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We love a great success story here on Lehigh Valley Rising on this edition, we revisit three of our favorite stories individuals whose perseverance, innovation and passion made their dreams come true.

Let's get right to it.

Rearmed Silva made her name as an A-list Hollywood makeup artist.

Now she's revolutionizing the makeup industry from right here in the Lehigh Valley with her game changing beauty blender.

We met with Brianne about making the move from Hollywood to hand over township, where her beauty business is booming.

My name is Ryan Silva.

I'm the CEO and creator of Beauty Blender Beauty Blender is the only tool that's created specifically for your complexion products and the perfection of flawless application of those products.

Being creative has been kind of like my life's calling.

I went to school the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandizing in Los Angeles as a starving student, I had to support myself, so I found a job in a department store as a perfume model and I found very quickly that if you ever want to live a solitary lifestyle, become a perfume model because nobody wants you to spray them with perfume.

I learned that the girls over in the makeup counters were was.

I never saw Beauty Blender coming.

The story is all about organic growth.

It's about fulfilling a need.

It's about really, truly innovation that makes someone's life easier.

There are still makeup artists out there that use these wedge like pie shapes, punches that have sharp edges.

The thing about those sponges in high definition when you drag them on the face, it leaves a line of demarcation and you can notice these textural changes on the skin.

So we started babbling.

It ended up being an egg shape because if you look at a triangle and you cut the edges off, you end up with an egg.

That is how this spun shape.

That's how the idea of the sponge came about.

Who can help me make this fun?

There was really only like two companies in the whole world that were making these materials and distributing them in the cosmetic world, and one was based in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Yay.

When I first met Catherine Bailey and she became very integral to the business.

She looked at what I was doing in Los Angeles and said, Hey kid, listen, hey, I'm going to tell you something I can save you some money if you trust me and if you trust me, you will move your business to the Lehigh Valley Alley.

My name is Nancy Greatness BioNTech.

I am a trainer, but I normally receive a new hire and show them what to do and how to stuff.

I love to work here because it's very convenient.

It's close to my house and heat very clean.

I love the product.

I know how to do stuff.

I know how to touch and know how to create.

I love working at beauty Blender because it's a very family oriented work environment.

I handle any incoming packages as I travel throughout the company on a daily basis and I go home very happy.

When I get here to the Lehigh Valley and I think like, Wow, this place is so charming.

It's a beautiful, beautiful area.

What I like about the Lehigh Valley is it's diverse.

There's a lot of things to do.

You know, you're close to Philly, you're close to New York, you're running the coast, you're close to New Jersey.

You can go to the beach.

So it's just has everything.

I invest in the area.

I live here, I invest in the people and you know, we've grown here so much.

I think we've got two or three fastest growing businesses here and Lehigh Valley because we just we thrived here.

It's been a really, really wonderful experience.

Growing up in an Italian refugee camp.

Mario Andretti dreams of one day becoming a race car driver after his family moved to the US.

He realized that dream and more.

In fact, he saw to the very top of the racing world.

Mario proudly calls the Lehigh Valley home, and we stopped by to learn what still drives him toward success.

And I don't know anybody Mulvaney.

He's incredibly fearless, and I don't mean that in the obvious sense when obviously he's a racecar driver.

Harrisburg six continents, 17 countries winning the World Championship Formula One World Championship, First Most Important Race and Andy Card, which is the Indianapolis 500 Star Cars and NASCAR.

The Daytona 500.

Fortunately, I'm the only one that has done that Tower City team team team with a capital T. You cannot bring back results without having a good team behind you with.

Many moving parts in the racing world, such as, you know, I got the racecar has to be prepared strategies.

I mean, you have engineers to mechanics, mechanics and it's like any other business.

So here we go.

This is where our trophies are.

These are the three trophies for that time of 500 Harley Earl Trophy and Herbold Baker Trophy in the governor's Trophy for the faith.

They all have their place a very special place.

They could have lived anywhere.

That's, you know, we stay here that married a local girl who was born in Allentown.

I lived in Nazareth and raised the family here and I never had any desire to move anywhere else.

We came in 1955.

I was 15 years of age.

The reason that we came to America started with World War Two.

The Allied Fifth Army rolls on in the face of incessant rain teams such as these depicting something of a terrific obstacles barring the road to Rome.

I was born and the northeast and raced to the they lost the war where I was born.

Asia became a communist area under hard line communist under Martial, Tito and there was a choice.

It was a choice to remain or succumb to communism or move on.

