DANA WARD | Great Day Moving

When Roger Ward earned 20 in Their Twenties honors in 2009, we knew that the successes of Marathon Moving—now Great Day Moving—were not his alone. So meet Dana Ward, his 29-year-old wife, who wears the hats of co-owner and marketing director. She’s worked to turn the company originally purchased in 2007 into a franchising operation serving the Kansas City area, with plans to expand into other states. That included creation of Crownbound University, the training center for the 1,000 Great Day franchisees the Wards hope to enlist. But her story is a reminder that vision must meld with execution. “Our strengths are complementary in that Roger is the big-picture guy and I am more of a detailed person,” she says. “Any successful business needs a person that can implement the smaller pieces of the process or system after the idea person casts the vision.”

SARA DAVIDSON | Revvv.It

Innovation, says Sara Davidson, changes lives, creates jobs, fuels growth and, ultimately, creates a better world. Her patch of that entrepreneurial mosaic involves a blur of activities: She has her own marketing consultancy, Revvv.It, she co-hosts the Entrepreneur KC radio show each week on KMBZ, she’s a co-founder of the Kansas City Women’s Entrepreneurial Group and an apprentice at the Women’s Capital Connection. She was exposed to start-up fever as a marketing strategist for Zaarly, the on-line buying platform. Virtually everything she’s involved in is part of the entrepreneurial infrastructure in Kansas City, and serving those aspiring start-ups is her passion. “Entrepreneurs,” says the 28-year-old, “are the thinkers, doers and innovators who change the way we think about what is possible … and have the fearlessness and relentless passion to find new and innovative ways to solve some of society’s oldest problems.”

KYLE GULLEDGE | Gulledge Family Wellness

Ambition. Drive. Innovation. They’ve all helped Kyle Gulledge get where he wanted to be—making a difference, as a business owner. He’s co-owner of Gulledge Family Wellness in Overland Park, plying his chiropractic trade and helping meet what he sees as a societal need. “I have seen that social need in the form of health-care challenges that too many Americans suffer from,” he says. “I have seen a society that has had its health care dictated by large corporations and big pharma.” So he set out to address that, one patient at a time. One of his over-arching goals with the clinic is spreading a gospel that says we all have the power to heal ourselves. Look no further back than half a century, before the nation fully embraced jogging, aerobics or weight-lifting, Gulledge says. Lack of fitness was a state of mind, he says, but the social norming that made those fitness activities commonplace is the same process that will fix America’s current health crisis.

GARRETT FUSELIER | T2 Studios

The world is a canvas. And Garrett Fuselier is out to leave his mark on it in more than just two dimensions. He’s creative director for T2 Studios, a motion-design and visual-effects company working with editors, finishers, designers, developers and visual effects artists around the nation. Fuselier is breaking new ground in the emerging field of experiential design, leading a team of designers and programmers who create experiences that connect a message to an audience. How? With interactive installations, immersive projections or cutting-edge educational spaces, Fuselier says. He built the team up from what was essentially a one-man enterprise as designer and programmer for those interactive experiences. “Experiential design is a new marketing platform, and therefore, we are truly functioning as a start-up,” he says. That allows him to practice his belief that an entrepreneur “is someone who will step out of the norm of what’s expected of them and their industry,” he says. The 27-year-old earned his degree in graphic design from the Kansas City Art Institute, where he remains a fixture as an adjunct professor.