Sara Ann Kelly: PR queen bee on building The Hive

“Some leaders are born women.”

— Geraldine Ferraro

For this week’s Best of LGBT issue, for which our readers picked the best of the best among local leaders, organizations and businesses, I chose to highlight a business opening this week to help other businesses. The Hive is “Philadelphia’s first co-working space dedicated to ambitious business women, a chic co-working space for the self-made female entrepreneur to learn, network and thrive. The 900-square-foot space in Old City aims to inspire collaboration, growth and empowerment here in the City of Sisterly Love.”

 

Sara Ann Kelly — in addition to running her own firm, S.A.K. PR — is the communications director and business development coordinator of The Hive. We did lunch and found out a little more about the fabulous SAK.

PGN: As I was driving here, Katie Perry’s song “Roar” came on the radio and made me wonder, What is your theme song?

SAK: Hmmm, at the current moment I would have to say Beyoncé’s “Flawless” and I will not be ashamed to say that. Female empowerment has been a major theme in my life and for the last couple of months it’s definitely been at the forefront. Feminism is alive and well and feeling good!

PGN: You’re clearly a very positive person and very involved in the community. Is that something you get from your family?

SAK: Definitely. I grew up in Cape May and my best friend, my original “O.G.” homie, is my dad and it’s been like that since I was born. They tell the story that, as I was being delivered, he was talking to me and as I came out I wrenched my head towards his voice. The doctor said, “Holy crap! We’ve never seen that before.” He’s very creative and when I was little we would brainstorm for fun, so I’ve been programmed to think creatively since I was a child. I learned how to interact and communicate with people from him too. My mother is the sweetest woman ever. She’s very caring and believes in giving back. She volunteers a lot in the Cape May community. She’s a hard worker, never complains and is always selfless. I feel like I get a lot of my better qualities regarding the way I deal with people and friendships from my mom.

PGN: What do or did they do?

SAK: My father owned a landscaping company until I was about 12 when he was diagnosed with a very rare, catastrophic cancer and we had to close our business. He was an entrepreneur and a brilliant beach landscaper/designer. He was known for it all over the beach towns. My mother is now retired but she was a manager of a cute kitchen store in Stone Harbor. My parents believed it was important to have someone at home for the kids so she left the business to take care of us. I’m definitely thankful because I learned a lot about life from her: the understanding of what a full day of work looked like, even if it was “technically” unpaid.

PGN: How would your parents describe you as a kid?

SAK: My dad would probably say the coolest little person ever. We were thick as thieves. I would go to city township meetings with him and to the bars from the time I was 4 or 5. He groomed me to appropriately interact with adults and taught me how to carry on a conversation. [Laughs] He’s been a fan for a long time. Now my mom would say that I’m a pickle. She thinks that I am overly dramatic and calls me Sarah Bernhardt, the stage and film actress from the 1800s. She laughs at me all the time.

PGN: What’s a fond family memory?

SAK: My sister and I used to memorize whole CDs and then create dance routines to them. We lived in a beach town so in the winter it was just the two of us, but in the summer there were a whole lot of girls to play with so we would recruit them to practice. Probably the most memorable was a Spice Girls concert that we put on in the cul-de-sac for all the neighbors. To this day, it’s still something we make fun of each other about.

PGN: How old were you when you left Cape May, and how did you end up in Philly?

SAK: I had plans to go to military school that didn’t work out and so I ended up going to La Salle University.

PGN: Wait, you in military school?

SAK: Yeah, I kind of think of myself as the boy my dad never had. Both of my grandfathers served in the military and I have always found it an admirable and somewhat-romantic thing to do for your country. I was very gung ho about entering the military until some physical setbacks precluded me from attending military school. The congressman who had been helping me with my appointment to the school had connections at La Salle University and he was able to help me with my very-late application process. I got in and have been in Philadelphia ever since.

PGN: What did you study?

SAK: I graduated with a political science and communication degree. I love Philly, it’s been very good to me.

PGN: Me too!

SAK: [Fist bumps] Homie!

PGN: I get the communication degree, but what made you study political science?

