Jennifer Henderson
Right out of college I went to work for advertising agencies where I learned how to NOT run a business. After I left both over a stint of only two years, I swore I would never go back into agency life unless it was on my own terms. It was not me – back stabbing, highly competitive and full of men running the show. Instead, I went into the nonprofit higher end arena where learned everything about campaigns, consumer marketing, public relations and politics. After four years, advancing up to the Director of Communications, I missed my true passion – design. To feed my soul, I started a side business at night designing for a few clients. Read more>>
Valerie Johnson
I was warned that it would be difficult to get a neurology job right out of PT school. They must have been wrong because right after completing my doctorate in physical therapy, I started working in vestibular rehab. Vestibular therapy is a subspecialty under the umbrella of neuro rehab that focuses on inner ear and other balance problems. The idea of starting my own physical therapy clinic was inspired by a man who wanted to hire me on a private basis. I met him while I was working part time at a hospital in Fort Worth. He was recovering from a cerebellar stroke and wanted me to continue to help him after his release from the hospital. Read more>>
James Talambas
I am a composer, producer, and artist based in Fort Worth. I run New Media Recordings. We are a production house, venue, imprint/record label, incubator, and most recently an avenue for visual and multimedia art. I have always been involved in art and music throughout my life to one degree or another. I began improvising on the piano as a child and began in the school’s music program as soon as I could, learning the cello, trumpet, and bass. My home life and school were always pretty difficult for me, so music was a way for me to escape to a better place. I went to college for audio engineering and music composition. I began collaborating with other artists and helping them create their art and finding my own voice at the same time. Read more>>
Brandt Sleeper
Brandt Sleeper began his career in the late 1980’s when he started Rising Eagle Productions, an audio post, scoring and sound design company in Tucson, AZ. He composed music and did sound design for numerous film and video projects throughout the 1990’s including independent feature films, documentaries and television advertising. In addition, he had an opportunity to perform some of his film scores in a live context for the silent films “Way Down East” (1920 D.W. Griffith, Dir., starring Lillian Gish) and “The Lost World” (1925, Harry Hoyt, Dir.). During this time, Brandt also did a significant amount of location sound work for various syndicated national and international broadcast television programs and films. Read more>>
Joanna Littler
My husband, Rudy, and I have a desire to serve and support families who have children with special needs. I worked for a home health company for a few years and always felt a little restricted by not being able to have large equipment to serve my patients and by a handful of corporate policies. The only way to truly do therapy the way I wanted was to start my own clinic. In January of 2015, we opened Beelieve Pediatric Therapy with a handful of patients. We believed there was a need for our services in this area and have seen that to be true. We’ve grown over the past 2 and 1/2 years to close to 400 patients and that doesn’t seem to be slowing down. Read more>>
Edward Luttenberger, Jim Messinger, and Gerald Brazell
The museum was started in 1995 by a group of former Vietnam helicopter pilots. In 1999, we acquired a 12 acre piece of property outside of Mineral Wells, Texas, near the former Fort Wolters, where almost 90% of the Vietnam helicopter pilots received their initial training. In 2007, we opened the first of our gardens, and have had a significant addition each year since. In 2008, we added a Vietnam veteran UH-1 “Huey” helicopter and a replica of a memorial wall for the 52nd Aviation Battalion which was originally constructed in Pleiku, Vietnam and left behind at the end of the war. In 2009, we revealed our 1/2 scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and we believe it is the only replica that can be updated to match the original in Washington, D. C. Read more>>
Jeremy Taylor
I was born and raised in Southern California where I participated in as many sports as possible. Football (always my favorite), baseball, basketball, wrestling, surfing, skateboarding, just to name a few. In high school, I was an All-League middle linebacker and captain of the State Champion Trabuco Hills Mustangs football team. With a 4.3 GPA, I was recruited by several Ivy-League schools to play football. After visiting New York City on a recruiting trip, I knew I was going to attend Columbia University. I excelled at football becoming an All-Ivy League linebacker from sophomore year on and leading the team as captain my senior year. Read more>>
Alison Cron
I graduated from the Aveda Institute in Dallas in 2011 and started working at an Aveda salon shortly after. I worked at that salon for a little over three years before deciding to branch off on my own. It has been surprisingly smooth. I am an independent hairstylist who specializes in dimensional color, i.e. balayage, highlights, babylights, color melting, etc. I’m most proud of the way I run my business with integrity. Not only am I a killer hairstylist, I am very forthcoming with my guests on pricing and realistic outcomes for their hair. Read more>>
Zoey Hunter Vick
I had left college to go home to be with my ill father and after he passed I started my apprenticeship, my daughter was ill and I started raiding my little brother- the beginning for me was about sheer drive and determination to meet my goals. I worked graveyard shift at a gas station and did my tattoo apprenticeship during the day while getting a handle on raising a teenager and a sick baby. Early in my daughter passed, Tattooing and my little brother is all that kept me above ground in those days. I worked until I couldn’t see straight saving every dime I could, when I was 27 I opened the door to my first studio with only the last ten bucks I had in my pocket and a dream. Read more>>
Heryn Donald
My mother started a company like mine while I was in college. When it began to grow, I decided to quit school and help out full time (I thought I could always go back to school, but may not have another opportunity like this). I eventually served as Executive Director until she sold the company in 2007 after 12 years of success. After the sale, I made the choice to start my own company as my heart was still very much into it. I opened up our contracting opportunities and streamlined some of our services to increase our margins as well as simplify and add quality to our services. Read more>>
Amy Hawks
