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Ten women have been chosen for recognition as the Des Moines Business Record continues its tradition of honoring Central Iowa’s most influential women. Nine were named Women of Influence, and one was chosen as the Woman Business Owner of the Year.

The Women of Influence honorees for 2008 are Rekha Basu, columnist for The Des Moines Register; attorney Bonnie Campbell; attorney Lori Chesser; community volunteer Sheila Drevyanko; Cara Heiden, co-president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage; Charlotte Hubbell, a member of the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission; community activist Willie Stevenson Glanton; Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge; and West Des Moines City Councilwoman Loretta Sieman.

The second annual Woman Business Owner of the Year award goes to Sarah Grant, founder and president of Sticks Inc.

The public is invited to attend a reception honoring these women on Aug. 12 at the Des Moines Marriott Downtown, 700 Grand Ave. The event begins at 4:30 p.m. with cocktails, hors d’oeuvres and networking. The presentation of awards begins at 5. Admission is $25..

Citigroup Inc., Des Moines Area Community College, Mercy Cancer Center and Katzmann Breast Center, and United Way of Central Iowa sponsor the event. First Bank sponsors the Woman Business Owner of the Year award.

Woman Business Owner of the Year: Sarah Grant

Her artistic vision has succeeded across the nation and she still takes time to create abstract paintings on canvas during intense bursts of activity. But Sarah Grant has a surprise for you. “I wish I had become a production engineer,” she said, “instead of an artist.”

The art came first, but learning about production and marketing gave it an audience, and isn’t that what every artist craves? Grant, 54, formed Sticks Inc. in 1985. Today she has about 140 employees in a showplace facility southwest of downtown Des Moines. Her functional and object art is sold in more than 100 galleries nationwide, including one downtown and one at West Glen Town Center. And after years of resisting the idea, Grant has just signed a licensing agreement to place Sticks images on gift cards, upholstery and fabric products.

So her career in business is going well. Imagine what might have happened if Grant had actually taken some courses in the subject.

“Although I was in college for what seems like forever,” she said, “I wish I would have listened to my parents and taken some business classes. There was no discussion (in art school) about production or focus on running a business.”

Grant says she learned the hard way, making mistakes as her company grew. “But everything takes its due course,” she said. “There wouldn’t be a Sticks as successful as it is if I had not managed to do all the jobs” that are now handled by specialists in marketing, sales, accounting and production.

Grant grew up in Ames, attended Colorado State University and Iowa State University, and received a bachelor’s degree in drawing and intaglio printmaking at the University of Iowa. She stayed in Iowa City to get a master’s of fine arts degree in intaglio printmaking and another M.F.A. in painting.

The early days of Sticks were a scramble. She taught classes at Iowa State, worked at the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines box office and put in time as a waitress, all while getting the company started.

“Until a few years ago, I would leap out of bed and work until 1 or 2 a.m.,” Grant said. “I recognized that I was not a happy woman, and that had to stop. I began stepping back at Sticks and trusting other people.”

She also ran into the frustrations that so many women face in business. “I have had times when I was physically sick and not happy,” she said. “I was not part of the old-boy network, and I didn’t have those people to talk to. I got into situations that were unhealthy for me and my business.”

But now Grant can say with pride, “I have done this without any breaks based on my sex.”

Along with the new licensing agreement – “I’ve been pushed in that direction for 10 years, but I’ve been kicking and screaming all the way,” she said – Grant plans to increase her company’s emphasis on art installation work. She also has started buying for her local galleries.

In June, on Friday the 13th, she married Mark Keairnes, a partner at LaMair-Mulock-Condon Co. It’s her second marriage, and she has three daughters. Rachel, 26, works at Sticks; Rebecca, 23, works at a bank in Omaha; and Hannah, 18, attends Iowa State.

“I’m happy now,” Grant said. Looking out over a bustling Sticks production floor, she said, “I’m having some fun with this.”

