Candy Mashmoor

Candy Mashmoor is the co-founder and CEO of YaYa & Co., an ethical home décor brand known for organic bedding and artisan-crafted textiles. Brazilian-born, she built a multimillion-dollar business that worked with six of the world's top 10 retailers before starting YaYa & Co. to be part of something greater.

YaYa & Co. sources heirloom-quality organic and natural bedding and home goods from around the world, working alongside artisans to revive centuries-old crafts in a sustainable way, and ships from its warehouse in Cleveland. Its fair-trade supply chain is built to empower women artisans, notably through a trade school for women she established outside Punjab, India, which helps girls out of poverty and trafficking. With every order the company plants trees in the Amazon rainforest, more than 300,000 so far. Now based in Cleveland, Mashmoor is leading the transformation of a historic 60,000-square-foot East Side building into a hub for the company, with a showroom, warehouse, textile production space and a co-working center for women and minority entrepreneurs.