Esther George
Senior Vice President
Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

As the Federal Reserve’s top
banking supervisor in the 10th Federal Reserve District with its 1700 employees, she leads the division of Supervision and Risk Management with approximately 200 staff in four offices (Kansas City, Omaha, Oklahoma City, and Denver). Esther George credits her accomplishment to important work, a quest for excellence, building strong relationships and stretching beyond her comfort zone for her place in life.

George chairs the HR Board Committee for the Habitat for Humanity. She serves on the Weatherby Lake Improvement Company’s Finance Advisory Committee. Her Financial Management Certification has probably been of more use to her than her crown as Miss Farm Bureau Queen in 1976, but she continues to play the piano, just as she did when she played for President Gerald Ford at a state convention. She still works on her family farm near St. Joseph along with her two children and husband.

An aspiring ballroom dancer, she tries to live her life according to a quote she’s saved: “The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it.” Her colleagues consistently mention her energy, her dedication to people, her smarts, her integrity—and her laughter.

Karen Daniel
CFO and Executive Vice President
Black & Veatch

As CFO, she’s in charge of more than $2 billion of revenue at this #80 firm in Forbes’ “500 Largest Private Companies.” Responsible for more than 250 professionals, she establishes the company’s strategic direction and implementation. Working with financial partners, she provides support for operations, external reporting, and shareholder relations. She attributes her success to her family, a plan that included education and hard work, and “wonderful mentors.”

Daniel’s track record points to difficult projects which have gotten the right results on time. As President of the Board of Commissioners for KC Parks and Rec., she led the effort for the restoration and rededication of the Liberty Memorial. She’s on the boards of the Community Foundation, Women’s Employment Network, Black Economic Union. Recently awarded the National Professional Achievement Award at the National Women of Color Technology Awards, she was amoung “the brightest and most innovative business leaders for their outstanding career achievements.”

Her favorite word is “courage” and she’s adopted the quote as her own: “It takes courage to push yourself to places that you have never been before, to test your
limits, to break through barriers.”

Citigroup has 2,200 employees locally (and 275,000 nationally) and Lori Hirons is in charge of all communications, public relations, philanthropy and legislative affairs here. She’s there, she says, because of persistence, timing, and patience.

Hirons is clearly dynamic. She’s mayor of Roeland Park and active in politics. She wants to encourage young people to get involved and is worried that they are being turned off by the negativity—“There is too much at stake to allow that to happen.” She sits on a number of boards but most importantly, she believes, she is active and vocal on those boards, whose common theme is improving economic development. “If you have an opportunity to influence things for the better, you are doing a disservice to the community if you don’t,” she says.

Recently recognized by Baylor University as an Outstanding Young Alumna (out of 100,000), she seems equally thrilled by her return to YouthFriends as a 4-year volunteer with, she hopes, the same student. She tries to live by the quote on her wall, which says something to the effect of being kind to “the weak, the needy, the proud, the stubborn, etc.—because someday you will have been all of these things.”

When Joan Horan moved from teaching school in Paola, Kansas to Kansas City in 1970, she began work as an assistant for an architectural firm. The following year, she took a job with DST Systems as their first personnel director.

From the original 75 employees to the now 12,000 plus, Horan says it’s like “starting in a puddle and ending up in an ocean.” On our original list back in 1992, her responsibilities now include the full gamut—and the DST orchestra due to her love of music. Besides this, her list of current board leader and membership positions is huge. She believes her counseling background and her love for people have been most instrumental in her background. Her biggest challenge? Finding enough of the right people to fuel the growth of this now huge company. She credits the phenomenal growth of DST and programs such as Kauffman’s Executive Fellows program as helping her to evolve with the company.

She manages (barely) to find time for traveling, a true passion, and has visited at least 50 different countries. She says she’s simply “been blessed with a wonderful, collaborative staff whom I trust completely . . . and with wonderful opportunities.”