(54b) The Secret of Success Is There's No Secret

you’ve got one shot,” she said. Drake was the only woman graduate

with a bachelor’s degree in chemistry from East Carolina University in 1984.

“The only girl, can you believe that?” She interned in the quality assurance

lab of the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world. They offered her

the opportunity to continue fulltime, but such a job didn’t ignite anything in the

passionate lady.

From helping facilities develop green energy, assisting in energy recovery, developing best

management practices, gas cleaning and purification, recycling, to finding

cost-saving solutions, CS2 has experts with knowledge that literally spans the

alphabet—from air pollution control engineering to waste-to-energy operations.

She quit her plant job in 1997. It was a home-based business for a while. She

started making cold calls that weren’t cold at all and quickly landed

some huge jobs. Within six months, she moved into an office building. Her college

roommate, Jamie Phillips ’87—“she did my taxes"—became her accountant.

Her husband became one of her engineers, and, because of her one-foot-in-front-of another

business plan, CS2 was founded with no borrowed money.

CS2’s client list is impressive: NASA, Clean Harbors, hazardous waste incinerators,

petrochemical companies, pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies, a nuclear

facility, and more. And when the petroleum company BP sent out a call to all the best

companies to help run its multilayered environmental audits, CS2 was picked for seven of

the jobs, outperforming some of the biggest companies in the nation.

“There are no guarantees for anybody. My children don’t think that there is

anything they can’t do. I don’t have to tell them.” Instead Drake teaches by showing.

“You’ve got to be a giver. You’ve got to serve others. You’ve got to make a difference.

You’ve got to be a risk-taker. Take a look at yourself and think, ‘I can

do this.’”