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Letting Go Isn’t Easy
Entrepreneur Kathleen Thornton Linta makes science make sense
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Business New Haven
4/6/1998
By: Linda Mele
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Kathleen Thornton Linta is the president and driving force behind Thornton Medical Communications of Branford, a privately held company she co-founded in 1989 and took over 18 months ago.
After graduating from Purdue University in 1981, Linta worked as a sales representative and brand/product manager for pharmaceutical giants GD Searle and Miles (now Bayer).
Because she was an engineering major before switching to business and understood the science/technical framework of the products, she often found herself editing the scientific/marketing literature provided with the products she was supposed to promote and sell.
“I found it hard to find a company that could deal with both the scientific and promotional information,” Linta says. “Most were not up to the level of technical expertise I felt was required.”
So, like many entrepreneurs before her, she saw a need and decided to fill it.
Nine years later, the multi-million-dollar company provides customized scientific communications and project/meeting management logistics for pharmaceutical companies worldwide with on-site marketing research, editorial, graphics and project management departments whose goal is to educate health care professionals.
Its written material offerings include abstracts, posters, scientific manuscripts, journal supplements, monographs, newsletters and formulary and slide kits for investigatory meetings, advisory boards and roundtable discussions as well as regional, national and international symposia and free-standing or satellite conferences.
“It's a very specialized field,” she says, “and our clients are looking for technical expertise and a high quality product. So my gender doesn't matter as much as the ability to get the job done.”
Male or female, Thornton Linta says venturing out your own requires the same dedication and basic qualifications. “You must be prepared emotionally and financially and know your personal strengths and weaknesses,” she says. “Not everyone is able or qualified to start and run a business.”
A clear vision of your mission is critical, she advises would-be entrepreneurs. “It's easy to go off into tangents and get involved in [peripheral] projects if you're not careful. It's important to stay focused on what it is you do best.
“I wanted, and still want, to provide educational information for health-care professionals who need to keep themselves updated on new and emerging pharmaceutical therapies,” she says, “so that is our focus.”
Long-term planning and flexibility are also critical aspects of business development, she says.
Linta is married to Joseph Linta, a vice president for Prudential Securities in New Haven and a sports agent. They live in Branford and have two sons.
“Family support is also extremely important,” she says, “especially in a deadline-driven job such as I have. My husband is very supportive and acts as a sounding board for me. Without a support system, it's nearly impossible to do what needs to be done to run a business.”
Starting and running a business is not glamorous, Linta says, and prospective entrepreneurs need to know they'll work harder and longer hours than they ever did working for someone else, particularly at the beginning.
“Successful business owners work harder than anyone and realize it's the team effort that gets the job done,” she says, adding that an autocratic attitude can be death to a new business.
Linta uses local vendors whenever possible and feels giving back to the community via donations to local- and state-based charities is important.
“My role in the company is different now, and that's okay,” she says. “As your business grows, you're going to wear different hats. You will become more of a leader rather than have the hands-on involvement you had in the beginning so you must be willing to 'let go.' Letting go isn't easy.”
- Linda G. Mele
Coming
Out
In putting together partnerships for neighborhood revitalization, Rolan Young lays down the law
Rolan Joni Young spins fond memories of the New Haven of her childhood. She recalls a close-knit community of people who lived and worked together, raising families, tending to homes and neighborhoods. Although Young is only 37, her recollections seem to have taken place eons ago.
Young is the new program director of New Haven's Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC), the four-year-old local offspring of a national group, established in 1979 by the Ford Foundation, that channels dollars from corporations, foundations and government for community-based projects such housing, grass-roots commercials projects and social services. Since its inception, LISC has raised more than $2.4 billion in donations, investments and below-market loans for the non-profit Community Development Corporations (CDCs) through which it works.
The New Haven LISC was instrumental in assembling the public/private financing package to build Dwight Place, a $15 million shopping center at Whalley Avenue and Orchard Street that will house a 56,000-square-foot Shaw's supermarket - the first major supermarket to locate in the city of New Haven - or in any of Connecticut's inner cities, for that matter - in decades.
Young views the development, which has been shepherded to fruition by the Greater Dwight Development Corp., as a fine thing. No longer will urban shoppers have to take a bus or pay a $15 cab fare to travel to Hamden or Amity to buy groceries.
For Young, the Dwight project is just the kind of from-the-ground-up project by which once vibrant neighborhoods can reclaim their destinies. And she views the CDCs with which her groups work as the best vehicles for neighborhood revitalization since they are at once in, and of, the communities they seek to renew.
“We understand Community Development Corporations because we're on the ground working with them on a daily basis,” says Young. “We also have a unique understanding of the community, where there are opportunities to make an impact in the neighborhoods, which projects are likely to succeed or fail.
“The whole idea, really,” Young says, “is to target funds to where you're going to spur other capital investment and development. The Dwight Place project hopefully will spur other development on Whalley Avenue.”
For the Whalley Avenue project, LISC put together a “pre-development” grant to study the project's feasibility, then made available a $400,000 loan guarantee as a hedge against state bond funding.
Through its affiliate, The Retail Initiative (TRI), a real-estate equity fund, LISC committed $3 million to the project. The state delivered on a $1 million grant, while the federal Office of Community Services kicked in $325,000. The project is scheduled to be completed in June.
It's a bit of an experiment for all parties involved, including Shaw's. And no one will be watching it more closely than Young.
