Vera Bradley's 100th Birthday
Interview with Co-owner and daughter Barbara Bradley Baekgaard.
Thursday August 6th, 2009

Skirt! Boston: How did the Vera Bradley Company Start?
Barbara: The company started in my basement actually, I borrowed $250 from my husband.  Within our first year I had made $10,000 on my Vera Bradley Bags. At the time I had two girls in college sand started making bags for them, well their friends loved them as well as their friends mothers and the idea took off.  Within five years I had hit the $3 million mark.

Skirt! Boston: Did you go to college for design?
Barbara: Well I went to college in New York, Marymount, but I went for Sociology not Design.

Skirt! Boston: How did you come up with the name Vera Bradley?
Barbara: I got the name from my biggest inspiratin my mother, Veronica “Vera” Bradley.

Skirt! Boston: What would you tell other women you get inspiration from you and your amazing success story?
Barbara: I would tell them that if you have an idea to run with it.  Don't think twice just go with it like I did.

Skirt! Boston: Has the line ever ventured into the clothing side?

Photo by Janet Casey

Christine was on track for her Ph.D. and a life as an academic, teaching and studying music and the brain, when her car jumped the rails. A combination of a difficult work environment and the realization that time with baby daughter Laurel was precious put the brakes on her career. She detoured, launching bostonmamas.com, a lifeline for local parents, and a graphic design business, poshpeacock.com.

“Having Laurel at home changed my priorities a lot,” says Christine “I’ve been an instinctive person all along and this felt like the right move.”

Laurel says, “We go to the library every week and get a ton of books, like Dora the Explorer, and I help mom with her artwork and baking.”

It's easy to imagine Ruth raising three girls as a single working mom. While she was creating leadership opportunities for women in the companies where she worked (like Shaw’s and National Grid), serving on the Mass. Commission on the Status of Women, and starting the nonprofit Suited for Success, her daughters absorbed the message that they are capable of anything. Debi followed her star to work in the federal government, to Harvard Business School, and to a career in marketing.

“Whenever there was a question or a fear that I couldn’t do something, she was there saying ‘of course you can.’ Her total and absolute certainty really empowered me to get it done and do it well,” says Debi.

“I believe people need the opportunity to be as good as they can be,” says Ruth, now CEO of Girl Scouts of Eastern Mass. “We need to give girls tools and values so the choices they make are the right ones.”

Dana’s relationship with motor vehicles was established back in the 1980s when she blew the transmission on her ‘82 LeBaron while racing a TransAm on Revere Beach Parkway.

She blew that transmission a few more times before graduating to other vehicles. Then she married a guy whose business was hot rods. Five years ago, they opened Chop Shop Custom Hot Rods in Woburn together.

She’s not tricking out cars in the shop, she says. “I can tell a street rod from a muscle car, but I'm not into engines, I like the artistic side.”

Rather than racing or dabbling under the hood, Dana is involved in legislation to keep the hobby legal and viable through the SEMA Action Network. And she's going to be driving a '60 Olds (when it's done). You know, the kind with the “12-person trunk.”

She’s an Olympic gold medalist and 20-year veteran of the US National Soccer Team, and a mom with a soccer academy business. So, what does Kristine Lilly have to prove?

As one of the first players named to the Boston Breakers professional women’s soccer team, people look to her to bring fans back to games (the first league was shuttered in 2003), and to be a role model for new moms (her daughter, Sidney, will be 9 months old around the time of the team’s first game on April 11).

"I lead by example more than anything," she says. "We’ll have a new group who mostly haven’t played together. I’m hopeful that we’ll have a bunch of leaders. I’m just trying to do whatever I can to make the team great."

Oh, then there are the throngs of elementary- and middle-school girls who will be watching, and wearing her number. "You want the young girls to see, to know that the possibility of playing professionally exists out there," she says.

She’s been at it 14 years now, stirring massive vats of homemade soups, overseeing the quality of the vegetables and rice, and admonishing customers to eat well. Marjorie is the driving force behind the New England Soup Factory, serving 800 people a day exactly the sort of high-quality ingredients that she feeds her own family.

It’s hot in Marjorie’s kitchen. While stirring the pots, she’s developing a new location, keeping an eye on the hip new chefs in town, and always improving upon what she’s been doing all these years.

"Inspiration is the most essential ingredient in every recipe," she says. "Every day I try to reach beyond the status quo. When you work for yourself you don’t have anyone pushing you, you have to push yourself."

It would be tough to find a couple busier than Arun Ramappa, an orthopedic doctor, and Jenny Johnson, producer of NECN’s TV Diner show. We lured them to Picco in the South End with an ice cream sundae, and heard about their joint resolution to cook more at home in 2009 rather than eating out. Food—of any sort—is one of their shared passions.

Jenny: “I love how Arun is very curious about the world.
It’s inspiring to me and keeps me very engaged asking questions and being thoughtful in a way I never was before.”

Arun: “Jenny has such a genuine spirit. She’s always uplifting to be around. She inspires me to be better.
And, it’s fun to date someone who likes to eat as much as I do.”

A transplant from DC and New York, Nikki worked on a variety of television shows and documentaries before launching her second career as owner of the interior design boutique Acquire in the North End.

True or False:

"I once had to find a ‘mouse wrangler’ to stage a scene with hundreds of mice in a cave for a show about a serial killer."

"I have a terrible fear of flying, so of course I ended up in a Navy jet landing on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the ocean – and we missed the landing the first time around."

"When researching a show about the Old West, I had to learn bull-riding."

Answers:

Call her Shayna Shenanigans because this artist plays with your imagination, making fuzzy animals, clown masks, balloons, everyday appliances and scary flowers both playful and eerie, the way a coat rack can take on an absolutely horrifying human form in the dark. It’s her way of sending viewers on their own adventures in art. Shayna’s work has been featured by Urban Outfitters, the adidas Originals store and the SXSW Music Festival. She is a founder of the Paint Pens in Purses events, which showcase female artwork.

"I resolve …
… for most of my existence I wished I could just disappear into my own imagination … my resolution for this year is to share this world with whoever is along for the ride! I’ll prove to you that there is a cartoon character in every cloud and crinkled piece of paper, making this world more like my dream world."

Meet Shayna and other female artists at the next Pain Pens in Purses event, Dec. 11 at Middlesex Lounge in Cambridge (see www.myspace.com/paintpensinpurses).

Her business could have been sneakers or lip balm.

Tori didn't set out to make a better granola, she wanted to create a business to make a difference in peoples’ lives. Then she stumbled upon her mother's habit of eating granola to ease perimenopause symptoms. Hoping to aid middle-aged women, Tori developed Zoe's Foods, a line of cereal and snack bars made of wholesome ingredients.

"When I was developing the formula, I'd cook up these little batches on my stove, finishing at midnight. Then I'd drive them around the corner to my friend’s house and leave them in her mailbox to try for breakfast,” she says. Ten years later, the products are in hundreds of markets and letters pour in from fans.

“I do not believe in a magic bullet, but I feel this can be a catalyst for change. It can get people onto the path to making more positive changes in their lives,” she says.

A magnetic personality, bubbly enthusiasm and a creative streak a mile wide make Morgan First, founder of Map Boston, an entrepreneur to watch.

She was backpacking through Europe using the Let's Go guide when she was inspired to create her own guide to Boston. The result is a handy, functional calendar/planner with neighborhood maps and tidbits on cool restaurants, stores (like Jamaica Plain's Salmagundi, where she's pictured).