Name: Donna Hanson
Place of Employment: Sabic (full time) and Balderdash Cellars Winery (full time)
Title: Inside Sales Representative for Sabic and Wine Taster/Social Media for Balderdash
What is your 3 sentence biography?:
I am a daughter of an immigrant family from Italy. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration. I have worked for 34 years with Sabic and I am currently balancing another full-time job assisting my husband in winemaking and marketing of the winery.
What is your personal elevator pitch?
I have worked for a corporate company for thirty-four years and have been able to learn so much about what it takes to make a business successful. With all I have learned I am going to combine my working days into fulfilling a lifelong dream of winemaking and helping to build a brand of superb wine. My goal is to build an experience to all who walk in our doors. I am passionate about working at the winery, meeting new friends every day and using this business to help fundraise and give back to the community as much as I can. In short, I love what I do and I feel blessed, grateful and thankful for what lies ahead of me.
Tell us about a challenge you faced on your path, and what you learned from it:
I would say that a challenge I had was pursuing my Bachelor’s Degree while I was working full time, had a young infant and traveled an hour away to classes two times a week in order to achieve this personal goal.
What I learned about it:
Never say never! If you want it bad, you can do it and don’t quit. Once you have achieved your goal, the reward at the end is worth all the effort you put into it just for the mere fact of knowing how hard you worked at it.
What “secret to success” would you share with young women entering the (Berkshire) workforce?:
Oh, this is easy for me to answer. Do something that you love, feel passionate about, want to wake up in the morning doing, makes you happy and it is rewarding professionally and personally. If you find that niche, it will never feel like work.
What Berkshire women in business inspire you and why:
Cindy Bartlett: She is an owner at Bartlett’s, a ski instructor at Bousquet, a baker at the Orchard and also manages to volunteer many hours for the Humane Society. She runs a family business and juggles it all and still finds time to do something she is passionate about, her support for the love of animals.
Arielle Fabiano: She is our very own Winemaker at our winery, Balderdash Cellars. She received her degree in Biochemistry at Boston University. She knew she had a love for winemaking and worked hard to get to where she is at. She has set hard goals of visiting California wineries and even worked three months on the vineyards of La Segreta in Umbria Italy while still managing to work for us distantly. We would not be where we are without her.
Barbara May: Barbara is co-owner of Chris May Construction in Richmond MA and she manages all of the paperwork, finances, etc. for the business. We like to say she is the brains behind the business. She is incredibly supportive to all the jobs that her and her husband take on. She is the quiet figure behind the scenes that you rarely hear about but if you know her, you know that she keeps things moving along.
