“Between working in high-pressure work environments and raising kids, by the time I was 40 I was just physically, emotionally and mentally feeling like I was exhausted and falling apart,” Pire says. “At that point, I went through a life-changing timeframe.” That’s when she envisioned The Rising Zone, a Rocklin-based event and co-working wellness center.

At St. HOPE, Jennings oversees a collection of nonprofit entities — including a charter high school, a development company and an endowment — aimed at revitalizing the Oak Park neighborhood. She is, and has always been, a community builder.

Patterson returned to public policy in 2019 as the legal affairs secretary for Gov. Newsom, where she spent a good portion of her early work as counsel on the energy team, tackling the PG&E bankruptcy after the destructive North Bay and Camp fires. As cabinet secretary, Patterson advises the governor on policy and oversees all state agencies and departments within the administration.

She began her legal career in Washington, D.C., where she worked for the U.S. Department of Justice. She chose the civil division, which handled cases such as aviation disasters, the U.S. government giving LSD to soldiers in the 1950s as an experiment, and whether radioactive atomic testing in Nevada caused cancer. “It was pretty exciting stuff,” she says.

In the four decades that Laura Knauss has been practicing architecture, a lot has changed. In the late 1980s when Knauss began her career, women were woefully underrepresented in the field. Now women make up nearly one third of all architects and almost half of all candidates pursuing a license.

After more than 20 years at KeyPoint Credit Union in Santa Clara, Nabhani joined SAFE Credit Union in 2016 as executive vice president and chief credit officer, overseeing their lending programs. In January 2023, she became the first female president and CEO in its 85-year history. “I’m really excited this year about where we are as an organization,” she says. 

Since joining Stoel Rives five years ago, Ewens has represented both public agencies and private clients, such as vintners and ranchers, navigating the legal maze of water access. Her work frequently involves mediating between competing interests: agriculture, municipalities, environmental concerns and historical water rights holders.