Karla Bakersmith, president and CEO of St. Louis-based Scrubs & Beyond, will be the keynote speaker at the fourth annual Power of Women Luncheon on March 11 at the Show Me Center in Cape Girardeau.

Karla Bakersmith

"Women in business today make other women successful when they mentor and help them," says Bakersmith. Mentoring is a lifelong passion for her, and she says she's looking forward to her first visit to the Power of Women event, which is designed in part to connect female students with mentors in the community.

A native of Sikeston, Missouri, Bakersmith graduated from Sikeston High School and Southeast Missouri State University, where she studied business administration and marketing. While a senior at Southeast, she was recruited to work for Famous-Barr-May Company's executive office as a buyer for several different departments. Several years later, she was recruited to the Angelica Corporation, which owned Life Uniform, a chain of 200 retail uniform stores. She worked as vice president of merchandising and marketing for 13 years before deciding to go out on her own.

"My parents had clothing stores when I was growing up, so I came from a family of mom-and-pop entrepreneurs from an early start," she says. "Realizing that the medical community is a group of extremely hardworking individuals, I wanted to provide a shopping environment for them that was fun and exciting."

Bakersmith left Life Uniform and started her own medical uniforms and accessories company, Scrubs and Beyond. Thirteen years later, in 2013, she bought Life Uniform and expanded her number of retail stores to 150.

"I didn't know a thing about nursing uniforms or medical accessories, but they enticed me, and I thought they would be a new challenge for me," says Bakersmith. "I loved working with medical consumers and thought they were somebody who deserves attention."

What set her new company apart from others was its new approach to designing and selling medical uniforms.

"At the time I started doing this, a lot of the medical community was still wearing whites. I enjoy being able to add prints and color to scrubs," she says. "It's become a very fashionable business."

At the Power of Women Luncheon, Bakersmith plans to discuss her background, how she got started in business, what she did right and wrong, and how to be a leader when starting a company.

"Trust your instincts," she says. "If you think it can happen and you have a passion for it, you can find a way to make it happen."

Above all, she says she hopes her presentation helps others.

"I think it's very important for people to pay back to the community," she says. "Sometimes we get so immersed in work that we forget about everything else. ... It's important to remember not only to mentor other women, but to help other people become stronger."

For more information about the Power of Women Luncheon, call 573-651-2259.