The Women of Influence honoree: Rekha Basu

Aman stopped his car in a Drake University parking lot to tell Rekha Basu how much he enjoyed her series from her trip to Ethiopia.

A moment like this not only confirms for The Des Moines Register columnist that people still read newspapers and care about issues bigger than their lives, but also that she has succeeded in her mission to expose inequalities and injustices by telling the stories of those who are seldom heard.

Born in India to parents who worked for the United Nations, Basu, 52, grew up with an international perspective. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree

in sociology from Brandeis University, a master’s degree in political economy and popular writing from Goddard-Cambridge Graduate School, and a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University.

With just a few editorial writing positions in the industry, she considers herself lucky to have moved from being a reporter at several New York papers, to an editorial writer and now columnist. She became interested in working for the Register after it won a Pulitzer Prize for a rape series a year before she came.

Though she found the Midwest “warm and gracious,” her “very self-confident woman’s voice” was hard for Iowans to adjust to. Even now, although she finds Iowans well-traveled, educated and thoughtful on social and political issues, Basu still worries about the hateful comments she receives on her blog.

It wasn’t until after she and her husband, Register columnist Rob Borsellino, returned to Des Moines after a year in Florida that she received an outpouring of support for her work. The first column published after her return “got 660 e-mail responses,” she said. “Overwhelmingly people said, ‘You know, I never agreed with a thing you wrote but I missed your voice.'”

Her biggest change was finding a more personal tone. “Survival,” one of her most powerful series, talked about issues related to grief, while she was dealing with her husband’s death. “My heart was breaking,” she said, “and it was very cathartic to be able to share that.”

She has received numerous awards recognizing her writing career, including an honorary doctorate of human letters from Grinnell College this spring and the YWCA of Greater Des Moines’ Mary Louise Smith Racial Justice Award last year.

Despite these successes, she wonders what she’ll do when her youngest son, Romen, 18, heads to Amherst College this month, where her eldest

son, Raj, 21, is a senior. She is working on compiling her columns into a book and this spring played Maryamma in StageWest’s production of “Miss Witherspoon.”

The Women of Influence honoree: Bonnie Campbell

When she worked on victim rights reform at the U.S. Department of Justice, Bonnie Campbell was named by Time magazine as one of the 25 most influential people in America. She has a lower profile now, but still wields plenty of influence as an attorney with clients across the nation and a member of the Iowa Board of Regents.

Campbell, 60, grew up in upstate New York and moved to Washington, D.C., after high school, where she worked for several politicians, including the late Iowa Sen. Harold Hughes. That connection brought her to Des Moines.

When she enrolled at Des Moines Area Community College, Campbell became the first member of her family to pursue education beyond high school. She transferred to Drake University and received a bachelor’s degree in 1982. She added a Drake law degree in 1984 and worked as a lawyer in private practice until 1991.

In 1990, Campbell was elected as Iowa’s attorney general, running on the Democratic ticket. She ran for governor in 1994, but lost to incumbent Gov. Terry Branstad. The following year, President Bill Clinton appointed her to head the U.S. Department of Justice’s new Violence Against Women office.

Then it was back to her law career. She was practicing in Washington when her husband, Ed, suffered a stroke. “The law firm very graciously offered to let me work from home,” Campbell said, “and I made two observations. One, I got a lot more done, and two, I really felt like I was enjoying it more.”

Eventually, “I asked some of my larger clients, ‘Do you care where I actually sit?’ They said, ‘No, as long as you’re standing where we need you when we need you.'”

So the Campbells moved to Des Moines, where they live at the Park Fleur condominiums. “Every morning I wake up and look at the pretty trees,” Campbell said. “Then I sit at my computer, and it feels like a virtual law firm. It does require discipline in a number of ways, but it has turned out very well.”

Campbell’s law practice requires a fair amount of traveling, and her schedule grew

even more hectic during the presidential primary season, when she worked for the campaign of Hillary Clinton.

“Hillary and I have been friends for 25 years, and I definitely had a strong commitment to do whatever I could to help her,” Campbell said.

