Written by: Jannatul Maisha.

Photo credit: Valarie Samuel.

Valerie White-Samuel is the founder of All Boro Expediter. She’s a certified expediter, a licensed filing representative and notary. Her All Boro Expediter business is M/WBE certified, in other words, Minority/Women-owned Business Enterprises. When asked about her pride in the company she has built, Valerie stated, “There are not a lot of black women in the industry. I’m extraordinarily proud of what I’m doing, I’m extraordinarily proud of my work. I am extraordinarily proud of how I help to solve problems.” Valerie is a person of passion,  optimism, and positivity. She takes pride in what she does and makes sure to give one hundred percent of herself in everything. The motto of the company is “Done Fast and Done Right.”

Valerie’s background has been as a business development professional with a marketing specialization. She started as an advisor/adjunct professor. She has facilitated continuing education business and project management courses in many different colleges such as Astoria, Baruch, Queens, and York College in addition to Hofstra, and St. John’s University. After some time, she realized that her strong instructional skills, coupled with her business background were useful skills necessary to manage, own, and operate any business. Luckily, Valerie was able to try out her theory while helping her uncle, who owns a hardware and construction business, as he had asked her for help since she had good management and research skills. In order to do this work and help her uncle, she had to obtain her expediter license. “It all started as a way to help my family,” Valerie stated, who quickly started seeing success as an expediter. Seeing this, Valerie decided to start her own company.

Her company, All Boro Expediter,  offers a variety of services to customers such as Site Inspection Management, Employee Training Record keeping, Safety Meetings, DOT Compliance & Training and OSHA Surprise Inspections. Some of the examples of work they do are pulling permits, removing violations, pulling the business buildout permit, property research, providing letters of no objection and registering contractors that want to do business with the city by helping them with the paperwork. If you need a plumbing permit they can pull that for you as well. They also help with project management. Valerie has experience working with many different agencies and businesses ranging from commercial, residential, and to even restaurants. Her motto is, “Teamwork makes the dream work.” 

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, All Boro Expediter had to find new ways to help contractors as well as facility managers. Now that the NY state is requiring safety plans, All Boro Expediter is now offering a new service in which they coordinate safety plans for their clients. 

Once a customer hires All Boro Expediter, they take them through a seven-stage process. First, they draft up the plan (i.e., the blueprint on how the project will look). Next, they prepare documents needed by the architect and by the buildings department. Then, they file the paperwork to obtain the permit, approval, physical work and inspections. Finally, the last stage is the “signoff” which signifies the end of the work through a letter of completion.

Valerie also owns a showroom called Lock and Roll. In this showroom, she provides customers with hardware such as keys and locks, carpet and flooring, and blinds. This is the showroom’s Yelp page.

When asked about the impact the pandemic had in her business, her work process and how she had adapted, Valerie stated: 

“The pandemic allowed me the opportunity to slow down. I had the opportunity to reassess how things had been going with my business and figure out ways that I can do things better. That’s been a real treat to me.”

Valerie took this pandemic to work in a positive way for her, and used this time to slow down and work on a few more new projects. One of them being the revamp of the All Boro Expediters website. She also recently started doing podcasts. Her focus on these is to talk about “doing business during the pandemic and how to do business with the federal state government.” She also seeks to “help people get the certifications and understand the certifications.” Valerie mentioned enjoying and being passionate about the podcasting activity since she “can put [her] energy into [her] voice.”

Finally, when asked about her motivation to overcome obstacles she faces when managing her company, she mentioned: 

“You have to keep a positive mental attitude. Somebody told me there are 26 letters in the alphabet and if A doesn’t work there are 25 more. Being an optimist, I naturally think I can do this. You can’t give up, you have to figure out another way.” 

Valerie says she goes by the saying, “If you fall down and you can look up, then you can get up.”

Valerie wants to leave us all with this message: 

“I’m just a woman that’s trying to build a company, and I’m trying to utilize my assets which are my certifications to do that. I’m trying to give back to the community and work with the community because if I grow, we all grow and I can hire from the community. ” 

Valerie’s office is located at 11708 Merrick Blvd, Jamaica, NY 11434-2236.