The 2026 Ingram’s 250—The Most Powerful Business Leaders in Greater Kansas City

The Ingram’s 250 is not a popularity contest and not a social register. It is an annual accounting of the executives whose decisions move capital, jobs, and civic direction across the two-state metro—the people who run the banks, builders, hospitals, agencies, insurers, law firms, manufacturers, and civic shops that give Greater Kansas City its economic weight. 

Since its inception in 2016, this list has always mixed household names with operators who rarely seek a microphone. The test is influence: who can change a payroll, a skyline, a talent pipeline, or a regional reputation.

What changes each September is the currency of the year just lived. For 2026, that currency is unmistakable.

 As a 2026 FIFA host city, Kansas City asserted its place on a global stage–then had to decide what those 39 days were for. These honorees respond with a collective vision for that. 

The same class is living with a finished KCI, decisions still in motion for professional sports stadiums, and a construction boom that is less about offices than about data centers, electric infrastructure, and the tradespeople who can actually build them. Those themes run through insights provided by those recognized this year: convert World Cup exposure into follow-up, not souvenirs; connect destinations with transit and power, not just more destinations; close the gap between the talent the region educates and the talent employers can hire.

In this report, you’ll hear from honorees about the milestone developments they named—an ESOP conversion, a big contract year, a Mayo affiliation, a classified office building delivered early—then drop into short labeled notes drawn from the rest of the Q&A. Other segments are researched the old way: public filings, Ingram’s 100 submissions, trade-publication clips, and previous-year files, because some of the region’s largest players have never treated a magazine questionnaire as time well spent. Both kinds of entries belong on the same list. Influence does not require a completed form.

The bold labels under each name are a map, not decoration. In addition to educational backgrounds and financial performance (where available), you’ll see shorthand for questions on the WORLD CUP impact, NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE goals the civic leadership should consider, or WORKFORCE FIX needs, a systemic problem they would erase if they could. Other topic labels: MEETING PET PEEVE, LEADERSHIP LESSON, and COMMUNICATION address the way these elite executives actually run a room. ALTERNATE CAREER is the human remainder. 

The full scope: 250 seats, two states, one metro still trying to scale the next generation of growth.

A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z

Robert Adams
Partner, Shook, Hardy & Bacon

At Shook, Hardy & Bacon general-liability litigation is where Robert Adams sits on the firm’s executive committee and co-chairs that litigation practice, defending automakers, insurers, medical-device makers and builders, among others. Chambers USA, Lawdragon 500, Missouri Lawyers Media’s POWER List and Best Lawyers have all put him on the short list for high-stakes business defense.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Kansas; J.D., University of Missouri School of Law
2025 FIRM REVENUES: $643.4 million (Ingram’s 100 rank 55)
LOCAL ROOTS: Before heading off to Lawrence and Columbia, Adams graduated from Rockhurst High School.
CLIENTS: Automotive, insurance/reinsurance, pharmaceutical, medical devices, design and construction
ROLE: Executive committee; co-chair, general-liability litigation

Raghu Adiga
President/CEO, Liberty Hospital

Raised in a lower-middle-class family in India, Raghu Adiga watched his mother work relentlessly so her children could be educated—and learned from it. After specialty med-school training in Chicago, he came to the hospital in 1997, moving up the leadership ranks. Most recently, he led its affiliation with The University of Kansas Health System to broaden the arc of care his team can deliver.
LEADERSHIP PATH: He says he had no single “a-ha” career moment to the C-suite. Positive feedback in early administrative roles led him to accept progressively larger and more complex responsibilities. Serving as CMO and practicing infectious-disease physician during COVID was an especially intense leadership test.
COMMITTED TO KC: “The Midwest is home. Missouri is home to my family and me,” he declares. He has an explicit desire to contribute to the Northland’s growth era through health care rather than seeking impact elsewhere.
OUTSIDER PERCEPTIONS: Missourians, he says, are data- and proof-oriented—“the Show-Me State moniker is fitting.” Many outsiders still do not grasp that Kansas City is a true bi-state metro or that the region is rapidly becoming a destination for specialized medical research and care not widely available elsewhere.

Mauli Agrawal
Chancellor, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Mauli Agrawal made raising UMKC’s research profile a top goal when he arrived in 2018—then made it a measurable reality. After UMKC achieved Carnegie R1 status in 2025, research expenditures headed toward $79 million, and it led a regional consortium to secure a National Science Foundation award of up to $160 million over 10 years for critical-materials research and commercialization.
COLLEGE: B.A., Technology, Indian Institute of Technology; M.S., Mechanical Engineering, Clemson University; Ph.D., Mechanical Engineering, Duke University
R1 ARRIVAL: UMKC’s 2025 Carnegie designation placed it among the nation’s top research universities—an achievement Agrawal called “a huge victory” for the entire Kansas City area.
RESEARCH SURGE: The 2025 research expenditures have nearly tripled since 2015, when that figure stood at $27 million.
NEXT LEVEL: “R1 does not mean it’s time to rest on our laurels,” Agrawal says; the designation is “a call to action.”
FUNDRAISING: Blue & Bold, UMKC’s largest campaign ever, targets $700 million for students, research, faculty, facilities and community impact.

Matt All
President/CEO, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas

Over the past year, BCBSKS became a co-founder of Stellarus, a health-care technology company built by mission-driven, not-for-profit plans. Says Matt All: “It gives a Kansas-based company a seat at the table in building the next generation of health-insurance technology—more intelligent, flexible and capable of making health care simpler and more affordable.”
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Kansas; J.D., Yale Law School
ABOUT BCBSKS: Topeka-based mutual not-for-profit; more than 80 years serving Kansans; more than 1 million members and 2,000 employees.
WORLD CUP: Treat it as the beginning of a relationship. One regional story, shared priorities and disciplined follow-through with companies and investors who experienced the city.
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: A truly regional transit system connecting KCI, Downtown, employment centers, universities and entertainment districts.
WORK FORCE / ECONOMY: Bend the health-care cost curve. Rising costs consume wage growth and strain small businesses—“it’s also an economic competitiveness issue.”

Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado
President/Chief Science Officer, Stowers Institute

The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is the reason Kansas City can claim a basic-science bench that most peer metros cannot. Steering that ship since 2021 is Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, carrying on the legacy of Jim and Virginia Stowers, who endowed it with more than $2 billion to set the stage for emergence of that discipline.
COLLEGE: B.S., Vanderbilt; Ph.D., University of Cincinnati
CAMPUS: Sitting just east of the Country Club Plaza, in the transformed building that was once Menorah Medical Center, the institute counts 500 researchers and staff, 20 principal investigators, 16 technology centers, 150 active projects and $2 billion spent on research to date.
PEOPLE: 500 members; 60 predocs; 60 postdocs; three National Academy of Sciences members
FUNDING: American Century, the Stowers’ wealth-management giant, dedicates a large portion of its earnings each year to fund the institute.

Adam Aron
Chairman/CEO/President, AMC Entertainment

Adam Aron has spent a decade turning AMC from a pandemic near-casualty into the world’s largest theater circuit still run from Leawood. Q2 2026 was the payoff: about $1.6 billion in revenue and $321.4 million in adjusted EBITDA, the strongest quarter in the company’s 106 years, with 71 million guests through AMC and Odeon doors—up 13.5 percent.
COLLEGE: B.A., Harvard; MBA with distinction, Harvard Business School
2025 REVENUES: $4.85 billion (Ingram’s public-company list, rank 4)
FOOTPRINT: About 860 theaters worldwide
2025–26: $150 million equity raise completed; returned to full duty after a November 2025 stroke
BEFORE AMC: Aron has navigated a career in hospitality and entertainment, including Starwood, Norwegian Cruise Line, Vail Resorts, and an ownership stake in the Philadelphia 76ers.
RELEVANCE: For a metro that sells itself on sports, travel and nights out, a revived AMC is one of the region’s most visible consumer brands.

Marco Assis
CEO & Partner, Propio Language Services

Marco Assis has turned Propio Language Services from a small local enterprise into one of the industry’s most aggressive consolidators. After revenues reached $243 million in 2024, he led the 2025 acquisition that combined two of the largest U.S.-based remote-interpretation providers. Now Assis is pushing beyond scale alone, expanding its technology portfolio with AI-enabled tools.
COLLEGE: B.S., Economics, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; additional studies in Australia and the United States focused on entrepreneurship and marketing.
THE CLIMB: He joined Propio in finance in 2017 and became CEO and owner in 2019 after an earlier international finance and M&A career with Shell Oil and Puma Energy.
TRANSFORMATIVE DEAL: Propio’s acquisition of CyraCom brought together two major remote-interpretation providers in “a transformative moment in our industry.”
GROWTH MACHINE: Propio  reported $243.2 million in 2024 revenue, up from $33.1 million just three years earlier.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Assis has told us that rapid growth creates a new challenge: leaders inevitably touch fewer employees directly, making development of a strong management team essential.

Jeff Auslander
CEO, LIV2ship

After building Dynamic Logistix as the region’s fastest-growing company by 2019, Jeff Auslander has another logistics enterprise moving at high speed. Since taking the reins at LIV2ship in July 2025, monthly revenue has increased more than 710 percent. The Overland Park company pairs logistics services with technology designed to give shippers greater visibility, automation and control in a volatile freight market.
RIGHT FIT: The appeal of LIV2Ship was both familiar and liberating: “It’s what I love to do and I had the chance to do it again”—this time with full decision-making authority. Just as important, he says, is a team of “nothing but pros” who treat one another like family.
TECHNOLOGY EDGE:  Auslander sees client-facing technology as increasingly central to logistics success. Visibility, automation and reporting give shippers greater control over volatility while allowing LIV2ship to function as a partner in navigating it.
THE FUEL FACTOR: Rising diesel prices are hitting the shipping sector hard, Auslander says, but LIV2ship’s software allows the company to route freight more intelligently, helping keep costs under better control than he says many competitors have been able to achieve.

Mario Azar
Chairman/CEO, Black & Veatch

Black & Veatch is the Overland Park engineering giant that delivers power, water, gas, and data center systems around the world. It’s led by Mario Azar, only the eighth to hold that role for a firm founded in Kansas City in 1915. He took the CEO chair in 2022 and refocused the portfolio on the energy transition and digital infrastructure, leading its growth.
COLLEGE: B.S., Electrical Engineering, UNC Charlotte
2025 REVENUES: $5.1 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank No. 8)
PEOPLE: Now more than 13,000; 100 percent employee-owned
SECTOR IMPACT: Engineering News-Record ranks Black & Veatch among the top 15 design firms in the United States. What gets built along I-35 and at KCI-adjacent sites often starts as a B&V drawing.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: Azar has served on the boards of United Way of Greater Kansas City, the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, the Civic Council, and, within the industry, the U.S. Energy Association.
BEFORE B&V: He was global CEO for Siemens Oil & Gas and Marine.

Rick Baden
EVP/Vice Chairman, Watco

Rick Baden is proudest not of a single deal over the past year, but of Watco’s habit of investing in infrastructure and people while still posting strong day-to-day results. “Through a lot of change, our teams have remained committed to safety, customers, and improving every day.” The Pittsburg-born short-line and logistics operator keeps expanding while the trains still have to run on time.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting, Kansas State University (magna cum laude)
WORLD CUP: Coordinated regional follow-through so businesses, investors and professionals see Kansas City as a place to grow, not just visit.
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Transportation and connectivity—rail, truck, barge and air—to keep people and products moving.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Close the gap between available jobs and workforce awareness by pairing employers with schools and technical programs.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Leaders don’t need all the answers. “Great organizations are built by strong teams, not by one person.”
ALTERNATE CAREER: Start or help grow a small business.

Robert Balderston
Founder, Balderston Automotive group

Bob Balderston presides over a family-led automotive organization whose presence extends across eastern Jackson County and into the Northland. Balderston Auto Group now encompasses four Ford, Honda and Subaru dealerships, giving it a broad regional base in vehicle sales while supporting those operations with financing, parts, maintenance and repair services.
OPERATING FOOTPRINT: The group includes Blue Springs Ford, Lee’s Summit Honda, Lee’s Summit Subaru and Smithville Ford. 
ADDITIONAL LINES: Summit Detail, with a full suite of services for both interior and exterior, operates near the group’s Lee’s Summit dealerships. 
THREE BRANDS: Its new-vehicle franchises represent Ford, Honda and Subaru. 
FULL-CYCLE MODEL: Operations encompass new and used-vehicle sales, financing, parts and service.
LONGEVITY: The family-led dealership traces its history to 1975.

