Women Carving Their Own Paths |
Self-employed alumnae build economically independent and creatively fulfilling lives. |
By Andrea Hammer |
Reflecting trends in the business world, Swarthmore-educated women have increasingly entered the workforce during the last few decades. As they have explored options from leadership positions in major corporations (see “A Profitable Education”) to independent start-ups, they have consistently relied on analytic and communications skills developed at the College. According to the College’s database, approximately 500 female entrepreneurs have opted to work independently as self-employed architects, financial analysts, translators, landscape designers, Web consultants, and gallery and bookshop owners—just to name a few.
In their book Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs: How Eleven Women Escaped Poverty and Became Their Own Bosses (Westview Press, 2002), Martha Shirk ’73 and Anna Wadia focus on women who have started their own businesses. In the foreword to the revised paperback edition (published this spring), presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) thinks that this work shows us “the possibilities of empowering low-income women through entrepreneurship.” He also notes the emergence of women as a force in the business sector:
“Since 1985, when I first joined the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, the number of women-owned businesses has doubled. Today, there are over 10.1 million women-owned firms generating $2.32 trillion in sales. One in seven American workers is employed by a woman-owned company, and the latest statistics show that women-owned businesses are outpacing other companies in overall growth, in number of firms, employment, and sales.”
Throughout her 30-year career as a journalist, Shirk has specialized in poverty-related issues. Her previous book, Lives on the Line (Westview Press, 1999), addressed the challenges of raising a family below the poverty line.
“The topic of Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs—entrepreneurship as one route out of poverty—struck me as a natural sequel,” Shirk said. “After years of writing about problems, I liked the idea of writing about a solution. Starting a small business, or becoming self-employed, isn’t the right choice for everyone struggling to get by below the poverty line, but for many, it can be a viable option.”
“I also wanted to get people thinking about the meaning of the word ‘entrepreneur,’” Shirk added. “I have always been impressed by the entrepreneurial streak I’ve seen in many low-income people. People who work in low-wage jobs have always run little businesses on the side, as a means of survival. However, hardly anyone thinks of them as entrepreneurs.”
Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th ed.) defines this word as “one who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business or enterprise” and self-employed as “earning income directly from one’s own business, trade, or profession rather than as a specified salary or wages from an employer.”
Since 1991, the Ms. Foundation for Women has administered the Collaborative Fund for Women’s Economic Development, a multifoundation effort that has given $10 million to community organizations supporting low-income female entrepreneurs throughout the United States. In the mid-1990s, after reading Shirk’s Lives on the Line and receiving a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Ms. Foundation staff recruited her to research and write a book about the impact of microenterprise on low-income U.S. women. Anna Wadia, a program director for the Ms. Foundation, collaborated on the policy-related chapters.
“Research has shown that often what makes the difference between a successful small business and one that fails is the amount of preparation that goes into starting it as well as the availability of ongoing support,” Shirk said. “The foundation asked that I feature women who benefited from some form of assistance from a community-based organization dedicated to promoting microenterprise as a poverty alleviation strategy.” The 11 entrepreneurs are diverse in race, age, ethnicity, community, and businesses.
Depending on the individual and the community organization, the assistance provided ranged from modest (a workshop about how to start a business) to intensive (one-on-one technical assistance) to ongoing (participation in a production network). Some women received microloans for the purchase of such income-generating equipment as a sewing or electronic knitting machine or a commercial freezer.
Meeting the women affected Shirk’s outlook on life. “Seeing the impact of these women’s businesses on their lives helped me rethink the notion of success,” Shirk said. For instance, Roselyn Spotted Eagle, a gifted beadwork artist and quilt maker who lives on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Kyle, S.D., wouldn’t be considered a successful business owner by most people’s standards. Her bead and quilt business brings in $10,000 a year at the most. However, the income from that business has enabled her to move her family from a two-room shack without running water to a comfortable three-bedroom mobile home. Her business has made a huge difference in her family’s quality of life.”
Many women who start businesses want to improve their economic status and gain more control over their lives. Although all of the subjects in this book started their businesses with the goal of earning more money for their families, an important factor in nearly every case was the desire to lead a different life.
