By All Means

Just a little over a decade ago, Emily Pritchard’s job didn’t exist. As an undergraduate entrepreneurship student, she noticed that her friends were communicating over social media, but businesses weren’t meeting them there. In 2011, straight out of the University of St. Thomas, she and a partner launched The Social Lights, a social media agency that helps brands with strategy, content, and optimi...

On Indigenous People’s Day 2021, Minnetonka –the 76 year-old non-Native owned company known for its moccasins, publicly apologized for appropriating native culture and promised to make reparations. Guiding that work was Adrienne Benjamin, an artist, community builder, and member of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. Benjamin was suddenly thrust into the spotlight as news of Minnetonka’s apology and re...

What happens when that corporate leadership path leaves you a bit unfulfilled? Amanda LaGrange got involved in the creation of a social enterprise designed to reduce waste and create jobs. Two years later, she exited the Fortune 500 career she thought she wanted to run that new social enterprise. LaGrange is the CEO of Repowered, formerly Tech Dump. Established in 2011, Repowered is now one of the...

Scott Olson is the founder of one of the most iconic lifestyle products to come out of Minnesota in the 20th Century: the Rollerblade. He didn’t invent the inline skate, but he improved on a design that had virtually no market traction and made it an international fitness phenomenon and a product that endures still today. Launched in 1980, Rollerblade steadily grew into a hot commodity. But by 198...

“Know what your mission is and what your values are. You can’t engage in everything. If there’s an issue that affects your mission and values, you better speak out. You better be behind it.” Bill George is the former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, and currently a professor at Harvard Business School. He’s the author of several books on leadership. The latest, "True North: Emerging Leader Edition,"...

“We are trying to build a really amazing company founded on principles of equity that makes money…and that delivers a new future for what work can look like.” Kate Downing Khaled is the founder and CEO of Imagine Deliver, a Minneapolis-based consultancy that specializes in transformation strategy. She takes us inside her process of finding new ways forward by putting people who have experienced a...

“I didn’t have a business model. I had an idea. And I refused to give up.” Former pro athlete Tyrre Burkes is on a mission to make youth sports safer. His Minneapolis based company, Players Health, provides a platform for coach credentialing and training, injury reports, management, and abuse investigations. The company has raised $30 million since its 2016 formation. But Players Health really hit...

Julie Allinson didn’t just create a company; she invented a new product category in 2000 with the launch of Eyebobs, the eyewear brand that turned reading glasses into a fashion statement. With its bold colors and daring shapes, Eyebobs developed a cult-like following that included celebrities from Elton John to Lauren Hutton. Today, Eyebobs offers both prescription glasses and readers that are so...

Manny Villafana is responsible for some of the most important breakthroughs in cardiovascular health care in the last five decades starting with Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. (CPI), the world’s first lithium-powered pacemaker and St. Jude Medical, which introduced the heart valve that became the industry standard and was sold to Abbott Laboratories in 2016 for $25 billion. He’s now working on his eighth...

When Junita Flowers was at her lowest, baking cookies became an escape. She turned that feeling into a social enterprise business. “Junita’s Jar is so much more than a delicious bag of cookies,” Flowers says. “It’s a bag of hope.” But striking a healthy balance between purpose and profit can be challenging for a mission driven startup. The initial model of selling to businesses that would bring Fl...

As the co-founder of Primp, a Minneapolis-based “cheap chic” boutique chain that grew to nine stores throughout the Midwest and a robust online following, Michele Henry had barely taken time off with her first two kids. When her third baby arrived, she vowed to take a true maternity leave, and that’s when she realized that an entrepreneur never really stops. Short on time for herself with three li...

Most people demonstrate their adoration of a consumer brand by buying a bunch of its products. Tom Sega bought the company. Since becoming the owner and CEO of Duluth Pack in 2007, Sega reinvigorated the brand's positioning, greatly expanded the product line and reach, and improved efficiencies that made the American-made, handcrafted canvas and leather goods collection profitable once again. Dulu...

In the early 2000s, leading consumers to a brand on the Internet could seem like a mystery, and Nina Hale loved the challenge. After years of working in advertising and digital strategy for other companies, Hale launched her own Minneapolis-based performance marketing agency in 2005. She called it Nina Hale Inc. and specialized in search engine optimization. Clients included UnitedHealth Group, Re...