David Ball
Chairman, Balls Food Stores

David Ball’s latest move may be the most consequential in a career spent extending his family’s century-old grocery legacy: preparing the enterprise to thrive without relying on a single family leader. After converting Balls to employee ownership, he expanded beyond the local market and moved into the chairman’s role, installing Ryan Campbell as president to focus on mergers and acquisitions.
COLLEGE: B.A., Personnel Administration, University of Kansas
EXPANDING MAP: The 2025 acquisition of Schulte’s Fresh Foods in Jefferson City took Balls Food Stores beyond the Kansas City market for the first time.
EMPLOYEE OWNERS: Ball marked the company’s centennial by transferring ownership to employees through an ESOP. “If you take care of your teammates,” he said, “the teammate will then take care of the customer.”
SCALE: Balls Food Stores operates roughly 25 stores under Hen House, Price Chopper, Payless and Sun Fresh banners, with more than 3,000 teammates.
COMMUNITY LEGACY: His family’s connection to KVC Health Systems spans generations; Ball concluded his board tenure there in 2025 and became a director emeritus.

Kevin Barth
Chairman/CEO, Commerce Bank Kansas City

In running Commerce’s Kansas City franchise and western markets, Kevin Barth would spend the region’s next capital dollar on the homeless crisis—“not only a significant humanitarian crisis, but it is also a threat to the city’s economic well-being,” he says. The skilled-labor shortage for more than $25 billion in coming capital projects is the workforce problem he would solve first.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business Administration, Graceland University; MBA, Rockhurst University
WORK-FORCE FIX: Trades capacity for the wave of stadium, airport-adjacent and civic construction starting next year.
MEETING PET PEEVE: People on laptops and cell phones.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: He doesn’t like to be surrounded by people who always agree. “If both of us always think alike, then one of us isn’t needed.”
COMMUNICATION: Face-to-face, or town halls when the group is large.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Marketing. “I’m a frustrated marketer.”

Michael Bartkoski
President/CEO, nbkc bank

For Michael Bartkoski, nbkc’s milestone of the year has been its recognition as one of the region’s best workplaces, having earned that designation from Ingram’s in 2025. After the region’s World Cup exposure, he wants tourism development and a serious pursuit of the Women’s World Cup; the next local capital idea on his list is an AI and financial-technology district.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting, Rockhurst University; ABA, Stonier Graduate School of Banking
WORK-FORCE FIX: Development of young talent and a leadership pipeline.
MEETING PET PEEVE: Meetings with no agenda or end goal.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Spending more time listening than talking.
COMMUNICATION: Direct face-to-face talks.
ALTERNATE CAREER: A lawn and landscaping business.

Marion Battaglia
President, Soave Automotive Group

For nearly two decades, Marion Battaglia has been the steady hand behind one of the region’s most prominent luxury-auto groups, guiding Aristocrat Motors and its sister dealerships through recession, pandemic disruption, inventory shortages and now another fundamental industry reset as automakers moderate their all-electric ambitions and expand hybrid offerings.
LUXURY LINEAGE: Battaglia has led Soave Automotive’s local operations since 2006 after nearly 14 years with Baron BMW.
BRAND PORTFOLIO: His organization spans Aristocrat Motors, Mercedes-Benz of Kansas City and dealerships in Topeka, with a portfolio centered on major luxury and performance brands.
CUSTOMER RULE: “Customers have many choices,” Battaglia has told us, making respect for their time and consistently strong service essential.
PEOPLE FIRST: His management philosophy has long centered on giving employees authority to solve customer problems without waiting for layers of approval.
INDUSTRY VOICE: He has served on the board of the Automobile Dealers Association of Greater Kansas City and previously on manufacturer advisory organizations.

Jamie Battmer
Chief Investment Officer, Creative Planning

Creative Planning continues to post industry-leading organic growth, Jamie Battmer says, as more clients bring assets and refer friends and family than any other firm. “That’s the best endorsement you can possibly get and is absolutely worth celebrating.” World Cup exposure, he adds, should remind the region it is not “flyover country.”
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Montana; M.S., Economics and Economic History,
London School of Economics
ASSETS UNDER MANAGEMENT: Creative Planning and affiliates report more than $700 billion in combined assets under management or advisement.
KC EDGE: More investors ditch their East and West Coast advisers to join Creative Planning than any other firm. That’s social proof that we can compete, and beat,
the coasts.”
NEXT PROJECT: Continued riverfront redevelopment—“We seem to be the one civilization in the history of mankind that fled its waterfront instead of embracing it.”
MEETING PET PEEVE: “Just having meetings to have meetings. We avoid that at all costs.”

Brad Batz
CEO, Fike Corp.

Brad Batz has spent his tenure turning an 80-year-old family manufacturer into a more market-driven global safety company. A tangible result: Fike is opening a 42,000-square-foot research and testing headquarters built to address emerging threats including lithium-battery fires, energy-storage systems and data centers. He also handed the president’s role to the next generation.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, University of Florida; M.S., Lean Operations, Cardiff University, Wales
2025 revenuE: A record $418.63 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 66), continuing a multi-year run of strong growth.
LEADERSHIP EVOLUTION: Batz became president in 2014 and CEO in 2017;  last year, he was named Blue Springs Citizen of the Year.
NEW LAB: Fike Labs HQ spans 42,000 square feet with roughly 50 rooms, including four large-scale battery-fire test cells and dedicated client-viewing areas.
FAMILY PURPOSE: “My grandfather had a vision to build a company that made a real difference in the world,” Batz says. The company has nearly 500 employees here and 1,200 overall.

Chase Bean
President/CEO, Tnemec

At the fourth-generation industrial-coatings manufacturer, Chase Bean prefers to keep strategy aligned with a company-wide open-book “huddle” that Tnemec launched just before the pandemic: Wednesday sessions of less than 30 minutes that share financials, provide deep-dive education, and foster team-building across plants and devices.
COLLEGE: B.A., English, University of the South; EMBA, University of Missouri–Kansas City
2024 REVENUES: $202.6 million
CULTURE: A 105-year-old company whose success, Bean says, rests on “career growth and development in the manufacturing environment.”
WORK-FORCE: “It is increasingly difficult to hire, retain, and develop career-minded individuals in manufacturing,” he says.
INDUSTRY IMPACT: Tnemec is a manufacturing company specializing in high-performance protective coatings, linings, and resinous flooring systems designed to prevent corrosion on critical infrastructure.

