Page 34 - BusinessWest February 17, 2025

me a sense of belonging.” And, in the simplest of terms, the Venture Way Collaborative was created to help others do the same.
She broke ground for the collaborative in 1999, just a few months before the pandemic arrived. COVID initially kept the facility from doing what it was designed to do — bring people together, in person — but Bordenca carried on through Zoom, and admits that her timing was actually good because she could not have afforded to build the facility amid the soaring construction costs that arrived post-pandemic.
As she mentioned earlier, it is physical space where people can meet, but it’s much more than that.
“It’s a physical space that manifests a place where I want to feel good, and where I want others, when they come in, to say, ‘this is good; I feel welcome.’ There are high ceilings, there’s expansiveness, there are bold colors — there are a lot of touches I curate so people feel like this is home,” she said. “I want it to be expansive and creative.”
That’s especially true of a large, 1,000-square-foot space that is called, among other things, the ‘classroom,’ or the ‘studio,’ depending on who’s using
it.
“It has no furniture in it in, so there’s room to move around,” she said.
“Everything I do has a component of awareness of the body and the nervous system, so I want to make sure that, when I’m doing leadership training, people can feel their bodies and are aware of their movement because that’s not something we’re taught to be aware of.”
The space now hosts groups ranging from the Queer Valley Library to the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts; from the Zonta Club of Quaboag Valley to Faces of Medicine, which shares the journeys, successes, and struggles of Black female physicians.
Building Emotional Resilience
Beyond her work at DESCO and as a landlord at 200 Venture Way, Bordenca is also a coach, working with both adults and young people. As part of these efforts, she created Lead Yourself Youth and the Women’s Collaborative to bring people together and create dialogue.
The former is not an official nonprofit, but rather an informal entity that provides professional development. Bordenca has worked with groups ranging from Girl Scouts to students and educators at the MacDuffie School in Granby and the Hadley school system, and focuses on normalizing different emotions,
ranging from anxiety to frustration, using hands-on activities like juggling and sewing.
“A lot of it is helping people build that emotional resilience through these safe spaces of practice and simulation,” she said, adding that she does the same with women, a discussion that will take her to ... golf.
“I talk to women professionals who say, ‘I golf, and I hate golfing,’” she explained, adding that she once put herself in that category. “And I say, ‘why do you golf, then?’ And they say, ‘that’s where the decisions are made.’
“I’ll say, ‘if this isn’t your thing, what is something that you can create that might attract some golfers and maybe non-golfers that are also influencers, decision makers, people that you’re trying to close deals with?’” she went on. “‘Can you create another event, like a hike or even a trip to an amusement park?’”
That’s just one example of how she encourages people to help cultivate communities by being creative and focused on knocking down walls instead of doors.
Overall, Bordenca said her broad focus is on helping individuals of all ages, genders, and life paths find common ground and that sense of belonging that eluded her in her youth.
“If people don’t have the people around them that have the same value system, they’re not going to get very far because they’re just going to have people tell them they’re wrong or ‘that’s the wrong way,’ which was a lot of my childhood,” she explained. “The work that I do with other children and also educators and other organizations is ... ‘hey, there’s no right or wrong way; it’s just based on values and your compass.’
“If you work in an organization, if you live in a community, if you’re part of a family whose value systems are different, who are the people that you can find that share your values so you don’t feel crazy, isolated, alone, or so you don’t have to compete or fight so hard? It doesn’t have to be that way.
“As social animals, we need other people,” she continued. “And just because of the way we’re taught and we learn, I think it’s really difficult, especially post-COVID with all the social and emotional issues that children and people are having, especially Gen Z, to know how important it is, and how possible it is, to find the people who are just like you.”
Helping individuals do that — helping people find that sense of belonging — is just one of many reasons why Bordenca is truly a Difference Maker. BW
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