Meet Us

Creating Products with Purpose

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Birdy Boutique is a proud certified disabled-veteran and women-owned small Michigan textile manufacturing business founded by an army veteran and military spouse.

Founders of Learning Blankets®, their consumer “Products with Purpose” are educational, meaningful and give back through initiatives such as FundraiserBlankets.com. With two main divisions, wholesale and private label, their capabilities include designing, printing, and manufacturing custom textile products for small and large customers. Veteran Threads, an entity powered by Birdy Boutique, focuses on private label textiles for corporate and government sectors.

Meet our proud team of women consisting of moms, sisters, retired teachers, veterans, and military spouses, who are the creative inspiration behind our brand.

Our goal is to create purpose by helping children learn, therefore building confidence and independence with our exclusively designed car seat ponchos, learning & weighted blankets, message tapestries, and more!

We love custom private label and corporate branding softline projects too and are so excited at some of our retailer partnerships such as Meijer and Walgreens.

Joanna and Barbara are sister owners of Birdy Boutique. They immigrated to the United States from Poland as children in 1988. Watching their mother perform hard physical work to put food on the table, they learned that hard work and determination can equal success. Education was of utmost importance and both sisters pursued college degrees and began conventional jobs immediately after graduation.  When the career paths changed for both sisters, sewing projects for their own children quickly turned into a small business. Since these two are bird lovers, initially their shop only consisted of items with birds on them. Unfortunately, they quickly learned that not everyone loves birds as much as they do. They pushed forward with their ideas and now have a variety of childrens' items in unique designs and patterns you won't find elsewhere.

Birdy Boutique has been featured in over 100 online publications from CNN, MSN, Forbes and most recently the Today show.

Barbara Jozwik Kent
Barbara Kent | Founder & CEO | Germany

Barbara is a retired and service-disabled Army officer and veteran of almost 15 years. She is wife to an active duty Army Engineer, mom to two very busy "almost" teenagers and a very clumsy German Shepherd puppy named Hans. Their family has recently been stationed in Alaska, Hawaii, and Virginia. They currently reside in Germany, her husband's latest duty assignment. Barbara graduated from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1999. She went on to honorably serve in the US Army Military Police Corps for 13 years, after which she was medically retired and disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs. She loves her sewing machine, traveling, good food and wine. Barbara is an active member of several Army spouses’ clubs which raise scholarship funds for military kids and help the active duty military communities in many other ways!

Joanna Jozwik Serra
Joanna Serra | Founder & COO | Michigan

Joanna is a proud married mama of three little ones and a loving Blue Heeler named Vortex. She lives on an old farm in Michigan where she loves birding, photography, exploring, teaching, her Instant Pot and scoring good deals. Her true passion is teaching and her efforts have earned her much recognition, specifically at State level. Joanna graduated from Wayne State University with a Bachelor of Science in Elementary Education; she also began her Master of Art in Educational Leadership at the University of Michigan. She taught elementary aged children and during this tenure, she earned some of the highest and most distinguished awards in her field at the state level. Her initiative and determination, combined with love for her field, allowed her to be a leader in every working environment she took part in. Joanna loves organizing fundraising events and staying very involved in her local community for the benefit of children.

Anna Rusinowski
Anna Rusinowski | Sales & Development Warrior | Michigan

Anna is a Michigan State Business School Graduate in Business Marketing and is working to finalize her MBA at Walsh College. She has 12 years of Federal Procurement experience, even living and working overseas in Europe as a Department of Defense Civilian, supporting both the US Air Force and US Army in the war in Iraq/Afghanistan.  Anna is an experienced B2B Sales and Business Development consultant of 8 years now, and she has a passion for building communities around brands! Anna lives in a walking community in Michigan with her fiancé and two rescue kitties. She is also a Stage IV cancer thriver, offering free wellness coaching services to cancer patients in her off time.  Anna has been a great addition to our growing Birdy Boutique team and is helping Birdy Boutique get on retail shelves near you!

Alyssa Colquhoun | Social & Marketing Guru | Connecticut

Alyssa was born and raised on the shoreline of southeastern Connecticut. She recently relocated back to Connecticut from Nashville with her 3 young children and their cat, Guava. Alyssa graduated from West Virginia University with a bachelors in child development and has worked as a private nanny and daycare manager. For the last several years she has worked as a blogger and content creator within the children and parenting niche, along with advocating heavily for stronger maternal mental health care. Alyssa loves to spend her free time outside with her kids at the beach or finding cool places to hike and explore in the woods.

Kathy Chutorash
Kathy Chutorash | Warehouse Wizard | Michigan

Kathy attended Eastern Michigan University, along with her twin, and studied broadcasting. She paid her own way through college by interning at WLLZ radio station and waitressing at Wing Hong’s Japanese Steakhouse. During the summers she and her sister worked at Cedar Pointe and loved meeting interesting people from all over the world. Best summers ever! She then landed a job with Young & Rubicam advertising agency where she coincidentally met her husband in the broadcasting department. When her friends told her about the Gilda’s Runners to Fight Cancer with the Detroit Free Press Marathons, she jumped right in, trained up, and ran three half marathons in 2007 and 2008, and celebrated their 40th year marker in 2017. She also participated in the Detroit Turkey Trot and a couple of the Oak Apple marathons in Royal Oak. Her favorite things are camping, boating, hiking, and gathering with family and friends at home parties. In her spare time, she loves walking her dog Lucky and spending relaxing hours on detailed counted cross stitch.

🦉 Shoot us a message anytime, we'd love to meet you too!