SAK: I started reading newspapers at a very young age and was a super-inquisitive child. I was that annoying kid who was constantly asking, Why? Why? Why? I always had a million questions and for some reason politics always intrigued me. I was totally fascinated and enamored with Bill Clinton; 1992 was a good year for me to become cognizant about politics and with real-life explanations from my father. Politics seemed like the best way to help as many people as you could. As I got older, I was interested in becoming a campaign director of some sort and perhaps chief of staff for an elected official. My thinking was that communication and political science were the perfect combination for launching a career. Unfortunately, I graduated at the peak of the recession or I would have gone on to law school. But happenstance brought me to an industry and job that I am happy to be a part of. I love what I do and I’m good at it. I love the people I work with and the clients I’ve had. I think everything happens for a reason.

PGN: So will we be seeing Sarah K. for Congress signs any time soon?

SAK: [Laughs] No, but I’d love to be the communication director for a campaign. Hopefully for someone from our community!

PGN: Tell me about your business, S.A.K. PR.

SAK: I run a public-relations and branding and management firm. I’ve been doing PR for about seven years, first freelancing and then I decided to take the leap and get an LLC and open my own company. I made it official on Bastille Day three years ago so that’s the unofficial birthday for the firm. I primarily work in the entertainment, food, nonprofit and start-up industry. It’s been a lot of fun and I’m still learning every day. It’s a lifelong journey in this industry. Things change on a monthly basis — the technology, apps, programs and social media, etc. I definitely enjoy the excitement.

PGN: What’s a favorite project you’ve worked on?

SAK: I’d say my favorite project so far was the first big client and campaign I worked on when I made S.A.K. official. I worked with Christina Wilson, who was the winner of season 10 on “Hell’s Kitchen” and became the executive chef at Gordon Ramsay’s BurGR Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. It was a lot of fun from the initial local PR outreach that was done when it was announced that she was a contestant, all the way up through her winning. I learned a lot about national PR campaigns from Gordon Ramsay’s team and Fox national. They were very kind about teaching me a lot along the way. It was a great experience.

PGN: Give me the buzz about “The Hive.” Notice how I worked in that pun? I could do PR.

SAK: [Laughs] You could. The Hive is my current baby. It’s an offshoot of Femme and Fortune, which is an online women’s business magazine. My best friend, Melissa, and I were shooting the breeze about her mentor, Antoinette Johnson from At Media. They were leaving their space at 222B Race St. and Melissa asked if we could open an all-female co-working space. We are excited to implement it in Philadelphia and hope to replicate it in other cities. Our grand opening is Nov. 7 and we’re having a ribbon-cutting ceremony to kick things off. I’ve really been impressed by the positive press we have received. We’ve certainly gotten our fair share of male hate through the social media but …

PGN: [Interrupts] You’re getting hate mail for opening up a business to empower women?

SAK: Oh yeah, but it only fuels the reason for needing this space even more. It’s going to be a wonderful space for female entrepreneurs and businesswomen. A place where they can come together and brainstorm without feeling belittled or oppressed.

PGN: I’m still nonplussed that you would be targeted for helping women achieve their dreams. I’m assuming they’re social media comments?

SAK: There’s a lot of stuff on Twitter and in the comments section of articles that have been written about us. A common theme is, “Why do lesbians need a place to work?” — insinuating that because we are women supporting each other and working together that we must all be lesbians — down to comments like, “Who do you think you are? What makes you think this is something you’re allowed to do?” The hatred is so infantile you have to laugh at it. There’s really no way to respond to something like that.

PGN: True. Which brings up the point that both Femme and Fortune and The Hive are not lesbian organizations.

SAK: No, though we do have a fair amount of people from the LGBT community who are interested in our programming. We’re going to be offering a lot of workshops that are open to both our members and the general public. It’s going to be a very diverse and inclusive community. And it’s going to be a safe space where women in business can ask questions without fear of being belittled or berated. So often, men will offer help and mentorship to other guys but not women in business. We are also finding that a lot of women who have been balancing a 9-to-5 job and doing their passion projects on the side never get proper business information such as how to get an LLC or how to run a business meeting with an agenda and minutes. We want to help find alternative educational routes to help fill in the gaps. We are not crying indifference and discrimination at every turn but we realize that for most women, us included, it’s just a little bit harder to reach the peaks that we want to reach in our careers. But if we grow together, we will rise together. That kind of camaraderie already exists in the Philadelphia women’s entrepreneurial community; it’s just never had a home base, and we hope The Hive will become that for everyone.

