Women in Business 2014

4 women under 40

Some of Austin’s brightest young workers share their stories

I

t takes a lot of skill to make a place like Austin so great. There are 25,000 Austinites who work hard to make products, save lives, teach others and keep people safe.

What’s more, younger workers are continuously taking the lead to better our community. That’s why Austin Living previously showcased some of the best and brightest young talent in the area. These professionals, all under 40, are excelling at their jobs, which makes the rest of Austin a success and a great place to live.

This story previously appeared in

Katie Baskin

Lindsey Haney

Nakayla Majewski

Brigitte Campbell

It didn’t take long for Katie Baskin to realize how much she missed Austin.

The longtime Austin educator became principal of Austin High School in early 2014 after almost two years at White Bear Lake Public Schools, but Baskin had been a part of Austin Public Schools since she graduated from Concordia University in 2002.

Baskin had teaching in her blood — both her parents were teachers.

“When I was younger in high school, I taught swimming in the summer and I just always loved working with kids,” she said. “It was just an easy choice.”

Though Baskin thought she may become an athletic director one day, she didn’t expect to step into an administrative role so early in her career. She taught math at Ellis Middle School for three years before she became the dean of students at Austin High School, then she became assistant principal for seven years.

Nowadays, Baskin’s days are busy.

A principal works more with staff than with students, but Baskin still interacts with teenagers every day.

“As principal, you really get to impact what they are experiencing on a daily level and on a daily basis,” she said.

She is pleased to have come back to Austin and is grateful to have had so much guidance in her career. She also recommends prioritizing tasks and goals as much as possible, as there’s often more work to do than the day before.

“I once had a mentor tell me, ‘If you can look at yourself in the mirror and say I did the best I could today,’ then you’re successful,’” she said.

At first, Lindsey Haney took a cosmetology course at Riverland Community College as an interest rather than a passion. She had always loved the arts, but she hadn’t considered cosmetology as a career.

“I signed up last minute,” she said.

“I don’t even remember why. I kind of felt like it was the most creative thing I could go to school for in Austin at the time.”

Haney was hooked on hair styling immediately, however. Everything came naturally to her, as she puts it, and the art courses she previously took helped her excel in school.

“It all made sense,” she said.

After college, Haney worked at several area salons for a few years before she and a co-worker decided to strike out on their own.

“We had the same mindset when it came to our vision,” she said.

“We wanted a place that was very professional, but not stuffy, gender neutral — Men or women could come in here.”

That vision became the Style Lounge, a successful salon in downtown Austin.

As co-owner, Haney works harder than most as she sees clients and helps run the business.

She can see up to 10 clients a day, depending on how many hours she has, and works hard to meet her client’s needs.

“A day in the life of a successful hairstylist is busy,” she said. “A lot of days, you go non-stop.”

Being a successful entrepreneur wasn’t easy, as she had to find balance between her work and her family. Yet Haney credits her time management skills as a key to her success.

“You just develop time management,” she said.

Her passion is another key motivator for work: “[Your work] has to be your true passion,” she said.

Nakayla Majewski loves helping people.

It’s part of the reason why she got into human resources, after all. Her passion for people has helped propel the 24-year-old Austinite into a top slot as a physician recruiter at Mayo Clinic Health System in Albert Lea and Austin.

“This is my dream job,” she said.

“This was what I dreamed of, being a recruiter of some sort, and I’m very fortunate to be able to recruit physicians and nurse practicioners and physician’s assistants.”

A 2011 Winona State University graduate, Majewski spent a short time at Fastenal before she decided to apply for a recruiter role with Mayo.

Since she moved here in 2012, Majewski has spoken with plenty of candidates from all parts of the U.S. and many other countries to see where they fit best with Mayo and with Austin.

Of course, it helps that she’s so interested in people.

“Being a people-person is something that came natural and easy for me,” Majewski said.

Majewski credits her success to the work ethic her parents taught as well as her dedication to making her goals happen. She also advises people to get involved in their community, as she has with the Austin Area Commission for the Arts and Leadership Austin.

“You definitely have to know the community you’re speaking of when you’re talking to these candidates,” she said.

The nonprofit world wasn’t Brigitte Campbell’s first career, but she can’t imagine doing anything else.

Campbell was a lifelong Austinite who graduated from Riverland Community College and Mankato State University before she became a Pacelli Catholic Schools teacher. Her literature degree came in handy as she became a drama director, as well as a reading and English teacher, at Pacelli for her first four years out of school.

Yet Campbell was intrigued by a job opening at the American Red Cross.

“I think I was ready for a change and wanted to give back to the Red Cross,” she said.

She spent four years at the Red Cross as the executive assistant and found she really enjoyed nonprofit work.

