Category Archives: Women In Business

By Ann Donnelly

Colleen Carlson’s career at Saratoga Casino Hotel began long before the property added a luxury hotel, a premier steakhouse or a busy casino floor. At 15, Carlson sold race programs at the harness track where her mother also worked. Today, as director of sales, she oversees a thriving corporate and events business built on the property’s decades of expansion.

“I have a long history here,” Carlson said. “I started here when I was 15 years old, selling programs. I moved up the line and worked in the press box, doing all sorts of interesting things. It’s like home to me being here.”

The property’s evolution has reshaped Carlson’s sales portfolio. Years ago, the on-site restaurant Fortune’s regularly hosted 350 guests for lunch and dinner. Today it operates exclusively as a private-event space, reflecting the venue’s broader focus on large-scale hospitality.

“Through the whole changeover of getting a hotel, casino, it’s been a great ride,” Carlson said. “When we got the hotel, it made it more interesting. It really ramped up everything.”

Carlson now oversees multiple event spaces across the Saratoga Casino Hotel campus, including conference rooms, a ballroom, Morton’s The Steakhouse and the Vapor nightclub. A standout venue is The Lodge at Nelson and Crescent avenues, featuring a dark green exterior and Adirondack-style woodwork. A large tent installed on a stamped-concrete slab outside The Lodge allows the property to host larger weddings and galas.

“I do love the galas, and we use Vapor for special events too,” Carlson said, noting regular events like the Saratoga Builders Association showcase and the AIM Services Gala. “Vapor is a really driving factor in business.”

By Susan Elise Campbell

Nicole Lanse, founder and operator of HEAL at 433 Broadway in Saratoga Springs, has turned a passion for therapeutic saunas and cold-water plunging into a new career. The business opened in the second week of March.

Last fall, Lanse relocated from the Finger Lakes to Saratoga after her husband accepted a job promotion in Albany. Along with their three children, the couple had been enjoying infrared sauna treatments in their prior community since 2019.

In 2023 Lanse started researching where she might be able to sauna and cold plunge at the same facility and learned that wellness facilities tend to offer one, but not both, types of therapies.

“I thought, I’m just going to create that,” she said. “It seems natural to dive in and do this.”

With a move to the Capital Region in view, she foresaw a career opportunity to make what had been very beneficial to the health of her family available to a broad market.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Elody Restaurant has opened at 54 Phila Street just off Broadway in Saratoga Springs. The owners, Patti and Larry Weaver, closed their Malta restaurant, 13 North, and brought with them their chefs, their staff, and their reputation for “all-American fare and every kind of steak you can imagine.”

“Saratoga is the spot to be,” said Patti Weaver. “A great corner unit with a lot of windows came up for lease in the building and I’m surprised there wasn’t a lot of activity on it.”

The Weavers have been in the restaurant business since retirement. Larry was in the military and Patti was a civilian in the military. They first opened a small pub in Ballston Spa and then their restaurant, 13 North.

The building they leased on Route 9 was in need of repairs that were “getting too costly” to continue there, Weaver said. The logistics of moving the restaurant was challenging because they had to deplete their food and liquor supplies and start from scratch with new ingredients. But she said that Elody is “the final leg” in their restaurant career.

The official re-opening was on December 31, 2025, the day the Weavers’ granddaughter Elody was born.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Nourish Designs is a mission-based business that sells “gifts that give back.” The name perfectly reflects the desire of its owner, Betsy P. Seplowitz, to nourish and calm the mind and to help lift up local children with food insecurity with donations from the business. 

Through this business model, to date she has provided nearly 306,000 meals to kids in need.

Seplowitz was selling her hand drawn circular designs online and at pop-ups and craft shows before making the move three years ago to a storefront at 87 Milton Avenue in Ballston Spa. 

Drawing was something Seplowitz did at home on short breaks during her busy days as a mother of young children. She does not have an art background like her husband, who has a photography business that she helps to market.

But she does have a retail background that goes back to childhood on the family farm.

“My father had a pumpkin business,” said Seplowitz. “He told me and my sisters, ‘here is five acres. I’ll plant, you sow.’” 

