Addie Zinone, soulful soldier
Addie Zinone, 40, bursts into a coffee shop near Fashion Island with 5-year-old daughter Hartley in tow. “I don’t know how I keep it together,” Zinone, also mother of Hudson, 7, says as she digs through her large purse, pulling out an iPad and some cash to buy goodies for her daughter so she can buy some time for this interview.
She really means it. Even though she looks like a person who has it easy – she’s a tall, gorgeous blonde with huge, blue eyes and Chiclet-white teeth – she’s got some back story. Since coming home to Newport Beach after two tours in Iraq as an Army sergeant, she’s suffered from PTSD. After trying to tough it out and power through with sheer grit, like she’s done with everything else in her life, she finally sought help at the Veterans Affairs hospital and is hard at work turning her life around.
Part of Zinone’s recovery is rediscovering herself and the grittiness that propelled her to join the Army; start Kicks for Kids, a shoe-donation program that provided 50,000 pairs of shoes to children in Iraq; and establish, with her husband, Greg, the organization Pro Vs. G.I. Joe, which sets up video-game smackdowns between troops overseas and their sports heroes back home.
Now her sights are set on her new brand of clothing, Sideline Candy, a line devoted to moms who, like her, stand at the sidelines of their kids’ activities.
She’s starting with a small line of shirts, tank tops and hats, but hopes to branch out to other gear, including coolers, chairs and blankets. The shirts will have a hidden message inside that says, “We see your grind.
We’re not just ‘rah rah rah,’ pretty women on the sidelines who look cute. No, we do it all. And we’re recognizing that to be on that sideline, it takes a hell of a lot of effort and love and energy and time and exhaustion, but you’re doing it anyway.
The thing is, her startup budget is … $1,000. If it were anyone else, you’d think, “Um, good luck with that.” But when Zinone says, “I’ve got to try and figure out how to work it,” it would be wise believe her.
Q. Who inspired you?
A. Katie Couric. I used to turn on the ‘Today’ show and say, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I wrote her a letter: ‘Dear Katie, I’m a 22-year-old journalism student wondering what I’m going to do with my life. I would love to see what you do behind the camera.’ She wrote back and said, ‘Why don’t you come spend the day with me?’ I ended up working for the ‘Today’ show for two years straight out of college. It was such an inspiring and encouraging way to get my life started.
Q. How do you share the duties of home with your husband?
A. I am so blessed because my husband is fully involved, wants to be involved and carries so much of the burden. He’s an amazing father. It literally is 50/50. Sometimes it can be 70/30 in favor of him since I suffer from an extreme amount of PTSD. I’ve been in consistent therapy at the VA for two years, and he takes the kids while I go to the VA. It’s a true partnership in every sense of the word.
Q. Last book read?
A. To be completely honest, instead of making it sound like I’m really deep, this morning I volunteered at my son’s school and read a book with him called “Eek! There’s a Mouse in the House.”
Q. Favorite place in Orange County?
A. Corona del Mar, Inspiration Point, running up and down the stairs.
Q. What would surprise us about you?
A. We live in this sort of fantasy world in Orange County. If you look at me just from the outside walking down the street, I look like your typical blond-haired, blue-eyed woman. You wouldn’t think I’m traumatized or damaged, but I am very much. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds here, but I’ve seen death up close. I’ve seen the complete opposite of this unrealistic world that I live in, and it’s brought me perspective.
When I start to feel overwhelmed by the chaos and demands of living here, I always go back to that perspective that I have. I try to put my blinders on and not look around. Each person has their own story. My success is my kids and that I’m healthy and not being drowned by PTSD. This is the turning point for me. I’m just at the beginning of what I think is possible.
Jennifer Wynh, swaddle success
When Jennifer Wynh says that starting her company Embe a year ago was a complete leap of faith, she’s not kidding. Not only did she leave a successful and high-paying career as an aerospace engineer, but she left it to start a company in a field she knew nothing about. She wasn’t even a skilled-enough seamstress to make the first prototypes of Embe baby swaddles.
But the enthusiastic 35-year-old mother of Isabelle, 7; Sienna, 5; Farrah, 4; and Jakob, 2, is undaunted, relying on her faith to carry her through this venture, even when it meant facing 30 (out of 30) rejections in a row and having her home go into foreclosure for three years.
“We didn’t want to lose our house, obviously,” Wynh says, “but a house is not a home. As an entrepreneur, you have to make sacrifices to pursue your vision. If we lose the house, then we’ll have to buy another one later.”
Somehow a miracle happened – in the form of a loan modification, a huge surprise order, even the idea for the swaddle itself – just in time.