“To my surprise, this project helped me clarify what I value most about being self-employed,” Shirk said. “After 21 years of working for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, I made the leap to self-employment seven years ago; just about every year since, I have debated with myself about whether to become someone’s employee again.”
But meeting the women profiled in her book helped Shirk, now a full-time freelance writer, realize that “what I value about being self-employed is not just the freedom to choose my topics but also to decide myself how to carve up the time in the day. Being my own boss allows me to reserve time in my week for other activities that I enjoy, including community activism, which simply wouldn’t be possible if I were still working as a newspaper reporter.”
Shirk thinks that “having an entrepreneurial streak isn’t enough to guarantee success as a business owner. It takes a good idea but also a lot of planning and hard work,” she said.
“You also have to have an appetite for risk to give up a job in order to go out on your own. When you’re employed, those paychecks keep coming in, even if you’re having a bad spell at work. When you work for yourself, your income depends upon your effort, and even major effort doesn’t guarantee it. If you think you have a great idea for a business, and nobody else thinks so, you’ve got a failed business. Approximately half of all small businesses fail within five years, so starting a business is a risky proposition.”
Here are the stories of four alumnae who have taken this bold step to design and market laptop cases to clients including Apple and Sony, create a Kathak dance company, develop a woodworking business, and fund legislative lobbying through antiques dealing. Although all have faced challenges in their enterprises, their fulfilling work and freedom of lifestyle remain the common threads.
EMILY MCHUGH ’90
Casauri® Laptop Cases
East Orange, N.J.
To raise “seed capital” for designing and marketing stylish laptop cases at her company Casauri, Emily McHugh played violin in subway stations for the Music Under New York Program.
“I used practically everything I had toward my business,” said McHugh, who first envisioned Casauri in a business plan that she wrote for the course Managing New Ventures at Columbia Business School. “I was depressed by my ugly and boring laptop case, which I refused to carry. My sister Helena, who went to the Fashion Institute of Technology, made me a case that people started to admire.”
Casauri (stemming from the French word caméléon and reptile-family sauria, as in “dino-saur”) was born—or at least on the verge of coming to life.
“The summer after graduating from business school, I worked part time to help pay for samples and basic expenses. I played my violin in the sweltering subways of New York and used to play Irish fiddle on St. Patrick’s Day at the World Trade Center,” she said. One winter, her sister even sewed fleece scarves and hats, which McHugh sold on the sidewalk of Times Square. She also worked as a sales associate at a Coach handbag and accessory shop to learn the business.
McHugh then did library research to identify additional resources, which eventually led to a microloan sponsored by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and guidance from SCORE counselors. The SCORE Association (see http://www.score.org), a resource partner with the SBA, has served more than 6 million entrepreneurs since 1964 and currently advises nearly 400,000 entrepreneurs annually.
“But my first real step was to go into the marketplace and check the pulse of what was going on. I visited practically every boutique and luggage store from Prada to Gucci and realized that I had an opportunity to explore because none of them were meeting the need in the marketplace that I had identified—that is, stylish, functional, and affordable cases for technology products, especially laptops,” she said.
In business since 1999, Casauri has faced “endless challenges—every day presents new ones,” McHugh said. “However, as we overcome each challenge, we make quantum leaps forward.”
The first major issue was getting design samples made; the next was to convince stores to take Casauri products based on rough first versions. To make headway in the marketplace, McHugh had to find a reputable overseas manufacturer, which took about two years. Ongoing challenges include inventory controls, distribution, quality control, pricing, forecasting, marketing, financing growth, and international expansion.
“We are masters at outsourcing—at least this is our goal. The strategizing, planning, designing, and conceptualizing take place ‘in house,’ but more and more of our execution take place elsewhere,” McHugh said. “The people we work with are all over the country and overseas. In fact, we work with independent contractors, many of whom are stay-at-home moms.”
She added: “In the beginning, we did everything ourselves. We still do a lot, but it has gotten much better. However, being exposed to all aspects of one’s business really makes the difference in actually knowing and understanding your business. So when it comes time to delegate, you know exactly what’s going on or what to expect. Delegating does not mean you do not still need to be aware of what is happening; it means you don’t have to do all the day-to-day tasks yourself, but you are still responsible for the results.”