The girls sold pumpkins on a main road just outside of Vermont and managed their business all through middle school and high school, she said.  

“I always thought it would be fun to have a little retail shop someday, but the business evolved later out of my mission to provide funding for meals for kids,” she said.

By Susan Elise Campbell

Frivolous Boutique owner Beth Jameson has proven that when it comes to shopping along Broadway in Saratoga, girls do just want to have fun.

On June 1st, Jameson marks 20 years of successfully navigating the challenges of a sole proprietor of a retail shop in a changing local economy. 

Most of her tenure has been right on 385 Broadway, which she and Thomas Newkirk purchased jointly at auction in 2012. Newkirk developed the 20,000 square foot building. Jameson moved Frivolous Boutique into the storefront. 

So many years later, Jameson remains true to her concept that often the best reason to buy something is “because it makes you happy.”

“The name ‘Frivolous’ can be defined as reflecting something you might want, but don’t need,” she said. “It may not be an impulse purchase, but one you have to have and feel good about.”

The boutique is designed so shoppers discover new and interesting items as they move through the space, she said.

“It has evolved to be more eclectic,” she said. “There are clothing items here, random items there, such as candles and dog gifts,” as well as jewelry, scarves, handbags, and other accessories.

By Ann Donnelly

Sheila Greco’s journey to becoming the founder and CEO of SGA Talent, a Saratoga-based recruiting firm, is a testament to embracing opportunity and the power of networking. Her story began in bond trading in New York City and took an unexpected turn after a chance conversation at a cocktail party. “Someone said, ‘Oh my God, you should be a recruiter,’” Greco recalls. Intrigued, she explored the field, landed a job at New York City firm Goodrich and Sherwood, and quickly discovered her passion.

Life, however, had other plans. In 1989, family matters brought Greco home to Saratoga. Fortuitously, a client offered to support her in starting her own business, and SGA Talent was born. “I started as sole proprietor, and within about three years,” says Greco, “I hired five people, four of which are still with me today.”

SGA Talent started as a research house that provided organizational chart structures and name generation, which involves providing a company with candidates from a list of competitors that they select. “Our clients said, ‘Why aren’t you doing recruiting? Why aren’t you doing competitive intelligence?’” Greco explains, highlighting how the company’s service offerings evolved organically based on client needs.

Over the years, SGA Talent expanded into executive recruiting and, more recently, ventured into the staffing sector. In 2022, an opportunity arose to staff the Saratoga race track. Despite having no prior experience in hospitality, Greco embraced the challenge. “I said, ‘I don’t know anything about it,’ and embraced it,” she says. This leap of faith led to SGA Talent staffing major events like Formula One races in Las Vegas, the Super Bowl, and the PGA. The firm also provides staff for college food service, outdoor festivals, and corporate events. “That business is a lot of fun, and we’re having a great time,” Greco enthuses, “I love the industry.” 

By Christine Graf

AccuStaff has been providing Capital Region businesses with staffing solutions for more than 25 years. An affiliate of Randstad USA, a global leader in staffing and recruitment, AccuStaff has six employees and offices in Albany and Johnstown. 

Owner Heather Rafferty joined the company in 1988, purchasing it in 1997. Since that time, she and her staff have provided services to companies throughout the region, working to identify, screen, and interview candidates for temporary, temp-to-hire, and direct-hire positions.

“We are a staffing agency that specializes in temp-to-hire positions in light industrial, production, and manufacturing. We also do professional roles, direct hire roles, admin support, call centers, and higher education,” said Mesha Brewer, director of business development. “By letting us do what we do best, companies no longer have to spend all of the man hours that it takes to recruit one candidate.”

AccuStaff works with businesses that experience fluctuating workloads or seasonal demands, helping them to find qualified temporary staff members. When working with companies looking for temp-to-hire workers, AccuStaff provides them with the opportunity to “try out” an individual before bringing that person on as a permanent employee.

According to Brewer, the gig economy has made it difficult to fill the many entry-level positions that are currently available in the manufacturing and warehousing sectors. 

