We hope you enjoyed the holiday, whether you cooked out or stayed in. 

This month, we’re taking stock of our city’s brightest stars amid a galaxy of shiny young professionals. While it was tough to make selections from our many impressive nominations this year, we have no doubt the 13 young leaders we selected are some of the region’s most promising, values-oriented individuals. 

Shifting metaphors — from astronomy to the horse races (keep up, will ya!) — we used the latter as our motif for this year’s spread, which was shot at the stylish Canon restaurant. We asked our honorees to don their best derby accessories to represent their competitive spirits and drive toward greatness. Join us in going “off to the races” as we highlight these deserving young professionals in the pages of our print magazine (out this week), and every day on the web. 

Here’s the latest Capital Region Rundown:

We chart the course of one design professional’s career and identify the specific ways she’s benefited from having a mentor; cover star Amber Celmer reflects on a pivotal moment in her career in which she applied her personal experience to her role serving the unhoused population; Comstock’s president looks to the latest survey results that reveal young professionals’ unique perspectives as well as their commonalities with older generations; Evil HR Lady zooms out in her advice to an employer who resents paying for the unemployment benefits of terminated employees; and we explore the imaginative new headquarters for Sacramento’s largest architecture firm.

Recommendations from our editors:

In this section we editors share what we’re reading, listening to, watching or even eating. Here’s what we’re consuming this week:

Vanessa: I recently decided to try being (mostly) vegan, and realized that even though I make a mean salad, I can’t realistically eat it for every meal. So for the past few weeks, I’ve been ordering meal plans from Rider’s Ranch, the Sacramento area-based meal delivery company created by Alannah Rider, who’s also the head chef of one of my favorite spots, Veg Cafe. Her plant-based meals range from hearty kale caesar salads to zesty zucchini bakes and are so tasty and satisfying.

Judy: The Tour de France is back! Cycling is huge in the Capital Region and the three weeks of Le Tour winding through the beautiful countryside of France is exciting to watch on NBC Sports. If that’s not enough, former TdF cyclists Lance Armstong and pal George Hincapie are back with their fun and “colorful” podcast every day of the tour, on THEMOVE podcast available on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere. You can follow former Roseville resident Neilson Powless who is one of seven Americans on the tour. 

Jennifer: I’ve attended a few artist residencies under my other guise as a fiction writer and have struggled to describe the experience to others. The Peter Strickland film “Flux Gourmet” gets it, with humor, self-awareness and style in spades. Inspired by 1970s Italian horror — but not, despite what trailers suggest, horrific at all — the new film is both a long joke about art and a testament to its role in people’s lives.

Odds and ends

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