Category Archives: Women In Business

By Jill Nagy

Small businesses need as much, if not more, support than their larger counterparts.  CEO’s and business owners often find themselves struggling with balancing cash flow, managing teams of staff, attracting banks and investors, and so much more. 

The Saratoga Springs -based company, CEFO Advisors, provides a variety of professional staff members that specialize in meeting those needs on a part-time basis. CEFO was built on the very premise that they can put a strong team in place to properly support their client needs using effective and innovative processes.

Amy Roman has owned the company for 10 years. For the first five years, however, Roman was the only employee. Eventually, she realized that her clients “needed more than just me,” and for the past five years, she has been hiring CFO’s, controllers, and additional support staff to place with clients, working within their businesses.

Early on, Roman recognized the benefit she could offer her clients by providing focused CFO support and strategic services that can be achieved through outsourced, forward-thinking business and accounting solutions.  One of her clients commented that “Amy did a good job closing the gap between the CEO and CFO” and thus the company name CEFO Advisors was born.    

Fast forward to 2023, Roman’s company supports over 65 businesses both locally and out of state. Roman currently has 18 employees including managers, accountants, bookkeepers, controllers, CFOs, and staff training specialists, which she matches with companies needing their specialized skills and expertise. 

Many are part-timers, working parents, or semi-retired professionals ready for a second career. They work flexible, hybrid hours that include working at home or in the CEFO offices, while maintaining the availability to work on site at the client’s company as needed, Roman said.

By Christine Graf

Attorneys Karen DeAngelus and Jacqueline Goralczyk opened DeAngelus Goralczyk, PLLC in Clifton Park in 2019, and since that time, they have expanded their firm significantly.

Their law practice now employs 11 attorneys and 10 support staff members. In addition to their headquarters in Clifton Park, the firm has offices in Schenectady, Saratoga Springs, Williamsville, N.Y., and Bonita Springs, Fla.

Although there are other women-owned law office in the area, there are few that are as large as DeAngelus Goralczyk.

“I think that being a women-owned firm of our size is unusual. We credit our success to keeping a laser focus on customer service and trying to serve our clients in a way that allows them to meet their goals,” said Goralczyk.

The pair decided to open their own firm after working in real estate law at different law practices in area. Having worked on opposite sides of transactions, they realized that had very similar ways of conducting business.

DeAngelus Goralczyk had been operating for just 11 months when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. In the early days of the pandemic, the partners worried they would not be able to keep the new firm afloat.

“We were very nervous and had no idea what would happen,” said Goralczyk.

Because residential and commercial real estate is one of DeAngelus Goralczyk’s core practice areas, the pandemic-triggered real estate boom resulted in a surge in an unexpected business.

By Paul Post

Gerald Davis wants to open a second location for his successful heating and cooling business, and document its growth with a long-range goal of having employees partner up with him as franchise owners.

JoAnna Schwartz felt the need for more structure and better processes at Name Bubbles, an e-commerce company that makes personalized waterproof name labels and decals, to ensure the firm’s future prosperity.

These are just two of many area business leaders that have turned to Wendy Waldron to teach, facilitate, coach, lead and direct them through critical phases of their respective operations. 

She owns Glens Falls-based WaldronWorks, and is a Professional EOS Implementer for the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), whose principles have helped clients around the world overcome business problems as well as identify and take advantage of new opportunities.

“We need Wendy’s help coaching and teaching us to be a great company, not just a good company,” said Davis, owner of Cambridge-based Superior Co-Op HVAC. The firm specializes in heating and cooling systems, using Mitsubishi hyper heat pumps, which maintain a desired  temperature without the use of fossil fuels

Davis began working with Waldron in January after discovering that other successful companies use EOS, too.

Schwartz, Name Bubbles vice president, said the leadership team started the EOS process in spring 2021. 

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.
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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.