C-BIZ: Spring 2018

It’s all of our business.

SPRING 2018

Inside the i.Lab

A look at the city’s most prolific incubator How net neutrality affects our area A locally made 3-D printed sneaker

Liza Borches, President and CEO of Carter Myers Automotive

WOMEN&WORK

While #MeToo and Time’s Up illuminate workplace inequality nationally, who’s leading the local charge for a better balance of power?

Can innovation hubs Reinventing agriculture survive in Charlottesville? at Sylvanaqua Farms

How much do your peers get paid?

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6 C-BIZ

22

SPRING 2018

The new way to farm, says Sylvanaqua’s Chris Newman.

MELODY ROBBINS

IN THIS ISSUE...

11

11 THE PITCH

JOHN ROBINSON

Q&A with Jason Ness, Charlottesville’s business gatekeeper.

36 Women & work

The national conversation about women is heating up, from workplace inequality to the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements. This issue’s feature zooms in on powerful women locally—CEOs, executive directors, business owners and founders—and asks them how they’ve carved out their own lane.

Plus: Why diversity is good for the bottom line. ■ How HR works for women. ■ A case for funding women-owned businesses.

308 E. Main St. Charlottesville, VA 22902 (434) 817-2749 ■ c-ville.com c-ville.com/cbiz

27 30

Better bikes, by the people for the people.

The i.Lab’s impact

19

How UVA’s incubator is feeding Charlottesville’s community.

Forthcoming innovation hubs may be a boon to your creativity.

21

How will net neutrality affect us on a local level?

STEPHEN BARLING

15

AMY JACKSON

JOHN ROBINSON

A local company goes rogue to support foot health in new ways.

58 BACKSTORY Inge’s Grocery: 1891.

C-BIZ, a supplement to C-VILLE Weekly, is distributed all over Charlottesville, Albemarle County and the Shenandoah Valley. C-VILLE Weekly Editor Jessica Luck. C-BIZ Editor Caitlin White. C-BIZ Managing Editor Sierra Bellows. Contributors Samantha Baars, Eboni Bugg, John Feminella, Shea Gibbs, Erika Howsare, Julia Kudravetz, Erin O’Hare. Copy Editor Susan Sorensen. Creative Director Bill LeSueur. Graphic Designers Tracy Federico, Henry Jones, Max March, Lorena Perez. Advertising Director Erica Gentile. Account Executives Theressa Leak, Katie McCartney, Alex Patterson, Cindy Simmons, Eleanor VonAchen, Beth Wood. Production Coordinator Faith Gibson. Publisher Aimee Atteberry. Chief Financial Officer Debbie Miller. Marketing Manager Anna Harrison. A/R Specialist Nanci Winter. Circulation Manager Billy Dempsey. ©2018 C-VILLE Weekly.

C-BIZ 7

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C-BIZ 9

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Wellness

JACKSON SMITH

These shoes W are made for action Locally made 3-D, biometric shoes are disrupting the industry By Samantha Baars

hen Dr. Casey Kerrigan, who was working for one of the top three shoe manufacturing companies in the world, realized her employer wouldn’t be able to develop the biomechanically engineered shoe that she knew she needed to make, she quit her job and did it herself.

“I had to figure out how to do it if I wanted to do it right,” she says. “I came to the realization—and they did, too—that what I wanted to do was go back to zero. They could use some of the technology I had, but I really needed to change the actual shape of the shoe.”

Kerrigan is the chairman of OESH Shoes, the only company devoted to making footwear designed for women on principles of peer-reviewed medical science, which has disrupted the industry and established its own cult following since 2011. In fact, one OESHer—a title given to loyal customers—has just bought her 29th pair.

Perhaps you’ve heard Kerrigan’s name before. The Harvard M.D. is well known for her 20 years of research on human motion and forces during walking and running, and for being the woman who first discovered the link between wearing high heels and knee osteoarthritis in 1998, when she was invited to appear on ABC’s “20/20” and in the pages of the New York Times and Time magazine.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 12

C-BIZ 11

The Pitch > Wellness

JOHN ROBINSON

C H ARLOT TESV ILLE, VA

It takes about four and a half hours to print a pair of Oesh sandals (below), though Casey Kerrigan recently developed a new auger that will cut that time by two-thirds.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 11

Did you just call it a vacuum?

This is a custom performance machine.

Kerrigan was recruited to be the chair of the UVA School of Medicine’s department of physical medicine and rehab in 2002, and she “published like crazy” until leaving that job to pursue one in the footwear industry in 2009.

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A row of 3-D printers lines the wall in Kerrigan’s small Dale Avenue factory, where countless research articles she’s written are tacked up on display next to a dozen of her footwear designs. Shoeboxes are stacked from floor to ceiling.

She pours a handful of rubber pellets—the same kind used to make bouncy balls—into the machine, turns it on and stands by as it begins to trace the outline of a pair of sandal soles. It’ll take about four and half hours to print these shoes, though the scientist says she’s developed a new auger that will cut that time down by at least two-thirds. Then a human will strap the shoes—everything from sandals and sneakers to clogs and an alpargata-style shoe—and they’ll be up for sale.

She explains that the OESH approach is all about the sole. Most athletic shoes are designed using toxic foam materials to cushion heel impact, and control foot movement with a one-size-fits-all approach, but Kerrigan says peak stresses and strains on the body don’t occur during heel impact and it’s not healthy to force all feet into the same generic form.

When an OESHer takes a step in Kerrigan’s perfectly flat footwear, the elastic spring compresses and releases energy that supports the natural movement from that step to the next.

Target audience

Why just for women? “Frankly, women need these shoes the most,” she says, because females have twice as many foot, knee,

The Pitch > Money

Big spenders: What do Virginians buy?

hip and lower extremity issues than men. “There’s always some guy who asks, ‘When are you making men’s shoes?’” Kerrigan adds. “I’m sorry, guys. I’m taking care of women first.”

At OESH, every year has been a record year, and Kerrigan says the ability to scale up, on demand, “is just ridiculous.”

While she has another small facility in Waynesboro, the biomechanist says her company has outgrown it. She’s now working with a shoe factory in China where she could potentially replace outdated machinery with her cutting-edge technology and make “gobs of them.”

As for scaling up domestically, Kerrigan says OESH employees build the 3-D printers themselves and have all the equipment on-hand to build a new one in less than three hours. The shelves that hold her current machines are extendable, and she’s considering making a few dozen more to total 42 printers in just her Charlottesville workshop.

Because she’s also developing technology to increase the speed of manufacturing, Kerrigan says each printer will soon be able to make 20 pairs of shoes a day—which could soon have all the biggest footwear manufacturers shaking in their boots.

“Do the math,” she quips. “We are now rivaling any factory in China with just a wall of printers here in Charlottesville.”

According to the Commonwealth’s taxable sales, in 2016, Virginians spent more than $20 billion on food and drinks, but only $658 million at ABC stores.

We’re guessing that just means Virginians like a little snack with their sips. (But watch those libbies—says stateofobesity.org, Virginia ranks 29th in adult obesity in the U.S.)

Food & Beverage Stores

$17 BILLION

Virginia ABC Stores

$658 MILLION

Clothing Stores

JOHN ROBINSON

Source: Commonwealth of Virginia. Taxable sales by business classification made during the calendar year ending December 31, 2016.

$5 BILLION

Motor Vehicles

General Merchandise Stores

$3 BILLION

$17 BILLION

Home Furnishings

$2 BILLION Gas Stations

$2 BILLION

Bars & Restaurants

$14 BILLION

Hobby Stores

$1.5 BILLION C-BIZ 13

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The Pitch > Entrepreneurship

How to pass ‘go’

City office lends business owners a hand

By Erika Howsare

T

hinking of making the leap to entrepreneurship in Charlottesville? Your first stop ought to be the Office of Economic Development, which offers a broad menu of services to would-be business owners. We spoke with Jason Ness, business development manager, about what he and his colleagues can do to nudge your startup dream closer to reality.

When someone comes to you with an idea for a small business, where do you start?

The first thing is to assess where they’re at. We get people in different stages, from “I have an idea” to “I have funding and a location.” We can help with data and demographic information, competition analysis and marketing plans. If they’re more advanced we have some internal programming.

What are those programs about?

One is the microgrant program called Advancing Charlottesville Entrepreneurs (ACE). These are competitive grants given quarterly for companies with fewer than five employees. They go toward everything from equipment to marketing plans.

It’s incredibly unique as far as local government giving away grants. For example, Pearl Island Catering received grant funding from ACE to wrap their van, the Flavor Wagon.

The other program is the GO HIRE program.

