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Member of the Year
The Member of the Year award recognizes someone for her outstanding contributions, leadership and achievements in service to the organization. Her dedication and active participation make her the quintessential member

Bonnie Nijst
President & CEO
Zeesman Communications, Inc.

Vice President of Membership of NAWBO-LA in 2004-05. Event Chair of the Annual Leadership & Legacy Awards Luncheon in 2005-06. President of NAWBO-LA in 2006-07. Vice Chair of the Enterprise Institute of NAWBO-LA and Chair of the NAWBO-LA Nominating Committee in 2007-08.

As impressive as it reads, this list doesn’t come close to reflecting the contributions of 2009 honoree Bonnie Nijst. During this decade, the President and CEO of Zeesman Communications, Inc. (a marketing, advertising and design firm) has applied her talents and dedication to benefit NAWBO-LA, making her just the fifth Member of the Year Award recipient in the organization’s 30-year history.

Paying It Forward

“When I became a member of NAWBO-LA, the objective was to be part of its vitality, to take part in not only getting what I needed, but also in giving something back in return,” Nijst said. “This honor is an extraordinarily humbling acknowledgement that I have, through my involvement, contributed something that matters in the life of the organization.”

A few of these contributions include providing marketing research, messaging and strategy; developing marketing collateral materials for a wide array of events and initiatives; and redesigning the NAWBO-LA website. In addition, Nijst’s firm has done extensive marketing work for NAWBO National.

For Nijst, it’s part of making a difference, and recognizing that women entrepreneurs succeed when they stand together.

She explained, “Whatever success or influence any of us has achieved as individuals has been predicated on the breakthroughs, accomplishments and sacrifices of others. It’s a notion that goes beyond a one-to-one show of gratitude, where someone does something for me so I do something for her. It’s really about paying it forward – someone has done something for me so I do something for someone else.”

While she has given her time and expertise to NAWBO-LA, Nijst also has built a thriving business career over 20-plus years. Prior to joining Zeesman in 2000 and becoming President and CEO in 2003, she held senior management positions with Medialink, MCTV, PR Newswire and Marketwire.

Nijst, whose family came to California from Indonesia by way of the Netherlands, said her father established three businesses within the first 15 years of having immigrated. He instilled this emphasis on entrepreneurship in his family, as today all three of his children and two of his grandchildren own their own businesses.

As a business owner, Nijst does not look at doing business as merely conducting transactions. Rather, she sees business as a complex network of interconnected relationships that grow incrementally in scope and strength with each interaction. This approach extends to the direct marketing programs Zeesman creates – programs that transform over time their clients’ relationships with their customers.

Under Nijst’s leadership, the 12-employee firm has received dozens of awards for exceptional marketing and design, and Nijst earned the Los Angeles Small Business Administration’s Women in Business Champion Award in 2007. She also sits on the Board of Directors of the California Family Health Council, is a member of the Economic Development Council of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce, and serves on the Minority Business Enterprise Input Committee of the Southern California Minority Business Development Council.

Creating a Sense of Community

Nijst, though, sees her impressive achievements in more personal terms, noting, “My greatest accomplishment is to have had the opportunity to meet, know and learn from such a diverse network of incredibly talented and generous people over the years. It’s something that keeps me grounded in my past and connected to all of the possibilities for the future.”

As for NAWBO-LA, Nijst plans to continue her involvement in “this vehicle for creating a sense of community among a group of people – women entrepreneurs – for whom the building of a business can be a solitary endeavor.”

For other women business owners who seek to further their own success, the Member of the Year added, “I would like more women business owners to see their memberships in organizations like NAWBO-LA as something to be actively exercised and as an investment in their professional and business development that is held over the long term.”

From having the opportunity to learn from the experiences of “women who’ve been there,” to being surrounded by other entrepreneurs who champion each other’s success, to having the rare privilege to impact the growth and development of someone else’s business, she believes that being part of a community has its benefits and its responsibilities. Said Nijst: “That’s the give and take that makes it interesting – the small and large opportunities to learn, to grow, to contribute … to do something that matters. And isn’t that what life is all about?”

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