2006 INFLUENTIAL WOMEN IN BUSINESS: GAYLE JACKSON

GAYLE JACKSON

Owner, Precision Title of Louisiana

Gayle Jackson is a woman on the move. That's evidenced by the fact she's fielding questions for this profile while en route from Baton Rouge to New Orleans.

Jackson is an attorney who in 2004 founded Precision Title of Louisiana,

which handles commercial and residential real estate closings. She formerly worked as an assistant district attorney in East Baton Rouge Parish, specializing in the prosecution of sex crimes, and also under former Louisiana Attorney General Richard Ieyoub, focusing on issues related to workplace violence and spousal abuse.

A Baton Rouge native, Jackson says her new company provides the opportunity to continue her longtime role as an advocate for womens rights. She's helping battered women in their efforts to secure permanent housing, so they can stand on their own without feeling compelled to return to a cycle of abuse.

While working for Ieyoub, she started a program that aimed to educate employers about how to recognize and address domestic, violence among their workers. "Louisiana has had the distinction, at various times, of being the state ranked highest for the number of women killed by their intimate partners, and many of those hap pened in the workplace," she says.

Through Precision Title, Jackson hopes to work with the local real estate community in assisting women who need a safe place to land after leaving a troubled relationship.

"Often people will tell a woman, 'Leave.' Leave to go where? Your mama's not taking you in; your sister-in-law's not taking you in. Often, there's no place to go. I thought if I could start the title company, then I could help battered women find permanent housing by working with builders, Realtors, mortgage companies and everybody involved in the process of putting a person in home."

She hopes to launch a nonprofit organization early next year that will raise money from the real estate industry and other sources to achieve her goal of steering more abused women toward home ownership.

"As I'm meeting more people in the industry, I'm sharing my vision with them," she says. "In January, I'm going to take my show on the road, teaching people in the industry what domestic violence is and why we need this housing."

Jackson is former volunteer for the Battered Women's Program of the Capital Area Family Violence Intervention Center and a past recipient of the Helping Women Award given by the Governor's Office on Women's Policy.

"People batter because they're allowed to," she says. "Batterers, go to jail less than folks who commit any other crimes. The only time you're really going to see a batterer punished is when he's killed someone."

Jackson, who attended LSU Law School, says community involvement was something she learned from her father, the late Roosevelt Harrell Sr., a preacher and Plank Road service-station owner.

"He taught me and my brother that first in life, we should be humanitarians. That our giving should start at home, church and the community. My father's life was about helping others. So I grew up with the notion that whatever I did in life, I had to use it for the good of society."