We became refugees in our own country seven and a half years and the refugee camp is kids.

You adapt very easily and are like, you know, and gone from that home.

We knew something was wrong, but then you meet other kids, you go to school and you know, Aldo and I, my twin brother and I became enamored with racing Formula One, especially at the very young age world champion at the time, Alberta Scottie became my idol in 1954 year before we came to America.

Ashland I went to see the Italian Grand Prix and the mole was cast.

If you will, you know the impossible dream on our part was to become race drivers coming to America gave us.

You know, some ray of hope quite honestly.

Just thinking maybe there'd be opportunities there and outdoor and myself and four other buddies.

We started to build a race car to race here.

But there are my favorite from races that I race somewhere and Williams Grove, Pennsylvania or somewhere in Indiana on the road course of Formula One race in Austria, Hellertown Kachmar.

This is the first trophy I received from my racing, even though I had won quite a few races before this, but they were not even trophies.

It's not something you're handed and OK, OK, I got lucky.

Now you work for.

The impact he had on the world.

What he did was phenomenal.

Coming here with nothing, there's a lot of stories like that.

But for me to see what he did, he had no plan B and I think that was the plan.

You know, I have nothing, so there's nowhere to go but up.

I was concerned about I was so entrenched in my career.

Pressed the envelope as far as it could go and I respect enough.

Is there a life for me after driving a race car?

Yes, there was there.

If there's something that he thinks he could be help or someone thinks that he could help move a relationship forward or a deal forward or bring a deal come you know, bring it back together that that's falling apart.

He's not afraid to call anyone.

I mean, he'd call any world leader if he thought he could make a positive impact.

The difference and that is awesome to me that he's not intimidated because he's got a lot to offer and he's also incredibly generous, credibly generous, not just with what he's been blessed with financially, but to give of his time.

You know, pipes for paws and Meals on Wheels will deliver year he lights up people's world, see a smile or some of these people where you just knock at the door and so forth and they welcome you.

It's it makes your day and that's why you should be able to pursue what you enjoy.

You know, to me, that success in itself, because that's what creates happiness, happiness, satisfaction.

But on any given day, I mean, I just I love that I said I count my blessings.

As a single mom with a baby in her backpack.

Elaine Kominski became the first woman to own and operate a vineyard in the state of Pennsylvania.

Today, that winery Franklin Hill Vineyards is the oldest winery in the Lehigh Valley, and Elaine and her crew are still discovering new ways to grow.

My name is Elaine Kavinsky and I own Frank Rehill Vineyards for 45 years.

I went to Woodstock in 1969 with my children's father on our way home in a 1969 Corvette.

He wanted to live on a commune and my heart sunk.

I was 19 years old.

I know I don't belong in a commune.

I know I don't share well.

I knew the marriage wouldn't make it, so I said, Let's live off the land on our own.

I knew how hard it was to be a single mom.

I decided to hire women many a time you'd walk in my living room and there'd be some sick children on the couch watching TV with Gatorade and Ritz crackers.

So the mother could work, but I thought I would allow women to put their children first and in that way the husbands loved me because they know their wife is happy and they know their kids are taking care of.

I was in my mom's backpack at a half a-year-old when this all started, so it's pretty long story for me because my whole life nice kind of yellow phase and very beautiful sugars.

And we found this beautiful 35 acre farm for $500,00.

In the 60s and 70s, Pennsylvania was not a grape growing region and Cornell University, he said.

We are experimenting with grapevines by 1975 will have enough plants.

Why don't you put one of the first vineyards in in Pennsylvania?

We didn't have a tractor.

We didn't know how to farm, but I didn't even own a shovel.

So I borrowed a lot of friends, their tractors and their expertize and we put in two acres of vineyards to start this new endeavor 1982.

We opened the winery commercially as the first winery in the Lehigh Valley since Prohibition and here we are 2021 Vineyard is pretty much remain the same.

You had to take a long view when you're putting in a vineyard because planting four years ahead of time.

Franklin Vineyards in Bangor we have a 60 acre farm on the farm.

We have 15 acres of vineyard and we grow four different varieties of grapes at this plant.

Today is our first day of harvest out here we have numerous people helping us kick.

We invite local residents in the area, retired people college, whoever's free housewives this morning get together early in the morning around 6:00 or so and we set them loose.

Picking grapes here in the vineyard, what they're doing is they're taking all the clusters off the vines and putting them into the crates that we have laid out on the ground.

From there.

