Danelle O’Connell Named Selling to the World Initiative Director in Middlesboro, Kentucky

Danelle O'Connell is pictured in the front row on the left, along with recent participants in the GrowthWheel training. 

Middlesboro, Ky. – Discover Downtown Middlesboro (DDM) is pleased to announce that Danelle O’Connell has recently joined the partnership between Eastern Kentucky Concentrated Employment Program, Inc. (EKCEP), Discover Downtown Middlesboro, and Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College as Selling to the World Initiative Director, currently funded through The New York Community Trust.

"After performing a national search, Danelle was the ideal person to lead this important initiative,” said Isaac Kremer, Discover Downtown Middlesboro Executive Director. “She brings to the position impressive skills and experience, as well as enthusiasm to continue our work promoting entrepreneurship in Middlesboro. We hope everyone will give Danelle a warm Eastern Kentucky welcome as she gets started.”

As the Director, O’Connell’s responsibilities include coordination of the proposed new entrepreneurial mentorship and training component of Selling to the World, which will pave a pathway for Eastern Kentucky artisans to become successful entrepreneurs by employing a comprehensive approach that includes education and daily, hands-on mentoring in the following areas: entrepreneurship, business plans, Internet sales and marketing, advertising, inventory management, production strategies, small business finance, bookkeeping, taxes and deductions, and intellectual property protection, among other topics.

O’Connell comes to Eastern Kentucky and DDM with over 17 years of experience coordinating community programs at a non-profit level. Her experience started at the grassroots level while working for Tri-County Mental Health Services as the Prevention Coordinator in Kansas City, Missouri. She managed coalition teams to reduce underage drinking across three counties. Most recently, O’Connell served as the Executive Director of Main Street Parkville Association in Missouri, where she provided leadership to maintain a successful and sustainable association closely following the National Main Street Four Point Approach® (Economic Restructuring, Design, Organization and Promotion.)

“Now that I’m on-site, I look forward to working with the initiative partners, the Assistant to the initiative Jeannie Redmond Allen and Eastern Kentucky’s artisans and craftspeople to start selling to the world and placing their work in The Palace located on Cumberland Avenue in Middlesboro,” said Danelle O’Connell, Director of Selling to the World.

  

Also joining the team is Jeannie Redmond Allen, a local community member, as the Assistant to the Selling to the World Initiative. A few of Redmond’s duties will include coordinating volunteers’ schedules at The Palace, assisting the Director in identifying prospective participants for the Selling to the World Initiative and responding to inquiries. 

Through a Sam’s Club Shared Vision Grant, industry leaders in Eastern Kentucky have joined forces to put together the second annual Selling to the World Expo, scheduled for June 25-26 at the Middlesboro campus of Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College.

With the World Wide Web, the opportunities for expanding your small business are endless. Attend the Selling to the World Expo to learn how to take advantage of the national and global market at your fingertips. New for this year’s Expo, you can also learn how to build a rock-solid plan to organize and grow your business or business idea using the GrowthWheel® model — a unique, customizable way of focusing on the specific needs of your business, with targeted sessions for your Business Concept, Organization, Client Relations, and Operations. Register for the Expo at www.selling2theworldexpo.com

About Selling to the World Initiative

Eastern Kentucky has a significant number of artisans and craftspeople whose products are of the type and quality that could support a business. However, most of these people do not fully realize the economic benefits of their labor—either in terms of unit price or sales volume—because they are unable to market their wares to a wide audience nationally and internationally. This is often due to a lack of knowledge of business planning, Internet sales and marketing, production strategies, bookkeeping, and other necessary elements for small business success.

The program will help regional artists and craftspeople come closer to realizing their tremendous potential to diversify and boost the region’s economy by increasing exports and possibly even to grow their businesses enough to create dependent jobs.

The physical location where this work will occur is at The Palace, located at 2008 Cumberland Ave. in Middlesboro. This was started as a pop-up shop by DDM in April 2014. From this location training will take place, co-working space will be developed, and direct sales will occur. The primary focus for sales will be through a portal website developed for the program with micro-sites within it for each of the participants. Expert instructors from SKCTC will work hand-in-hand, on-site with participants in this incubator-like, co-workspace environment to guide them in all aspects of small-business development, with the goal being their harnessing the power of the Internet to distribute their products to statewide, national, and even global customer bases.

About The New York Community Trust

Through the generosity of New Yorkers and others who have set up charitable funds, The New York Community Trust is able to make grants for a huge range of charitable activity that is important to the well-being and vitality of that city–and beyond. Since 1924, The New York Community Trust has helped make donors’ charitable dreams come true by funding the nonprofits that make communities a vital and secure place. The Trust ended 2013 with assets of $2.4 billion in more than 2,000 charitable funds, and made grants totaling $141 million. The New York Community Trust is providing direct support to Selling to the World—and Eastern Kentucky–through a grant from the Oakley L. and Ethel Witherspoon Alexander Fund included in a round of grants awarded in December 2014 to 51 groups totaling $7.4 million. Visit www.nycommunitytrust.org.