Mary Hinde
Community Foundation of Northwest Missouri, St. Joseph
After a career as an interior designer, Mary Hinde decided to try on retirement. It was not a good fit. “It just wasn’t my deal,” says the president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Northwest Missouri. “There was so much that needed to be done in Northwest Missouri.” So Hinde went back to work full time, and is relishing the challenge. “There are so many exciting things going on and to be done,” particularly with philanthropic-minded Baby Boomers, an aging group that represents the largest generational transfer of wealth in history.
Setting up a community foundation in 2009, it turned out, had its advantages, chiefly, the opportunity to see how other communities had succeeded, and where they’d come up short. The specific challenge for addressing community needs in her hometown, she said, is that the city of nearly 80,000 people is a gateway northwest Missouri, and strategies must cover the needs. of 18 counties.
Doyle Privett
Kennett National Bank, Kennett
It’s easy, at times, to forget how far we’ve come, and how fast, with educational attainment. Maybe that’s why, in the bootheel of Missouri, education matters so much to Doyle Privett. “My father had no education and could not read or write,” says the chief financial officer for the Kennett National Bank for the past eight years. “My mother had gone through the eighth grade.”
Dreams of becoming a chemical engineer inspired the boy from Deering to attend college, but the costs of completing that degree away from nearby Southeast Missouri State University prompted him to change his plans, so accounting it was. He served briefly as a U.S. Treasury auditor, then worked in a CPA firm for 32 years before joining the bank. But his understanding of what education means for rural areas has never ebbed: For a total of 15 years, through appointments by two different governors, Privett has sat on the board of trustees for his alma mater, the past two years as president. “My goal is to ensure that everyone who wants to get a college degree has access to an affordable institution,” Privett says. And to that end, he helped arrange for the university to open a satellite campus in Kennett. As a banker in a town of 11,000 people, he’s living with the financial pressures imposed in an era of increasing financial regulation. “During our last three years, we have seen our compliance costs increase by $100,000. ... Good banks in small communities will continue to survive,” he says, “but we will see much smaller returns.”
John Holstein
Polsinelli PC, Springfield
As a partner at the Polsinelli law firm, John Holstein spends considerable time in mediation. “I advise litigants that judges are imperfect. I know: I was one.” And not just any judge, but the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court until he retired from the bench in 2002. He cautions clients that the nuance and circumstance of each case can bring new and unexpected results. “But law is not yet a science,” he says, and “all clients are well-served to consider these uncertainties as part of risk management.” As a jurist, Holstein was involved with a number of reforms in the judicial process. He takes little credit and praises those in the system who oversaw the details, but during his tenure, the courts became more transparent, with on-line access and courtroom cameras, embraced uniformity in child-support determinations and disposition standards that infused a measure of judicial accountability, introduced consideration of criminal sentencing guidelines, and centralized the handing of attorney discipline cases. A native of Springfield, he had parents who worked hard to make ends meet, and who set expectations for the same kind of exertion from their two sons. What was the attraction that law held for this Holstein? “In America, principles of economics, government and the rule of law had a sort of seamlessness, each interconnected with the other, that I found both fascinating and frightening,” he says. “Those rules give us the luxury of predictability and stability. Without them, the world is a savage place.”
Richard Fordyce
Secretary of Agriculture, Bethany
Richard Fordyce makes a living as a fourth-generation farmer raising corn, soybeans, cattle—and awareness. For as deeply involved as he is in the production side of agriculture, Fordyce is a whirlwind of activity on the policy side, as well. In December, Gov. Jay Nixon named him Missouri’s dir-ector of agriculture, but the row he hoed to get there has involved leadership roles with local, state and national organizations for more than two decades. Fordyce had a 17-year run as president of the Harrison County Farm Bureau through 2010, he’s chaired the state’s Soil & Water Districts Commission since 2008, and has served on various boards and committees for both the Missouri Farm Bureau and the American Farm Bureau Federation. His commitment to civic life in rural Missouri has led to service on the South Harrison R-II school board, on the Green Hills Regional Planning Commission, and on the Sherman Township board of trustees.
DeAngela Burns-Wallace
University of Missouri, Columbia
From an all-black grade school to a nearly all-white high school, DeAngela Burns-Wallace first became aware of diversity issues. But at a far more diverse Stanford University, she found her calling and a sense of purpose, in part because she no longer felt constrained by labels. “I didn’t have to choose between being black and being academic,” she remembers. Diversity in education has framed her career, which has led her to Columbia as MU’s director of access initiatives in the Division of Enrollment Management. But the foundation for her work has been an impressive commitment to education as the first in her family to attend college.
She has degrees from some of the top institutions in the nation: A bachelor’s in international relations from Stanford, a master’s in public administration from Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public & International Affairs, and her doctorate in higher education management from the University of Pennsylvania. She speaks conversational Chinese and is proficient in both verbal and written French. Just as impressive is what she’s done with that education, working at U.S. embassies in Pretoria, South Africa, and Beijing, and at the consulate in Guangzhou, China; back to Stanford, where her work on diversity took on a sharper focus as assistant dean for diversity outreach, and then closer to home at MU in 2009. “I think of my background as being in public policy,” she says. “Higher education is just a different sector of it.” With her State Department work, “I didn’t feel like I was having a true impact on lives, and that impact is the center of my public policy work and why I got into higher ed and government.”