At a Starbucks near her home in Anaheim Hills, Wynh tells her story breathlessly, as if she can scarcely believe any of it herself. For her, the swaddle was a bit of divine inspiration coupled with the motivational factor of a 6-month-old who just wouldn’t stop crying.
I was waking up, like, every 15 minutes with my third child, and she was breaking out of every swaddle, and I was going insane. One day I said out loud, “Oh, my gosh. It’s not that hard to design a swaddle that works. Why hasn’t anybody made one?” I woke up in the middle of the night and my engineer brain said, “There it is” – like the whole picture of it. I drew it out and went back to sleep. The next morning I woke up and was like, “This is genius.” Her swaddle features a zipper, Velcro and a unique “legs in” and “legs out” feature.
“The whole journey has been really just amazing. I can tell you crazy stories that really don’t add up,” she says.
Q. Let’s hear a crazy story.
A. After we launched, I headed to New York for a press conference. I emailed 30 boutiques in New York saying, “I’m here. I would love to show you my product.” All 30 emailed me back and said, “No.” Well, the press thing was only one day – what was I going to do in New York for the whole week? I prayed, and instantly I got the thought in my head to email Babies R Us and Buy Buy Baby. I was talking to myself like “What? Why would I do that? I just launched six days ago – that would be crazy!” But I just did it. Within less than 30 minutes, I got emails back from both saying they’d meet me the next day.
I went into Babies R Us, and within five minutes, she said, “Love it. Let’s go into every single store.” Same thing with Buy Buy Baby. Within five minutes, “Let’s go full stores.” We were 6 days old.
Q. What are the advantages of swaddling?
A. During the fourth “trimester,” the first three months out of the womb, swaddling is used to keep the arms contained so that babies aren’t hitting themselves, scratching themselves and startling themselves. Because their arms just kind of flail, like, “What’s hitting me?”
Q. What is the biggest struggle or challenge doing this and being a parent?
A. The hours. The company is just me. We’re not big enough that we can hire anyone yet so everything falls on my shoulders. Plus being a mom of four. But I’m blessed with a very supportive husband (Michael), and he’s also a great daddy. He takes the kids to school in the morning because I’m staying up all night.
Q. When the kids are around, do you try to work at home?
A. No, I have learned that you cannot work and be with your kids. It will make you a very grumpy mommy. I’ve learned that because I tried it, and it didn’t work out very well.
Q. What do you do with your free time?
A. On the weekends, I set time aside for my family. I’m a stickler on that. Saturday mornings, they wake up and they’re like, “Mommy, where are we going?” Friday nights we go to Disneyland. And on Saturdays, we do normal family things. My husband likes to see open houses so we’ll drive around to the grand openings of model homes, and the kids love it. They get their freebies and run around and claim their rooms. Or we’ll go to South Coast Plaza and go on the carousel for a dollar.
Q. What would surprise us about you?
A. If I could buy a cup of coffee and a dessert at every meal and feel financially secure enough to be comfortable doing that, I would deem that successful.
Lindsey Meehleis, birthing boss
“Every birth is beautiful and special. There’s never a birth where I’m like, ‘Well, that wasn’t as miraculous as I wanted it to be,’” Lindsey Meehleis says in the cheery Lake Forest office of Orange County Midwifery (ocmidwifery.com), which she founded in 2010.
Meehleis, a 34-year-old sunny blonde who lives in Irvine with her husband, Darren, daughter, Dylyn, 13, and son River, 6, always wanted to work with children but changed her trajectory after a “horrible” first-birth experience. Her hospital stay was traumatic, full of medical interventions and ended in a cesarean section.
As a lactation consultant, a doula and now a midwife, Meehleis has been present at about 900 births, and at every one, she works to make sure other women don’t have the kind of experience she had. (She takes only low-risk clients and says, “There’s a time and a place for hospitals.”)
Clients are not only guaranteed that Meehleis herself comes to their house when it’s time to give birth, but they’re also signing on for full prenatal and postpartum support. Two other midwives now work at the practice.
“This isn’t a doctor’s appointment. It’s about so much more than just taking your blood pressure. It’s a therapy appointment, a nutritional counseling appointment, a date-with-your-girlfriend appointment. It’s about what’s going on in your day-to-day – how your relationship with your husband is, even back to what things in your childhood could affect your birth.”
What you won’t get at a birth are either of Meehleis’ kids.
“Kid energy is great at births, but not my kids’ energy.” Not that Dylyn would even go if asked. “Now that she’s turned into a teenager, she’s like, ‘Mom, you’re so gross.’”
Meehleis shares every birth story on her Facebook and Instagram page. “I write from my heart and share my experiences so that people actually see that birth is normal. Giving birth (naturally) is not just a random fluke thing. It can happen for anyone that’s low risk.”