Some of Casauri’s outsourced areas include graphic design, Web programming, accounting/bookkeeping, manufacturing, and distribution. Emily is directly involved in product development, marketing, and sales. Helena does product design, sourcing, and “remains the steady voice of wisdom and insight,” her sister said. “She is great at summing up situations and people—in other words, saving time.”
At the College, McHugh majored in linguistics, French, and Spanish.
“Swarthmore was excellent, if not ideal, for shaping me for the role of entrepreneur. I didn’t know it then, but I certainly see it now. I knew Swarthmore was shaping me for something interesting, but I had no idea what. Swarthmore was like an intellectual playhouse that allowed me to pursue all my eclectic interests. I couldn't decide on a major, so I created one,” McHugh said.
“At Swarthmore, we were constantly pushed beyond our perceived limits, always asked to do more and to test our stamina—both physical and intellectual. There was no room for complacency and absolute intolerance for mediocrity. We were trained to set high standards, high goals, and ultimately figure out a way to achieve them.... Swarthmore will be happy to know that I have most definitely found the outlet—it took a while, but I found it.”
Before attending business school, she worked at the Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) in New York and in Mexico City.
“[Entrepreneurship] is not for everyone, and it might take a while to come to the realization that it is something you truly want to pursue. For me, it was a lifelong series of events that culminated in that moment of decision. In addition, it took me a few months of waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat to accept that starting my own business was the appropriate step for me to take. Talk to people, do research, and assess your own temperament. Are you comfortable with total uncertainty—or at least can learn to be—are you obsessed with a driving force to execute your vision, are you convinced that the world will definitely be a better place with what you have to offer?” said McHugh, a 2002 Lax Conference panelist.
“We have evolved beyond just being perceived as a product that meets a need to becoming an entity to which people have established emotional attachments. We receive e-mails from people all over the world who tell us that they have been looking for what we offer for years and that they want more,” McHugh said. “Our goal is to continue to build Casauri into an international brand that designs innovative products and resonates with consumers for decades to come.”
Casauri’s first-quarter sales this year were at least four times the figures, for the same period, in 2003. This summer, McHugh and her sister also plan to hire two other internal workers. They currently have at least 20 contract employees as well as another 100 in a factory in China making Casauri bags.
“The marketplace has gradually woken up to realize that without women entrepreneurs our economy would be nowhere,” McHugh said. “With so many companies and government agencies eager to interact with women businesses, this could possibly be considered the dawn of the golden age of women entrepreneurship. I personally am thrilled to be part of it.”
JANAKI PATRIK ’66
Kathak Ensemble & Friends/CARAVAN Inc.
New York
Last year, Janaki Patrik (Wendy Hughes) celebrated the 25th anniversary of her company with several “beloved” classmates, who attended her ensemble’s performances.
“I have a dance company whose core repertoire and inspiration for creating new choreography is Kathak, the classical dance style from North India,” Patrik said. “I saw my guru, Pandit Birju Maharaj, in 1963, when he and his company performed at Swarthmore as part of his first United States tour. When I saw him perform and heard him speak about his art in Parrish Commons after the performance, I decided to go to India to study with him.”
After graduating from Swarthmore, Patrik trained with Maharaji in 1967, 1969, and during “many subsequent trips in the intervening 37 years,” she said. Awarded a Merce Cunningham Studio Scholarship in 1971, she studied the renowned dancer’s technique, repertory, and choreography from 1971 to 1978.
Remaining committed to Kathak, though, she said: “The first step was to go to India to learn the dance and its cultural context. This is like [being born] for a second time and learning a whole new language, both physically and metaphysically.”
Patrik was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for study in India during 1988 to 1989. She researched poetry of the Kathak repertoire. Katha means “story,” and the roots of this dance style are found in storytelling in village temples. Today, rhythmic footwork accented by ankle bells, spins, and themes from Persian and Urdu poetry as well as Hindu mythology characterize this dance.
