This is based on the number of votes received and does not reflect the quality of the business or chances of winning.

A scientist by trade, I’m a prime example of the saying “Necessity is the Mother of Invention.”

I loved my successful career as a geologist in the petroleum industry and my former supervisors had always been very accommodating when it came to my taking care of a special needs daughter by permitting me to work a flexible, telecommuting-based work schedule. Then a new manager, who did not believe in telecommuting, forced me to make a decision: care for my daughter at home or return to the office full time. It was a no-brainer: I chose my daughter… and found myself facing the financial burden of a 60% decrease in our family income.

We live on a farm, and nearly all of our 200 animals are rescues. Over the years my main hobby had been creating products to improve the quality of their lives. When covering the food and medical bills of all of our animals while staying home to care for my daughter became impossible, I was inspired to form Crazy K Farm Pet and Poultry Products, LLC to manufacture and market my unique, patent-pending inventions.

From the beginning, caring for my toddler daughter and running my business complemented each other. Because her illness required her to be breastfed frequently and for an extended time, and I was unable to pump due to a medical issue of my own, my daughter and I needed to be together for much of the day and night. She spent a lot of time playing and learning in my home office while I worked, and she attended trade shows with me happily dressed up as a chicken or cat to attract distributors, retailers and consumers to our booth. It was no surprise to anyone that the first words my daughter recognized and spelled were “Crazy K Farm.”

My successful at-home (on-farm!), Mom-owned business certainly merits consideration as a winner in the Leading Moms in Business Competition. My business is the epitome of a successful Mom-owned business: The operation of Crazy K Farm Pet and Poultry Products was originally organized around my child’s requirements, and as she began to outgrow the illness that so deeply affected her physical and emotional wellbeing, so did the business grow and transform, all the while enabling me to fully accommodate my daughter’s needs; By the time my daughter was well enough to start school this past February, my business had grown from its very humble origins as a manufacturer of pre-paid, made-to-order items sold solely via my personal EBay account, to my products being manufactured by the tens of thousands in Bangladesh and sold in stores across the US, Canada and the UK.

With the success of my Mom-owned business comes the responsibility to give back to the community, specifically Moms and other women. To that end, I will soon be introducing pink-colored varieties of my products and donating a percentage of their sales profit to Susan G. Komen for the Cure. Additionally, a percentage of the profit from sales of my parrot hut will be used to support Dr. Irene Pepperberg's Alex Foundation.