Every feature is a deep dive into the entrepreneurs, creators, and changemakers shaping culture.
Luxury fashion and community advocacy intersected at Carolina Herrera's "Shopping for a Cause" event in La Jolla, where influence, philanthropy, and cultural awareness came together under one purpose-driven experience.
Daniel Schreiber had never worked a day in insurance. Shai Wininger had built Fiverr from scratch. Together they decided the most hated industry in America was also the most broken — and that fixing it might just save them both.
When Daniel Schreiber cold-called Warren Buffett's insurance lieutenants to tell them their industry was about to get disrupted, they laughed. Six years later, Lemonade had crossed a billion dollars in force premium, gone public on the NYSE, and proved that insurance could work the way trust actually works — by aligning with customers instead of against them.
He learned global logistics by importing motorcycles from China in his dorm room. Then he spent a decade building the software that made the world's supply chains visible for the first time — and discovered that disrupting a $3 trillion industry is a lot harder than explaining why your container is late.
Ryan Petersen learned global logistics by importing motorcycles from China while still a college student. Two decades later, Flexport is the company that finally made the black box of global shipping transparent.
Nik Storonsky left Lehman Brothers with a burning question: why does sending money across a border cost three percent? A decade later, 65 million people carry the answer in their pockets.
In 2015, a Russian physicist-turned-trader quit his job at Credit Suisse, teamed up with a software engineer, and launched a prepaid card from a co-working space in London's Canary Wharf. Today, Revolut is valued at $75 billion — more than Barclays — and Nik Storonsky is personally worth $14 billion. The origin story is simpler than you'd expect: a fee that made no sense to a man who spent his career trading derivatives.
She arrived in Los Angeles in 1989 with $200, no English, and a daughter to raise. Her husband had fled to America years earlier. The regime had kept them apart. She had survived bread lines, blackouts, and the Securitate. What she built next would reshape an entire industry — and the hardest part came last.
The line for bread in Constanța, Romania, could stretch for two hours. Anastasia Soare knew exactly how long it took because she had stood in it hundreds of times — a young woman in a country where the electricity cut out at six o'clock every evening, where toilet paper was bartered like currency, where the government decided when you could leave and when you had to stay. In 1986, her husband Victor found a way out. His shipping route took him to Italy, where he walked into an American embassy and asked for asylum. He made it to Los Angeles. She did not. She stayed behind with their daughter, waiting, for two and a half years, to find out if the regime would ever let her follow.
She was decorating everyone else's apartment, working in advertising, and sleeping on sheets nobody could name. Then she took a trip to Italy and came home with an idea that would become one of the defining DTC brands of a generation.
Ariel Kaye was the person her friends called when they needed their apartment to feel like a home. Not an interior designer by training — an advertising executive by day, a compulsive home-decorator by night, the kind of person who noticed when something was wrong with a room before she could name what it was. Her friends noticed too. They kept asking her to come over and fix things.
How a busy marketing executive turned her weekend smoothie side hustle into a $1.1 billion plant-based food company—by refusing to compromise on health or growth
Rachel Drori was burning out. As a marketing executive at Gilt Groupe, she found herself skipping lunches, grabbing whatever snack she could find, and accepting that convenience meant sacrificing health. Three years later, after building a frozen food delivery company from her kitchen, Drori had rewritten the entire frozen food category—and proved that discipline, not luck, builds billion-dollar companies.
She walked away from a C-level salary, opened a piercing business from her attic, and watched it all blow up at once — the good kind. Now Rowan does $70 million a year and she's just getting started.
Louisa Serene Schneider was 48 years old, a hedge fund manager who assessed dying malls for a living, when she quit her Wall Street career to start an ear-piercing business. Not a tech startup. Not a fund. An ear-piercing business — from her attic in Larchmont, New York.
He lost everything at 30 with four kids under five. Then he put $5,000 on a credit card, built his next company in the margins of his life, and spent four years proving Amazon wrong.
Steve Sonnenberg was thirty years old, married, and had four children all under the age of five. He had built a business from nothing — then lost everything in a lawsuit. He put $5,000 on a credit card and started over.
Ankur Jain spent years watching Americans light $1.4 trillion on fire every year. Then he decided to give it back.
Ankur Jain didn't invent the loyalty program. He just asked one question nobody else had thought to ask: why doesn't the biggest bill in America earn you anything?
A serial founder discovers his true business only after his first one succeeded.
A serial founder discovers his true business only after his first one succeeded. Karan Goel built PrepMe into the first adaptive learning platform for college test prep—then realized he'd solved the wrong problem. Ten years later, GetSet became the platform he should have built first.
Ray Harmon is the fourth generation to run a funeral home in Pratt, Kansas. When the biggest death-care company in North America came knocking, he said no. That was the easy part.
Ray Harmon's great-grandfather opened Harmon & Sons Funeral Home in Pratt, Kansas in 1922. A hundred years and four generations later, Ray is still there — handling 140 arrangements a year, paying his people fairly, and refusing to sell. The economics of rural death care are brutal. But someone has to do it.
A corporate food exec walks away at 55 to rebuild agriculture in a 100-year-old warehouse—and transforms an industry.
Mike Zelkind walked away from a 30-year corporate food career at age 55 to convert a 100-year-old warehouse in Hamilton, Ohio into the nation's first fully automated farm. Today, 80 Acres is in 17,000 retail locations, raised $115 million in 2024, and just merged with Soli Organic for a $200 million combined enterprise.
