There’s an old clock on my desk. It doesn’t tell time anymore.
Yet, it feels more timely than ever during Women’s History Month.
This clock once sat under my grandmother’s bed for as long as anyone could remember. When she passed away, I was just three years old. I apparently searched for it at her funeral, confused about where it had gone. I don’t remember the service itself, but I remember her. My mother insisted a three-year-old couldn’t hold such a clear memory. Then I described the visions I carried of Grandma Cory. My mother grew quiet and said softly, “Oh, you do remember her.”
This clock has traveled with me through every chapter of my life. Today it sits where I can look at it and think about the company I named in my family’s honor. It’s a story I’ve carried for decades and only now have begun to write down and share. For me, it’s become the symbol of leaving a timeless legacy.
Grandmothers and Mothers Who Left a Lasting Legacy
My grandmother, Verna Opal West Cory, raised a houseful of children. Like so many working-class women of her generation who endured the Great Depression, she made the most of whatever life handed her and her husband, Emmett Hiram Cory. She never complained. She simply carried on and built a stable home that lasted at 1003 Chicago Avenue.
My mother, Audrey Marie Cory Rozgonyi, faced illness for much of her childhood and then battled cancer with a determination I couldn’t fully appreciate until I was older. Diagnosed when I was four, she was given a short timeline. Yet Mom set her sights on seeing my sister and I graduate from high school. She lived to see me begin my freshman year of college.
Growing up with a mother who wasn’t always well taught me to perform with purpose. I baked bread, practiced clarinet, piano, and dance. I chased straight A’s and earned a place in the National Honor Society. Everything I did was to show her that her daughter was going to be okay.
The Women Who Shaped My Path
I wasn’t supposed to go to college. My family, whom I love deeply, didn’t see a degree as necessary for a girl like me. After all, I was only the second family member to graduate from high school. No one else had been to college. It was a caring guidance counselor who saw something more and helped me submit an application to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
After college, I started out as the first regional inside sales rep for a Dun & Bradstreet subsidiary. After being promoted to office manager and then moving on to win a national sales award at my next company, I became a traveling national sales trainer for Blue Cross and Blue Shield plans. I loved the work, but traveling 3 days a week was wearing. After our daughter was born, I found myself navigating life as a working mom in Chicago while my husband was away on a long-term project in New York.
Knowing that this wasn’t the best option for our family, I took a career exploration class where my career assessments pointed towards being a florist or writer. A job at a flower shop didn’t pay enough to cover childcare. Our advisor suggested I check out Independent Writers of Chicago. I researched rates, positioned myself as a healthcare communications specialist, and boldly billed at $75 an hour in 1990.
In August 1990, I opened CoryWest Media as a marketing and PR communications firm from our home in Oak Park, Illinois. Work from home businesses, especially ones run by moms, were a novelty. One courageous decision led to a million-dollar writing career. I never looked back as I took assignments ranging from Fortune 100 companies to entire villages to founding Social Media Club Chicago in 2008 to opening a new office when we relocated to Charlotte, NC in 2019.
A Nod to Women in Business and Entrepreneurship
This Women’s History Month, with its theme of “Leading the Change: Women Shaping a Sustainable Future,” I also honor the women in business and entrepreneurs who continue carrying their legacy forward. Whether they run corporations, launch startups, manage teams, or build something from the ground up, they show the same commitment and determination my family taught me.
My grandmother and mother weren’t the only ones watching over me. Aunts who served as CFOs, nurses running entire practices, hospital floor managers, and the first woman hired at a major GM plant showed me that women have always stepped up to lead in practical, powerful ways. I grew up thinking these accomplishments were simply what women did. That belief became the foundation for my own entrepreneurial journey.
Why the Name Still Matters
Every professional check I’ve earned for more than 35 years passes through CoryWest Media, LLC. The name combines my mother and grandmother into one word, with both the C and the W capitalized. To me, it was never two separate names. It was one family. One legacy.
This Women’s History Month, I honor my mother, my grandmother, and every woman in my family tree who ran something, built something, and stayed when staying was hard. They didn’t call themselves leaders or entrepreneurs. They simply led.
They taught me what it means to step into any room and bring your light with you. The greatest inheritance they left wasn’t a business plan or a network. It was their resilience and their brighter presence; the foundation for leaving a timeless legacy.
Here’s to the women in business and entrepreneurship who do more than they realize, whose quiet strength shapes sustainable futures and carries farther than they’ll ever know.
There is an old clock on my desk that still proves that the legacy you leave is timeless.
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