GO stands for Growing Opportunities. City-based businesses can hire city residents and we will subsidize 50 percent of their wages for the first eight weeks. That lessens the burden on the businesses for that onboarding phase. These are semi-skilled jobs and the average wage is $14 per hour. City businesses can also get help with credential training,

JOHN ROBINSON

How did you get into this line of work?

I’ve been in Charlottesville about 10 years and initially worked in workforce development. I transitioned into small business development almost six years ago.

Before you start your own business in Charlottesville, you’ll want to visit business development manager Jason Ness, who helps entrepreneurs start from a position of strength.

to help employees gain skills to make them more attractive to wage raises and promotions. It’s customized to the business—we’ve reimbursed trainings on AutoCAD, solar energy education and CDLs [Commercial Driver’s License].

What are the other local agencies that you partner with?

The Small Business Development Center provides one-on-one business consulting and classes. The Community Investment Collaborative started six or seven years ago to help under-resourced entrepreneurs. They have a 16-week course on how to start a business, and they give out loans.

What do entrepreneurs often need help thinking through?

Generally most people already have a career, so how do they keep going with that while building

their business? CIC is great for that with their nighttime classes. A lot of people have questions about where to get money. They may be relying on personal credit, which can be an advantage or a disadvantage, depending on your background. We walk people through getting a business license, plus zoning and finance regulations. As Three Notch’d Brewery was looking to expand and outgrowing current zoning regulations, we helped write a zoning amendment to help them stay within the city.

Any other services your office provides?

We’ve recently started a “Made in Charlottesville” branding campaign to promote businesses that design and manufacture products in the city. We have up to 75 businesses in three categories— products, food and beverage and technology. They range from WillowTree, the largest, down to one- or two-person shops.

C-BIZ C-BIZ 15 15

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The Pitch > Wages $1758

Money matters: How much money do people make?

How does your weekly take-home pay stack up to other jobs? Here are the averages for different Virginia industries. (Curious about finding a highpaying job in the utilities sector? You’ll want to look for a gig in electric power, natural gas, steam supply, water supply or sewage.) $1052

$1595 $1518 $1463

$1437 $1366

$1104 $1077

$1019 $986 $899 $859

$750

$769

$866

$787

$717

$624

$524

$437

Utilities

Federal government

Finance and insurance

Professional, scientific and technical services

Information

State government

Wholesale trade

Health care and social assistance

Management of companies and enterprises

Source: Virginia Employment Commission, Economic Information & Analytics, Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW), 2nd Quarter (April, May, June) 2017.

Manufacturing

Mining, quarrying, oil and gas extraction

Construction

Other services (except public administration)

Real estate, rental and leasing

Local government

Transportation and warehousing

Administrative and support and waste management

Educational services

Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting

Retail trade

Arts, entertainment, and recreation

Accommodation and food services

$383

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The Pitch > Creativity

Workspace of the future Can growing numbers of local open work areas fuel tech innovation?

By Shea Gibbs

T

JOHN ROBINSON

he technology community is notoriously secretive, but there’s one thing Charlottesville techies can’t hide: The local innovation infrastructure is growing at a rapid pace, with two new co-working spaces set to open on the Downtown Mall this year.

Construction is expected to begin on the Charlottesville Technology Center, which will go on the former Main Street Arena land parcel, by the end of March. And Vault Virginia, which will occupy the former Bank of America building on the mall, will be full by the end of March, according to founder James Barton.

The new spaces will join established open work areas like Studio IX (also operated by Barton), HackCville, UVA’s i.Lab and OpenGrounds, Tinkersmiths, The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, the Old Michie Building, the Charlottesville Technology Incubator and Ten Flavors Studios.

Studio IX developer James Barton says Virginia is poised to become the next great tech hot spot, and he’s “Charlottesville is really unusual in that, on a hoping his newest venture, Vault Virginia, will contribute to the local innovation landscape. per capita basis, it has the seventh or eighth highest venture capital flows in the country,” says Tim Taliaferro purchased the building and land But what will be the effect of all this new Miano, who founded innovation infrastructure occupied by Main Street Arena for $5.7 million, tech-focused terrain? Andrew Montalenti, a Charfirm SP@CE in 2014. “Charlottesville swings according to a press release issued last year, and lottesville resident and founder of New Yorkabove its weight class. ...It’s why I moved here and solicited proposals from architecture firms to design based internet traffic analyst Parse.ly, thinks such started the project. There is this clear opportunity a “new building.” A spokesperson for Woodriff, who work areas can contribute significantly to the to develop a large-scale innovation hub.” declined to be interviewed, said demolition would local innovation economy.

In addition to deep-pocketed investors, Miano “There are kind of two groups in Charlottesville begin at the end of March. Former tenants of the points to UVA’s status as an innovation anchor, a building, including concert venue The from a tech standpoint,” he says. “Those that are “shockingly mature” biotechnology Ante Room and restaurant Escafé, affiliated with local startups, and then people like community and a high standard of have confirmed March will be their me that are affiliated with another organization, living as reasons C’ville could become Just how will the last month in operation. remote digital nomads that happen to be based the next great tech hot spot in the Charlottesville Barton says his Vault Virginia projhere. The co-working areas serve us, and the dedimold of a Boulder, Colorado, or Technology Center’s ect is nearing launch, with several cated spaces serve the others.”

Chapel Hill, North Carolina. But the 140,000 square feet anchor tenants he declined to name So why did OpenSpace close its doors, and how growth of the local innovation infrabe allocated? Here’s slated to fill the third floor. He expects will the new spaces avoid the same fate? For one structure hasn’t been without its the breakdown by the second floor of the building to be thing, it’s unclear a lack of profitability contributed bugs—shared workspace stalwart square footage. next to fill, occupied by smaller firms to OpenSpace’s undoing. The company’s founder, OpenSpace closed in mid-2014, and and sole proprietors, followed by the Jeff Gunther, officially cites his own relocation as 60,000 Anchor tenant Miano says the city has “structural first floor, which will feature common the reason for the business’ closure, and Barton limitations” due to its population.

40,000 Tech/venture spaces and a restaurant. suggests the concept may have been before its time.

The crown jewel of the new local Barton and Miano, who spoke in Now, he thinks the time is right. tech spaces is the Charlottesville 20,000 Smaller separate interviews, agree their proj“A rising tide lifts all boats, and I believe that Technology Center, an ambitious tenants and lab ects are vastly different and shouldn’t will be the story for Charlottesville,” Barton says.

140,000-square-foot office structure 10,000 Retail compete for tenants. And the devel“I’m proud of the impact that Studio IX has had, driven by development firm Taliaferro opers expect the spaces to work in and Vault Virginia will be another part of the infraJunction and Jaffray Woodriff. Miano 10,000 Event/ concert with the more artisanal tech structure that supports progress and thoughtful says SP@CE helped scout the project presentation/ common area work areas around the city. development.” but isn’t currently involved.

Making room

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The Pitch > Technology

Ask a technologist: Will losing net neutrality protections affect me?

By John Feminella

I

n December, the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission voted to repeal its own 2015 ruling about how Internet service providers should be regulated, saying it was eliminating “heavy-handed micromanagement” of the Internet.

Many users saw it differently, and lamented what they saw as a loss of important safeguards.

At the heart of the FCC’s ruling is an important question for the future of the web: Should Internet service providers (ISPs) be classified as common carriers? This might seem like an obscure legal debate, but it has profound implications for what you get to see on your laptop or smartphone, and perhaps more importantly, how much you’ll pay for the privilege.

Giving Internet service providers common carrier status means the agency can regulate how ISPs deliver content to users, and what kinds of business practices they’re permitted to engage in. Net neutrality advocates see this as important for ensuring the Internet remains a level playing field for everyone, and to ensure that ISPs don’t engage in practices they believe are abusive for consumers and businesses.

With the current gridlock in the Republican-controlled Congress making any improvement to these protections improbable, consumers and businesses will ultimately have to vote with their dollars to see the Internet they want, and support providers that want to preserve a level playing field. Fortunately, most of Charlottesville enjoys the comparatively rare case of having more

than one Internet service provider. But the rest of America doesn’t; only 24 percent of communities in the United States have more than one high-speed broadband option. Everyone else is either under the yoke of a monopoly or doesn’t have access to broadband at all.

One local provider, Ting, says net neutrality is important to them. “We know our customers want this, and we want to double down on our commitment to a fair and open Internet even in the face of changing regulations,” says Monica Webb, Ting’s director of government affairs. Ting lobbied against the FCC changes and has pledged to operate as if the protections were still in place.

For its part, Comcast, the largest provider for Charlottesville, says that going forward it won’t “block, throttle or discriminate against lawful content.” And that may well be true. But without the FCC’s net neutrality protections, many of those promises are no longer enforceable by law.

Still, this all seems pretty hypothetical. After all, most people don’t think we live in a dystopia. Is this much ado about nothing?

