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BY DURELL HALL JR., THE COURIER-JOURNAL "Cookie Lady" Elizabeth Namusoke Kizito was named Woman Business Owner of the Year yesterday by the Louisville chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She opened a bakery on Bardstown Road in 1989 without savings or a bank loan.

Elizabeth Namusoke Kizito's middle name means "rainbow," but she's too busy running her business to search for a pot of gold.

She started her now well-known cookie business from scratch 20 years ago ,  after baking cookies at home to raise money for her son's birthday present. In 1989, she opened a bakery on Bardstown Road without the benefit of savings or a bank loan.

Widely known locally as the "Cookie Lady," Kizito is a familiar fixture at Louisville festivals, baseball games and other events, selling cookies from a basket she carries on her head, a skill learned in her  homeland,  Uganda. Her cookies are sold in restaurants, coffee shops and other places around town.

But so far, the president of Kizito Cookies hasn't opened bakeries in other cities or explored the idea of selling franchises, though she has been approached about it.

Why not? "Because I'm so busy," Kizito said yesterday.

 She  was busy accepting congratulations, as she was named Woman Business Owner of the Year by the Louisville chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners. She received the award at a luncheon at Galt House East.

"I'm really happy to be in Louisville," Kizito  said  as she accepted the award. "This is the best day of my life. Thank you for eating my cookies."

Kizito was chosen over 12 other nominees, two of whom were named Women of Distinction. They are Margaret "Peggy" Karman, president of Cookie Cutters Haircuts for Kids, and Catherine A. VanBever, executive director and partner of ChiMed Management, a  physician billing and consulting firm.

NAWBO  presented  several other awards. Caterer and restaurateur Sueanna Masterson-Carroll, an owner of Masterson's Restaurant and the Captain's Quarters restaurant, was named corporate partner of the year.

WHAS radio personality Bob Sokoler was named media advocate of the year, and Today's Woman publisher Cathy Zion won the Spirit of Kentucky award.

Kizito was born in Uganda in the 1950s, before that country won its independence from Great Britain. She was one of eight children born to her mother and 36 born to her father, who had nine wives.

Her father, a baker and businessman, sent her to America to attend school. The family business collapsed after he died, and when civil war broke out the army overran her family's home.

Kizito remained in America, studying in Colorado and New Mexico before marrying her first husband and moving    in 1978 to Louisville, where she took a waitress job.

She baked cookies at home and took them to her co-workers. When the restaurant went out of business, she decided to try to sell her cookies for a living.

Kizito's cookie cart became a fixture on a downtown street corner. Her second husband, Todd Bartlett, later joined her in the business.

Today, her bakery has five other employees. Although Kizito has been hesitant to sign up with investors who have approached her, she thinks the time to expand to other cities may be near.

But she has her own way of approaching that. She said she plans to go to Chicago and give cookies to people in line for Oprah Winfrey's TV show, hoping to be noticed.

"I'd like to meet Oprah," Kizito said. "I think that's how I'm going to be discovered."

She said she has sent several mailings to Winfrey, but has received no replies.

Kizito said that as she built her business, she never worried about failure "because I didn't know what else I was going to do." Selling her cookies is "really fun" because she enjoys getting out and meeting people, she said.

Kizito visits  her family in  Uganda once a year and has sent money to finance restoration of the family home and help educate orphaned nieces and nephews.

The business lessons she has learned are the value of working hard, "being persistent at what you do," and putting out a good product, she said.

In addition to her well-known cookies, Kizito's bakery also makes biscotti, brownies and muffins.

Before NAWBO presented its awards yesterday, several hundred members heard a speech on leadership by Susan Ivey, who has been president and chief executive of Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co. since January 2001.

Ivey said she is often asked how it feels to be a female CEO and answers that she has "no idea what it feels like to be a male CEO, so it feels fine."

She said lessons she has learned in more than 20 years at B&W and its parent company, British American Tobacco, include the need to "embrace change and run with it" and not to over-analyze.

Leaders don't need to master every business detail  or  generate all the ideas, she said, but they need to assemble "a team of strong people that possess the skills and the assets that you don't have."

"The higher up the ladder you go, (the less) your technical skills and your technical knowledge are scrutinized. Because how you do things becomes just as important, if not more important, as what you do," Ivey said, citing the need to delegate, mobilize, motivate and build consensus.

"Your job is not to have all the ideas if you're at the top," Ivey said. "But it is a good skill to recognize a good idea when you hear one, and pursue it relentlessly."

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