EYE FOR PROGRESS—Elaine Freeman, chair of the park district board and president of Urban Strategies, has played a role in scores of residential and commercial developments all across the city during her 40-plus years in Simi Valley. In 1989, she became the first female Rotary Club member in District 5240, which includes Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties. WENDY PIERRO/Acorn Newspapers A 45-year resident and longtime business leader in the community, Elaine Freeman has helped shape Simi Valley into the city it is today. But she won’t take credit for it.

This town, as well as Freeman’s life, might be very different though had it not been for a simple typing test taken more than four decades ago.

Must be fate

The year was 1967. Still relatively new to Simi, Freeman had moved to the one-stoplight, onegrocery-store town two years earlier.

Moving to Simi had been quite the culture shock for the San Diego native, who’d become accustomed to city life after living and working in Beverly Hills.

After quitting her job at a nonprofit in Los Angeles to go on maternity leave, Freeman later sought work closer to home but found there were few places to work in Simi. She briefly held a job in Calabasas, but her life-changing moment came when she got a callback on an application she’d submitted to the Rancho Simi Recreation and Park District.

“They needed a receptionist. So I went in and filled out the application and took the test,” Freeman said. “There were 80 women taking the typing test. So I went home and said, ‘Boy, am I glad I don’t need the job.’”

Freeman got the job. She still sees the moment as fate.

“One out of 80 women. Isn’t that kind of serendipitous? Someone had a plan for me to stay here in Simi.”

Following her passion

While working for the park district, Freeman met board member Ted Grandsen, who would become Simi’s second mayor in 1972. When Gransen’s term on the City Council was up, Freeman helped him win a seat on the county Board of Supervisors.

Seeing that she was a hard worker and good problem solver, Grandsen hired Freeman as his chief deputy for the 4th District.

“She has a real knack of working with almost anybody, whether a business person or an individual, a group or organization,” he said. “You give her something to do, and it might be a challenge, but she gets it done.”

While working for Grandsen, Freeman furthered the business education she’d received at San Diego State, enrolling in a fouryear program in urban studies and land use offered by a consortium of colleges in Ventura.

Freeman somehow managed to juggle a divorce and life as a single parent with working full time and going to school. She even made the dean’s list and obtained her bachelor’s degree at the end of three years.

With the degree in hand as well as her experience working with Grandsen, Freeman’s career took off. She went to work for a civil engineering firm in Ventura as a project manager before being hired as executive director for the Building Industry Association for Ventura and Santa Barbara counties.

She then moved on to Griffin Homes, where she worked for six years as vice president of land development.

When recession struck in 1989, Freeman decided to start her own consulting company, Urban Strategies.

“If I had to do (this life) over, I might have become an architect,” she said. “And this was working with architects and engineers, and I really enjoy the creativity of those people.”

With everything she’s worked on, her objective has been the betterment of the community.

“I’ve had opportunities to work on certain projects here that I wouldn’t do,” she said. “If I can’t get up and say this is good for everybody, I won’t work on it.”

Though her work is done behind the scenes, her impact is visible. Hope Town, Mount Sinai Memorial Park, Borders Books, Regal Cinemas, 24 Hour Fitness— she helped build them all, guiding each application through the permit process.

Driving through town, Freeman is proud of the city Simi has become.

“Simi was unincorporated. The county was just letting anything be built, helter-skelter,” she said. “I wanted Simi to be better.”

Breaking down barriers

The local Rotary clubs have also felt her influence.

Up until 1989, Rotary International excluded women. But a progressive club in Duarte, Calif., and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling changed all that.

When the organization’s bylaws were amended to allow women, the Simi club was forced to take a step forward, too. But change didn’t come easily.

“It was really controversial because there was a lot of this good ol’ boy attitude, that this is a men’s club,” said longtime Rotarian Bob Huber.

Several women were proposed and rejected. Then Huber sponsored Freeman, chair of the Chamber of Commerce at the time. The club voted her in, making her the first female Rotarian in District 5240, which includes Ventura, Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Kern counties.

Huber said he chose Freeman because she was admired by the community. But that didn’t shield her from criticism.

Even though Freeman knew the flak she’d get by joining the club, Huber said she “didn’t flinch.”

“Some left the club. That was their option,” said Freeman, who served as president of the Rotary Club of Simi Sunrise in 2004. “There was going to be women and it was their choice how they dealt with it. That’s the way I looked at it.”

Still, she admitted it was difficult when a friend stopped speaking to her or questioned her decision. But she was used to being in a male-dominated profession and had never before let gender get in her way.

“She’s always up; she has a positive attitude,” said Janet Adams, a friend of Freeman’s for 33 years. “She feels like you’re in control of your life and you make it what you want it to be.”

Committed to community

Last month at the Chamber of Commerce’s 57th annual Business Achievement Luncheon, Freeman received the Strathearn Lifetime Achievement Award for her work in the community.

Surprised by the recognition, Freeman said she never set out to make a statement; she just followed her heart.

“You know how in life, you just do things that seem the right thing to do, without the goal of anything other than doing the right thing? That’s just it,” she said.

She declined to state her age but said she’s thinking of slowing down soon, at least on the work front, to make more time for traveling, cooking, gardening and spending time with family.

Freeman has one son, Alex, 44, who lives in Simi, and two stepdaughters and seven grandkids with Jack, her husband of 32 years.

The current chair of the park district board made it clear that she’d maintain her list of volunteer activities, which includes Simi Valley Republican Women, Simi Hospital Strategic Planning Committee and Hats Off to Women Committee.

Adams said she often shakes her head at all that her friend Freeman takes on.

“I’d think she’d get overwhelmed but . . . she just loves giving of herself,” she said. “I don’t think she’ll ever retire. . . . She always has to have a cause.”