Pam Wallace left the corporate world knowing a lot about consumer marketing and next to nothing about massage ”“ when it came to trying her hand at her own spa in Stamford, she says that corporate training worked out the kinks that would have otherwise given her some sleepless nights.
The owner of Connecticut”™s first Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa franchise was able to secure a U.S. Small Business Administration loan in just three weeks, allowing her to leave behind ”“ for good she thinks ”“ a corporate career that took her to Harvard Business School and through JPMorgan Chase & Co. among other stops.
“You get a good training at big companies,” Wallace said, “but I”™ve always been an entrepreneur at heart.”
She”™s not alone ”“ in the wake of a report suggesting women are not getting along any farther in the executive ranks these days, an increasing number of women appear to have decided the best way to get to the top is to start there.
“Early in my career, a mentor once said to me: ”˜As you go through your career, fail, fail often ”“ and fail forward,”™” said Susan Davis, CEO of St. Vincent”™s Medical Center in Bridgeport who started out as a nurse. “Her point was ”¦ if you don”™t take risks, you are never going to grow.”
While Fairfield County is home to a number of corporations with the best records for promoting women”™s careers, there is ample anecdotal evidence to suggest that women”™s entrepreneurship is blossoming here as some leave their day jobs ”“ not always by choice ”“ not perhaps a few of them hoping to control their own mini-empires one day.
It is not an easy transition for some, according to Kathy McShane, who runs the southwest Connecticut chapter of the Ladies Who Launch entrepreneurship support group.
“I find that women who come out of the corporate world have a different set of needs than those that are born entrepreneurs,” McShane said. “Many of them are so used to having a support system that they find it far harder to do everything on their own. And sometimes they feel isolated and that has them looking to expand their (non-corporate) network.”
Connecticut had nearly 93,500 women-owned businesses as of 2007, according to a report published late last year by the National Women”™s Business Council (NWBC) using data from the U.S. Census Bureau. That was up from just over 82,000 in 2002, and 72,400 five years before that ”“ a 29 percent increase in a decade.
Fran Pastore, CEO of the Women”™s Business Development Council and an NWBC board member, said the recession has increased demand for her Stamford-based organization”™s services, with WBDC having doubled its staff recently as it secures additional contracts.
“We see people from GEDs to PhDs,” Pastore said. “What we are seeing are women who have given up on the traditional job (market), whatever the reason.”
For those who leave day jobs and security behind ”“ as much as can be enjoyed in an era of downsizing, anyway ”“ they enter a life of uncertainty as to that next paycheck. At the least, however, they get control and in time even power as their businesses grow.
Fairfield County remains in many ways a great place for women to advance their careers within the confines of the corporate world ”“ the region is home to three of the 60 organizations nationally “paving the way in women”™s advancement,” as ranked by the National Association for Female Executives in New York City.
Local entities on the NAFE list included Boehringer Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals Inc. in Ridgefield, Norwalk-based Xerox Corp. and Yale New Haven Hospital, whose parent organization runs both Bridgeport Hospital and Greenwich Hospital.
Only in December, however, the New York City-based advocacy group Catalyst said women”™s leadership has “stalled” in corporate America, citing a survey showing women held 14.1 percent of the leadership posts at Fortune 500 companies, down 0.3 percent from the year before; and the percentage of women holding corporate board seats rose only slightly between 2010 and 2011, to 16.1 percent of all directors.
Pastore said while entrepreneurs coming from white-collar jobs enjoy perhaps better access to a broad range of advisers and acquaintances who can assist in launching a company, she feels there is no single right answer for the time a woman should strike out on her own, if at all.
“It really is when the spirit speaks ”¦ and the stars align,” Pastore said. “That”™s what being an entrepreneur is ”“ you see an unmet need and you fill it.”
