A successful entrepreneur and dedicated advocate for small and woman-owned businesses, Julie Lenzer Kirk juggles many different and often competing roles. She is a business owner, author, international speaker, community volunteer, and mom. It has been her ability to balance all of these roles and transfer that capability into a productive work place that has won her and her company national acclaim. Her book, The ParentPreneur Edge: What Parenting Teaches About Building a Successful Business (John Wiley & Sons) is due out June 2007. Click here to pre-order from Amazon.Path Forward, International is Ms. Kirk's most recent entrepreneurial endeavor. Path Forward helps others to become entrepreneurs or to take their entrepreneurial companies to the next level through workshops, training, and consulting. She is a sought-after speaker on topics of entrepreneurship, business management, and balancing work and business.As the Lead Instructor for the NSF-funded ACTiVATE program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Ms. Kirk is in her second year of helping experienced women to become entrepreneurs by commercializing university and government-developed technologies. She is also an Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the Maryland Department of Economic Development and writes a column for Enterprising Women Magazine called Serious Mom, Serious Business which profiles successful entrepreneurs that are also dedicated moms.She is also the CEO and President of Applied Creative Technologies, Inc. (ACT), an IT solutions firm focusing on manufacturing operations and inventory control which she founded in 1995. Through the years, Ms. Kirk directed her team in the development and commercialization of ACTrax, a leading-edge production and warehouse management system, for which she recently negotiated the sale. ACT was recognized four years in a row by the State of Maryland and Montgomery County with a Workplace Excellence award for its work-life balanced policies. ACT is also a national award winner; Advanta's Stevie Awards for Women Entrepreneurs named ACT its "Employer of the Year" for its unique approach to a life-balanced workplace.Ms. Kirk received the Athena Award in 2004 as recognition for her contributions to other business women and the community. She was also selected as a finalist for Enterprising Women Magazine's Enterprising Women of the Year awards in 2004 and was named to Maryland's Top 100 Women 2005 sponsored by The Daily Record. She is also an ex-officio member of the Board of the Center for Women in Information Technology at UMBC and a business advisor for Women Entrepreneurs, Inc. Ms. Kirk graduated from Texas A&M University with a B.S. in Computer Science and is leader in numerous community activities. She currently resides in the Washington D.C. metro area with her husband and two children. Click here for Julie's website.Click here to email your entrepreneurial questions to Julie