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Rising Stars
BNH's Elizabeth Guertin Regan takes a look at a quartet of female business people who are making names for themselves and their businesses in the realsm of financial services, health care, high technology and the arts. Here are their stories.
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Business New Haven
4/5/1999
By: Elizabeth Guertin Regan
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Sandra Glick
Sandra Glick sees herself as a typical entrepreneur who threw herself headlong into business without really knowing what she was really getting into. If she knew then how hard it was going to be, she says, she might not have started her business.
Inspired by the courage that her Italian ancestors displayed in coming to America, Glick founded Accounting Resource Management 12 years ago. She was one of the first members of her family to attend college, and was in fact an accounting student working at a public firm when she began working with Great Plains Dynamics, which makes the software she now sells and supports.
There were no rules during that time, she says, since it was the dawn of personal computing. Her company grew slowly at first. Glick admits to losing many a night's sleep worrying that she would lose everything. But then business began to pick up.
“I had two young children and didn't want to be tied down,” Glick recalls. “But it outgrew me. It got so successful, it couldn't be part-time anymore.”
Six years ago Glick took on a partner, Mary Cockerlane, whom she describes as her “alter ego.” Their success, she believes, can be attributed more to their shared values than their common business goals.
“Mary and I both believe integrity is the most important value. We would never put profits before that,” Glick says.
So far, so good: Accounting Resource Management has grown to employ eight people and is on track to double its sales in the next year.
“We want to be the 'go-to' company for any mid-size business that needs financial management software,” Glick says.
Included in their company's goals and mission statement is a commitment to their staff, which includes, Glick acknowledges, many “corporate drop-outs.” Glick and Cockerlane work hard to help each employee grow and develop in his or her career.
“I guess the word is 'nurture.' It's that kind of environment,” according to Julie Marsh, ARM's director of marketing.
A graduate of Providence College, Glick has received more advice about business than ever she wanted, including one occasion when she presented her business plan to a group of retired executives who volunteer to help small businesses.
“It was about 20 men and two women and they looked at me like I was crazy,” she recalls.
Because she remembers hitting what she calls “the mommy ceiling,” as opposed to a glass ceiling, Glick has made family values a part of her business as well.
“In this company, family always comes first. We're big on flex-time and we tell people to 'Go home, your family needs you,'” Glick explains. “Balance is one of our shared values. It's part of our mission: balance between professional and personal lives.”
Pamela Tatge
It was a daunting task. The Long Wharf Theatre, already $500,000 in the hole, needed to raise $1.7 million for renovations and capital improvements under new artistic director Douglas Hughes. Pamela Tatge, the theater's director of development, stepped up to the plate and accomplished in less than a year what the theater's board had anticipated would take three to five.
“My success is only as good as what I'm selling,” Tatge humbly replies.
Over the last ten years, Tatge has been responsible for raising much of the $2.5 million needed annually to run the theater. She had wanted to initiate the capital campaign, which began during the 1997-98 season, for years. When Hughes came aboard as artistic director, it presented the perfect opportunity.
“It was a question of careful planning and organization - and a lot of cheerleading,” Tatge says.
Tatge attributes the development campaign's success to Hughes' artistic vision paired with “extraordinary board leadership.” The theater got a substantial boost when the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven offered a challenge pledge of $500,000 to match funds raised under Tatge's leadership.
In addition to her role at LWT, Tatge has been hired by the Connecticut Commission on the Arts as a consultant to teach fundraising workshops and work as a “mentor” for smaller arts organizations working with their first paid administrator
A former actress, Tatge serves on the boards of the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven and of the Regional Cultural Plan for Greater New Haven. Last year she received a “Champion of the Arts” award from the Arts Council of Greater New Haven.
Tatge is inspired, she explains, by two women who have served for decades on the LWT board. Ruth Lord was the founding president of the board and Betty Kubler was founding vice president. “In terms of people who believe in art and do something to keep it going,” Tatge says, they are her mentors.
Tatge, says her greatest challenge has been balancing time between the theater at night, business during day, and her home life, which includes two pre-school-aged children and two older stepchildren.
“It's a constant struggle. The only way you can do it is with a fantastically supportive husband,” Tatge muses. In her case, it's artist Jerry Zinser, an associate professor of art at the University of New Haven.
Lesley Mills
The male-dominated business of hospital reimbursements and computer science served as training ground for Lesley Mills.
