Diane Cutler, Co-owner Bryson City Bicycles. Board Member – Nantahala Area Southern Off-Road Bicycle Association. www.brysoncitybicycles.com. 

There was little fanfare in 2010 when Mary Earnest opened the Blue Rooster, a Southern diner in a strip mall past its prime.

If you’d asked Leeann Bridges 20 years ago what her ideal career would look like, she probably wouldn’t have told you she hoped to become a marketing executive at a casino. 

Like many women, Karen Buchanan Bacon loves to shop. She loves skimming through Pottery Barn and Southern Living magazines looking for home décor pieces that mesh together to create the perfect room.

For Lisa Potts, Christmas isn’t just a holiday — it’s a way of life. Potts owns Nancy Tut’s Christmas Shop in Dillsboro, an occupation that means she spends every day surrounded by Christmas paraphernalia of all sorts.

Three women in Franklin have been able to weave their multiple talents together to run a successful downtown business.

Back in 1990, Hanneke and George Ware’s odds for success were long. A pair of non-locals living in what was then an even more remote corner of the state than it is now, they’d just purchased a 23-acre property between Dillsboro and Whittier with the hope of creating a sought-after bed and breakfast destination.

When Kathy Sheppard got her start in the insurance world 30 years ago, she was a pioneer in a male-dominated profession.

Most people don’t kick off their retirement by becoming president of a company, but Nicki Slusser is not most people.

Michele Rogers had no job, no college degree, no husband and no place of her own when she pulled up stakes in her hometown of Norfolk, Va., and headed for Haywood County in the winter of 1996.