Her position on the Board of Regents fills any spare moments. “I enjoy it a lot,” Campbell said. “It’s definitely very time-consuming, but they’re interesting issues, and I think everybody involved understands the work is incredibly important.”

Campbell was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 2002.

The Women of Influence honoree: Lori Chesser

Lori Chesser’s background is in corporate and financial law, but an acquired passion is immigration law, and that is where she has made her mark nationally and at Davis, Brown, Koehn, Shors & Roberts P.C.

Chesser, 46, was a rookie at Davis Brown when one of its immigration specialists retired and another headed off to the firm’s London office.

“He needed some help and, I don’t know, I just volunteered to help,” Chesser said.

Chesser is a shareholder in the firm and chair of its immigration department.

For the last 15 years, she has brought the kind of slog-it-out perseverance necessary to sorting through the regulatory framework of corporate law to her work as an immigration specialist, an area of practice with a more “human” touch.

“You’re helping someone with something that is so close to them and so personal to them,” Chesser said.

Chesser said her role is to build bridges between various constituencies, including employers, workers, advocacy groups and law enforcement.

After the 2006 raids at six Swift & Co. meatpacking plants, including one in Marshalltown, she helped form a rapid-response team that has been a model in the country.

The more recent raids and arrests at Agriprocessors Inc. in Postville added a new dimension to the debate because federal authorities pursued criminal charges against the foreign nationals who worked there.

Chesser said the country is following an immigration system that is 20 years old, was formed on false assumptions and fans an emotional fire that steals the breath from a rational discussion of the issue.

“It’s been a team-building exercise, bringing different constituencies together to deal with problems this dysfunctional system has caused,” Chesser said.

“The current approach was developed with a focus on highly educated immigrants,” Chesser said. “That’s a great thing, but they also went forward with the assumption that this country had all of the manual labor that was needed.”

With the immigration debate reaching fever pitch in political campaigns and the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency apparently bent on enforcing what Chesser considers an archaic system, “the last few years have been tough; I’ve spent a lot of time away from home.”

But she is deeply committed to bringing some clarity to the issue.

“If we don’t fix it, I think bad stuff is going to happen to our country,” Chesser said.

“I love going into a room that’s not really convinced,” Chesser said. “Iowans, when it’s something they understand, especially on a personal level, would throw themselves in front of a train.”

The Women of Influence honoree: Sheila Drevyanko

Born into a large Irish family, Sheila Drevyanko – the second-oldest of 10 children – has spent most of her life volunteering.

“It is so rewarding to make someone’s life a little easier by volunteering,” she said. “That’s what made me do it.”

Drevyanko, 55, grew up in the Chicago area, but moved to Clinton, Iowa, after high school to attend Mount St. Clare College. It wasn’t long after she arrived in Clinton that Drevyanko met her husband, Tim.

Following him to the University of Iowa to attend medical school, Drevyanko tried a few night classes but realized school wasn’t for her.

After her husband completed medical school in Iowa City, the couple moved to Des Moines in 1985, where her husband started his career at Iowa Methodist Medical Center.

“We moved to Des Moines and I worked for a few years until we got situated, and then I decided that there are so many organizations that I believe in,” she said.

Following her passion to give back, Drevyanko began to submerge herself into the Des Moines volunteering scene, and years later she still spends the majority of her time volunteering.

She has been on the board of directors of the Des Moines Symphony Alliance, where she chaired the 1997 Decorators’ Show House and has served on a few Symphony Ball committees, and also has been on the board of the Blank Children’s Hospital Guild, where she served as a volunteer chair for the Festival of Trees.

Drevyanko also has served on the Des Moines Art Center auction committee, the Winefest Des Moines volunteer committee, the Drake Read-a-thon committee and has helped with the Salisbury House Gershwin event.

On top of her past involvement, Drevyanko currently serves on the board of directors of Planned Parenthood of Greater Iowa, the Polk County Medical Society Alliance and the Iowa Medical Society Alliance.

