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Pioneering Women
Notable Connecticut females who blazed business trails
and inspired others
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Business New Haven
4/2/2001
By: Priscilla Searles
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Almost since the dawn of European settlement here, Connecticut has always produced women who have set the pace for others, pioneers who have tackled territories where others feared to tread. The following are just a sampling of the women whose courage, drive and accomplishments have earned them the title of Woman Business Pioneer.
Jean Handley
Jean Handley joined SNET in 1960, serving in positions of increasing responsibility as a writer, editor and employee communications and advertising manager. In 1972 she went to AT&T as press relations manager and eventually served as press-relations director for AT&T in New York. Returning to SNET as vice president of corporate relation and advertising in 1978, she was the company's first-ever female vice president.In 1984 she was appointed vice president of personnel and corporate relations, serving on the chairman‚s Strategy Council as one of five senior officers. She headed a 300-member public relations and personnel department that served 14,000 employees.
After retiring from SNET in 1989, from 1993 to 1995 Handley was principal of Handley Consulting, a strategic planning and communications planning company. Always focused and dedicated to the task at hand, Handley is committed to the arts and was instrumental in getting New Haven's International Festival of Arts & Ideas launched, an organization which she presently serves as president.
She also serves on numerous boards, including Long Wharf Theatre, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, LEAP Inc., the Women Organizing Women Political Action Committee (WOWPAC) and the University of New Haven. She is listed in Who's Who in Business & Industry and Who's Who in American Women.
May Warzocha
Founded in 1924 as a scrap business, the Wallingford-based Ulbrich Stainless Steels & Special Metals Inc. has emphasized family since its inception. Fred Ulbrich Sr. realized that he needed administrative help as the company started growing into specialty metals after World War II. He turned to his sister, May Warzocha.
her early days as office manager to her oversight as director of purchasing and secretary of the company's board of directors, Warzocha shaped the administrative framework of the company as it grew into a multimillion-dollar international business. In a business as cost-competitive as the steel industry, she exercised full responsibility for spending 65 percent of the company‚s budget, directly impacting Ulbrich‚s profits.
She was a competitive and tough negotiator and always had the company‚s bottom line as her benchmark. Her skills earned national recognition: She was the first female president and a national spokeswoman for the National Purchasing Agents Association (now the National Purchasing Management Association). She also served as president and chairwoman of several
committees for the Connecticut Association of Purchasing Management as well as vice president of purchasing for the Metal Center Inc. in North Haven.
Paving the way for the women who followed her, May Warzocha juggled tremendous professional responsibility and accomplishment as a working mother and, after the death of her husband, a single working mother. She was a female pioneer in not only the metals industry but also purchasing. Not bad for a woman who was not allowed to go to college.
Eileen Kraus
Eileen Kraus joined the Hartford National Bank, one of Fleet Bank's predecessor companies, in 1979 as vice president of human resources planning and development. Prior to that she was president of her own firm, Career Search Resources. During her career she managed a variety of staff and line groups for the bank including HR, marketing and communications, branch banking, private banking, personal trust, consumer lending, credit cards, discount brokerage, mutual funds, mortgage banking and small-business banking.
Prior to the merger of Fleet Financial Group and Shawmut National Corp. in December 1995, she was vice chairman of Shawmut National and president of Shawmut Bank Connecticut. Although she retired last summer as chairman of Connecticut Fleet National, she remains active with the bank on several special projects.
Always accustomed to serving on the front lines, Kraus' outside activities include serving as chairman of ConnectiCare Inc., vice chairman of the Capital City Economic Development Authority in Hartford, a member of the executive committee of the Greater Hartford Chamber of Commerce, vice chairman of Bushnell Memorial Hall and as a director of some of Connecticut‚s largest corporations.
Ella T. Grasso
The daughter of Italian immigrant parents, Ella Tambussi Grasso was the first woman in the nation to be elected governor in her own right, serving from 1974 until illness forced her to resign in 1980. Grasso entered politics when she ran for the Connecticut General Assembly in 1952 and never lost an election thereafter. She spent 12 years as Connecticut's Secretary of the State and was elected to two terms in the U.S. House of Representatives.
Grasso had to overcome not only sexism but also religious prejudice due to her Roman Catholic faith. She earned a reputation as a champion for those in need of help. Inducted into the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame and the National Women's Hall of Fame, Grasso passed away in 1981.
Ruth Campbell Bigelow:
In 1945 Ruth Bigelow had an idea that just wouldn't go away. She knew exactly what she wanted to do and had the determination to stick to her goal. So she sat down at her kitchen table and began to try to develop a tea with more flavor than typical commercial teas.
