Valarie Phillips sorts through clothing to be dry cleaned at Woodard-Ficetti Cleaners on J Street in Sacramento. She checks each garment, cleans the material under the arms and then handles any special spot-cleaning and scrubbing as dictated by a ticket attached to the clothing. Phillips, a Louisiana native, has worked at the cleaners for 22 years.

It happens every time: I’ll be at a business event and someone will inevitably say that we all need to “perfect our elevator pitches” and launch into a rote explanation (an elevator pitch of the elevator pitch, if you will). Cue the over-exaggerated rolling of my eyes.

Clearly, Sacramento is home to a lot of artistic talent and our holiday traditions are brighter because of it. And we’ve been fortunate to have venues to host these performances. These aged facilities have served Sacramento well for a long time — perhaps too long.

Technically, Atocera Inc. is the result of a shaving accident.

Back in 2012, Saif Islam, a UC Davis professor of electrical and computer engineering, was in the campus labs building silicon micro-walls for solar panels. During the process of cutting semiconductor material into small slices, something unexpected happened.

Over the last few years, a growing number of states and cities have created offices designed to foster job growth and economic development by helping private sector companies with innovative ideas find their footing. We sat down with Diane Parro, chief innovation officer for the City of Davis, to talk about the city’s role in this process.

I have been in my current job for about one year. I have been working in my industry for eight years and have an MBA. When I applied, the minimum experience was two years. I have more industry experience and more education. How am I not supposed to see this as gender discrimination?

Artery Recordings is a modern-day label and sits under the umbrella of the Artery Foundation, a full-service artist management company based in Sacramento.

The technologies coming down the pipe now, though, are like nothing we’ve seen before. They’re coming all at once, and they’ll make the most recent digital age feel more like the Stone Age.

We are witnessing the development of a new and radically different philanthropic archetype: They are young, eager to solve the intractable problems that continue to plague our society and willing to chart a new course in how to achieve those goals.

The instructors at iFly Sacramento, in Roseville, do a practice round, as the controller manages air flow. Fans at the top of a vertical wind tunnel draw air through the flight chamber and then push it back down through the sides, creating a column of air. These instructors pride themselves on being able to take anyone off the street and introduce them to the sport of bodyflight.