Lead Data Consultant/Co-Owner / Age 36
Snow Fox Data/Joyful Beginnings Academy
When Virginia Maus and her neighbors found themselves without care for their children in January 2023, she and fellow mother Tiffany Simon opened Joyful Beginnings Academy in Hortonville.
With more than 70% of rural Wisconsin considered a “child care desert,” according to Raising Wisconsin, it’s one of the key concerns for Northeast Wisconsin, Maus says.
Joyful Beginnings now serves almost 100 children from seven communities, says Maus, who also works full-time for Snow Fox Data in Neenah.
Maus counts among her mentors her mother, Ellen, who founded the nonprofit Women in Trucking Association — “she has given me the gift of advocacy I can’t ignore” — and her late grandmother, Virginia, saying she was “a beautiful example of kindness.”
Maus and her husband Andrew have three daughters, whom she wants to have the opportunity to be both “present parents and engaged employees (or business owners) because access to necessities like flexible work, family leave and child care are commonplace. I will continue to have a role in that transformation.”
