As one of the first female students admitted to what was Rutgers College in 1972, Melanie Willoughby found herself navigating unfamiliar terrain: from residence hall bathrooms ill-equipped to handle women’s needs to a health service that had never counted a gynecologist among its staff.
From Day One, the Howell High School grad learned to break down these and other barriers, a skill she calls on to this day to guide companies large and small through the labyrinth of running a business.
The woman who became the first female president of the Rutgers student body – and later the first female member of the Rutgers University Alumni Association, and later still its president – directs the New Jersey Business Action Center, an agency within the Department of State.
She and her team of 33 advocates spend their working days fielding questions from business owners and prospective entrepreneurs: How do I register my business with the state? How do I comply with the Garden State’s rules and regulations? Will these new tax laws affect my employees?
“Our sole purpose is to help businesses navigate the regulatory system, and solve problems, because government can be very complex,” the former history major said.
The job requires her not only to remain on top of all new laws the Legislature enacts, but also to know whom to call to get things done.
The center helps business owners arrange meetings with regulatory agencies, identifies grants that may be available, helps with permits and approvals, aids with site searches – anything and everything to help companies thrive in a competitive economy.
“We’re facilitators, matchmakers, whatever,” Willoughby says.
She is also New Jersey’s biggest booster, ticking off the assets that make her native state attractive to job-creators.
“Location, location, location – our proximity to New York City and Philadelphia makes us a great transportation hub, a great trucking center,” says Willoughby. “If you want to get your product out quickly, New Jersey is the place to be.''
"We have a very highly educated population and a great education system,” she said.
“Rutgers has a phenomenal wealth of research opportunities, including in the biosciences and technology. We partner with Rutgers in so many ways.”
Following a recent meeting with officials at Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR), for example, Willoughby’s staff has been coordinating efforts with the New Jersey/New York Center for Employee Ownership, an arm of SMLR.
Willoughby also cites her ongoing relationship with the Eagleton Institute for Politics, whose students she has mentored over the years, as well as her membership on the board of the university’s Institute for Women’s Leadership.
The Institute for Women'a Leadership, a consortium of nine units based on the New Brunswick campus, promotes women’s equality and supports the role of women in the workplace and the political sphere.
The atmosphere today is a major shift from the day she arrived at the university’s flagship New Brunswick campus nearly five decades ago. At that time she encountered a culture clinging to the belief that women did not belong in college, she recalls – rather, they belonged at home with the children.
Professors would angrily accuse the women of lowering university standards. Upperclassmen would knock on the women’s students’ dorm rooms, accusing them of taking up spaces rightfully belonging to men. No support group existed to help the pioneers pave the way; the modern women’s movement was barely in its formative stages.
“Being at Rutgers was an opportunity for me to toughen up, to build acceptance and respect among the professors and administrators and show other students what I was capable of,” she says. “The professors had fears of our dumbing down Rutgers. Instead, we were very rigorous and academically gifted.”
Looking back, Willoughby believes the confrontations were part of the crucible that forged her into the successful advocate and negotiator she is today.
“Even then I knew I wanted to work in politics and government, and that’s definitely a man’s world, so I was very comfortable that I was gaining valuable experience,” she noted in a 2012 Rutgers Today article marking the 40th anniversary of coeducation at the university.
Later, she handled marketing for the New Jersey Business and Industry Association (NJBIA) in the early 1980s before starting a 17-year run as president and CEO of the New Jersey Retail Merchants Association.
Willoughby returned to the NJBIA in 2003, lobbying and serving a brief span as acting president, before landing her current position with the Business Action Center.
Bill Castellano, a professor at SMLR and executive director of the Rutgers center working with Willoughby, praises the impact she has in the state and at Rutgers.
“Melanie works tirelessly to help New Jersey businesses gain access to valuable resources to help them succeed. She connected our center to numerous business associations, enabling us to make direct contact with thousands of New Jersey businesses,’’ Castellano says. “This has enormously helped us build greater awareness of the benefits of employee ownership and the resources we offer.”