Starting with a colonial recipe that called for orange peel and spices, and after much trial and error, she came up with what many tea drinkers would describe as the most recognizable American tea: Constant Comment.
Bigelow packaged the loose tea in a canister and her husband spent his evenings hand painting the labels to add color. She hand painted flyers and talked high-end stores such as Bloomingdale's and Altman's into carrying it but also looked to smaller gift shops for mass appeal. Persuading retailers to place an open jar near the cash register called the"Whiffing Jar", the marketing effort proved to be brilliant.
Not leaving anything to chance, to draw customers to the product Bigelow mailed flyers to people whose names appeared in the newspaper social columns. The name of the product was born when, after passing out samples to friends and acquaintances, one person reported back, "Ruth, your tea caused nothing but constant comments."
Bigelow's determination and her ability to market her product lead to the birth of Bigelow Tea Co. Celebrating its 50th anniversary in 1995, today the Fairfield company is a high-tech enterprise, with Ruth's and David's son, David C. Bigelow, at its head as president and CEO and their daughter-in-law and two granddaughters helping to carry on the tradition of a company started by a woman who truly deserves the title of Women Business Pioneer.
Dorothy M. Horstmann, M.D.
An epidemiologist, virologist and polio pioneer, Dorthy Horstmann was the first woman appointed a professor at the Yale School of Medicine. She earned her medical degree in 1940 from the University of California/San Francisco. Horstmann came to Yale in 1942 as the Commonwealth Fund Fellow at the School of Medicine in the section of preventive medicine (then part of the Department of Internal Medicine) working with John Redman Paul. She became a pediatrician in mid-career.
In 1961 she earned her professorship at Yale and in 1969 she became the first women named to an endowed chair, in epidemiology and pediatrics, named after her mentor, Dr. Paul. Horstmann made significant scientific, educational and public health contributions, but her major scientific achievement was revealing that the polio virus reached the brain by way of the blood, a finding that upset dogma and helped make polio vaccines possible.
It was during a polio epidemic in New Haven in 1943 that Horstmann joined the poliomyelitis unit, deciding shortly after to devote her career to various aspects of infectious agents. Horstmann, who died in January of this year, was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and was the president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
Emmy Nowak
Born in Germany, Emmy Nowak arrived in the U.S. at age three. Believing that only in the United States could someone arrive as an immigrant and build his or her own successful business, she proceeded to do just that, becoming the owner, president and CEO of Alloy Engineering Co. in Bridgeport.
Nowak started her career as an R.N. after being graduated from the Bridgeport Hospital School of Nursing and soon became assistant head nurse in the delivery room. She married Joseph E. Gorgens and shortly thereafter left nursing to become a housewife. Before long, though, feeling that home and hearth offered insufficient challenges, she looked for something more to do.
Her husband, an engineer, came up with the idea that the two of them could manufacture thermowells because no one then specialized in producing this metal housing for temperature-sensing elements.
In 1958 Nowak began production, running the company while her husband continued to work as an engineer. They took out a $20,000 mortgage on their home, purchased surplus equipment dating from the 1940s and bought a 7,000-square-foot brick building on Seaview Avenue with funds from her father. When her marriage ended in 1961, Nowak stayed with her business. Following a major fire in 1968, Nowak's always-dedicated employees offered to work for nothing until the company got back on its feet.
After just five years in business, the strong-willed Nowak had purchased new equipment, expanded the business and ran the shop herself on weekends when a special order was due on Monday.
She became one of the first female board members of the Manufacturers Association of Southern Connecticut. Nowak recently sold the company to three employees - two men and one women. But true to form, she insisted that the woman be named president. To this day she isn't a bit hesitant about checking up on the company and handing out advice.
Margaret Fogarty Rudkin
Born in New York City, Margaret Rudkin, her husband and three sons moved to Fairfield, building a home they called Pepperidge Farm. Rudkin enjoyed growing her own fruits and vegetables and raised livestock as well.
When one of her sons became ill and needed healthy food, she developed a healthful good-tasting bread. When friends and neighbors praised the bread, she decided to create a mail-order business from her kitchen, eventually expanding to local grocers. Unable to keep up the pace in limited space, just three years after going into the baking business, she expanded the operation and moved it to Norwalk.
During World War II production became difficult due to shortages and rationing, but in 1947, following the war, Rudkin opened her first modern bakery in Norwalk. By 1953 it was producing 77,000 loaves of bread weekly. Later, Pepperidge Farm cookies were added to the line.In 1968, the company was acquired by the Campbell Soup Co.
A perfectionist, Rudkin demanded a great deal from her employees but rewarded them with compensation and benefits considered wwell above average. Today Pepperidge Farm, still headquartered in Norwalk, has eight plants across the country. Rudkin, who passed away in 1967, was elected to Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame.
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