Donna LaVoie
LaVoieHealthScience was started in 2001 based on the idea that health and science companies that are truly innovating have critical needs around communicating their message to key stakeholders. Massachusetts as a leader in health and technology, this was a natural place to begin the business. Shifting from working in the business versus working on the business is a big shift. Growing from one person to five and to ten, professionalizing the organization, focusing on people and people’s growth paths is rewarding and challenging at the same time. Read more>>
Emily Kanter
Cambridge Naturals was founded in 1974 by my parents, Michael and Elizabeth, when they were 23 years old. We were originally “Cambridge Natural Foods” – a health food store that sold everything from produce to cheeses and meat to bulk grains and packaged foods, as well as a wide selection of nutritional supplements, body care products and healthy lifestyle goods. Over the years, in part due to intense competition in the area, we transitioned to focus on supplements, body care, and lifestyle, with a smaller, curated selection of grocery and snack foods. As a business, we focus heavily on providing an impeccable selection of goods, deep product knowledge, and excellent customer service. Read more>>
Leslie Williams
Leslie Williams’ educational roots are firmly in science and business. Her love of learning, desire to make a difference, and strong entrepreneurial spirit led her to the world of biotechnology. She discovered and sold her first start-up company (a health care informatics company) while in graduate school. After earning her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of Iowa, she broadened her science education at Virginia Commonwealth University and then earned an MBA from Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis. Read more>>
Sunitha Mogilicherla
Paradigm Graphics Partnership was started by Sunitha & Veera Mogilicherla in 2005 as a print broker. Veera has been in the printing industry for 35+ years with expertise in Printing Technology, Graphic Design, Information systems. Veera graduated from Rochester Institute of Technology with a Bachelor of Science in Printing Management and MS in Computer Information Systems from University of Phoenix. Sunitha has Diploma in Fine Arts from India. We have two adult children – Uttam & Priya. Uttam is married to Ashti. Our daughter, Priya recently graduated from Bryant University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business, Marketing. Read more>>
Jotham Busfield
We are a mother/son team who formed the company in 2013 with the goal of creating an environment where clients can feel comfortable and get results, and this started with our office design. We have always felt that a lot of waiting areas are uncomfortable and awkward, so we designed our space to be flexible, accommodating, and filled with choice. Clients can grab a coffee and a snack while connecting to Wi-Fi, they can sit by themselves in a nook, or they can converse with others if they choose, but they have that choice, and this improves the overall experience prior to a session. Read more>>
Victoria Jones
I was a former women’s basketball player and biology/premed major at Boston College. I always knew there was something more to science than chromosomes and molecules. In my mind, biology was something that unified us all. During a 2008 planet molecular biology class, I was struck by the thought that such structures “kinda artsy”. With the idea that a simple message can be spread through simple means, I began an apparel line. When I started out, I was outsourcing all of my printing and it just didn’t allow for much flexibility in styles, colors, and quantities. So I started to look into equipment and possibly getting my own shop going. Read more>>
Brent Barlow
I grew up in Southwest Missouri and have been heavily involved in music my entire life. My mother and father were both music teachers in public schools and made sure that my two older brothers and I had our fill of musical training. But, I was the only sibling in my family that was interested in a musical career. At the age of fifteen my dreams turned to songwriting. When I graduated from High School in 1986, my first thought was to jump on a bus heading toward LA and start living my dream! But, my mother convinced me that this plan wasn’t very well thought out. Read more>>
Jill Buchanan
I woke up one day and knew I wasn’t working to my full potential. As a music therapist for over 25 years, I had strengths in running sessions using live, improvised music with children and adults to attain skills in communication and socialization, but I wanted something more, something bigger. I had often repeated to myself, “I wish I could run my own practice. A place where we could have music pouring out of the rooms at all hours. Other healing practitioners would come and do their good work. We could support each other while we supported our clients”. The more I thought about it, the more The Meraki Center became a reality. Read more>>
Mariana Nacht
I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina but moved to the states when I was 2 years old. My father is a biochemist and came to the US to do a post-doctoral fellowship in Salt Lake City. We moved around a lot when I was growing up: after Salt Lake City, we moved to the Bay Area (CA) and then to NY. The day after I graduated high school, my parents moved to CT. I went to college in the Boston area (Tufts) and then moved to NYC for 3 years to work in an influenza lab before getting a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Pennsylvania. I also met my husband in grad school, and we had our first child as we were each writing our theses. Read more>>
Paul Lukez
