Pol's progeny keeps things percolating.

• Position: Kathy Gingrich Lubbers, owner of Carolina Coffee Roasting Co.

Five years ago, when she was struggling to find a decent job, Kathy Gingrich Lubbers stopped at Carolina Coffee Roasting Co. for a cup of joe. The owner was swamped, so she helped him out.

She still pitches in. But now she owns the Greensboro company, which has two coffee shops and wholesales to restaurants.

The 33-year-old daughter of U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich is on the go nearly 12 hours a day, delivering coffee in a dinked-up, white 1985 Mazda RX-7. She's yet to turn a profit, though sales are just over $400,000.

Her State Street store is full of bags from Costa Rica, Jamaica, Kenya. There's a green-and-silver German roaster in a corner. "I don't think I work very hard because I grew up under a workaholic," she says. "I love him to death, but his job is his life."

She has her dad's wit, but not his bulldog style. The Georgia native wanted to study chemical engineering at Duke but couldn't get in, so she enrolled at Davidson. After a quarter of chemistry and calculus, she decided it wasn't her calling. Her father, a former history professor at West Georgia College, told her, "Find the people that you learn from and study under them."

So Lubbers studied religion, then moved to College Park outside Atlanta. She was a waitress and an administrative assistant for a state legislator, then got a job she liked as a benefits consultant. But she moved when her husband got into...