JACK BOWLING

If there’s a big deal in the works at Stinson Leonard Street—emphasis on “big”—there’s a chance Jack Bowling has a seat at the table. The 39-year-old has his fingerprints on transactions totaling more than $36 billion in combined worth. Start with more than $20 billion in mergers, acquisitions and divestitures both foreign and domestic, then add in $14.9 billion in private and public offerings of equity and debt securities, and more than $1.4 billion in venture capital financings, and you get a sense of scale on deals that Bowling helps cut for the firm known until recently as Stinson Morrison Hecker, where he’s a partner in the corporate finance division.

His clients have included Fortune Brands Home & Security, in a $300 million acquisition; DeBruce Grain, in the $4.6 billion company’s 2010 acquisition by Gavilon; EPR Properties, with more than $1.8 billion in public securities offerings; and in lead attorney roles for H&R Block and Waste Management, Inc. He’s a current board member for the Community Health Charities of Kansas and Missouri, served six years on the board for the Brain Injury Association of Kansas and Greater Kansas City, and is a graduate of the Civic Council’s Kansas City Tomorrow program.

He also was named to the CleanTech 100 list by Legal Media Group last year, recognizing the 100 top attorneys in the fields of clean technologies and renewable energy. He and his wife, Anne, have three daughters—Grace, 9; Kate, 6; and 4-year-old Caroline.

ERIC CAMPBELL

Just six years after picking up his diploma from Knob Noster High School—with a detour through nearby Warrensburg and the University of Central Missouri—Eric Campbell became project management director for VML. Within a decade, he’d risen to chief engagement officer, then recently becoming business officer for the digital marketing and advertising company.

His clients read like a stock exchange’s membership roster—Microsoft, MillerCoors, Bridge-stone and SAP, plus local monoliths like American Century Investments. In addition to providing executive leadership to key accounts like those, he’s responsible for the agency’s business-development practice. “I’m incredibly passionate about the growth of our company and running through walls to solve our clients’ toughest business challenges,” says Campbell, 39. The source of that passion can be traced back to the Midwestern values he embraces and what he calls his “can-do approach.” Campbell has also applied that can-do spirit to philanthropic work as a founding member of the VML Foundation, the company’s charitable arm, since its inception in 2005.

“It’s amazing to see how this VML cultural pillar has positively impacted so many Kansas City-area charitable organizations,” says Campbell, who also backs efforts for Head for the Cure, the personal inspiration of VML chairman Matt Anthony, and the American Cancer Society’s Shave to Save. Campbell and his wife, Stacie, have two daughters, Jacqueline, 12, and Cecilia, 5.

LAURA BRADY

Teamwork. Accountability. Making employees see the connection between their roles and the company’s success. Those are the values Laura Brady holds dear as CEO of Medical Positioning, Inc., which makes beds and tables that improve diagnostic imaging in medical settings. And they work: in four years at MPI, Brady has overseen a threefold increase in earnings. Before that, she ran Wolferman’s Gourmet Foods, a division of Williams Foods, and scored sales increases of 50 percent and an impressive 1,500 percent increase in earnings in six years, sandwiching those two roles around a year with Three Dog Bakery. Jumping from one sector to another was challenging enough, but when the landing strip is in a field like contemporary health care, the difficulty factor grows exponentially.

“Navigating the choppy waters of health care reform has made my current position all the more challenging and rewarding,” says the 37-year-old Kansas City native. After earning hear bachelor’s in economics from Trinity University in San Antonio, she picked up an MBA from the Kenan–Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina, then came home to start her career at Wolferman’s, which was eventually acquired by specialty gourmet retailer Harry & David.

Two key traits she values are lifelong learning and work ethic, and as a Kansas City native, she’s a fan of the Chiefs and Royals, First Fridays in the Crossroads, and spending time on the Plaza.

JAMES CLARKE

He spent 35 years assembling an identity you can discern from a business card: James Clarke. Partner. Fiduciary Research & Consulting. Then, 3½ years ago, life came calling in the form of young Matthew Clarke. “It sounds trite, but having children really does change everything,” says Dad, who’s now 38. Up until then, “I would have reflexively described myself as a professional investor, occasional entrepreneur and frequent editor and author” with a particular yen for re-crafting poorly written Wikipedia entries. And he still is all that. As head of private equity and real asset strategies for FR&C, he helps provide asset allocation, manager research and risk-management services to clients with a combined $9 billion in assets. He previously worked at Nations Media Partners, a boutique investment banking firm focused on telecommunications and media, and at the Kauffman Foundation, where he was responsible for structuring and tracking the foundation’s investments in private equity, venture capital, real estate and energy holdings. But since December 2010, “I’m now the father who feels guilty for missing a few nights at home when I have to travel for work,” Clarke says, and he’s graduated from games of peek-a-boo and readings of The Foot Book to hide-and-seek and water-slide-centric vacations. “I still keep a lot of balls in the air at any one time, but I am learning that most of them are just a distraction from what really matters,” Clarke says. “Who am I and what matters? I’m Matthew’s dad and Jen’s husband.”