Women Of Influence

As of January, Nikola Labs Inc. was headed for its best year ever. By April, like many businesses shut down by the coronavirus pandemic, the startup was in "the fog of war." In the latest episode of Crisis Management, Columbus Business First's podcast about steering a business through the pandemic, Nikola co-founder Will Zell and CEO Brian Graham discuss how Graham succeeded Zell mid-pandemic after two years as COO...

Lauren Parker is no stranger to imposter syndrome. She questioned herself in her early days as an account executive in the high-stakes world of New York City public relations firms right out of school. Now in her early 30s and a little less than a year into her tenure as CEO of Columbus' FrazierHeiby, she's aware that she might not fit the profile of a top executive at a decades-old firm...

When Gina Heffner started her career, she was a typical consultant: a "road warrior," traveling all over the country week in and week out. She didn't mind and made it work, aided by the fact that her husband also traveled extensively and the couple didn't have children yet. But after a while, she found her way to Centric Consulting, a firm founded with the explicit purpose of bucking that industry norm...

Simple Times Mixers’ big problem prior to 2020 was space. Its first two years of business were spent building its brand and then trying to keep up with demand as it used rental kitchen space. Last year it finally moved into a home of its own, not just giving it a retail storefront and space for events, but also quadrupling its production size with plenty of space to grow. Then the Covid-19 pandemic hit this spring and knocked out 75% of its sales...

Karen Hough has built her business around her improv background, but it came in handy in a way she never could have expected amid the challenges of 2020. "We proved to ourselves that we are truly improvisers," said Hough, founder and CEO of ImrovEdge, a Powell-based business that provides business training workshops "with an improv twist." Prior to the pandemic, Powell said, about 5% of the firm's clients had taken advantage of its services virtually...

Cameron Mitchell wasn’t sure he restaurant company would still be around. The founder and CEO of Cameron Mitchell Restaurants was just as scared as anyone in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic that the event might lead to the end of the company he’s spent nearly three decades building. Now seven months in, the self-described optimist feels more confident in his business’ survival and hopeful the worst has already occurred...

Janica Pierce Tucker has a solid job – she's the partner in charge at Taft Stettinius & Hollister's Columbus officer. Her income is steady, her family is healthy. On the whole, things are going pretty well for her. But that doesn't mean she can close her eyes to the racial justice conversations that exploded across the country this summer. "When I step out here on High Street, you don't know anything about me. All you see, is a African American female, that's all you see...

Columbus Food Adventures thought its business was done when Ohio shut down dine-in restaurants in March. After all its business was based on going into restaurants. In groups. That’s two things that couldn’t be done then and are still limited today months later. “In a sense, we were starting from scratch,” said co-owner Andy Dehus. “We just had to completely re-configure everything.” A business built around tours taking people to food turned into a delivery service bringing food to people...

One of the industry's most affected by the coronavirus pandemic has been healthcare, with hospitals not only serving on the front lines of the response to COVID-19, but also seeing their finances up ended by a temporary ban on elective procedures. The pandemic has also accelerated the adoption of telehealth, which has implications for hospitals operations and their physical expansion plans...

Heather Blair and her team have had plenty of work to keep them busy in 2020. Blair is the leader of JPMorgan's Columbus technology hub, a 5,000-person team that's responsible for creating seamless digital experiences for all the financial giant's customers...