Kate Renwick-Espinosa was weeks into a four-month maternity leave from VSP Vision Care when her boss called and asked to stop by.

Ronald Fong, 52, has served as president and CEO of the California Growers Association since 2008. The CGA is a nonprofit, statewide trade association representing more than 500 retail members operating 6,000 food stores and 200 supply companies in California and Nevada. 

While much of the local and national talk around pension reform is directed at public employees, the biggest current changes are occurring in the private sector.

Last November, Roger Niello was named president and CEO of the Sacramento Metro Chamber. We sat down with him recently to talk about the city’s business and political climate and the Chamber’s collaborative Next Economy planning initiative.

Ashley Coleman has wine in her blood. Great-granddaughter of winemaker Julio Gallo, she grew up tending grapes in the family vineyard and working at its winery in Livingston. She knew the family business would color her future, but she never dreamed she would use wine to drive social change.

The Great Recession has cast a long shadow over the Capital Region. The economy has been static. Recovery has been slow. But in the hard-hit hospitality business, the pause has spurred opportunity for reinvention.

Scott Silva got a job steering concrete-laden wheelbarrows at age 16 and started a local ready-mix company as a young man. He knew the concrete contracting business from the ground up.

When Sacramento-based Breuner’s furniture store chain closed its in-house upholstery shop in 1971, the eight seamstresses and upholsterers were told that, if they opened their own shop, Breuner’s would send its work their way.

In the past 10 years, Alzada Knickerbocker of independent bookseller The Avid Reader has seen her revenue cut in half. To help businesses like hers that suffered during the e-commerce boom, earlier this year lawmakers introduced the Assembly Bill X1 28, the so-called Amazon tax law.

When Sacramento-based Aerojet decided to convert part of a superfund site into a solar field, it sought bids from companies across the country. The project, after all, would be big — 35 acres ultimately generating six megawatts of power, making it one of the largest industrial solar projects in the country.