by Julia Paulus

On her winding career path, Tina VonderHaar eventually arrived at marketing and communications firm Brighton Agency, but not before she earned her entrepreneurial chops.

After graduating from college with a computer science and math degree, Vonderhaar worked for Accenture, a global management consulting company, for more than 10 years. The travel and long hours, which took away from time with her two sons, eventually outweighed the job’s benefits, and Vonderhaar decided to become a stay-at-home mom. But after a year at home she began to feel the entrepreneurial itch. She founded a small-business consulting firm called HRcounts.

Brighton became one of her clients, and in January 2005, Vonderhaar became the company’s chief operating officer.

“My primary focus is to manage the business, but I also work directly with several key client accounts,” she says. Since Vonderhaar joined Brighton, she has helped it go from five to 37 employees, and the company had revenue of $8.6 million in 2009.

“I believe in working hard and having fun at what I am doing,” she says. “The rewards will follow.”

Vonderhaar’s mentor in the industry and the former owner of Brighton, Roger Yount, had the same ideals when he founded the company in 1989.  “He built this agency on the belief that you should enjoy what you are doing and work hard for your clients.  He had confidence in my ability to build upon this foundation and gave me the opportunity of a lifetime,” Vonderhaar says.