Fran Pastore began her career working on Wall Street — an environment she found to be the antithesis of empowering to women, dominated by men and rife with sexual harassment.
She quit her job and vowed to help change the status quo.
Now, Pastore is the CEO of the Women’s Business Development Council (WBDC), a Stamford-based nonprofit she founded, which champions female entrepreneurship and women’s economic equity across the state.
Pastore is the quintessential advocate for women. For more than two decades, she has helped women in the United States and abroad achieve economic empowerment through business ownership.
“I think that women’s economic equity is the last piece of unfinished business for women in our country,” Pastore told the Hartford Business Journal in 2017.
Pastore lobbied for federal funding to launch WBDC in 1997. Before that, Connecticut was the only state without a U.S. Small Business Administration-funded Women’s Business Center.
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In 2022, Gov. Ned Lamont named Pastore board chair of the Connecticut Paid Leave Authority, a quasi-public state agency responsible for administering the state’s paid family and medical leave program.
“Anybody who has ever been involved in economic development activities in Connecticut is familiar with Fran Pastore, who for many years has been a passionate advocate of ensuring that women and girls have every opportunity to determine their future and make a good living for themselves and their families,” Lamont said at the time.
Pastore also served a three-year term on the National Women’s Business Council, an independent source of advice and counsel to the U.S. president, starting in 2011.
She has brought her expertise to other countries, teaching financial management and business strategies to women entrepreneurs in rural Costa Rica and Ethiopia. She served as a U.S. delegate to the 2015 Istanbul Women’s Summit.
She has also significantly expanded the WBDC’s reach across Connecticut. Last year, the nonprofit opened a new office in downtown Waterbury. It also has regional offices in New London and New Haven.