Beverly Wall translates entrepreneurship

Beverly Wall translates entrepreneurship

Beverly Wall.

Editor’s note: Each issue of the Influential Women enewsletter will feature profiles of the Business Journal’s reigning 50 Most Influential Women in West Michigan. The profile first appeared in the event program.

Beverly Wall lives in two cultures as CEO and owner of Languages International: the culture of business and the culture of international communications.

Through Languages International, she helps individuals, companies, nonprofits and governmental organizations embrace the nuances of linguistics and fragility of communication in other languages.

Wall’s true passion, however, is mentoring West Michigan’s future female leaders and helping women-owned businesses grow. She started her own marketing consultancy, Wall2Wall Marketing, specifically to help women business owners. She is active with the Michigan Center for Empowerment and Economic Development, certifies women-owned businesses through the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, works with Inforum’s Activate program training women for business and assists the Michigan Women’s Foundation.

Wall additionally chairs the advisory committee for Davenport University’s Maine School of Business, which seeks to support second-stage business owners. Her own successes as an entrepreneur are worthy of note, having revitalized Languages International after purchasing the company in 2003. Originally founded in 1988, she dedicated 18 months to turning the business around, led the company to a 200 percent sales increase, and survived the Great Recession.

Wall has been recognized as a leading women-owned business and received awards from Toastmasters International, VIEW 100, Grand Valley State University’s Seidman College of Business, and the Grand Rapids Area Chamber’s Athena Award program.

Wall has been a Grand Rapids Township planning commissioner since 2008 and has served numerous boards including Susan G. Komen West Michigan, Community Rebuilders and American Heart Association.