For nearly five years, our Women of Influence podcast has featured conversations with some of the most influential female executives in Central Ohio. This year, Columbus Business First decided to take things a step further with the launch of our inaugural Women of Influence Awards.

We fielded 126 nominations, ultimately honoring 27 outstanding women in six categories: nonprofit leaders, community champions, entrepreneurs, trailblazers, mentors, and a rising star, along with Businesswoman of the Year, OhioHealth's Karen Morrison. We encourage you to check out our July 14th print edition for short profiles of each honoree and an extended Q&A with Karen.

During our July 12th awards event, I sat down for brief chats with three of our honorees:

Merry Korn, CEO and Founder of Pearl Interactive Network; Kari Jones, President & CEO of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Ohio; and Emily Foote, Area Manager for Bechtel Corp.

Listen on to hear what they had to say; and stay tuned for my onstage conversation with our keynote speaker, Bath and Body Works CEO Gina Boswell.

Mentioned in this episode:

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The client wanted the impossible: Give a robot all the skills of a human welder.

Five years ago a custom automotive and marine supplier in Cleveland asked what was then an engineering consulting firm to help him with a labor shortage, and Path Robotics Inc. was born.

"The tolerances are incredibly tight, that you have to keep with welding," co-founder and CEO Andy Lonsberry said. "And if the gaps (between pieces of sheet metal) change from 0 to 4 millimeters, you have to be able to make adjustments on the fly, seeing what's coming, move to a weave, go up onto a lift, weld in.

"And these, again, are things that come very easily for a trained human welder. But for a robot, it's just impossible."

Except now it's possible.

Path Robotics has since moved to Columbus, and last year launched its first commercial robotics system based on the prototype built by two brothers and a fellow engineer in that factory basement, as Lonsberry told us as the latest guest in Columbus Business First's Newsmakers podcast.

We talk about how the Path team solved its impossible problem, what it's like to work in cramped quarters with your brother, and why at first Lonsberry told Drive Capital, "Go away."

The interview was recorded shortly after the company landed a $56 million venture capital round to expand sales and manufacturing of its AI-powered system. The round was led by VC firm Addition along with returning investors, Columbus-based Drive Capital LLC and California's Basis Set Ventures and Lemnos Lab.

Lonsberry founded the company with his brother, Alex Lonsberry, and fellow engineer Matt Klein. The fourth founder is Ken Lonsberry, their father, on the business side – he didn't have to work in the basement. Today Path has more than 100 employees and could top 160 by year's end.

Welding jargon like "weave" above makes sense in context, but a few terms in the interview might be unfamiliar: Tier One automotive are the very large suppliers to automakers, mass producing the same part. And in welding the "puddle" is the molten metal forming during the weld, which quickly hardens to join the parts.

It’s almost hard to believe there was a time when good coffee just wasn’t a thing.

But it wasn’t that long ago.

Greg Ubert was working in computer software in the late 1980s, but what really captured his imagination was coffee — real, good coffee; the art and science of roasting.

And, of course, the potential for business.

“Good coffee just wasn’t widely available,” he said. “It wasn’t around. It wasn’t accessible.”

When he started Crimson Cup Coffee and Tea in 1991, local-based Stauf’s had been open just a few years, but industry giant Starbucks was still years away from stand-alone Columbus shops.

Ubert started not with a plan to seed the city, state or country with shops, but rather to be a resource — a wholesaler of beans and other supplies and consultant to those who wanted to run shops of their own.

Its customers are those who serve the end customers. That’s still the heart of the business today with hundreds of clients in 40 states plus a franchisee in Bangladesh, but Crimson Cup is gradually building up name recognition of its own with industry awards and a slow rollout of its own stores, including the newest unit at Easton Town Center.

Ubert sat down with Columbus Business First for our Newsmakers podcast. He shared not just the history of the brand and how its evolved in the past 30 years, but also the impact the Covid-19 pandemic had on the business — he shares his personal record for consecutive days wearing sweatpants to work — and his hopes for the future.

“People enjoy having a great drink,” he said. “I don’t think that’s going to change.”