Women Of Influence

COTA CEO Joanna Pinkerton is always eager to pick up a new book. In fact, when she joined Columbus Business First's Women of Influence podcast a few weeks ago via Zoom, she said she was in the middle of four. Her interests vary from historical fiction to business books that get at the psychology behind performance, books like Questions are the Answer by Hal B. Gregersen. But Pinkerton's love of re...

Back in 2009, Heather Whaling had a steady job, leading public relations and taking point on social media for a communications agency in Orlando. She'd spent some time learning the ins and outs of social media, and speaking to audiences across the country about what it could do for their business. Confident in what she'd learned, Whaling approached the head of business development at the agency, a...

Heather Whaling gave birth to her son five weeks early in an Akron hospital. She spent the next 13 days with him in the NICU, hours away from her life in Columbus and the firm she had just recently founded, Geben Communication. "It was the most stressful experience of my life," Whaling said. But there were some stressors she didn't need to worry about: whether she would still be getting a paycheck...

Early in her career, Kim Zavislak thought the best way to succeed was to keep her head down and work hard. But after a little more than a decade with KPMG, Zavislak realized there was something else she needed to do: make her voice heard. "You do have to advocate for yourself," Zavislak said, when asked to offer her best advice for young women entering the workforce. Her other big tip? “I think it...

Remember the days before Covid-19, when traveling for business was a common occurrence? Now most of us aren't even traveling to the office, let alone to another part of the country. Still, even it takes several months – or maybe years – there will likely come a day when people like Kim Zavislak, a partner in KPMG's audit practice, once again find themselves on the road (or in the air) quite freque...

Cathy Lyttle, a former journalist turned Columbus Chamber exec turned C-suite officer at Worthington Industries, had a front row seat to the Columbus Crew's arrival in Columbus. She was working for the chamber at the time, and was closely involved in the push to bring the team to Central Ohio. How did she feel, then, more than 20 years later, when it looked like the team might leave? "I was sad ab...

Cathy Lyttle's dining room table is now the "HR command center" for Columbus manufacturer Worthington Industries. Lyttle, whose job as Worthington's human resources chief is just one component of her wide-reaching influence in Central Ohio's business community, joined me for the first fully remote episode of our Women of Influence podcast. (She and I chatted about near the end of March, an importa...

A few years ago, Lori Gillett and a colleague from the Kokosing family of companies attended an event focused on women in the workplace and the challenges they face. It's easy to attend those types of events, resolve to take action based on what you've learned, and then quickly return to your normal daily routine without taking any steps to change things, Gillett said. But that's not what she and...

About a month ago, Columbus Business First hosted its annual Mentoring Monday event. Dozens of accomplished and up-and-coming professional women gathered at the Grand Event Center in Grandview Yard to share wisdom, build connections and hear a live recording of our Women of Influence podcast with Lori Gillett, CEO of Corna Kokosing. Then the world changed. Within weeks of that event, the Arnold Sp...

The United Way's traditional workplace model isn't the lucrative source of funds it once was, as employees look elsewhere to do their giving in a crowded philanthropic environment. That puts Lisa Courtice, CEO of the United Way of Central Ohio, in a tough spot: She must lead the organization's Columbus office as it identifies new ways to raise money and continue serving the community. Three years...

Lisa Courtice knows attitudes are changing about traditional four-year college degrees. And someday, she recognizes, the world may change enough that a certificate or another form of advanced training will be enough to help young people get ahead and the world today. But that's not what she sees today. According to Courtice, CEO of the United Way of Central Ohio, four-year degrees are one of the k...

Growing up, Amy Heintz wasn't totally sure what she wanted to do with her life. A lover of learning, she knew she wanted to go to college, and she knew she wanted to be "smart." But with the limited worldview of a child, she had an unusual role model for what that might mean. "As a child of the 80s, I really knew everything I knew from sitcoms," Heintz said during a recent taping of our Women of I...