“I really admired the director there and was given an opportunity to act in a leadership role,” she said. “It was during my time there that I knew that I wanted to someday be an executive director for a nonprofit.”

Campbell joined the local Habitat for Humanity in December 2012 and has expanded the organization’s efforts since then. She now leads a staff of three and Habitat for Humanity works closely with Vision 2020 and the city of Austin on exterior home repairs for needy families. Campbell helps tackle all of this on top of a growing list of homes to build in the area — Habitat volunteers have helped build five homes in Freeborn and Mower County this year.

For Campbell, all that work is worth it.

“I felt in my heart of hearts that this was where I needed to be,” she said.

Hattie Stadheim’s fall collection shows autumn isn’t just sweaters and scarves

By Eric Johnson

eric.johnson@austindailyherald.com

Fall clothing trends are continuing to drift toward heavy clothes: sweaters, jackets and scarves.

But there are avenues leading to a more eloquent look for fall. Clothes that can bridge the gap from the warmth of summer to the early days of autumn, a gap designer Hattie Stadheim is aiming to cross with her early fall line.

Her clothes are meant to be fitted and relaxed, able to both dress up as well as dress down and be edgy

and feminine.

Stadheim, who has launched her own line under her company, House of Hattie, dresses her customers in colors of cream, mint and black that is right at home in the time of year that can be blessedly warm during the day, but still be chilly at night.

“It’s not for super cold weather,” Stadheim explained. “Just to transition. You can layer this clothing line. It’s meant to be layered.”

See HATTIE, Page 2

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WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014

Women in Business Hattie Stadheim shows off The Willow Boyfriend Blazer, which sells for $65.

See more examples of Stadheim’s fashion in the SeptemberOctober edition of Austin Living.

A special supplement to the AUSTIN DAILY HERALD

Hattie: Local entrepreneur bringing her fashions to the public From Page 1 The layers of Stadheim’s first fall line are versatile, a bridge to her later, second fall line.

“I wanted to show versatility, but yet if a customer bought a piece, they don’t have to worry about what to wear with it,” Stadheim said.

One might think at first Stadheim used the three prime colors of tan (cream), mint and black because of a link to the season itself — green transitioning to browner colors.

But that’s looking too much into the meaning behind the clothes. For Stadheim, it’s more about class and a further effort to mix and match.

“I chose black and tan because to me it’s very classy,” she said. “It allows me to mix and match with a variety of colors. That’s where the mint color comes in kind of wanted to add a pop-out color.”

What’s more, Stadheim’s designs allow the customer to mix and match not only her clothes, but clothes they already have.

“I think it’s true how they perceive the clothes and adapt it to their own particular clothes,” Stadheim said. “I hope the customer sees that as well.”

As this early fall line is meant to bridge summer and fall, it also will serve to give customers a jumping-off point into colder days later this year. At the same time, this first line is able to work both lines into one.

“I’ll be taking a few design elements and incorporating them into the second fall collection,” she said. “[The second line] will have its own entity, but still be able to be worn with the first fall collection.”

There’s the larger picture to consider as well. How this line works into all the other seasonal lines Stadheim is working on.

“My hope is to have someone purchase a summer piece of clothing and fall and winter so they can see it as the House of Hattie,” she said. “I want them all to be able to coordinate and yet be able to stand alone in some way.

Women in Business

A special supplement to the AUSTIN DAILY HERALD

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014

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Book addresses ‘mean girls’ politics in the workplace

By David Fondler St. Paul Pioneer Press

F a c e b o o k e x e c u t ive Sheryl Sandberg famously told her female readers to “Lean In” when it came to advancing themselves in the workplace — and started a conversation.

Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella infamously told working wo m e n t h i s m o n t h t o stand back, not ask for a raise and have faith that the system, and “karma,” will reward them for their patience — and elicited a backlash. Nadella later apologized for his comments.

Then there is writer Anne Litwin, who advises women to work together to change rules that for years have been working against them.

In her book, “New Rules for Women; Revolutionizing the Way Women Work Together” (Third Bridge Press), Litwin redefines the battle of the sexes: Forget Man vs. Woman, it’s actually Woman vs. Women in the competitive workplace. Her solutions are open communication and mutual empowerment.

Litwin seeks to find out why, based on her research, women say they would rather work for a male boss than a female boss.

T h e a n sw e r i s t h a t with a male boss, the goal-oriented workplace expectations are defined.

Whereas women expect their female bosses and coworkers to be nurturing and friendly, and are dismayed when goals, results and discipline are enforced or when things become competitive.

When working women are seen backstabbing, gossipy or “catty,” it’s disheartening to those on the receiving end, but not unexpected: “That’s just the way women are,” Litwin’s research subjects say.

