Cara Mocarski â€“ looking out for fellow entrepreneurs

Cara Mocarski has always been a bit ahead of the curve when it comes to women”™s business issues. Back in the late ”™70s when she was attending Syracuse University studying simultaneously for two bachelor”™s degrees ”“ one in history, the other in magazine writing ”“ she had a concentration in women”™s studies, “not knowing it would prepare me for future roles I”™ve taken.”

One of those roles developed about five years ago when Mocarski was one of the founding members of the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce”™s Women in Networking group in Shelton. “The chamber has about six different ”˜lead”™ groups comprised of different professions that meet twice a month to grow their businesses,” she said, by exchanging business leads with other members. “There are close to 25 women in our group.”

What”™s unique about the business networking group, though, is that two years ago it began raising funds to provide small grants to women entrepreneurs in the chamber”™s footprint. “It sort of happened by chance,” Mocarski said. “We had excess funds in our budget one year and someone in the group said, ”˜Why not start a grant program for women starting out in business or wanting to grow their business to the next level?”™”

Since then the networking group has given out about $3,500 in grants and is hoping to raise $10,000 in a permanent fund administered by the Valley Community Foundation. “It took on a life of its own,” said Mocarski of the grant program, which is “the only one of its kind in the state.”

How to succeed

In a way, the grant program is almost an outgrowth of her public relations and marketing business. “I think that you can”™t be successful in business today without giving back to the community you live and work in,” she said. And she”™s been giving back something almost from the beginning of her career, which began in 1980, the year she graduated from Syracuse and joined a small marketing company in Westport. “It was convenient, it was local and it was in my field,” she said of the job.

She stayed at the company for a year, then joined the marketing department of Main Hurdman in Stamford ”“ then the ninth-largest accounting firm in the nation ”“ until “they moved the corporate offices to New York,” she said. “I didn”™t want to commute to the city at that time.”

For the next three years she worked at the History Book Club in Stamford as review coordinator and then, in 1985, “landed a job with Park City Hospital in Bridgeport as assistant director of public affairs.” A year later she and her husband ”“ they married in 1981 ”“ built a house in the Huntington section of Shelton, where she still lives and has her home office. She also earned a master”™s degree in corporate communications from Fairfield University while she was at Park City.

The couple”™s first child, Derek, was born in 1990, “so I took maternity leave and then went back to work part time” at Park City Hospital. “I always seemed to be a trend setter,” she said. “I negotiated with the hospital to work from home” ”“ long before ”˜telecommuting”™ was coined. “I did that for two years, and then Park City Hospital closed when it merged with Bridgeport Hospital,” she said. “I needed a job.”

Connections

Mocarski wasn”™t out of work for long. “Someone who knew I was going to lose my job referred me to a major nonprofit,” she said, declining out of professional courtesy to name the client. “I interviewed for the part-time consulting job while I was pregnant and wasn”™t discriminated against and wound up landing the job,” she said. “They simply started my business.”

Back then she called her business Mocarski Public Relations, and began picking up more and more clients. When her two children grew to school age, “I became very involved in the PTA in Shelton, first as publicity chair, then as vice president and then co-president of the entire PTA.” It became, she said, a passion that stretched beyond the PTA. She was part of a community planning committee for Shelton”™s schools and was involved in a referendum for a new intermediate school donating her public relations expertise in support of the referendum.

During all that same time, Mocarski was growing her business, changing the name to Cutting Edge Communications about seven years ago “because I had some major statewide accounts and didn”™t think ”˜Mocarski Public Relations”™ was indicative of my work.” The name change “definitely helped,” she said. “It brought me to another level of business,” enlisting a network of graphic designers, printers “and even advertising and marketing people” to service her growing list of clients.

Cutting Edge, she said, is “a public relations special events firm that specializes in providing services for small to medium-sized businesses, typically clients that do not have the need for a full-time public relations department.”

Her business “is based on connections,” and some of those connections came through the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce and the Women in Networking group that she chairs and its grant program. “A lot of women”™s groups will give out loans but not actual grants,” she said. “We get calls from all over the state for grants from this program, but it”™s only for this region.”

Key to survival

Next month the group will conduct its third Almost Autumn Wine Tasting and Grant Fund-Raiser at the Jones Winery and Jones Family Farms in Shelton. “Our goal is to raise at least $5,000,” she said. Only 125 people can attend the fundraiser (call the Greater Valley Chamber at 203-925-4981 for tickets for the Sept. 16 event) “because it”™s in a barn,” and much of that hoped-for $5,000 should come from corporate sponsors and a silent auction of items and services donated by local businesses and corporations. “Last year we added the silent auction to the event and made $4,000,” she said.

Until the bank account is beefed up, the Women in Networking will continue to give a limited number of grants to businesswomen. “We have dozens of applicants, but we select two each year,” she said. The grant, with a minimum amount of $500, can be used for anything from buying a business wardrobe to paying for child care to helping start a new business or buying new equipment.

As for the future of the grant program, the group plans to create the Women in Networking Fund “that will continue this program for posterity,” she said.

Mocarski said she sees herself volunteering her time for community events far into the future as her business grows and prospers. “There”™s a huge need for my services because there are so many small businesses,” she said. “Small business is where the business growth is coming from in the state, and a lot of them are owned by women. Any new business needs marketing and public relations to establish itself,” she said. “That”™s the key to surviving.”