Alumna Agbayani digs up facts for BBB

Mechele Agabayani, 35, works on her daily PR as the CEO of the Better Business Bureau in Tyler. Her job incorporates researching local companies and certifying their credibility. Photo by Jessica Sibbing.

The walls of the Better Business Bureau’s office surrounds Mechele Agbayani while she sits at her CEO desk looking over press releases, searching for new leads to scams and business success.
On the wall above her neat desk sit two framed diplomas, a master’s from the University of Baylor and a bachelor’s from the University of Texas.

“I always had really good business sense, but didn’t have the paper work to go behind it,” Agbayani said.

The responsibility of the BBB is to keep records of registered businesses. The employees track criminal records, sex offenders, and the history of each company. Along with educating business owners, another duty of the BBB is to educate the public by informing people about new scams and how to prevent being victimized by them.

“A lot of people think that the BBB is just a big complaint department and that is one thing that we do. But ultimately what we do is monitor businesses and give consumers a resource where they can get an educated decision about the companies that they choose to do business with,” she said.

Agbayani said she reads the newspaper every day to see what’s going on in the community.  “The great thing about East Texas is that people do call us and say, ‘I got this letter in the mail’ or ‘I got a call from this company. Can you check them out?’ So we’re able to see if there’s a trend,” said Agbayani.

There’s a lot of research that goes into it. I basically do a little reporting myself.” Agbayani moved to Tyler from Houston after buying a small doughnut shop and it was during this time she decided to continue her education.

“I thought I would shut down at 11 a.m. and go to school in the afternoon,” she said. “But there’s a lot of work that goes into owning your own business.You wake up at 3 a.m. in the morning and work and then after you close, there’s still the shopping, bookkeeping”

Agbayani said she eventually sold her shop to become a full-time student majoring in public relations while interning for CBS 19 for a month and then becoming a producer. She said she didn’t stay there because she didn’t want to “pay her dues” and work her way up.

“In college it took me awhile to find out what I’d like to do,” Agbayani said. “I liked it [broadcasting], but I wouldn’t like it enough to do it the rest of my life,” she said.

“I always wanted to do something fulfilling, something in which I had to interact with a lot of people,” she said. Agbayani said after graduation she worked for an appraisal district where her public-relations experience assisted greatly in dealing with the public and writing.

“While I was working there, I had a great boss,” she said. “I decided I wanted to go get my master’s degree, I took off every other Friday and went to Baylor.”

She said she took eight hours of classes on Fridays, the equivalent of four weeks of school. Agbayani said after juggling work and class time, she graduated with a grade point average of 3.6.

“This was my greatest accomplishment, as well as my greatest challenge,” she said. “It’s like the saying ‘Successful people do what unsuccessful people won’t’,” she said.

Agbayani said after graduation she began looking for something “more meaty” to do and that’s when she discovered the open position of chief executive officer for the BBB.

“The position here came up,” she said. “I saw the job description and they said they needed someone with some business experience, management [experience], and PR and media experience.”

Agbayani said before the interview process she hand delivered the resume to the proper recipient, researched the job and the area, and practiced for possible interview questions.

“I have to write lots of press releases and I have to write lots of articles, Agbayani said. “All that PR and media stuff came into play here. Knowing and having all the business experience that I had really helped because I can relate to what business owners have to struggle through.”