MARY PORTER, C-ZONE FOUNDER & PRESIDENT

They say that you can find your true calling in life by looking at what you were doing as a kid.

What was I doing? Taking apart things to see how they worked (like my clock radio and my dump truck). Catching fireflies and observing their bellies. Growing things in the garden. Inventing new and improved rubber band guns to torment my sisters. I was a budding little scientist/engineer/inventor.  But it took me a long time to grow up to be one. . . .

All that inventive play as a kid certainly prepared me well for college. I went to the University of Virginia, where I somehow managed to graduate in the top 2% of my class, Phi Beta Kappa, then went on to Virginia law, and did pretty well there, too, serving on the Virginia Law Review and landing a job at one of those mega corporate law firms.

But what does growing up to be a corporate lawyer have to do with being a kid scientist/ engineer/inventor? Well, not a whole lot. And that’s kind of my point. It wasn’t until life unexpectedly took me to Seattle and to a startup Internet company that went crazy and went public in a blast of innovation that I finally started to get it. It was like a million of those fireflies glowing at full wattage. I was supposed to be creating and inventing stuff.

And so here I am.  I devoted the last couple of years to studying, playing, brainstorming and creating with some pretty amazing kids, parents and teachers. The result is the Curiosity Zone -- a place I wish I’d had as a kid, and a place all of the wonderful kids in my life today are proud to have helped invent. It's a place where kids can go to let their curiosity fly; where they can think, invent, create, explore and learn, learn, learn!

The future will belong to the curious, the creative, the innovative thinkers. We hope the CZ will inspire a few.