Yay! Ladies Who Launch Co-Founder Victoria Colligan was named one Crain's Cleveland "40 Under 40".
Here's an excerpt of the article, but click through to see the video of Victoria Colligan.
The woman-owned businesses, she found, were started as much to change the entrepreneur’s lifestyle as to build an empire. For example, she noted, “Women will moderate the growth of the business because (they are raising) small children.”
As a result, the women entrepreneurs were learning about being business owners differently than men.
“These women were not reading traditional business publications or joining traditional networking groups,” Ms. Colligan said. “We thought there was a need to create content and opportunities for networking for women launching businesses that had more of a lifestyle purpose.”
She started with her newsletter and eventually teamed up with Beth Schoenfeldt, Ladies Who Launch’s co-founder, who was developing an incubator concept to offer businesswomen workshops and coaching. Today, that newsletter and the workshops are key parts of Ladies Who Launch, a national organization with franchises in nearly 50 cities helping women balance their businesses with other aspects of their lives.
Last spring, Ms. Colligan and Ms. Schoenfeldt, with co-author Amy Swift, turned their business into a book, “Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle.”
While she started her business in New York, Ms. Colligan, raised in Pepper Pike, returned to Northeast Ohio in 2002 as she began thinking about where her two young
daughters would be going to school. She realized she wanted them to attend Hathaway Brown School in Shaker Heights, where she had gone, so she and her
husband Owen, a co-founder and managing partner of Rockwood Equity Partners LLC, moved to Cleveland. Their businesses maintain offices in both cities.
Margey Lowery, who joined Ladies Who Launch as a franchisee a year ago and now owns franchises for Cleveland, Akron and Columbus, works closely with Ms. Colligan.
“I found Victoria very creative — she always has great ideas,” Ms. Lowery said. “She’s on the cutting edge in how women communicate with each other.”
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