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Article Excerpt
Letter From the Publishers
Welcome to the San Diego Business Journal's Women Who Mean Business publication, honoring local women for their outstanding contributions to business, the government and the San Diego community. We are proud that this is our 15th year honoring Women Who Mean Business in San Diego County.
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This year's honorees represent the diversity of San Diego business and are shining examples of how women are contributing to all sectors of the economy.
This supplement provides photos and names of the independent panel of judges, as well as the names, pictures and profiles of the honorees.
The San Diego Business Journal would like to thank all previous and this year's nominees and honorees. The impact of these women on San Diego business, culture and community cannot be measured.
We would also like to think the judges for their dedication and hard work in selecting the honorees from a terrific group of 146 nominees.
The San Diego Business Journal would like to thank presenting sponsor Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves & Savitch for supporting this 15th annual Women Who Mean Business publication and event, as well as co-sponsors Bollotta Entertainment, Comerica Bank, Women in Technology International, Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, Kaiser Permanente and Signa Digital Solutions.
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Thank you for continuing to support the San Diego Business Journal and local businesswomen and making the Women Who Mean Business event and publication a success. We look forward to honoring women's efforts in the community for years to come.
Congratulations again to all of the nominees and honorees!
Thank you,
Armon Mills
President & Publisher
San Diego Business Journal
Reo Carr
Associate Publisher
San Diego Business Journal
Exemplary Award
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Adm. Christine Hunter
Medical Corps, U.S. Navy
Rear Adm. Christine Hunter assumed command of Navy Medicine West and Naval Medical Center San Diego in January 2007.
Hunter is a graduate of Boston University School of Medicine and is board certified in internal medicine, hematology and medical oncology. During her 27 years on active duty, she has served as chief of staff, bureau of medicine and surgery, pacific fleet surgeon, commanding officer of Naval Hospital Bremerton, executive assistant to the navy surgeon general, and director of medical services at Naval Medical Center San Diego.
Hunter's military decorations include the Legion of Merit (five awards), the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, the Navy Commendation Medal (two awards) and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal (two awards).
Community Service Award
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Dr. Nancy Graff
University of California San Diego
Dr. Nancy Graff graduated with a B.A. and M.D. from UC San Diego. After completing residency at UCLA, she returned to San Diego as a fellow at the UCSD Division of General Pediatrics in 1990. She is currently a clinical professor at the UCSD School of Medicine. Graff has always wanted to be sure that everyone has a voice, especially those who can't fight for themselves. For that reason she decided to focus her career on the prevention of family violence and the health and well-being of children in the foster care system.
Acknowledged as an expert on child abuse, Graff has served as the medical director of the Polinsky Children's Center clinic since 1994. In this position, Graff meets the needs of children suspected of or found to be at risk of child abuse. Since returning to San Diego for fellowship in 1990, she has also addressed the needs of children and families at El Cajon Community Clinic, The Birthplace and Hillcrest Receiving Home. She worked closely with UCSD's Academic Center of Excellence on Youth Violence Prevention for a number of years. While working with the center she developed and now leads a Youth Violence Seminar for fourth-year medical students.
Graff directs two programs at the UCSD Division of Community Pediatrics. As the director of Pediatricians and Communities Collaborating Together, a residency training program, she ensures that San Diego's future pediatricians will competently practice culturally appropriate medicine, as well as understand, appropriately respond to and prevent family violence. Graff also directs a program that provides varied developmental and behavioral services for children ages 0-5 and their families, including developmental/behavioral screening, assessments and evaluations.
Graff serves as the State Governmental Affairs Representative for Chapter 3 of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) and has chaired the chapter's Committee on Child Abuse and Neglect since 2002. Currently, Graff sits on the San Diego County Juvenile Policy Group Healthcare Committee and is a member of the following: Domestic Violence Fatality Review Team, Developmental Screening and Evaluation Project Advisory Board, and San Diego County's Fetal Infant Mortality Review Advisory Board and Case Review Workgroup. Graff has served on the board of La Cuna, a nonprofit foster family agency that places Latino babies in healthy and loving homes, and is a past chair of the AAP's Community Access to Child Health Committee.
Graff has participated in the AIDS walk and the AIDS bicycle ride from San Francisco to L.A, where she volunteered as a member of the crew. Graff is also a member of Children's Health is a Legal Duty (CHILD), which fights for the rights of children who are prevented from receiving health care due to their parents' or guardians' religious beliefs. Consistent with her beliefs that all children deserve health care, she has gone beyond the expectations of a pediatrician to simply treat ailing children, to fight for all children at a policy level.
Courage Award
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Sarah Reinertsen
Always Tri Inc.