Kimberly Beatty
Chancellor, Metropolitan Community College

Employers who need new skills added to their teams look to Kim Beatty and Metropolitan Community College, the two-year system central to staffing the region’s trades, health care and technical workforces. Chancellor since 2017, Beatty has expanded that mission to focus on access and economic mobility, including MCC’s first bachelor’s degree program.
COLLEGE: B.A., M.A. English; Ed.D., Higher Education, Morgan State University
MILESTONE: She became MCC’s eighth chancellor in 2017 and its first African-American chancellor. She has spent more than 30 years in higher education, rising from tenured English professor to dean, vice chancellor, and chief academic officer.
ROOTS: A Pittsburgh native raised by a single mother, Beatty grew up accompanying her mother to college classes—an experience that helps explain her emphasis on educational access and economic mobility.
CHANGE AGENT: That first venture into bachelor’s degree programming focuses on Respiratory Care. Beatty is also leading the KC Guarantee, designed to provide students with a paid path through college and into employment or transfer; Jackson County and MCC committed a combined $2 million to its launch.

Smitty Belcher
Chairman, Best in Class Technology Services

After more than 40 years, the enterprise Smitty Belcher built continues to expand beyond its Kansas roots. BCTS, created in 2020 around P1 Services and other mechanical-service companies, is now a North American platform. Recent acquisitions have extended its HVAC, plumbing and electrical capabilities geographically while preserving the local operating brands that built their markets.
COLLEGE: B.S., MBA, University of Toledo
2025 REVENUES: $450 million for its P1 Construction unit (Ingram’s 100 No. 64)
SCALE: BCTS now reports 1,700-plus employees, 27 North American locations and more than 62,000 work orders completed in 2025.
EXPANSION: Omaha-based Prairie Mechanical joined BCTS in October 2025, adding a long-established mechanical contractor to P1 Services. This year’s acquisition of Modern Niagara Building Services extended the platform further into Canada.
THE MODEL: BCTS acquires established HVAC, plumbing and electrical businesses while providing capital, technology and administrative resources to help them grow.
ORIGIN STORY: Belcher’s entrepreneurial leap came when he left Toledo for Kansas to acquire the small operation that ultimately became P1 Group.

Brad Bergman
CEO/Chairman, Midwest Trust

Brad Bergman set out in 1993 to build a different kind of trust company after working inside large-bank trust departments. More than three decades later, the enterprise he founded has grown to more than 500 associates and continues expanding nationally, including entry into four additional states over the past year. His ambition hasn’t diminished with scale: Bergman says the goal is to build “the finest trust company in the country.”
COLLEGE: B.S., Illinois State; J.D., Washburn University School of Law
LEADERSHIP: Bergman says the job is to build an organization capable of producing answers without waiting for the CEO—and ensuring people ask the right questions.
PIZZA RULE: Meetings shouldn’t include more people than two large pizzas can feed—or last longer than it takes to eat them.
MANAGEMENT STYLE: Calls his preferred approach his “MBWA degree”—Management By Walking Around.
KC PRIORITY: Wants the metro to behave as one economy across workforce, transportation, housing and talent attraction.
ALTER EGO: He once wanted to be a scientist; now, the acquisition of Midwest Bioscience Research Park lets him “engage vicariously.”

Bill Berkley
CEO, TENSION CORP.

Bill Berkley represents the fourth generation of a Kansas City manufacturing family whose enterprise dates to 1886. Under his leadership, Tension has continued to move beyond its traditional envelope business into print, packaging and automation solutions, preserving one of the region’s longest-running family-business legacies while competing in changing international markets.
COLLEGE: B.A., History, Colorado College; MBA, Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth
2025 REVENUE: $297.8 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 84)
FAMILY LEGACY: Berkley is the great-grandson of company founder William J. Berkowitz and succeeded third-generation leader Bert Berkley as president and CEO. 
DEEP ROOTS: Tension started as Berkowitz & Co. Printerson March 17, 1886. 
EARLY INNOVATOR: The business began producing envelopes in 1890 and later developed specialized equipment and patented packaging products. 
GLOBAL REACH: Tension expanded internationally through an affiliation with Australia’s E.S. Wigg & Son and through Tension Envelope Taiwan Corp. 
CIVIC ROLE: Berkley also serves on the BioNexus KC board, connecting a legacy manufacturing company with the region’s life-sciences leadership network.

Steve Bernstein
CEO, Bernstein-Rein Advertising

Bernstein-Rein marked its 62nd anniversary, still independent and Kansas City–based. “The milestone isn’t simply that we’ve been around for 62 years; it’s that we continue to evolve,” Steve Bernstein says, “adapting our business for a world being transformed by technology and AI. I’m proud that after six decades, we’re still pushing ourselves to get better rather than simply celebrating what we’ve already done.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona; J.D. and MBA, University of Missouri–Kansas City
WORLD CUP: Treat it as the beginning, not the finish line. “Give businesses, talent, and visitors a reason to come back and, in some cases, to stay.”
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Energy infrastructure—power generation and transmission for AI, data centers, advanced manufacturing and electrification.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Keep more of the region’s best young people from leaving for Chicago, New York and Dallas.
MEETING PET PEEVE: Talking around an issue instead of talking about it. One cultural pillar: “Be Real.”

Roger Best
President, University of Central Missouri

Roger Best came to UCM in 1995 to teach finance; three decades later, he’s UCM’s 16th president, bringing to that task an unusually comprehensive view of both the classroom and the business of higher education. His preferred measure of impact is straightforward: 4,000 students earned UCM degrees over the past year, joining more than 100,000 living alums.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Georgia College; Ph.D., Finance, Florida State University
FIRST-GEN: Raised in rural Georgia, Best was the first in his family to attend college.
THE CLIMB: From assistant professor, he worked through faculty and administrative ranks before becoming president in 2018.
LEADERSHIP: “You can never communicate too much.” Employees must see that leaders care about them and the mission.
MEETING RULE: Cell phones—the “incessant interruptions” undermine being present with the team.
FIRST THING: The ’80s channel goes on in his car for “a bit of energy for the day ahead.”
SECOND ACT: Research scientist—or, more realistically, back to the faculty. “Being a lab rat sounds like so much fun!”

