Sign of the Times Rachel de Azavedo Coleman, 32, Mother of Leah, 10, and Lucy, 6, and Cofounder of Two Little Hands Productions, Salt Lake City, UT

Her Idea: Create videos to teach American Sign Language so hearing kids can "talk" with the deaf.

How She Did It: She charged $25,000 on her credit cards to make the first video. There are scenes that Rachel de Azevedo Coleman remembers all too vividly: Her daughter Leah, who is deaf, standing alone at the playground as a toddler because other children didn't know how to communicate with her. Kids on Leah's soccer team saying they didn't want to be her partner during practices because she couldn't hear. Even parents shying away from inviting Leah to their children's birthday parties because they didn't know sign language. The isolation Leah experienced inspired Rachel in 2002 to partner with her sister, Emilie, to create Signing Time!, a fun easy-learning video that teaches American Sign Language to kids. "When we started, my intention was to create a signing community for Leah," says Rachel, a singer-songwriter. But the video soon gained a much larger reach.

Little did the sisters know that their personal project would become a hit with thousands of families across the country. Two Little Hands Productions has since produced 17 Signing Time! videos, books, flash cards, music CDs and a nationally broadcast series on public television. Sales rose about 32 percent last year, four years after the company's launch, to nearly $3 million and are projected to double in 2007 as the company adds retail partners. That's even more impressive when you know the business started with a single $25,000 video. In production for a year, they contained costs by making the most of family talent. Emilie developed the script; Rachel wrote the songs. Leah starred, along with Emilie's son, Alex. "They were paid in LEGOs and Barbies," jokes Rachel, who was then working ("very part-time") as a voice-over artist. Without family assistance, she says, the video would have cost closer to $80,000. Rachel and Emilie gave away 100 copies of Signing Time! to family and friends and created a website. They also put the video for sale on Amazon.com. "That gave us instant searchability," Rachel says. "The video received rave reviews from customers there, which encouraged more buyers." Today, Two Little Hands remains a family affair. The sisters write and direct the videos, while their father, former Capitol Records producer Lex de Azevedo, scores them and serves as the company's CEO. Their mother, Linda, babysits, and Rachel's husband, Aaron, helps with additional shooting and editing. Of the 11 other employees, including seven women, three are mothers. Part-time hours are available for moms. "We try to create an atmosphere where anything is possible," Rachel adds. "If employees' family needs are met, they're going to be happy and productive at work."

Rachel, for one, knows her family's needs are being met. At Leah's karate class recently, she spotted three parents signing to their hearing children. "This is something we created," she says. "Sign language has become so mainstream that there is a place for kids who are deaf. There really is a signing community that was not available to them a few years ago."

Tracing Injustice

Alexandra Wrage, 42, Mother of Alexander and Nicholas, both 12, and Founder of Trace International Inc., Annapolis, MD

Her idea: Fight bribery worldwide by showing multinational companies how to keep their businesses clean. How She Did It: She took out a $75,000 loan on her home. Some new mothers in India must bribe their doctors to be allowed to hold their newborns in the delivery room. Some parents in China have to pay to get their children into "free" schools. And some AIDS patients in Africa have to slip officials cash for access to precious lifesaving medications. The World Bank estimates that about $1 trillion is spent on bribes every year—a staggering figure that Alexandra Wrage is determined to slash, one bribe at a time. Back in 2001, Alexandra was an attorney overseeing antibribery compliance for defense contractor Northrop Grumman in the Washington, DC, area, when she was sent to a conference in Prague. While she knew that her work at Northrop made a difference, sitting in that conference room in Prague surrounded by dozens of her peers made Alexandra realize that much more could be accomplished. Companies needed to band together and send a consistent message that bribery worldwide would not be tolerated. The key was a neutral third party to organize the effort. Thus Alexandra's company, Trace International, was born on her flight home from Prague. "My husband says that by the time my plane landed, I'd already had it incorporated," she laughs.

Alexandra took baby steps at first, keeping her job at Northrop for two years while she got Trace up and running. Today, the nonprofit commands revenues of $2 million a year, charging annual membership fees to the firms that use its services. Trace conducts in-person and online training for companies, carries out background checks on firms' foreign partners to ensure they're legit and provides summaries of antibribery laws in more than 70 countries. So far, employees from nearly 1,000 businesses have participated in Traces's training program. "It's very powerful to be able to explain to a foreign government official that bribery is against his law as well as yours," Alexandra says. "He probably knows that already, but now he knows that you know!"

The international scope of Alexandra's work keeps her calendar booked with trips around the globe, from China to Ecuador, to conduct antibribery workshops. But other dates are circled in red, too. Of Trace's 11 staffers, eight have had babies in the last year and a half. "I think I'm the only CEO with due dates on her calendar," she says. All her employees, as well as Traces's 19 independent contractors, are women—a fact that didn't just happen. In Traces's early days, Alexandra didn't have much money for fat salaries, so she advertised flextime and reduced schedules in help-wanted ads. "I have to assume that women looked at that and thought, That speaks to me," she says. Many of Traces's employees telecommute, with email, instant messaging and monthly lunches keeping the team connected. Alexandra, meanwhile, stays connected to her family by bringing her sons along on some of her globetrotting, such as a recent trip to India. "It's pretty easy to win kids over to business travel when you can throw elephants into the deal," she acknowledges. But the trip also showed her kids how bribery feeds bigger societal problems like poverty. After all, she explains, doctors who demand money from pharmaceutical companies to promote their drugs are the same doctors who extort payments from mothers seeking vaccinations for their children. Alexandra is counting on businesses standing up to bribes, believing everyone will feel the impact. "TRACE," she says, "has made it easier and less risky for companies to do the right thing."

Mail-order Maven Terri Alpert, 44, mother of Sarah, 14, and Rachel, 10, and Founder of Professional Cutlery Direct LLC, North Branford, CT

Her idea: Make professional-chef-quality cookware products accessible to everyone through mail-order catalogs. How She Did It: She invested $8,000 from personal savings. What started in a cramped spare bedroom has grown into a sprawling business that now occupies a 30,000-square-foot facility. Not bad for someone who put together a business plan while on maternity leave in 1992 from her job as an IT manager at Morgan Stanley in New York City. Terri Alpert may have started small, but her idea was big—and sharp. Professional Cutlery Direct was conceived as a company that would sell restaurant-quality cutlery to everyday cooks. Terri got the idea when she was trying to buy a top-grade knife and discovered that no department store or specialty kitchen shop could explain the differences between various brands. Terri did some research and found she lived near many of the distribution centers for the major knife manufacturers. She convinced them to supply her with product, got a toll-free number and installed four phone lines to take customer calls in her spare bedroom. "When I would go to pick my daughter up at day care, I would forward my phone to my mom, and she would answer the 800 number, write everything down and fax it to me," says Terri. The business took off like gangbusters, doing $11 million in annual sales within seven years. In 2003, Terri used the know-how—as well as some of the profits—gained from her business to launch a second company, Uno Alla Volta LLC, a website and catalog company that sells handcrafted gifts and home-d