Rand O'Donnell, CEO, Children's Mercy Hospitals & Clinics

It really was love at first sight: “When I first visited Children’s Mercy,” says Rand O’Donnell, the hospital’s CEO, “I was absolutely amazed by the enthusiastic, dedicated staff.” The commitment and compassion, from physicians to nurses, housekeepers to cooks, was unlike anything he’d ever seen. “You just don’t find cultures like this anywhere else,” says O’Donnell. “I had to be a part of it.”

That was 20 years ago. Since then, O’Donnell has taken a stand-alone facility on Hospital Hill and guided his staff—“my 6,000 heroes,” he calls them—into an expansion of presence and mission across the region. Now with additional facilities in the Northland, Johnson County, Independence and, most recently, a new clinic in Wichita, Children’s Mercy absolutely owns the pediatric health-care space between Denver and St. Louis.

In part, Kansas City can thank his mother, a pediatric nurse who was an early advocate for allowing parents to spend the night with hospitalized children; he calls her influence “invaluable.” “Her role and influence led me to my first job scrubbing floors and cleaning operating rooms,” he says. “It was a good place to start.” Even as a teen, he developed an interest in the psychosocial aspects of pediatric care with his first job in a hospital setting. “I could sense the anxiety and tension in the children and recognized that it was different than that of adults,” he said. “I’d do whatever I could for those kids and talked with their parents to help ease some of that anxiety.” This, he notes, was long before Child Life programs, a time when pediatric health care was treated much like adult health care. “I knew there were opportunities to affect care and treatment—and outcomes, for that matter—which is why I chose this path,” he says.

His vision for the hospital is the same today as it was 20 years ago: “To be among the top children’s hospitals in the world,” he says, citing progress that has earned the hospital U.S. News & World Report plaudits for its orthopedic, neonatology and other specialty treatments. In addition to his staff, he credits community support and Kansas City’s collective pride in the hospital as success factors. Although operating in a challenging health-care environment, he says “our biggest advantage is the simple clarity of our 116-year-old mission: we take care of every child that passes through our doors.” That may complicate things, given that children are far more likely to be uninsured than not. But, he notes, “our kids don’t have to compete with adults for resources. In adult hospitals, children’s needs sometimes come in a distant second to the needs of adult patients."

 

Benny Lee, CEO, DuraComm

Before he lived the American Dream—and he still dares to dream it big—Benny Lee lived the Taiwanese version of it. An electrical engineer by training, he began working for a Kansas City company with operations in Taiwan back in 1972. Seven years later, Lee founded a trading company in his home country, and you may have heard of some of the products he merchan-dised, like the Ginzu knife or the Handy Stitch sewing machine.

His company sold products to Western Auto and Payless Cashways, business lines that helped forge his ties with the U.S. And his success prompted him to make the long-distance move in 1995. Kansas City has been his home since then, for a lot of good reasons. “Kanas City is an entrepreneurial city,” he says. “We can find good people to work, to promote the business.”

One of the things he truly relishes about doing business in America is the comparatively high level of customer service here. “That was a surprise to me,” he said. “In Taiwan and China, it’s becoming a concept now, but the U.S. has been practicing it a long time.”

Within two years of his relocation, Lee had founded Top Innovations, a company dealing in small appliances and steam-cleaning machines, and he shipped them around the world. Lee sold Top Innovations in 2008 and acquired full ownership of an electrical-components company called DuraComm, where his approach to innovation and business growth made him a regional finalist in the 2012 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year competition.

In addition to his business dealings, Lee is on the adjunct faculty for the Bloch School of Mangagement at the University of Missouri–Kansas City.

Lee’s work with Top Innovations led to a global network of business connections, a network that paid off in recent months when the owner of a Spanish company that had gone bankrupt called Lee to talk about buying out what was left of the operation.

Ever the risk-taker, Lee saw an opportunity to rescue a viable business and return it to prosperity. While most other Americans celebrated Memorial Day by kicking back, Lee was returning from Barcelona and taking the phone call with news that Spanish courts had cleared the way for this serial entrepreneur’s newest venture.

Success has made him comfortable, even though he points out, “I’m not a rich man.” You wouldn’t know it to see his list of philanthropic activities: DuraComm contributes on a corporate level to the Children’s Wish Foundation, Kansas City Hospice, the National Federation of the Deaf, the Guadalupe Center, and many other causes. And last year, Lee and his wife Edith donated $1 million to help establish the new birthing center Shawnee Mission Medical Center, where one of their daughters was born.

It was an act that meshed perfectly with the reasons he made his home here. “Part of the American culture,” he says, “is to leave some legacy. A hundred years from now, my great-grandchildren will be able to see that.”