Hailey Kinnamon and Dara Shade are looking to spread the word about Key4Women. “We are trying to get the word out about the program. We have anywhere from 20-65 ladies that are attending,” said Kinnamon.
Kinnamon is the Branch Manager at KeyBank in Lexington and Dara Shade is the KeyCenter manager at the Mansfield branch. Kinnamon has been associated with banking for eight years and she is from Lexington.
Key4Women is a program that started out on a national level through KeyBank. Maria Coyne is the founder and leader of the program. It is set up to help women business owners and provides them a chance to network and connect with other women. The program is open to any woman, not just associates with KeyBank. Shade said, “Maria Coyne saw the importance of entrepreneurial women having a network of people that they could learn from and provide education to.”
There are different chapters of Key4Women. Shade and Kinnamon are the leaders of the Mid-Ohio chapter. The two of them have been in charge of the program since January 2012. The two women are focused on entrepreneurial women, but opened it to professionals and retired women as well. Shade said, “We wanted to include retired women because they still have a lot to give.”
Events for Key4Women are held once a month, usually falling in the last week. There are two types of events that can be held. One type is social. Kinnamon said, “In a social event, a woman business owner can come in and showcase her business. There is no set agenda, they just network and talk.”
The other type is educational. Kinnamon said, “This is where we discuss topics that are hot in their minds. This can be with investments, social media, or retirement concerns. We will bring in speakers that are very well educated in these areas and we try bringing in speakers who are local.” Shade added, “We try to have a woman speaker as much as we possibly can.”
The number of women at each event varies by the topic that is addressed. Kinnamon said, “Our social media event was strictly hands on and we could only get 20 women at a time because we needed laptops for them to use. We had to split it into two sessions because we had so many women that wanted to take part.”
During educational events, Shade said they requested women who wished to attend to reserve a spot because sometimes there is limited space available. Shade said, “We always want them to RSVP, but if they don’t for a social event then we can work with them.”
Kinnamon said, “We get the word out about our events that we hold through LinkedIn and we have recently started diving into Facebook. We have a Key4Women directory set up on Facebook where we have a picture of each woman and they can put a description about
