Category Archives: Women In Business

By Tammy J. Arquette, Esq.

We know that investing in women makes good business sense, whether that be in promoting women within a company, supporting women owned businesses, or supporting local programs that benefit women.  Women play an important role in every aspect of business locally and globally.  

Women are business owners, executives, employees, producers and consumers. As such, empowering women presents an incredible opportunity for business to improve the lives of people making, selling, and buying products. 

As a woman owned business, there is a struggle not only to be successful in business, but to manage time and resources in a way that allows us to also support our own, our family and our community needs. 

We think of work-life balance as a balancing of our work time with our family time, but it is also a balancing of our community investment time.  How can we do it all?  How can we make the best of our current resources and commitments in order to make the biggest impact on those community needs that are most important to us?

Volunteerism and community activity can be done in a way that maximizes our personal, business and volunteer goals.  Joining with existing local programs and organizations can make this possible.  Involvement with local programs and organizations, whether that be by joining a board, becoming a member, volunteering with programming, making financial contributions to their programs, advertising during their events, participating in their external events, and sharing their messages on our social media, are all ways to combine our investment in our business,  our self and community.  

By Christine Graf

Clifton Park physical therapist and massage therapist Laura Brown is on a mission to help chronic pain sufferers eliminate their need for opioids. According to the National Institute of Health, 25 million Americans suffer from daily chronic pain and lack effective non-opioid treatments to manage that pain.

“I want to get people off the opioids and the narcotics. You can’t live on that stuff and you shouldn’t have to,” said Brown. “My mission is to give people a little bit of their life back.”

In order to help patients suffering from chronic neuropathic and oncologic pain, Brown purchased an $80,000 FDA-approved pain therapy device called a Calmare. The device delivers gentle electrical stimulation, and clinical studies have shown that its technology successfully reduces pain in more than 80 percent of treated patients without the adverse side effects commonly associated with drugs. It is not effective in treating pain caused by inflammation.

Brown first learned about Calmare from one of her massage clients, a physician whose daughter found relief from chronic pain after receiving Calmare pain treatment therapy. Intrigued, she set out to learn more.  

“I saw that it didn’t just have a bunch of advertisements,” she said. “It had clinical studies and publications. Johns Hopkins uses it, the Mayo Clinic uses it, VA centers across the country use it.”

Because she is a physical therapist, Brown met the medical standard requirements necessary to become a Calmare practitioner and was able purchased the device in December 2019. Just as she completing the necessary training, the COVID shutdown forced her to close her office for three months. Since reopening, she is working to spread the word about the revolutionary pain treatment therapy she offers. 

By Susan Elise Campbell

Jane Chen left Wall Street to start a writing center for youth in a career leap that surprised her peers in the world of investment banking. But helping children read and write is something Chen has been devoted to since she was 16 years old. 

Her business, Eyre Writing Center, was launched January 2020 from Saratoga CoWorks and Chen has already helped 900 middle school children “take the mystery out of writing well,” she said.

“At the end of my time in asset management on Wall Street I was writing a curriculum for a new writing center for the new age,” said Chen, whose parents named her after The literary character, Jane Eyre. “My task was to break down the foundations of writing and make it a science.”

The center would focus on middle school students because “we have great elementary schools and, depending on the district, great high schools,” she said. “But middle schools are underperforming so it is difficult for students to jump from eighth to ninth grade. When I saw what books were on the recommended summer reading list for seventy or eighth grade, I realized I had these titles on my reading list in fifth grade.”

She said she doesn’t know exactly what is behind the drop in basic skills, it was “aggravated by COVID,” she said. “I don’t look at data to see where the problems may lie, but I know anecdotally that there has been a deterioration in the quality of writing.”

As Chen edited college essays on the side she was “learning what the students weren’t learning. Switching tenses, poor sentence structure and punctuation are fundamentals that should have been addressed 10 years earlier,” she said.

Leslie Morlock will be the new superintendent of Saratoga National Historical Park in Stillwater.

Morlock begins her job on March 28.

“The victory at Saratoga changed the entire course of the American Revolution,” National Park Service Regional Director Gay Vietzke said. “The park has an important role to play as we get closer to America’s 250th birthday in 2026. Leslie’s background in planning, visitor use management and partnerships provides a crucial skill set needed to lead the park as we approach this milestone.”

