WOMEN WHO MEAN BUSINESS

by Debra Ryll 7. April 2009 12:12
Debra Blachowiak of Sleeping Giant Sotheby's International Realty will be honored Thursday, April 9 as one of Hawaii's top 35 Women-Owned Business Owners by WWMB (Women Who Mean Business), a branch of the Pacific Business News network.

This year's WWMB awards event, held at the Hawaii Convention Center, seeks to honor women of distinction who are outstanding leaders in business and their communities.

Pacific Business News (PBN) defines "women-owned" as privately held firms in which women own 51 percent or more of the interest or stock of the business. The most recent census indicates that 30,000 businesses statewide fit this criteria.

PBN's Research Director Cynthia Gibson surveys as many women-owned businesses as possible and ranks them by revenue, though survey participation is voluntary. According to Gibson, 2006 census data revealed that Hawaii's women-owned businesses employed 38,600 people, produced total annual payrolls of $811,000,000, and generated $3.9 billion in annual sales.   

Blachowiak, who has been in real estate since 1979, certainly fits the definition of "women who mean business." As part-owner (along with Diane Treskon and Micki Evslin) and Principal Broker of her firm, Blachowiak has either been the number one volume producer on Kauai or ranked in the top ten for the last several years straight.

Besides servicing her large client base and overseeing a busy office with 25 sales agents, Blachowiak finds time to serve on the boards of several non-profits, including the Hawaii Children's Theatre. When her young daughter developed a passion for theater, Debra helped out behind the scenes—and quickly discovered she had a knack for producing. In the last ten years she has been involved with over twenty musicals on Kauai, from "Peter Pan" and "Into the Woods" to "Beauty and the Beast" and "Big River."


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