Drevyanko also is the state contact for The Children’s Tumor Foundation – Ending Neurofibromatosis Through Research – Iowa Affiliate, which holds a special place in her heart because she was diagnosed with that disease when she was 14 years old.

“Neurofibromatosis is a genetic disorder that causes tumors to grow all over the body,” she said. “It’s been a challenge, and many families with neurofibromatosis experience social isolation and loneliness, and that’s what kind of drives me to help people get through and deal with that.”

Even though she has made a dramatic impact through volunteering, Drevyanko remains modest.

“I just don’t think I do anything any more than any other volunteer,” she said.

But it’s clear to see that Drevyanko has gone above and beyond her call to duty as a volunteer.

On top of her already busy schedule, she still finds time to volunteer at Iowa Methodist Medical Center twice a month and enjoys her involvement as an active member of the Central Iowa Blues Society with her husband of 36 years.

The Women of Influence honoree: Willie Stevenson Glanton

Breaking color barriers, making history and setting precedents is what Willie Stevenson Glanton is best known for.

For more than 50 years, Glanton, 86, has dedicated her time and energy to law, human services and civil rights in Des Moines and even worldwide.

Obtaining her undergraduate degree in business education with a minor in economics from Tennessee State University in 1942 and later attending Robert H. Terrell Law School in Washington, D.C., Glanton worked her way through discrimination and day jobs until she was admitted to membership in the Iowa State Bar Association upon graduation from Terrell in 1953.

“I’ve always wanted to go to law school ever since I was 10 years old,” Glanton said.

Glanton’s involvement started in the 1960s, when the U.S. State Department sent her to Africa and Southeast Asia to compare the laws and their application to women in those countries.

Once she arrived back in the States, Glanton’s passion for law intensified when she became the first woman and the first African-American woman, to serve as assistant Polk County attorney. Additionally, Glanton was the first African-American female to be elected to the Iowa Legislature as well as the first African-American attorney and equal opportunity advocate for the U.S. Small Business Administration beginning in 1966.

In response to Glanton’s dedication to law and precedent-setting positions, she was inducted into the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame in 1986 and in 1995 was inducted into the National Bar Association’s Hall of Fame.

Between those two honors, Glanton was listed in Who’s Who in America and also became the first woman and African-American to be elected president of the Iowa chapter of the Federal Bar Association. In addition, she received the Young Women’s Resource Center Visionary Woman Award; the Judge Luther T. Glanton Community Service Award for Meritorious Service to the Community at Large – named for her late husband – given by Blacks in Government; and the Legacy Celebration Award for distinguished service as an area and national officer of The Links Inc., a national philanthropic organization of more than 10,000 African-American women.

In June, Glanton was inducted into the Iowa Democratic Party’s 2008 Hall of Fame as the 2008 Outstanding Elected Official and was named one of 2008’s YWCA of Greater Des Moines’ Women of Achievement honorees. Glanton also recently received the Mary Louise Smith Racial Justice Award.

Glanton has recently slowed down her involvement and serves on the board of trustees of Des Moines University and the board of Urban Dreams.

The Women of Influence honoree: Cara Heiden

As the daughter of a home builder in Denison, Cara Heiden learned early the value of home ownership and giving back to her community. She also hammered plenty of nails at her father’s construction sites.

“It was a small town, so we got to know the families we were building for,” Heiden said. “It’s just a pretty awesome celebration when they move in.”

Today, as co-president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, “I’m financing the ability of people to move into that house to make it a home,” she said.

Heiden has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives and other forums on responsible lending practices, and has become a national advocate of making sure consumers are treated fairly.

The housing loan industry is “challenged right now,” she said, “but it fuels the American economy. So I’m pretty proud that I’m helping improve our families, our communities.”

Heiden serves as chair-elect of United Way of Central Iowa’s board of directors and also heads the finance committee. Last year, she chaired United Way’s Central Iowa Campaign, which raised more than $25 million, the most per-capita giving of any United Way organization in the country.

