LAUREL, Md. — The Drycleaning & Laundry Institute (DLI, formerly IFI) announced Tuesday that it has installed its first female president. Barbara “Bobbie” Harvey, owner of Fabricare by Fran in Severna Park, Md., will serve as the association’s president for the 2007-2008 term.
Harvey has served previously as treasurer and District 2 director. She has also been active in several industry associations, including the MidAtlantic Association of Cleaners (MAC). This year, Harvey chaired the committee to change the International Fabricare Institute’s name to the Drycleaning & Laundry Institute.
Despite her credentials, Harvey remains humble. “I haven’t gone very far in life,” she says. “I live in the same house I was born in, and I’m working the only job I ever had.” Harvey worked with her parents, Francis and Theo Sadler, until taking the company reins in 1989. Her parents launched Fabricare by Fran in 1951 as a route service and built it into a full-service drycleaner and coin laundry facility.
“I feel very confident that I have handed over the association to a very competent person,” says Steve Poulos, outgoing president and new DLI chairman. “Bobbie has demonstrated her competency time and again at board meetings and industry functions. I’m very comfortable knowing that she’s the new president.”
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