The Buzz

The first Bastiat in Business Award is going to Lexington entrepreneur Kathy Gornik, president of Thiel Audio Products Co.

Never heard of Thiel? That’s no surprise since (a) the company doesn’t make a lot of noise locally and (b) the speakers for your home sound system were sold in pairs.

Thiel speakers are sold individually and cost $990 to $12,900 each.

Gornik founded the company with Jim Thiel 31 years ago to make the best speakers in the world. Now they are in 30 countries.

She will be honored by The Bastiat Society on April 5 in Charleston, S.C., for “her distinguished effort to promote free market ideas in the course of her professional life.”

Gornik is chairman of the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, “a free market think tank,” and is past chairman of the Consumer Electronics Association, where she “promoted … the principles of limited government and free trade,” the society said.

Named after the late French economist Frédéric Bastiat, the society believes “commerce is the engine of human progress.”

This entry was posted on Friday, March 21st, 2008 at 11:12 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.