Successful Women in Male Dominated Businesses

Women in traditionally male-dominated fields, such as the v-twin industry, are rare but success is possible as women are proving.  For seven years, Mary Jo Light operated a successful daycare center after graduating from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania with a degree in Elementary Education.  She then decided to run for a local school board position, and to own and operate her own state licensed day care facility.  Her center provided early learning and educational assistance for school age children where she had 62 students revolve through her program. 

Though she had much success with the daycare and enjoyed the children, she always had a passion for speed and the automotive industry.  She grew up with two brothers and a father who drove a truck for a living.   They spent the weekends together doing maintenance on her father’s truck for next week’s load.

Horsepower Inc. has successfully been owned and operated by Mary Jo since its beginning is 2002.  She spends her days answering phones, ordering materials, managing employees, picking up and/or dropping off parts, or whatever needs to be done that day to keep the business going.  She is very hands on and she can even answer a tech question or two.  Sometimes it will catch a customer off guard having a female successfully answer their question about the proper size throttle body for their build.  Some customers are impressed, and some would rather hear the answer from a male, even though they give the same answer. 

There are several women in the motorcycle industry who love to ride, own, and even work on their own bikes.  There are also women who just enjoy the industry, maybe they don’t ride, but they are involved in the bike rallies and atmosphere of the industry because it’s something they share with their husband/boyfriend.  However, it’s not every day you learn of a woman owning a successful operating business in the industry.

Mary Jo loves what she does and loves the industry she is involved in.  She is proud to be a female in a male-dominated business and is confident in the products her company manufactures.  In her spare time, you can find her at the dirt tracks supporting her son, Jimmy Light who races wing sprint cars and her nephew, Bryan Salisbury who drives late models.  Though she doesn’t have the time to ride herself, she hopes to one day have her Horsepower team build a shop bike for her to cruise around town and take to the trade shows, but for now she drives her 2006 Pontiac GTO 6.0 6-speed.