Thirty-One Gifts founder and CEO Cindy Monroe was recently inducted into the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) Gary W. Rollins College of Business Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.
Monroe, the founder of one the biggest direct marketing companies for women and the head of one the biggest minority-owned companies in Tennessee, attended the ceremony at her alma mater, where she had received a bachelor’s degree in marketing. She joins more than two dozen other business entrepreneurs and managers that UTC has saluted since creating the business Hall of Fame in 1999.
“Each year, we come together to honor individuals who have made a lasting impact in and around Chattanooga,” said Dr. Robert Dooley, dean of the UTC College of Business. “Collectively, the Hall of Fame members illustrate how the power of entrepreneurship can transform a city and this year’s inductees add to that story.”
Monroe launched Thirty-One Gifts in the basement of her home in Tennessee in 2003 with just two employees. She named the company for Proverbs 31, a chapter of the Bible that celebrates women’s strengths. Today, the company has more than 1,000 employees at its home in central Ohio and an independent sales consultant force of about 63,000 throughout the United States and in nine provinces in Canada.
Monroe has previously been honored as one of the Most Influential Women in Direct Selling (in both 2014 and 2017). She was the 2016 winner of the Women for Economic & Leadership Development Riveter Award and was named to Enterprising Women magazine’s Hall of Fame.
Thirty-One Gifts has donated more than $100 million in products and cash to nonprofits. Monroe has also established the Cindy Monroe Vision and Values Scholarship, available to any high school girl in Hamilton County, Tenn., providing $12,400 to attend a college or university.