My story is about finding strength in the hand you are dealt, and building and learning from each moment and person that you meet in life. 

I was raised in Mt. Vernon, NY.  I am the daughter of a French culinary chef and a first-generation American mother of French and Italian descent. The eldest of three children, we lost our mother to lung cancer when I was five years of age. Following our mother’s death, our maternal grandmother, along with our father, raised the three of us. 

When I was 12 years old, and within months of my father starting a professorship at the Culinary Institute of America, my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.  Weeks before his death, he married a friend of the family while in his hospital bed to keep the three of us together. 

I am a multipreneur, wife and mother of three internationally adopted children. Ethan (20) and Isabella (19) were adopted from the country of Kazakhstan and Aeryn, our youngest (17), was adopted with special needs at the age of 2 1/2 from Fuling, China. I located Aeryn on a special needs board on a Saturday night. As fate will have it, she shared the same birthdate as my brother who was visiting from New York.

I am married to Cary, my husband who supports my endeavors as I support his hectic career as a Data Scientist and adjunct professorship at a well recognized university.  All three of my children, as well as my husband, I located on the internet in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. 

As a mother of a second grade survivor of the Sandy Hook School shooting, I live in a community that has grieved a tremendous loss. I have not only dealt with the emotional trauma that the shooting brought to our family, I have also managed the medical issues of our children, the traumatic disorder of being institutionalized in an orphanage, Reactive Attachment Disorder, mental health issues, learning disabilities, and surgeries for our youngest daughter’s leg needs. 

As a sales and marketing veteran for 30 years in the publishing, music and gift industries, when COVID-19 hit I decided to close my representation of clients in these industries. I currently focus my time on my two “younger” award winning businesses, The Persnickety Bride and Persnickety Promotions located in Newtown, Connecticut.

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In my spare time, I love to travel, go to fine restaurants, spend time with my family and friends, work out at Barre, and love up our 4 dogs who are spoiled rotten.