“Then, I began performing—almost exclusively with live music. Becoming part of the network so that people know you exist and invite you to perform is a large part of the challenge of launching such a business because traditional advertisement is not the primary way of getting jobs.”
The company, formed in 1978 and incorporated as a not-for-profit arts and education organization in 1997, performs both Patrik’s choreography and traditional Kathak. Residencies are offered through CARAVAN, the company’s arts-in-education section.
Some challenges that Patrik has faced as an artist include “funding, booking, dealing with issues of ‘authenticity’ in a field defined incorrectly as ‘ethnic’ rather than ‘classical,’ filling out tax forms, and doing all the administrative work.”
The most fulfilling aspect of Patrik’s work involves “collaborations—working with dedicated fellow artists in performance,” she said. “Working with children—particularly with those who respond to the power and physical expertise of a performing artist, when they may have closed down the traditional access channels for learning—is some of the most gratifying work my art has allowed me to experience.”
Patrik has employed hundreds of dancers, musicians, lighting and set designers, composers, stage managers, and graphic designers on a freelance and per-project basis during the 25-year history of her dance company.
“I could not run a dance company without employing these people. The scope of my work has grown, but I do not measure growth according to the size of each production. Some productions are necessarily small because the vision dictates this; some productions are large. The concept rules the number of people who will collaborate with me—both artists and technical support staff,” she said.
“As an artist, I want to communicate, and I am utterly convinced of the beauty and power of this particular art form—whether alone in its purely classical form or in dialogue with other art forms such as tap dance, modern dance, jazz, and contemporary music. I am grateful that Kathak has given me a powerful medium through which I meet and work with other artists who are dedicated to excellence,” Patrik added. “I enjoy communicating with a very broad range of students and audience members who hunger for beauty and positivity and who search for answers in this difficult world through means other than emotionless words and facts.”
A Russian language and literature major, Patrik said: “Swarthmore did not prepare me for becoming an entrepreneur. It prepared me to think independently and persevere in fulfilling my visions—whether academic or artistic. Swarthmore exalted the life of the mind, and it provided circumscribed and achievable examples of defining a project, exploring and researching, then presenting the result in an acceptable format.... I believe that part of Swarthmore is about vision, reaching for ideals and not thinking only in practical terms. If I thought of my art in entrepreneurial terms, I would have given up long ago.”
Patrik emphasized the need for artists to persevere in fulfilling their creative dreams.
“Don't give up before you begin, just because it seems impractical. Creativity does not take place primarily in the mundane. It is born in the mind and heart and imagination,” she said.
“My business is not based on any sound economic strategy. America has abhorrent policies toward its arts and artists. For example, what I am paid now by Young Audiences to teach 30 students—$67 per 45-minute class—is barely $2 more than what I was paid in 1980. No health benefits or retirement plan add on to this criminally low wage for a teacher entrusted with nurturing creativity and inspiring a cohesive and sensitive reaction by students to cultures other than their own. When America does bother to think about the arts, or arts-in-education, it generally wants artists to justify themselves in terms of ‘real economic value,’ by teaching to the curriculum,” Patrik said. “Art can do that, but it can do so much more, and to ask an artist to justify herself in entrepreneurial terms—or according to some abstract standard of economic accountability—is a travesty, a waste, a crime against creativity.”
During the evolution of her company, Patrik has realized a greater fulfillment of her artistic vision, “both in execution and in the creative process,” she said. Her goals for future development are to “continue to create in real time and real space the musical and choreographic visions that engross my mind. Along the way, I envision continuing to work with fellow artists and with students in the most humane and ethical and creative ways possible.”
Daughter Lela ’04, a mathematics and sociology/anthropology double major, is a resident assistant in Mertz Hall. She has sung in four productions of the Swarthmore chorus, with a cappella jazz group Oscar & Emily for three years, and as a Swarthmore College Jazz Band vocal soloist for seven semesters. Lela also dances with the Swarthmore African Repertory group and Rhythm & Motion; a work-study was at the Djoniba Dance and Drum Center, the African dance studio in New York, where she continues to take classes. To learn more about Lela, see her Web site at www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/users/04/lkp/index.html.
