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09/10/2012 12:00 AMJackie St. Peter has created a happy and successful personal and professional life here in Connecticut-but ironically, getting to that point actually began in Florida.
Jackie moved from East Haven to Florida in 1989 and "it changed the course of my life."
Jackie headed south to see a friend, who is now her husband. She took a job as a unit secretary at St. Mary's Hospital in West Palm Beach and attended Palm Beach Community College to learn how to treat chemical addition. Jackie became a mental health counselor.
But in 1995, after their first daughter was born, Jackie and her husband Gary moved back to East Haven-where they both grew up.
"My grandmother had cancer, so I came home to take care of her," says Jackie.
Jackie's grandmother died seven months later. Soon after, she helped take care of an aunt with muscular dystrophy. She and her husband bought her grandmother's house as Jackie helped her aunt for a year and a half. Her mother still lives in East Haven.
The family then moved to North Haven in June 2000, where they've since lived and where Jackie has continued to focus on the healthcare field. During the time that Jackie was back in East Haven, she furthered her medical career a bit more by working in a nursing home from 1996 to 1999.
"That's why I decided to get into home care," Jackie says.
After moving to North Haven, her career path accelerated. Jackie ran her own home care business for seven years. After buying the business in 2001, she was pregnant with her third child.
"It was the most difficult time of my life; having a baby and starting a business," Jackie recalled.
She closed the business after those seven years, but she continues to do elder care consulting on her own. Jackie now also works for home care agency Comfort Keepers in Wallingford. Jackie says Comfort Keepers' owner Carol Carbutti looks like her grandmother.
"We share the same philosophy," Jackie says of Carol. "It was meant to be," says Jackie of transitioning from her own business to working for Comfort Keepers.
Jackie became the director of operations and sales at Comfort Keepers two years after she began working there in 2009.
Jackie says the work is rewarding.
"You help families," she says. "I have three aunts in their 80s. I know what it's like."
Even as Jackie remains busy with work and family, she makes time to help others. She helps with fundraising for New Haven Home Recovery, which provides shelter for women and children and helps them buy affordable housing.
When her children were younger, Jackie was a member of the PTA at Montowese Elementary School, serving as vice president for three years and two years as president. Alex is now 16, Jason is 13, and Katie is 11.
She also served as director of publicity when her oldest daughter was a synchronized ice skater. Jackie is currently director of publicity for the Greater New Haven Warriors, the hockey association in which her son plays.
Jackie is also a founding member of "Got Girlfriends?" a group of women who met through business and became friends. The group works to educate women and seniors about services available to them.
Jackie also works for Business Networking International (BNI) as a director. Seven chapters in the North Haven area report to her. Her networking also spans East Haven, where she participates in the East Haven Chamber of Commerce's Women in Business program.
With so much accomplished, it may be difficult to believe there is anything that Jackie hasn't yet done that she want to achieve, but Jackie says she still wants to get the nursing degree she was pursuing when she returned to East Haven 17 years ago.
"I have two years of clinical to do," she says; chances are, she'll get it done.