Star of Television’s Trading Spaces and While You Were Out,
Co-Host of Radio’s The Money Pit
LESLIE SEGRETE

Story by Maureen Traxler
Cover photo is Jim Rohman

Segrete Prepares to Receive Girl Scouts’ Highest Honor, The Juliette Low Award of Distinction

“I enjoyed the entire Girl Scouting experience, the crafting and creating, the field trips, and the community, friends and camaraderie that come with it,” says Leslie Segrete, who joined Girl Scouts as a Brownie in her hometown of Garden City.

“I got to do things I never tried before,” like camping and horseback riding. Segrete continued in Girl Scouts through her early teens. When she graduated from college, she and a friend began to reminisce about their fond memories. They wanted to return to scouting and explored becoming troop leaders. But because they lived in a small Manhattan apartment and were unfamiliar with the responsibilities of organizing a large group of girls, their request was turned down.

Then, as life would have it, a couple of years ago, Segrete—now a successful home improvement expert with an eye for design and the skills and ideas to make almost any home project easy and fun—met Donna Rivera-Downey, marketing director for Nassau County Girl Scouts at a Nassau Coliseum Home Show. Their chance meeting was just the knot that reconnected Segrete with girl scouting. Throughout the past year, she has volunteered her time and services to the Girl Scouts of Nassau County, not only working with the girls, but also with their adult leaders and staff.

In recognition of Segrete’s endless contributions to Girl Scouts and to her community, the Girls Scouts of Nassau County will bestow upon her its prestigious honor, the Juliette Low Award of Distinction, at its 21st Annual Luncheon on October 30. Adventurous and energetic, resourceful and self-reliant, Segrete epitomizes the spirit of Juliette Gordon Low, who founded the Girl Scouts of America in 1912.

“Girl Scouts has extended their community to me as an adult. I’m really glad they embraced me and allowed me to be involved,” Segrete told Networking® magazine recently. “I am so honored.”

Working with the girls

Segrete says she comes from a very creative family, and Girl Scouts became an extension of that creativity. She credits scouting for teaching her skills she uses in her career today, most importantly, how to complete a project on a limited budget.

Last fall, Segrete worked with more than 70 girls, teaching them basic sewing skills and techniques and helping them earn the Sew Simple badge. With her husband Ed’s assistance, she made the girls kits that included instructions by way of colored dots so the girls knew where the needle went in and where it came out. Through a professional contact, she brought in 20 Viking sewing machines from Ohio for the girls to use, and they made pillows for their bedrooms. As a community related project, Segrete and the girls sewed handmade cage comforters, designed to help animals feel more at home while they await adoption at the New York City Animal Care and Control shelter.

“The girls feel challenged and motivated when working on badges,” says Segrete. “It’s a good competitiveness. They work as a team and earn the badges together.” She adds, “I enjoy teaching someone a skill or technique they didn’t know, were nervous about trying, or felt they couldn’t accomplish. I love it when someone gets it. They’re inspired and challenged at the same time.”

Hofstra nurtures her creativity

Segrete entered Boston University with dreams of becoming an archeologist, “an Indiana Jones,” she says. But with experiences working at her dad’s architectural firm and doing community and college theater, she transferred to Hofstra University to study drama with a focus on set design.

With only three students following the specific coursework, Segrete says, “We took turns flip-flopping among the responsibilities—set design, assisting set design and props, and rotated among Hofstra’s mainstage, blackbox and summer theater performances. She recalls, “Hofstra had a wonderful small theater department at the time,” and by graduation, Segrete had already “designed” many shows. She would also assist her professors in creating set designs on projects that they were working on professionally.

“I received an amazing education,” adds Segrete, who has been recognized as Hofstra’s Young Alumni of the Year, an honor awarded for outstanding achievement in one’s field in less than ten years following graduation.

Fresh from Hofstra, she went back to working at her dad’s firm while looking for a job in visual design, retail design, window display or set design. She also continued to work in theater, most of the time at “no pay or very little,” she says, and it wouldn’t be unusual for her to be asked to create setups for 12 theater locations on a mere $50.

