Felicia Shanken

It Started With a Field Trip

Felicia Shanken was in middle school the first time she visited Philadelphia, when her French teacher brought the class down from Queens, NY to visit the Liberty Bell. That was back before it went behind glass, when you could still walk up and touch it.

“I remember thinking, ‘Wow, I never knew all of this existed,'” she says.

She wouldn’t move here for years. But now, decades later, she remembers that visit as a harbinger of things to come.

“I love Philadelphia. And not just because of the history. I love it because of everything it has to offer,” she says. “And also because I met my husband here.”

Like a lot of people who end up here, Felicia came for a job. For her, it was in radiology, where she’d landed a job with  the Medical College of Pennsylvania. The year was 1995. She wound up in Fairmount, where she lived right by the Art Museum for 18 years.

“We loved it, walking everywhere, going to different neighborhood restaurants on the Parkway. When the Pope came, we were there. When they had the NBA Draft, we were there. Live Aid, we were there. When the Eagles won the Super Bowl the first time, we were there.” She pauses. “I just felt like we were there for some really monumental things.”

A Different Kind of City

Having grown up in Queens, Felicia had a certain idea of what city life was all about.

“In New York, there are two kinds of people – the very poor and the very rich. The middle class really gets hit hard,” she says. “In Philadelphia, you still have kind of that New York City lifestyle, just at a slower pace and a little cheaper.”

But she found something very different here. And cost is only part of it.

“In Philly, you really have the opportunity to feel seen, just be the person that you are, and people actually see you,” she says. “When I go back to New York, I just feel so lost there. When I come back to Philadelphia, I really feel the closeness of my friends, my family, and my whole community, really.”

Her New York friends still don’t fully get it, she says.

“I think it gets labeled as a ‘little engine that could’. And that’s a misconception, because Philadelphia is already there,” she says. “More people are starting to see it now, because more and more people are coming from New York saying, ‘Wow, I never knew this about Philadelphia. I didn’t know all these great food places and fashions and opportunities. And I can live a little easier.'”

From Panera to Paris

She’d been going to networking events around the city and leaving frustrated when she got the idea for her own venture. She was sitting in a Panera Bread at the time, and still doing radiology at the VA.

“I got a vision to start a women’s network – something I knew nothing about, of course,” she says. “Most of the events I had been going to were in a restaurant or a bar, and the music was too loud. I would leave with some business cards, but I didn’t leave with any content I could actually use.”

The Philadelphia Women’s Network Connection launched in 2019, bringing together women in corporate and professional settings who are interested in starting their own business.

Then COVID hit, and she had to put the whole thing online. What happened next surprised even her.

“We went global our first year,” she says. “We had people signing up from India first, then Sweden, and then it just kept going like that.”

She now has 1,500 members. Last year, she gave a talk in Paris.

“At 55, I left a job to start two businesses from the ground up. I know what it feels like to be at a job you don’t like, that you don’t want to go to, and you want to start doing something before it’s too late.”

Now, she’s developed a new service for women 50 and over who want to learn AI but don’t know where to start. PWNC Digital Futures offers monthly hands-on and personalized live Zoom sessions. “I’m holding your hand,” she says, “so now there’s no excuse for you not to be doing this.”

Philadelphia, she’ll tell you, rewards that kind of initiative.

“Everybody says Philadelphia is big, but in the entrepreneur space, it’s not as big as you think. Everybody knows everybody,” she says. “If you cook, if you’re a foodie, there’s a place for you here. If you’re an up-and-coming fashion designer, a photographer, a woman over 55 starting over, there’s a place for you.”

It’s why, when she was invited to join Phambassador, Philadelphia’s program for passionate city advocates, she didn’t hesitate.

Felicia and her husband eventually left Fairmount for Montgomery County three and a half years ago. They live in Gilbertsville now, where they enjoy living next to nature.

But she still keeps an office in the city. And now, she says, helping welcome visitors for the 250th anniversary feels personal.

“I always say Philly is the little city, but it’s so much bigger – and the proof of that is the 250-year celebration this year,” she says. “I’m excited, and honored, to be a part of that.”