As a teenage mother, faced with the choice between being a victim or a survivor, Isabel Alexander says: "I chose to be a thriver."

Today, she is president and founder of Phancorp Inc., a Brampton-based chemical wholesaler serving the North American chemical distributor market. The company specializes in industrial raw materials and chemicals, including industrial solvents and commodity glycols, and had sales of $11.3 million in 2005, up from $8.3 million the previous year.

Alexander was recently named as one of the country's top 10 growth leaders by Profit Magazine and, last year, she climbed to 43rd place from 50th in the Profit W100 ranking of its Top 100 Canadian women entrepreneurs.

"Sometimes I fell along my journey, but I've always gotten up and moved forward," she says. "Setbacks never derail my goal to be the best at whatever I do."

Isabel Alexander

Raised on a farm outside Shawville, a village in western Quebec (about 75 kilometres west of Gatineau), Alexander says working on the farm was her initial exposure to independent entrepreneurship.

"We milked the cows and piled the hay before dawn, went to school, cleaned the house, did our homework and then continued farm chores well into the night. A hard life, but it instilled a powerful work ethic and gave me resilience."

Alexander left home as a teenager and travelled to Northern Ontario, where she found her first paying job - flipping hamburgers.

A pregnancy at 16 was a life-changing event, she says. "I was single, facing the reality of putting food on the table for my baby. Perhaps had I not had a child early in life, my destiny would have been different, but it taught me a lot about myself and the power of determination."

Alexander discovered she had a gift for running other people's businesses, managing a retail store before taking administrative posts at a car dealership and later at a golf club where she learned bookkeeping and how to read financial statements and supervise staff.

In 1986, a friend told her about an opportunity at a Toronto chemical plant. "I thought this was for an administrative opening, but it turned out to be a sales position," she says. "I never thought of doing sales, especially chemicals."

Her chemical sales training program, she says with a smile, "consisted of me practising each syllable of those long chemical names for hours in front of my home mirror. I wanted to exude confidence speaking with customers without stumbling over the words.

"I enjoyed getting to know a customer, finding out their needs and recommending solutions," she says. "That's the exciting part of business."

In 1989, Alexander founded Phancorp Inc. after deciding to leverage her expertise and contacts. The name came about because she wanted her business to be free to evolve in any direction. "I didn't want something like Acme Chemical that would lock us into a mould," she says. "I believe the name has served us well."

First based in her home, Alexander ran Phancorp as a one-woman show for the first 10 years. Doing everything - sales, accounting, answering the phones - was a brutal agenda, she says. "But it also honed my business skills. And I'm still learning something new about entrepreneurship every day."

Phancorp's next stage of evolution occurred in 1999, when it began growing its international supplier base. It opened its first overseas office in Beijing in late 2002. "And we're looking at opening up in India, too," she says.

The company currently has eight employees and by outsourcing services such as IT and communications to keep costs down, Phancorp is exploring more sources of chemicals, including Europe and Middle Eastern countries such as Turkey.

"We're looking for untapped opportunities in most of the world's emerging markets," Alexander says.

Cathy Campbell, managing director of the 52-member Canadian Association of Chemical Distributors, says Alexander has proven triumphant in what is a male-dominated industry. The Oakville-based association represents 90 per cent of Canada's chemical distribution market and more than $4.5 billion in annual sales.

With only a handful of women in Canada in vice-presidential or presidential positions at chemical distributors, Campbell says: "Isabel has almost single-handedly broken through the glass barrier to become a role model for other women.

"A decade ago, I attended conferences numbering 3,000 delegates, of which only 10 were women," Alexander recalls. "An anomaly back then, we continue to gain strength and are changing the face of the old boys' network in this business."

Dave Emerson, president of Canada Colors and Chemicals, which teamed with Phancorp at its inception, praises Alexander's accomplishments. The Toronto-based company, the sixth-largest chemical distributor in North America, operates eight facilities across Canada serving the food ingredients, personal care and pharmaceutical industries, as well as the oil and gas markets.

"She's passionate about the chemical industry, and her organizational skills and creative zeal help brighten what can often be thought of as a careful and conservative industry," he says. "Isabel's energy and enthusiasm for her relationships in this business are what set her apart."

Now 50, Alexander believes confidence is what has sustained her through many challenges. "Without it, one can't survive today's tough business environment," she says.

A firm believer that winning entrepreneurs never stop learning, Alexander says she regularly attends the Strategic Coach, which brings together entrepreneurial peers across a range of industries under the guidance of coaches who inspire participants to unlock their own wisdom to deliver results.

"Networking with positive people is a big key to success," Alexander says. "I know it's helped me overcome many obstacles in business and in life."

(Jack Kohane can be reached at kohane@businessedge.ca)