“Be very careful that you treat your fellow women as seriously and respectfully as you have wished to be treated,” Patrik said. “We can be our own worst enemies, particularly as we age and see our beauty, mental acuity, and physical stamina giving way to the next generation. Revel in the success of your female colleagues. In the end, that is what we have left—a sense of a life lived fully and decently and generously.”
JANE GREENBERG KOSTICK ’88
Custom Woodworking (www.jjkostick.com)
Medford, MASS.
I pursued this line of work straight out of College because woodworking had always been something I enjoyed,” Jane Kostick said. “In junior high and high school, I loved my woodshop classes, and then during my senior year at Swarthmore, I loved the woodshop that I used in my sculpture course with Professor [of Studio Art] Brian Meunier. I majored in math at Swarthmore, and the independent research I did for my senior paper was about tiling patterns, which, for me, was about two-dimensional art. That’s when I first learned about the work of M.C. Escher.”
Kostick now sees herself as a math artist who creates furniture, cabinetry, and puzzles. She particularly relishes creating wooden objects that “people can play with” and gifts such as multidimensional jewelry boxes.
“This interest in art and mathematics has led to so much in my life today. In 1992, [Albert and Edna Pownall Buffington Professor of Mathematics] Gene Klotz notified me about an art and mathematics conference at State University of New York-Albany. There, I met people from all over the world with this common math/art interest.”
At this conference, Kostick was particularly inspired by and learned from Professor Koos Verhoeff of Holland, who knew Escher from decades earlier. “We went on to do some collaborative work, and I began learning about polyhedrons and spatial lattices, three-dimensional art,” she said.
“I’m particularly grateful to have met the late Professor Arthur Loeb of Harvard’s Design Science Department,” Kostick added. He ran a lecture series at Harvard called the Philomorphs. It was at one of those lectures the following year that I met my husband, John, who shares this interest in geometry and also happens to work as a carpenter.”
After an informal apprenticeship with a fine furniture maker in Cambridge for a year, Kostick rented space in a Boston woodshop to design and build her own furniture and artwork in wood.
“I sold work through art galleries in the beginning, and I still do occasionally,” she said, “but I’ve always found it to be an unreliable way to make money. For several years, I worked other part-time jobs to pay bills. I earned enough to keep doing what I love, and gradually I acquired enough tools and machinery to set up my own woodshop, which is in a Tufts-owned industrial building in Medford. Most of the renters in the building are also woodworkers, so there are a lot of skilled people around to learn from.”
A self-employed woodworker for 14 years, Kostick said, “The biggest challenge was how to make the artwork be profitable.” To achieve that goal, she expanded her business into other types of woodworking besides mathematical art.
“This was a natural result of my husband being in the residential remodeling business. So I learned how to design and build custom cabinetry, which there seems to be an endless demand for in this area. That’s about half of my business now. I still do the geometric woodworking, and I enjoy it more when there’s no pressure to make money doing it,” she said.
Kostick thinks that self-discipline is critical for self-employed workers. In her 20s, she learned to live on a small income—not needing much to maintain her lifestyle.
“The most gratifying thing about my work is that it balances with the rest of my life. For the most part, woodworking is solitary and peaceful, just the kind of energy I need in my life so I can take care of what's most important to me, which is my family. John and I have two sons, and being self-employed has enabled me to have a flexible schedule. I didn’t plan it this way, but it couldn’t have worked out better.”
SARA DUSTIN ’59
Dustbin Antiques
Hopkinton, N.H.
A “kitchen table business,” Sara Dustin said of her Dustbin Antiques, “certainly defines mine.... It’s just something I developed so I could earn enough money, in my spare time on the weekends, to do the mostly unpaid Quakerly work I really wanted to do during the week—lobbying the New Hampshire legislature; the state administrative structure; and, occasionally, Congress, on behalf of poor children and their single-parent mothers.”
In 1996, the Board of Directors of Southern New Hampshire Services honored Dustin for her “tireless effort on behalf of New Hampshire’s Women and Children.” From 1983 to 1997, she also served as executive director of Parents for Justice, an advocacy group for low-income single parents in New Hampshire. Dustin continues to volunteer for Families for Justice, which supports humane operations of the state’s child protection agency.