Perhaps because of her experience in those industries, Mills turned ten years ago to a more traditionally “feminine” business - that of home health care. Mills owns and operates Griswold Special Care, an organization that provides live-in companions, home-health aides and personal care attendants to the elderly and infirm.
Founded by a minister's wife, Griswold aims to provide high quality home care at an affordable rate. “We keep people out of nursing homes,” Mills explains succinctly. The company employs nearly 300 caregivers and works closely with visiting nurse associations and hospices to provide service to patients and families.
“Because of the age of our patients, we have longer relationships with them than some other companies. We provide a lot of live-in service,” Mills says.
A recognized authority on home health care, Mills has been keynote speaker at conventions of the American Medical Association and the American Medical Records Association. She serves on the boards of several national organizations and volunteers locally, as well.
Mills is vice president of the trustees of Orchestra New England and chairman of the Health Care Council of the Greater New Haven Chamber of Commerce. She has served as vice president of the New Haven chamber and has worked with the YWCA, Long Wharf Theatre and Parkfriends. The native of England recently hosted a proper tea as a fundraiser for the International Festival of Arts & Ideas.
Lydia Bornick, executive director of the Volunteer Center in Bridgeport, says that although Mills is the consummate British lady, she “can get down and dirty and have some fun.” The pair has worked together on several volunteer projects.
A graduate of Temple University who attended graduate school at Yale, Mills says she always had the makings of an entrepreneur. Her status as first-born and her immigrant experience helped build her character, and she says, her father always encouraged her. “Even at the age of 12,” Mills recalls, “I believed I would own my own business.”
Early in her career she owned a computer company which developed statistical models used for determining hospital reimbursements. At the time she had two young children and looking back, she says, she would do it differently. “I would take my time off,” she says. “That's more possible now. Back [in the early 1970s] it wasn't perceived as 'professional' to be working part-time or take time off.”
As a result, Griswold Special Care offers flex-time to its employees and the workday is shorter than most, at 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. In fact, Bornick points out that Mills makes enormous efforts to provide her employees with opportunities to relax and unwind.
Bornick's mother has been a client of Griswold Special Care and Bornick reports that “Their performance is amazing, and that's because of Lesley's leadership and her attention to the client, to the caregiver, and to the family.”
Laura Kent
Even in the depths of Connecticut's recession, Laura Kent thought the state was brimming with potential. Having survived oil and agriculture crashes in Oklahoma, Kent says she couldn't understand why the Nutmeggers were so paralyzed by their misfortune.
“Oklahoma, which has not even a fraction of the resources that Connecticut has, picked itself up and said 'let's move on,'” Kent explains. “Connecticut has so much wonderful stuff. There's so much here to build on.”
A graduate of Smith College with a degree in economics, Kent found herself working at the Greater Hartford Chamber of Commerce, where she helped coordinate the technology group. About five years ago, that group spun off into the Connecticut Technology Council (CTC), a privately funded statewide organization that Kent says was founded as a forum to help the state make the most of its technology-based industries.
“We started with a staff of one, which is me,” Kent recalls. “We have had the same growing pains of any start-up company. I have a lot of empathy for people starting a business, because I've been there.”
Today Kent is president of the CTC and champion of its mission: “to make Connecticut a first-tier technology state,” a place one thinks of when the subject of technology comes up in any industry.
CTC's core membership is technology companies and colleges and universities that provide the technology workforce. Five CTC staffers work on membership, special projects, public policy and workforce-development initiatives. The CTC also provides networking opportunities for its members.
Sandra Glick, a partner in the New Haven-based Accounting Resource Management, says she has gotten a lot of advice from other CTC members. A member of CTC for a three years, Glick describes Kent as “very committed.”
A native of Washington D.C., Kent believes economic development should grow business rather than redistributing it from other parts of the country, and that technology is an industry that can indeed grow.
Although Kent acknowledges that the so-called “brain drain,” which has seen some of the state's best and brightest young people departing Connecticut for greener pastures, is probably a natural fact of life, she does believe Connecticut could do more to keep them here and attract others by making the most of its resources - quality education, for one.
Kent says that despite the disproportion of males in the technology industry, she has never faced a challenge based on her gender. More accurately, perhaps, she doesn't let it stop her.
“There certainly have been people in my career who have had a problem with a strong woman. I've always just taken a different route: Who cares? There's too much to be done. Life is moving too fast to get hung up by that stuff,” she says.
The mother of four reports that she has always been encouraged in her career by men who have emphasized the importance of priorities. She also says she has had the “privilege of having been surrounded by wonderfully powerful women” throughout her life.
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