• ENTREPRENEUR
• Born Isabella Selmes into a wealthy family
• After her father died when she was 9 years old, her mother moved them first to Minnesota and then to New York City, where Isabella attended private schools and befriended such society elite as Edith Wharton and Eleanor Roosevelt
• Began a lifelong correspondence with Eleanor in 1904, and served as a bridesmaid at her wedding
• After her first husband died, she married John Greenway, moving with him and her two children to Tucson
• John died soon after, and Isabella split her time between raising her -- now three -- children, working on political campaigns, and helping veterans of the first World War
• Arizona's FIRST female member of congress
• Opened the Arizona Hut, a successful furniture factory that employed disabled WWI veterans, but business plummeted after the 1929 stock market crash. Greenway invested and lost more than $20,000 (almost $300,000 in today's dollars) of her own money in attempts to keep it afloat.
• Opened a hotel, the Arizona Inn, the FIRST luxury hotel in Tucson -- supervising every detail of hotel construction
• PROTECTED the welfare of her employees and those who worked to build the hotel, threatening to fire her architect when he suggested they cut costs by paying laborers less than fair market wages
• Furnished the hotel with a combination of leftover items from the Hut, and her own personal belongings, including Audubon prints and antiques
• Marketed the hotel as a private, informal, luxurious getaway, and it was instantly successful, welcoming such famous guests as John D. Rockefeller, Clark Gable, and, of course, good friend Eleanor Roosevelt
• Managed the inn even when she was serving in Congress
• The Inn, listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is still open today

So. Very. Awesome.

When some of the employees at the Arizona Inn complained about sharing the cafeteria with a Black employee, Greenway sat right beside that employee, eating her lunch and sharing stories about all of her Black friends back in Kentucky.

Bibliography: Drachman, Virginia G. Enterprising Women: 250 Years of American Business. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2002. Print.

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