Self-Made Businesswoman Believes in Getting Involved

Asked how she was active in the Milford Chamber of Commerce, Priscilla Lynn replied, "Let me count the ways."

She is a member of the Chamber’s Ambassador Committee, which contacts new businesses and invites them to become chamber members.

She helped start the Milford Chamber’s Health and Wellness Committee five years ago, and is a member of the committee’s executive board, for which she worked on its annual fundraiser on Nov. 4, a murder mystery dinner theater event at Aldario’s.

She is active with NEW, the Network of Executive Women, and assisted as entertainment chairperson for its Girls Night Out fundraiser on Nov. 3.

And Lynn is a member of the Chamber’s Legislative Action Committee, which works with a lobbyist to make sure members of the Connecticut General Assembly and other government leaders are aware of the Chamber members’ views on issues that concern them.

"When I get involved, I get involved," she said. "I don’t join in name only."

Lynn said she started getting involved in community projects back in the late-1970s when she was a married housewife in Trumbull. She helped to start the Trumbull Arts Council and served as its chairperson for five years.

She became a self-employed businesswoman when she got divorced in 1984 and suddenly had to make a living. Lacking a college degree, she got a job selling ads for the Trumbull Times newspaper. "I wound up having a knack for it," she said.

Lynn purchased the Connecticut franchise for American Business Associates, a professional networking group that held many meetings at the Trumbull Marriott. She was so successful getting publicity for the group that the manager of the Marriott asked for her help marketing the hotel. That led to her career in marketing and public relations.

"I decided maybe I could do this full time," she said, and opened her own consulting firm in 1989.

She was invited to move to the Virgin Islands to promote the Virgin Island Business Journal, which had just started. While working there, she traded her marketing skills for dental work from the only female dentist in the islands. The dentist, who was a Rotarian, praised her marketing work so much to other Rotary Club members that Lynn soon found herself with a thriving consulting business.

Lynn came back to Connecticut to get married in 2002, living in Shelton briefly before moving to Milford and opening PrisCo Consulting LLC. Her marriage didn’t work out, but her business did. Today she has 10 clients, most of them Milford businesses.

She said she specializes in marketing for health care and "green" industry clients, which was why she spearheaded the formation of the Chamber’s Health and Wellness Committee.

"You know about P.R.," Lynn said. "You have to be engaged in the community for your clients."

That is why she is so active in the Milford Chamber of Commerce.

"I’m pretty entrenched there," she said. "I love the Chamber. Ninety percent of my business comes from the Chamber."

Soon, the community will recognize her for her contributions. She will receive a Friends of the Chamber Award at the Milford Chamber of Commerce’s annual awards luncheon on Jan. 25 at 11:30 a.m. at the Grassy Hill Country Club.