Ruth Thompson is founder and president of Hugs Café, Inc., a nonprofit founded in 2013 dedicated to providing meaningful training and competitively paid employment to adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Her love of serving special-needs adults was sparked in 1998, when she took a job as executive director of New Day In-Home Support and Respite Care in Parker, Colo. In 2018 she opened Hugs Greenhouse, an enterprise that employs special-needs adults with a love of the outdoors. Thompson has received much recognition, such as McKinney’s Top 25 Women in Business, the Community Builder Award from the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas, and the Quality of Life Award from the McKinney Community Development Corporation.