Q. What happens at a birth?
A. Most people like to labor in water, so we get the tub set up and wait for baby. We’re constantly checking on baby and mom and making sure everyone’s vitals are in normal limits. The first hour after the baby’s born is what I find to be the most sacred, and I protect that as much as I can. Every time you put a hat on the baby or listen to the baby with a stethoscope, you’re entering that bubble around mom and baby. I try to use my eyes more than my hands and I try to protect that space.
Q. What’s been your biggest struggle being a parent and doing this?
A. The uncertainty of not knowing if I’ll be there Christmas morning or birthday dinners. I can have five people due in a month, and those five people give birth in a three-day period, and I literally don’t come home for three days at a time.
Q. How do you share the duties of home with your husband?
A. There’s no possible way I could have this lifestyle if I didn’t have the support of my husband and my family. He works a full-time job from home, and when I’m gone he’s Mr. Mom and takes care of the kids and the dogs.
Q. What do you do with your free time?
A. Being on call 24/7, there’s really no free time in the true essence of the word. So I have to physically take a month off at a time in order to get what I consider free time, where I can actually turn my phone off and detach from the outside world. It doesn’t matter if I’m sitting at home with my family doing nothing or if we’re sailing. Just full presence with my kids is the most important thing.
Q. Last book you read?
A. Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear”
Q. Favorite place in Orange County?
A. Crystal Cove. You’re transported to a different world almost.
Q. What would surprise us about you?
A. That I still cry at every birth.
Q. What about this does it for you?
A. This is not a job. This is a calling. It’s a blessing and a curse because I have the chance of being gone all night. What keeps me going is how women can take their power back and how I can be a facilitator for that. Because I’m not giving them their power – they’re finding their own power. I just get to be the person who holds that space and is blessed to watch everything miraculously unfold the way it’s supposed to.
Payal Kindiger, imagination master
It’s 9 a.m. at the Irvine Spectrum. Shopkeepers are setting up for the day, and you can still get a decent spot in the huge parking lot. Payal Kindiger is inside Storymakery, her new shop located strategically close to a playground and the kid-magnet Ferris wheel. Right now it’s quiet, but later, the computers will be fired up and the printers in back will be chugging out books with titles like “Attic Lasers,” “The Great Pirate Voyage” and “Blah, Blah, Blah” from Orange County’s newest authors.
“The kids’ eyes light up when they see their stories printing,” said Kindiger, 39, who lives in San Clemente with her husband and kids Arya, 9, and Saheli, 2 1/2.
Storymakery is a place for kids to come in, create a story and leave with a real book they’ve written. The shop caters to ages 4-12 and accepts walk-in customers and organized groups. Younger ones get help with story prompts and typing, and older kids (and a few stray adults as well) create their own stories of mermaids and monsters and robots. Anyone suffering writer’s block can visit Imagination Forest, part of the store where the leaves on the trees have story prompts such as “Today I am small: One day your character shrinks to the size of a cricket. What are their silly and dangerous encounters?”
With or without the help of grown-ups, kids use the touch-screen computer to create and personalize characters, illustrations and story lines. If inspiration is lacking, there are even story outlines that can be customized, a la more purposeful Mad Libs.
Storymakery opened in November and was inspired by Arya. After selling a software company she and her husband partially owned, Kindiger took some time off, but got “a bit antsy.”
“My daughter loves writing and drawing. She was trying to figure out how to bind her book, and I saw that there really wasn’t much there. There are different digital storytelling sites but nothing in terms of a self-publishing platform for kids. And I was crazy enough to move forward with that.”
Q. What’s been your biggest struggle being a parent and doing this?
A. The biggest struggle is wanting to spend more time with the kids. I feel the most whole when I’m with my kids and my husband and having that quality time. But there are weeks when I’ve had a couple of days where I only spent a few good daylight hours with them.
Q. How do you share work at home with your husband?
A. Casey’s been a true partner in this effort. We’re both crazy – he has his own startup as well (in software). We share our responsibilities equally. I don’t think we would have done our businesses without that. He does the dishes. He’ll do the laundry. He watches the kids. He makes dinner. With the launch, he’s been cooking more dinners than I have lately.
Q. Do you ever have to steer a story away from something a kid wants to write about?
A. Sometimes kids want to incorporate something like poop into the story. It’s a delicate balance. We want to capture their way of thinking but at the same time also make it something their parents would want to see too.
