Chris Rieland doesn’t think that women in business have a particularly hard row to hoe. She’s not felt any discrimination in this area. As president and CEO of Pacific NW Title in Silverdale, she’s observed the increasing trend of single women as homebuyers. And the days when a husband was the signer and the woman the co-signer are long gone.

Rieland, who started the company twelve years ago as an independent affiliate of a Seattle firm, now employs 43 people — including her husband. She says it’s a complementary relationship; she handles business details while he manages accounting and information technology. “We are a great complement to each other,” she said. “We don’t have a strict hierarchy, like many couples that work together.”

And in this case the division of labor is completely appropriate.

“Escrow is a female dominated business,” she said. “If the companies aren’t owned by women they certainly are the most visible. This works take a lot of nurturing, and the customers are always at the pinnacle of their stress-o-meter.”

The escrow business, while it had the requisite post-Sept. 11 drop-off, has been stable for Rieland. The Kitsap real estate market lacks the turbulence of Seattle. “We never had an extreme rally, so we never dealt with a huge drop,” she explains. “Last year we had a refinancing mania, because the interest rates were so low.”

So every cloudy economy has a silver lining for somebody.

“People are everything,” she said. “Our people, all of us take really good care of each other, then we’re intent on taking care of the customer. So each customer becomes more than just another case file. We become involved with them in a way that is not possible with big title companies or in larger cities.”

Happy employees, she says, make happy customers. There is a generous profit sharing program, and the benefits package is richer than many companies of this size. “We make them work hard,” she said. “But we also make them feel good about their work. As a result, they will do whatever it takes to make the customer feel comfortable. We don’t want anyone to feel like they are out there on their own.”

Local ownership is important to Rieland. One of the advantages to working with her is the fact that everyone lives and works in the community. The money spent on loan fees is eventually recycled into local businesses. You may be able to refinance your home over the Internet, but Rieland counsels against it — she would rather see you shop at Target than Target.com

“You can do a lot of work over the Internet,” she said. “But you should always support local businesses. While it’s easy to buy things on line, doing so takes the money right out of the county.”.