YSU grad shares how she reached her dream just weeks after graduation

LOWELLVILLE

Cecelia Haren had a lot of doubters.

Not many believed, as she did, that her dream of opening her own business could one day become a reality.

It didn’t come easy, however. This the 24-year-old, a 2008 graduate of Lowellville High School, illustrated during two of Pam Iarussi’s senior economics classes at her alma mater Friday morning.

“I had to get my priorities straight,” said Haren, who began devising the business plan for what would eventually become Cece Couture — a store that sells special-occasion gowns and accessories, and aims to make girls and women both look and feel “fabulous” — while still a student at Youngstown State University. “I had to decide what’s important to me.”

Doing so often meant staying in her room, estimating startup costs and defining her target market, instead of going out with friends. Even so, it took Haren “two full years” to put together her plan. Her ideas changed and her research changed, and she ended up with something completely different than what she started with.

But that plan, Haren said, is “what got me the money to open my business.”

In 2012, she was funded for $180,000, despite others telling her that “no bank in their right mind” would give her — then, a 22-year-old blonde, she recalls — such a loan.

“Do it. Don’t let anything hold you back,” Haren said afterward, when asked what she hoped students took away from her presentation. This, of course, was in addition to a better understanding of all the planning and work that goes into following one’s dream.

Cece Couture, 339 Boardman Canfield Road, opened in January — only weeks after Haren graduated from YSU with her bachelor’s degree in business administration.

Read more about this young entrepreneur in Saturday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.