Charles Carlsen
Dr. Charles Carlsen is an institution unto himself. He has served as president of Johnson County Community College for an incredible 25 years. During that time, the college’s enrollment has tripled, 12 new buildings and three parking structures have been constructed. Not content to rest on his laurels, Carlsen is planning an innovative technology and business center and contemporary art museum. As a result of Carlsen’s efforts, ours may be the largest metro in America to have a community college as its most prominent institution of higher learning.

Larry Bridges
Although blocked in his recent effort to redevelop the Empire Theater downtown into a new home for KCP&L and its parent company, Larry Bridges, President of Executive Hills, remains a force to be reckoned with on either side of the state line. Bridges is one of the largest property owners of office buildings in the Kansas City area, included among them, One Kansas City Place—KC’s largest office building.

Len Rodman
Black & Veatch CEO Len Rodman has led the firm through rough waters and still remains on top. The company is the area’s largest engineering firm , with more than 6,800 employees worldwide, 2,600 of those in greater Kansas City. The company did a cool $1.4 billion last year.

David Hancock
David Hancock is Chairman and CEO of the Grandview-based NASB Financial, which employs more than 250 of its 400-plus employees in the Kansas City area. NASB is the holding company for North American Savings Bank, which offers consumer banking and investment products through eight offices in the Kansas City area.

Stuart Lang
The President and CEO of First National Bank. Stu Lang has helped grow his bank, just 12 years old, into a respected institution with $1.2 billion in assets. As testament to its success, First National is the official bank of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Bob Regnier
The Chairman & CEO of Blue Valley Bancorp, Bob Regnier organized and developed investors for a newly chartered Bank of Blue Valley a little more than 15 years ago. Since that time, the bank has expanded into seven locations assets over $600,000,000. The bank is an active real estate lender and expanded that business dramatically when it acquired the Internet–mortgage.com domain name, now a well-established national mortgage lending resource.

Mick Aslin
Mick Aslin is President and CEO of Gold Banc. Not yet 10 years old, the Leawood-based Gold Banc owns three commercial banks with 40 offices in 21 cities in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Florida. The company has nearly 1,000 employees more than 400 in the Kansas City area.

 

EAST

Lamar Hunt and Carl Peterson
Kansas City Chiefs’ owner and founder Lamar Hunt stabilized Kansas City’s future by signing top executive Carl Peterson to a four-year contract extension that will retain Peterson’s services through the 2009 season. During his 16 years at the Chief’s helm, the team has made the playoffs eight times. In the previous 16 years, the team had made the playoffs once. The real bottom line is that the Chiefs have sold out their last 117 home games. Few Kansas City businesses mean more to the city than the Chiefs.

Byron Constance
Byron Constance has made his mark on the area this year as the developer of the Bass Pro deal in Independence. A serious civic presence, serving as he does on the board of the GKC Community Foundation and chairing the board of the Truman Heartland Community Foundation, Constance pulled the community attention to the only undeveloped quadrant at Interstate 70 and Missouri 291, where Bass Pro will anchor a $73 million development.

Frank Ellis
For more than 30 years, Frank Ellis, the Chairman & CEO of Swope Community Enterprises, has been a building a mini-empire on what was once a barren stretch east of the Plaza. These “enterprises” now include Swope Health Services, formerly Swope Parkway Health Center, FirstGuard Health Plan, and the Applied Urban Research Institute. As Brush Creek development pushes east, this investment begins to look better and better.

Rich Hastings
Although based in midtown, Saint Luke’s Health System, under the steadying hand of President and CEO Rich Hastings, is making its most ambitious current move in Lee’s Summit with the gradual opening of Saint Luke’s East, which will culminate next year with the opening of a 52-bed hospital to complement the recently opened emergency and diagnostic centers.

Carlos Ledezma
Carlos Ledezma is the owner and president of Cable-Dahmer Chevrolet, Kansas City’s largest volume dealer for the last 10 years with more than 150 employees. Ledezma has helped the company make serious inroads into the growing Hispanic market and firmly sits atop the list of Kansas City’s largest minority-owned business.

Sandy Kemper
Sandy Kemper left the seemingly secure world of UMB Bank a few years back to launch a cyber-venture now known as Perfect Commerce, of which he is now Chairman and CEO. The move seems to paying off. The Lee’s Summit-based company is now the leading supplier of On-Demand Supplier Relationship Manage-ment solutions and expects $40 million in revenue in ‘05.

