Four Kansas City-area women win national small-business honors

Four small businesses in the Kansas City region, all operated by women, have won 2017 awards from SCORE and will join 98 other national winners to compete for three grand prizes.

SCORE is a national network of volunteer business mentors.

Selected from more than 1,500 applications, the Missouri and Kansas winners are:

▪ Sally Barchman, veterinarian and operator of State Line Animal Hospital & Holistic Health, Leawood.

▪ Martha Childers, psychotherapist and owner of Childers Counseling Service, Kansas City.

▪ Beth Dowell, candymaker and owner of Tall Grass Toffee, Lenexa.

▪ Heidi Faith, founder of stillbirthday.com and The MOM Center, Kearney.

With sponsorship from Sam’s Club, SCORE supports the annual program in which each winner gets a $1,000 Sam’s Club gift card for their businesses plus an expense-paid training event. The 102 winners compete for three $25,000 grand prizes to be awarded Sept. 14.

The application asked each entrepreneur to describe their businesses, tell about the positive effects on their communities and detail their plans to use the prize money for their businesses.

This story was originally published May 5, 2017 at 5:45 PM with the headline "Four Kansas City-area women win national small-business honors."