Danice Langdon became a member of The Women’s Business Center of CEED in February 2022. She recently took advantage of an early retirement offer from BB&T and left Banking after 17 years. The last 16 years she was in the Spring Lake branch. She worked with her clients and small business owners to help them achieve their financial goals and dreams. Each day was different, but one thing remained constant, “each day I got the chance to make a difference…
Helping Out the Mommas
Were you breastfed as a baby? If you’re a parent, did you or your partner breastfeed your child? Society takes breastfeeding for granted – a natural ability all mothers possess. But in reality, breastfeeding does not come easily for all moms. Lactation can be influenced by health conditions and stress – something we’ve all had plenty of this past year. New moms need support, and babies didn’t stop being born because of coronavirus. How did the pandemic change what that…
Now’s the Time to Teach Your Kids About Money
When Crystal McLean asked for a book about money for her third-grade daughter, the Barnes & Noble employee just looked blankly at her. There was no such thing, she was told. So instead of pushing off financial literacy lessons for her young daughter, Crystal wrote the book she had hoped to find. “Harmoney & the Empty Piggybank: A Book about Money Budgeting Entrepreneurship and Persistence” introduces kids to handling money while helping parents facilitate conversations about financial responsibility. Crystal recently…
Masks On, Hair Done: How A Salon Survived Lockdown
Getting your hair done is a personal, face-to-face affair. You sit in the swivel chair and the stylist makes a masterpiece out of the mop on your head that you walked in with…or at least gets your bangs out of your eyes. And while you’re there, you might share more with them about your relationship struggles or work stress than you would with any other person you only see every six to eight weeks. But in a pandemic, that intimate…
Meet CEED’s Executive Director: Suzy Hrabovsky
When Suzy Hrabovsky first interviewed for a job at the WBC, she didn’t get it. She figured that the CEED founder and then-executive director, the late Sylvia Ray, didn’t like her. So Suzy turned back to her other career until another opportunity to join CEED cropped up 10 years later. Turns out, Suzy was wrong. Sylvia did like her—quite a bit, in fact—and after three years of serving as a board member, Sylvia asked Suzy to take the reins as…
Meet the WBCFay Staff
“. . . being a part of a team like the one we have here at CEED. . . I’ve learned to rely on other people. I’ve learned to accept the input of other people and to see their strengths as something that can also build my own strength instead of seeing it as either a challenge or like a hinderance. So I think that’s the thing I’ve learned the most is that I don’t need to be an…
Four Hours All to Yourself: Drop-in Daycare in a Pandemic
Tiffany Martinez is here to tell you: you’re not a bad parent if you’re sick of your kids, especially in this pandemic. Her business, Imagination Station, specializes in providing a nurturing environment in which kids can learn and play while the parents/caregivers get a well-deserved break. In this episode, Martinez shares how she persevered through many trials of 2020 — from precautionary closure due to COVID-19 and a PPP loan to moving and reopening under Centers for Disease Control and…
The Grand Opening: Cupcakes and COVID-19
When Yesenia Portes imagined her first year as a food truck owner, she pictured parking her mobile bakery at fairs, parties, and festivals to sell her gourmet cupcakes. But the coronavirus pandemic hit just two weeks after her grand opening. The owner of Sinful Decadence shares how she adjusted her business to thrive under the limits of COVID-19. Plus, we hear from Katlin McFadden — the director of the Women’s Business Center. Check out this episode!…