Absolutely not, says Barbara Cherry, a legal expert on net neutrality and a professor at Indiana University. “The loss of these protections opens the door to a wide range of serious abuses,” she says. Cherry argues that larger telecoms prefer the regulatory restrictions removed, because it would enable them to pursue new kinds of business models, and potentially capture more revenue.

The problem for consumers and small businesses, Cherry says, is that these business models are often counter to how we might want to access the Internet. For example, an Internet service provider could adopt a policy of charging customers extra if they want to watch videos on streaming video sites, instead of treating all data as equal.

That might be better for the provider’s bottom line, but it’s probably not something consumers or businesses will want.

John Feminella is the co-founder of analytics startup UpHex and an adviser at Pivotal. He lives in Charlottesville and enjoys solving difficult technology problems.

ONLY 24 PERCENT OF COMMUNITIES IN THE UNITED STATES HAVE MORE THAN ONE HIGH-SPEED BROADBAND OPTION. EVERYONE ELSE IS EITHER UNDER THE YOKE OF A MONOPOLY OR DOESN’T HAVE ACCESS TO BROADBAND AT ALL.

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The Pitch > Agriculture

The new ag Sylvanaqua models the next wave of local farming

By Erika Howsare

22 C-BIZ

PHOTOS: MELODY ROBBINS

T

alking with Chris Newman about the farm he runs with his wife, Annie, you get the feeling you’re glimpsing the future.

Newman likes to think ahead; he was still in his 20s when he and Annie began planning to become farmers after retirement, which was decades away.

They lived in Washington, D.C., then; he worked as a software engineer and she managed an art gallery. But the stress of his job soon threatened his health, and in 2013 the Newmans decided to walk away from their city life. They returned to Annie’s hometown, Earlysville, and founded Sylvanaqua Farms.

Plenty of young couples have made a similar move, but not every upstart farmer has the makings to take over Joel Salatin’s role as spokesperson for a new agricultural paradigm. Newman, in fact, counts Salatin’s writings as an original inspiration, and attended training at Salatin’s famous Augusta County farm, Polyface. But his philosophy and practice of farming have since diverged from Salatin’s in a few important ways. And because Newman seems to possess his onetime mentor’s knack for PR—he’s an ace writer and an outspoken visionary—the next generation of farmers may well be looking to Newman as a guiding light.

But first, back to the farm. What Sylvanaqua has produced so far is high-quality meat—chicken, heritage-breed pork, duck—plus eggs, and buyers have included restaurants, farmers market customers and “members” who pay up-front to get discounted prices. That’s all fairly standard, and the Newmans are certainly working hard to make their business float (and raise two daughters at the same time).

But they’re also animated by a longer-term vision based on permaculture. “We want to prove you can do tree-based agriculture,” says Newman, “and move to where we’re not a ‘livestock farm’ but we have livestock supporting the production of plant crops.” What that might mean in central

Virginia’s ecosystem is a herd of pigs that will eventually be harvested for meat—and in the meantime, they’re rooting around among chestnut and hazelnut trees, tilling the soil and eating windfall apples that would otherwise be wasted. Animals and plants become symbiotic in a way that mimics natural systems.

Organic, in this model, is a given, but isn’t really the point. “We are for making sure that food is in sync with the ecology where it’s grown,” says Newman. “Permaculture is what indigenous people were doing in precolonial times all over the world.” It’s a personal connection for him, stemming from his Piscataway-Conoy and African-American heritage.

The “food forest” represents Sylvanaqua’s next big expansion. While they’ll still serve Charlottesville-area customers, this year they’ll move their base of operations to Stratford Hall, a 1,900-acre historic estate on the Northern Neck, so as to be closer to several major cities. They’ll be scaling up in a major way—increasing turkey production, to name one example, by 1,000 percent. The estate’s large swaths of woodland and pasture will provide enough room for Sylvanaqua to build the food for-

est and grow their business for, they figure, many years to come.

The notion of a place like Stratford Hall—the birthplace of Robert E. Lee—doubling as a working farm is one of the things that makes Sylvanaqua a bit radical. Instead of owning land, the Newmans have opted to lease acreage and/or partner with institutional or public landowners. This is more financially feasible for them but also, Newman says, will help Sylvanaqua serve as an example for other would-be farmers, including those who don’t have

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Sylvanaqua Farms owners Chris and Annie Newman hope to be an example to young farmers interested in permaculture.

much—or any—wealth to start with. Eventually, he hopes, “Younger farmer entrepreneurs can take an internship with us, then enter a partnership with a landowner and start their own operation without having to take so much of the terrifying risk.” With permaculture farming, he adds, a state park or historic estate could still serve recreation or conservation uses while producing food.

While Sylvanaqua is still enough of a start-up that Newman hangs onto a freelance software gig, he’s got no shortage of ambition, seeing his farm as part of a broad-based solution to a raft of problems, from urban food deserts to a lack of people of color entering the farming profession.

“How do we change the food system into what is ecologically responsible and socially responsible?” he asks.

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The Pitch > Work

Growth industries: Occupations on the rise As the Virginia economy changes in the coming years, we’ll need more people to work in health care. Indeed, 681 new home health aides will be hired each year, along with 308 psychical therapists. With the growth of some occupations, we’ll see declines in others. Postal service workers are expected to decline between 26 and 33 percent by 2024. There also will be fewer motion picture projectionists and telephone operators, if anyone even remembers what those are. Here are a few other projections for growth occupations.

Occupational therapy assistants

65 new hires per year

Physical therapist aides

87

Home health aides

681

Personal financial advisors

385

Ambulance drivers & attendants (not EMTS)

17

Nurse practitioners

235

Physical therapist assistants Hearing aid specialists

149 7

Audiologists

28

Physician assistants

129

Interpreters and translators

132

Nurse midwives

8

Statisticians

54

Commercial divers

8

Industrial-organizational psychologists

8 308

Physical therapists

293

Operations research analysts Forensic science technicians Phlebotomists

51 191

Source: Virginia Employment Commission, Economic Information & Analytics, Long Term Industry and Occupational Projections, 2014-2024. Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey, 2016.

C-BIZ 25

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The Pitch > Retail

A quick-release seat clamp option makes it easier to disassemble and transport.

Custom frame geometry accommodates various riders’ sizes and weights.

Weighing in at just 20 pounds, the Mini Velo is made from lightweight (but strong) 4130 CroMolly steel.

The diminutive wheel size—20 inches—promotes acceleration and increased maneuverability.

Not just built for two Respect Cycles’ innovative bicycle design is for all riders

By Erin O’Hare

EZE AMOS

B Scotty Wilson

icycles are a great way to get around. They’re economical, eco-friendly and good exercise. But their design never made much sense to television and film editor and director—and lifelong bike rider—Scotty Wilson.

Bikes are big, bulky and not easily transported from one place to the other (unless the bike is the transportation); they’re a pain to put into a hatchback and store in the garage.

With all this in mind, Wilson designed the Respect Cycles Mini Velo: a full-size bike frame with small-

er-than-usual wheels. It’s easy to ride, store, transport and customize. Initially geared toward women and children who typically measure for smaller bikes, the Mini Velo has proved popular among people of all ages and genders. Wilson’s 8-year-old rides the same bike as 6-foot-tall Wilson.

Wilson says that since starting Respect Cycles in 2014, the company has sold about 2,000 standard Mini Velos out of the company’s Charlottesville warehouse, quite a few of them to touring musicians and their crews. Crew members for Rihanna, Jay-Z and Beyoncé own Respect Cycles…and from time to time, the stars will pedal them around, too.

C-BIZ 27

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wn incubator

UVA’s i.Lab boosts burgeoning companies, from the idea up

By Samantha Baars

C-BIZ 31

Out of the i.Lab Contraline

Here are a few recent businesses the i.Lab has thrown its support behind.

It’s an inserted birth control much like an IUD, but here’s the catch—it’s for men. Contraline believes contraception should fit seamlessly into the lives of couples, so CEO and co-founder Kevin Eisenfrats, a former student of nanomedicine engineering at UVA who is developing a nonsurgical, nonhormonal and reversible procedure known as a vastinomy, where a type of hydrogel is injected into a man’s vas deferens to block his sperm during ejaculation.

The company has raised more than $3 million, and the procedure is targeted for approval in 2021.

Imbibe Solutions Who knew laboratory tasting could be so delicious? Owner Audrey Reid, who holds a master’s degree in gastronomy from Boston University, combined her love of science and food to create a quality control lab for local craft breweries, wineries, cideries and distilleries. Businesses in the industry are required to test and publish their alcohol content by volume, and those operating in the area without their own mini-labs didn’t have a way to do so.

That’s when Reid stepped in, also offering microbiology, sugars and water quality testing, which can drastically affect the flavor of a craft beverage.

