First off, congratulations to all our wonderful Women of Influence. Once again, this year’s class is full of women from diverse areas of our community, who serve as inspirations to so many and have the drive and will to be such powerful influencers. In the following section, you’ll find a story on each of these women and, on our website, their advice via video to young women. Let me also offer all of our readers an invitation to honor the class in person at our Women of Influence event – a fantastic opportunity to hear from the honorees themselves about how they became such influential women. So congratulations again to the 2011 class, and I look forward to meeting each of you at the event.

– Chris Conetzkey, editor of the Business Record