queens
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Peter Phillips and the business that fit in 250 square feet
A Queens builder turned a tiny storefront into Chip City, then watched the cookie chain close after his departure as CEO. His next bakery puts a familiar question back on the counter: how do you make people return?
Joseph Schneier and the right to be ordinary
He has built companies, advised founders and opened his family life to a documentary camera. For the CircleEngage CEO, the most revealing story begins at home in Queens.
Gilbert Hakim and the company that outgrew the living room
He started SCC Soft Computer in Queens in 1979, doing the coding, selling and support himself. Decades later, Gilbert Hakim is still involved - and has made room for a rather different software project: a library of sacred texts.
Ron Rudzin and the store that never quite closed
He helped build a 219-store furniture chain, then took the mattress business online. At Saatva, Ron Rudzin keeps finding new uses for an old retail skill: knowing when a customer needs a person.
Chip City made a cookie worth coming back for. Then the doors closed.
A tiny Queens bakery turned warm cookies into a multistate business with $17.5 million in backing. Its sudden closure reveals the distance between a product people love and a company that can keep serving it.
Lexa Gates
Lexa Gates (born Ivanna Alexandra Martinez) is a Queens-raised rapper, singer, and performance artist blending jazz-soul atmospheres with spoken word rap and stream-of-consciousness lyricism. Known for a calm, unhurried delivery packed with emotional density, she broke through with the viral single 'Angel' (2023) before signing to GoodTalk/Capitol Records and releasing her acclaimed label debut *Elite Vessel* (2024), followed by the 18-track solo statement *I Am* (2026). A Colombian-Puerto Rican artist who dropped out of school at 15 and started recording at 17, Gates has become one of New York's most distinctive emerging voices - equal parts Sade and Mac Miller, with a flair for conceptual stunts like locking herself in a glass box in Union Square for 10 hours on album release day.