Marty Bicknell
President/CEO, Mariner

Marty Bicknell spent years building Mariner through acquisitions, changing the nature of the enterprise itself. After the Cardinal Investment Advisors combination vaulted assets under advisement past $577 billion, Mariner has kept buying. The objective is increasingly clear: build a national financial-services platform centered on the advisor-client relationship.
COLLEGE: B.S., Pittsburg State University
MEGA-SCALE: The Cardinal deal added roughly $292 billion in assets and, for a time, transformed Mariner into Kansas City’s largest wealth-management organization.
STILL BUYING: Mariner opened 2026 by adding First National Advisors and Strava Wealth, representing approximately $1.8 billion in assets under advisement.
NEW NICHE: Its acquisition of Wealth Conscious Management added expertise serving film, television, music and media professionals.
PUBLIC SAFETY: Mariner Institutional advises approximately $35 billion across 256 retirement plans serving police, fire and other public-safety personnel.
THE TARGET: Bicknell has set an extraordinarily aggressive growth objective: 5,000 advisors by 2027.

Kenneth Block
Managing Principal, Block Real Estate Services

More than half a century into commercial real estate, Kenneth Block is still adding dimensions to an enterprise already unmatched locally for breadth. BRES now manages more than 45 million square feet of commercial property, while affiliate Block Multifamily Group oversees 10,600 units. A long way from the enterprise his father and uncles founded just after World War II.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business, Michigan State University
CAREER SCALE: Block has participated in the development of more than 340 buildings valued above $4.8 billion and more than $5.3 billion in property sales and dispositions.
BUILDING LEADERS: BRES promoted roughly 10 employees over the past year, including a new CFO and accounting manager.
FULL SERVICE: Brokerage is only one piece: development, construction, property management, investment, capital markets and Block Funds broaden the platform.TALENT EYE: Block told Ingram’s that confidence and direct eye contact can tell him “within just a few minutes” whether a candidate fits.
FAMILY TREE: He entered real estate in 1975 and ultimately formed BRES with brothers Stephen and Michael.

David Brain
Founder/CEO, Brown Cow Capital

David Brain has spent his career finding opportunities before capital markets fully recognize them—from co-founding EPR Properties to building investment platforms in renewable energy and infrastructure. After monetizing a major hyperscale data-center investment, Brain has been repositioning capital around infrastructure opportunities, including EV charging.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics; MBA, Tulane University
DATA-CENTER EXIT: Brain’s team monetized a major hyperscale data center development investment over the past year, generating capital for its next opportunities.
NEXT WAVE: EV charging infrastructure has emerged as another area of interest as the sectors economics adjust to reduced federal subsidies.
SECOND ACT: After helping create EPR Properties in 1997 and building it into a national experiential-property REIT, Brain launched Brown Cow Capital and Enfinite Capital.
AI USER: Brain has told us he increasingly uses AI for research, finding its synthesis more useful than conventional search.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Failure’s greatest benefit, he says, may be the humility it imposes on the decision-maker.

Mark Brandmeyer
CEO, Brandmeyer Enterprises

Mark Brandmeyer’s most important business move this year was knowing when to hand something off. Seven years after leading the rescue of a struggling T-Bones franchise—and helping reinvent it around the historic Kansas City Monarchs identity—Brandmeyer sold the club in April to Quint Studer and KC Roots, positioning the franchise for its “next era of growth,” he says.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business, University of Kansas
WHY SELL?: “This team belongs to Kansas City,” he said of the Monarchs, and his responsibility was ensuring it had “the leadership, resources, and vision to thrive long into the future.”
THE RESCUE: When his ownership group stepped in, it spared the financially troubled T-Bones from eviction from their stadium.
REINVENTION: Ownership partnered with the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum and rebranded the club as the Kansas City Monarchs, connecting a modern franchise to one of baseball’s iconic names.
BEFORE BASEBALL: Brandmeyer spent 23 years helping build family-owned medical-device maker Enturia before its $490 million sale to Cardinal Health.

Rob Bratcher
President, Commerce Bank–Kansas City

The World Cup placed this region on a global stage for a few weeks. “The real test is whether we convert that visibility into a pipeline, not just a memory,” says Rob Bratcher. That means aggressive follow-up with site selectors and attracting outside capital should be key levers, he says, backed by a workforce that can actually staff the work. Exposure without capacity, he says, is a wasted opportunity.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., Finance and Real Estate, University of Missouri Trulaske College of Business
WORK-FORCE FIX: Close the skills gap in construction trades, advanced manufacturing, animal health and digital health, with K-12, community colleges and employers sharing real ownership.
MEETING PET PEEVE: Issues discussed without clear ownership. “If no one owns the outcome, the meeting probably should have been an e-mail.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Seek opposing views.
HABIT: A 5:15 a.m. workout every day. “Putting on your own oxygen mask first.”
ALTERNATE CAREER: Start within a growing ESOP, likely a specialty subcontractor, rather than only financing them.

Pamela Breuckmann
President/CEO, FerreLL Capital

As the financial steward for one of Kansas City’s most prominent business families, Pamela Breuckmann directs Ferrell Capital’s operations and ensures execution of its investment strategy. Her influence expanded again this past year with her appointment as vice chair of the Ferrellgas board, which oversees the direction of the nation’s second-largest propane retailer, Ferrellgas.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration and Accounting; Master of Accounting and Information Systems, University of Kansas
NEW BOARD ROLE: She was named vice chair of Ferrellgas Partners’ board in May, recognizing what the company called her deep institutional knowledge and contributions to governance and succession planning.
THE ROAD TO FERRELL: She began with Deloitte & Touche in 1998, advanced through Kansas City Life Insurance Co. and specialty finance, then joined Ferrell Capital as CFO in 2007. She became President/CEO in 2011.
KC PRIDE: “I am proud that KC not only has the Chiefs, the World Cup and the first women’s stadium,” she says, “but also that it has such a wonderful business community that does good and is productive!”

Katie Briscoe
CEO, MMGY Global

Katie Briscoe’s mandate at MMGY Global has moved from rebuilding travel marketing after the pandemic to building a truly global enterprise. Proof of that? The 2025 acquisition of Think Strawberries, giving it a direct presence in South Asia and the Middle East. MMGY now employs more than 600 people in 16 international offices, with Briscoe overseeing both M&A and long-term expansion.
COLLEGE: B.S., Journalism/Mass Communication, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUE: $276.54 million 
GLOBAL MOVE: Think Strawberries established MMGY’s first direct presence in India and the Gulf states, two rapidly growing outbound-travel markets.
AI SHIFT: MMGY has expanded its AI Expertise Hub and EurekA! travel-intelligence platform, with Briscoe emphasizing AI as an amplifier of human creativity rather than a replacement for it.
FIRST: She became the 40-year-old company’s first female CEO in 2023.
HER PATH: Briscoe has spent her career at MMGY, moving across integrated marketing disciplines before becoming president and ultimately CEO.