A native New Havener who now lives in Orange, Young left Connecticut to attend Dartmouth College and then law school in at American University in Washington, D.C., where she lived until 1992. She returned, she says, simply, because, “This is home.
Returning to New Haven, “I was shocked by the change in this place. Streets that I used to feel safe walking down, I started to think, 'Maybe this isn't a good area to go into,'” she explains. She was further dismayed by how rapid had been the disintegration: After all, she's been gone only 14 years.
Beyond that, she couldn't help but notice the gaping gulf that had emerged between the core city and its surrounding communities - and the unmistakable sense that arbitrary municipal boundaries separated communities that had indeed become worlds apart.
“When I was growing up, people didn't say they were from Orange, or East Haven,” Young recalls. “People said, 'I'm from New Haven.' There was more of a sense of community.”
That was then; this is now. And rekindling that sense of community is the spark that ignites Young's passion for her hometown and fuels her vision of what it once was and could again become. And the more she learned about LISC, the more she became convinced that it was the perfect vehicle for her to become an agent for positive change.
“There was a clear need to get the resources of LISC, both financial and technical, into the hands of the community development corporations in an intense way,” she says. “There's clear opportunity in this community to do some real development and spur some meaningful revitalization activity.”
Dwight Place is certainly a good place to start, and a meaningful one. But Young realizes that it's nothing more than a first step.
“It's very hard not to be passionate about this if you just walk the streets,” Young says. “When I had the opportunity to try and have an impact in my own hometown, I couldn't pass that up.”
- Michael C. Bingham
Vegging Out
In 1975, Claire Criscuolo set off an feeding frenzy that's still going strong
Claire Criscuolo, 46, owner of Claire's Corner Copia at 1000 Chapel Street in New Haven, credits the success of her 23-year-old business to “my phenomenal staff, a great location and lots of luck.”
When the East Haven resident decided to open a mostly vegetarian restaurant in 1975, she had just received her degree in psychiatric nursing from the University of Bridgeport and was working as an R.N. Her husband, Frank, was a musician. Neither had any previous business experience and frankly, Criscuolo says, didn't know what to expect.
“We wanted to work together and I wanted to cook,” Criscuolo recalls. “I had this illusion that I could be with my husband, spend my days cooking - which I love - and we'd have this great life.”
It didn't take long for reality to set in. “First, I found I couldn't work a full-time nursing job and run the restaurant, even with my family helping,” she says. “So after a few months I quit my job.”
The second and third things she learned rather quickly were that owning a restaurant was more than just cooking - and that being her own boss meant a lot of hours and a lot of hard work.
Back then, there weren't many female entrepreneurs, Criscuolo says, but she never let that bother her and over the years she learned to deal with those who tried to take advantage of the fact that she was a woman or tried to place obstacles in her path.
“I was once told by a state worker that our food-service license couldn't be in my name because I was a woman,” Criscuolo says. “I thought that was ridiculous and got it straightened out.
“A good friend told me, 'Choose your battles.' I didn't have time to fight that [women's equality] battle but, thank God, others did. I just wanted to feed people and maybe make a little dent in the places where I could make a difference.”
Acknowledging that starting a business in 1975 is very different than what women face today, Criscuolo says her advice for the would-be self-employed is simple.
“Realize you can't do everything and make sure you get the best people available to do what you can't,” Criscuolo says. “Be fair, work hard, do the best job you can and learn to listen, especially to those who offer advice.”
And come to grips with your own imperfections. “Understand you're going to make mistakes and learn from them. And, once you are successful, remember where you came from and give back to the community that helped get you there,” she says.
Criscuolo herself certainly wasn't afraid to try new and different things. Always an advocate of healthy eating, within a year of opening the eatery Criscuolo took all meat off the menu and offered only vegetarian dishes, many of which had their roots in the “Italian Catholic meatless Friday” meals her mother and grandmother cooked.
“About 20 years ago I realized we were going through a lot of salt, which certainly wasn't healthy. I decided to take the salt shakers off the tables and make customers get up and get them off the shelf if they wanted them,” she says. “Our salt consumption dropped way off.”
Perhaps the most important piece of advice Criscuolo has to offer is to take advantage of opportunities that present themselves, something she is doing herself right now.
Over the years, Criscuolo developed many of her own recipes. Customers asked for them, and she would write them out on guest checks or napkins.
“More than once, someone told me I should write a cookbook,” she says, “and I finally decided to take a year off to do it.”
The result was Claire's Corner Copia, a collection of some of the “same rich-tasting, low-fat, meatless meals” she had been serving her guests for years. It was published in 1994.
In 1997 Criscuolo's second book, Claire's Classic American Vegetarian Cooking, was published. Her third, Claire's Italian Feast, is scheduled to be published in October.
Once the first cookbook hit the shelves, Criscuolo was invited to teach classes and do television demonstrations. Consulting opportunities likewise became available.
Today, Criscuolo also writes articles for vegetarian magazines such as Veggie Times, does numerous radio and TV interviews and book signings. A Connecticut Public Television show called Claire's Vegetarian Kitchen is also in the works.
Because of a great and the support of her family, Criscuolo says she's comfortable being away from the restaurant when duty calls.
“It was very exciting when all these other doors began to open,” Criscuolo says. “But without all that support, I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of all the opportunities that came along.”
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