New baby cookie gift basket

Cookie sales gave women a sound start in business

Don't feel guilty about indulging your sweet tooth with cookies from girls in green uniforms. Here's a new rationalization for stocking up on Girl Scout cookies: You're helping create female business leaders.

The Girl Scouts says 90 percent of female CEOs and 54 percent of female business owners got their first taste of success selling cookies.

In the Pikes Peak region, female executives are quick to praise the business and life lessons they learned hawking the yearly treats.

Mary Mashburn, executive director of the Kennedy Center Imagination Celebration, says scouting "made me what I am today, as far as I'm concerned."

Her nonprofit organization donates Celebration Place, its space in The Citadel mall, to a Girl Scout troop on Tuesdays.

Mashburn made her first fund-raising pitch at the Sir Walter Hotel in Raleigh, N.C., as a Brownie in the second grade. She stood up on a chair in front of a Rotary Club to ask members to donate money to save her Girl Scout camp.

"I remember very clearly standing on a red velvet chair, and it worried me to death that my mother would be mad at me for standing on a chair with my shoes on," she said. "I remember how empowered I felt. I told them about Girl Scout camp and what it meant to me, and they voted to donate money to my Girl Scout camp."

It was one of many character-shaping moments from the little girl who would stay in Girl Scouts through high school, then volunteer as a troop leader for more than 20 years across the country.

"(Girl Scouts) taught me that people can say no, but if you never ask, you'll never know if they might've said yes," she said. "In nonprofit fund raising, that is an important lesson -- that you must ask and ask politely and kindly, but ask. They empowered me to be able to ask."

Lynne Telford, vice president for finance and chief financial officer at Pikes Peak United Way, counts herself as "a cardcarrying, lifetime Girl Scout."

She was active from elementary school through high school, and has volunteered as a troop leader.

"It absolutely made a difference in my career and the successes that I've had," Telford said. "When I was growing up, starting when I was 10, my mother was ill. I was the oldest child, and my female role models came mostly from Girls Scouts. They gave me examples of strong women."

They also inspired her to be more than a housewife, which was the direction in which her family pushed her.

"I always knew that I wanted to do that. I set my sights on going to college and having a career," Telford said. "I think a lot of that determination came from the examples I had from Girl Scouts. They taught me teamwork, to try something new and difficult and be successful at it."

Cynthia McKay of Castle Rock is a former lawyer who developed her home-based Le Gourmet Gift Basket Inc. into a multimillion-dollar business with more than 500 franchisees, 90 percent of whom are women. She describes herself as "a cookie-cutter Girl Scout."

She caught the sales bug early.

McKay juggled cookies with door-to-door sales of baby aquarium swordfish that were inadvertently bred out of control by her original pet pair. But other aspects of scouting had a lasting impact.

"I was always so comfortable in huge groups of women, and here I am now working with 500 women. I understood the theory of sorority early on," McKay said. "They probably taught me lessons I would not have been able to learn anywhere else."

One of those lessons was particularly poignant: live up to your word. Because she hated memorizing things, McKay said she tried to avoid saying the Girl Scout oath out loud.

"The leader caught me and told me, 'It's your responsibility. It's a matter of integrity,'" McKay said. "She said, 'If you're gonna be a good Girl Scout, this is what you have to do and this is a lesson you'll need for the rest of your life.' It was all about responsibility, integrity and not cutting any corners."

Those lessons learned years ago by today's business leaders are still being taught, said Sherry Goldston, spokeswoman for the Wagon Wheel Council of Girl Scouts in Colorado Springs.

"We encourage every girl at the beginning to make a goal. Even more than that, to make a plan of something they want to learn to do," she said.

The cookie sales program teaches about money management, how to interact with the public, teamwork, customer service, achieving goals and how to make a marketing plan.

Girls learn they have to work with each other and through a series of steps to achieve goals, she said.

"Girl Scouts gives them that kind of opportunity," Goldston said. "They all have to work together. If one person lets the whole team down, it impacts everybody."

For more about the Girl Scouts and how to get your cookies, go to www.gazette.com.