It’s hard to believe that Twila True, co-founder of Newport Beach-based True Family Enterprises, was ever intimidated by Orange County.
The family office business oversees four portfolio companies and a nonprofit foundation. True co-founded two of the portfolio companies and the charity and is the chief executive of the three entities.
Yet True still remembers the worry about fitting in that she experienced the first time she drove down California Highway 133 and arrived in Laguna Beach. “Here I am, my mother had trouble with alcohol her whole life, and I didn’t know who was my father,” she said. “I felt ashamed of all that.”
She said local businesspeople eliminated her fears when she started working with them.
“We don’t care about your circumstances; we love diversity and empower our women,” she remembers them saying. “If you work hard and believe, we will give you the opportunities; and you can do anything you want to do.”
She believed, she said as she received a Business Journal Excellence in Entrepreneurship award on March 10 in front of a crowd of about 350 people (see profiles of the other winners, below, and pages 1, 6 and 13).
Obstacles Abound
True had been afraid to some extent prior to her business success that she represented influences of her community and the collection of her young life’s experiences.
She’s part of the Oglala Sioux Tribe in Pine Ridge, where about 18,000 Sioux live on 3,500 square miles. The typical mother there is 16 when she gives birth to her first child; the teen suicide rate is four times higher than the national average; infant mortality is three times the national rate; and 25% of infants are born with fetal alcohol syndrome, said Gordon MacLean, a partner at Irvine-based accounting firm RJI International CPAs who introduced True at the event.
Her own mother was struggling with alcohol addiction when True was born. Her grandmother raised her and started building the girl’s confidence.
“My grandmother said, ‘I want you, we’re going to be a family, you will not be pregnant by the age of 14, and you will do great things,’” True said.
Her plans for college changed after her parents divorced and she began working for a family-owned business in California.
“I wanted to provide for myself,” break the poverty cycle and become financially secure, she said.
Making Good
She worked during the day, studied accounting at night, made her way through several departments, and was promoted numerous times.
True eventually became chief executive of privately owned La Verne-based printed circuit board maker Synthane Taylor, which was sold to Boston-based Teradyne Inc. in October 2000. Teradyne reported a 70% leap in revenue to $3 billion the year it acquired Synthane Taylor.
True married Alan True shortly afterward and helped move his furniture making company, True Innovations, to China.
She became an active philanthropist and co-founded with her husband the True Children’s Home in China in 2006 to help orphans obtain medical care for severe or life-threatening medical problems. She founded the True Sioux Hope Foundation in 2009 to help her tribe in South Dakota overcome the 85% to 95% unemployment rate that results in an average household income of $3,000 per year.
The Trues returned to Newport Beach in 2011 after Hong Kong-based Li & Fung acquired True Innovations for an undisclosed amount. True Children’s Home joined with Oklahoma City-based Love Without Boundaries to continue its nonprofit goal to help orphans in China.
The couple the following year founded True Family Enterprises to manage their family’s investments in real estate, consumer products, retail, private equity and the True Sioux Hope Foundation.
She became chief executive of newly formed family firm True Investments LLC, a real estate rental portfolio of 1,000 single-family homes priced around $70,000 and located primarily in the Midwest to help revitalize neighborhoods.
True also created Costa Mesa-based Polished Perfect in 2014 to provide the experience of an upscale nail design studio that she said is typically only available overseas. The company has four locations and plans to open a fifth in Irvine in the coming months.
She and her husband created a fifth portfolio company, Newport Beach-based True Venture Capital, which will invest in startup firms in the technology, financial services, and food and beverage sectors. She seems, in doing so, to be repeating the message she’s heard throughout her life: Regardless of your circumstances, if you work hard and believe, you will get the opportunities to succeed.
