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11/06/2024 08:30 AMIt all started with a flyer from Middlesex Health that came in Beth Judd’s mail.
Sometimes informational flyers have an unkind ending: from the mailbox to the waste basket.
This one had a different fate. It was for the Women’s Wellness Fund of Middlesex Health, and it interested Beth. She became a founding member of that fund and, three years ago, became a member of the group’s steering committee.
This year, her involvement with Middlesex Health grew. Beth, who lives in Chester, was recently elected as a member of the Board of Trustees of Middlesex Health, which includes, among its many constituent parts, Middlesex Hospital in Middletown, as well as a network of locations and providers throughout central Connecticut and the Shoreline.
“Middlesex is a community-based hospital. We want to serve our local communities,” she says. She has long known from personal experience about the hospital’s services. Her daughter, now 33, was born there.
The Women’s Wellness Fund, Beth explains, is dedicated to educating and informing about women’s health issues and to funding initiatives related to women’s health through Middlesex Health.
It holds three informative sessions for its members a year with topics that have included anxiety and stress management, bone health, and most recently, a meeting entitled “What’s Going on Down There,” a frank discussion about the issues involved in pelvic health.
The fund also supports projects focused on women, among them head coverings for cancer patients and a clinic to benefit new mothers experiencing post-partum depression. The group also contributed to the acquisition of innovative equipment designed to treat endometrial cancer. The new apparatus is able to target radiation more precisely to the growth of cancer cells in a woman’s uterus.
Professionally, Beth is the president of Konover Commercial Corporation in West Hartford, a real estate and property management company. Her responsibilities include the management of over four million square feet of commercial real property.
She didn’t start out in real estate. After graduating from Georgetown University, she worked for the late Connecticut Senator Lowell Weicker, going through an election as a Weicker aide. The senator won, but Beth realized politics was a business with limited job security. She spoke with some Georgetown alumni to discuss other career paths; one of them, upon hearing of her interest in urban planning, suggested real estate might be a way to tap into that interest.
Commercial real estate is a field not usually associated with women, but Beth says there are far more women involved than most people realize.
In 2014, she was a recipient of the Woman of FIRE award from The Commercial Record, which honors women in finance, insurance, and real estate. The newspaper covers real estate and finance in Connecticut
Beth has headed the Connecticut branch of CREW (Commercial Real Estate Women) and has served as president of the group. She recently went to a CREW convention in Vancouver, Canada.
Beth is also active in the Connecticut chapter of REFA (Real Estate Finance Association), a group that includes both male and female members. She has chaired the Hartford branch of REFA as well as serving as chair of the entire Connecticut chapter.
“We want to promote women in commercial real estate, in hiring, in mentoring. The more women who are represented, the more who are seen, the more who will come into the field,” she says of her work with professional groups.
Whatever business needs to be done, Beth is at the office early to do it. She rises at 5:30 and is usually in the office by 7 o’clock.
Middlesex Health is not the only governing board Beth has joined recently. She also just became a member of the Board of Directors of the Girl Scouts of Connecticut. She was a Girl Scout herself and says that the organization has continued to move with the times, providing experiences focused on introducing young women to the new world of technology.
She adds that Girl Scouts want to create troops in underrepresented urban areas so that all girls of the appropriate age have the chance to participate in the program.
“We want to empower young women, to create independent and fearless young women,” Beth says. She points out that Girl Scouts now offers STEM programs, the acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math, to prepare young women for an increasingly technology-driven world.
Beth recently participated in a time-honored Girl Scout ritual, a camping weekend, this one at Camp Aspetuck in Weston. The event was for women who were themselves alumnae of the scouting program. The Connecticut Girl Scout Council has established an alumnae network for former scouts who want to keep in touch with new developments in the organization.
Beth reports the group cooked out and made s’mores, but there was at least one difference in the camping weekend: they stayed in a lodge, with indoor plumbing, so no flashlights out to the latrine at night.
It is hard to talk about Girl Scouts without ending up in a discussion about cookies. Beth says her favorites have always been the shortbread trefoils. Still, she knows there are other opinions out there. Frozen cookie mints? “They are pretty good,” she says.
To learn more about the Women’s Wellness Fund of Middlesex Health, go to:
https://middlesexhealth.org/donate/women-s-wellness-fund
To learn more about the Connecticut Girl Scouts Alumnae Network, go to
www.gsofct.org/en/discover/our-council/ct-alums.html