Rob Broomfield 
CEO, UnitedHealthcare of Iowa, Kansas & Nebraska

Nearly a decade into the regional CEO role—and more than 20 years into his UnitedHealthcare career—Rob Broomfield oversees an insurer connected to more than 22,000 providers and nearly 150 hospitals. The challenge now is increasingly about extracting more value from that network as employers confront rising costs, drug spending and demand for greater transparency.
COLLEGE: B.A., Finance, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Wharton School Executive-Development Program, University of Pennsylvania
LONG RUN: He joined UnitedHealthcare in 2005 and became regional CEO in 2017 after leadership roles spanning sales, account management and pharmacy strategy.
COST PRESSURE: UnitedHealthcare is pushing harder on price transparency, navigation tools and lower-cost care options as employers face another year of steep benefit inflation.
DATA ADVANTAGE: The company increasingly uses its massive health-care data set to personalize member outreach and steer people toward benefits and services.
CIVIC ENGAGEMENT: He serves on the Kansas City Area Development Council board and has chaired the American Diabetes Association’s Heartland Region.

Michael Brown
Chairman/CEO, Euronet Worldwide

Michael Brown built Euronet by recognizing an unmet need for cash access in post-communist Eastern Europe. Today, the opportunity is in moving money seamlessly across digital channels. It continues to push further into merchant acquiring, digital remittances, issuing and payment infrastructure, and has added Spain’s PaynoPain this year to expand omnichannel payment capabilities.
COLLEGE: B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Missouri-Columbia; M.S., Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of Missouri-Kansas City
2025 REVENUES: $4.24 billion (Ingram’s Public Companies List No. 5)
DIGITAL PIVOT: Brown says Euronet spent 2025 advancing toward a “digital-first organization,” investing in remittances, merchant acquiring, infrastructure and revolving-credit capabilities.
GLOBAL MACHINE: The network now spans more than 200 countries and territories with roughly 10,000 employees worldwide.
RARE DOUBLE: Before Euronet, Brown built Innovative Software, making him the only executive Ingram’s has documented taking two companies to No. 1 and No. 2  Corporate Report 100 finishes.

Peter Browne
President/Co-Founder, KISSICK CONSTRUCTION

Peter Browne has helped turn a company conceived in an apartment kitchen into one of Kansas City’s leading heavy-civil contractors. More than three decades after co-founding Kissick Construction, he leads the underground and infrastructure work that supports many of the region’s most high-profile developments, even if that work takes place below the surface.
CO-FOUNDER: Browne and his uncle, Jim Kissick, co-founded the company in 1994.
SCALE: The company now reports more than 400 employees and projects extending across the Midwest.
CORE WORK: Kissick specializes in self-performed heavy-civil construction, including utilities, earthwork, structural concrete, industrial work and site preparation.  
DEMONSTRATED IMPACT: Its project history includes work associated with Kauffman Stadium and other major civic, industrial and institutional sites.
CIVIC LEADERSHIP: Browne has served as president of the Kansas City Public Library board, extending his influence beyond construction into one of the city’s central cultural institutions.

Owen Buckley
Founding Principal, LANE4 Property Group

LANE4  marked its 20th anniversary this past year, endurance that Owen Buckley, borrowing from the iconic Cliff Illig, says attributes to “we just plain tried harder.” On both fronts, he wants that habit to keep the momentum rolling. The next competitive edge for the region, he says, is doubling down on energy and advanced engineering, defense/national security, and life sciences/health care.
COLLEGE: B.S. and MBA, University of Kansas
WORKFORCE/ACCESS: More direct flights at KCI.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Urgency. “Why wait until tomorrow if you can do it today?”COMMUNICATION: Nothing can replace face-to-face.
ABOUT LANE4: Founded 2006; brokerage, management and development with more than $1 billion in completed work.
REGIONAL IMPACT: From  the 39th and Rainbow redevelopment to the Village West site in Wyandotte County and the revitalization of the Red Bridge Shopping Center, Buckley and his team have their fingerprints all over some of the most visible retail-site work in the region.

Mike Bukaty
President, Bukaty Companies

Bukaty Companies has posted 15 percent new and organic growth “over the past several years,” which Mike Bukaty calls “a reflection of the talent and dedicated team we have.” The independently owned employee-benefits and insurance brokerage he founded in 1992 now operates from Leawood with additional offices in Kansas.
COLLEGE: Kansas City Kansas Community College; B.S., Business, University of Kansas
WORLD CUP: Civic–business cooperation that made the tournament work “needs to continue.”
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: A comprehensive, interconnected public-transportation system—underscored by World Cup readiness reviews.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Workplace skills for young people not headed to college: project management, communication, teamwork, dependability, initiative.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Recognize when an effort didn’t produce the intended results and move on.

David Burkhart
CEO, Garney

David Burkhart became CEO at Garney after a carefully staged succession; three years later, his imprint is increasingly evident. The employee-owned water-infrastructure specialist had record revenue in 2025, then opened 2026 by acquiring Oregon contractor Emery & Sons—establishing a permanent Pacific Northwest presence and pushing Garney beyond 2,700 employees.
COLLEGE: B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $2.29 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 25)
THE CLIMB: Burkhart has spent his entire professional career at Garney, starting in the field and leading increasingly large projects before entering executive leadership.TEXAS TEST: During a decade there, he helped establish Garney as a leader in large collaborative-delivery projects before returning to Kansas City in 2022.
OWNERSHIP DNA: Before joining the executive team, Burkhart served as an ESOP trustee at a company that has been 100 percent employee-owned since 1995.
ROOTS: Raised around western Kansas farming communities, he keeps a small farm and ranch outside of Kansas City.

DeAngela Burns-Wallace
Pres/CEO, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

DeAngela Burns-Wallace spent her first years at the Kauffman Foundation listening, restructuring leadership and redefining priorities. Now comes execution. The foundation’s renewed strategy has moved into sustained grantmaking, including more than $32 million in inaugural project grants and $5.8 million in research awards, with another cohort funded in 2026.
COLLEGE: B.A., International Relations and African/African-American Studies, Stanford University; Ed.D., Higher Education Management, University of Pennsylvania
FROM PLAN TO ACTION: The foundation completed five funding cycles in the first year of its refreshed grant-making strategy.
$32 MILLION: Its first project-grant cohort funded 27 organizations over three years to test and scale approaches to economic mobility.
HER STANDARD: “Economic mobility doesn’t happen by chance. It is built through intentional investment in people, systems, and ideas,” she says.
UNUSUAL RESUME: Before Kauffman, she moved through the State Department, Stanford, MU, KU and two Kansas cabinet posts—Secretary of Administration and Chief Information Technology Officer.