By Jill Nagy

April Weygand was at loose ends. Shortly after finishing college, she was back home living with her parents, working part-time jobs and generally miserable. 

“I needed something different to do,” she recalled. 

So, on little more than a whim, she decided to thru-hike the Appalachian Trail, approximately 2,100 miles of some of the country’s most difficult hiking, from Georgia to Maine.

At the time, she had hiked a bit as a Girl Scout and camped out one night in the Catskills. 

“I was not considered a hiker by any stretch of the imagination but I loved the outdoors,” she said. 

She read everything she could find about the trail, including a two-volume, 2,000-page book about the first 50 people who thru-hiked the trail soon after it opened in the 1940s. She made a pilgrimage to a large outdoor store in New Jersey and spent about $1,500 on gear for the expedition. And, she was ready to go.

It took two tries, but she did complete the hike and, 20 years later, she wrote a book about it. The book also required two attempts. The first version was over 1,000 pages, unwieldy to put it mildly. After many months of workshopping and editing help, she produced a lively, sometimes funny, 230-page paperback called Trail Gimp. The book is available, in paperback or as an e-book, at Northshire Books in  Saratoga Springs and  Manchester, Vt., And Weygand is ready to start marketing it further afield.    

By Ann Donnelly

Artistry of Face, a medical aesthetics practice operating in the Capital District since 2016, opened offices at 481 Glen Street, Glens Falls, in November 2023.

 Owner Kelly Heffernan NP saw the potential to restore the Victorian-era home that previous owners had cut into apartments to its original beauty and make a comfortable and luxurious environment for her clients in the area. Heffernan reached out to the family that first owned the property and got access to pictures of how the home looked. She has carefully decorated with furniture and accessories from that era or fit the style.

Heffernan and her staff provide minimally invasive treatments to enhance their clients’ appearance and assist those who have suffered from disease-driven facial asymmetry, such as Cleft Palate, Bell’s Palsy, and severe burns. The latter is a particular passion for Heffernan, who has been a medical professional for 20 years.

After receiving a four-year nursing degree and attending night school to qualify as a Nurse Practitioner, Heffernan moved into medical aesthetics in 2005. She has worked as a Nurse Practitioner, Senior Clinical Specialist, and most recently as Senior Medical Science Liaison for Nestlé Skin Health, traveling the country and teaching doctors, NPs, PAs, and RNs the art of injections. Her experience has allowed her to work and learn alongside the top thought leaders in the dermatology and plastic surgery fields, both in the country and internationally.

She then decided to open her own “med spa.” “It’s a big leap. Very scary and easy to come up with a million reasons not to, but I felt I had to,” she said. 

She started Artistry of Face on the weekends while working full-time. When she felt financially secure, she left her job and opened Artistry of Face full-time. 

With the warmer skies and spring temperatures on the way, the Battenkill Conservancy (“BkC”), a not-for-profit land trust that works within New York and Vermont’s Battenkill watershed, has announced some exciting hellos and some bittersweet goodbyes.  

In January, the organization lost its long time BkC Board Chair, Stuart Bartow, who passed away after a relatively brief battle with cancer.  His dedication to BkC’s mission coupled with his talents as a writer, poet and avid fly fisherman helped guide the organization’s work for over 18 years. A memorial tree planting and a scholarship announcement will take place later this spring. 

Simultaneously the BkC Board in conjunction with Lorraine Merghart Ballard, its first Executive Director, was working to secure her replacement. In 2016 with assistance from the NYS Conservation Partnership Program, Ballard  was appointed BkC’s first Executive Director.  During her tenure, she helped revitalize the organization with popular river related events, increased the public’s river access through the Battenkill Corridor Connections Project and used a simple “Picky Bugs Exhibit” containing macroinvertebrates to demonstrate the importance of cold, clean water and a healthy watershed.  She promoted the Battenkill as one of the area’s most important recreational, cultural, historical and environmental assets.  Advocating for “Clean Water & Open Space for All” became the organization’s motto during her tenure. She will continue to stay involved and act as Board Chair to help with the transition.