Girl Scouts: The Business of Building G.I.R.L.s (Go Getters – Innovators – Risk Takers – Leaders)

Valley Business Radio

Susan de Queljoe, Emmi Edwards, and Elizabeth Laughlin with Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council

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The Girl Scouts are the experts on girls, providing an all-girl, girl-led, and girl-friendly environment, which creates the necessary safe space for girls to learn and thrive.

Girls face unique challenges, and they need support from the very beginning to build the resilience and confidence to overcome peer and media pressure. Research shows that the single-gender environment builds connectedness, competence and confidence in girls. While most schools and many extracurricular programs are now co-ed, Girl Scouts is one of the few single-gender organizations accessible to all girls and young women. They’re in a unique position to change girls’ lives for the better.

Since the founding of the Girl Scout Movement more than a century ago, this once-small circle of girls has grown to include nearly two million girl members and more than 50 million Girl Scout alums—united across the decades by a spirit of lifelong friendship and shared adventure and the desire to do big things to make the world a better place.

Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council (GSACPC) started in 1936, and over the past 80-plus years and has grown to serve more than 21,000 girls grades K-12 in over 90 communities across central and northern Arizona.

Learn more at www.girlscoutsaz.org/. Connect with Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Susan de Queljoe

Susan de Queljoe is a board member with the Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council. As a child, Susan de Queljoe was a Girl Scout. Years later, once a mother, she was a Girl Scout leader for her daughter’s troop. And now today, life has come full circle as she leads the Girl Scouts into their future. De Queljoe earned an M.B.A. in Marketing from New York University and a B.A. in Communications from Michigan State University. During her career, she has shared her skills in some interesting geographies – including Indonesia and Singapore. She served St. Vincent de Paul as Director of Community Relations and Business Strategies in the 2000s. Even more came to know her in 2009, when she also gained responsibility for the eight Valley thrift stores and related processes. Her talent for building relationships with local media and businesses helped promote the work of SVdP so people could better understand what the organization does and become more involved. Eager to hone these relationships further, de Queljoe was accepted into and graduated as a member of Valley Leadeship’s Class XXIX. She also joined the local chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA Phoenix), where she would eventually serve as its president and help to bring the first PRSA Western District Conference in more than two decades to the Valley.

Connect with Susan de Queljoe on LinkedIn.

Emmi Edwards

Emmi Edwards is the Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council member-at-Large (1st term, 2017-2020). A lifetime member of Girl Scouts, she served one year as a girl advisory member on the GSACPC board of directors. Her mom, Regina Edwards, was her Troop leader (Troop 47). A University of Arizona graduate with a degree in Business Management and Marketing from the Eller College of Management, Emmi currently works for LAVIDGE as a Digital Strategist, where she focuses on leading digital marketing efforts for clients. She serves on the Girl Scouts–Arizona Cactus-Pine Council board of directors to help young girls develop confidence while giving them the tools to succeed.

Connect with Emmi Edwards on LinkedIn.

Elizabeth Laughlin

Elizabeth Laughlin is a high school student and Girl Scout who is being awarded her “Gold Award” in March 2019 — the highest award a Girl Scout can earn. For her Gold Award Project, Elizabeth created Teenwealth.org, a website dedicated to helping teens recognize their value in multiple aspects of their life. On the home page, teens in distress can get immediate help by clicking the “Teen Lifeline” or “Crisis Lifeline” button to automatically open these hotlines on their phone’s respective dialer. Each year, there are multiple deaths at Elizabeth’s school related to drugs, alcohol, mental illness, and lack of care. Knowing that this is happening, she wanted to make a place that creates light in the darkness for those at any high school to see their life is worth more than just doing the same thing every single day and determining their self-worth through social media and the treatment from peers.

Learn more about Elizabeth’s Gold Award project at Teenwealth.org.

Dawn Albright

Dawn Albright is co-owner of C + D Industry, a custom wood and metal fabrication company.

C + D Industry designs and manufactures unique furniture for indoors and out including their patented Garden/ Cooler/Fire Table. They have created a unique buying experience allowing for customizations so clients can get what they really love. Their current mission is to continue to expand and grow their brand while reaching into the community to introduce trades to youth. Dawn is particularly passionate about empowering and instilling confidence by teaching skills like woodworking, welding and entrepreneurship to girls.

Dawn started her journey to entrepreneurship at a young age. She was practical but creative and never missed an opportunity to help build or fix something along side her dad. Her mom also instilled in her from a young age that the best way to know that something will get done, is to make sure you know how to do it yourself. Her first job out of high school was driving a fork lift at the local plant in the summer between college semesters. Dawn moved to Arizona after college and enjoyed a rewarding career in physical therapy, including management, for twenty years. Never ceasing to be creative, in her spare time she designed a product based on her love of gardening that has now become the flagship item of C + D Industry. Dawn is the lead woodworker and manages operations of C + D and her husband, Chase, oversees the metal fabrication and the long term vision of their company. Combining her creative passion with her desire to help her community has provided Dawn with the opportunity to help others discover what might be available to them on the other side of traditional education models and ‘typical’ gender roles in the workforce.

Connect with Dawn Albright and C + D Industry on Facebook and Instagram.

Gia Venturi

Gia Venturi is the principal interior designer and business owner of Gia Venturi Interiors. With over 20 years of diverse design experience, Gia brings expertise to high-end custom home design, large-scale remodels and commercial projects that include office design, medical and dental, apartment clubhouses and models, and restaurant design.

Gia graduated with honors from Scottsdale Community College, Interior Design Program. Gia had the exciting fortune to appear on HGTV Designers’ Challenge in October of 2006. She has done several local television segments on Good Morning Arizona Channel 3, talking about design trends. Gia was recognized by The Arizona Business Journal, as a Winner of the – Superstars in Real Estate – Interior Design category, 2005.

She enjoys taking on new design challenges. Multifamily projects are a specialty. Collaboration with all of the key people in a project — owner, architect, general contractor and management companies — to bring about the best design outcome is something she proudly provides. Gia has discovered that listening and great communication is the secret ingredient to a smooth and interesting project.

Connect with Gia Venturi on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.