Katie Mills Giorgio

Unique Events in Cedar Rapids is a “one-stop shop” for weddings, including event planning, coordination and design, a flower shop, rentals, D.J.s, photo booths, a lighted dance floor and more, the owner says.

Casey Peck Peck started out at Kalona Cooperative Technology as an accountant and worked her way into being controller. From there she moved on to being CFO and in 2013 stepped into her current role of both CFO and general manager.

Oranges and Elbows offers residential and commercial cleaning in the Iowa City area.

Critical Hit Games in Iowa City specializes in role-playing card games, such as “Magic” and “Pokemon.” It also has board and miniature games, and they buy and sell retro video games as well.

‘The glue that brings a community together,’ Kathy Waychoff has spent a lifetime connected to volunteerism.

“Nobody's going to be more committed to these goals than me and nobody is going to understand this community that Horizons is serving better than me,” says Sophia DeMartino of Horizons, A Family Service Alliance.

Hia Dog Boarding in Hiawatha offers doggy day care, overnight boarding, basic training, supervised swimming and more.

Moxie and Mortar owners adapted to unexpected learned in the pandemic.

223 Baby Co opened its doors at the beginning of October as one of the newest retailers in downtown Iowa City.

When Cale Henderson saw the empty building space in the Town & Country Shopping Center, he knew right away that it would make a great event rental space.

University of Iowa students create birthday boxes --filled with a gift and games, a birthday cake, birthday decor and more -- for children in need.

Each year the city’s forestry division seeks a homeowner to donate an evergreen tree to be placed in Greene Square and decorated for the holiday season. The derecho made that task a bit more challenging, though.

HappyGram is a card delivery service for those living in senior communities. Family and friends go to the HappyGram website where they can write a personalized message and upload a photo from their computer or smartphone.

In her role as a Coe College professor, Maria Dean said she enjoyed helping students make connections to a future career path, never discouraging them as she’d been discouraged early on in her career.

Local bookstores brace for supply chain challenges