Stamford Businesswomen Named to Women's Business Development Council

The Women’s Business Development Council (WBDC) has announced the selection of four new members of its Board of Directors.

The Stamford-based WBDC, founded in 1997, provides entrepreneurial and financial education services throughout the state to start-ups and established business.

Kim Rodney, WBDC Board Chairperson, and Vice President of Commercial Lending for Connecticut Community Bank, N.A., said in a statement, “The backgrounds, of these four new board members, in government, finance, marketing, management and leadership, will continue to strengthen and grow the support WBDC provides to entrepreneurs and women owned businesses across the state. We are honored to have them join our board.”

The new board members are:

•Stamford resident Gillian Ranee Doucette, founder of Doucette Consulting based in Stamford, is a returning member of WBDC Board. Doucette began her professional career in the newspaper industry working with Hearst Media Services and Gannett. She now provides a full range of services in brand development, strategic and communications planning, and revenue management to clients.

•Susie Robinson, head of Human Resources at Purdue Pharma LP in Stamford, has worked with leading companies such as Dow Jones, B. Braun Medical and Wyeth. She also has expertise in integrating change initiatives and large scale talent strategies in multi-cultural operations in 98 countries across the Americas, Europe, and Asia. She lives in Montvale, NJ.

•Stamford State Rep. Caroline B. Simmons, (D-144) serves on the Commerce, Public Safety, and Judiciary Committees in the state legislature. Simmons previously worked at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) providing support for DHS’s domestic and international counterterrorism programs. She is a member of the bi-partisan Young Legislator’s Caucus, Women’s Caucus, and the Southwest CT Chapter of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence.

• Kimberly Wiehl is EVP and Chief Operating Officer of Wiehl Properties, a third generation family property investment firm based in Fairfield. The Westport resident is an experienced executive with 15 years in senior and board leadership roles for not-for profit-organizations. While Managing Director at JPMorgan, where she worked for 20 years, she had extensive experience with financing in emerging market countries for infrastructure and project finance.

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The WBDC February – March 2016 schedule of free and low cost programs is available athttp://www.ctwbdc.org/current-schedule. Many of the programs have a half-hour “Q&A” session in Spanish following the English language presentation.

To register for WBDC programs or receive more information, call 203-353-1750, or click on the class you are interested in at www.ctwbdc.org/Current-Schedule-C34.aspx.