Spencer Johnson sketched his initial designs for Sota Clothing as part of a class project while pursuing a graphic design degree at the University of Minnesota Duluth. His clean, modern designs and signature crossed paddles caught fire, and within a few years of graduating, Sota Clothing hit $1 million in sales. Sota became a fixture at popup shopping events and the Minnesota State Fair; the appar...

The secondhand clothing market is growing 11 times faster than traditional retail, according to research by Global Data. Children’s clothing is the fastest growing category, which makes sense considering the typical baby churns through seven sizes in the first two years of life. Kidizen, an online resale marketplace for kids clothes, makes selling those outgrown onesies as easy as taking a smartph...

Chemist and professor Paul Boswell couldn’t get over how little his students knew about how computers work. He started building a three-dimensional model to teach programming and realized he could turn it into a game. Named for Alan Turing, the father of modern computer science, Turing Tumble is basically a marble run that teaches people how to build computers—something no other game was doing at...

While building a career in financial services by working with large banks and investment firms, Dionne Gumbs grew increasingly bothered by the inequities in access to capital. She left the corporate world to pursue a big idea: remove the obstacles that prevent women and people of color from accessing the financial tools they need to succeed. In 2018, she launched GenEQTY, a fintech platform that p...

The gig economy wasn’t a thing in 2002 when Amy Langer and John Folkestad launched Salo LLC, a Minneapolis-based professional services firm that got its start placing senior level finance experts on project work, and soon expanded to HR, consulting, and more. Today, Salo is a national firm with more than 900 employees. The company recently hit a major milestone: $100 million in annual revenue. Lan...

Robbie Harrell started an ice company before he owned a freezer or knew anything about carving. Today, Minnesota Ice is the nation’s largest producer of sculpture-grade block ice and artisan cocktail ice, manufacturing and delivering up to 50 tons of ice per day. That’s after a pandemic setback that might have put the company out of business if not for Harrell’s doggedness. “Give me two weeks,” he...

The founder of 2 Gingers whiskey is at it again with a new Irish whiskey called Red Locks. Serial entrepreneur Kieran Folliard shares the process of launching new businesses, and why he’ll never retire. “I don’t play golf, I wouldn’t be any good on a beach," Folliard says. "I get to do something I’m passionate about, excited about.” He grew up in rural Ireland. He liked sports and drama. He descri...

Sally Mueller got inspired to become an entrepreneur as she entered menopause. A seasoned executive who launched dozens of successful lifestyle brands, product lines, and designer partnerships for big companies including Target and Clique Brands, she was shocked to find that beauty and wellness companies weren’t addressing symptoms of menopause in a modern way and set out to fill that void with Wo...

Emmy Award winning TV host Ian Grant is an entrepreneur driven by passion. He loves travel. He appreciates art. He is a gifted storyteller. And he’s found a way to turn those interests into his life’s work, culminating with his new PBS television series Culture Quest, in which he takes viewers around the world to experience different cultures through the lens of artists. Getting there has taken cr...

Around 60 million American children play an organized sport, according to the National Council of Youth Sports. If you’re the parent or coach of one of them, you likely rely on a smartphone app called SportsEngine to stay organized and on schedule. SportsEngine is the leading provider of enterprise software and mobile apps used by youth sports teams nationwide. The Minneapolis-based company is own...

Du Nord Craft Spirits is known in the industry as the nation’s first Black-owned micro distillery. It’s a distinction founder Chris Montana would like to shed. “I’m sick of being the ‘Black’ distiller,” Montana says. “I want it to be irrelevant, but the only way to do that is to get more people into the industry.” A year after the Minneapolis distiller nearly burned to the ground when protests tur...

Angie Tebbe is on a mission to make vitamins cool. “I believe that if you’re going to start something from scratch, dream big,” says Tebbe, who left the Target merchant job she thought she’d retire from on a gut instinct that she should be doing something tied to wellness. Within 8 weeks of quitting, she hatched the idea for Rae Wellness, a brand of natural supplements that address big issues incl...