RIKKI GERSON-PARRY
CEO UNIVERSAL REPROGRAPHICS INC.
Company: Universal Reprographics, Inc. Industry: Construction CEO: Rikki Gerson-Parry Employees: 24 Headquarters: Los Angeles, California
BUILDING THE FAMILY BUSINESS During the past 26 years, Rikki Gerson-Parry has been involved with some of Los Angeles’ most impressive construction projects.
Her ventures with the business started out as a young San Fernando Valley girl working as a clerk at the then Universal Blueprint and later evolving into various roles helping As the CEO of Universal out the family business. “When my Reprographics Inc., she is an expert husband died I did not want to sell in document management for large the company, I wanted to run it,” she scale construction projects. She has worked on some of the region’s largest said. At the time, she had two sons, ages one and four. “I never intended undertakings, including The Getter on working full time, I had worked in Center, Los Angeles Metro, Los Angeles Community College District the accounting department part time Campuses, as well as Westfields across to help the family business,” she said. America. Gerson-Parry assumed the Gerson-Parry took over the family leadership role, devised a five-year plan and hired an interim president. business in 1989, after her husband “I needed to learn the business from a tragically passed. Over the years, different angle. At the end of the five she has successfully reinvented the years, the first thing I had to do was company multiple times and ridden let that president go. That was one of the ups and downs of the market to the hardest things I have done in my their present three locations across professional career,” she said. “I knew the Greater Los Angeles area. then, that I could do this.”
Over the years, she has continued to expand with the market and industry. She modernized the company’s offerings, both on the architectural side, where blue lines have transitioned to online plan rooms, and on the publishing side. The company now offers a wide range of commercial digital printing and scanning products and services designed to provide fast turnaround to the architectural, engineering and construction industries. Her colleagues say she is innovating the printing industry and making ancillary moves as a ball of fire with everyone wanting to pass the torch. “Being a women in an industry that is dominated by men can be very intimidating if you let it be. I have found that as long as I am confident and believe in myself then no one can stop me,” she said. PDJ
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