Beanstalk “Big impact. Small footprint,” is the credo of this startup founded in 2017 by UVA School of Engineering and Applied Science grad Jack Ross and his brother, Michael.

The duo started the agricultural technology company, called Beanstalk, to feed increasing populations with little to no food supply by way of what they call a vertical farm. The indoor-friendly farms are renewably powered to grow greens like spinach and kale in a vertical, completely contained system of nutrients and oxygenated water. Scalable and sustainable, the product reduces water usage by 95 percent and requires no pesticides.

Relish Careers

InMEDBio It’s not a Band-Aid, it’s a Phoenix-Aid. This company, founded by Ashwinraj Karthikeyan of the School of Engineering and Applied Science’s class of 2018, is credited with creating the better bandage. The Phoenix-Aid is touted as a safe and cost-effective wound dressing that’s designed to prevent infection and speed up the time it takes for chronic wounds to heal.

InMEDBio has a global reach, and is focusing its efforts on treating diabetic foot ulcers, especially for medically underserved and socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.

What’s harder: getting an MBA or finding a job after?

Founders Sarah Rambaugh and Zach Mayo, two MBA students at the Darden School of Business, created a service in 2014 to address the latter. At Relish, they help put job candidates in touch with employers by using customized networking and data analytics tools to pair a network of top job candidates with employers from across the globe. It’s like Match.com, but for hiring.—SB

ELLI WILLAIMS

32 C-BIZ

“WHERE I THINK WE’RE DOING A GOOD JOB IS FILLING THE FUNNEL. ANNUALLY, I.LAB ALUMNI ARE AT THE FOREFRONT OF CAPITAL RAISED IN CHARLOTTESVILLE.” JASON BREWSTER

Secret sauce On a recent trip to the think tank on Nash Drive, Touve gives a tour of the 9,500-square-foot building, bopping in and out of classrooms and workspaces that he says are unusually quiet. He enters what he calls the “tinker space,” where Babylon Micro-Farm founder Alexander Oleson is studying one of his hydroponic systems—or a “shelf to grow organic produce in restaurants,” Oleson explains.

STEPHEN BARLING

T

he University of Virginia’s i.Lab is where good business ideas go to become great ones.

Local entrepreneurs and their teams apply for the incubator program in January, and if they’re one of about 20 groups selected after a Shark Tank-style round of pitches, they’ll be admitted into a 10-week program where their startups are provided a $5,000 grant, workshops, mentorship and workspace, followed by ongoing support from the folks on staff at the i.Lab. Since the summer of 2013, the lab has provided more than $600,000 in grant funding to more than 100 business ventures, according to its director, David Touve. He says, long-term, its programs have racked up nearly $1.5 million in grants to more than 225 ventures and their 400-plus team members over the past 18 years.

At the i.Lab, the entrepreneurial spirit is contagious.

A bright green wall on the left side of the lobby is likely the first thing you’ll notice. This is the “idea well,” where ways in which people can help others are brainstormed onto white pieces of scrap paper and hung from floor to vaulted ceiling.

For example, the one that’s positioned the highest says, “I can reach high places.”

The lab looks a bit like Charlottesville’s own miniature Googleplex. Some walls can be written on and some are made of glass. Some work spaces are intimate and some are wide open and intended to be shared. And don’t forget the pitch room, where a traffic light is programmed to respond to the sound of clapping. Going for the green light? Your pitch had better get a hearty round of applause.

Sandra McCutcheon is the i.Lab’s program manager, and Touve took over as its director in the summer of 2016 when he transitioned from directing the Galant Center at the McIntire School of Commerce—where he taught and developed undergrad courses and programs such as the uber-popular entrepreneurship minor— across Grounds to the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Darden School of Business, which funds the i.Lab.

The i.Lab is designed to inspire creativity and productivity. Its idea well (opposite page), for instance, encourages entrepreneurs to think about how they can help others.

The incubator program that Babylon was initially a part of launched around 2000 and has continued to grow and transform ever since. Its director, Jason Brewster, says something like 80 percent of Charlottesville founders or ventures were nurtured by the i.Lab in some way in 2016.

“Where I think we’re doing a good job is filling the funnel,” he says. “Annually, i.Lab alumni are at the forefront of capital raised in Charlottesville.”

While in some cases, Brewster says those funds are accumulated by ventures that went through the incubator program, in other cases, the capital is raised by the founder of an i.Lab start-up’s subsequent company. For this reason, he and other mentors often focus on the founders themselves, rather than their actual businesses.

“Initial ideas fail,” he says. “Considerable trial, error and refinement always precede success. Focusing on individuals is critical to ensure founders understand how to navigate the company genesis.”

Application deadlines have passed for this summer’s incubator program, but the staff encourages local entrepreneurs to check in next year, no matter their age.

When asked about the range of entrepreneurs who’ve made it through his program, Brewster doesn’t mince words. “Some are either unable to drink or collecting Social Security.”

The start-ups that mentors hand-pick to participate in i.Lab programming often grow to have a magnanimous impact.

“Some of these ventures have gone on to raise millions, even tens of millions of dollars in venture capital,” Touve says. “Other ventures provide mentoring connections or music training to hundreds of students each year, or inspire thousands of attendees through a festival each April.”

Perhaps the most well known idea to launch out of the i.Lab is the last one Touve refers to—the Tom Tom Foundation, which hosts an annual festival that brings a massive accumulation of events, speakers and concerts that celebrate entrepreneurship, culture and innovation to Charlottesville each spring.

Tom Tom founder Paul Beyer says his company had just wrapped up its second festival when he was selected to participate in the incubator program, and he called on mentors for help in determining his nonprofit’s business model and organizational structure in 2013.

There, he formed invaluable relationships with leading investors and entrepreneurs, he says.

“The i.Lab connects the networks that you’re going to need in order to succeed,” Beyer says. “I think that’s what’s so great about it—it’s a confidence builder.”

C-BIZ 33

Eat up!

Holly Hilton of Hilton & Associates, Attorneys and Counselors at Law, celebrates women who have achieved business and personal success, financially and intrinsically, and serves women’s legal needs in both endeavors. Holly’s passion for educating, supporting and assisting women is expressed in her professional life as she works with women to manage challenging, exciting, delicate or confusing matters in ways that enhance the quality of women’s and their loves ones’ lives, dispel confusion, instill peace, and provide comfort whenever possible.

Holly Hilton has been practicing law for 30 years, with a focus for most of them being writing wills, trusts and other estate planning documents, elder and special needs and business succession planning, and related litigation.

Possible incapacity and end of life are challenging subjects, usually avoided as much as possible. You would be surprised at the level of peace and comfort you can achieve from meeting with Holly and addressing your desires and hopes for your care in the event of incapacity, and putting your personal and professional legacies into action, thereby paving the paths of your loved ones and business partners following the inevitable along with the possible.

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These women’s work During the autumn of 2017, our newspapers and newsfeeds were filled with stories about sexual harassment in the film business, television and other industries where powerful men behaved badly. In December, “the silence breakers” of the #MeToo movement were named Time magazine’s Person of the Year.

By Samantha Baars, Sierra Bellows, Erika Howsare, Erin O’Hare, Susan Sorensen and Caite White, with contributions by Eboni Bugg and Julia Kudravetz

The sheer number of cases reveals a pattern that underlies many of our institutions and organizations: Despite great gains in social and economic power in the past 50 years, women still don’t have an equal share. CONTINUED ON PAGE 39 C-BIZ 37

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THE

When women can’t reach their full economic potential because of systemic obstacles, says Darden’s Lalin Anik (p.54), everyone loses. Yet, there are reasons to be hopeful.

Charlottesville’s economic gender disparity is better than the American average. There are also many women here who are starting businesses, leading companies and excelling in their fields, as you’ll see in the following pages. When a woman forges the career that she truly desires, she makes a tangible step toward greater equality.

Thanks to Kathryn Piper Crespin at the Weldon Cooper Center for her help with the statistics on which the infographics for this article are based.

Disrupter

EZE AMOS

Metro Charlottesville’s employment and salary numbers show disparity between women and men in the workforce. Not surprisingly, women make less money. Fewer women work full-time. Among those who are full-time and self-employed in their own incorporated businesses, only about 23 percent are women.

L

This automotive CEO is redefining a woman’s role

iza Borches’ father likes to joke that That was 15 years ago, and today Borches, his eldest daughter moved back to 42, is responsible for 13 automotive dealerCharlottesville to work in the family ships, 15 franchises and 600 employees. And car business because she didn’t want to wind she says being a woman in a male-dominatup in Detroit. Borches had been employed by ed industry hasn’t hampered her at all.

