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A sample of the Smart Women style and message. Click the image to visit their Web site.

Yet today she’s founder and CEO of Minneapolis-based Smart Women and a leading voice in social entrepreneurship. What started in 1999 as a kitchen-table effort to create clever, homemade birthday gifts for friends—like chalk and chalkboards declaring that “Smart Women Chalk It Up to Experience”—has become an internationally recognized brand from Denmark to Dubai.

Hellwich’s droll messages, aimed at uplifting and galvanizing women, have attracted partnerships with the League of Women Voters, The New Yorker magazine, and Chronicle Books. Her customers include Hillary Clinton and iconic political journalist Helen Thomas, who has a red Smart Women ribbon on her suitcase so she can find it in the airport, Hellwich says. It reads, “Smart Women Tie Up Loose Ends.”

As a single mother, Hellwich earned her bachelor’s degree in environmental geography. Her interest in international development and maternal and child health led to masters’ degrees in social work and public health. She and her then-8-year-old daughter lived in India while Hellwich studied a simple, low-cost method for treating dehydration.

Her love of learning is conveyed by Smart Women’s top seller, a mug that reads “Smart Women Thirst for Knowledge.” “I like learning across disciplines. . . . I can see the connections between things that others might not think are connected,” Hellwich says. Being a businesswoman with a community health background helps her think across sectors—public, private, and nonprofit—where some might see rigid boundaries. And, her values-driven approach includes a commitment to keeping her products useful, minimally packaged, reusable or recyclable, and made in the United States whenever possible. Although Hellwich is Smart Women’s only employee, many functions that are outsourced, such as packaging, are done so locally.

Hellwich fields requests from numerous organizations to collaborate around her brand, and she enjoys helping promote causes she supports. Last year, she joined University of Minnesota Marching Band members in working with Goodwill/Easter Seals of Minnesota (“Smart Women Extend Goodwill”) to make hats and scarves with recycled sweaters. She recently hired a business partner, who has a team that works on marketing, public relations, and sales. That’s allowing her to focus more on her core mission; last year, for instance, she gave a speech at Duke University on doing business for the common good. As a volunteer, she’s working with a high school in St. Paul’s Midway neighborhood, teaching young entrepreneurs how to make candles and crayons from beeswax. Hellwich negotiated a trade with a beekeeper at a farmers’ market who’s supplying beeswax in exchange for candles. The students hope to sell their creations in gift shops and craft shows.

For a retailer, Hellwich—a child of the first Earth Day—is strikingly nonmaterialistic. “I don’t have a microwave, I hang out my laundry to dry—my dryer broke and I didn’t get it fixed,” Hellwich says. “Being in this industry is really kind of strange for me because I’m not a big consumer.”

—Susan Maas

Visit Smart Women online here.