They find their tribes. They see needs and run toward them. They devote their time, talents and energy to strengthening communities.
Introducing the 2017 Women of Style. They are entrepreneurs of the heart. As they pursue their passions, the world brightens up around them, filled with color and smiles, greenery and gatherings, love and bling. They find their tribes. They see needs and run toward them. They devote their time, talents and energy to strengthening communities.
Abeer Allen & Tania Srouji
Eye Candy Family, Mechanicsburg
Where others see needs, the Srouji sisters see opportunities, not just to grow their business, but to create good in the community.
“Every event we do, we find a way to give back,” says Abeer Allen, younger sister, by just short of one year, to Tania Srouji.
The story of the Srouji sisters is about two women with different strengths and passions who teamed up, took a detour from the corporate road, and found success as entrepreneurs with a social-awareness mindset. While their businesses create dazzling events and help women look beautiful, the underlayment is always about doing good for others.
Though close in age, the two sisters weren’t close growing up. That changed after Tania returned from the military. Together, they built up a wholesale sideline around Tania’s interest in unique, affordable jewelry.
Abeer left the corporate world first, after 17 years in banking. “I literally gave my notice, and that was that,” Abeer says. “I haven’t looked back.” In her successful bid for 2011 Leukemia and Lymphoma Society of Central Pennsylvania Woman of the Year, she organized events that included the first Central PA SuperChef competition. The next year, she helped Tania repeat SuperChef in her bid for LLS Woman of the Year, and the event doubled its take.
It was time, Abeer knew, to pursue that lifelong passion for event planning. She remembers organizing her first event, a Mardi Gras party, when she was 14.
Six months later, Tania was laid off from her position in an engineering firm. She took it hard, but their father told her, “Tania, you’re smart. You’re beautiful. Money comes and goes.” It was time to take misfortune and turn it into a pursuit of her passion.
So the sisters formed Eye Candy Family, parent company to the accessories and event planning arms. Tania oversees Eye Candy Accessories and its higher-end sibling, Eye Candy Couture. Abeer runs Events by Eye Candy. Their mother, Fanny Srouji, is an excellent, internationally oriented cook and “our biggest fan,” says Tania. When they stage Uncork for Community, spotlighting international food and wine, Fanny “finds the countries we don’t have, and she’ll create a dish.”
In only six years, Events by Eye Candy has raised more than $175,000 for, plus donated products to community causes. Net proceeds from SuperChef, still going strong, entirely benefit a charity or two selected by a committee of supporters. A new event, Homemade by SuperChef, will give home chefs a chance to shine while using PA Preferred products, “showcasing what we have here in central Pennsylvania,” says Tania.
Raising awareness of the causes and products in our midst is an Eye Candy touchstone. While SuperChef raises money, it also has helped nine local culinary students find jobs by connecting them with executive chefs from top restaurants. Often, event volunteers find new passions as volunteers for the beneficiary causes.
The sisters once had their offices in a space where every door was emblazoned with the words “Never give up.” It’s the spirit they inherited from their parents, who taught them to work for what they want.
“No matter how hard things are, never give up,” says Abeer. “We have the ability to make a change in this world, and we’re going to do it. People are going to knock you down, and you just get back up. You always have to go down before you get back up.”
Their attitude—and gratitude, they add—is reflected in the part of their mission that states the Eye Candy Family is meant to “inspire, motivate and empower our community to live their lives by design, not default.”
“It’s not about awards or recognition,” says Tania. “It’s more about building true relationships and true friendships. At the end of the day, you can’t take anything with you. As entrepreneurs, it’s our job to use our business to make change. You’re designing your own life.”
Sarah Doyle
Attorney, Stock and Leader, York
Sarah Doyle says the farm where she grew up, in her family for 200 years, is “a big part of why I am where I am today.” There in southern York County, Family Tree Farm bustles with pick-your-own opportunities and agricultural events.
“My family always had the attitude that we love our farm so much and want to share it with our neighbors and friends,” she says.
Her passion for agriculture led to an epiphany late in her college career, when she was studying agriculture policy relating to environmental issues and food labeling and safety regulations.
“I’m not sure the general public is aware how much that impacts the people who are actually growing the crops and raising the animals,” she says. “That was the click for me about how everything came together, so I decided to pursue law school.”
In law school, she shifted from thoughts of government or trade association work into work with individuals.
“I’m a people person,” she says. “I discovered that the greatest impact I could personally have as one person is to work with people on the ground day to day.”
Asked to describe the challenges facing farmers today, Doyle says, “How much time do you have?”
