Albany councilwoman tells audience about new female advocacy business venture
Dorcey Applyrs addresses Women@Work network
Updated 4:21 pm, Wednesday, April 11, 2018
COLONIE —When she moved to Albany 15 years ago, she counted down the days until she could leave.
“I grew up in Washington, D.C. I went to Delaware State University. Then I moved to Albany. It was a culture shock,” Dorcey Applyrs, founder and CEO of InVision Her and 1st Ward Albany councilwoman, told a crowd of 90 women Wednesday at the fourth “Changemakers” breakfast held by the Times Union’s Women@Work networking group.
Applyrs has built a personal and professional life in the city of Albany devoted to improving the quality of life for residents. With a doctorate in public health she has focused on health disparity and environmental safety issues affecting her constituents. She recently launched InVision Her, further promoting advocacy and female empowerment through events and experiences.
“I’m going to be very candid and honest,” Applyrs said. “I was used to being in communities in which multiple people I was surrounded by looked like me.”
The only two people she knew when she arrived in Albany were Dwight Williams, a professor at University of Albany’s School Public of Health, who recruited Applyrs to attend the graduate program there, and his wife.
“I spent a lot of time in my studio on South Lake crying,” she said. “I had to learn to grow where you are planted. I was thinking about Albany the wrong way. I was thinking about Atlanta and what my life would have been like had I decided to move there. Once I changed my mindset about Albany, things just started to happen.”
She met her husband and fast forward several years she received a quality education and became a strong young woman here in Albany, she reflected.
“When I campaigned I talked about my obligation to give back to the community. This community has poured so much into me,” she said. “It is an obligation to give back.”
Applyrs shed a couple of tears when she began to talk about Williams. She was introduced to Williams when she was a junior at Delaware State and she remembers first sharing with him her story of growing up in Washington, D.C., learning how people’s environment influences their health. She talked honestly to him about her father—a substance abuser who contracted HIV. She said her family was affected by the three epidemics of the 1980s: crack, heroine and HIV.
“I lost my father at a very young age,” she said. “He was 25 when he passed.”
Applyrs learned Williams also grew up in Washington, D.C. and went to Delaware State University.
“He understood my story,” she said. “He felt he wanted to be instrumental in extending an olive branch for me to have opportunities.”
When Applyrs first moved here, Williams and his wife bought things she could not -- including a mattress. They also cooked and took care of her. Williams mentored her through her program and taught her life lessons.
The day Applyrs defended her dissertation Williams was there.
“After my defense, what I didn’t know was he marched into the dean’s office and handed him his letter of resignation,” she said. “He was retiring from the university after being there for so many years. When we talked after, he said, ‘I was just waiting for you to be done. My job was to see it through.' ”
That taught her a valuable lesson about mentorship, she said.
“It’s to be really invested in people’s lives,” she said. “Not for a short period of time. But to be in it for the long haul, every day, whether it’s about politics, whether it’s about family. He has been a constant in my life.”
Still, she said she looked at the opportunity to address Women@Work members as another “when opportunity meets fate” circumstance.
“In addition to when opportunity meets fate, I believe God puts people in your path to help usher you along in your journey,” she said.
Applyrs had the opportunity to be a Center for Women in Government and Civil Society fellow. From there she met Judith Mazza, the New York State Health Department AIDS Institute director of the HIV Comprehensive Case Management Program. Mazza later would encourage her to first run for public office in 2014.
“That program changed my life,” she said. “It changed my trajectory.”
She has learned campaigning is a “contact sport.”
“Women do have a hard way to go,” she said. “There is a double standard. There’s a certain expectation that you have to be a backslapper. That you have to fit a certain mold.”
But when she tries to recruit other women to run for public office, she explains what they should expect.
“If you’re not prepared it’s enough to leave you running and not wanting to move forward,” she said. “We should not be paralyzed by people’s ignorance.”
To that end, she has created InVision Her—a business seeking to motivate women to achieve their goals.