American Honda, which is headquartered in “I always try to take the whole gender piece Southern California, for several years when out of it,” Borches says. “Women today have she and her husband, Pete, “started thinking no lack of confidence about being a minority long-term about what we wanted out of life,” in a business room; it’s the norm, and if you says the Carter Myers Automotive president have confidence in your abilities, gender and CEO. “I still loved the company I was won’t matter.” When you’re the only female working for, but [Pete and I] were discussing in the room, “you stand out, and your ideas having kids, and we didn’t want stand out, and sometimes you to move every two years—we have a louder voice,” she adds.

Liza Borches wanted to put down roots in a One challenge Borches, a President and CEO of mother of two young children, community and be involved.”

Carter Myers Automotive Around the same time, admits that she struggles with is Borches’ father, Carter Myers balancing her professional and III, was thinking about buying the local Volhome lives. “You never feel like you’re giving vo dealership—but he needed someone to enough to the needs of your business or the run it. Borches says “the stars aligned with needs of your family,” she says. And on days when she’s “trying to come to terms with the what we wanted out of life,” and by coming home in 2003, the St. Anne’s-Belfield and guilt” she feels because she didn’t make it to a UVA grad was “able to learn from the very child’s performance or she couldn’t stay the bottom with a small dealership,” by doing extra two hours at work, Borches says she tries everything from transporting customers in to “look at it all over the course of a year. And the shuttle to selling cars with a child [during that time] I hope I was able to do strapped to her chest in a Baby Bjorn. enough for both my business and my family.”

When you’re the only female in the room, “you stand out, and your ideas stand out, and sometimes you have a louder voice.” LIZA BORCHES C-BIZ 39

An exploratory how-to guide

By Eboni Bugg

R

ecently, “diversity” has become a catch-all phrase to describe any number of initiatives and strategies that aim to alter the makeup of businesses and organizations. Given shifting demographics and recent events in our community, issues related to diversity have become particularly salient. Many organizations, both public and private, are grappling with how best to navigate them.

In Charlottesville, leaders in the corporate and nonprofit spheres alike are being tasked, perhaps for the first time, with leading their institutions toward outcomes that are driven as much by profit as by social good. For some, “diversity” conjures mandatory cultural sensitivity or implicit bias trainings, which may or may not have lead to tangible benefits. For others the word represents a new opportunity to move into better alignment with mission and vision.

Whether the motivation for diversity efforts stem from a response to social pressure, market forces or perceived stagnation, the ways in which businesses pursue solutions can either result in innovation and high levels of employee satisfaction, or lead to increased marginalization and reduced productivity.

While there is no shortage of articles devoted to the benefits of diversity, there are few road maps for leadership and success. Here are several key considerations when working toward building a more authentically diverse business environment.

Alignment with values

Most strategic goals focused on changing workplace composition and dynamics will alter the status quo, so they require significant resources and stakeholder buy-in for success.

Rarely do such endeavors prevail when they do not embody the ethos of the organization, while also allowing cultural shifts to occur to accommodate new perspectives and information.

Therefore, when embarking on structural changes within organizational and business environments, it is important that diversity initiatives reflect and inform institutional values. An authentic investigation of values may mean acknowledging when long-held beliefs and norms impede or conflict with valuing diversity. It may also illustrate ways in which diversity is valued but not acted upon. Rather than viewing this dissonance as untenable, executive leadership is encouraged to see this as an opportunity for strategic action.

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There is much debate about whether initiatives driven by profit or those driven by social good have greater merit or garner greater success. This debate occludes the fact that authentic diversity is impossible to achieve without also addressing equity and inclusion.

Personal and professional experiences demonstrate the tendency for some diversity initiatives to tokenize members of historically underrepresented groups. Tokenism happens when what we actually need are sustainable, institutionalized structures that generate ongoing opportunities for mentorship, advancement and leadership.

Tokenism not only creates significant emotional and professional burdens for minorities in business, but also limits productivity and creativity.

In order to address this, many organizations are moving away from “cultural competence” and “cultural sensitivity” frameworks to embrace cultural humility, which recognizes intersectional identities, the centrality and relevance of culture and the need for redressing power imbalances to achieve authentic diversity. While research indicates that implicit biases can be mitigated by counter-typical exemplars, it is important that we move beyond mere representation as a benchmark for success. Investigating who holds power, who makes decisions and who has mobility might be additional ways to holistically assess diversity.

THE

Risk-taker A local business owner gives it her all

K

it “Kitty” Ashi arrived in the United States in 2006 with only $500. First, she worked as a babysitter. Then she got a job in a Thai restaurant. “In Bangkok, I graduated from art school and worked as a stylist at a magazine,” she says. “But I come from a family of people who cook and work in restaurants.”

Ashi started as a dishwasher, then she did food prep. She was a waitress in Richmond and then became a manager at Tara Thai in Charlottesville. Her friend Dutdao “Pooh” Wonglaka, whom she’d met in art school, worked alongside her.

Then in 2011, both Ashi and Wonglaka considered returning to Thailand. “We’d been sending money home the whole time, but we’d also been saving,” says Ashi. “We each had saved up $20,000.” Ashi and Wonglaka discovered that Lu-Mei Chang, who’d opened Monsoon in 1992, had put her restaurant up for sale. It was a crossroads.

“I was tired of being a server and an employee,” says Ashi. “We had to decide whether to go home or to commit ourselves and our life savings to a business.”

When Ashi met Chang, they clicked right away. “She looks like my mom,” she says. “[Chang] wanted to keep it an Asian restaurant. We didn’t have all the capital at the start, but she helped us and supported us and said, ‘We’ll figure out the details of the financials later.’”

Ashi and Wonglaka cooked in the kitchen, took orders over the phone, served in the

Accountability

Many successful businesses are driven by clear strategic plans that reflect their mission, vision and values. Outcomes are typically judged against baseline measures based on data and evidence. But how does one measure diversity?

When conducting a survey of available diversity data, especially on the local level, there is a significant dearth of information. When moving from tokenizing to inclusion, from optics to transformation, it becomes incredibly important to develop more granular metrics and means of accountability. Data dashboards that look beyond aggregate population data are important tools that can drive the refinement of strategic goals and strategies.

For example, what might we find if we look at the intersection of gender and leadership hires, or sort intervention outcomes by neighborhood?

According to the Virginia Employment Commission, four of the five largest employers in our community are public organizations. Accountability is inherent to the social contract that affords these organizations’ funding.

In Charlottesville, we have an opportunity to re-evaluate the systems of inequality that not only hinder human potential, but also stifle creativity and the full capacities of businesses and organizations to achieve success. Recognizing methods for growing a more authentically diverse workforce is more than good for business—it is good business.

Eboni Bugg, LCSW, is the senior manager for Diversity, Inclusion & Global Outreach at Mind & Life Institute.

AMY JACKSON

Real diversity

The intersection of equity and inclusion

restaurant and delivered food themselves. “We had to do everything,” says Ashi. “We could not fail. We went all in.” Ashi designed brochures herself, had them printed, then put them in mailboxes around the neighborhood.

“Owning a business was harder than I expected. We stressed over the financials, the service, the food itself,” Ashi says.

Then, in 2014, Wonglaka moved with her husband, a professor who now teaches at the University of Wisconsin, to Madison. After trying the Thai food available there, Ashi and Wonglaka decided to open a

THE

Leader

Kit “Kitty” Ashi

Co-owner of Monsoon Siam, Monsoon Siam Togogo, Urban Bowl and Monsoon Siam in Madison, Wisconsin

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second Monsoon Siam. They transferred many of their Charlottesville employees to Wisconsin. It was a rough year by all accounts. Ashi found herself working 18-hour days, seven days a week, with little hope of reprieve. “It was hard to find employees,” she says. “Thai kitchens are hot; there’s lots of fire.”

She got sick from the stress.

“What saved me was my friends and staff; they helped and supported me,” she says. “They are like my family.”

When the restaurant won Best of C-VILLE’s Best Thai category in 2015, Ashi was delighted. “Every plate touched my hand. I was so proud,” she says.

Andrea Copeland-Whitsett believes in the strength of sharing

W

Order up Among food service workers in our area, 54.7 percent are female.

hen Andrea Copeland-Whitsett was a young girl, she wanted to be a nurse, a singer or a teacher (or some combination of all three).

And though a 14-year-old Copeland-Whitsett abandoned her future nursing career after getting stuck in a hospital elevator, around that same time, inspired by Oprah Winfrey’s tenderly hard-hitting interviews, she began dreaming of hosting a talk show.

Now 45, Copeland-Whitsett, director of member education at the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce, an organization dedicated to building business and community, is teaching. And as founder and president of Positive Channels, a media network that works to harness the power of media for good, she’s talking.

After working in local public education for years, she currently leads, among other programs, Leadership Charlottesville, which reveals to participating community leaders how the entire city is run—“the good, the bad, the ugly, the okay. The idea is, when you are finished with this program, that you will plug yourself in somewhere and make [Charlottesville] better,” says Copeland-Whitsett.