Litwin writes that these age-old female friendship rules are learned in childhood, tested in adolescence — think the “mean girls” in the school lunchroom — and then instinctively and unconsciously put into practice in the adult workplace.

A Boston-based business consultant by trade, Litwin was in St. Paul

last week to promote her book. The book sprang f ro m re s e a rch L i t w i n be gan years ago while working on her doctoral dissertation.

In an interview, Litwin discussed many of the concepts in her book. Her answers have been edited for context and clarity.

Q: What primarily do you think people should get out of this book?

A: “That there are ways in which many organizational cultures really set women up against each other, or at the very least create confusion for women about what to expect from each other in the workplace.

“I would like people to take away that they can change that experience when it is negative. My goal was to help women break the negative patter ns that they experience all too often with other women at work.”

Q: Do you think all women, at some point in their professional lives, are undermined by other women?

A: “I don’t know about all women, but a majority

do experience something like this. In my study, well over half of the women reported having an experience like this. I’ve seen studies where up to 75 percent of the women say they’ve experienced some form of undermining or sabotage or lack of support — on the continuum from mild to severe — from other women.

“They expect men to be competitive, to take the credit for ideas; it’s n o t a s u r p r i s e. W h e n it comes from women, they are shocked, surprised. I heard the word ‘sabotaged’ a lot. It think that really describes the strength of the emotional reaction.”

Q: But are most women, at some point in their careers, also perpetrators of this behavior?

A: “I don’t know, because we never asked that question, ‘have you ever done this to another woman?’ I would say from my own experience that I now realize I have been the perpetrator of some of those kinds of things, but I didn’t see myself as

doing it.

“I think we don’t see o u r s e l ve s d o i n g s o m e of these things; we see it in other people. These patterns really are deeply ingrained in us from childhood. They become unconscious; that’s the problem.

“But when I asked women in the study, they’d say, ‘I don’t know why we’re surprised. These are the same behaviors we saw in middle school, and the middle school bullies have just become adult women.’

“A n d s o, i f yo u a s k women, they’re not surprised, and on the other hand, they are surprised, because they have a different expectation coming into the workplace.

“One of my goals in writing this book was to help us as women on an individual level become more aware of our own behavior.”

Q: We see many women making it in the cor porate world. Are the Mary Barras, Meg Whitmans and Marissa Mayers of the world adopting these new

models?

A: “My sense is that particular group are acting more like masculine managers. They have done what they had to do to get up there, they’ve made themselves into men and they’re doing very well.

“I do know that Sheryl Sandberg, for all the criticism she’s gotten, has made an effort to change the culture of Facebook in terms of getting more women up into senior management and changing culture.”

Q : H o w d o e s yo u r book differ from Sandberg’s “Lean In?” A: “I like her book, and I think it’s made a huge contribution by getting conversations going that were not happening before. What’s dif ferent about my book is that I focus more on the macro — on the organizational structures and what it is that women can do together to change those structures. And hers is more focused on what individual womenneed to do.”

—Distributed by the Associated Press

St. Paul mom keeping local kids warm with donated cowls

By Allison Kronberg St. Paul Pioneer Press

Last winter’s biting wind and penetrating chill were unpleasant and even dangerous for many children who had to wait outside for a bus or walk to school.

But with a simple circle of fabric similar to a scarf — a “cozy cowl” — one St. Paul mom is trying to make this year a little more bearable for her customers and children in need.

Janna Murphy’s 2-yearold business, called Josie and Leo, follows a business model similar to the popular shoe company TOMS. For each cozy cowl purchased, Murphy will make an identical child-sized cowl to donate.

“I want (kids who receive a cowl donation) to feel like they just got a gift — it’s a present,” Murphy said. “I just want them to feel special.”

Murphy, 34, who also works as a hairdresser at the Rats Nest in St. Paul a few nights a week, will be donating to various local women’s shelters, schools and churches, such as Crossroads Preschool in Minneapolis and Dakota Woodlands shelter in Eagan.

About 100 cowls have been purchased since she began the donation process, and Murphy hopes to at least double that by the winter.

Como Park Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Stephen Belsito said the winter gear of his students often is inadequate. Stu-

dents wear flip-flops into December, he said, and many don’t have gloves, hats or scarves.

“You always wish you could do more to help them,” he said. “The kids aren’t going to come to you and say anything, but they’re always really gracious and helpful when you can help them out.

“Earlier this month, Murphy donated her first batch of cowls — more than 50 — to Crossroads Preschool in Minneapolis.

“It was a really positive experience,” Murphy said.

“It gave me joy to see the kids and gave me validation for why I was doing this.”

