The Washington Post
November 16, 2010
Is there a second act after founding Cisco Systems?
Sandy Lerner has starred in a second and a third.
After being fired from the Silicon Valley computer networking company in 1990, six years after she helped start it, Lerner created the Urban Decay line of punk cosmetics she later sold for a hefty profit. Now 55, the no-nonsense entrepreneur and self-described cattleman is deep into her third career.
She runs Ayrshire Farms near Middleburg, Va. The $7 million-a-year business includes 3,000 certified organic, certified humane, heritage-breed turkeys now giving their lives for next week’s Thanksgiving holiday.
“If you are not eating heritage-breed [turkeys], you are eating a hybridized, genetically engineered freak,” she said. “You are what you eat.”
Her turkeys aren’t cheap: A 22-pounder runs $230, and even then she doesn’t make money on it.
Ayrshire tries to raise its animals as close to traditionally as possible. No chemicals, hormones or other artificial additives reach her flock, which includes 800 head of cattle, hundreds of pigs, hundreds of veal calves and thousands of chickens.
Ayrshire is a vertically integrated business with 100 employees – from bartenders to a soils engineer — across seven business units.
Its Home Farm Store in downtown Middleburg sells its humane heritage meats, in addition to other locally grown and organic goods. There is a catering business, and a mansion for weddings and celebrations.
Why does she do it?
A love of animals, even the ones she eats.
“I came to Virginia to make an organic, humane farm,” she said. “There is an alternative to factory farming … and the intense suffering it causes all the animals.”
It’s just not clear if she can make money while doing it.
Ayrshire will lose around $1 million this year, mostly as a result of the expensive cattle operations.
“I can sustain the loss indefinitely,” Lerner said. “But I don’t want to.”
Lerner’s love of animals and farming goes back to her days living with relatives on a farm in the foothills of California. She was a nine-year 4-H all-star, owned a Welsh cob horse named Blackjack and raised her own herd of cattle.
She sold her herd in stages to pay her tuition at California State University at Chico. She earned a master’s degree in econometrics at Claremont Graduate School, followed by a joint master’s degree in computer science and statistics from Stanford University. At Stanford, she and then-husband Len Bosack worked on breakthrough computer systems that helped build the Internet.
Cisco went public in February 1990. Even though she and Bosack owned a third of the company, Lerner, who was vice president of a customer advocacy group, was fired in August 1990; they left Cisco with $200 million. They plowed 70 percent of their Cisco stock proceeds into charities, with Lerner concentrating on helping animals.
Washington Post – Ayrshire Farms
Posted: November 17, 2010 by Certified Humane
Is there a second act after founding Cisco Systems?
Sandy Lerner has starred in a second and a third.
After being fired from the Silicon Valley computer networking company in 1990, six years after she helped start it, Lerner created the Urban Decay line of punk cosmetics she later sold for a hefty profit. Now 55, the no-nonsense entrepreneur and self-described cattleman is deep into her third career.
She runs Ayrshire Farms near Middleburg, Va. The $7 million-a-year business includes 3,000 certified organic, certified humane, heritage-breed turkeys now giving their lives for next week’s Thanksgiving holiday.
“If you are not eating heritage-breed [turkeys], you are eating a hybridized, genetically engineered freak,” she said. “You are what you eat.”
Her turkeys aren’t cheap: A 22-pounder runs $230, and even then she doesn’t make money on it.
Ayrshire tries to raise its animals as close to traditionally as possible. No chemicals, hormones or other artificial additives reach her flock, which includes 800 head of cattle, hundreds of pigs, hundreds of veal calves and thousands of chickens.
Ayrshire is a vertically integrated business with 100 employees – from bartenders to a soils engineer — across seven business units.
Its Home Farm Store in downtown Middleburg sells its humane heritage meats, in addition to other locally grown and organic goods. There is a catering business, and a mansion for weddings and celebrations.
Why does she do it?
A love of animals, even the ones she eats.
“I came to Virginia to make an organic, humane farm,” she said. “There is an alternative to factory farming … and the intense suffering it causes all the animals.”
It’s just not clear if she can make money while doing it.
Ayrshire will lose around $1 million this year, mostly as a result of the expensive cattle operations.
“I can sustain the loss indefinitely,” Lerner said. “But I don’t want to.”
Lerner’s love of animals and farming goes back to her days living with relatives on a farm in the foothills of California. She was a nine-year 4-H all-star, owned a Welsh cob horse named Blackjack and raised her own herd of cattle.
She sold her herd in stages to pay her tuition at California State University at Chico. She earned a master’s degree in econometrics at Claremont Graduate School, followed by a joint master’s degree in computer science and statistics from Stanford University. At Stanford, she and then-husband Len Bosack worked on breakthrough computer systems that helped build the Internet.
Cisco went public in February 1990. Even though she and Bosack owned a third of the company, Lerner, who was vice president of a customer advocacy group, was fired in August 1990; they left Cisco with $200 million. They plowed 70 percent of their Cisco stock proceeds into charities, with Lerner concentrating on helping animals.
Category: news