After graduating from MIT’s School of Architecture, where I was introduced to so many great teachers and practitioners, I realized that architecture could have a major impact on shaping our environment, our cities and the people that inhabit them. After working for five years for some excellent firms in Boston, I set out to start my own architectural studio in a loft building in the North End occupied primarily by artists. I had $500 in the bank. I entered a major urban design competition and was one of the winners. In addition, I got a commission for a small project in Martha’s Vineyard. Read more>>
Anna Gaul
Tipping Cow started four years ago by attending local farmers markets in the Boston area, and one year ago, we opened our own scoop shop in Somerville. We make all of our ice cream in house, and have fun playing with new and exciting flavors, such as blueberry ginger, strawberry basil, and Irish Stout. Our greatest struggle was in the beginning, before we opened our own location. We used a shared kitchen, and while it was a great way to get started, using a shared space always has its problems. Read more>>
Alexandra Rozenman
I came to America thirty two years ago with my parents, as a political refugee, from Moscow, Russia. As a child growing up in the Soviet Union I received a soviet-style education which was wholly obliterated when I became twelve and started studying with dissident artists. As a teenager, I had already become part of Moscow growing alternative cultural scene in the 1980’s. My mother was teaching language and theater in our small communal apartment. She was a teacher. Read more>>
Nhon Ma
The story starts with Nhon Ma, a Belgium native who grew up immersed in the food and the restaurant business. Both of his parents owned a world-renowned restaurant in Belgium, while his mother was the only female Asian chef to attain the coveted Michelin Star Award. Nhon grew up taste testing the food and working alongside his parents. He became friends with Bertrand Lempkowicz while at school in Brussels. They bonded while feasting on Belgian waffles after classes. Later, while traveling in the US, they discovered that there were no authentic Belgian waffles sold there. Read more>>
Liz and Jared Kiraly
We’re a husband and wife brewing duo, and like most brewers out there we got our start brewin’ in the kitchen. And after years of brewing up a storm and fantasizing about a brewery all our own, we made the leap! Fueled by optimistic delusion, we drafted a business plan and started scouting for properties – “we’ll be making beer by summer!” we said. Then after two and a half years of property searching, negotiations, permit hearings, license approvals, contractor wrangling, and a metric ton of DIY construction (with the exception of plumbing and electrical, we did the entirety of our own buildout – and it shows!) we were finally able to open! Read more>>
Tamie Bilazzo
I used to work at start-up high tech company as a senior data network engineer in Chelmsford. I had an assignment in Tokyo that week. Since I completed the task earlier that I thought in Chelmsford Fiber Optic start-up, I thought I could have fly one day early to spend the time with engineer team in Tokyo. It probably due to 13 hours’ time differences here in Japan, I woke up very early next day. I turned the TV on and found every single channel showing 9/11 plane crash in U.S. Not many people owned cellular phone or using email back then. I could not call my husband due to the high-volume calls to U.S. I did not know the details of what was really happening in U.S. I ended up staying 2 weeks in Japan. Read more>>
Deborah Mason
It all began when Mason was fourteen years old, in Cambridge’s Central Square neighborhood. Her teacher was about to close one of her dance school locations, but she instead had Mason teach a few Saturday classes there – with her own keys and run of the space. She was, essentially, “running the studio,” said Mason – while also working two other jobs, taking her own dance classes, and getting top grades in school. By age twenty-two, she owned her own school. Mason never did go to college, she said, something that she had always wanted to do. Read more>>
Lynn Bratley
I started Improbable Players with three others in 1984 to inform people about addiction and recovery through theater. My own story, which once seemed so ordinary to me – a story of closet drinking, nightly blackouts, and endless promises to quit – became the basis for the first play, still performed today: it tells a timeless story of the hope and reality of long-term recovery. Since then over 200 actors and more than a million people in audiences from elementary school to senior centers, community coalitions to national conferences have been educated and entertained by the Players, pioneers in putting an authentic face on recovery. Read more>>
Nadira Jamal
I’m living proof that you should listen to your mother. In 1998, my mom was sent to review a dance performance for a newspaper in Buffalo, NY. When she got home, she said: “you should try this; you’d be good at this.” And she was right. I did some dance as a child: a little ballet, jazz, modern, and even took a lunchtime West African dance in middle school. I loved moving, but none of the forms I tried felt like they fit me. In particular, ballet felt like fighting my body, not working with it. So when I tried belly dance in 2000, it was like coming home. That’s not to say that it was easy. Read more>>
Tom von Zabern
After 33 years of work in corporate and franchised real estate offices, the desire to work independently and be free had become irresistible, and during the holiday season of 2014 I said good bye to my boss and set up my own office in my Cambridge home. I had worked for some good companies over the years, but have no regrets about being independent! There’s that marvelous ability to be creative, to be free from the obligation to use corporate logos and graphics. If a property is fun to live in and has great period architecture, there’s nothing to stop me from highlighting that during a presentation, and I am free to use anything from fabulous antique cars to period furniture to highlight the era the property represents. Read more>>
