Eileen Conlon’s first sign that she might launch her startup business at age 65 was, well, a sign.
She and her husband Gary Lenox, transplants from Boston to northern Maine and then Wells, saw it three years ago on a spring stroll through downtown Ogunquit: For Rent. A storefront. And a dream come true – her tea shop.
Lease signed, she and Lenox raced to meet their grand opening deadline just one month away. New shelves, boxes of teas, and advice from fellow shopkeepers sustained the unexpected entrepreneurs as they built out The Tea Space – just in time for tourist season on July 1.
“It was really insane,” Conlon recalls with a laugh. “I had to decide in the moment if I was going to do this thing because I had to pay the whole year’s rent like that. I thought, ‘Heck, if I’m ever going to do this, I gotta do it now.’”
Conlon embraced her new retail persona as easily as she had become part of the community, working with York County nonprofits through her job at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. Not long after she opened her shop, she attended MaineCF’s first Community Conversation, in Sanford, where nonprofit and other leaders shared their visions for the county’s future.
“I went to that meeting just on a lark,” she recalls. She was so impressed by the foundation’s leadership and willingness to listen to the needs of nonprofits that she volunteered to help out. Today she’s one of 11 advisors to MaineCF’s York County Fund.
County and regional advisors are key to the success of MaineCF’s community-building program as local leaders who connect philanthropy to programs that will improve the lives of Maine people. The advisors review grant applications from nonprofits in the county, advise on grants, and help raise philanthropic funds to benefit the area. This year, the York County Committee awarded grants totaling $62,548.
Conlon brings a strong background in nonprofits to the committee. She provided organizations management and diversity training through her job at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, first in Houlton and then Alfred. She subsequently earned her doctorate from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with an emphasis on diversity and equity and multicultural organization development, worked at Maine Medical Center, and then launched her own consulting business.
Gloria Aponte C., MaineCF senior program officer who staffs the York County Committee, praises Conlon as a lovely and caring person. Her active role in the community also “makes her engaged and knowledgeable about the strengths and needs of York County.”
Not to mention tea. The woman who grew up in an Irish family that drank tea every night, who studied tea, and always had a notion she would do something with tea, says she’s “still a little surprised by it all.” Her cheerful shop is now filled to the brim with teas from Maine and around the world, pots, and other accessories. The store’s fourth summer brought return customers and an “off-the-charts busy August.”
“The part I like the best is creating my own vision of this little tea store … and the comments from customers who like the store and its energy,” says Conlon. “I love that. I love that I was able to create a space that people feel good in, welcomed in, calm in. People are just so sweet.”
Eileen Conlon, an advisor to MaineCF’s York County Fund, realized her entrepreneurial spirit and started a new career. Photo Jill Brady
