sonoma-county
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Dane Jasper and the business of leaving people alone
A misused college account helped give Sonic its start. Three decades later, Dane Jasper’s career traces a stubborn idea: an internet provider can build the connection without claiming the customer’s life on the other end.
CoMission Turned a Small Town’s Rolodex Into Civic Infrastructure
The Sebastopol consultancy sells something most cities cannot download: trusted introductions, patient listening, and enough structure to turn a roomful of good intentions into work.
The benefit concert begins with a low-backed chair
Event Planning & Marketing Communications built its public identity around EarleFest, an Americana fundraiser. The interesting work happened where the music, the message and the folding chairs met.
TIV Branding found its niche in the storm drain
The family agency behind Streets to Creeks learned to make public problems personal. Its own turning point came when it stopped trying to market to everyone.
Foley bought the wineries. Now comes the whiskey.
Foley Family Wines & Spirits built a portfolio of California estates, then added distilling and global drinks partnerships. A bourbon finished in Ferrari-Carano barrels shows how those businesses can work together.
Jigar Patel Knows the Crop Doesn't Read Spreadsheets
The NorCal Cannabis co-founder has spent more than two decades turning instinct, regulation and agricultural reality into an operating system. His enduring lesson is simple: the model matters, but the living business gets the last word.
Erin Gore Built a Cannabis Company From a Kitchen Table and an Engineer’s Mind
A Wisconsin-trained chemical engineer turned informal baking gatherings into Garden Society - then learned to manufacture, finance and expand a consumer brand inside an industry whose rules were still being written.
KLH Consulting
KLH Consulting is a Santa Rosa, California IT firm that has served North Bay and Sonoma County businesses since 1980. It provides managed IT services, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and Microsoft Dynamics ERP implementation, and develops Vintegrate, a winery-specific ERP built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. The company pairs a local help desk and engineering team with vendor certifications to deliver its 'one call, one team, one solution' model to small and mid-sized organizations, including wineries and healthcare providers.
Garden Society
Garden Society is a Cloverdale, California craft cannabis company founded in 2016 by Erin Gore and Karli Warner, built to redefine cannabis for women. A certified Benefit Corporation, it makes wine-country-inspired edibles - artisanal chocolates, gelees and gummies - alongside sun-grown pre-roll Rosettes, and sells across California and select multi-state markets. The company raised a $7 million Series A in January 2022 to scale manufacturing and expand nationally.
Brian Bauer
Brian Bauer is the co-founder, president, and CEO of Resynergi, a Rohnert Park, California advanced-recycling company turning hard-to-recycle plastic into fuel and chemical feedstock with Continuous Microwave Assisted Pyrolysis (CMAP). A Stanford-trained mechanical engineer who spent 25 years in telecom and semiconductors, Bauer co-founded Resynergi in 2015 with longtime colleague Jason Tanne after a decade of conversations about green technology. His pitch: microwaves heat plastic roughly 10-20 times faster than conventional pyrolysis, in a modular system small enough to deploy near the waste itself. In 2025, a partnership with Lummus Technology brought Resynergi's modules to commercial availability.
Barry Friedman
Barry Friedman is the President and CEO of Friedman's Home Improvement, a third-generation family-owned hardware and home improvement retailer based in Petaluma, California. Named CEO in 2013 by his father Bill Friedman, Barry has led the company through digital transformation, e-commerce expansion, and a new 72,000-square-foot distribution center, all while steering the business toward its 80th anniversary in 2026. Under his leadership, Friedman's operates four locations across Sonoma County with approximately 600 employees, and remains deeply embedded in the North Bay community through philanthropy and civic engagement.
Pedro Toledo
Pedro Toledo is the CEO of Petaluma Health Center, a federally qualified health center serving more than 40,000 patients across Sonoma County and West Marin. The son of a Bracero-program farmworker, he holds degrees from Stanford, Cornell Law, and Georgetown, and was one of 14 Californians chosen for the 2020 Citizens Redistricting Commission.
Soni Lampert
Soni Lampert is the CEO of KLH Consulting, a full-service managed IT and cybersecurity firm based in Santa Rosa, California that has served businesses across Sonoma County and beyond for over 38 years. She co-acquired the firm alongside her husband Hub Lampert in 2005 and has since led it to become a regional IT powerhouse specializing in managed services, cybersecurity, cloud computing, and ERP implementation - including the wine-industry-specific Vintegrate platform built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. A published contributor to the Press Democrat and the North Bay Business Journal, Lampert bridges the gap between technology and industry, most notably in the intersection of IT and winemaking operations.