Q. Last book read?
A. “Dark Places” by Gillian Flynn
Q. Can’t live without?
A. Besides my family? That’s tough. Coffee. I have to have my coffee.
Q. Who inspired you to do this?
A. A combination of people. Definitely my parents. They came from India and worked really hard. My mom had a jewelry business and my dad is an engineer at Boeing. Growing up they were very selfless – there wasn’t any such thing as “me” time. They always taught me education was important, and I still live by that. My husband has always been a go-getter, and I worked with him to grow our company and I gained confidence to do my own thing as a result of that. And women supporting each other. I’m always very eager to support hardworking women. And I think we could do a better job of supporting other women.
Q. Does Arya help out in the store?
A. She loves it. We have aprons with our logo, and when she comes into the store, she goes right to the back and puts one on. When it’s been busy she’s helped kids create characters, and she takes a lot of pride in it. I ask her a lot of questions about what she’d like to see and we did a lot of testing with her, so she’s written easily 50 stories, if not more. I talk to her about what it takes to do the business, and as I was explaining all the costs, she said, “Wow, Mom, you’re going to have to sell a lot of books!”
Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, Eco CEO
For Kelly Vlahakis-Hanks, president and CEO of Earth Friendly Products, balancing work and family is tricky because it’s all mixed together.
In the airy conference room overlooking the factory floor in the company’s minimalist Cypress headquarters, there’s a poster for “A Green Story,” a movie about her father, Van Vlahakis, a Greek immigrant who started the company in his garage in 1967. Her husband, Eric Hanks, grown stepdaughter, Monika, and sister, Ashley Dawson, work right down the hall. And her daughter, Alexsia, 12, hosts Girl Scout meetings here.
Workers who aren’t actually family are treated like they are. Every employee is full-time, makes at least $17 an hour and has generous PPO insurance. As Kelly gives a tour of the factory, which today smells entrancingly of lavender, she greets everyone by name – chemists, line workers, the guys driving the forklifts. Many of them have been with the company for 20 years or more.
“Their children are here. Husbands, wives – it’s a beautiful thing,” she said. “We want to serve as an example for other employers – you can be profitable and pay a good living wage.”
The idea of doing right by people and the environment is reflected in everything the company does. The company’s five plants are zero-waste, carbon-neutral and powered by renewable energy. Its line of plant-based cleaning products is U.S.-made, never tested on animals, and locally sourced whenever possible.
Q. What’s been your biggest struggle being a parent and running the company?
A. My daughter is my top priority. I live by my schedule and I schedule in a lot of time for my daughter. Because we’re a family business, I also incorporate her a lot in what we do here. When we have work trips, I take her with me as much as possible. During the summer, I take her on everything.
Right now she’s greening her school. I went with her this week to meet with her assistant principal and I was really proud to see my daughter stand up there and say, “You need to start turning off your lights. And doing the right thing will save the school money, too!” Even at a young age she’s understanding that you need to sell the financial benefits alongside the environmental benefits.
Q. How do you and your husband share the duties at home?
A. My husband does a lot of the cooking, grocery shopping, and school pickup and drop-off – and he’s great at washing dishes. When you’re at a business like ours, every day is different, so we make sure we have each other’s backs.
Q. What would surprise us about you?
A. I’m getting my executive MBA at Chapman University. Every day there are new things to learn, and I think we always need to keep our eyes open, especially in a family business. I’ve actually pulled a lot of talent from Chapman. My director of communications was an MBA cohort, my product manager was the TA of my statistics class, and the new intern for my VP of sustainability was in my international business class.
Q. What do you do in your free time?
A. I want my daughter to have a bit of a childhood – to come home, play outside. We’re fortunate enough to live in Huntington Harbour, right by the water. We can walk to the beach. We can ride our bikes. We can walk our puppy around. We spend a lot of time walking through the Bolsa Chica wetlands.
Q. Last book you read?
A. Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In,” which was a great book as a working mom trying to juggle so many things and to really lean in and sit at the helm of a company. I also read a lot of different green books. Beth Greer just wrote a great book called “Super Natural Home” that I would highly recommend to anyone looking for a guide on greening their lifestyle.
Q. What’s your house like?
A. I have a green home. I don’t have a massive home, so it’s a small footprint. It’s what you’d expect: solar-powered, bamboo flooring, paints with low VOC, low-flush toilets, energy-efficient appliances, lots of natural light, xeriscaping, so I don’t require any additional water for any of the landscaping. My grass is made from recycled tires. It’s a great place to raise my daughter and also an opportunity to teach her at every point that we need to think about the environment.
Q. What does it for you about this?
A. I’m doing something that’s environmentally and socially responsible. That’s such a blessing in life to get up every morning and run a profitable business that’s doing the right thing for future generations. The legacy of my mother and father, my family, all of those things really drive my passion. It’s authentic. It’s real. It’s from the heart.