“After doing good all week, on the weekend I turn into a shark, prowling the yard sales, flea markets, and estate auctions of my neighborhood in New Hampshire for undervalued treasures, which could be cleaned up, restored, and marked up mercilessly for sale on the antique and collectibles market,” Dustin said. “Marketing the stuff has been a source of much adventure.”
Dustin finds the line between leisure and work increasingly blurred. In many ways, her antiquing is recreational, even though it provides her income.
“I spent a number of years trucking the stuff down to New York City one weekend a month to set up at the fabulous outdoor weekend antique markets in the parking lots of Manhattan’s garment district,” she said. For a week each during May, July, and September in Brimfield, Mass.—home to one of the largest outdoor antiques shows in New England with more than 5,000 dealers—Dustin also has set up and manned a booth 90 feet long by 10 feet wide every year for the last 18. “I perform this feat in partnership with my long-term significant other, John Moore,” she said.
But these days, at 66, I am gradually retrenching. I have stocked a small booth in the most reputable group shop on Northwood New Hampshire's famous Antique Alley with the very best things I can find cheap, priced as high as I can imagine them selling— and, to my astonishment and delight, like my magic show boxes, it produces this magic money." Dustin refers to “magic" because the contents of a box and a half (or less) sell regularly for a dependable $400.
A political science major at Swarthmore, Dustin said that she valued the self-confidence and ability to think critically that the College first instilled—and that has continued to inform her work. For example, she now has the eye to spot pieces for first-rank venues.
“Two summers ago, I discovered a first-period Van Briggle Jardiniere in a peach basket full of flower pots under a table in a local estate sale for 50 cents and ‘flipped it,’ as we say in the trade, two days later, for $1,500 to a colleague with better selling connections than I. And this fall, a battered turn-of-the-century watercolor I rescued from a yard sale shed last summer for $25 went for $2,300 at auction at Skinners in Boston,” Dustin said.
“So you see, I have acquired a life that provides highly varied satisfactions. During the week, I jump into my little suit and my nylons and go down to the legislature to practice a very active kind of political science representing the interests of the poor,” Dustin said. “On the weekend, I play around with [antiques] in my sweat pants and joggers, getting up at 5 a.m. to beat the competition to my neighbors' lawns and, up to very lately, camping out in vans to sell it. High fun and low fun.” |
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“Much of my work is along the lines of built-in bookcases,” said Jane Kostick from her Medford, Mass., woodshop, where she also designs multidimensional jewelry boxes. (Photo by Eve Lyman)
“You have to have an appetite for risk to give up a job in order to go out on your own,” says Martha Shirk, a journalist who has received many awards. In 1997, she was a Knight International Press Fellow in China. Her recent book, On Their Own (Westview Press, 2004), focuses on foster care children. (Photo by Christine Krieg)
Kitchen Table Entrepreneurs a recent book by Martha Shirk ’73 and Anna Wadia focuses on women who have started their own businesses.
In NewYorkDelhiMix (November 2001 production), the Kathak ensemble is shown in joyful movement during Another Get Together. (Photo by Julie Lemberger)
To learn more about Janaki Patrik ’66 (above) and her dance company, visit www.kathakensemble.com. (Photo by Frank Gimpaya)
In 1994, Jane Kostick’s trefoil knot table (above)—designed by Koos Verhoeff of the Netherlands—was displayed in Swarthmore’s Admissions Office. Her work has grown in other directions now. (Photo by Dean Powell)
Emily Mchugh has clients including Apple, Sony Style, Merrill Lynch, and Flight 001 at Henri Bendel. To learn more about Casauri Laptop cases, featured in the June 7 BusinessWeek, visit www.casauri.com. (Photo by Daniel Marracino)
Sara Dustin sold antiques in a booth at Brimfield, Mass., on a warm May morning about 10 years ago (above). Dustin began
lobbying the New Hampshire Legislature 20 years ago.
| Related articles |
| Swarthmore develops entrepreneurial spirit
Being an entrepreneur requires a kind of confidence and courage that many students learn—or further develop—here,” Professor of Economics Ellen Magenheim said. |
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