Janice K. Sussman

’83 E.M.B.A.
Author, Poet and Entrepreneur
President, Dance Writers Associates

Janice K. Sussman is an author, poet and business entrepreneur. After graduating from Fairfield University with a bachelor's degree in English, she went on to get her E.M.B.A. at the University of New Haven in 1983. She has held executive positions at several Connecti­cut corporations-as vice president at Citytrust, vice president at Schine Rosenbaum Food Distributors and as an insurance executive, chartered life underwriter and founder of Schmitt-Sussman Enterprises. She also has owned and operated an advertising specialty company, Impact Associates, with her daughter, Deborah Sessel. Most recently, Sussman founded Dance Writ­ers Associates, a firm that explores the world of ballroom dance through literature, poetry, photography and art.

She has served as president of the Boys Village (now the Boys and Girls Village) in Milford, Conn., and as a guardian of the American Technion Society, an organi­zation that supports the world-renowned Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. A supporter of efforts to educate the public about the horrors of genocide, Suss­man has funded a trip to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. for University of New Haven Oskar Schindler Endowed Professor Mario Gaboury and students in his Oskar Schindler Humanities class. She is the author of Spaces, a book of poetry written after a Holocaust history trip to Poland and Israel, and the "Plan2B" program, an organizational tool used in inner-city education.