Queer Women We Love, Red Hot Entrepreneurs, Wonder Women

Workin’ It 2011

September 19, 2011 Liz Gold

The Real L Word fans know Romi Klinger from her spot on the Showtime reality series, but this Pasadena, Calif.-born jewelry designer has lived a best-seller life since growing up in the care of two mothers and a father. Our cover girl has been a successful makeup artist, an apothecary buyer for Kitson, a co-creator of the famed lesbian event company PYT and a blogger at tenderomi.com. This year, Klinger and Vanessa Salazar founded HIJA Por Vida, a jewelry and accessories line exclusively sold through Love and Pride. Now solo, Klinger is moving forward with Casa Por Vida, her own jewelry brand inspired by Mexican and Native American designs. Her Web site, casaporvida.com, launches this month. “The best part of owning my own business is that I’m my own boss and I get a chance to do what I love,” Klinger says. “We make all these items by hand on our living room floors. So far, we’ve lost a lot of sleep—but, we’re hustlers and hard-workers. The fact is, when you believe in your product, work is a pleasure.”

2011’s Red Hot Entrepreneurs

For spouses Cindy Sproul (right) and Marianne Puechl, love and equality are the foundation of their life and work. The two entrepreneurs behind RainbowWeddingNetwork.com, a Web site dedicated to providing carefully screened wedding-planning resources for the LGBT community, have been involved in the wedding industry since 2000—long before Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage. Within six months of its launch, the site received more than one million hits. Sproul and Puechl have expanded their scope dramatically since then: They produce their signature ‘Same Love, Same Rights’ LGBT wedding expos across 19 different states, while their book My Dangerous Commute: Witnessing Gay Marriage Rights Across America shares their insights regarding gay weddings as a viable industry in the United States. “Over the past decade, we have had to become very adaptable,” Sproul says. “As the community’s ideas about marriage have evolved, as the economy has shifted, as the political climate has churned—and as long as we have been willing to stay true to our fundamental ideals—we have been able to adapt our business plan to meet and create success.”