“That’s when you had to improvise by painting or using extra lumber from behind your parent’s garage,” remarks Segrete. She finally landed a job doing window displays for Canal Jeans and then moved to Giorgio Armani. She also worked for Good Morning America as a freelance food stylist and prep cook (Segrete has a degree in La Technique 1 from the French Culinary Institute), while working theater, nights and weekends. Impressed with her work, the theater’s set designer recommended her for the position of art director with the Ricki Lake Show.

In the “biz”

Segrete then moved to Oxygen Media, where a friend told her that television’s TLC Channel was looking for an actress to play a carpenter on a new show, While You Were Out. Skeptical, Segrete lamented to her husband, “Who’s going to watch home improvement shows?” But recognizing the opportunity, he replied, “You’ve got to take it.” While she admits she was “apprehensive” about coming out from behind the scenes and going before the cameras, she says it was an interesting experience and “opened up so many doors.”

“Once you’re in, you’re in,” notes Segrete, whose mantra remains, “Be nice to people, do your job, come in on budget, and they’ll offer you another job.”

While filming over 200 segments of While You Were Out and Trading Spaces, Segrete says the home improvement shows brought such familiarity with people’s homes that she was able to point out the family silverware drawer or where they keep their cleaning supplies. But she adds, “We impacted these families’ lives in a positive way. Sometimes people get stuck in a rut and have a hard time visualizing what they can do, especially on a limited budget.”

And now, radio

Segrete has moved to another career level, becoming the co-host of the nationally syndicated home improvement talk show, The Money Pit, with Tom Kraeutler. Over the past three years, the show has increased its affiliates three-fold to over 210, airs in the New York area on WABC 770 AM on Sundays from noon to 2, and is the Number One home improvement Pod cast on iTunes. The Money Pit was named to Talkers Magazine’s prestigious “Heavy Hundred” list of “100 Most Important Talk Shows in America.”

“It took me a long time to get used to talking to a wall and seeing the corkboard with my to-do list posted,” says Segrete about working in her home studio. Kraeutler’s studio is located in his New Jersey home, and they uplink through an ISDN line to a studio and engineers in Toledo, Ohio. She records 2 or 3 nights a week when at home, and she and Kraeutler try to get back to callers quickly with answers that will work for them.

With single women rising to the Number One homeowner category, Segrete notes that “The Money Pit receives a good share of women callers.” She adds, “There’s something empowering about learning to fix something on your own.”

While she says that she’s pleased with the opportunities that have come her way, Segrete exclaims, “I’m 32 and I’m exhausted!” She quips, “I’m looking forward to Christmas. It’s the only time of the year that the rest of the world catches up with my daily frenetic pace.”

New ventures and more

Segrete looks forward to the publication of her first book, Fear Not You Can Reupholster Anything, in Spring 2008. She got her upholstering start in the small Hofstra prop room where she experimented with new fabrics on old furniture pieces: first tucking in material, then pinning, and taking pieces apart to see how they were constructed. “I can re-cover a three-person sofa about eight feet long in six to seven hours if I’m not bothered,” says Segrete, “It’s a crazy skill to have.” Of her book, she adds, “I feel I am able to impart some secrets, short cuts, or concepts that people can wrap their heads around.”

For someone who practices bikram Yoga—meditation in a room heated to 100-degrees with a humidity of around 40%—shooting a television series in Florida in summertime should be a piece of cake for Segrete. Recently, she’s been filming an exterior home makeover show for WE network, called The Ugliest House on the Block, in Fort Lauderdale. In addition, she is an editor-at-large for Country Home Magazine’s “Shop Girl” column, which will begin in October.

“I’ve always been a go-getter,” admits Segrete, who acknowledges the support and encouragement she’s received over the years, first from her parents and now from her husband Ed, the general manager at the Tom Ford Boutique in Manhattan. Often working multiple jobs simultaneously, she believes her greatest strength has been her organizational skills. “I do lots of research. I make lists, upon lists and revised lists for project assignments. When you’re handling so many different kinds of responsibilities at the same time, you’ve got to have a system and stay with it.”

Segrete and her husband enjoy decorating and improving their home in Garden City. They like going to the movies, bowling and cycling, and have a four-year-old toy poodle named Daisy (coincidentally, Daisy was Juliette Low’s childhood nickname). Always the adventurer, Segrete also reveals, “I’m a Harry Potter fanatic.”