David Callanan
CEO, AE Wealth Management

A decade after launching AE Wealth Management, David Callanan is setting up the Topeka firm for a much bigger second decade. Assets have climbed past $52 billion, and this year he recruited former Osaic executive Shannon Larson as president to help build toward an audacious target: $250 billion under management by 2035. The move gives Callanan another seasoned operator beneath him as the enterprise continues to scale nationally.
COLLEGE: B.A., Management and Marketing, Washburn University
THE START: Callanan and college friends Cody Foster and Derek Thompson formed Advisors Excel in 2005, then created AE Wealth Management in 2016.
ADVISER NETWORK: Their related companies now provide business, investment, insurance, operational and marketing support to roughly 550 advisory offices nationwide.
RAPID SCALE: AE Wealth added more than $21 billion in managed assets over two years, including roughly $12 billion through organic or transition growth.
ROOTS: A native of tiny Benton, Kan., Callanan stayed close to home for college and ultimately built the enterprise in Topeka.
GIVING BACK: AE provided employees more than 10,500 volunteer hours last year, supporting causes ranging from hunger and education to financial literacy.

Curtis Campbell
President/CEO, H&R Block

Curtis Campbell stepped into one of Kansas City’s most visible corporate jobs on Jan. 1 and immediately had a tax season to prove the succession worked. His first fiscal year as CEO produced 5 percent revenue growth, 23 percent higher operating cash flow and continued improvement in assisted-market share, successfully extending the transformation begun under Jeff Jones.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, The Citadel; Master of International Business, University of South Carolina
CLIENT SCALE: Block serves more than 20 million clients globally through digital products and more than 70,000 tax professionals.
TECH CREDENTIALS: Before Block, Campbell held product and strategy leadership roles at Amazon Web Services, Intuit and Dell.
TAX EXPERIENCE: He previously spent five years as president/CEO of TaxAct, where Block says he led a transformation that produced double-digit revenue growth.
AI ERA: Campbell is pursuing what he calls an “expert-led, technology-enabled” model, increasingly integrating AI without surrendering the human element of tax preparation.

David Campbell
Chairman/President/CEO, Evergy

The data-center boom has made David Campbell’s Evergy an economic-development gatekeeper. Just this year, the company signed its fifth large-customer electric service agreement while beginning construction on a 710-megawatt generating plant in Kansas. He’s balancing unprecedented new power demand with a promise that existing customers won’t subsidize the newcomers.
COLLEGE: Yale University; J.D., Harvard Law School; master’s, International Relations, Oxford University, Rhodes Scholar
CUSTOMER BASE: Evergy serves approximately 1.7 million customers across Kansas and Missouri.
RATE PROTECTION: New very-large-load customers will pay premium rates under Evergy’s new tariff structure to cover their share of existing and future grid costs.
GROWTH PIPELINE: Campbell said large-customer interest remained strong enough that Evergy expected at least one additional electric service agreement in 2026.
LONG-RANGE PLAN: Evergy is targeting 6–8 percent-plus annual adjusted EPS growth through 2030, with growth expected to exceed 8 percent beginning in 2028.

Scott Campbell
CEO, The University of Kansas Health System-St. Francis Campus

Four years after taking command at St. Francis Campus, Scott Campbell said the Topeka hospital’s turnaround is producing better care. In 2026, St. Francis earned an “A” patient-safety grade from The Leapfrog Group and national recognition from the American Heart Association for cardiovascular care—important markers for a hospital system once acquired out of severe financial distress.
COLLEGE: B.A., Virginia Commonwealth University; M.H.A., Medical College of Virginia/Virginia Commonwealth University
2025 REVENUES: $1.51 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 36)
THE PLATFORM: St. Francis includes 378 licensed inpatient beds and 21 primary- and specialty-care clinic locations, including a cancer center partnership with The University of Kansas Cancer Center.
UNUSUAL STRUCTURE: The campus is jointly owned by The University of Kansas Health System and for-profit Ardent Health.
COMMUNITY VOICE: Campbell has emphasized keeping community needs central as new members join the St. Francis governing board.

Shelly Cannon
CEO, UTXL

Shelly Cannon operates in a business where credibility is measured load by load. As president of UTXL, she has helped the Kansas City logistics company distinguish itself through carrier screening, around-the-clock service and an on-time performance rate that has allowed it to compete nationally without owning a traditional trucking fleet.
BUSINESS MODEL: UTXL is a third-party logistics provider specializing in full-truckload, multistop and power-only transportation. 
NATIONAL NETWORK: The company works with more than 1,500 vetted contract carriers and says its power-only network can access approximately 50,000 trailers. 
PERFORMANCE: UTXL reports a 98.5 percent service level, a figure also cited in Commerce Bank’s 2024 company profile. 
OPERATING HISTORY: The company reports more than 24 years of logistics experience and nearly 1 million shipments arranged. 
INDUSTRY STANDING: UTXL has been recognized among the nation’s Top 100 third-party logistics providers and emphasizes technology-supported tracking paired with live, 24-hour service.

Faruk Capan
Chief Innovation Officer, EVERSANA; Founder, EVERSANA INTOUCH

Faruk Capan built one of this region’s entrepreneurial success stories by anticipating the way technology would transform pharmaceutical marketing. Now he’s trying to disrupt the very model he created, leading an AI-first reinvention of pharmaceutical commercialization—one he says may eventually make the traditional agency itself obsolete.
COLLEGE: Marmara University, Istanbul; MBA, Business Administration and Management, Central Missouri State University.
ORIGIN STORY: After creating MSWatch, an early online patient portal, Capan founded Intouch in 1999; the enterprise ultimately grew to more than 1,500 employees.
NEXT DISRUPTION: “I feel like I’m killing the whole model,” he said in a deep-dive interview with pharmaforum.com. Capan believes AI could fundamentally replace the traditional pharma-agency structure he spent decades building.
HUMAN FACTOR: His biggest AI lesson? “Technology is not the problem.” Changing employees’ and clients’ habits and mindsets is harder.
MIND + MACHINE: His model puts AI on roughly 80 percent of the work—not 80 percent of the jobs—while increasing the value and responsibility of human judgment.

