Trendsetters - Tourism and Entertainment

Mike Vogel | 6/1/2007

Birth of a New Career

In October, young Conceive Magazine beat out established Ladies' Home Journal and InStyle for a prestigious industry award, the Eddie Award for editorial excellence.

Kim Hahn Conceive Magazine Founder/CEO, Orlando After MBA: Wanted to work for Disney. Still waiting: For Disney to knock on her door. Still waiting II: For Oprah to call. "She kind of inspired me. Her life and my life have a lot of parallels." Met her husband: At Disney, where she was a 16-year-old dancer in parades and a costumed character. He was a 19-year-old supervisor. Parting ways: SunTrust was "extremely supportive" of her entrepreneurial wish and bought an ad in the first issue. How she spent her 40th: A three-day event at Disney's Grand Floridian honoring those who made a difference in her life. She handed out 70 "Oscar" statuettes to former SunTrust colleagues, college professors and so on. [Photo: Michael Cairns]

For Kim Hahn, it was vindication of her editorial mission -- to help women interested in prepregnancy health and getting pregnant. Vindication on the financial front could begin to come this year with the 3-year-old magazine's first profit.

Combined, they would bring vindication of a larger sort for Hahn, 41. A Long Island native who moved to Florida at 16, Hahn's first career was as a banker. She earned an executive MBA at Rollins College and rose to become SunTrust Bank's top financial officer for Florida. "You would have thought the world was my oyster," she says. When she and her husband, Ernie, began trying to have children, however, she was frustrated to find magazines for brides, expecting mothers, ferret lovers and log cabin owners but no publications for women interested in conceiving. She became depressed at not being pregnant. "When it didn't happen, it rocked my world. I probably had an early midlife crisis."

She and her husband eventually adopted a daughter, Taylor Ann, six years ago. With the help of a life coach, Hahn rethought her career and set a goal of having her own business, one that suited her personality and afforded her the time she wanted to spend with her family. So she raised $250,000 from family and friends, founded the magazine and left SunTrust in 2004 just before the first edition appeared.

Ad sales have doubled for three years, though moving beyond the endemic market -- nutrition, fertility and birth-related product companies -- has proved a challenge. Buyers are women with a median age of 28; most are college graduates and working. Revenue this year will be $2 million.

She's extending the brand with a radio broadcast and two books coming out next year, and she's syndicating content.

"I wanted to be able to create something when I was on this earth that would help somebody, and banking wasn't doing it for me anymore," Hahn says.

Notables

» Terry Dale, 45, president and CEO, Cruise Lines International Association, led the association's relocation this year from New York to Fort Lauderdale. He also led the merger of CLIA with Washington, D.C.-based International Council of Cruise Lines.

» David Feder, 59, is president and general manager of the Fontainebleau Miami Beach, which is undergoing a $750-million renovation and expansion ending next year that will leave it at 1,504 rooms and suites and a spa, restaurants, lounges and meeting space.

Tags: Dining & Travel, Trendsetters