Women Of Influence

Jennifer Rittler sees architecture as designing for the future. But that doesn’t mean the present doesn’t have an impact. Check out the latest episode of our Women of Influence podcast to hear how the pandemic is changing the spaces the Moody Nolan senior associate designs. She also talked with us about the need for diversity in the industry, and how she melds creativity and math to design new spa...

This isn't Erandi De Silva's first epidemic. De Silva, co-founder of Grove City's Forge Biologics, grew up in Botswana. She watched as the public health community worked with the government to respond to the AIDS epidemic, and she was inspired.  On our latest Women of Influence podcast, De Silva talked about that experience, and how she hopes the Covid-19 pandemic can similarly inspire the sc...

Nancy Matijasich wasn't looking for an IT job. She was supposed to meet with someone about a new job in the pharmaceutical industry, but her contact was running late to the job fair where they were supposed to talk. One case of mistaken identity and a different conversation later, a brand-new career path was born. Today Matijasich leads Manifest Solutions Corp., an IT consulting firm she founded n...

Lara DeLeone didn't grow up dreaming of working in banking. It wasn't even where she thought she would end up when she graduated from college. The lifelong lover of the written word made her way from journalism to communications to government to lobbying to, as of this summer, serving as Columbus market president for KeyBank , the eighth-largest bank in the Columbus metropolitan area. She recently...

Cheryl Stauffer's business had it's best year ever in 2020. But, as with many companies, it looked a little different than the norm.  Historically, Stauffer said, commercial clients represented the lion's share of Crimson Design Group's work. But as people settled in to a new normal of spending nearly every hour of every day at their homes, they realized those surroundings could be in need of...

Moving, whether it be to a new house or a new office, is always overwhelming. Add in widespread business shutdowns amid a rapidly spreading pandemic, and you've got a recipe for some serious stress. That's what happened to Vickie Thompson-Sandy, who was wrapping up her first year as CEO of The Buckeye Ranch and readying to shepherd the nonprofit's move to a new headquarters when the coronavirus pa...

There were times, over the past few months, that Luconda Dager didn’t want to get out of bed. Dager is president of Velvet Ice Cream, and the Utica-based company was outsourcing ice cream production to three partners in the Midwest. The shift followed a listeria scare in April, discovered via the company’s routine testing. It’s also part of an effort to boost capacity after strong demand in 2020....

Lori Duncan wasn't exactly sure what to do with her fine arts degree from Ohio State University. So she went rafting. Professionally. Duncan spent her post-college years as a whitewater rafting guide in West Virginia, filling her time during the winter months working in the ski industry. After nearly a decade, she realized it was time to get a "real job," a decision that led her to Columbus' retai...

Early on in Robbie Banks' career, she grew used to being in rooms where she was the only woman, the only young person, and often, the only person of color. Banks, the new program director for diversity, equity and inclusion for the Columbus Partnership, is now helping Columbus' private sector build more racial equity inside their organizations. "My job essentially is to shepherd the work that is b...

When LC Johnson was thinking of launching her organization Zora's House, she was balancing two competing feelings. On the one hand, she was feeling burned out from years of being an entrepreneur, but being a relatively new resident to the city, she deeply desired to build a community for other Black women and women of color in Columbus. "I was really starting to look for community," said Johnson,...

Elizabeth Martinez knows there's more to career growth than just rising through the ranks. "I think sometimes, we when we talk about growth, there is a disservice in the conversation to exclusively focus on vertical growth," Martinez, CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Ohio, said during a recent taping of our Women of Influence podcast. "I'm a strong supporter of women climbing ladders wit...

Linda Swearingen didn't spend much time thinking about the fact that she was working with mostly men. She was early in her career, working for a real estate investment trust, and it wasn't that notable to her that out of 40 or so desks on the loan floor, only hers and one other were occupied by women. "Except one day, nobody was there," Swearingen recalled during a recent taping of our Women of In...

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. "I have...

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...

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...

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 anyth...

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. Those demands got bigger this spring as the coronavirus pandemic increased customer demand for ways to interact with their bank remotely – an...

For a few weeks this year, Jenny Saunders felt a bit like a Disney princess. The lights in FCBank's headquarters are motion-sensitive. At the start of the pandemic, the bank's president was one of the few people working in the office, triggering the lights as she transitioned between rooms amid the largely empty space. Now more of the FCBank team is back in person, although Saunders said the work...

Lece Lohr hasn't met much of the leadership team at Columbus-based Highlights for Children Inc. in person. That's because Lohr started her new job as the company's president of consumer business in April, just a few weeks after the onset of the coronavirus pandemic sent most of us home from our offices. "I was completely uncertain of how it would be becoming a new president via Zoom," Lohr said du...

Few industries have been battered as much by Covid-19 as the restaurant industry. An estimated 11% of the state’s restaurants have closed for good and the fear is that number could rise if relief from operating restrictions, additional aid or both don’t arrive. Ohio Restaurant Association President and CEO John Barker spoke with Columbus Business First for this episode of crisis management. “Peopl...

Rhea Cunningham was preparing herself for a busy fall, with the start of part-time law school adding to her already full calendar of a full-time job and a busy family life. Then, during a routine visit, her doctor asked if she'd noticed some swelling in her neck. It wasn't long before she was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “I never took on the diagnosis as a sign of defeat," Cunningham said during...

Rhea Cunningham knows how it feels to be the only Black woman in the room. Cunningham is chief financial officer and director of human resources at New Albany-based roofing company Feazel, putting her in a leadership position in an industry that's not known for high levels of diversity. She and her colleagues have spent the summer listening and reflecting on how to grapple with the lack of diversi...

Jodie Bare started her new job as the Columbus Regional Airport Authority's chief innovation officer in early January. Her focus was simple: find ways to use technology to improve the passenger experience. Half a year later, the world looks very different – especially within a travel industry reeling from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. But Bare is still focused on finding ways to improve...

In the early days of her career, it wasn't uncommon for Jodie Bare to be one of if not the only woman in a room of her pers. "Men would look to me to be the one to take the notes in the meeting, or order lunch if it was a lunch meeting," Bare said of her early days in the technology industry. Bare, now the chief innovation officer for the Columbus Regional Airport Authority, recalled some of the c...

Growing up, Joanna Pinkerton's parents always taught her that she could accomplish anything she set her mind to. "There just was an early emphasis put into my life by my parents that if there's something you want to do ... there's nothing stopping you," said Pinkerton, CEO of the Central Ohio Transit Authority. It was only later in life that Pinkerton, an engineer who was used to finding herself i...