Female engineers working in manufacturing or construction go back and forth between office meetings and hazardous sites where protective boots are mandatory. These steel toe boots are often ill-fitting and clunky, and most women hate them. This was Anastasia Kraft’s experience. After years of complaining and commiserating as an engineer herself, Kraft founded Xena Workwear […]
Nina Roberts
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Forgotten No More: How Verloop’s Founder Turned Deadstock Yarn into a Bold Brand
Knit gloves, scarfs and balaclavas in colorful, graphic patterns made by Verloop are sold at museum shops across the US, from New York City’s MoMA, to de Young in San Francisco. The modern knit creations are made in part with surplus yarns from a manufacturing factory just outside Manila, the capital of the Philippines. Ten […]
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From California Car Salesman to Five Time James Beard Nominee in Asheville, N.C.
Walk into Chai Pani in downtown Asheville, North Carolina: The smells of butter chicken thali, okra fries, vegetable uttapam, among other meals served on big, silvery platters fill the air. The vibrant, contemporary space is decorated with graphic murals, street art and photos rooted in India, where chef and co-owner Meherwan Irani grew up. Chai […]
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Reinventing the Business Model for Food Production, This Farm Offers An Organic Diet for a Single, Low Price that’s Cheaper than McDonald’s
Roll into Essex Farm, located a mile west of Lake Champlain in the Adirondacks, and the usual sights, sounds and smells of a working farm emerge. Weathered wood barns, rolls of hay, workers in rubber boots escorting cows to pasture, rows upon rows of green leafy tufts, rusty farm equipment graveyards and a massive pile […]
Posted inRest of US
The Expensive Choice That Landed This Flower Founder a Martha Stewart Contract
Who doesn’t love to receive a box of fragrant fresh flowers, ready to be trimmed and arranged in a vase? Flowers are one of the simple joys in life, a luxurious moment of self-care or a visually and olfactorily stimulating gift to others. Juan Palacio is the founder of BloomsyBox, a direct-to-consumer flower delivery company […]
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The Yes People: Her Friends Said No. But that Didn’t Hinder this Entrepreneur’s Bissap Dream
The Yes People is a new bimonthly series profiling founders who said “Yes,” when others said “No.” These founders now run successful businesses, The Yes People examines how they knew to persevere and negate negativity. Bottles of Berry Bissap, a deep magenta hibiscus drink with roots in West Africa, now sell at some Whole Foods […]
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Will Altruism Fade As The Pandemic Wanes?
On last year’s National Ice Cream Day, July 18, Mona Lipson of Miss Mona Makes Ice Cream co-created Ice Cream For Change with Dr. Maya Warren, an ice cream scientist based in Los Angeles, CA. (Yes, that Dr. Warren who won The Amazing Race in 2014 with lab mate Dr Amy DeJong.) A one-day initiative, […]
Posted inPersonal Finance
The Secret To Miss Mona’s Growing Ice Cream Brand: The Way She Boosts Other Entrepreneurs
Some people look forward to summertime’s Community Supported Agriculture boxes of kale, cukes and beets. A growing number of Brooklynites are on the watch for something different: Community Supported Treats. That’s what entrepreneur Mona Lipson is calling her new small batch ice cream venture Miss Mona Makes Ice Cream, which delivers three pints of artisanal […]
Posted inVC Spotlight
Music’s Rich Future: The Pandemic Broadened Audiences Coast-To-Coast, From Liz Phair To Omaha Opera
Could an Austin, Texas drive-in movie theater be screening an animated version of Philip Glass’s opera The Fall of The House of Usher? Or two professional musicians on opposite sides of the country meet, collaborate and help each others’ tour be a success? Could you easily watch every one of Liz Phair’s performances on her […]
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In Elaine, Arkansas, The Struggle To Remember A 100-Year-Old Massacre
The main street of Elaine in the rural Arkansas Delta looks less like a thoroughfare and more like a scar. A dozen empty shops in one-story brick buildings, some crumbling, line the desolate street near a well-kept Baptist church. A rusty water tower stands in the distance. On one corner, an empty building with a […]
