NJBIZ Honors Feliciano as One of the ‘Best 50 Women’

Mimi Feliciano, who founded the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship with her husband Edwin, will be honored March 24 as one of the NJBIZ Best 50 Women in Business.

The award recognizes women who excel in the areas of professional accomplishments, community involvement and advocacy for women.

“Mimi is so deserving of this award,” said the Center’s program manager, Sharon Waters. “She has done so much, through her professional work and community involvement, while also channeling her entrepreneurial drive and talent into the goal of advocating for the advancement of women.”

Feliciano is the CEO of FEM Real Estate LLC in Montville. Previously she was the CEO of Lincoln Park Healthcare, where she began working in the family business as a teen.

Feliciano later became a partner of a 60,000-square-foot health club and 550-seat banquet facility, for which she supervised the construction and subsequently managed it for 14 years. It achieved significant success as the largest racquet ball club in the country at that time, and included a co-ed fitness center with social activities which was novel at that time. Then, in conjunction with raising two children, Feliciano and her husband invested in residential real estate, acquiring and managing commercial properties.

During her time as CEO, Feliciano reinvented Lincoln Park Healthcare, updating the facility and creating a place where she would want to live, and expanded the company into short-term rehab which was an innovative shift for the business, adding private room suites, concierge services, a pool, Japanese garden, a salon and sauna. The boutique approach to health care was novel at the time, and became a trend others followed, demonstrating Feliciano’s ability to innovate. She also doubled the square footage of the facility, boosting revenues and making Lincoln Park Healthcare the largest nursing home community in New Jersey.

Under Feliciano’s tenure, Lincoln Park Healthcare sponsored more than 100 Filipino women to come to the facility, training them to become licensed as nurses and nurse aides at the facility while also teaching them English and helping them find housing, giving them a shot at the American dream.

In 2012, Feliciano sold the business and with her husband founded FEM Real Estate, for which she is CEO. FEM is a real estate investment company that develops, owns and manages commercial real estate in the Northeast and is locally focused on redevelopment projects in northern New Jersey and the Jersey Shore.

VIDEO: Mimi Feliciano tells students to know their strengths

Feliciano has also been involved in her community. In 2009, she and her husband began working with Wayne-based Hope for a Thousand Hills, giving seed money to revive an abandoned coffee plantation operation in Rwanda. After five years of the Felicianos’ involvement, the plantation is now Rwanda’s largest non-government-owned coffee plantation. It has employed up to 800 people, and at least 80 percent of the field workers are women, many of whom serve as the family breadwinner after their husbands were killed or incarcerated in the Rwandan genocide. The plantation includes a clinic with a thriving maternity center, and a school for 1,300 children.

“(The Felicianos) were really the confirmation for us to move forward with this project. To move forward, you need supporters and they were really major, major supporters of this initiative,” said Anthony Longo, CFO, Hope for a Thousand Hills. He said the plantation has become a model used by other African countries for the rehab of a coffee plantation.

A longtime supporter of Chilton Medical Center in Pompton Plains, Feliciano and her husband in 2012 donated the funds for creation of a 100,000-square-foot rooftop healing garden at the hospital. “Supporters such as Mimi and Eddie are helping our dreams of patient-centered care come to fruition,” said Joan Beloff, Chilton Foundation director.

Feliciano is involved in multiple organizations, including the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship advisory board; Montclair State University School of Business advisory board; Women President’s Organization (WPO); Commercial Real Estate Women, Inc. (CREW NJ); among others. In the past, Feliciano also ran the fundraising for the Kinnelon Elementary Home & School Association for two years, and in 1986 she was the first person to organize a Project Graduation event, a now ubiquitous program at high schools across New Jersey, and she earned a gubernatorial commendation for her efforts.

Feliciano has advocated for women in many ways, but her most enduring legacy will likely be the Feliciano Center for Entrepreneurship at Montclair State University, funded in 2012 by her and her husband. The Felicianos’ goal is to create mentorship opportunities and provide needed resources for young student entrepreneurs. It was Mimi Feliciano’s vision and directive that the Center have a special mission to nurture and support women entrepreneurs, who are heavily outnumbered by men entrepreneurs. Also, it was imperative to the Felicianos that the Center’s classes not be rote learning. Each year through its classes and programs, the Center provides an immersive, hands-on entrepreneurial experience, from seed capital to cash prizes, for students.