Never Give Up
In her rise to the top of the professional service industry, President and CEO of ICON Information Consultants, Pamela O’Rourke said she never took no for an answer.
“Never give up!” she said. “Once you give up, someone else will win. If you fight, you at least give yourself a chance to succeed.”
She says being a woman in the male dominated technology sector has been challenging. “The industry is a network in itself with built in obstacles, but I have found you have to put your time in and it will pay off. People take me seriously in the IT realm because I have hands on experience. I know what I am talking about because I have been in the server room, I have cabled wire, coded and programmed,” she said.
O’Rourke pursued her MIS degree at the University of Houston, while working full time in an information technology position. She founded ICON Information Consultants with a vision to provide human capital solutions with an information technology foundation to meet client needs. This included filling high-turnover and temporary positions, as well as supplementing positions during periods of higher business demands.
She began by building a client base focusing on the Fortune 100 and 500 arenas, primarily due to their investments in state-of-the-art technology. She expanded and developed ICON Consultants to provide recruitment, payroll and independent contractor solutions, and a specialized information technology project management group.
Since the launch of ICON Information Consultants, O’Rourke’s business has grown to over 3,150 employees and sales of $253 million, all while never experiencing a single quarter without profit. Included among ICON Consultants’ clientele roster are Shell, Waste Management, Hewlett Packard, Halliburton, CenterPoint Energy, Bank of America and NRG, a Reliant Company.
O’Rourke’s numerous accolades include the 2016 University of Houston Distinguished Alumni Award, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and the WBENC WBE Star Award. She was inducted into the WBE Hall of Fame in 2011 by the American Institute of Diversity and Commerce.