no.229 Fighting Fire With Foam—and a Résumé That Includes the Space Shuttle
Irene Rhodes, founder and CEO of Consumer Fire Products, united her backgrounds in engineering and firefighting to create a system that automatically sprays a biodegradable protective foam onto a house when a wildfire is nearby. Her Eugene, Oregon–based company has grown by beating back the fires that are a year-round threat in some western states.
Irene Rhodes Consumer Fire Products
• Three-year growth 1,740.9% • 2015 revenue $2 MILLION
I COME FROM A FAMILY OF engineers, and so I just naturally went into electromechanical engineering. I designed underwater sonar equipment, mining equipment, ionization machines—and I was an engineering designer on the space shuttle and the International Space Station.