Solange Hyppolite choreographed videos for gold-certified artists and toured with two sold-out acts. At 31, she walked away and opened a 900-square-foot dance studio in a shuttered Brooklyn laundromat. Seven years later, Hyppolite Arts serves 2,400 students and does $2.1 million a year.
Solange Hyppolite spent eight years as one of the most sought-after choreographers in commercial dance — invisible by design, essential by execution. Then she opened a studio in her Brooklyn neighborhood and built something that finally had her name on the door.
Rosa Delgado's parents opened Delgado's Kitchen in Boyle Heights in 1984. Forty-two years later, she's still there — and so is the neighborhood.
The mole has been going since 4 a.m. Rosa Delgado is in the kitchen at Delgado's Kitchen in Boyle Heights by 5:30, same as always — a pale blue apron over her jeans, a cup of coffee she started making when she walked in and won't finish until noon.
How Linh Tran turned a pandemic layoff and $14,000 in severance into Mẹ Studio — a sustainable fashion brand now generating $3.1 million by honoring the invisible labor that built American fashion
Linh Tran's mother spent twenty years sewing piecework in a Houston garment shop — thirty-three cents per dozen hems, eight hours a day, no benefits. Tran took the other path: fashion school, a corporate buyer role at Dillard's, senior buyer by thirty-two. Then March 2020 came and took all of it. What she built in its place — Mẹ Studio, a sustainable D2C women's wear brand — now employs 14 people, pays every seamstress a living wage, and generated $3.1 million in revenue last year.
How Leah Bressette left a utility career behind to bring solar energy to tribal lands in northern Wisconsin — and turned energy sovereignty into a $4.2 million business
Leah Bressette grew up on the Bad River Reservation in Wisconsin, where winter power outages were so common her grandmother kept three kerosene lamps staged in the kitchen. Fifteen years later, Bressette runs Anishinaabe Energy Solutions, a solar and renewable energy contractor that has installed systems on tribal lands across the Upper Midwest and generated $4.2 million in revenue last year.
How Keali'i Kahananui built a $3.8M cultural tourism company that's changing who actually profits when people fall in love with Maui
Keali'i Kahananui grew up watching tour buses roll past his family's taro fields. At 29, he started leading hikes in his great-grandmother's footsteps. Seven years later, Na Pali Cultural Journeys employs 22 Native Hawaiians and generates $3.8 million a year — by doing the one thing resort tourism never could: telling the truth.
How Rodrigo Esparza turned a used CNC machine, $58,000 in savings, and an aerospace certification nobody thought he could get into the most precise manufacturing operation in San Antonio
At 17, Rodrigo Esparza swept metal chips off the floor of a San Antonio machine shop for $7.50 an hour. Nobody expected much from the quiet kid who barely spoke English. Twenty-four years later, Esparza Precision Manufacturing builds aerospace-grade components for defense contractors, employs 47 people, and generated $6.8 million in revenue last year.
How Marcus Webb turned $25,000 and a Baltimore row house into a workforce housing company doing $4.2 million in revenue
Marcus Webb spent his childhood in Baltimore watching landlords collect rent and do nothing else. At 31, he bought his first distressed row house. Seven years later, Keystone Housing Group manages 340 units across three cities and generates $4.2 million in annual revenue.
How James Park walked away from a software career to open boutique fitness studios in Austin — and found himself running a $3.1M business
James Park had a stable tech job, a good salary, and a nagging feeling that he was slowly disappearing. He quit, opened a gym, and nearly went broke twice. Then something clicked.
How Elena Vasquez turned one night of helpless rage into a $2.1M home care agency serving Chicago's most overlooked families
Elena Vasquez watched a rotating cast of strangers cycle through her grandmother's apartment for two years — different face every week, wrong medication twice, a fall that went unreported for three hours. She promised herself she'd fix it. She just didn't know that meant building a company.
How Priya Nair built a $2.4M software company by solving the problem she lived with for years
Priya Nair had no engineering background, no outside funding, and $8,000 in savings when she started building software to save her parents' gym. Three years later, Fit.Studio has 180 paying customers and $2.4M in annual revenue.
How a Ghanaian-American hairstylist built an $1.8M hair care brand from her apartment
Amara Osei started her hair care brand with $40 and a kitchen mixer. Five years later, Luminous Hair Co. is in 300 stores across the country.
When Yolanda Price parked her first food truck outside a New Orleans hospital in 2020, she just wanted to survive. Now she feeds hundreds every day.
Yolanda Price lost her entire catering business in a single weekend in March 2020. By April, she was feeding healthcare workers out of a folding table. By 2024, she ran three trucks, a full restaurant, and a community program that keeps the neighborhood fed.
How a single mother turned a weekend candle business into a multi-million dollar wellness brand
Maria Santos started making candles in her garage while her kids slept. Five years later, Bloom Wellness ships to 40 countries.
Marcus Thompson turned a fading barbershop into the heartbeat of his neighborhood
When Marcus Thompson bought a struggling barbershop in Detroit, everyone said he was throwing money away. Three years later, Thompson's has become the neighborhood's living room.
How a burned-out attorney found her calling in a commercial kitchen
Lisa Chen billed 2,400 hours a year at a top law firm. Now she spends her days perfecting chili blends. She's never been happier — or more successful.