Her next planned donation will be at Dakota Woodlands women’s shelter in Eagan during the week of Halloween.

Mur phy got the idea for her business venture one day while playing outside after school with her two kids — Josie, 6, and Leo, 4.

The family was building snow forts in the yard when a young neighbor passed them. He had his shoulders hunched and his face buried in his light jacket, Murphy said.

She told him she had something for him and grabbed an extra cowl she had inside.

“From there I could have just left it at that, but then all of the sudden I’m like, ‘There are so many kids,’ “ Murphy said. “I just think that comes from being a mom, seeing how your kids are and feeling how you would feel if that was your child.”

Murphy uses remnant pieces and up-cycled fabrics to help her maintain a slim profit since she started duplicating each cowl.

The business has been advertised through social media and word of mouth.

Although Murphy admits exposure is a challenging part of the process, a presence online has been paying off, she said.

Instagram is where one

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buyer, digital marketing manager and Minneapolis local Jennifer Kaplan, 30, found the product. Kaplan bought a cowl in late September and said she is excited about the donation that will follow.

“I live a really busy lifestyle, especially with the amount of hours I work, so I don’t get a ton of time to volunteer and give back to the community,” Kaplan said. “I was already online shopping, so I thought, ‘Might as well squeeze that in.’ “

The product also appealed to Kaplan because it was local and handmade, she said.

Murphy does all the sewing by herself. About a year ago, Murphy was only able to sew about one cowl every hour. Now, she can sew up to seven.

Depending on the project’s popularity, she might consider making a new product to donate next year — like mittens.

“I’ve gotten people who have offered to help me a lot, you know, but I think

for now, I just like doing it.

It makes me happy. It just feels good on my soul to do it,” Murphy said.

“So I just feel that as long as I can do it, I’ll do it.”

Adult cozy cowls cost $35 to $38, kids’ cowls are $30.

They can be bought online at www.josieandleo. com with free shipping or at the Rat’s Nest salon on Tuesdays and Thursdays, when Murphy has a table there for her product.

—Distributed by MCT Information Services

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Women in Business

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2014

A special supplement to the AUSTIN DAILY HERALD

A passion for recreation Willow Cove is now downtown

By Jason Schoonover

jason.schoonover@austindailyherald.com

Jill Jones’ passion is taking something old and turning it into something new.

“Some people say, ‘Think outside the box.’

I look at the box and go, ‘What can I do with that box?’” she said.

Jones, the owner of Willow Cove, is looking to expand her passion for restyling old furniture and other items after moving her business downtown recently.

Willow Cove focuses on home decor, especially furnishing, gifts and restyling services. She redoes tables, chairs and other furniture and also makes custom signs.

Some may confuse such items for antiques, but Jones mainly deals with hand-crafted, “up cycled” pieces. Jones has taken old rocking chairs, frames, magazine holders and other items and remade them into something new.

“I’m very into renewing the resources that we have,” she said. “I like taking something and making it new, reusable.”

Jones opened Willow Cove in Oak Park Mall about two years ago, but she’s looking forward to new opportunities downtown at 309 N. Main St. — the former Ooh La La! location.

“I feel like the best place for me is downtown because of the vision downtown has,” she said.

“I feel like the downtown

is going with that small town, local business-type shopping” With Vision 2020’s downtown efforts, the Austin ArtWorks Center and other changes, Jones sees downtown as a budding tourist location.

“I belong downtown with the local businesses,” she said.

Moving downtown, Jones would like to bring in more new, hand-crafted items and be a hub for other people to display and sell their handiwork.

“I think there’s a lot of talented people in town,” she said.

Currently, she sells several items on consignment, but she’s not sure if she’s looking to do more consignment work or offer people space in the store.

“Austin needs a store where people can go and shop for local creations,” she said.

Jones does some home decorating, both with color coordinating and helping select items and decorations.

“It’s definitely something I’m hoping to expand,” she said.

She also sells Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint and teaches classes on up-cycling with the paint.

She plans to hold classes in the store, through Community Education and across the street from her new location at the Austin ArtWorks Center.

Miss Mustard Seed Milk Paint is natural paint known for

producing an aged, “chippy” look. It’s used in a lot of restoration and craft projects.

“It’s a very artsy paint,” she said.

Jones is an Austin native. She and her husband, Kevin, have four sons and a step-daughter ranging from 13 to 23.

Jones may have some space in her store to rent out to other tenants, especially for more service-based businesses, as office space or as studio space. For more or to contact Jones, check out www.facebook.com/ WillowCoveAustinMn.

Coming Soon:

Look for a story on Jill Jones and the milk paint she sells in the November-December edition of Austin Living.

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