“I am honored and excited for the opportunity to serve as superintendent at this pivotal site in the history of the United States,” Morlock said. “Saratoga National Historical Park is a unique place to learn about a key turning point in American history, explore nature and honor those who walked the hallowed grounds before us. I look forward to working with the dedicated park team, the Erie Canal National Heritage Corridor, other partners, and the community to preserve this important site for future generations.”

By Christine Graf

When the COVID-19 pandemic temporarily shuttered fitness studios, Shenendehowa middle school teacher and local spin instructor Brittaney Deitz found herself with a lot of free time on her hands. Prior to the pandemic, she was teaching spin classes five to six days a week at a local studio.

“I enjoy motivating and inspiring people, and it brings me such joy to teach classes and share health and fitness with others,” said Deitz, a Clifton Park native. “So those first few weeks of the pandemic were really tough. I didn’t even have a bike at home because I was at the studio so often that I didn’t need one.”

After a friend gave Deitz a bike, she started doing workouts at home and posting details about them on social media. People began reaching out and encouraging her to teach virtual classes. She was skeptical at first and considered it unlikely that people would be willing to purchase spin bikes for their homes. The bikes are expensive and were difficult to find at the height of the pandemic.

Her husband, Justin, encouraged her to pursue the idea and surprised her by setting up a home spin studio in their living room. Three days later, Deitz taught her first sample class on Zoom with six students. The following day, she opened up her free classes to anyone who wanted to participate.

Carolyn Zinn built a following from running a pie stand on Ballard Road and has now opened a store at 20 Gordon Lane in Wilton where she sells her baked goods.
©2021 SaratogaPhotographer.com

By Susan Elise Campbell

Customers with a sweet tooth are visiting Sweet Caroline’s Pies at its new location at 20 Gordon Lane in Wilton, near Northway Exit 16.

Owner Carolyn Zinn said she had built a following from her pie stand on Ballard Road and took the risk to rent a retail shop months into the coronavirus pandemic.

Zinn is a Wilton native who had been away for 20 years when she returned with her husband and family to take care of her aging mother. She had a baked goods and catering business for 10 of those years in Wisconsin.

Customers there called her “Sweet Caroline” and when the time came to start the bakery she always dreamed of, she chose her nickname for her business.

Five years ago, Zinn was running a private lodge in the Catskills doing the cooking. Then she obtained the licenses to bake out of her home, focusing on fresh local produce from Saratoga Apple in Schuylerville and Ariel’s Farm in Gansevoort. She still bakes the apple pies and strawberry pies that are sold at those farms and also supplies Ariel’s with fresh biscuits to serve with the farm’s homemade jams.

By Susan E. Campbell
At ease with hair cutting shears in hand or applying makeup for a professional photo shoot, it is not easy to imagine Autumn Wright in a combat uniform.
The owner of Seraphina Divine Beauty, 437 Geyser Road, Ballston Spa, and specializing in bridal hair and makeup, Wright had a four-year tour as a U.S. Marine driving trucks in Iraq. When her deployment ended in 2009 she went “wherever the wind” took her. “All around the country,” she said, from New York to Arizona to Tennessee.

By Susan E. Campbell
The mortgage market is driven by a variety of complex factors that make the times look more or less attractive to those seeking to buy, renovate or refinance a home.
A mortgage originator for three decades, Caroline Hommel of Homestead Funding has experienced just about every permutation and combination of circumstances imaginable, from severe market corrections to record-setting interest rates.
“There have been so many highs and lows over the years. Mostly highs,” said Hommel. “The relationships with customers are certainly high points.”
Hommel joined Homestead Funding in 1995 after a few years as assistant to the PR and communications director for the New York State Association of Realtors and then as a mortgage broker for a small firm.

By Rachel Phillips
For more than 30 years, diners have been enjoying the age-old family recipes and hand-crafted breads and sauces offered by Village Pizzeria on Route 29 in Galway.
The restaurant, which opened in 1988, is owned and operated by Sandra Foster, along with her partner Joseph Guerrera, and is managed by her daughter, Jessica Mancinone.
Foster’s professional career began in 1969, when she became the first female licensed barber and men’s hair stylist in Waterbury, Conn. At the time, cosmetology and barbering were segregated by gender, and Foster pioneered the transition that brought into being the unisex salons that are now standard today.