In a room full of women at the Florida State University College of Business, Bethany Schenk gestured to her PowerPoint presentation and got – better yet, stayed – fired up.

“I love this line: ‘I might only have one match, but I can make an explosion,’” she told students.

Bethany Schenk (BS RMI ’92), CEO of Art Originals, speaks to students as the keynote speaker at the college’s Summit for the Advancement of Women in Business.

Schenk (BS RMI ’92) offered wisdom, inspiration – and, yes, fire – last week as the keynote speaker at the college’s Summit for the Advancement of Women in Business. See her full speech here.

She spoke as a distinguished alumna and business owner who likens fire to confidence and action and who champions her FSU business degree with swagger and flare:

“What made me be able to leave Florida State and set my life on fire?” she asked students. “Florida State set me up for success. We are different, ladies. We Seminoles are different. As I’ve traveled the world and met (graduates of even the most elite universities) … nobody has what I got here at Florida State, which is that street-smarts, that hustle, that sizzle that makes me get up and go.”

Schenk, CEO of Art Originals, an Orlando-based full-service art design, production and installation company, joined a lineup of experienced business leaders at the annual half-day event that gives students the opportunity to meet and learn from professionals dedicated to supporting women in business.

Cassandra Cole, the Dr. William T. Hold Professor in Risk Management and Insurance, and Samantha Paustian-Underdahl, the Mary Tilley Bessemer Associate Professor of Business Administration, coordinated the event, which took place in the Starry Conference Room and other locations in the college. Enterprise, FSU Credit Union and Danfoss LLC joined Schenk as sponsors.

Breakout sessions focused on topics such as networking, career goals and job negotiations. Presenters included Schenk; Christina Chancey (BS Consumer Science and Textiles ’08), senior human resources manager of Danfoss; Jennifer Durden (BS Accounting ’98), EVP and CFO of the FSU Credit Union; and FSU law graduates Betsy Brown, Tony Fusco (BS Management & Political Science ’10) and Jimmy Fasig of Fasig Brooks Law Office.

In a session called “Corporate Culture and Finding the Right Fit,” Chancey told students she got her start in the corporate world.

“That was a really great experience for me,” Chancey said, elaborating on insight that Schenk shared in a Q&A after her keynote. “A lot of times those big companies are going to have best practices, and you're going to learn how to do things the right way.”

A panel moderated by Yvonne Baker, executive director of the college’s FSU Real Estate Center, discussed challenges and triumphs of women in leadership. The panel featured Fasig, managing partner of Fasig Brooks; Erin Rock, government consultant with The Southern Group; and Julia Gill Woodward (BS Criminology & Psychology ’07), CEO of the Florida State Parks Foundation.

“I proceeded through my career with the understanding that I’m never going to be afraid to ask a question or embarrass myself,” Rock said. That approach “ended up being very impactful for my career and impactful for the management that I work with.”

Raising ‘powerful, confident women’

That’s an example of the fires that Schenk aims to ignite. She does that every day as the mother of four teenage daughters, including Cassidy, an FSU freshman who, like her mom, plans to major in risk management and insurance.

“I think I was put on this earth to coach and mentor and raise powerful, confident women who are comfortable with themselves …,” she told students.

Michael Hartline, dean of the college, introduced Schenk as a member of the college Board of Governors executive committee and as a serial entrepreneur who built two companies into “national, best-in-class” entities before selling them and later founding Art Originals.

“I don't want to impress you,” Schenk told students. “I want to impress upon you that my story can be your story, your own version of the story. I want to impress upon you that it is very doable because I sat in this room with the exact ‘full toolkit’ that you guys already have today.”

Her presentation – “Own it. Love it. Go for it. No excuses.” – emphasized the power of action, passion, leadership, self-assuredness and personal responsibility in students’ aspirations and careers.

She presented her story as that of a good student from a humble, middle-class family. Her family wanted only one thing for her: a man to marry. Yet she felt a fire in her gut and saw herself as a business star in the making. The conflicting expectations sparked resentment in her, she said, and added fuel to the flame that continues to drive her.

“I love my parents very much, and they love me,” Schenk said. “I’m not angry. I’m thankful I have edges that made me sharper.”

Becoming ‘wiser, stronger, better’

Schenk would achieve significant success in business despite an immediate post-graduation setback: an inability to land the job she wanted at the company she wanted.

She worked several years as a property and casualty underwriter at Aetna and a sales executive at CIGNA Healthcare before she founded her own employee benefits brokerage firm – BeneTek Corporation (Benefits and Technology) in 1999. Two years later she started a second business and technology firm, Web Benefits Design. Then she combined the companies.

After a competitor’s company sold for a nine-figure sum, Schenk set out to do the same.

After that initially didn’t work out, she said, “I spent the next three years doing the hard work – going over every question that I was ever asked and every answer that I wished were true, and I spent three or four years making those answers be true. I really had to own what was happening, and I was able to go out again wiser, stronger, better, more humble.”

In 2019, she sold her companies as one entity and remained CEO for three years before stepping down to pursue her new company, Art Originals.
She celebrates her achievements and urges all women to do likewise.

“We, especially women, do so much to become successful, and then we pretend like we’re not,” she said. “We grow really big, and then we shrink when somebody puts the spotlight on us, and it’s not that way for men as much as it is for us.”

Audience members nodded.

“Yeah, it’s crazy that we do this,” Schenk said, “… and, remember, we can’t spend all this time being successful and then dumb it down and dial it back just so that other people don’t feel uncomfortable with the things that are great or successful about us.”

That greatness stands as one of the benefits of attending FSU, she said:

 “You don't understand how special you are until you get out with the rest of the world and realize how much that (College of Business) environment and that structure is going set you up to have that confidence and that grit to go set it on fire every day.”

– by Pete Reinwald