“Our goal actually was $24.5 million, and that was already an aggressive goal,” said Shannon Cofield, president of United Way of Central Iowa. Near the campaign’s end, Heiden said, “Let’s go for $25 million,” Cofield recalled, “and she really pushed people to reach that goal.”

Heiden is a leader who uses both her head and her heart effectively, Cofield said. “She has that nice balance of being a strong business leader, holding others and herself accountable, but she has an incredible heart, really. She’s a very compelling speaker, and she believes in her mission, and it shows.”

Heiden also serves on the Wells Fargo Housing Foundation. She is active in Trinity Lutheran and with her alma mater as governor of the Iowa State University Foundation and the ISU College of Business Dean’s Advisory Council.

A certified public accountant, Heiden worked three years for Ernst & Young before joining Norwest Bank Iowa, which became Wells Fargo Bank Iowa in 1981. She worked her way up to the bank’s chief financial officer. She then became head of loan administration for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage and in 2004 was promoted to co-president with Mike Heid. She’s responsible for Wells Fargo’s loan production channels and consumer marketing activities, while Heid oversees capital markets and finance and credit administration.

“Dividing up the work allows us to go deeper with our respective teams, and in turn because we’re aligned with where we want to take the company, the company achieves its strategic vision,” she said.

The Women of Influence honoree: Charlotte Hubbell

With Charlotte Hubbell, one story of achievement seeps into another story of achievement, much like a watershed she wants to protect.

Not that she is counting trickles and drips, but her river of influence began to form in 1971, when Hubbell, 58, was a volunteer with Volunteers in Service to America.

Since that time, she has helped foreign governments restructure their educational systems and advocated for environmental issues at home and abroad.

And don’t forget the Hmong tomato farm.

“Oh yeah, the tomato project; that was such an interesting occurrence the way it happened,” Hubbell said.

“I had been tutoring the Hmong in English back in the 1980s and I got to know the extended family and one of the guys had this idea. He said, ‘I’m going to grow tomatoes,'” Hubbell said.

She launched into research and discovered that there was a ready market for tomatoes at the H.J. Heinz Co. plant in Muscatine. She wasn’t sure exactly what Heinz would do with the tomatoes, but it was a market.

Hubbell found funding through Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. to lease land near Des Moines and buy a used pickup truck.

“And of course, it would break down and we would have rotting tomatoes along the side of the road,” she said.

Still, she made certain that the Hmong tomato farmers understood the intricacies of their contract with Heinz and the importance of on-time delivery.

Hubbell said she does not stick with any project for long.

“I don’t feel the need to stay with them for longer than five or six years,” she said. There’s always another project or cause waiting.

Hubbell said she is involved now with the most important issue of her four decades of involvement. She serves on the Iowa Environmental Protection Commission, overseeing the

Iowa Department of Natural Resources’ environmental protection activities.

“Here I think we can have an impact, and hopefully, if it’s a good impact, you can see improvements in Iowa’s water quality,” she said.

Hubbell practiced corporate law in New York City before returning to Des Moines in the early 1980s. She said much of her involvement in causes, ranging from the city’s poetry festival to compensation for the state’s public officials, results from having the time to be active.

“I think when you don’t have a paying job you end up doing a lot of things that people ask you to do,” she said.

The Women of Influence honoree: Patty Judge

A portrait of feminist Annie Savery on the wall behind her desk and a mug that says “I’m In Charge Here” are signs that Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge, 64, doesn’t take a back-seat role in anything she does.

She was the first woman from Monroe County to be elected to the Iowa Senate and the first woman to serve as Iowa’s secretary of agriculture.

“I was mad because I thought we weren’t being treated well during the farm crisis, so I ran for the Senate so I could tell people what I thought,” she said. “After I did that successfully, I then ran for secretary of agriculture successfully, when people thought we couldn’t elect a woman. I never planned any of those events.”

But she’s driven by passion and a take-charge attitude that also has led her to take an active role in Gov. Chet Culver’s administration.

