05/11/2026
On Friday, May 8, 2026, we lost our founder, Ms. Mary E. Evins.
In 1967, when most boardrooms didn't have a chair for women, Mary pulled up her own. She founded Evins Personnel Consultants — what would become Openwork — and spent the next five decades reshaping an entire industry from Austin, Texas.
She was the third woman business owner to join the Austin Chamber of Commerce. The first woman in the U.S. to chair a state regulatory board for the employment services industry. She helped create the very first certification program for personnel consultants (the CPC) in 1969 — a standard that still shapes how our industry operates today. She was inducted into the National Association of Personnel Services Hall of Fame, received the Governor's Award for Women in Leadership, and built her company into one of Texas' Top 25 Women-Owned Businesses for 40 consecutive years.
But the stat sheet doesn't quite capture her.
Mary believed staffing wasn't about filling seats — it was about helping people build lives. That belief is the foundation everything we do at Openwork still rests on. "Fulfilling lives, not just filling jobs" isn't a tagline we wrote in a conference room. It's the lesson she taught us.
She gave back relentlessly — to the Salvation Army, to veterans, to Austin SHRM, where her endowed scholarship continues to send the next generation of HR leaders forward.
To Jeff and the entire Evins family: thank you for sharing her with us. To Mary: thank you for the blueprint. We'll keep building.
Rest easy, Ms. E.
🤍