Abbey Henderson
Coming out of Dartmouth College as an Economics major, I thought that I wanted to be an accountant. It turned out that while I loved numbers and finance, I needed more personal client interaction and wanted to feel like I was making a difference for individuals not businesses. That led me to pursue financial planning. I was lucky in that the accounting firm that I was working for at the time had a financial planning group and they were generous enough to let me make a change. I worked at that accounting firm and then a Boston law firm in wealth management from 1997-2001. In 2001, I decided that I wanted to strike out on my own and I started Abaris Financial Group with two clients and $600,000 under management. Read more>>
Susan Taub
I received a BA in Child Study from Tufts University and an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I have over 38 years of experience in the field of education. My career has spanned teaching elementary school; supervising student teachers, teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in education at five colleges, being an education consultant conducting in-service training in schools throughout Vermont. In 2003, I completed an intensive college counselor training program and have counseled prospective students throughout the country and internationally ever since. Read more>>
Nate and Maryn Coughran
Maryn and I love two things in this world. Empowering other people and our kids. We already have 3 kids and so we decided it was time to pursue our other love: empowering. After working with dozens of companies and hundreds of young professionals over the years, we started to notice a trend. Many young professionals did not have the skills to get the job they wanted or progress as quickly in a company. Unfortunately, many schools don’t teach skills and employers expect young professionals to already have these skills when they are hired. This leaves young professionals on their own. We decided to create a company to fix this problem. Read more>>
Gary Bailey
I graduated from Lexington High School in Lexington, Massachusetts, served in the United States Armed Forces as a U.S. Customs & Immigration Agent for the U.S. Air Force, and had duty stations in the Philippines, Korea, Arizona, and Massachusetts. I received a top-secret security clearance from the Armed Forces, which allowed me to work around the U.S. President’s airplane, Air Force One, Stealth Bomber Spy Plane and AWACS aircrafts to name a few. I obtained a Masters Degree, and worked for a few big Corporations before I was discovered by a Talent Agent in Hawaii while on vacation, and started an exciting acting career shooting TV commercials, and ad campaigns all around the world over the past twenty five plus years. Read more>>
Didier and Cesidia Baugniet
My husband and I have been in this business for over 30 years. At the time we decided to move forward with our own place, my husband was in between jobs. He was tired of the corporate world telling him what he could cook. I also worked in the hotel restaurant industry. It was hard to spend time together and with our kids. We felt with our own place we could set our own hours and still be together as a family. We chose Arlington because it was a great little spot. Arlington was coming up. We knew between the both of us we could run the restaurant and still manage our growing young family. Read more>>
Lyudmila Teshler
Moving from New York to Massachusetts was a professional challenge. I left behind a small, but thriving private practice, a wonderful school job and many talented colleagues. Balancing family, parenthood and adjusting to a new city took some time and effort. Once I got my bearings, I started working on establishing my career in the Boston area. I was fortunate enough to gain employment in one the largest and best known Occupational Therapy practices in the area. There, I met my business partner Anastasia Ivanenko. Read more>>
Eric Luden and Andrea Zocchi
Digital Silver Imaging started when the founder, Eric Luden, saw a technology that he believed would revolutionize black & white photographic printing. The technology uses a photographic laser to make prints on light sensitive photo paper. The resulting print is indistinguishable from a traditional darkroom print made from film. With this new technology, no film or negative is required, but all the quality, expanded tones, long life, and beauty of a darkroom print can be obtained from a digital camera. Digital Silver Imaging (DSI) was started by Eric and his wife, the independent curator, J. Sybylla Smith in 2008. Read more>>
Samantha Burns
As a Licensed Mental Health Counselor, I have my master’s in Counseling Psychology and opened a private practice where I treat individuals and couples around relationship issues. I saw a need in the community for a more direct, advice-giving approach, so I took my clinical knowledge and skills and created coaching programs, which are faster paced than traditional therapy and results driven to help those heartbroken to bounce back from a breakup, singles to find the love they have always desired, and couples to create the love life they deserve. In addition to my practice, I’m also the founder of www.lovesuccessfully.com where I publish advice articles and free downloads, such as my eBook, “Love Successfully: 10 Secrets You Need To Know Right Now.”. Read more>>
Brian Thompson
TCW was founded by my father Bruce Thompson in 1989. He started out as a one man shop in Danvers MA and added a few employees over the years. I grew up in the shop learning things from my father. I started out sweeping and cleaning up at young age, by the age of 14 I was helping with cabinet and furniture assembly and installation. Today I work side by side with my father and other family members like my wife and my little sister. Over the years we moved locations a few times and are now located in Winchester which is more centrally located to Boston and many of our clients. Read more>>
