Raised on an Iowa farm and trained as a musician, Sadie St. Lawrence went on to become a global leader in data science education and AI strategy.

What began as a small Stockton startup now operates eight locations with thousands of caregivers.

Kennedy Hill-Garcia has mentored hundreds of students while building programs designed to support future leaders.

From the Tower Bridge Dinner to Food Frontier, Meghan Phillips works to connect the region’s farms, chefs and food leaders.

Leading Northern California’s largest nonprofit senior living provider, Sheri Peifer is helping reshape how communities support older adults.

Inspired by the doctor who cared for her as a child, Dr. Jennifer Nuovo has built a 40-year career improving health outcomes for patients across California.

After first joining WEAVE as a fundraiser in the 1990s, Beth Hassett returned to lead the organization.

Emily Baime Michaels calls Midtown an “urban village,” a fading vision of American life that still exists here.

After nearly two decades at CBRE, Kimberly Follett now oversees brokerage teams across the region.

With live music echoing through Sacramento Memorial Auditorium, Comstock’s Women in Leadership honorees stepped into the spotlight for a dramatic orchestral photo shoot.

As CEO of Guardian Protection Force and founder of a budding new agency, she has cemented her place as a leader in a male-dominated industry and is actively building the future of security.

Steve Ayers owns or has sold dozens of buildings in Sacramento and says he’s “only just begun.”

Conversations with Sacramento-area business owners show tariffs aren’t affecting all companies the same way. At least one is expanding fast because of them. But almost everyone is seeing some effect.

Arteaga’s job requires him to maintain the viability and contemporary relevance of the oldest art museum in the West. 

Jacqueline, Allison and Elaine Taylor traveled with their father to Asia as he expanded Taylor Brothers Farms’ organic prune business. All this family immersion laid the groundwork for when they decided to branch out and form their own plum-related company Le Prunier.

When Earl Gorman Taylor planted his first plum tree on the 70 acres he bought in Sutter County in 1916, he could never imagine that his grandson Richard would one day turn it into a global empire. That’s exactly what Taylor Brothers Farms is now — the world’s largest producer and global distributor of organic prunes and prune products. 

From one vantage point, the Padillas — Greg, Topo and Brandon — are the most-multi-faceted professionals working in the Capital Region’s courts. The success of their bail bonds business over four decades involves how many hats each of the three generations can wear.

Collins’ first major project was a state hospital in Stockton in 1929, followed by another in Mendocino. More recent projects include the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Fresno Chaffee Zoo, Candlestick and Sutter Health parks, and many casinos.

Ming Luong started Ming’s Recycling in 1987, less than a decade after the Luong family arrived in the U.S. They were among the millions of people who fled Vietnam following the fall of Saigon, riding a fishing boat to a refugee camp in Malaysia before a church group sponsored their relocation to Laramie, Wyoming.

Sacramento State’s sports teams have endured many lean years. But the institution, which debuted its original sports — basketball, baseball and tennis — in 1948, has embraced a controversial change.

North Star House, designed by renowned 20th-century architect Julia Morgan and owned by North Star Historic Conservancy, has undergone a painstaking transformation. 

The interior retains many of its original “Eichler” features, including pristine globe light fixtures and mahogany-paneled walls. 

Du Bose, a voice actor, lived in L.A. for 25 years before growing weary of the scene. In 2015 he resettled in his hometown of Fair Oaks while continuing to work in the industry. To decompress from a stressful job, Du Bose threw himself into transforming his yard and home into a showstopper. “I wanted to make it feel like I was on vacation,” he says. 

Since being hired in January of 2024, Heidt not only took the helm of an organization with an annual budget of $5.5 million, a 20-member board of directors and a fulltime staff of 10 plus “five contractors who have very specialized skills” — but also began what he calls “an apology tour.”

When Helen Pierson took a new job in the billing department at her family’s ambulance business in 1988, she couldn’t have predicted that she’d one day lead the team — alongside her three adult children.

“It’s a pretty spectacular home that emulates the juxtaposition of modern and traditional design in a Northern California style,” Brian Whitmore describes his house located in the Sierra de Montserrat development in Loomis.

Nearly 2,000 miles northwest of Sacramento, Matthew Perkins rode a boat out into the Gulf of Alaska and saw nothing but endless potential for growth. “It’s kind of overwhelming how much opportunity there is,” he says. “You’re on the water, snow-capped mountains in the backdrop, you look down and see this incredible biomass growing. It’s literally the bounty of nature.”

For years, Mike Baddley walked his dog from his J Street office past a dilapidated little house on the corner of 24th and I Streets in Midtown. “I was fascinated with it,” he says. The abandoned folk Victorian-style house, built in 1893 for H.L. Cuthirth, had been deemed by the city a substandard building, meaning not safe for occupancy.