“We shake hands with a farmer three times a day, every time you have a meal,” she says. “We’ve become a society somewhat disconnected from the hard work and the time and the complexity of how that food got to your plate. Our population’s only going to continue to grow. How can we continue to provide wholesome food to our society?”
Farmers are educated and smart, striving to stay profitable in a changing business climate. With Stock and Leader, staffed with experts in the diverse needs of agriculture, she is part of “a one-stop shop if they’re having a problem or want to do something innovative and new.”
She enjoys raising Southdown sheep, a skill she learned in 4-H. On the York County Preservation Trust board, she says, “I care deeply about farmland preservation, but it’s got to be the right situation. How can we continue to help farmers be profitable and stay on the farm if they want to be on the farm?”
Her involvement with York Young Professionals puts her among people who “truly care about making York a great place to live.” Service on York’s Central Market board helps sustain a city market that “incorporates the rural aspect of York. The Central Market has always been a hub for people to gather.”
She hopes to continue finding ways to serve her clients and her community.
“I’ve been given a certain skill set, and I’ve been given my passions for a reason. It would be wasteful for me to not put that to use in the community I live in. That would be a real shame. That’s why we’re all here, to help others and serve others, and that’s what leads to a fulfilling life.”
Michelle McCall
CEO, YWCA Lancaster
Michelle McCall never lets the grass grow under her feet. She studied engineering because she was strong in math and science, and because the career offered independence. She has completed design and management in corporate and nonprofit settings. She has done cutting-edge work in food processing. Helping defuel the damaged Three Mile Island reactor was her favorite corporate job, surrounding her with “extremely bright people” using “a lot of first-time technologies.”
It all led to her role leading a vibrant YWCA.
“I’ve done so many things that I thought it was time to give back and mentor some other ladies who are aspiring to be CEOs,” she says.
Taking the helm in January 2017, after two separate stints as interim CEO, McCall rehired “some really great people” who had left. She pointed the team toward fulfilling the “tremendous amount of potential” within the YWCA and its historic but underutilized building (ywcalancaster.org).
“My vision along with the team is to be able to use more progressive technologies, to be able to grow the programs so we can grow the mission and be able to offer more to the community in realizing our mission, which is eliminating racism and empowering women.”
She envisions expanding the YWCA’s affordable housing. Perhaps its winter shelter, operated in conjunction with the Lancaster County Council of Churches, will grow to meet the need year-round.
She hopes to build on partnerships to strengthen the YWCA’s social justice programs. “It’s important for communities to come together on these issues and understand there are ways to make your community more resilient in the face of things like what happened in Charlottesville.”
She has drawn lessons from the “myriad experiences” of mentors, female and male, over the years. One taught her to temper a tendency to shoot from the hip, to “step back and consider all of the options and be able to project what your actions may or may not result in.” In mentoring others, she shares the same “sense of perspective and leadership” that her mentors have conveyed.
“It’s not always as important to be right,” she notes. “It’s sometimes about how you get to the end result.”
She enjoys visiting national parks, including a recent hiking trip to Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Her “pretty large gardening effort” cultivates flowers and vegetables on a home property that includes a natural swimming hole. Her husband, Tom Zug, is a structural engineer whose business, Zug & Associates, does the YWCA’s structural work for free and supports YWCA events. She studies alternative medicine and foods, “because the older we get, the more we have to take care of ourselves.”
Her love for all things retro is emerging in a series of YWCA teas, starting with a 1950s-themed gathering. With all that’s going on at the YWCA, she insists that the team is the thing.
“The effort that allows us to do what we do here is about having a really great team. It’s not about the CEO or any one person.”
Cheryl Hornung
Founder and director, Caitlin’s Smiles, Harrisburg
The email from a nurse was heartbreaking. A young mother appeared at Clarion Hospital, small children in tow, because her husband had just been killed in an accident. She had no one with her to occupy the kids. Then the nurse noticed a box of craft kits, and suddenly the kids had a blessed distraction until relatives could arrive.
Cheryl Hornung had only recently arranged to deliver the craft kits to the remote hospital.
“That’s how things work around here,” she says. “They just happen when they’re needed the most.”
“Around here” is Caitlin’s Smiles, the nonprofit Hornung founded in 2004 (caitlins-smiles.org). It was inspired by the final years of her daughter, Caitlin, who died from a malignant brain tumor in 2000, just before her eighth birthday. In and out of hospitals, Caitlin never became discouraged, and she kept herself occupied through her love for art.
Today, Caitlin’s Smiles helps lift spirits in about 90 health facilities around the nation. Hospitalized children get “Bags of Smiles” filled with age-appropriate toys, journals, books and crafts, plus an encouraging note. “Coping kits,” like those sent to Clarion, help children undergoing outpatient procedures pass the time with a craft such as bracelet-making.
