Lisa Williams is a petite, beautiful, brown-skinned woman, with a broad endearing smile. She’s genuine, compassionate, soulful, and is the creator of Positively Perfect Dolls. No, this isn’t a story about a woman who, all her life desired to make dolls and sell them to little girls. And this isn’t a story about a woman seeking fortune and fame. This is a story about a woman who had the greater desire to fill a need. “I don’t create dolls; I show the beauty in our children. I see myself as healing generations,” said Williams.
A visionary leader, award-winning speaker and author, Lisa (as she is affectionately known) is the CEO of the World of Entertainment, Publishing and Inspiration (World of EPI), LLC. In addition to winning numerous teaching awards from major universities such as Penn State, Ohio State and the University of Arkansas, Williams is the first female to hold a multimillion dollar endowed chair in her field, the first African-American female to graduate from the Ohio State University’s Marketing and Logistics Department, and the second woman in her discipline to become a full professor.
With numerous accolades under her wings, Williams has triumphantly created a flight path to success. But while on her journey of enlightening people through education, she realized that God yet required more of her, she said. After publishing her book “Leading Beyond Excellence,” Williams developed a partnership with Wal-Mart, in which her books sold extremely well. It was something in her book that showed Wal-Mart, she could offer something to their customers that they had been longing to do – sell children’s books that reflected multiculturalism.
After great sales, and tremendous feedback, Wal-Mart decided to throw Williams another challenge: create dolls, “Wal-Mart understands and is sensitive to the needs in our community,” she said. “I wanted to do something that was respectful to our community and our race. [Wal-Mart] was saying ‘We think you understand the community, and we want you to do a line of multicultural dolls.’”
The DIVA Doll Collection
From concept to production, Positively Perfect Dolls took approximately a year to complete. The name of the collection, DIVA, stands for Dignified, Intelligent, Vivacious and Attractive.
“That’s how I see these girls. These dolls aren’t sexy. You’ll never see them in a sexy outfit…
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