• Executive Assistant

    After 29-and-a-half years in hotel management, Ellen Williams isn’t thinking about retirement.

    She’s ready for the next challenge.

    Just sitting around the house isn’t an option.

    At least not for someone with her level of ambition.

    “Some people like being retired and being at home and not doing anything,” said Ellen, the Executive Assistant at Fortis Mortgage. “To me, I couldn’t do that. I still have life in me. I want to start over.”

    As it turns out, she didn’t have to look far to find the next adventure.

    Ellen is the mother of Fortis Mortgage founder and CEO Shawn Williams. It just so happened that Ellen was looking to re-enter the workforce at the same time that Shawn was launching his own company.

    “I retired for six months, and I was like, ‘I can’t do this.’ There was nothing to do,” Ellen said. “I was looking for a job, but I wanted to work from home. Shawn and I were just talking, and he was like, ‘Mom, you still looking for a job? I said, ‘Yeah.’ He said to me, ‘Send me your resume. I think I may nobody somebody who needs help.”

    LIFE BEFORE FORTIS

    Ellen still lives in the Stanardsville community where she was born and raised. She helped integrate William Monroe in eighth grade and was a standout student.

    “It’s right across the mountain from Harrisonburg and right up the road from Charlottesville,” Ellen said. “I have been Greene County for life. It’s quiet. It’s country, and I know everybody.”

    She enrolled at Radford University after high school, with designs of instructing special education students. Ellen completed one year at Radford, before returning to Greene County.

    She worked a number of odd jobs – factory work, school aide and Yellow Pages – before landing up in the hospitality industry as a hotel manager.

    “I liked meeting people,” Ellen said. “Every day was different. I’m terrified of snakes, but one day a man came in with a snake wrapped around his neck. I got to meet Ray Charles. I got to meet Shabba Ranks. It was a lot of different stuff. We did a lot with the University (of Virginia), so I know a lot of the coaches of the teams really well. That’s what I liked about it.”

    A SPECIAL BOND

    At the same time Ellen went to work in a factory, she started raising Shawn.

    From the beginning, the mother and son have an unbreakable bond.

    “Shawn was a very good child,” Ellen said. “We had – and still do – have a very close relationship.”

    During Shawn’s freshman year of college, he enrolled in an introduction to public speaking class. For his end-of-semester final project, Shawn gave a stirring speech on all the sacrifices Ellen had made for him as a single mother.

    There wasn’t a dry eye in the classroom.

    Included in the audience members wiping away tears was Ellen, who showed up to the class with no idea of what her son’s speech was about.

    “I cried through the whole thing,” Ellen said. “I had no idea. He just told me to come up there. He said, ‘I’m doing this speech.’ It’s making me tear up even now. It just brought it all together for me. We’ve always been really, really close. I guess that was his way of saying what he couldn’t always say.”

    The admiration goes both ways.

    “Every time I sit down at that computer, I’m proud of what he’s doing,” Ellen said. “He knows that I’ve got his back. Whatever he wants to do, I’m going to stick with him. I think he’s doing an awesome job. I’m very proud of the stuff that he does, and he’s such a giving person. He’s out here helping all these people. He has such a big heart, and he loves to give back. I could not be prouder of him.”

    LIFELONG LEARNER

    As the Executive Assistant at Fortis Mortgage, Ellen is always adding new skill sets.

    “I do all the bookkeeping for Fortis, so I went back and got QuickBooks certified as a certified bookkeeper,” she said. “I did that online. And then one day I was talking to our compliance lawyer, and she said, ‘Why don’t you become a notary, and then you can notarize all this stuff?’ I applied to be a notary, and I got permission two weeks ago. Right now, I have to go back and apply to be a virtual notary, so I can do it virtually.”

    Far from slowing down, she’s thinking about ramping up. She’s exploring starting her own tax preparation business on the side.

    Shawn’s accomplishments have always fueled her to dream big, but he’s not the only family member from whom she draws encouragement.

    Her older cousin is a 75-year-old distance runner in Texas.

    “She motivates me,” Ellen said. “She’s a runner, but she has all of these medical things going on. She’s going to New York next week to run in a race in Central Park. She and I talk quite often. I tell her all the time she motivates me. If she can do all of that, then I can sit at this desk and do what I do.”

    Ellen’s advice to her peers is that just because they can retire, it doesn’t mean that they have to retire.

    “Don’t be afraid,” Ellen said. “If it doesn’t work, you can always go back into your cocoon. Do what it is that you want to do. If you feel there’s something, go out and do it.”