Rosemary Reed, President and Owner of Double R Productions, LLC, Full Oral History

Описание: Rosemary Reed is the owner and president of Double R Productions, which has been in operation since 1987. When she was trying to start the company after losing her television job, Reed applied for small loans at two local banks in Washington, DC, but both turned her down. In desperation, Reed bought the equipment she needed on a credit card. A colleague then suggested she try Adams National bank, where Reed met Stephanie Lipscomb. Lipscomb counseled Reed and provided important financial support and cultural capital to help her get her business off the ground.

In this interview, Reed discusses her childhood and family, her early career in radio and television, and multiple experiences she had with mainstream banks before she discovered Adams National Bank. This interview helps us understand the critical role that access to credit played in Reed’s ability to flourish as an independent entrepreneur and demonstrates the impact that women’s banks like Adams National Bank could have on women. This research helps us see how, even after the passage of the ECOA, women continued to face obstacles in accessing credit and to learn about how women’s banks made a difference for them.

“I’d had such a bad experience with that other bank. Walking into the Abigail Adams National Bank, there were a lot of women, and they were so welcoming and so nice, and they would sit down with me and say ‘Okay, you're doing this freelance stuff.’ Not making fun of me, not demeaning me, not saying. ‘Oh, well, you're never going to make it.’ They were encouraging me, and I think they saw that I had the fire in my belly to make this business work.”

In addition to still running Double R Productions, Rosemary Reed has expanded her entrepreneurial endeavors to using her family’s land in Nebraska to grow hemp for fiber that can be used in new kinds of environmentally and economically friendly building materials.

Video Description: This video features curator Rachel Seidman interviewing Rosemary Reed, who is the owner and president of Double R Productions. Reed was previously a customer at the Adams National Bank. They are both seated in a conference room in Washington, DC.