PGN: Nice! Let’s do some arbitrary questions. So why have I been seeing pictures of you in a wedding gown all over the Internet?

SAK: Funny story! From the time I was 5, I told my mother that I was never having kids and didn’t want to get married and all I cared about was having a career. She was terribly distraught, so when the opportunity came up with Tara Beth Photography to model for a wedding photo layout, I agreed to do it. I figured it would be good to be photographed in a wedding dress before I turned 30. It seemed like a milestone you should have. I chose my best bud Tina to be in the shoot with me. We’ve known each other since we were 15 and I figured she would be the least-awkward person to pretend I was madly in love with. A lot of the pictures were unusable because we were laughing so hard, but it was a lot of fun — though my mother and sister got a lot of panicked phone calls from relatives and friends asking, “Why weren’t we invited?”

PGN: Your worst nanny moment?

SAK: That would be the first time I ever babysat. There were three sisters, ages 2-7, and the middle child locked the toddler in her room with an open window. I had to call 911 and have the fire department use a ladder to go in through the back window. I didn’t call the mother because it was the first time she’d gone out in forever and I didn’t want to ruin it for her. When we got into the room the kid had gotten a hold of a marker and drawn all over her face! The fireman said she was totally calm sitting in the corner drawing. I had to come clean to the mom because her brother-in-law was a fireman so she would’ve found out anyway. She was really cool about it and said, “Don’t worry, I know they’re a handful.” And that was the start of my nanny career.

PGN: Adventures in babysitting! Celebrity crush?

SAK: This is going to be so boring but I just started watching “Ray Donovan,” and Katherine Moennig from “The L Word” plays the assistant to a Boston mobster-turned-good guy who fixes all the Hollywood-celebrity, big-money problems. She wears these great outfits and is truly badass. And of course there’s Martha Stewart, the original bad ass of female entrepreneurs. My mom was really into crafting and it was our favorite pasttime when we weren’t in school. I did a book report on [Stewart] in middle school and learned that she lives on a sustainable farm, she was a model and a single mother. She was America’s first self-made female billionaire and did it with grace and class and style. She has so many business milestones and over the years has helped tons of women’s small businesses along the way. Mad about her!

PGN: What sign are you?

SAK: Taurus.

PGN: Ah, I’m a fellow bull. I’ve never met a Taurus that I didn’t like!

SAK: Yes, instant best friends. I’m really into astrology and universal ideology; it’s how I make a lot of my decisions.

PGN: What is universal ideology?

SAK: It’s something that has increased my learning and teaching about the universe since I started studying and practicing Kabbalah about seven years ago. An old boss of mine and I got into a conversation about astrology and he started telling me about the Jewish calendar and how the moon and the sun played into it. I grew up by the bay and have always been affected by the tide and been aware of how the moon affects everything in nature, including me. It intrigued me and sounded like an ideology I could get behind. Kabbalah and the universal teachings that you apply to everyday life have taught me a lot. My father is deeply in touch with that side of himself. He says it’s part of our Irish inclinations. We are both very spiritual and connected to that side of the realm. A lot of people think it’s hooey but for people who are in need of something, there is a lot to learn.

PGN: What’s in your wallet?

SAK: Currently nothing, because I got pickpocketed at Woody’s during OutFest and they stole my wallet. I have to get back to Cape May to replace my driver’s license.

PGN: What’s your motto?

SAK: Well, my business motto is close to my heart and it’s “Slightly obsessed with success.” I think it’s something we need more of. People get satisfied with the status quo, but I want to help people look ahead and reach that next goal.

The Hive launch party will be held 7-10 p.m. Nov. 7 at 222B Race St. For more on The Hive, visit www.thehivephilly.com.

To suggest a community member for Family Portrait, email [email protected].

Newsletter Sign-up