Company: Joy Lynn, Inc., Roswell, GA USA
Company Description: Joy Lynn, Inc. is a qualitative marketing research and consulting services company. The company was founded in 1995 by Joy Lynn Fields, recent recipient of Enterprising Women magazine's 2013 Enterprising Women of the Year award. Joy Lynn, Inc. conducts qualitative research for some of the world's leading brands of consumer products and services.
Nomination Category: Individual Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Female Entrepreneur of the Year – Business Services –10 or Less Employees

Nomination Title: Joy Lynn Fields, President

1. Describe for the judges the activities and accomplishments of the nominated entrepreneur since the beginning of July last year (up to 525 words):

In the past 12 months, Joy Lynn Fields has been busy continuing to manage and grow her existing business while making it a personal priority to give back. Even with a 19 year old company, in a single year, she has managed to increase gross profit by 21%, increase net income by almost 68% and the company has already met its 2014 goals after only 7 months. She has done all this without reducing or adding personnel. The company is clearly on track to have a record year.

Amidst this growth, she has made giving back a priority. Joy Lynn manages and oversees disbursements from her newly created philanthropy called the Pearl Fund (named after her grandmother), which provides interim assistance to needy families who have been thrown into extenuating circumstances and she has begun personally mentoring young aspiring women on an individual basis. In 2014, she joined the ASPCA's Legacy Society and was also invited to join the Girls Scouts Second Century Circle. On an ongoing basis, Joy Lynn helps support the US Olympic Team as well as the US Bobsled & Skeleton Federation. Within her own company, she started a clean soap initiative to collect unused hotel amenities for local homeless and domestic abuse shelters.

In the past year, Joy Lynn extended her philanthropy abroad. She recently received a Reforestation Award from Santuary Olanana in the Masai Mara area of Kenya for her contributions and tree planting efforts there. This year, she has helped fund a rainwater collection project for a local Masai village, provided needed school supplies to local Masai children and Joy Lynn has also recently adopted 3 orphaned baby elephants who have been affected by poaching incidents in Africa through the David Sheldrick Elephant Wildlife Trust adoption program. Upon her recent departure from Kenya, local Masai villagers decided to acknowledge her giving efforts by honoring her with a special ceremony granting her the Masai name “Namunyak,” meaning, the “lucky one.”

For her 50th birthday, in lieu of gifts, Joy Lynn decided to run a Charity water fundraising campaign to provide clean water to underserved global communities and after less than a week, it had already reached it’s goal.

Joy Lynn currently serves as consumer advisory panel member for a major consumer products manufacturer and a Thought Leaders panelist member for another organization. She is a member of QRCA, MRA, WIT, the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Women Presidents Organization.

This list of accomplishments adds to a litany of recent awards Joy Lynn has recently received including Enterprising Women magazine’s 2013 Enterprising Women of the Year and she continues to be featured in the media for her wealth of consumer expertise and her unique success story.

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Provide a brief biography of the nominated entrepreneur (up to 125 words):

Joy Lynn grew up in Griffin GA, where, after her father's sudden death at age 14, she received many scholarships and became the first person in her family to go to college. Her advertising-related career began an intern for BBDO. After multiple advertising-related jobs, in 1989, she got a rare opportunity to train in marketing under the late Frank Lane, ex-Neutrogena President and author of Killer Brands. There, she worked on brand strategy assignments for many famous brands and saw an untapped opportunity to build the business through research. She created a profitable research arm of that consulting practice and after 6 years, she spun off on her own to become a first generation entrepreneur running the company she has today.