Women are just starting to establish themselves as CEO and Founders of media companies.

So, finding one of them who is ALSO in the tech space and the rapidly-growing local marketing business is a real BOOM! I had heard about Laura Rich, the CEO and Co-founder of Street Fight a while back. We even LinkedIn at some point. But then I got to meet her live at her company’s New York event.

Laura moved to Boulder, Colorado after 17 years working for major national business publications in New York and California. She saw a gap in the market for business publications so she decided to launch her own — one with a national scope. She said it was a way to “stay in the game,” but we think Laura is changing the game!

As a longtime journalist covering the Internet , Laura says, “I had been paying attention to the rise of Foursquare, Groupon, and Patch (hyper-local media), all of which hit the scene pretty hard in 2009-2010. They represented the sea change taking place in local media and marketing, which were cratering at the time. These tech upstarts were providing businesses and consumers with new ways of connecting with each other, with brands, and their cities. It was way more than a single story…it was the emergence of an entire new industry.”

And Laura was right! Her recent conference brought together big brands looking to market at the local level with technology companies that enabled them to pinpoint and communicate with individual consumers.

Launching in 2011, Street Fight established a reputation as being on the cutting-edge of tech developments in local; the main source of what’s new and upcoming. They aligned themselves with startups and have continued to do so while still attracting larger companies and legacy businesses. Events have become a bigger part of the company’s strategy.

“I’d like to see more women in local marketing,” says Rich. “Women are doing well in media these days, except in securing funding.” Although Laura humbly says, “We guessed it right,” when talking about her media start-up. But the birth of Street Fight was smart and deliberate. The company launched with a blog site as proof-of-concept. Once she realized that an affinity group was in need of the content and community she and her co-founder sought to provide, “the response was overwhelming.”

Keep on Street Fighting, Laura! We’ll be following you (and subscribing!)