“In the rest of the world, it seems like kids are less into arts and crafts and coloring, but in the hospitals, they seem to be real important,” Hornung says.
A cadre of volunteers assembles the kits and bags, bead by bead and crayon by crayon. Co-working groups have been coming to Caitlin’s Smiles’ cheery space for years. Some are aides bringing people with special needs, happy to contribute. Preschoolers from a nearby child care decorate cards. One couple whose grandson enjoyed his Bags of Smiles during hospital stays asked guests to their 50th anniversary party to bring Play-Doh in lieu of gifts.
“That’s so neat,” Hornung says. “That’s what keeps not only me but all the volunteers here running, because everybody is paying it back and paying it forward.”
Through her work, Hornung has discovered her inner flexibility. “I love the life being a little chaotic here because that keeps my blood pumping.”
She remains active in the church where she founded Caitlin’s Smiles. She helps other charities serve meals to the homeless. She cheers on her 15-year-old daughter’s volleyball team. There are occasional road trips to visit her older daughter at Slippery Rock University.
As for Caitlin? “I feel like she’s sitting on my shoulder,” says her mom. “She would love all this.”
Hornung doesn’t worry about the future. The devotion of volunteers keeps the wheels moving. Even as thousands of bags and kits go out the door yearly, she learns of new places where kids need smiles, like the home for medically fragile children that called recently.
“Somebody else is guiding this, not me, and it’ll go where it needs to go,” she says. “We’re going to keep growing and finding the missing places. I seem to be finding these other little ways that I can still help.”
Rabiya Khan
Community justice advocate, York
Growing up in London, Rabiya Khan would be called “bloody Paki.” Visiting Pakistan, she was “bloody English.”
“That’s why as I grew older, especially after I was American, I held onto my faith,” says Khan. “No matter where I lived, I could always practice my religion.”
Her parents and grandparents had already lived through resettlement when the family followed an uncle to Conestoga, Pennsylvania, an area reminiscent of the lush fields of India. A creek wound through the backyard. The neighbors had horses. Even while she went to college, got married, had a son, and divorced, Khan thought she would return to London and its lifestyle. Then, her ex-husband died.
“I could live anywhere, but I didn’t know where to go,” she says. “It’s kind of overwhelming when you have that freedom to do anything you want.”
She chose to stay close to family. Soon after, 9/11 hit. She started getting invitations to speak on understanding Islam.
“This is one thing I know that I am,” she says. “I’m going to make sure that other people understand that what you’re seeing on TV is not Islam. It’s a politicized, radicalized fringe movement, and they don’t represent the majority of us.”
Then came her tipping point, when North Carolina officials wrote off the murder of three Muslims as a dispute over a parking spot.
“We are productive members of the community. We are college students,” she says. “Now you want to go after people who are like us? If you want to go after ISIS, go ahead. But you’re fighting useful, good people and contributing members of the society who are by all means American—born and raised here and going to school and trying to better their lives.”
She had had enough. She organized a well-attended march in Harrisburg “to say, ‘You know what? These things are happening. Let’s shed light on this.’”
As hate comes out in the open, she has to remind herself not to “go down that dark path, too.” During the YWCA of York Race Against Racism and the York Equality Fest, she manned a table called “Meet an American Muslim.”
She reaches out to people on all sides of the political spectrum “because I know that’s what I don’t like about the communities that do the same to me. Any marginalization of any group is intolerable to me.”
In York, a friend helped organize a show of community support during her mosque’s prayers. The gathering, in response to an earlier incident when a passing motorist shouted profanities at the group, attracted people from all walks of life, including a local rabbi.
“We shared our meal with them. We laughed. We talked. We had a great time. This is how it should be. This is really what makes America great, that people want to come here and support our rights to practice our religion.”
Robena Spangler
Director, Children’s Division, Rehabilitation and Community Providers Association
At every step of her career, Robena Spangler has sought guidance from mentors. Her high school basketball coach remains a friend. Three legendary men in Pennsylvania human services introduced her to the intricacies of the systems serving people in need.
“I had a friend read my palm one time,” Spangler says. “She said, ‘Oh, my God, look at all these guardian angels you have!’”
Her mentors taught her the value of humility and the importance of staying “open-minded and solution-focused. It’s very difficult for me to hear a problem more than once without feeling an obligation to help find a solution.”
Spangler grew up in a household infused with giving. Her mother was “always, always, always in the spirit of helping people and taking care of people and offering my brother’s wayward friends places to stay.”
