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.”

Count North Country Charcuterie among those businesses that are wiser and more efficient at this point in the pandemic.

The Columbus-based maker and processor of salami, fresh sausage and other products has used new offerings to make a better-balanced business and refigured production space to better maximize its use.

The moves create more consistent cash flow and buy them more time in their current facility before they need to consider an expansion.

In this episode of Newsmakers, Columbus Business First’s podcast with Central Ohio leaders and entrepreneurs, co-owners and brothers Duncan Forbes and James Forbes (who started the business in 2014 with mother Jane Forbes), share their company’s history, some of the ins-and-outs of meat product production and why adding products like fresh sausage is important for more reasons than just additional sales.

How long can North Country Charcuterie stay in its current facility? What new products are they developing and dreaming up? And why does production have to occur within very specific hours?

The Forbes brothers discuss that and more.

Harley Blakeman's LinkedIn profile is one of a kind, but he's working to change that.

The founder of Columbus tech company Honest Jobs LLC lists one prior job and the book he wrote, then drops this attention grabber: "Drug dealer, January 2009 - November 2010."

"Started with $500 and grew the business to over $8,000/month in revenue," reads the description for the self-employed role. "Met and exceeded customer expectations. Successfully managed multiple suppliers. ... Closed down operations after being arrested and sentenced to prison."

The hilarious, blunt satirization of resume-speak helps explain the inspiration for his startup.

Blakeman turned his life around after his 14-month sentence in Georgia, moving to Columbus at the invitation of relatives who hooked him up with his first job. He described his journey from couch-surfing homeless teen to startup founder in the latest episode of Columbus Business First's Newsmakers podcast.

Despite earning top grades at Ohio State University, Blakeman couldn't land an internship and had trouble finding a job because of his record. He did eventually land a supervisory role at a manufacturer, but he knew the struggle was worse for many more entering the job market after incarceration – no matter their skill level.

"And I was just obsessing over it, I couldn't sleep at night, I was thinking about: This is what I should be doing with my time," he said. "This is my calling, I think, helping people overcome this problem."

Blakeman answered that calling by starting Honest Jobs, and pivoting the business from job-hunt training services to a full tech platform that matches candidates with employers.

But the best possible outcome, he said, is eventually to put himself out of business.

Comune will reopen for business, but that was never a sure thing.

Co-owner Joe Galati said he met with his accountant in November. The accountant asked him what Galati believed his chances of going bankrupt were.

Galati said 20%.

The accountant said 90%

“That hit the hardest,” Galati said. “There’s a very good chance this is all going away. … That lights a fire. That’s not going to happen. What are we going to do?”

The situation is better today.

Galati explains why he is more optimistic now than he was a few months ago in this episode of Crisis Management, Columbus Business First’s podcast about doing business amid the coronavirus pandemic.

He took a more conservative approach to business in the past year than many peers in the industry. He always expected this to be a long event, not just a few weeks.

Though the entire restaurant industry was challenged, Comune was among the establishments facing added difficulties. It was never built to have a thriving carryout business and the dine-in space was too small to reopen in any meaningful way. It’s still closed today.

But there were bright spots. The Parable Coffee pop-up has done well. There was some success with planned dinner events.

A return to some of the restaurant’s earliest dishes like crispy rice and its walnut-mushroom Bolognese is helping drive sales now.

“You can only hunker down so much,” he said. “At some point a business has to make its numbers.”

Business in times of struggle often talk of getting back to their roots.

Not North High Brewing.

Like many breweries and other businesses, the last year was one of big changes in the face of challenges, but the North High of today doesn’t resemble the one first dreamed up by co-founders Gavin Meyers and Tim Ward a decade ago.

They didn’t want to run any brewpub. Today they have four and could be in double digits by the end of the year.

They didn’t have aspirations beyond Columbus but soon will be in multiple states.

They only barely wanted to brew their own beer — the initial hook for the business was as a brew-your-own operation. North High’s own beers would be secondary to the experience of inviting customers in, showing them a book of recipes and letting them loose (with professional guidance) on the brewing system.

That brew-your-own option diminished over time as the founders realized being a traditional brewery made more sense.

It officially ended last year.

“That was the reason for being. That was the point of differentiation back when we thought the seventh brewery in Columbus was going to really crowd the industry,” Meyers said.

There are dozens of craft brewers around Central Ohio today and hundreds in the state.

North High is poised to rise in those ranks.

Meyers chatted with Columbus Business First for an episode of Crisis Management, a podcast about businesses operating amid the coronavirus pandemic.

He talked about the challenges of the past year — declining sales, laying off staff — but also the promise of the future. Thanks to its relationship with Columbus-based coworking space developers and operators CoHatch, North High’s reach is moving beyond its original Short North taproom.

Through that partnership, North High now has operations in Dublin, Springfield and Cincinnati, with additional units lined up in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis and Florida.

Meyers explains how that relationship developed, how it works and how it’s allowing North High to expand at “a fraction of the cost” they would incur if striking out on their own.

The startup he co-founded based on his original idea was running out of money, and he'd long since left day-to-day operations, but Chris Sauerzopf couldn't let go of the growing wire fraud problem it was trying to solve.

SafeWire is back in business and growing, after investor and adviser Pete Kight – the CheckFree Corp. founder – took the assets of the former business as collateral for paying off its debts and brought back Sauerzopf as CEO. They incorporated SCSV Holdings LLC at the end of 2019 and registered SafeWire as its trade name in early 2020, targeting more than $220 million and growing annual real estate scams.

"This problem scares the crap out of me," said Sauerzopf, who also owns a title company in Westerville. "Where this problem was first on my radar was in 2016, where someone had sent me an email who had just lost his entire life savings in a wire fraud loss. A title company had sent his proceeds to the wrong place."

Sauerzopf had started the former SafeChain Financial with original CEO Tony Franco and Rob Zwink, who was CEO from Franco's departure until the startup shut down. SafeChain had won the Columbus pitch event for Steve Case's Rise of the Rest seed funding tour, and later raised $3 million. But in late 2019 expenses still outstripped growing revenue, and Kight said other investors did not want to put in more capital.

Zwink insisted that Kight and Sauerzopf start talking, the two said in an interview for Columbus Business First's Newsmakers podcast.

"(Sauerzopf) met my criteria for an entrepreneur that you want to back," Kight said via videoconference from his ranch in Colorado. "He knows this industry, I mean, to the point where you got to be careful if you’re going to go out for a beer with Chris, because you’re going to talk about real estate."

The investment also is attractive because the entire mortgage process is "messy," Kight said. SafeWire is focused on the problem of wire fraud during the mortgage closing, but eventually can take on more aspects of a burdensome paper-piling process. The startup has more than 100 customers including title companies and real estate brokerages.

Zwink is now a CTO with a Minneapolis tech company. Franco declined an interview request but said via email: “Wire fraud is a complicated problem and opportunity. I’m happy Chris and the team are pursuing the vision for a solution.”

The interview tells the story of the revival, why Kight doesn't lose sleep over being the only investor willing to give the company another shot, and how SafeWire is similar to the early days of CheckFree, which launched digital banking.