Key4Women Forum features healthy foods entrepreneur

 Key4Women Forum features healthy foods entrepreneur

Piatka brings message “Now is Not the Time to Retreat”

With an idea and a $100 investment, Nadja Piatka grew a company out of her kitchen to become an international supplier to McDonalds, Subway, Wegmans and Giant.  

Piatka is the speaker at KeyBank’s Eighth Annual Key4Women Forum on Tuesday, October 27, at the Sheraton Hotel in South Burlington.  The event begins at 8 a.m. and registration is required at www.key.com/womensforum.  The fee is a $25 donation to the Vermont Women’s Fund and includes a light breakfast.

Piatka overcame divorce, debt and cancer to create a successful company, Nadja’s Foods, and author healthy recipe cookbooks. Her topic, "Now is Not the Time to Retreat" addresses the challenges in one's personal or business life in difficult economic times.

In the past, Key4Women Forum speakers included former White House press secretary Dee Dee Myers, financial experts Jean Chatsky and Jane Bryant Quinn, and adventurer Alison Levine.  In addition to an educational and motivational presentation, the forum offers the opportunity for hundreds of Vermont women community leaders and business professionals to network.

For more information on the Key4Women Forum, contact Lesli Blount, KeyBank Director of Community Relations, at 802.660.4223 or lesli_blount@keybank.com.

About Key4Women
Key4Women is KeyBank’s women-owned business initiative, designed to provide female entrepreneurs with access to capital, financial solutions, educational offerings and networking opportunities. Key4Women offers customized service and financial expertise to clients through a team of dedicated Key4Women Relationship Managers in 13 states. The program is founded in research that shows women business owners have unique challenges accessing capital and conduct business differently from their male counterparts. Working closely with the Center for Women’s Business Research, Key4Women sponsors research on the successes, challenges and concerns of women business owners and utilizes the findings to develop its program offerings.  Key4Women recently announced KeyBank will lend $3 billion to qualified women-owned businesses nationally by the year 2012. This new commitment comes on top of lending $3 billion to women owned business since 2005.

About KeyBank’s Vermont District
KeyBank N.A. is one of Vermont’s largest financial services companies with 13 branches across the state and 24-hour banking through www.key.com. A strong proponent for local economic growth, Key companies provide investment management, retail and commercial banking, retirement, consumer finance, and investment banking products and services to individuals and companies throughout the United States and, for certain businesses, internationally.