The lifetime athlete attended college on a basketball scholarship. Today, recovering from a torn ACL, she still enjoys workouts and expects to “be a healthy dead person.”
Born the day after the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., and literally the day before Michelle Obama, Spangler says it’s awesome to be “sandwiched between two great Americans.”
Her career has always been in human services, whether preventing and investigating child abuse or pilot-testing a mental health screening tool for girls engaged in the juvenile justice system. For Northwestern Human Services, where she worked for 19 years, she led a project to keep girls in their communities, homes and schools by addressing underlying causes of delinquency that included PTSD from sexual and physical abuse. Another residential program focused not only on girls’ emotional and physical needs but on the importance of their academics.
Today, Spangler is “loving it” at RCPA. It’s a different but familiar perspective on human services, working with 140 children’s service providers on their mutual interests and with state government officials to assure that laws and regulations benefit the children served.
Spangler and her daughter, 27-year-old Eryn, have been best friends and roommates all their lives. They share clothes and shoes and enjoy outings to favorite restaurants.
“I want to continue to keep an eye on mentoring and making sure that my daughter continues to understand her worth, in the context of the world she’s in now. The world that she’s growing up in has its own challenges.”
Spangler recently bought a house where she enjoys yard hobbies. She has “a really, really, really nice crew of girlfriends. I like golf. We do girlfriend dinners. I enjoy reading.”
Perhaps she is “a little selfish,” but service to others “makes me feel good,” she says. “I think I give myself selflessly, but ultimately it is a sense of gratification and accomplishment to know that I have a lasting effect on people. I feel like I get so much more out of it.”
Sherry Harry
Vice president of business development & marketing, VisionCorps, Lancaster
Some people work on their weaknesses. Sherry Harry prefers building on her strengths.
“Be your authentic self and really rise above,” she says. “You know what your strengths are and build on those. You can work on your weaknesses, but it doesn’t give you that satisfaction.”
Harry was 14 years old when her mother, the quiet leader of the family, died. She assumed the role of family caretaker “because I had to be.” She sought out other women as mentors—guidance counselors, teachers, supervisors at work.
After graduating from Penn State University, she built a career in high-level retail management. The younger brother she helped raise came to live with her. She helped put him through college, and they remain close to this day.
“He is a vice president of a company now, and I’m a vice president of a company,” she says. “Some days I think, ‘How did I get here?’ but it’s really about the journey.”
Laid off during the recession, she found the space to think about the rest of her life. She had fun working as a winery’s regional sales manager. She was volunteering, too, but never considered paid work in nonprofits. Then she got to know VisionCorps Foundation, the fundraising arm of VisionCorps, and they needed a marketing manager.
“I really liked the culture and the people,” she says. “I liked the mission and working for a cause. It was about being that caretaker and giving back and doing something bigger than myself.”
At VisionCorps, revenue from products made by people with visual impairments finances services for the visually impaired throughout the community. Harry is in awe of her visually impaired colleagues. “The disability is just the blindness. There’s nothing they can’t do anymore.”
Harry keeps community close to her heart. She serves with Rotary Club. This year, she won the Lancaster Chamber’s Athena Award, fulfilling a dream she pursued by posting on her desk the core tenets of the prestigious prize for community service, business excellence and women’s mentoring.
Through the chamber, mentoring girls who are high school juniors “really hits home for me,” Harry says. She recalls one young woman who expected to support her mother and siblings by working at a convenience store. Through mentoring, the girl was captivated by job shadowing at a doctor’s office, and Harry helped her consider the path to nursing. Today, that young woman can hardly believe the turn her life has taken—married, expecting a baby and working as a certified nurse assistant.
Even when Harry gets a day off, she is likely to volunteer somewhere.
“We need to continue to foster good relationships wherever we are in the world,” she says. “Be a part of your community. I’ve learned the most from people I’ve volunteered with. It really does matter. It changes your life as well as others’. I think the impact I’ve made is helping lead others into service above self. It really is how I live now.”
Anne Kirby
Founder, The Candy Factory and The Sweet Core, Lancaster
When Anne Kirby moved to Lancaster to be with family, she loved the town’s big-city-in-a-small-package feel, but she didn’t like the isolation of working from home. In search of “my tribe,” as she calls it, she founded a creative network where everyone from artists to CPAs could help each other, and the city, thrive.
“I’m passionate about connecting people,” says Kirby. “I love being around interesting people who inspire me, who challenge me. That’s where I get my energy. I know I’m going to meet someone new every single day.”
