Former Senior Software Test Engineer Kathy Baker-McLean brings a unique corporate portfolio to the burgeoning world of female entrepreneurs.  Her ability to evaluate technology is complemented by her strong consumer knowledge base and the understanding of supply and demand plus quality verses quantity.  Ms. Baker-McLean holds a masters degree from Nova Southeastern University in Computer Information Science and an undergraduate degree in political science from Howard University.  She has led engineering project teams for major corporations and government contractors in South Florida and Metropolitan Washington, D.C.

In 2003 after leading a stressful career, Baker-McLean left her field of computer science and transitioned to the designing a product of under-wearing apparel. A novel yet sorely needed product for women. 

Kathy Baker-McLean also had many problems associated with having large breasts.  After her first son was born, she was a size 40-J, then went down to a 40-G. She purchased many different bras to get a lift and feel relief for her shoulders, neck and back.  

One month after leaving her job, Baker-McLean woke up one morning with the idea and name for the product called “The Bra Clip.”   Baker-McLean considers her product idea as her blessing.  Baker-McLean wrote down this idea and persued her idea on little more than faith and the knowledge that thousands of women find themselves with the same problem. 

She and her husband sold their home and moved in with her parents to make her idea become a reality and applied for a patent.  Her prior work experience helped hone Ms. Baker-McLean’s skills in evaluation, analytical detail, design specifications and overall product development and served as a segue into the founding of  Baker-McLean Investment Group and its consumer product line – including the invention of the now re-named BRALIEF. 

Florida native Baker-McLean has invented an innovative self-help product for the women’s accessory clothing industry. She created BRALIEF out of empathy for women seeking a non-invasive, non-surgical way to bring comfort to wearing a brassiere.  She also discovered that the product improves self-confidence in women who saw a new, more postured looking woman in the mirror after clipping on the BRALIEF.

I am a "Stay at Home Mom" from Cleveland, Ohio who stumbled upon a helpful hair styling tool while standing in front of my bathroom mirror. Attempting to hide my grown-out roots by creating an uneven part --a secret used by celebrity hairdressers-- with no “rat tail” comb in sight, I grabbed a simple hairpin in a nearby drawer to part my hair. After I ran the hairpin across my scalp which had effortlessly created an awesome uneven part, I experienced that “Ah-Hah” moment and found a solution to a problem that I had always struggled with.   I was anxious to share my experience with my stylist. As she watched me part my hair she said, “You have no idea how many people sit in my chair and ask me to teach them how to part their hair exactly the way you just did.” Obviously, I wasn’t the only person having this hair parting problem. This encouraged me to take the next step in developing an actual tool that could help other women solve a few of the hairstyling challenges that they were also experiencing at home.   Unbeknownst to me, my husband had taken my original design; an old hairpin attached to my son’s school pencil, to a manufacturer and had the first prototype made. I found this gift wrapped (in newspaper!) in my stocking on Christmas morning. Now, I could go out and actually show others the different parts and styles that I was able to create with ease using my “magical tool” that I started to call the Styl Styk Hair Part-ner®.   After several design changes, research, consulting with a beauty expert and a lot of hard work and determination, the Styl Styk Hair Part-ner® was born. The Styl Styk® has been featured on QVC, the Home Shopping Network and CNBC’s hit entrepreneurial show “The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch.”