Colligan, Victoria

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Colligan, Victoria

PERSONAL:

Married Owen Colligan (a managing director); children: two daughters. Education: Brown University, B.A. (with honors); Case Western Reserve University, M.B.A. and J.D.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Hunting Valley, OH. Office—Ladies Who Launch, Inc., 265 W. 37th St., 7th Fl., New York, NY 10018. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Entrepreneur. Kelley, Drye & Warren, New York, NY, corporate lawyer; Wedding List, director of business development; Amsale, director of content and business development; Ladies Who Launch, New York, NY, cofounder.

WRITINGS:

(With Beth Schoenfeldt and Amy Swift) Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle, St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Author of the blog Ladies Who Launch.

SIDELIGHTS:

Victoria Colligan is an entrepreneur. She earned a bachelor of arts degree with honors from Brown University and went on to earn both a master of business administration degree and a juris doctorate from Case Western Reserve University. Colligan worked as a corporate lawyer at the New York firm of Kelley, Drye & Warren before becoming director of business development for the online wedding registry site Wedding List. Colligan later accepted the position of director of content and business development for Amsale, a wedding gown designer, the previous companies both being female-owned start-up businesses. Her experience here partly led her to cofound Ladies Who Launch, a New York-based network for successful female entrepreneurs.

In an interview in Inside Business, Colligan explained that the key to creating a successful business is "never giving up and never taking ‘no’ for an answer." She added that of all the useful bits of information she learned while creating her business, she stated that "corporate America is a great training ground for anybody who wants to launch anything. It teaches reliability, professional responsibility … and how to harness and organize creativity." Amy Ann Stoessel also interviewed Colligan in a Crain's Cleveland Business article. The article states that "women join Ladies Who Launch and venture out on their own for a variety of reasons, according to Ms. Colligan, whether it's to break free from a corporate structure that's not compatible with a woman's way of thinking or to find more balance between work and home." The same interview also related: "As a self-described ‘lifelauncher,’ Ms. Colligan can connect with many of the women in Ladies Who Launch. In fact one of those women, Erin M.T. Naso, founder of EMT Communications," said that "Colligan is ‘really like a mother hen to a lot of us.’"

Colligan published her first book, Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle, in 2007 with Beth Schoenfeldt and Amy Swift. The book acts as an at-home version of Colligan's online networking and offline support company, where successful female entrepreneurs use their contacts and experience to benefit others in similar positions. The book counters popular positions held by many M.B.A. programs in the country and takes a holistic approach to creating businesses.

Booklist contributor Whitney Scott noted that "there is no doubting her sincerity" while digesting the messages in the book. A contributor to Publishers Weekly suggested that the book was written primarily "to promote membership" in the Ladies Who Launch organization, but added that the authors' "enthusiasm for self-improvement will excite even non-joiners into making positive changes."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 15, 2007, Whitney Scott, review of Ladies Who Launch: Embracing Entrepreneurship & Creativity as a Lifestyle, p. 89.

Crain's Cleveland Business, October 9, 2006, Amy Ann Stoessel, review of Ladies Who Launch, p. 25; November 19, 2007, Jay Miller, author interview.

Inside Business, October, 2006, Sara Lepro, "Lively Launcher," p. 32.

Publishers Weekly, March 19, 2007, review of Ladies Who Launch, p. 57.