Today, that network has blossomed into The Candy Factory, a co-working space uniquely devoted to more than desks and shared printers (candyissweet.com). Her own web/design/social business, The Sweet Core, is there. So are techies, entrepreneurs, artisans and students, sharing ideas and collaborating on projects meant to energize the business landscape and reshape lives.
“A lot of businesses downtown realize that if one business is successful, it helps all of them,” says Kirby.
Perkup & Co., the micro-sized downtown Lancaster coffee shop, is one of those social enterprises born at The Candy Factory. While the ecofriendly, grab-and-go shop fills the basic need for a muffin and a cup of coffee or tea, it also employs teenagers learning the soft skills of employment, “everything from making eye contact to small talk.”
“It’s a way to take everything we’ve learned from co-working and apply that to a café space,” says Kirby. “We want everyone to feel welcome.”
The Candy Factory moves into a newly renovated building this year, even as it evolves into more of a concept than a workspace. It has hosted a women’s business forum and will host Pennsylvania’s first coworking conference, showcasing the coworking possibilities in a small city. Rock Candy Coworking in Lititz is a new Candy Factory project that spreads collaborative coworking deeper into Lancaster County. Kick-ass Female Entrepreneurs of Lancaster is Kirby’s idea, too, convening women to share ideas and provide support.
The Irish-born Kirby grew up singing with a family band. She sings today with atmospheric dreampop band Here Inside, strictly for fun. It is her time to “just not think about anything else and immerse myself in something other than work.”
The mother of two sons, ages 22 and 8, grew up hearing from her parents about the importance of giving back. At speaking engagements, Kirby shares the story of another transformative experience. She was in high school and pregnant, with the good fortune to have a Mom’s House near her Pittsburgh-area home. With help from the “incredibly supportive” women there, she found child care for her son, finished high school, and went on to college. It all came with the expectation that she help around the space and “be an active part of the community.”
Today, she sees the same spirit at The Candy Factory.
“Our members all give back. Our members all help maintain the space. We come together. We support each other, and we give back to the community.”
Carrie Wissler-Thomas
President, Art Association of Harrisburg
Carrie Wissler-Thomas remembers standing in her mother’s kitchen in Ephrata and being asked that question posed to every 5-year-old: What do you want to be when you grow up?
“An artist,” she said.
Always, she has been an artist. In high school, she drew cover art for her reports. At Hood College, she studied fine art and English literature. It all led to the Art Association of Harrisburg. She joined in 1972, when her husband took a job in Harrisburg, and became director in 1986.
Today, Wissler-Thomas and her multi-talented staff have turned AAH into the gathering place for sharing and making art that she always envisioned (artassocofhbg.com). With her board, she has overseen restoration of the association’s longtime home, the tall-ceilinged, parquet-floored 19th-century brownstone mansion that was once home to governors.
The history-rich building is not a museum but a showcase for all things art and artistic, from traditional to avant-garde. Under energetic new curator Rachel O’Connor, Wissler-Thomas expects some real eye-openers.
“It’s important for people of all backgrounds who want to see the world become a better place to have a place that‘s inclusive,” she says. “They can meet like-minded people and maybe see art that will delight them or even appall them, but it’ll challenge them.”
Art is a conduit for people to meet and ideas to circulate, Wissler-Thomas says. Young artists or those new to town come to receptions and gallery openings, and suddenly, they have friends. Schoolkids, retirees and classmates in AAH classes support each other’s expressive creations.
“Age is a chronological accident,” she says. “Age is no barrier to the love of art.”
Every inch of wall space in her office at AAH and her 1920s-era graystone home in Harrisburg is filled with art. Every Christmas at home, her collection of Scottie dog figurines—her current Scottie is a 3-year-old bundle of energy named Gimli—migrates to the crèche, where they circle in adoration of the Baby Jesus.
The long hours of running an art association haven’t diminished her drive to create and exhibit art. Twenty of her paintings of her beloved Scotland, where she and her husband travel every year, are part of a two-person show November 16 through January 12.
Her son essentially grew up at AAH. So did her 18-year-old granddaughter, once sleeping in a crib in Wissler-Thomas’ office. Her husband, Scott, is “so supportive,” helping her stretch canvases and schlep artwork at the end of AAH’s many events.
The Bal Masque, one of Harrisburg’s premiere galas, is Celtic-themed and in a new home for 2018. By moving to the funky Harrisburg Midtown Arts Center, AAH hopes to introduce new generations to the idea that great communities need great art.
“It’s about bringing people together,” she says. “It’s making connections, whether it’s between artists and businesspeople or board members and artists. We’ve had couples who meet in our art class and marry. It’s just so much fun.”