For example, she says “it’s not enough” to tell community leaders that more than 5,000 families in the city of Charlottesville live in poverty, and that the majority of those folks are people of color.

Leadership Charlottesville teaches how poverty affects everyone in the community by showing how we’re all connected, that we’re all neighbors.

She’s especially committed to supporting women- and minority-owned businesses, as

each group has unique set of needs—for example, women, Hispanic and African-American people often face discrimination when applying for business loans—and the chamber can help guide them all.

It helps that Copeland-Whitsett is an entrepreneur herself: She founded Positive Channels in 2004, and for 11 years, via local public access television and WINA radio, talked with everyone from the Charlottesville 12 (the first group of black students to enroll in all-white Charlottesville schools in 1959) to the Dalai Lama, broaching

Andrea Copeland-Whitsett Founder and president of Positive Channels, director of member education at the Charlottesville Regional Chamber of Commerce tough topics with sensitivity. Copeland-Whitsett will revive Positive Channels this year, posting short episodes to social media.

She defines success by how one shares her wisdom and knowledge to better her community. And she has plenty to share—be candid, be transparent, be yourself—but here’s the crux of it: “If they won’t give you a seat at the table, bring your own chair.

That’s where we as women need to make sure we are empowering one another. We have to, because they say women can be catty, but there is enough success to go around for everybody.”

Sometimes, she says, you just need someone to whisper in your ear, “Girl, you got this.”

C-BIZ 41

“You have to do your job no matter how you got there.”

ALICE HANDY

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42 C-BIZ

Financier THE

THE

Relentless pursuer

Meet the woman managing $13 billion for education

To build a luxury brand, accidental wedding planner Lynn Easton goes all-in

A

A

lice Handy is fond of a T.S. Eliot quote that sits on her desk: “Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.”

“That sums up my career,” says Handy, who grew UVA’s endowment from $50 million to more than $2 billion during the 29 years she managed the university’s investments. Handy, however, was just getting started: After retiring from UVA in 2003, she founded Investure, a Charlottesville-based firm that manages more than $13 billion in assets for a consortium of 14 colleges and foundations.

Ask her about being a successful female in a male-dominated industry, and Handy recalls the early 1970s, when she was fresh out of Connecticut College and working as a bond portfolio man-

s a young girl, Lynn Easton recalls once remarking to her dad that a friend’s father was an executive at Exxon.

“I said, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.’ And my dad turned to me and he said, ‘Just so you know, there isn’t anything you can’t do. If you want to be president of Exxon, you could do that, too,’” Easton says. “That’s the kind of household I grew up in. And that’s what people need to be saying to their little girls.”

Easton took her dad’s advice to heart.

She went into television, flirted with the idea of being on-air until she realized a producing role would be “more fun.”

When she moved to Charlottesville with her family in the late ’80s, a friend asked if she knew of any wedding planners in the area.

“I said, ‘I don’t, but I used to produce live TV,’” she says. “’I’m sure I can do this.’ So, I became a wedding planner because I planned a wedding.”

Since starting Easton Events in 1998—then just a boutique (“code for ‘one person,’” she jokes) event planning company—Easton has set her sights higher and higher. First, she established a luxury brand by paying special attention to “high touch” details (which she credits to frequent travel in her youth, anywhere from Africa and China to Mexico and Italy). Then, nearing a decade of marriage to her now business partner, Dean Andrews, they expanded her event

Alice Handy

Founder of Investure

ager at Travelers Insurance Company. “It was a different world,” says Handy, adding that her boss departed after a year, and left her with a billion dollar portfolio. But she says she was lucky because “I was young, and people took me under their wing. I wasn’t a threat to them, and they taught me everything; they gave me a lot of advantages. ...They made the UVA job possible.”

But there were some disadvantages along the way, too, such as when she learned her successor at UVA (a man) “was paid multiples of what I made.” And much earlier in her career, Handy was told by the head of personnel (a woman) that the only reason she had her job was because she was female. The mother of three and grandmother of four didn’t flinch, though: “You have to do your job no matter how you got there,” she says, which is why she tells young people to “say yes to everything. Get as many experiences as you can—new places, new things, new opportunities—especially if you don’t have a planned-out career path because you never know when those skills will come in handy.” And when you see an opportunity, grab it and “run with it.”

Handy, who turns 70 in April and is in a fiveyear process of retiring, claims she “never really had a life plan,” so she pauses for a moment when asked what she’ll do when she’s no longer working full-time. She says she’ll continue to serve on several boards, and she’ll help her husband with his real estate development business. She’s also looking forward to spending time with girlfriends because “I finally have the time.”

Lynn Easton

Owner of Easton Events, Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards, Red Pump Kitchen and Zero George (Charleston, South Carolina)

company to include a sought-after venue, Pippin Hill Farm & Vineyards.

She’s been recognized as a top planner in Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, Martha Stewart Weddings and, most recently, Pippin Hill topped Brides magazine’s list of the top 30 Getting personal Within local personal care and service occupations, women make up nearly 80 percent of the full-time workers.

JEN FARIELLO

best wedding venues in the U.S. And while that all came years after she’d been established, Easton knew straight away the level of success she wanted to achieve.

“Not everybody needs to chase success, but I was chasing it,” she says. “I wanted to be nationally known. I articulated it, I thought about it and I was willing to work hard to make that happen.” It didn’t come without a few long nights (“People talk about dinner around the table? Dinner with my boys was around my desk,” she says), but Easton says that was a choice she consciously made.

“To have the level of success that I have is an active choice. I would like to empower other women to make that choice as well, but they need to consciously articulate— and this can be a challenge for women to say—‘I want to be the best.’”

“Not everybody needs to chase success, but I was chasing it.” LYNN EASTON C-BIZ 43

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“Don’t be afraid to do something that you don’t know. And do not apologize that you don’t know it.”

THE

Networker For Tracey Greene, business is about contact

TRACEY GREENE

T

racey Greene likes to call herself a “connectioneer.” That is, someone who uses her network to the benefit of others. In fact, she’s made a career doing just that—recognizing a need and connectioneering (it’s used as a verb, too) the players to find a solution. It turns out she’s often the one with the answer, but only because she’s asking lots of questions. That, she says, is the secret to her success.

“Don’t be afraid to do something that you don’t know,” says the Charlottesville Angel Network founder. “And do not apologize that you don’t know it.”

Greene, 47, has spent her life learning. Starting with an office job at an area car dealership, she taught herself computer systems that others were intimidated by and wouldn’t bother with. At 19, she took a temp job at the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors, where she did the same thing, and quickly earned herself a full-time position. While at CAAR, she transitioned into PR and marketing, garnering the attention of David Kalergis. At the time, Kalergis was employed at UVA, assisting innovators who wanted to commercialize their in-

Tracey Greene

ventions. He asked her to help him start Diffusion Pharmaceuticals. Despite not knowing anything about the pharmaceutical industry, she accepted.

“He said, ‘We need wet lab space.’ I said, ‘Okay, great. What’s a wet lab? I’ll go find out,’” says the Charlottesville native.

In the meantime, Greene had begun volunteering with the Virginia Piedmont Technology Council (now the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council), and when the CEO of Diffusion put the brakes on the company during a funding slump, she presented a proposal to CBIC to name her executive director and give her a full-time job.

The council said yes.

But, she says, she recognized that “something that was missing in the ecosystem, which was how do entrepreneurs find funding?” She’d helped raise angel capital for Diffusion and knew many of the players, but “if you didn’t personally know who the investors were, how did you get access to them?”

The Charlottesville Angel Network, which helps connect technology and innovation-based entrepreneurs with investors, was born.

AMY JACKSON

Founder and executive director of the Charlottesville Angel Network and executive director of the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council

“One of the reasons we exist is to reduce the friction for local companies to find access to angel investment and to help provide that critical seedstage capital,” Greene says. In just three years, the organization has raised $4.8 million for 29 startup companies.

What is Greene most proud of? Besides her work with CBIC and CAN, it’s the fact that she’s achieved such a level of success by forging her

own path. Instead of college, Greene started a family after high school and entered the work force right away.

“I think part of the reason I’m as scrappy as I am is because I was faced with people who had multiple high-level, post-secondary degrees and I didn’t secure a college degree until much later,” she says. “I had to be better in whatever ways I could be better.”

C-BIZ 45

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46 C-BIZ

THE

Educator

Emily Morrison is connecting people through music

W

hile the founder of The Front Porch initially defined success as being able to pay the bills while tucking away a nice cash reserve, she adds that the “barometers of success are continually changing,” and says she’s had a change of heart.

“This one is more important,” says Emily Morrison, who started teaching roots music out of her Belmont home in 2015 just to see what would happen.

