MOUNT HEALTHY, Ohio — Nestled in a Mount Healthy neighborhood, Fibonacci Brewing Company has stood out in Cincinnati’s growing craft beer scene. The one-acre property boasts a working farm, complete with chickens and goats to greet customers, as well as honeybees and a garden in the back, helping produce some flavors that make Fibonacci’s beer farm fresh.

Besides its eclectic atmosphere and hyper-local ingredients, there’s one more unique factor that sets Fibonacci Brewing Company apart.

Its majority owner is a woman. Though if Betty Bollas had her way, soon there will be brewers of all races and genders across the industry.

Bollas greets the goats at the urban farm outside her brewery. (Michelle Alfini/Spectrum News 1)

With a background in human resources, recruiting and hospitality, Bollas said owning a brewery wasn’t something she considered out of her comfort zone, but it started as her husband’s dream.

Already a hobby home brewer, Bob Bollas wanted to take his craft to the next level. 

Betty Bollas brought in the idea of an urban farm and a community-driven setting and helped turn that dream into a business. 

“Then think after a few years, I started realizing it was just as much, if not more, my dream,” she said. 

Bollas realized her passion laid in bringing people together, and beer turned out to be a perfect vehicle.

She reached out to local farms to source ingredients, grew some of her own, then opened up her beer garden to the community to host a seasonal farmer’s market. 

“I think just working in nonprofit really drove me to want to build something that would be very community-focused and continue to be a place to provide connection and resources,” she said.

Bollas pours a drink in her taproom. (Michelle Alfini/Spectrum News 1)

Then as co-founder, Bollas got to exercise another passion, recruiting and hiring.

Under her leadership, Fibonacci Brewing Company became the first brewery in the Cincinnati area to participate in Queen City Certified, now Ellequate, a program focused on improving diversity and inclusion among Cincinnati businesses.

“It’s about the way that we write and post job postings the way that we pay,” Bollas said. “Also, best practices surrounding sexual assault and harassment.”

She said the lessons have helped her grow as an employer, while also becoming a leader for change in her own industry.

Last year, she ran for a spot on the Brewers Association Board of Directors, a national industry advocacy group. Her platform was about encouraging diversity and inclusion and now she gets to put those promises into practice. 

“I’m starting on my second year, and I’ll be leading the new, newly created human resources committee,” she said.

Women like Bollas are still a novelty in the craft beer industry, which remains a heavily male-dominated field, especially at the highest levels. Across the country, men make up 75.6% of brewery owners. Less than 3% of breweries are entirely woman-owned and 58.6% of breweries have no female ownership at all.  

The differences are even more stark with race — 93.5% of brewery owners are white.

Bollas would like to see that change, but she said it will take the right recruiting approach. 

“There has to be this whole piece to it that’s authentic,” she said. “You can’t just be checking a box.”

Bollas checks on the beer brewing in the basement of Fibonacci Brewing Company. (Michelle Alfini/Spectrum News 1)

To Bollas, that means recruiting based on potential strengths and interests of each individual candidate. She said her favorite thing to do is to help potential candidates find a career path they may never have considered on their own simply because they didn’t know such a job existed. 

“I think I just like making those connections for people and seeing people happy,” she said. 

In her seventh year as Fibonacci’s majority owner, Bollas is proud to start the work at home, serving as a mentor or resource to pave the way for other women in beer.