Hi, I’m Mary Porter founder of the Curiosity Zone.
Welcome to one of the most creative places on earth, Loudoun County. We established the world’s first Curiosity Zone in Loudoun County in January of 2005. The mission of the Curiosity Zone is to inspire in kids a love of science and learning through classes, parties and field trips.
I grew up in northern Virginia and I had moved away. I was watching explosive growth of Loudoun County and was so excited to be able to move back here and start a company.
Loudoun County is a vibrant creative community full of really curious little kids and highly educated smart parents who value science and education. So the demographics were absolutely perfect for our business. It is also great to be so close to D. C. with all of the resources that that big city has to offer, but still have the quality of life of living out here in such a beautiful place.
The Loudoun Country business community is a tremendously supportive place, and so I like to participate by talking to other entrepreneurs, being a sounding board, providing resources, and I also volunteer wherever I can.
From the very beginning when I was first starting and I had all kinds of dumb questions, the whole way through, our build out and zoning and permitting, they’ve been enormously helpful in leading me down all the right paths. And even today they continue to reach out to me and help me reach out to the market place.
Since we opened two years ago our business has been going gang busters. We’ve had more than 13,000 kids through our programs and we’ve sold literally thousands of toys to inspire curiosity in little kids. It is an amazing place to build a business. Not only is it a really supportive business community, but the marketplace is just phenomenal. There’s enormous opportunity for any well conceived business idea. It is a great place to start a company.