“Now it’s being able to provide programming for all people who want to participate in Charlottesville and central Virginia, being accessible and inclusive and attracting audiences from all backgrounds.”

For Morrison and The Front Porch folks, that means hosting and teaching music classes, workshops, weekly jams and performances to people of all walks of life, so long as they have one thing in

Emily Morrison

AMY JACKSON

Founder of The Front Porch

“[My] barometers of success are continually changing.”

EMILY MORRISON

common: They dig bluegrass, old-time, gospel, acoustic blues and folk music.

When her Belmont jam sessions were decidedly a success, Morrison says she sought expertise from mentors at UVA’s i.Lab, who helped her set up her business as a nonprofit, develop bylaws and a founders board. And voila, now she sits in a studio on Water Street East with denim blue-painted bricks and a big yellow sign with her company’s name on it.

“Finding appropriate space for this continues to be a challenge,” Morrison admits. “I love our physical setting. We have a great problem that we’re also growing out of it.”

She calls the issue a “growing pain, really,” and says she’s hoping to expand beyond the Downtown Mall, while still keeping that space, in the very near future.

Morrison’s proud of building a woman-run nonprofit in which she, the executive director and operations director all have two X chromosomes—but she says it’s hard for her to differentiate between being a woman in business and just being a woman.

“I’m so in it,” she laughs. “It’s like saying, ‘Does breathing oxygen help you stay alive?’”

Morrison explains it like this: We all have different kinds of capital that we use to build things.

“For me, what I had was social and relational capital, and I think that’s stereotypically true for women,” she says, but adds that she owes a great deal to the neighboring businesses, city government and local population for helping her along the way.

“I never wanted this to seem like a one-woman deal.

It’s truly been a community effort.”

C-BIZ 47

Supporting role

Instructor

H

S

THE

What can HR do for women?

Fitness pro Sabrina Feggans pushes the limits

uman resources professionals help determine work culture and are often the first line of defense when employees have problems, big or small. In our current era, the HR office is busier than ever, but we stole a moment from Susan Dawson, the chief people officer at Silverchair Information Systems, about what kind of culture best supports women and how to deal with challenges as they arise.

What kinds of policies do companies need to have in place to protect people from harassment or discrimination in the workplace?

At the heart of this, you need to have a culture of open communication where people feel free to express their thoughts, opinions and feelings. Without this, it doesn’t matter what the policy handbook says, people won’t tell you what’s going on.

Assuming you have an organization where people feel comfortable and confident speaking up, then leaders need to be consistently open to learning, listening and asking questions.

As for policies, you should create them, update them and be willing to adapt or delete them. I’m also a big fan of the Netflix HR policy of “act like an adult,” meaning we can create loads of

48 C-BIZ

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What can companies do to support the success of women?

Supporting the success of our women employees ends up looking like what it means to support the success of all our employees. We need to ask: How are we supporting our employees to be their best selves? How can we create and sustain an environment to help employees be successful in both their professional and personal lives?

Both women and men in the modern workplace want flexibility, so they can, if they choose, come in late or leave early to get kids on or off the bus, or be home when family situations arise.

They want parental leave to spend time with their newborns.

Employees want organizations with leaders who genuinely care and where they can talk through challenges they are facing. It’s about offering an environment that is respectful of each employee as a whole person. And that also means an environment that is challenging, where they can do great work, get rewarded and have opportunities for advancement.

abrina Feggans wouldn’t have started Beyond Fitness with Sabrina if she wasn’t already a firm believer in the power of tabata.

When she decided to focus on her fitness in the fall of 2015 and wasn’t having much luck at the gym, Feggans turned to tabata, one of the most popular forms of high-intensity interval training.

As she began to transform her body and started losing what would eventually be more than 50 pounds, her metamorphosis evoked the attention of others in the local fitness community.

“Once I gained that following, people started asking me for advice,” she says, so she initiated a “very informal” group with three people who met once a week to discuss exercise, calorie intake and their commitment to living a healthier lifestyle.

It wasn’t long before she was given the opportunity to teach a seasonal outdoor group fitness class, which drew crowds of about 40 people.

Feggans says that experience was the impetus for building her own business, and now she’s hit-

policies or we can act like adults and work things through without creating lots of bureaucracy.

Tech has traditionally been a male-dominated industry, and, indeed, even local employment numbers show that trend. Does that need to be addressed?

Tech is still male-dominated on the development and coding side of things. Outcomes and products are better when their creation includes wide-ranging perspectives. And while there may be fewer female developers, there are many women involved in the process of software development, as business analysts, scrum masters, quality assurance analysts and so on.

One thing I value about Silverchair is its Agile environment [a software development methodology based on iterative development, where requirements and solutions evolve through collaboration between self-organizing cross-functional teams], that allows all members of the team to contribute directly to outcomes, so every person has a voice and is represented.

We need to get more women coding, but to simplify the equation to “too few female developers equals not many women in tech” isn’t fully reflective of female employees’ roles in the development process. At the same time, it’s important that we continue to engage girls, young women and women across the board to explore jobs in tech and to support their development and/ or career transitions.

Sabrina Feggans Owner of Beyond Fitness with Sabrina

One-woman show Only 31 percent of the self-employed with their own incorporated business are female.

ting it harder than ever by teaching a couple classes in Charlottesville and Fluvanna every week.

But running her own company takes a different kind of endurance than she’s used to. According to the fitness coach, the biggest challenge has been the lack of stability.

“It’s never an even flow,” she says. New Years resolutioners carry her through the beginning of the year, but come fall, her clients sometimes stop dropping by. “There are some months where there are only five people in class and there are some months when there are 40. You can’t give up when you only have five.”

Adds Feggans, “You can’t give up when people start to rely on you. Even though there were five people, those five people needed me.”

Because she’s a mother of three and works full-time at another job, the tabata instructor says she identifies with her clients, who are 95 percent female.

“Women sometimes feel like they have to take care of everyone else, and they neglect to take care of themselves,” she says. “At the end of the day, I can’t take care of my family if I’m unhealthy myself.”

In her final word of advice, Feggans sounds as much like a fitness coach as a business owner.

“When it looks like the funds aren’t coming in or you’re not able to pay your business expenses, you have to keep pushing. It will all come full circle.”

“Women sometimes feel like they have to take care of everyone else, and they neglect to take care of themselves.”

AMY JACKSON

SABRINA FEGGANS

C-BIZ 49

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#GIRLBOSS: Where do women work?

THE

Facilitator

Midwife launches woman-centered startup

Despite the fact that, in the Charlottesville metro area, males make up a greater proportion of full-time, year-round workers (54.5 percent), the percentage of female full-time year-round workers is still higher than the national average. Here’s a closer look at how gender plays out in various occupational groups.

Personal care and service occupations

77.9% Office and administrative support occupations

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79.8% Health care support occupations

74.3% Health technologists and technicians

70.4% Service occupations

55.1% Food prep and serving

54.7% Arts, design, entertainment, sports and other media occupations

49.5% Legal occupations

44.8% Computer and mathematical occupations

29.4% Farming, fishing and forestry occupations

26.6% Protective service occupations

26.5% Production occupations

23.5% Material moving occupations

22.5% Transportation occupations

21.8% Architecture and engineering occupations

15.3% Construction and extraction occupations

2.7% Installation, maintenance and repair occupations

2.5%

Source: American Community Survey 2012-2016 five-year estimates.

Helping hands Within health care support occupations locally, 77.9 percent of workers are female.

W

hen Brynne Potter was a practicing midwife, she believed her role was to empower mothers, not rescue (or “deliver”) them. Now she’s taking a similar approach to helping communities improve their own birth outcomes—but instead of attending births, she’s heading a tech startup. Her Charlottesville company, Maternity Neighborhood, builds software for maternity care providers. “We’re using community resources to solve problems,” she says.

The concept goes well beyond giving midwives a way to track client information. Rather, the software can be used by many different people who might care for a woman during or after pregnancy, including birth doulas and lactation consultants. It’s designed to make it more likely that mothers will be well-informed about their care—full partners in decision-making—by, among other innovations, giving them direct access to their own records.

But the software is also a tool for data collection, and that’s where the community resources piece comes in. Potter says the best local example is the Sisters Keeper collective of birth doulas, a nonprofit that provides its members with Maternity Neighborhood software to track client care. “How do we know if that [doula-client] relationship is the best prescription for a better birth?” says Potter. “This isn’t

captured in a traditional health care platform. We’re trying to quantify it. ...Maybe in five years Sisters Keeper could partner with an insurance company instead of applying for grants.”

Potter says that since founding the company in 2012, she’s drawn from lessons learned years earlier when she helped midwives’ groups lobby at the state level for professional certification.

