Women Vying for a Spot on the Inc. 5000

Part businesswoman, part animal lover, Putney's CEO Jean Hoffman founded Putney in 2006, two years after the sale of her first company, Newport Strategies, which provided competitive intelligence for the pharmaceutical industry. One afternoon, while taking her adopted cat Dude to the vet, Hoffman had a couple of realizations. First, pet medications were prohibitively high for many people. And second, this created a niche market for a business that sold generic pet medications. These facts sparked the beginning of Putney. Read more.

Denise Wilson is an anomaly in the flying community. She is one of the nearly 38,000 active female pilots in the United States, just six percent of all active pilots in the country, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. She's been flying for the past 15 years including stints working for Aloha Airlines and other major airlines. What makes her even more rare is that she's also the founder and president of an aviation company, Desert Jet, which she launched in 2007. Read more.

Kim Overton can be classified as a serial entrepreneur. In the mid-90s she co-founded a tech company with her friend. After that she helped The Lord Group advertising agency develop its interactive division. And most recently, she invented the SPIbelt (pronounced spy belt) in 2006, with the goal to make a small, convenient pocket that would fit all of your essentials while you are working out: keys, ID, cell phone, inhaler, etc. Read more.

Renee Lyle is the president of The American Poolplayers Association (APA), which was started by professional pool players Terry Bell and Larry Hubbart. Bell and Huppart had traveled around the country on the professional circuit noting how each city would have a slightly different interpretation of the game. To bring the disparate pool communities together under one umbrella, Bell and Hubbart founded The National Pool League in 1979—later renamed to the American Poolplayers Association in 1981—with the goal of making billiards more accessible. Lyle is Bell’s stepdaughter. Read more.

After 9/11 Sandy Webster’s office near the World Trade Center was rendered uninhabitable and she and her best friend and co-worker Peggy McHale were forced to work in different locations, while they continued to struggle with the loss of many other co-workers and friends. A new perspective on life caused them to quit their jobs and launch Consultants 2 Go. Since the company began in 2001 it has expanded to a network of more than 700 vetted consultants who work with clients all across the country. Read More.

Early morning flights from Chicago to Washington, D.C., don't often change lives. But in the case of a Chinese-American restaurateur and bakery owner who was served a frozen pastry and a tar-black cup of coffee by the airline attendants, it was kismet. That's when Sue Ling Gin had her "aha" moment aboard a plane to start Flying Food Group in 1983. The company aims to provide a higher quality of food service to commercial airlines. Read more.