Vassar Women Founders Redefine Entrepreneurship—"It’s a Mindset,” They Say
If there is a throughline from the conversation held by three illustrious Vassar alums during the November 16 Women in Entrepreneurship: Female Founders panel, it could be this: Entrepreneurism is not just the creation of a thing that has never existed, but a mindset, a way to approach every situation with open curiosity about new opportunities.
Elisa Strauss ’98, founder of Confetti Cakes; Pari Farood ’80, Executive Director of the Miles of Hope Breast Cancer Foundation; and Geraldine Laybourne ’69, who led the teams that created Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, and Oxygen Media, and most recently built DAY ONE, offered insights into the paths that have set them apart as leaders in their fields.
Despite their varied successes, none of them has traveled a straight line and each made it clear that, although there is no formula for those seeking to define their own trajectory, there are some common threads.
Communications strategist Arielle Lapiano ’96 moderated the panel hosted by the Vassar Innovation and Entrepreneurship Program, the Women’s Center, and the Center for Career Education. She noted she had stepped into that role hoping it would inspire students to broaden their ideas of what it means to be an entrepreneur.
“Entrepreneurship is not just about building something new in your garage,” Lapiano said, referring to Steve Jobs’s Apple origin story. “These women’s stories show that you can be an entrepreneur in almost any setting.”
Laybourne’s newest project, DAY ONE Early Learning Community, founded with Dr. Julie Riess ’84, former Director of Vassar’s Wimpfheimer Nursery School, has won multiple awards and garnered federal, state, and foundation support. But before launching the model teaching-apprenticeship program and early-learning model school, Laybourne came up through the ranks of corporate America, where she learned to question accepted practices, challenge what she thought was wrong, and determine what original ideas she could offer her audience. Looking back on her long career, Laybourne realizes that her most recent project is another iteration of what she’s been working on since she was in her twenties—how to help underserved kids and their parents.
“Conventional wisdom underestimates everything, especially children,” she said. “Vassar made me think more creatively. It taught me to question everything, to go to the source, and take a new approach—that’s entrepreneurship.”
Following one’s passion—that simplistic, oft-touted adage—can serve as a beacon, even if how it will play out is less than clear. Throughout an early stint as an art teacher and later as a freelance textile designer for Ralph Lauren, Elisa Strauss loved baking cakes. She experimented for hours, initially in her parents’ kitchen, marrying her flare for design with mouthwatering cakes, including creating an eyeball-shaped cake for the doctor who performed her Lasik eye surgery. Coming from a family of professionals, Strauss had a hard time envisioning cake design as a career when she began attending pastry school on weekends to fit around her other commitments. But she loved it so much she eventually switched to full-time classes. And as orders for her creations picked up, she edged her way toward commitment.
“It definitely wasn’t a straight line, but when I had enough work to stop doing textile design, that’s when I claimed the mantle of entrepreneurship with Confetti Cakes,” she explained.
That’s also when Strauss reached out for the support she needed to make sure her business would grow. She had her brother design her first website, consulted other cake designers, and asked her accountant to teach her QuickBooks. A mother of three, Strauss no longer makes cakes for individual clients but instead has created a line of silicone cake molds, produced two cookbooks, and currently focuses on educational and media-related projects.
Farood recognized her desire to help people during her first job out of Vassar as Press Secretary to Congressman Hamilton Fish. After leaving Washington, DC, to raise children during the ’90s, her work as a volunteer with a range of nonprofit organizations in the Hudson Valley helped lay the foundation for the role she took on in 2004 as Executive Director of the Miles of Hope Breast Cancer Foundation.
“While my kids were growing up, I sat on so many nonprofit boards and learned a lot,” she said. “When a friend approached me about starting a nonprofit for women with breast cancer, it was a pivotal moment because I realized I had clear ideas about how to run an organization efficiently—with less overhead [and] better delivery of services, including the kinds of things people hadn’t thought of before, like financial support for women whose illness makes it difficult for them to pay bills or get to treatment, and scholarships for kids whose families are impacted.”
Farood, who has also written two novels, oversees all the activities of the foundation, which has given away more than four million dollars within nine Hudson Valley counties.
The panelists agreed that, although the world has changed since Farood was in Washington and Laybourne was a corporate executive, it can still be challenging for a woman to have her ideas heard and accepted. Laybourne emphasized that, in addition to maintaining a sense of humor, aligning with female colleagues can help keep the attention and credit for good ideas from going to the men.
“Whatever you do, bring an entrepreneurial spirit to it and work with the people who have original ideas living within them,” she offered. She also touted the value of finding a mentor and a seeing a terrible boss as an opportunity to learn what not to do. “Make sure there are other women on your team to help support you because, even in this day and age, a man will still get credit for a woman’s idea.”
For young people starting out, the panelists all encouraged cultivating a sense of fearlessness, despite nay-saying voices that might arise, and having the ability to pivot if an idea doesn’t work out.
“You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, or create a new one, but take a leap of faith,” said Strauss. “If you don’t try, you’ll never know what you could accomplish.”