Category Archives: Women In Business

By Susan E. Campbell
Amberly Bucci is a businesswoman who wants others to know that they, too, can turn their life’s passion into profit.
“For myself, I combined my passion for travel, digital marketing and teaching, and fused them together to create a career that I love: digital marketing with a focus on the hospitality industry,” Bucci said.
Last fall she officially formed Amberly Bucci LLC, a move she said was “long overdue.” After only a few months, the feedback she is getting utilizing digital marketing expertise is “exciting.”

By Christine Graf
Three years ago, Tricia Nussbaum opened The Food Florist in Ballston Spa. She described her business as a mobile food company.
The Food Florist food truck she operates is available to go to farmers markets, local schools and businesses. She also sells frozen, oven-ready meals at a retail locations. All food is made from scratch with a combination of local, organic, and all-natural ingredients, she said.

By Susan E. Campbell
Media marketing solutions and health and wellness services are being covered in the career of Antoinette DiMascio.
DiMascio is chief financial officer of Newkey Media Solutions and founder of Newkey Esthetics and Wellness in Ballston Lake, two seemingly disparate businesses. Yet there is an overarching theme under which she connects them—relationship enrichment.
“Whether building a brand or employing therapeutic techniques, it’s still about working on a relationship,” said DiMascio, who is a licensed cosmetologist and asethetician, a certified yoga instructor, and a doctoral candidate in metaphysics and religious studies.

By Christine Graf
Linda Brown of Spire Business, Inc. never set out to start her own business. She had a successful career in money management and financial planning when she took a maternity leave in 2002.
While on leave, a CPA asked her if she could help some of his clients with QuickBooks.
“I never went back to corporate America,” she said. “As a financial planner, you work 70 hours a week and I really didn’t want to do that.”

By Jill Nagy

When the renovated Adelphi Hotel on Broadway in Saratoga Springs reopens, its new look will include ornate ceilings decorated by Donna Mock whose company, Classic Design Finishes, has been bringing new life to area walls and ceilings for nearly 20 years.

The ceilings in the Adelphi’s rooms and hallways will be finished with a silver metallic glaze, Mock said. She has completed work on the rooms and she expects to have the hallways finished in three or four weeks.

The project at the Adelphi is fairly simple, she said. Often, she produces murals, trompe d’oeil effects and other artistic details. “I can make walls look like wallpaper, plaster, whatever the client wants, but I am best known for my plaster work,” she said.

Another project, the lobby of the Saranac Hotel at Saranac Lake, is more complicated.

That work is “coming along” and should be finished in May. For that project, she is working on 30-foot-long ceiling beams first installed in 1924. There is water damage and much of the design on the beams has faded so that they have to be completely redone.

Mock’s work is part of the historic restoration of the hotel.

These relatively large commercial projects are a change from Mock’s usual work. Most of the time she works on people’s homes, both new construction and existing buildings.

“Every job is different,” she said, “And I love what I do. It’s very creative, it’s fun, and it’s great to work with clients.”

By Jennifer Farnsworth

Duct work testing, air testing, and fume hood testing are not career areas associated with  females.

Eileen Venn saw things very differently when she and her husband, Brian, took over Mechanical Testing Inc. in 2008.  As the CEO of the company, Venn is making her mark in the industry.

MTI, located at 70 Lake Ave., Saratoga Springs, is an independent, certified test and balance (TAB) contractor. It provides clients with reliable and repeatable TAB services for the heating, ventilating and air conditioning industry. It was established in 1967.

“It can be very intimidating, women in construction. You need to be confident and it helps to have  a strong support group, which I have,” said Venn.

Venn is a graduate of SUNY Albany with a degree in business. She said her background helped her fight through any doubts.

“I came in with experience in the alcohol and beverage business,” said Venn.

It has been two years since Heidi Ives, Dorothy Rogers-Bullis, and Rachel Spensieri first began discussing the need for a women’s networking group in Saratoga Springs.

While each of these women comes from differing professional backgrounds and industries, they pooled their collective talents, and from those early conversations, the Saratoga Women in Business (SWIB) was established.

SWIB targets female professionals in the greater Saratoga Springs area and offers free bi-monthly fellowship opportunities, hosted and sponsored by various local businesses. Wine and light snacks, donated by the host business, are provided at each gathering, and door prizes, provided by SWIB members, also are awarded.

“I often point out that men do their professional networking on the golf course, and women often have a tough time finding a comfortable venue that serves that same purpose,” said cofounder Heidi Ives, a manager and mortgage loan originator with HomeBridge Financial.

“One of my primary goals for the SWIB gatherings was to provide a casual, unintimidating atmosphere for professional women to enjoy a glass of wine and network with each other,” she said. “Our unofficial motto for SWIB is ‘Make friends first, and the business will follow,’ and time and time again, this is exactly how new business relationships are formed.”