I have two kiddos – ages 6 and 13 – and I learned early on as a mother that it’s way too easy to give and give and give until you’re ready to fall apart. I went on a couple of overnight craft retreats with girlfriends and afterward I felt really refreshed, re-centered, and ready to take on life again. I thought, “Man, I’d love a place that operates like this during the day so I can just drop in, take a few hours for myself — away from the responsibilities that come with running the household — and leave feeling empowered and energized.” I started with a group that took turns at each other’s houses, and that quickly fell apart because everyone felt burdened by the need to clean their house before and after, and everyone felt guilty sending their spouse and kids out all night. Read more>>
Roxann Breyer
I got started in the education field because of my love of mathematics and being around young people. Students keep me energized and I appreciate the challenge of teaching math to students who struggle with learning. Searching for creative strategies to help students learn would keep me up at night. Over my time at Hill School I have worn many hats-teaching, coaching, facilitating and leading. While I enjoy being the Head of School at Hill, I still need to visit classrooms regularly to feel the joy of learning and working with students. Read more>>
Brandon, Heather, and Vicki Thornton
The original business was started by Brandon’s grandparents in the 1950s. His grandmother was one of the first women in the state of Texas to obtain a license as an Enrolled Agent. They did bookkeeping and tax preparation for clients in the Fort Worth and surrounding areas. Vicki later bought the business when her parents retired. Vicki has held a license as an Enrolled Agent from the IRS for 26 years. Seven years ago, Brandon and Heather began working with Vicki full time. After 35 years of Vicki’s continued dedication and growth, the business was then purchased by Brandon and Heather. As a team, they bring a great mix of knowledge and experience along with new ideas and understanding of integration with new digital technologies. Read more>>
Ruth De Hoyos
I have been in the floral business all my life. My mother and mother in law both had their own flower shops in San Antonio, TX that were very close together. I started working for them at a young age delivering, cleaning, and arranging during the holidays. I realized early in life the floral business was my passion, but life happens and it wasn’t the path I took when I graduated high school. I took a different route in life and had different jobs that had nothing to do with floristry, even though I would still help my mother and mother in law during the holidays. It wasn’t until 1992 when I was 35 a friend who owned his own shop in Roanoke got very sick and asked me to take over for him temporarily. Read more>>
Becky Steinsultz
I studied piano my whole life, but always as a hobby. I never knew it would shape my whole future! I moved to Texas in 2008 and began teaching piano lessons out of my apartment. I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart, but didn’t always have a clear idea of what type of business I wanted to build. It wasn’t until a year later, when I moved the lessons into a small two room office space and hired my first teacher that the vision for Stage Notes slowly began to emerge. Another two years later, after marrying my husband, Devin, we moved into a larger, six room office space, and grew the staff to seven instructors offering additional instruments such as guitar, drums, bass, and voice. Read more>>
Kelly Lott
I have been a massage therapist and massage instructor for 25 years, teaching all over the country to massage therapists with my migraine treatment, face toning massage and pregnancy massage. I have always wanted to help people with massage who are in pain and so many have headaches. After watching an interview with an esthetician in Dallas, who commented that so many clients have migraines and wanted something cold on their head. She used eye gel packs, but they didn’t stay cold enough to get rid of the migraine. Read more>>
Aubrey Grossen
I had a pretty rocky first few months of motherhood and relied heavily on my sisters and mom for help. I worried about my friends who didn’t have family around to help them so I thought by creating a group we could all be “sisters” in a sense and help each other with different things that have worked/not worked in parenting. I started it back in 2014 with about 30-40 close friends and family and it’s grown to over 20,000 members worldwide. My blog goes along with it and we’ve been able to do some fun things with the amount of numbers we have in our group. Read more>>
Shivaun Palmer
Plaid for Women was founded in 2012 to create a “go to” digital platform for women to find substantive content on the “Business of Life”. Five years later, the platform has grown and includes original content five days a week on Career & Money; Health & Wellness; Home & Family and Inspiration. Plaid has over 60 women content contributors from across the U.S. Content includes blogs, radio podcasts and short form videos. The company embraces a #NoMeanGirls culture encouraging women to love themselves FIRST (not be mean to themselves) in order to achieve their personal and professional dreams and to respect other women on that same journey. Read more>>
Jennifer and Christopher Zoll
Our clinic was created by the owners, Bruce and Lee Ann Conti after their 19-year-old son suffered from an anoxic brain injury in 2013. Bruce wanted his son to have every opportunity to recover and improve function. After a year of intensive traditional therapy in their home, we decided to open a Neuro focused outpatient physical therapy clinic with specialized robotic equipment to improve function and build neuroplasticity in the brain. What we thought would start out as a small “boutique” clinic quickly grew into a dynamic, innovative therapy center that people travel from all over Texas to come to. We recently moved to a 13,000 square foot facility in order to accommodate the growing demand and treatment schedule. Read more>>
Kay Gambrell
I was sitting in my beautiful office over-looking the canal in Irving working in a stressful position I didn’t like. I was working as a human resources professional, and on this particular day I came to terms with how unhappy I was… I loved supporting employees, and helping people, but hated the manner in which I was doing it. I decided that day, I no longer wanted to work for anyone. I no longer wanted to ask for my time off when my children are sick, or fight the unbearable traffic commuting to an office. My peace, my happiness, was worth more than my beautiful office and great paycheck. Read more>>
David Edmondson
I retired from TCU after working there for 33 years as the Emeritus Provost for Technology Resources. After retirement, I began to volunteer for several different organizations. One of them is the Fort Worth Chapter of Hearing Loss Association of America (HLAA). I have been on the board serving the past 3 years as President. We are a very small nonprofit chapter that is 100% volunteer. So there are many activities we want to do to serve the hearing loss community in the Central North Texas Region. Be totally dependent on members volunteering to contribute their time and resources is a difficult issue for us. We would like to do more but we just don’t have the people and money it takes to accomplish many of our aspirations. Read more>>
