Barbara Bradley Baekgaard


Barbara Bradley Baekgaard is the co-founder, designer, and former Chief Creative Officer of Vera Bradley. The fashion company was named for her mother.
Baekgaard founded the Vera Bradley Foundation for Breast Cancer in 1993 after the loss of her dear friend. She lives in Indiana and New York City. In 2016, she was ranked 54th in the Forbes America's Self-Made Women.

Career

In 1982, Baekgaard and neighbor Patricia Miller were traveling together. They noticed how similar women's travel bags looked and wished they had bags to match their own fun and colorful style. They each borrowed $250 and started making handbags out of high-quality cotton in Baekgaard's basement in Fort Wayne, Indiana.
Their business became Vera Bradley.
At the time, the bags seemed like they wouldn't amount to much more than a hobby, as Baekgaard hadn't been in the workforce before. To learn about accounting and other financial aspects of running a business, she and Miller went to SCORE, a nonprofit that provides free business mentoring services to small-business owners. Thanks to that formation, Baekgaard, and Miller would officially launch a handbag and luggage company.
In 2000 she published Vera Bradley: Our Favorite Recipes and in 2017 she published A Colorful Way of Living: How to Be More, Create More, Do More the Vera Bradley Way.

Personal life

Baekgaard married right after college and had four children in five years. Because of her husband's job, the family moved often. She never had the chance to pursue her passion for entrepreneurship before her 40s.