 

WEST

Robert Hemenway
As head man at Kansas University, Chancellor Bob Hemenway has played a critical role in the state’s commitment to biosciences. This commitment has borne fruit recently in the creation of the Kansas Bio-Science Authority and the opening of a $10 million Structural Biology Center on the Lawrence campus.

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius
The Kansas governor, Kathleen Sebelius, continues to show her business-friendly demeanor by her very recent signing of a workers’ comp reform bill. If she is to be re-elected in 2006 in the Republican-heavy state, she will have to keep this up. Her public backing of Neil Sader in the Overland Park mayoral race may also have consequences.

Fred Ball
Few realize how vast is the KCK-based co-op that Fred Ball directs as Chairman. In fact, Associated Wholesale Grocers encompasses some 1,400 member stores in 10 states and generates roughly $4 billion a year in revenue and growing. Gary Phillips is the company’s President and CEO.

Keith Tucker
Despite a recent suspension by the Missouri Securities Division, this venerable Overland Park-based institution of Waddell & Reed of which Keith Tucker is Chairman and CEO should continue to prosper. The firm has more than 1400 employees, half of which are in Kansas City.

Sam Turner
Shawnee Mission Medical Center, which Sam Turner serves as President and CEO, has plans underway to expand its 383-bed Johnson County operation. The medical center employs more than 2,600 local residents and supports a staff of more than 600 physicians.

Bill Murray
From Lenexa Bill Murray, President of the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System, heads up a four-state organization with nine hospitals and four clinics. Guiding the mission of this enterprise is Sister Sue Miller, the Community Director of the SCL—the organization’s leader.

 

Cecil and Larry Van Tuyl
Van Enterprises (VT, Inc.), the nation’s largest-privately owned automotive dealership group, turns 50 this year. Cecil Van Tuyl and his son, Larry, co-CEOs, have grown the Merriam company into a Fortune 500 powerhouse that consistently ranks in the top 15% of all U.S. companies. Cecil Van Tuyl sold the West Edge property that Bernstein is developing after neighborhood opposition thwarted his ambitious plans.

Irene Cumming
Irene Cumming, the president and CEO of the University of Kansas Hospital, guided the dramatic turnaround that transformed this unloved ward of the state to a highly respected, independently operated not-for-profit. The renewed confidence has led to a planned $170 million in capital investment in the next four years. This includes the $77 million Center for Advanced Heart Care now under construction and scheduled to open in 2006.

Howard Fricke
The long time Chairman of the Board at Security Benefit Group of Companies in Topeka, Howard Fricke has assumed the leadership of the Kansas Department of Commerce and been inducted into the Topeka Business Hall of Fame. Named the most powerful person in Topeka by The Topeka Capital-Journal a few years back, he helped grow SBG from a $2 billion company to a $10 billion one.

Kris Robbins
The Chairman and CEO of the Security Benefit Group, Kris Robbins also serves as the Chairman of the Greater Topeka Chamber of Commerce. His company also just re-upped as the exclusive supplemental retirement program provider for the National Educational Association and its 2.6 million members.

Jerry Farley
Since 1997, when Jerry Farley became the 14th President of Washburn University, the campus has seen more growth that it has in decades prior. Farley started with a $19 million, 112,000-square-foot Living Learning Center, $2 million of renovations to the adjoining Memorial Union, a 44,000-square- foot student recreation center with a budget of $5.45 million, and a $4.3 million project to make the first major changes to Moore Bowl since the football stadium was built. In the works is a new arts building and a renovated Mulvane Art Museum. This has all been possible because enrollment is growing as is community interest in the university.

John Dicus
As president and CEO of Capitol Federal Financial, John Dicus is a significant force not only in Topeka, where his institution is based, but in Kansas City, where it employs nearly 300 people.

 

NORTH

Neal Patterson
The chairman of the board, CEO and co-founder of Cerner Corporation, Neal Patterson has guided the Cerner Corporation on its stunning 20-year journey to its current status as the world’s largest healthcare information technology company. Vice Chairman and co-founder Cliff Illig deserves his own fair share of the kudos for Cerner’s success. Few companies have been able to generate internal growth for as long as Cerner has. To handle the company’s “explosive growth,” Cerner recently leased 125,000 square feet in a building once occupied by Farmland Industries and expects to add 400 new workers at the site. Cerner now employs about 5,400 people, two-thirds of them in Kansas City.

