Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2010

Martha Stewart, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia

Martha Stewart can bake a mean pie. She started with a catering company in 1976, wrote her first cookbook by 1982, launched Martha Stewart Living magazine in 1993 and became president, CEO and chairwoman of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in 1997. Then, in 2004, she went to jail.

Stewart was found guilty of conspiracy, obstruction of an agency's proceedings and lying to federal investigators about an insider-trading deal. The multimillion-dollar mogul had sold a few thousand shares of ImClone Systems stock to save just $45,000. She served five months in a minimum-security prison camp in West Virginia and was released in March 2005. Now she's back — and bigger than ever.