“I realized I had a talent and a passion for bridge-building,” she says. “It’s not

Brynne Potter CEO and co-founder of Maternity Neighborhood about winning, but about recognition of stakeholders. That may be a more female style of leadership”—one that prizes listening and receptivity. Maternity Neighborhood also offers its 10 full-time employees individualized hours and PTO packages, aiming to create an inclusive and family-friendly workplace.

Potter, who before becoming a CEO practiced as a midwife in Charlottesville for a dozen years, believes that being a female entrepreneur may have garnered her investments or opportunities she wouldn’t otherwise have received, but she isn’t bothered by the notion that tokenism may sometimes be at play. “I will take every opportunity to expand the mission.”

C-BIZ 51

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52 C-BIZ

“My career has been determined by practicality and passion.”

AMY JACKSON

MORELA HERNANDEZ

Professor THE

Ethics, leadership and diversity collide for prof Morela Hernandez

R

esearching business governance, Morela Hernandez found a tipping point where the number of women on a board of directors changed the kinds of issues raised and decisions made.

“Three,” she says. “When you have three or more women on a board, the dynamic completely changes. Traditionally marginalized voices are heard.”

Women are underrepresented on boards, Hernandez explains, partly because board members are often chosen from C-level professionals, where women are also underrepresented. “It’s a filtering mechanism that perpetuates a disparity,” she says. As well, new board members often come from the social networks of existing board members, who tend to be white men who know people like themselves.

Hernandez is an associate professor of business administration in the Leadership and Organiza-

tional Behavior area and the academic director of behavioral research at UVA’s Darden School of Business. Her expertise focuses on the ethics of leadership and the role of diversity in organizational systems and decision-making practices.

She also consults with global companies, governmental agencies and nonprofits.

“My career has been determined by practicality and passion,” she says. Her father was a diplomat from Honduras, and his work brought the family to the United States when she was 7. Hernandez’s parents sold the family farm to pay for her and her brother’s university educations. “Our education was our inheritance,” she says. “I needed to be able to rely on myself after I graduated.”

At Rice University, Hernandez was drawn to psychology, but her mentors encouraged her to go to business school. “They suggested that I study the psychology of the workforce, how people behaved within organizations,” she says. “Applied psychology.”

Hernandez earned her Ph.D. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, then taught at the University of Washington in Seattle before coming to UVA in 2014.

How does academia compare to other industries for women? Hernandez explains that it mirrors other male-dominated industries, and women are still in the minority of professorships.

“Being both a woman and Hispanic, I am often the only one in my work environment,” she says.

When Hernandez considers what advice she would give to other women, she remembers her mother’s counsel about picking the right life partner. “I knew I wanted to work and have a family, so whoever I ended up with needed to not only tolerate but celebrate the work I wanted to do.”

Hernandez and her husband both have demanding jobs and share the work of raising their two children. She applies her knowledge of organizational structures at home. “In some families,

Morela Hernandez Associate professor of business administration at Darden responsibilities are siloed,” she says. “It’s like having different departments at a company: You respect what the other departments do, but you don’t have intimate knowledge of the day to day.

In our family, my husband and I are completely interchangeable for our children. We have the same utility. For a while, my son even called us both the same name, ‘ma pa.’”

What’s a measure of success for Hernandez?

Recently, her daughter asked her if men could be professors, too.

C-BIZ 53

Show me the money

THE

Creator

Metal fabricator moves into design

L

Why capital matters for women entrepreneurs

I

t takes money to make money, and that’s why undercapitalization of certain businesses is a big deal.

Lalin Anik, a Darden professor of marketing, asserts that women-owned businesses are far more likely to be undercapitalized than those owned by men: “Women entrepreneurs’ access to capital is limited in both source and amount,” she says, “and women are more likely to fund their ventures with high-cost capital such as credit cards.”

Operating a business with insufficient capital can mean, for example, running out of funds to produce or ship products, even if demand exists. And female entrepreneurs dramatically trail their male counterparts in raising money: Even though 40 percent of U.S. businesses are owned by women, they receive just 2.3 percent of available venture capital.

Why such a yawning gap? “The majority of women-owned businesses are professional services, which traditionally receive less funding than product- or technology-based companies,” Anik says. “But this is not sufficient

to explain why for every dollar of small business loans that women receive, another $23 go to men.” And as with gender, she says, an entrepreneur’s race has been shown to dramatically impact their access to funding. “When we are facing this landscape, discrimination in small business lending is hard to ignore.”

The national economy stands to lose, especially because women-owned businesses are growing at five times the national average. “Lack of sufficient capital funding for women entrepreneurs will cost the economy about 6 million jobs over the next five years,” says Anik.

When unconscious bias is part of the problem, social incentives may be part of the solution. Anik hopes for a lending process that’s gender- and race-blind.

“Another approach would be to move investors away from evaluating applications one at a time to comparing applicants to each other,” she adds.

“While the former leads people to compare applicants to an imaginary, stereotypical applicant, the latter process adjusts people to look for the best applicant in the pool.”

auren Danley grew up in a working-class neighborhood near the shipyards of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey—places that employed tens of thousands of people. Her father loved to build things, worked on railroads and once let her drive a train. She never felt like being an academic student was for her, but she was a natural student of the industrial trades that were

Lauren Danley Owner of Metal Inc.

Hard hit Among construction and extraction occupations, women make up just .7 percent of the workforce.

AMY JACKSON

Darden professor of marketing Lalin Anik says undercapitalization of womenowned businesses will cost the economy about 6 million jobs over the next five years.

54 C-BIZ

all around her. “I got started by randomly choosing the plumbing trade,” she says. From there she moved to pipefitting. “Metal made sense to me,” she says.

She found that the previous generation of tradespeople, then ending their own careers, were happy to pass on their knowledge. After almost two decades of industrial work, she decided to apply her skills to the architecture and design world. The company she started, Metal Inc., is now a three-woman shop that fabricates staircases, doors, light fixtures and other architectural elements near downtown Charlottesville. Many clients come from the Washington, D.C., area, but a number of local architects have collaborated with Danley, too.

“I get to work with some really creative people,” says Danley. As a pipefitter and fabricator, she says, “You had to be accurate. I transferred those skills into architecture and could push them much further.”

Being a woman in the trades, Danley says, can be a challenge, but she believes progress is happening. She relies on her integrity, reputation and skill to bring in clients. “It’s about the perseverance over the barriers,” she says. And she’s trying to foster a new generation of female metalworkers.

One of those is her apprentice, Georgia Christman, who says that when she contacted metal shops around Charlottesville looking for work, “I didn’t hear from anyone but Lauren.” Almost a year later, Christman is reveling in the environment at Metal Inc. “As someone who grew up being told ‘Don’t get dirty, don’t get hurt,’” she says, “I can unlearn that.”

“It’s about the perseverance over the barriers.”

LAUREN DANLEY

C-BIZ 55

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46 C-BIZ

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2018 KEYNOTES

JOHN CLEESE & DAN RATHER

F U L L S C H E D U L E & T I C K E T S AT T O M T O M F E S T. C O M

Backstory

B

Market share

uilt in 1820 as a residence (and later a dry goods store), the building at 333 W. Main St. (pictured above in 1952) cost George Pinkney Inge $3,000 when he bought it in 1890. His intention was to turn it into a grocery—Inge’s Grocery— with chickens, geese, a milk cow and vegetables in Bull Alley out back, and a variety of meats and other items inside. For a while, Inge’s was the only seller of fresh fish in the city, serving nearby private homes, university dorms and fraternities, as well as the Clermont and Gleason hotels, the University Hospital and Dolly Madison Inn. Inge made a name for himself in Charlottesville. A former slave, he left the city for boarding school (there were no high schools available to

58 C-BIZ

THEN:

Inge’s Grocery Store

Opened July 1, 1891 ■ Closed 1979 NOW:

Tavern & Grocery

Opened January 28, 2016 black students at the time), then returned to take a teaching position at Jefferson School on Seventh Street. He got involved in politics, often consulting with Paul Goodloe McIntire, and served as chairman of Charlottesville’s Republican Party in 1900.

Still, it was the grocery that made a lasting impact.

In 1965, Inge’s store was slated for demolition by

COURTESY ANDY MCCLURE

the urban renewal project that razed Vinegar Hill.

Thomas Inge, one of George’s nine children, fought for the building to be spared and won.

When it closed in 1979, Inge’s Grocery was one of the longest-owned black family businesses in Charlottesville.

Today the building houses Tavern & Grocery, an upscale pub spot that wants to honor its roots.

“The fact that it was a home, a boarding house, an eating place and a grocery store right in the center of the city is pretty amazing,” says owner Andy McClure. “Tavern & Grocery was designed to embrace what this building was, both with how it looked and felt, but also with its approachability to all who pass by.”

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