Sarah Reinertsen is a magnetic woman with a potent message of strength and perseverance. She has blazed a new trail of opportunity and redefined expectations for others around the world. Reinertsen has done this through her sport of triathlon racing and speaking. She has spoken as a motivational speaker to many groups such as Met Life, Principal Financial, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Nike, NASA Ames Reasearch Center, Tropicana, University of Illinois at Chicago, EV3 Las Palmas Hospital, Sacouny and many more. Reinertsen has raced many races all over the United States and the world showing and inspiring others to go out and just do it. She has also appeared on many TV shows and magazines even gracing the covers. All this has worked to show and inspire others to be more than they think they can be. Reinertsen's motto is "Fear Less Live More."
Reinertsen is a motivational speaker, athlete and mentor. She conducts clinics around the country and the world for amputees who want to learn to run and get back into the world of sports or just into life. She has visited and run clinics for the soldiers back from the war in Iraq at Brooke Army Medical in Texas, Walter Reed Hospital in D.C. and Balboa hospital in San Diego. Reinertsen has also worked with people who are not amputees, but are inspired by her and see her as a role model.
Missing her leg above the knee since the age of seven, she has never let that stop her from pursuing her goals, no matter how big. She is a woman of spirit, strength and determination who has always overcome any challenge to meet her goal. In 2005, she was the first female amputee to finish the Ironman Triathlon Championship in Kona Hawaii, won an ESPY Award in 2006 and was honored with an Outstanding Young Californian Award from the California Jaycee Foundation. She even participated in season 10 of the CBS show, "The Amazing Race."
Reinertsen is an athlete, motivational speaker, mentor, role model and an advocate for change. She participated on the Amputee Coalition of America Board to help with the issue of insurance facing amputees, which allowed for only one leg to be covered, not taking into account growth, adjustments, etc. A lot has been done to change the insurance wording in most policies and it is still an ongoing issue but strides are being made. Reinertsen speaks to many groups as a motivational speaker and has touched many lives with her message and with her story of pursuing goals. She is guided by a simple, but powerful, mantra: Don't ever give up on what you believe in. Not once. Not ever!
Community Leadership Award
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Maj. LindaMarkiewicz
The Salvation Army-Sierra del Mar Division
Maj. Linda Markiewicz has served with The Salvation Army for 27 years. This year, she was appointed as divisional commander of the Sierra del Mar Division and is the first woman to hold the position in this division and only the third female to hold that position in the Western Territory. When Markiewicz joined The Salvation Army there were virtually no women executives in the corporate or NGO (non-government organization) world. She has successfully broken through the glass ceiling by serving in a leadership role equivalent to that of a CEO in a major corporation.
In addition to overseeing a four-county region--San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Imperial--Markiewicz oversees the Door of Hope and regional disaster relief services. She is responsible for overseeing a $35 million budget for this division, which is staffed by 700 employees. She also serves as the ecclesiastical head for 34 pastors.
As an art major who graduated from university in 1972, Markiewicz sought out the art scene in New York. There she first came into contact with the army when Salvationist friends of her aunt helped her get a job as a house mother at The Salvation Army's Wayside Home School for Girls in New York. She became a Salvationist (a soldier in The Salvation Army) in 1977. She became an officer in 1981 and her first assignment was as a corps officer overseeing a Salvation Army corps community center in New York.
With each new appointment, Markiewicz assumed exceptional leadership roles, often roles no women had held before. In June 1985, she transferred west to become assistant personnel officer at the Salvation Army Training College. In 1995, she was summoned to serve at International Headquarters in England as undersecretary for the Americas and the Caribbean. In 1998, she returned to the states to serve in positions as assistant secretary for the personnel and pastoral care secretary. Continuing up the chain of command, she was sent to Hawaii in 2003 to serve as divisional secretary of Hawaii and the Pacific Islands. The following year, it was back to England to serve at the International College in 2004. She received the appointment as divisional commander of the Del Oro Division (Sacramento) in 2007 and was transferred to the Sierra del Mar Division as divisional commander here in San Diego this year.
As divisional commander, she is spearheading the Army's capital campaign efforts to rebuild the Salvation Army's Door of Hope campus in San Diego. The Door of Hope is home to the Transitional Learning Center (TLC), which houses homeless women and children, as well as the Haven Program for pregnant and parenting teens who are referred through juvenile hall or the foster care program. It will also be the future home of a program to support emancipated foster girls ages 18-24. These programs are designed to empower the participants by giving them a place to stay while they find work, finish school, develop life skills, receive counseling, etc. Markiewicz believes that "by saving the individual, the community starts to change."