Jeremy and Scott are vineyard managers come around.

They pick up the crates, they throw them into the Condola.

And then they take them down to the winery.

And from there they do extend them, put them through the creche and pump them into the tank.

For Bonnie, our winemaker, to work her magic on it.

Bonnie Pfizer as my head winemaker for 40 years, that's unheard of having someone 40 years making wine as hard and physical and cold as it is.

We started to get a name with the wine called Sir Voltas Red.

It's a Concord wine named in honor of my father who helped me out and dad didn't know anything about wine.

He would work for me and Stroudsburg smoking a pipe and it was called Sir Sir Walter Raleigh Pipe Tobacco and his name is Walter Pavin Ski.

He stuck up my store, but he was free labor, so I had no choice.

I had to let him smoke and then when people would ask for different wines like Could I have a chambers in or can I have a piano?

He'd give them conquered.

He had no clue and I try to explain that to him and dad would say, Oh, people don't know the difference about wines.

You know who again was free labor.

But guess what?

He sold so much of the Concord wine that when he passed on, we renamed it Sir Walter's Red.

We sell 30 thousand gallons of Sir Walter's red a year.

So my dad today is still making me money.

Elevators offers a more playful approach to wine.

We have wines that are fun and sweet, but at the same time we can offer something that has tradition and honors the craft of what we do.

So we offer something for everybody.

We also own social still distillery and Bethlehem 2003 Governor Rendell, nominee to me as the top 50 women in business.

That was the turning point because all these years was fluff you just working every day trying to get your name out there and the big move came in 2016, where the Liquor Control Board decided to allow supermarkets to carry wine.

What's been the greatest thing lately is that we've grown into distribution, so our wines are available all through the state of Pennsylvania.

That is the luck of small wineries is to be in distribution.

That means I only need one truck to go to the warehouse and on my 73 third birthday, my son bought me a brand new Mac truck.

There's a lot of romance and vineyards when it comes down to it is farming and we got a lot of work to do in.

Very good Typekit.

For now, I'm going to tell it I wear a variety of hats today.

I'm out here in the vineyard in charge of all the pickers.

So some days where we're here planning some days we're on events, some days I'm making calls to our grocery stores, getting orders together for our delivery guy to do.

Some days I'm on the bottom line.

The culture is one that fosters growth and with all my staff I might mentor them, but they mentor me.

Valerie is bringing agriculture into the 21st century and they're bringing their innovative high tech approach to vertical farming to the Lehigh Valley.

Earlier this year, we sat down with Bowers Chief Commercial Officer Katie Scytl to learn about the future of urban farming.

Welcome to Bowery behind us.

What we have going on is the construction and development of an indoor vertical farm that will be fully operational in early 2020 to.

This means we are taking what was once non arable land and creating and producing a farm that can grow fresh local pesticide free produce 365 days a year for the community it serves.

When the Bethlehem Farm comes online, our network of farms will actually produce the equivalent of 20 million clamshells a year.

It would take traditional farming 5 million square feet to produce that same amount of produce.

So we are a completely self-contained farm.

We're completely enclosed indoors.

We grow our crops from floor to ceiling and use Ali lights to mimic the spectrum of the sun.

We have a proprietary operating system.

We call it the Bowery.

Alas, It uses sensors, data automation and technology to control the duration of light, the intensity of light, the nutria and the water.

We are gathering this data 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So when you think about scale and expansion, we can actually create a new farm plug it into the Bowery operating system and it's a smart or if not smarter than the previous farm because it's benefiting from all the data the other farms have completed Bethlehem, Pennsylvania will be the location of our third commercial farm work excited to tap into the workforce.

Here we are.

Create Ring Year Round Green Manufac nurturing jobs the projects that by 2050 the world population will reach nine to 10 billion people.

That means we're going to have to grow 40% more food in the next 30 years than we do today with fewer resources, less arable land.

So we need to think of a different way to strengthen and fortify our food system.

And we believe indoor vertical farming and Bowery is a part of that.

We just couldn't get enough of a lane for Penske, so we brought her back to the studio where Dr Georgette Phillips, dean of Lehigh University School of Business, really got to know Momma great.

The woman behind the wine welcome Elaine.

So great to have you here.

Thank you for having me.

I love the part of your story about how you empower women and it's something that you know, as a business woman myself, we share.

What are some of what some advice that you give to your employees in terms of empowering women?

I think this is a big part of it.