Jim Ferrell
Jim Ferrell is Chairman, President, CEO of FerrellGas, the country’s second-largest propane retailer with 1 million customers in 45 states. The company employs 400 of the company’s more than 5,000 employees in the Kansas City area, most at the area’s stately Liberty headquarters.

Charles Garney
The veteran Northland developer, and the Chairman and CEO of the Briarcliff Development Company, Charles Garney has established his legacy with Briarcliff. This highly visible, mixed-used, master-planned community just minutes from Downtown has become a city unto itself and a prime residential and commercial address.

Beverly Byers-Pevitts
Now in her fourth year as Park University president, the first woman in that role in the institution’s 130- year history, Beverly Byers-Pevitts continues to find innovative ways to make the university more a national player than its size and Parkville location would suggest.

David Carpenter
The outspoken CEO of North Kansas City Hospital, David Carpenter did not shy from voicing his opinion about the malpractice issues that threatened to strangle health delivery in Missouri and especially at his ever-growing regional medical center. This year, in fact, the hospital expects to complete a $135 million expansion, the largest in the hospital’s history, to accommodate the increasing demands for medical services north of the river.

Lowell Kruse
Quite likely the most influential person in Buchanan County is Lowell Kruse, the CEO of Heartland Health for the last 20 years. With 2,700 employees in his charge, the most in the county, and an impressive suburban property almost always filled with construction cranes, Kruse has been a driving force in the county’s growth.

Tom Mann
If Kruse has competition for the role of Buchanan Cou-nty’s most influential citizen it would be Tom Mann, the long-serving presiding commissioner. Mann and a coalition of leaders has made bold moves in St. Joe that will will payoff.

 

SLOWERS

Dr. Bill Neaves
As CEO of the Stowers Institute, Bill Neaves has not been shy about exerting the influence of the Institute and the life science initiative it generated to influence legislation in Missouri. He has gone on record to say that if the stem cell ban under consideration passes, the Stowers Institute “would be forced” to build its anticipated 600,000–square foot second facility outside the state. He added, “Future expansion of the Institute must occur in a jurisdiction that welcomes this research.” Just a little pressure.

Matt Bartle
The dauntless state senator, Matt Bartle is chairman of the Missouri Senate’s Judiciary Committee. Despite concerted opposition from the state’s bioscience establishment, the Chamber, and many of his own Republican colleagues, Bartle sponsored a broad ban on cloning that passed out of committee with a 7-2 vote. The opposition fears that the bill’s passage would drive Stowers out of state and suck the wind out of the area’s life-sciences movement.

James Haines Jr.
Jim Haines serves as President and CEO of Topeka’s troubled Westar Energy. With 2,000 employees and more than 600,000 customers, the company is the state’s largest electrical utility, but its adventures into the deregulated world did not exactly pan out. Haines has helped the company shed its debt and its oversized ambitions and get back business.

Tim Webster
The blame here really goes to Dr. Atkins for his pasta-unfriendly diet. Tim Webster, president and CEO of American Italian Pasta, is dealing with the Atkins era as best he can. The company’s fortunes will improve as soon as the nation’s dietary habits change and that, analysts believe, is about to happen. With some 700 employees, half of those at his Northland headquarters. The company is the largest producer and marketer of dry pasta in the United States.

David Glass
Glass bought the Royals for $96 million but put the caibosh on downtown ballpark talk when he said the Royals and their fans were not interested in moving. David and son Dan Glass backed a bi-state election for renovations, but killed the drive by leaders for a new ballpark. “The fans wanted us to stay there,” said Glass. Kansas Citians simply hope he puts his money towards building a winner.

Annabeth Surbaugh
Annabeth Surbaugh is the first popularly elected chairman of the Johnson County Board of Commissioners. A long-time citizen activist, Surbaugh was first elected to the County Commission in 1992. Although generally a friend of development, Surbaugh made her reputation a few years back by nixing the ill-conceived, even delusional, Oz project.

Rick Green
When the good news is that shareholder losses are less than they were the year before, a company is doing more slowing than growing. That much said, Aquila chair and CEO Richard Green has recently laid out at an ambitious repositioning strategy designed to improve the credit metrics of this natural gas and electric utility and increase investment in the years ahead. And with more than a thousand of its 4,000 plus employees in Kansas City, Aquila’s fate matters.

Tony Alvarez
As the new CEO Tony Alvarez has assumed the unenviable task of restructuring the once indomitable Interstate Bakeries and ideally seeing it through Chapter 11. With 34,000 employees nationwide, there is a lot more at stake than Twinkies and Wonder Bread.

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