them to golf, aviation and airport retail
industries. This is done in conjunction with her
parent company, BZB International, Inc., which coordinates
special events and works with small businesses on retail
development, marketing and strengthening consumer and
community relations.
Ms Britton’s client list is as impressive as it is varied:
Busy Bee is a partner and Senior Vice President of
Paradies-BZB, DC, LLC, a company that operates retail
stores such as Brooks Brothers, Heritage Booksellers, CNBC
and PGA stores in Washington Metropolitan area airports.
She works closely with over 100 employees on publication &
merchandise mix, customer service, team building and
community outreach projects.
Busy Bee’s most recent endeavor is a partnership with
Cardinal Resources of Pittsburg, PA where she serves as
the Managing Director for Africa.
In this role, Busy Bee delivers the patented Red
Bird System, a solar-powered community-sized drinking
water system, to communities and industrial wastewater
treatments facilities. Red Bird is a self-contained, water
purification system that is a high-tech solution designed
to function in any environment and without any existing
infrastructure. Senegal, West Africa is the site of
the launch on the African continent with other launch site
countries scheduled throughout 2012.
In spring 2007, Busy Bee debuted her first film,
Random Acts of
Kindness: A Documentary of Giving, based on an
emotional dream she had nine months earlier. She founded
the Random Acts Foundation of Washington, DC, dedicated to
conducting random acts of kindness toward women and
families through humanitarian projects nationally and
internationally.
Busy Bee's communication and public relations expertise is
focused on building bridges between corporate and
community-based entities. In 2008, she was appointed as
Director of Communications at the University of the
District of Columbia where she made a ground-breaking
impact in relations between the administration and the
student body during a crucial period of transition at the
University. A consultant, motivational speaker and
trainer, Busy Bee enjoys working with aspiring
entrepreneurs; rural women in micro-economic development
projects; and, artists and merchants from around the
world. Busy Bee generously serves on various community and economic development boards and commissions:
In addition, she manages to find the time to be a
concerned and devoted mentor and "fairy godmother" to
several families in her neighborhood. In her ‘spare
time’, Busy Bee enjoys a variety of passions that include
scuba diving, spending the night in indigenous African
villages and jumping small buildings on a single bound!
Busy Bee’s professional and volunteer enterprises have
earned her national and international accolades. In
October 2011, she was officially bestowed the honor of
being enstooled as
Queen Mother Botwe Nana Adobea II of KONKO Village in
Ghana, West Africa.
She is responsible for development projects and
educational improvements for a community of over 400
citizens of KONKO.
Juanita ‘Busy Bee’ Britton is grateful that God has
blessed her life abundantly and, in turn, she delights in
making great and wonderful things happen for others.
For more information, please visit
www.bzbinternational.com and
www.bzbqueenmother.com |
An
entrepreneurial aura has always radiated from the
energetic and charming Juanita Carol Britton. As a child,
Juanita vividly displayed her business acumen. Her talent
for enterprise far exceeded that of most adults. She
became affectionately known as “Busy Bee” because she was
as industrious as a worker bee.