About five years ago, several of Amy Heintz's friends and colleagues at Battelle started moving into management positions. But that's not what Heintz wanted to do. The chemist and materials scientist had her sights set on a pair of recognitions within the company: Inventor of the Year and Distinguished Inventor, the latter of which requires 14 U.S. patents. So she eschewed the management path, sta...

As CEO of White Castle, Lisa Ingram is responsible for the future of a company with nearly 100 years of history behind it. As we wrapped up our podcast interview at the company's new headquarters – just one piece of a $65 million project that represents a dramatic shift for the company as it readies to enter its second century – I asked Ingram to talk about her own future. Pulling out that most cl...

Lisa Ingram doesn’t have a desk anymore. The company she leads, White Castle System Inc., is about four months into its tenure at its brand-new headquarters, part of the $65 million Reach on Goodale headquarters. The new building is completely open-concept, with even Ingram and her fellow executives sitting out on the floor without an office door to hide behind. “I figured … if I’m going to going...

After she graduated from high school, Debbie Penzone came to Columbus with one dream in mind: to work at a Penzone hair salon. Of course she wasn't yet Debbie Penzone at that point, she was just a girl from Springfield with a talent for making people look beautiful. When she expressed her dream to one of her teachers at cosmetology school, though, she was surprised at the reaction she got. “Debbie...

Columbus Business First reporter Hayleigh Colombo got her haircut last weekend. She went to Great Clips. And when she returned to the office Tuesday morning and mentioned the cut, she was quick to defend that choice. Why? Because she feels women are unfairly expected to pay high prices for salon haircuts from a stylist they loyally visit every six weeks. Having just booked my own high-priced salon...

You might know Donna James from her time at Columbus financial and insurance giant Nationwide. Or maybe you or someone you know have been a member of the African American Leadership Academy, which she co-founded. Or perhaps you've served on a board with her, or worked for a nonprofit she's helped shepherd, or encountered her through her advisory work at her firm, Lardon & Associates. In short,...

Donna James was doing work she loved, leading several financial services subsidiaries of Columbus-based insurance giant Nationwide. Then she had a stroke. "It was what the doctors would technically call a mini-stroke, but it didn't feel mini to me," James said during a recent taping of our Women of Influence podcast. James, who was only 49 at the time of her stroke, recovered, but she saw the medi...

Don't use the word "spin" when talking to Hinda Mitchell about her career in public relations. "That's … the sort of thing that really just gets my ire up," Mitchell, president of Inspire PR Group, said during a recent taping of our Women of Influence podcast. In Mitchell's view, her line of work does involve working with reporters to share stories, but she can't "snap (her) fingers" and make a ne...

Hinda Mitchell's entire staff is female, a not incredibly uncommon fact in the female-dominated public relations industry. But the Inspire PR Group founder has a simple reason for the reason her firm is currently entirely staffed by women: it's data, not just demographics. The women who Mitchell has hired on the people who've performed the best on what her team dramatically refers to as "the test....

There aren't many power centers in Columbus that Trudy Bartley isn't somehow connected to. Now the associate vice president of local government and community relations at Ohio State University, Bartley's resume includes time spent with both city and state government, in the nonprofit world and in the private development community. She's been closely involved with Franklin County's Rise Together an...

In 2007, Trudy Bartley was recruited to become the president of Diversified Development Group, a minority-owned real estate firm. It didn't go exactly as planned. "When I started with Diversified Development, that is when the recession hit,” Bartley, now a vice president with Ohio State University, said during a recent taping of our Women of Influence podcast. “At that point in time the banks were...

For Angie Lloyd, her first impulse when presented with a career opportunity that seems "fun and interesting" is to say yes. That, in a nutshell, is how she decided to become executive director of the Ohio Access to Justice Foundation (previously the Ohio Legal Assistance Foundation) in 2011. And it changed many things about her daily life – including how people reacted to her when she approached....

Angie Lloyd didn't think she would grow up to be a lawyer. She knew she wanted to help people, which is why she decided to join the Peace Corps. One day, while teaching English in Kenya, she found herself and her fellow faculty members detained by armed military personnel for 24 hours following the publication of banned content in her students' makeshift newspaper. "It was discussed how you were n...