Jan 28, 2021
According to the wedding website The Knot, the average bride spends $2,000 on flowers for the nuptials—which means two grand gets dumped in the trash after the Big Day has passed. But with the help of Nikki Gray and her floral-preservation company Endless Florals, those flowers and that big investment don’t have to go to waste.
“What I’m preserving is a memory,” says Gray, who officially launched Endless Florals at 51st and O streets last May. “Yes, it’s a flower. But it represents a significant one-time event in someone’s life that they can then look at day after day.” Seeing your wedding bouquet “has a different feeling than looking at pictures—it brings you back to the moment of holding it in your hand. There’s a certain romanticism to it.”
Dec 28, 2020
Though Derek Yuan is only 17 years old, you wouldn’t know it talking to him on the phone. The Mira Loma High School senior credits his impressive verbal poise to six years of speech and debate training. And he’s determined to give other kids the chance to develop their own public speaking skills through Leaders Speak, a free online training program he co-founded with fellow Mira Loma senior Hemang Dhaulakhandi.
“I was very shy growing up,” Yuan admits. “I was really lucky I made the speech and debate team in middle school or I wouldn’t have gotten started on this path. Once I got to high school, I realized that I’d gained all these skills by participating in speech and debate competitions—but not everyone has the same access to those opportunities. We decided to spread our experience and knowledge to as many people as possible.”
Dec 28, 2020
Sacramento has numerous boards, commissions and committees to help the mayor and City Council run the city smoothly. One of those entities is an advisory committee for the Front Street Animal Shelter.
Unfortunately, the Animal Care Services Citizens Advisory Committee, formed in 2002, has not met since 2018, mostly for lack of a quorum. The committee currently has one member and six vacancies—which is why the city is looking for a few good animal lovers to bring this board back to life.
Dec 28, 2020
“There’s a restaurant in every family tree,” writer Nancy Econome says. “I wanted to bring out those stories.”
Econome has done just that with her debut novel, “The Classic Grill: A Tale of Greek Gods and Immigrant Heroes,” which chronicles the family struggles of a successful Greek-owned restaurant in Vallejo in 1942. The book is loosely based on Econome’s grandparents’ restaurant of the same name.
Dec 28, 2020
Jennifer Sattler is the first person to admit that “fashion is fluffy—but it also makes a big difference.”
Now striking out on her own after 20 years as a personal stylist at Nordstrom, Sattler is all about how clothing makes you feel—and it doesn’t need to be designer to make you feel your best.
“It’s not just about the brand, it’s about your aesthetic, your lifestyle, what resonates with you,” she says. “Whether it’s Target or Chanel, you have to know what works for you.”
Dec 28, 2020
Sunburst Projects’ new executive director Jacob Bradley-Rowe likes to say that he’s proud of his organization—a nonprofit that empowers children, women and families living with HIV—for always taking the extra step. The same could be said of Bradley-Rowe himself.
Bradley-Rowe has dedicated nearly two decades of his life to nonprofit work, both as a staffer and volunteer. The interest in giving back to his community was instilled in him from an early age—as the sixth generation of his family to raise cattle and sheep in Grass Valley, Bradley-Rowe spent his childhood deeply involved with 4H and FFA.
