Hitting the target: Oxnard businesswoman launches Boys + Arrows swimwear

Launched a year ago, the swimwear line is already selling thousands of bikinis at designer prices.

Fashion designer Heidi Merrick to keynote Top Women

Successful formula: Thousand Oaks woman rethinks the baby bottle

Seven years after Christine Barlow’s son was born with a birth defect, the baby bottle business she launched to help other infants avoid the same problem is up and running.

Karim, Jacob at the helm

San Luis Obispo County’s two most prominent business organizations are now headed up by women.

High-tech mapping: VSolveit garners USDA awards

Mapping company VSolvit recently garnered national USDA awards.

They shatter glass ceilings: Firm coaches women to negotiate

Coaching firm She Negotiates teaches women how to negotiate for pay raises and advancement .

Raising the bar: ThinkThin goes from home kitchen to big chain stores

Ventura-based energy bar company ThinkThin went from a home startup to a $30 million-a-year business

Kathy Ireland to female entrepreneurs: ‘Don’t let rejection stop your dreams’

Swimsuit model turned fashion mogul Kathy Ireland was in downtown Santa Barbara on Dec. 5 to tout her new jewelry collection. Ireland, who was a model for Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue for 13 consecutive years from 1984 to 1996, is now the CEO and chief designer of Kathy Ireland Worldwide, a $1.4 billion clothing [...]

Dialing up success: Firestone leads Tempest Telecom to clear skies

Jessica Firestone has built a business by making sure that your e-mails, text messages and phone calls get where they’re supposed to be going, and fast. In five years, Firestone has grown Goleta-based Tempest Telecom Solutions from a four-person startup to a 100-employee firm with operations across the country. Tempest pulls in about $30 million [...]

Lopker tells her story at CSUCI

Today, Pamela Lopker is the founder, president and chairman of the board of Santa Barbara-based QAD, a $220-million-a-year manufacturing software company with 1,300 employees. But back in the in the 1970s, Lopker, the daughter of a U.S. Navy engineer, was coding software at a defense subcontractor when she realized she had brighter career prospects. “As [...]