Inspiration & Profiles

Syd’s Book Shack & Boutique was inspired by Sydney Daggett, a 17-year-old girl with an immense love of books, telling jokes and eating Chinese food.

Whether it’s a personal New Year’s resolution or a business plan goal, there are best practices to help ensure success in goal setting.

How can a Key4Women Certified Advisor help you? Let us count the ways. They have studied, trained and tested and they are here to help you, a woman business owner.

Who doesn’t love an inspiring woman-owned business story? At Key4Women^®, we especially love hearing about a business model that creates a platform to help others realize their dream as business owners. One such story is about Key4Women members Kate Isler and Susan Gates of TheWMarketplace.

Borrowing a term from the sports world, Lilian Lo is a “natural.” She embodies all the essential skills and attributes of a successful entrepreneur and instinctively knows when and how to make the just-right next play. She is a confident leader who embraces new systems and technologies, builds important relationships, and creates interesting opportunities for growth – all while investing in knowing her market, customers and employees extraordinarily well.

Rachael Sampson has been named Director of Key4Women. Sampson is a 20-year veteran of banking with a focus and passion for helping entrepreneurs, businesses and communities thrive.

Sarah Thomas, the NFL’s first female official, was the Keynote Speaker at Key4Women’s Annual Forum in 2020. In this conversation with Susan Zongrone from KeyBank, Sarah Thomas talked about overcoming adversity, maintaining work-life balance and looking through the windshield toward opportunity.

According to recent research by the National Women’s Law Center nearly 2.2 million women have left the workforce since February 2020. Another Study by McKinsey & Company highlights that the pandemic has affected women’s confidence, as well as their thoughts about their financial future. Learn more as KeyCorp experts weigh in on the topic with tips on how to support women – and parents – throughout the pandemic and beyond.

Nancy Kern Eaton, President at the United Way of Central New York and recipient of Key4Women’s Central New York 2020 Community Impact Award, talks about why community is central to addressing the root causes of poverty and changing the systems that make it persist.

Meet Angela Benton, a pioneer of diversity in the technology industry. Benton has created companies that have enabled Black, Hispanic and female entrepreneurs to successfully grow their businesses with venture capital financing, own and monetize their data, and network with other minority executives.

Benton places a high value on integrity, transparency, simplicity, and intuition in all her business pursuits – values informed by her life’s experiences as a mother and cancer survivor.

Laura Serway, winner of Key4Women’s Central New York 2020 Achieve Award, talks with KeyBank’s Rachel Galusha about the importance of building relationships, giving back to community and how she handles challenges she faces as an entrepreneur.

Meet Debra McClendon-Boddie, who has been chosen as this year’s recipient of the Central New York Key4Women^® Small Business Achievement Award for her work as founder of PGR Foundation, Inc. Hear how her mentorship makes a difference in the lives of young girls, and how this work has changed her life, too.