Fred Parry
Inside Columbia, Columbia
Anyone in publishing still trying to figure out where their readership is going should call Fred Parry. The publisher of three successful magazines—Inside Columbia, Prime and CEO—he can tell you what sells: “It’s all about content these days,” he says. “The consumers of our content may choose to engage with us through their smart phone or curl up with one of our magazines on a Sunday afternoon.” Regardless of medium, he says, if the content is compelling, the access is broad and you’re targeting the right audience, publishing is far from dead. A native of Liberty, he attended one of the nation’s top-ranked universities for journalism—MU—but earned a general-studies degree. After a few years in trade publishing in Chicago and at newspapers in Pittsburgh and Washington, he started his own company, publishing magazines aimed at businesses, seniors, parents and homeowners, then sold the lot in 1999.
Columbia, he says, is the perfect venue, with its quality of life, cultural amenities and support for entrepreneurs. Some might be surprised that the fifth-largest city in the state can support a niche product like CEO, but Parry considers it a cornerstone of the company’s work, pulling together thought leaders and influencers from around mid-Missouri. “Our ability to bring these folks into the same room and get them talking about the issues of the day is powerful and can be transformative for the community,” he says. “I’m most proud of our ability to connect people.”
Marilyn Bush
Bank of America Merrill Lynch, St. Louis
For 30 years, Marilyn Bush has been a fixture at Bank of America, most recently with its Bank of America Merrill Lynch division. She’s a senior vice president, overseeing public sector banking across six states. In other words, she’s got a full plate at work. But for almost the same span, Bush has been deeply engaged in civic life in St. Louis, particularly with that city’s United Way. She chairs its Women’s Leadership Society, an association of more than 3,200 women from that region who combine to raise more than $6.5 million every year. In addition to serving on committees for various United Way functions, she’s a member of the Tocqueville Society and the executive committee for the United Way’s board of directors.
Bush is also chairs the board of the Hawthorn Foundation, a group of influential business exectives from across the state who raise funds for economic development. Last year, she was named a Leader of Distinction for the YWCA in St. Louis, and she has served on the boards for the state’s lend-ing authority serving college students, and the influential Metro East Levee Issues Alliance.
Carlos Ledezma
Cable-Dahmer, Independence
No reverse gear. Two bald tires. And a young father with “one on the ground and one on the way.” That’s how Carlos Ledezma describes his introduction to car sales, back in Texas 30 years ago. The Chevrolet dealership would make available a demo car to anyone making sales goals. Ledezma took the job and got the car. Today, he’s president of the Kansas City area’s top-selling Chevrolet dealership, which he acquired in stages after moving here in 1994 as a consultant to local dealerships. It didn’t take long before dealer Jerry Dahmer realized Ledezma had more to offer than consultation, bringing him on board the next year. Two years later, Ledezma made partner, and in 2002, he bought the dealership, and since then, three more.That success comes via the best of what Kansas City has to offer: “One of the things I really enjoy about Kansas City is its foundation,” he says. “There’s a diversity in business—that’s what keeps our own business very, very stable.
Walter White
Commerce Bank, Kansas City
He hailed from the Maryland-Virginia area and played four seasons with the Chiefs in the mid-’70s. Then two things happened that made Walter White a lifer in Kansas City. The first was a chance encounter with Gene Periera at Merchant’s Bank, who on the spot insisted that White take a job at the bank. “I said that’s not my forte, but he said ‘I’m going to teach you,’ ” White recalls. “He kept pushing me and pushing me, and I didn’t even know him.” But Pereira had a solid repution with other Chiefs, and White bit. From the credit department to new accounts, loans, and collections, though acquistion by Boatmen’s, learning trust operations, pension administration and endowments. When NationsBank acquired Boatmen’s, rival Commerce Bank came calling, and White signed on 16 years ago, working in the trust department.
The second anchor keeping him here is the Chiefs Ambassadors program, which he helped launch after Carl Peterson and Marty Schottenheimer came here in 1989. “Once you’re out of the game, you’re pretty much out of the game—there’s not a whole lot of contact,” White says. But encouraged by the team’s leadership, he and nine others teed up a group that has raised tens of thousands in scholarships for hundreds of area youths, funds for Lake Regional Hospital at the Lake of the Ozarks, and even helped start a similar group for the rival Denver Broncos, meeting in Goodland each year for a benefit golf tournament. “We give these guys an opportunity to come into our group, see if they like it, have the time to commit to it and get voted in,” White says. “It’s all volunteer work we do.”
Peter Hofherr
St. James Winery
Producing fine wines may be an art, but make no mistake: A winery is both a business and an agricultural enterprise. Given that, Peter Hofherr has hit the trifecta at St. James Winery, where he’s an MBA-educated CEO, a vintner and a manager well-versed in policy—for six years, he worked in the Department of Agriculture, four of them as Secretary. Since rejoining the winery founded by his parents in 2007, Hofherr has helped build it into the state’s largest, producing 200,000 cases every year and shipping them to 19 states—up considerably from the 3,400 cases that Jim and Pat Hofherr coaxed out of their cellars their first year. And it’s wine with a reputation— in 2009, the Critics Challenge International Wine Competition designated St. James winery of the year in the eastern United States.
It’s a long-established industry in Missouri—the first settlers to set vines in the area started in the 1840s, and the state led the nation in wine production in the 1880s (take that, Napa Valley!). But Prohibition wiped it out, and not until 1965 did commercial production resume. Today, the state boasts 140 wineries.
Hofherr also serves as chairman of Missouri’s Wine and Grape Board, and he’s wrapping up a Ph.D. in agricultural economics at MU, where he’s assistant director of the McQuinn Center for Entrepreneurship.
