I'm sure this month's Featured Business is familiar to all the bargain hunters, students or just plain book hounds of America. What may not be so well-known about this fabulous business, however, is its humble beginning, its hippie origins, or its innovative president, Sharon Anderson Wright.

At the age of fifteen, Cassatt enrolled in the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Although supportive of their daughter studying art as a hobby, her parents did not support her desire to pursue art as a career. Mary soon found that the Academy itself did not fully support its female students in pursuing art professionally either.

In her long and storied existence Barbie has been an astronaut, a doctor, a flight attendant, even a NASCAR driver. Now she is poised to become a barfly. Perhaps Mattel can complete this brave new ensemble in the months to come by offering a tiny cigarette and a whisky tumbler. The wardrobe for her new avocation should be quite easy to piece together from the miniskirts and tube tops which already occupy her closet.

Byrnes’ accounting background helped her transition from full-time businesswoman to writer and eventually on-air reporter. As a financial journalist for TheStreet.com, she wrote weekly columns about taxes and the market, offering personal financial advice as well as general recommendations for investing.