I've been in business for five years, so I could see 40 years at least we had an incredible dynamic of women run Wuhan and owned Empower Women, give them a sense of belonging, give them a sense of making decisions, making them make decisions on their own and not be a part of the marriage.

You know, I would ask them for advice and a lot of times I ask for their opinion and that empowered them to be even better than they are.

Bring us back to your career path.

What do you see as the pivotal point in your career path and what have you learned from that?

Well, when I was married, my name wasn't even on the mortgage because I was an earner and I had no reason to be on it.

And that was how women were treated in the sixties and seventies.

And when my children left, I had a mortgage that didn't have my name on it and I had to keep paying it month after month after month.

I know my self-worth working every day, but it took till 1986 and think about that where women were allowed to get their name on a mortgage without a man's signature.

I was an angry about that.

I just I was happy to get it and then everyone made fun of me because the mortgage was at 14.8% interest and they said we fool.

Why did you do it?

I said, I have a mortgage in my name and I was so grateful.

What do you think was the biggest risk you took?

That mortgage was a risk, but are there other risks that you've taken?

You know what I could say almost every day it's a risk I farm.

That means, you know, when you have a business, a small business, sometimes you go through a catalog and buy your products from glassware to flavorings to Covid.

I turn the soil over to grow a product that's a risk you have climate, you have diseases, you have winds, you have hailstorms.

And I think that was one of the biggest risks is doing with the elements of farming and then taking on the mortgage.

Would I be able to pay it?

I want to move ahead and open a store.

Will that give me the revenue that I want?

Will the people like my new wine I put out?

You know these are I wasn't confident in that sense, but I there's an it factor that people have, which is cool.

They're intuition, that gut feeling.

And I always risk some.

I always went ahead as long as I knew I had a fallback, like if I took on this mortgage Beau Biden myself as a single mother, raising two young children, what would happen if I couldn't pay it?

Well, I'd move in with my father.

You know, it's something like I always looked at the alternative and then if I ever bought something that was extremely expensive, how could you pay it off?

I would go through my checkbook and say, OK, how many cars are going to be paid off this year?

All right, that'll leave me $2,000.

I could buy this.

You know, the risk of wondering you know, you just don't buy something.

You have to make sure that you can pay for it.

Franklin Hill is a family business.

Yes.

And that must come with its challenges.

What are some of the challenges and how have you address them?

The challenges of a family business is if I had one advice is I'd ask people not to have their home at their place of business.

Second, of all, as my children are running my business, it was the control and the funniest story I have is when my son Adam Flat, who owns social, still gave me that choice.

He said, Mom, he said, You're so controlling you.

I have to check everything through you.

You never trust my intuition.

You don't trust my decisions.

And I said, All right, Adam, go ahead.

Go to that trade show and do what you want to do.

He came home with a $50,000 piece of equipment.

My farm cost $50,000.

And before I screamed and yelled at him, he said, Do you know the filtration of wines at the winery?

And I said no.

He said $25,000 goes in filters.

All the labor that you and Bonnie spend three times on all these tanks is once.

And he said at the end of the season, the waste that goes in filters, we gain $25,000 worth of wine.

So that piece of equipment was paid for in three months.

So I love my son Adam now, but it took that struggle back and forth and to realize like let your children take a part of it, let them fail like you did.

There's no one to answer to me when I fail because there's no one above me and they shouldn't have to always answer to everything so they'll know if you treated them right and you didn't give them a sense of entitlement and they know how hard I worked.

Let go.

Let them see what they can do.

Same with your employees to control them so much.

Let them let them fly.

Let them come back with new ideas.

And if it works, it works.

If it doesn't.

We both learn from it of thank you.

I have one more question.

OK, I need a wine suggestion for the dinner party this weekend.

Oh, gosh, I if you want to buy Franklin Hill, if I would do a read, I would do a trio, which is our cabernet blend of Shepardson.

But my favorite white wine is called white jade named after my granddaughter Jade Lin Wood and it's a short Vinny and Vito blond blend with like a sort of like a pinch agree but a much more flavorful because there's the Chardonnay grape in it.

I will be sure to pick up a bottle for this weekend.

Elaine, thank you so much for being with us today.

Thank you.

So I really appreciate.

Thank you for even wanting to hear what I have to say.

Thanks, Georgette and Elaine.

For more information and to see this episode in other.

Go to PBS39.org and be social with the hashtag Elvie Rising.

I'm Valerie Bitner from all of us at PBS39.

Thanks for watching.

We'll see you next time.

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