Growing Through Adversity & Opportunity

​Growing Through Adversity & Opportunity: Women Entrepreneurs Share What Made Them Braver, Bolder, and Boundless

Every entrepreneur’s story is remarkable. Join us for a lively discussion with inspiring women entrepreneurs as they share their trials and tribulations on the path to success.

​Speakers include:
Kari Brunson
Co-founder & CEO, Frankie & Jo's
Kari Brunson moved to Seattle in 2000 after being recruited to dance professionally with the prestigious Pacific Northwest Ballet. After almost a decade with the ballet company, she retired in 2009 to pursue her longtime hobby of cooking into a new career. In 2012, she founded Juicebox Cafe, a vegetable-focused restaurant and in 2015, she co-developed and co-founded Frankie & Jo's, a plant-based ice cream company. Kari is passionate about creating products and places where plant-based cuisine and excellent hospitality are the centerpieces. In 2022, she became certified as a Leadership and Personal Development Coach. She does both internal coaching within her organization and external coaching to private clients looking to dig deep into their values, desire a career transition or change, want to develop a growth mindset, and achieve effective daily habits both personally and professionally. Kari lives in West Seattle with her family. She loves to cook vegetables, listen to podcasts, read fiction, and dig in her garden.

Rosalinda Mendoza
Co-founder & CEO, Mocel Mezcal
Rosalinda co-founded Mocel with Elizabeth Mendoza to share artisanal spirits that inspire connection and help establish a mezcal culture in the U.S. that considers the land, history and the way it connects people today. Rosalinda is part of a co-op mezcal distillery in Michoacan, Mexico, where her family is from. Prior to Mocel, Rosalinda was a Sr. Client Executive where she led a global team that delivered multimillion-dollar projects to IBM clients. While at IBM, Rosalinda was inducted into the IBM Hundred Percent Club for leading exceptional sales growth in her territory. Before that, Rosalinda held roles in management and marketing for various organizations including Starbucks and the Washington State Farmworker Housing Trust, a non-profit working to improve housing conditions for families in rural Washington. Rosalinda has an MBA from the University of Washington and a B.A. in Economics from Whitman College.

Amy Hutchins
Founder, Chief Product & Technology Officer, Unearth Technologies
Amy Hutchins founded Unearth, a map-based field productivity platform for construction. Unearth was acquired by Procore Technologies in September 2023 where Amy now leads the Mapping platform. Prior to Unearth, she led Product Management for buuteeq, a digital marketing platform for the hospitality industry acquired by the Priceline Group in 2014. She also spent nearly a decade at Microsoft leading various efforts in the consumer identity space working with Office, Xbox, Outlook and Windows.