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BIRTH OF BETA

Long story, short: corporate good girl turns independent risk taker.

While working not so long ago as a Business Strategist at Ann Taylor's Corporate headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, Janice Moskoff, the Beta Boutique founder, couldn't picture herself happily climbing the corporate ladder, rising through the ranks, even at a great company like Ann Taylor.

So, she took her first big risk. She quit her job, stuffed her favorite belongings in a backpack, and bought a round-the-world ticket, joining her husband on a sabbatical journey of international proportions.

She didn't know what she would do when she returned, but figured that was part of the reason she'd left; she'd just figure it out along the way.

Once on the road she became more and more adventurous. So much so that roughly nine months into the trip while walking along a deserted beach in Mozambique, she realized that one risk leads to another - and decided to abandon the ladder to become an entrepreneur.

Luckily upon moving back to Chicago, where she had lived four years earlier, she quickly identified a gap in the marketplace and an idea was born.

Drawing upon lifelong skills as a bargain shopper, professional skills as a retail strategist and intimate knowledge of the Chicago marketplace, she struck out to create Beta Boutique and provide the city with much anticipated, highly regarded and not-to-be-missed shopping events.

Janice originally hails from St. Louis. She received her undergraduate business degree from University of Michigan, has lived in Chicago where she was a retail consultant with Accenture for clients such as Nordstrom, has lived in New York where she was a business strategist for Ann Taylor and after a year of backpacking the world with her husband, returned to Chicago in 2004 to start her business.