“When I joined Gov. Culver,” she said, “it was with the idea, with both of us, that I would be a partner with him in decision-making and policy, and that has been the truth. I’m at the table with him on all major decisions, policy conversations, and as an ex-legislator, that’s something I enjoy very much. I enjoy getting a good idea and making that good idea become reality through making it a law in Iowa.”

Some of her most passionate causes have been developing Iowa’s renewable energy industry and promoting the health and wellness of Iowans, driven by her nursing degree. She is proud of the administration’s many achievements, including raising of the minimum wage, expanding the civil rights code, creating the Iowa Power Fund and passing a wellness bill. She also created the Commission on Wellness and Healthy Living.

“The role of lieutenant governor is a very visible one and it gives me lots of opportunities,” she said. “It gives me a real bully pulpit.”

But lately she has had to put most of those initiatives on hold to focus on her role as a leader of homeland security. In addition to serving as the Governor’s homeland security adviser, she was named director of the Rebuild Iowa office, created to help Iowans recover from the floods. She has been working 12- to 15-hour days, mostly from Rebuild Iowa’s Urbandale office, overseeing a staff of 40, nine task forces and a 15-member commission.

“It’s been very stressful, but I think it’s important,” she said.

Despite giving up biking daily to work on flood relief, she still finds time to escape with her husband, John, to their farm in Monroe County or spend time with their two grandchildren. “They don’t consider me to be anyone of influence,” she said. “They like to have me fix their dinner or just be with them. It’s fun to switch to that role.”

The Women of Influence honoree: Loretta Sieman

There are few Greater Des Moines leaders who over the years haven’t received a call or visit from Loretta Sieman, asking them to become involved or contribute to one civic project or another. And there are probably fewer whom she hasn’t hugged and called “Pumpkin.”

“For nearly 30 years Loretta has given of herself in a very unselfish manner,” wrote Dory Briles, Blank Park Zoo’s vice president for development, in a nominating letter. “Loretta has a heart of gold and brightens the lives of everyone and every organization she is involved with.”

Sieman, who retired last year from Business Publications LLC, has served on the West Des Moines City Council for the past 14 years and has been a tireless force in dozens of leadership and hands-on roles with community service and nonprofit organizations. “Her leadership is evident,” Briles said, “whether she’s organizing an event or project, fund raising, soliciting sponsorships or recruiting her many friends as volunteers. If she believes in a cause, she’s there to make sure it succeeds.”

Sieman, who was recognized as a Volunteer of the Year by the governor’s office in 1994 and with the A. Arthur Davis Award from the Greater Des Moines Leadership Institute in 2004, among other honors, has a list of board affiliations, committee memberships and chair positions that fills three pages.

“I love giving back,” Sieman said, peering over her trademark reading glasses. “I love seeing people smile; I love seeing people’s lives better.”

Among the organizations she’s been involved with are Variety – The Children’s Charity, March of Dimes, Blank Children’s Hospital, Broadlawns Medical Center, Habitat for Humanity, the American Red Cross, the American Cancer Society, the National Kidney Foundation, the American Heart Association, Junior League of Des Moines, the Science Center of Iowa and the Blank Park Zoo.

A Drake University graduate, Sieman worked early in her career as a high school English teacher and school administrator. She credits her generous nature to “growing up in a family of givers.” With her husband, Dr. Robert Sieman, an obstetrician, “it’s always been kind of a thing with us: He brings the children into the world, and I make sure that they have a good world,” she said.

Since launching LJS Consulting last year, Sieman sees herself becoming even more of a mentor.

“I have a lot of young professionals, business groups and organizations calling me to serve on panels, for advice and for mentorship to their boards and commissions,” she said. “My goal has always been to bring young people not only into our community, but into leadership positions.”

Sieman recently celebrated the birth of her first grandchild, Finnegan. Being a mother has been perhaps her most influential role, she said, but one that’s extended to the entire community. “They call me ‘Grandma’ in West Des Moines; they call me ‘Mom’ in West Des Moines,” she said. “I give hugs, I give kisses and I cheer them on.”