18 Graduate ​“Fit For Business”

Heather Taylor’s nonprofit sober house was already underway when she decided to take an eight-week program at the city’s Small Business Resource Center to help her learn even more about running a business.

Now she has graduated from the Fit For Business program, ready to join the city’s newest job creators.

A graduation ceremony and networking event for 16 of the program’s 18 graduates were rolled into one Monday evening at the city resource center on Dixwell Avenue. Wine and small bites flowed while the many graduates who have come through the program since its inception nearly four years ago mingled.

Taylor said one of the program’s teachers, Joe Williams, helped her land the property she needed to start her sober house for women at the Hamden/New Haven line on Butler Street. Then he told her he wanted her in his class.

“I was a construction worker for 26 years,” the 49-year-old Taylor said. ​“I had to change my whole career.”

That meant pursuing an associate degree in psychology, a bachelor’s degree in sociology at Albertus Magnus College, and starting a business while taking classes at the city’s Small Business Resource Center, simultaneously. How she did all? ​“By the grace of God,” she said.

For Alan Tilley, 51, who seeks to open a fitness franchise venture called Fit Body Boot Camp, said it meant working two jobs — one as an employment specialist during the day and in the hospitality industry at night — while attending the business classes. How’d he do it?

“By the grace of God,” he said echoing Taylor’s sentiments.

Cathy Graves, a city deputy economic development director, said that kind of tenacity permeated the most recent class of graduates from the small business program.

“This is a class that really showed up,” she said. ​“We had evenings when it was raining so hard that we thought that there wasn’t anyone who would show up. Not only did they show up but they had lots of questions and we enjoyed that.”

Grave said Monday’s graduates are the fourth cohort to graduate from the entrepreneurship program, joining the 360 who came through the program last fiscal year. (Read about some of the previous graduations here, here, and here.) She said the resource center helped small businesses in the city access nearly half a million last year in loans. Graves said many of those who participate in the program are in the service industry and have never made much more than about $25,000 a year.

Mayor Toni Harp, fresh of the heels of an announcement of Yale-New Haven Hospital’s forthcoming $838 million investment in a state-of-the-art neurosciences center, said the addition of much smaller businesses like the ones the graduates will start are also key to the local economy. She said small businesses employ more people in the state. They hire locally and are part of the supply chain for the bigger businesses.

“Your businesses are critically important to the economic development of our community, our town and frankly our state,” she said. ​“A long time ago, I thought I wanted to go into business but nobody taught me about a business plan. Nobody told me where you go to get resources you need.”

“As a result,” Harp deadpanned, ​“I’m mayor.”

That line grabbed a big laugh and rounds of applause from the crowd.

“The work you do, how you contribute, is critically important to our growth and development as a city,” she said more seriously.

Michael Piscitelli, Harp’s acting economic development administrator, said that graduation wasn’t the end of the collaboration between the city and the new small business owners of the city, but the beginning.

“We’re going to be with you on the journey,” he said. ​“We stay with you long after the program is over.”

He encouraged the graduates to exchange business cards and network so that they can become part of the small business ecosystem that will help their ventures be successful.

The 16 graduates who received their certificates Monday are as follows:

Alan Tilley
Angettica Wallace
Charra James
Enjoli Hassan
Gwenadine Felder
Heather Taylor
Jimmy Lee Baker
Justin Harmon
Liliana Kearson
Mariel Paulino
Michele Smith
Pamela Williams
Retha Neal
Tanasia Butler
Tyquan Ford
Walia Lynch-Diaz