This is it! Meet the Winners of the Dreamers into Doers Contest!

The Dreamers into Doers contest winners have been announced! In case you're not aware of this contest, Martha honors women who have turned their passion into a business or a philanthropic venture. This year, Martha has honored two women -- one who has a nonprofit business and another who runs a for-profit company.

Congratulations to Erin Slater for winning the contest in the non-profit category! Erin is the CEO of College Mentors for Kids (http://www.collegementors.org), a nonprofit that pairs at-risk elementary-school students with a college mentor in order to expose them to higher education. The organization, founded in 1995 by two undergraduates at Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana, is now at 23 campuses across three states. Below is part of the essay submission that someone sent in to nominate Erin:

Erin (Taylor) Slater, a young girl in West Lafayette, Indiana, had lost both of her parents by age 16. She was making poor life choices and failed her last semester of high school. She never thought college was an option for her. However, in 1998 after finding a mentor to push her, Erin enrolled in Purdue University. She was approached by her mentor to start a chapter of a fledgling program called College Mentors for Kids.

By the time she graduated from Purdue, Erin had gone from being Least Likely to Succeed in High School to Outstanding Senior in college. Upon graduation, Erin began working for College Mentors for Kids headquarters. Moving up the ranks, Erin helped expand the program and grow the number of children served. In 2007, Erin took over as CEO and has placed College Mentors in a position for national expansion.

Erin is an inspiration to everyone she meets. It is because of her strong leadership that College Mentors for Kids has grown from serving 685 children in the 2006-2007 school year to serving 1,220 in the 2009-2010 school year and is consistently recognized as one of the top mentoring organizations.

What an amazing story, right? Make sure to say hi to Erin on this site and read her blog about winning the contest. She'll be blogging about her experiences as a Dreamer into Doer.

Winner of the for-profit category in the Dreamers into Doers contest is Jackie Heinricher. Jackie is the founder and CEO of Booshoot Gardens. Jackie is truly a green go-getter! Read the inspiring essay below about Jackie and how she never gave up on her dream to save our planet.

As an environmentalist and a humanitarian, Jackie's dream is to transform the world through bamboo. It's been her passion since childhood. And it's led her to discover and patent a breakthrough technology capable of fighting climate change, creating thousands of new green jobs, and establishing a first-ever domestic agriculture market for bamboo and bamboo products.

Jackie founded Booshoot in 1998. It was not an easy road. She was told she'd never crack the code required to clone bamboo. Others had tried for decades. But she refused to give up. And after nine years of experiments, Booshoot became the first company to ever successfully propagate bamboo through tissue culture. They started by cloning "bamboo that behaves," a trademarked line of noninvasive ornamental bamboos for home gardeners. They've now successfully cloned over 50 species, producing millions of bamboos annually as they pivot their target market from small home gardens to big commercial farms.

Bamboo is the fastest growing plant on Earth. It sequesters four times more CO2 and releases 35 percent more oxygen than hardwoods. But the U.N. estimates up to half the world's bamboos are endangered or extinct from over harvesting. So they need to move quickly. Booshoot has the only scalable solution to replenish the planet.

I love Jackie's story of never giving up the good fight! Check out Jackie's profile and blog post about being a Dreamer into Doer winner.