Markiewicz also oversees The Ray and Joan Kroc Corps Community Center on University Ave., which opened in 2002 and represents the first in a new model for Salvation Army Corps. The 12.4-acre center offers the community an ice arena; a gymnasium; aquatics; recreational fields; challenge courses and rock climbing tower; an indoor skateboard park; a fitness center; life enhancement and family support programs; a 600-seat performing arts center; vocal, instrumental and dance instruction; an education center; and an internet-based library.
Markiewicz has also held senior appointments at The Salvation Army Training Colleges in both the United States and at international headquarters in England. More than 600 officers were impacted by the benefit of her training and are serving in Salvation Army corps around the world.
Executive Team Award
Aspire IRB
Executive Team Award
Aspire IRB was founded in late 2004 during a lunch meeting between Alycia Huston, Cathryn Taub (no longer with the company), Charlotte Stewart and Michele Baptista. They all worked at Biomed IRB at the time and decided they could own and operate an IRB (institutional review board) better and more ethically. Today, Aspire consists of 12 female employees and one male.
"We truly believe in mentoring young ladies to succeed in this-male dominated world. If we continue to support one another, there is nothing we cannot accomplish," says Huston.
Huston graduated from UC San Diego in 2000 with both a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Arts degree. She served at the Children's Hospital San Diego's department of research at an IRB before her three-year stint at Biomed with executive director, Baptista. She is a board member for NAWBO San Diego and holds the programs chair. She has also been elected NAWBO San Diego President Elect for 2009/2010.
Stewart began her professional career as a receptionist for local San Diego radio station, KSDO, where she served 13 years working for both the AM and FM stations, then the accounting department and finally the national sales department, managing the stations' largest accounts. She began at Biomed in 1997 as an administrative assistant position, two years later was promoted to study manager and in 2001 was promoted to IRB administrator.
She also passed her CIP (Certified IRB Professional) designation when she was not required to, but felt it was important for the advancement of her career in this field.
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When Baptista started at Biomed in 1991, she operated out of the executive directors' dining room, which had been converted into an office, and the company was in the red. Baptism learned how to run a company with virtually no experience. Biomed was willing to give her the job because they could not hire someone they felt was "qualified" and pay a fair salary. She was promoted from receptionist to executive director in four years. By 2004, when she left to found Aspire, Biomed had 20 employees and revenues of $1.5 million.
Because she had to learn accounting on her own, Baptista hired a woman from the classifieds to teach her accounting and bookkeeping in order to fully understand the financials of the business. Then, when the board told her she had to take over marketing, Baptista contacted a high school friend who was a marketing expert to walk her through building a marketing plan for Biomed. By 2003, she was extremely overwhelmed with her duties and asked the board to find an individual to take over the executive director position. The board told Baptism that because of her dedication to the company and her efforts that led to its success, she had a job for life at Biomed and she could choose her position and her salary would not be altered from her current salary as executive director. She then became the director of business development and started pursuing a degree in business administration with an emphasis in marketing.
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Huston, Stewart and Baptista decided they had the choice to stay where they were or change everything and start their own company. They knew they could do it better without the pressures of having to respond to a board of directors with hidden and/or personal agendas, so they pulled together $5,000 each from personal funds, acquired personal loans and decided they wanted no outside investors.
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These women are committed to protecting human subjects in the clinical trial process. There are only 15-20 independent IRBs spread out over the United States that are not hospital or university-based. From $27,869 in 2004 to $333,775 in 2005, then from $906,352 in 2006 to $1,401,866 in 2007, Aspire's revenue has continued to climb since opening its doors in 2004 and it is projected to reach $1.5 million by December 2008.
Honoree
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Candice Benn
RECON Environmental Inc.
Candice Benn has two passions that have contributed to improving lifestyles for San Diego residents and businesses. The first is the environmental planning community and her support of small environmental consulting firms. The second is her dedication to the National Meningitis Association (NMA) and outreach to inform parents of meningococcal meningitis and ways to protect their children from contracting this devastating disease.
In 1972, Benn graduated from the University of Arizona with a master's in anthropology and began her archaeology career in the Midwest. In 1986, Benn was employed at RECON Environmental Inc., where she became an environmental project manager for development projects in San Diego County. At RECON, she quickly moved from project management to become head of business development. She then began the company's expansion into federal contracting for environmental planning projects with the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Interior.
As part of her business development marketing goals, she began a small business outreach and support program for RECON. Through this program she has helped small businesses form and grow into successful firms through sponsored programs.
Benn has served as membership chair and president of Women in Business, a support organization for women who own various types of businesses or nonprofit organizations. She is a member of the Society of Military Engineers San Diego and Los Angeles Posts and is currently the small business chair for the Los Angeles Post and the featured firm chair for the San Diego Post. She is on the San Diego Post's scholarship trust board of directors and helps manage the trust...
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