Jeff Carson
President, Kansas City & Texas Region, Enterprise Bank & Trust

Jeff Carson is proudest not of growth, acquisitions, or new clients, but of the leaders emerging across the bank. “The best organizations don’t just produce results; they produce people who can carry those results forward—with or without you.” World Cup success, he says, showed what happens when the region “stops worrying about…state lines.”
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, Kansas State University
UNITED TEAM: “We rallied around one goal: show the world why Kansas City deserves the spotlight. What we have hoped for in the past, we should now expect.”
NEXT INVESTMENT: Stewardship of historic assets such as Starlight Theatre, not only new stadiums and the airport.
TALENT: Make Kansas City “a magnet for young professionals who don’t already have a reason to be here.”
MEETING RULE: “Put the phones down and close the laptops. Be where your feet are.”

Ramin Cherafat
President/CEO, McCownGordon Construction

Employee-owned McCownGordon, one of the region’s largest general contractors, joined the region’s 10-figure revenue club with a $1.02 billion top line, up 32 percent. Ramin Cherafat says Kansas City can convert World Cup exposure into lasting growth by aligning business, civic, and community leaders around workforce development, infrastructure, innovation, and quality of life—“a top destination for business investment and talent.”
COLLEGE: B.S., Construction Science, Kansas State University; MBA, UMKC
2025 REVENUES: $1.02 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 44)
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “Building genuine relationships starts with listening well and being truly interested in the perspectives of others,” he says.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Real estate development, for the same mix of people, variables, and “a tangible result that reflects the effort.”
EARLY ACHIEVER: Cherafat was recognized as a part of our 40 Under Forty Class of 2008.
EXPANSION MINDED: On his watch, McCownGordon has stretched its wings by opening an office in Texas, adding to its influence in Missouri and Kansas.

Bill Clarkson Jr. 
CEO, Clarkson Construction Co.

Bill Clarkson Jr. is presiding over a rare moment while his fifth-generation family company is helping rebuild Interstate 70 on both sides of Missouri at once. Clarkson crews are working on the $237 million Kansas City corridor reconstruction while a separate joint venture tackles the $600 million Warrenton-to-Wentzville job—the largest individual project in MoDOT history. 
COLLEGE: B.S., Economics/Business, Cornell College; MBA, Keller Graduate School of Management, DeVry University
FIFTH GENERATION: Clarkson grew up around the family business, working summers in both field and office roles before joining full-time after college.
LEADERSHIP SHIFT: He now serves as CEO, with Billy Clarkson as president—allowing Bill to concentrate on strategic direction and organizational alignment.
INNOVATION: On the Kansas City I-70 job, unexpected ground conditions prompted crews to use 48-inch steel pipe piles more than 100 feet deep—the first installation of its type in Missouri.
BEYOND ROADS: Clarkson is also performing major site work on Lockton’s future Leawood global headquarters.

Joe Close
Regional Leader, FNBO-Kansas, Missouri & Texas

Joe Close went from running one of Kansas City’s best-known community banks to helping reshape the market for a much larger regional institution. After FNBO acquired Country Club Bank in October 2025, Close took charge of Kansas, Missouri and Texas. Less than a year later, FNBO agreed to acquire Blue Ridge Bank, a deal that would make it the fifth-largest bank by deposits in Kansas City.
COLLEGE: B.A., Roman History, University of Missouri-Columbia; MBA, Missouri State Univ.
BIGGER PLATFORM: FNBO’s Country Club acquisition expanded its Kansas City presence to 30 locations and nearly $35 billion in total assets across nine states.
NEXT DEAL: Blue Ridge brings another eight Jackson County branches and approximately $850 million in assets, pending regulatory approval.
THE CLIMB: Close  joined Country Club Bank in 2002, became president in 2019 and helped oversee asset growth from roughly $300 million to $2.5 billion.
LEADERSHIP: “I lead with transparency and purpose, especially during times of stress.” 
ROOTS: A Springfield-area farm upbringing gave him what he calls an “agrarian work ethic,” reinforced later as a three-year football letterman at Mizzou.
BANKING VIEW: Close entered the industry in 1988 on his father’s advice that banking was “the lifeblood of business.”

Jeff Cloud
President/CEO, IBT, Inc.

Jeff Cloud saw a fully implemented new ERP system at IBT over the past year—“a transformational process, allowing us to once again focus on growing the business,” he says. As the third-generation leader of an industrial distribution company founded in 1949, he’d like to see more horn-tooting to keep people coming to Kansas City and give the rest of the country reasons to make this a destination.
COLLEGE: University of Kansas; A.S., Culinary Arts, New England Culinary Institute; Johnson County Community College
2025 REVENUES: $231 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 92)
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Lead by example. Buy-in fails when you direct people to do what they don’t believe you’ll do yourself.
COMMUNICATION: No single medium; people absorb information differently, so use multiple channels.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Professional skier.

Scott Colangelo
Chairman/Managing Partner, Prime Capital Financial

Scott Colangelo spent nearly a decade turning Prime Capital Financial into a national wealth-management platform. This summer, that growth gained institutional validation: Carlyle agreed to provide approximately $600 million in hybrid capital, taking a minority stake in a transaction valuing Prime Capital above $1.8 billion.
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, minor in Marketing, Kansas State University
ASSET SCALE: Prime reported $39.14 billion in client assets under management at year-end 2025; current company materials put the broader platform near $50 billion.
GROWTH RUN: Since 2017, Prime has expanded from about $2.5 billion in AUM and seven offices to 68 offices nationally.
DEAL MACHINE: The firm says it has completed more than 30 strategic acquisitions and integrated more than 50 advisory teams during that period.
RETIREMENT ROOTS: He co-founded Qualified Plan Advisors in 2004 after identifying a gap in participant education; that business is now Prime Capital Retirement.
ORGANIC MUSCLE: Even amid acquisitions, Prime says it has maintained approximately 10 percent annual organic growth.

Matt Condon
Founder, Bardavon

Matt Condon has entered another chapter in a career built around physical therapy and health-care innovation. After moving from Bardavon’s CEO role to its board in 2024, he joined publicly traded U.S. Physical Therapy this year to lead national hospital and health-system partnership strategy. He has a larger platform with his passion for linking better clinical outcomes with smarter business models.
COLLEGE: B.S., Kinesiology, Iowa State University; J.D./MBA, University of Toledo
NEW MANDATE: At U.S. Physical Therapy, Condon leads efforts to develop and expand hospital and health-system partnerships nationally.
FOUNDER’S LEGACY: Bardavon grew under Condon into a national workers’ compensation and MSK platform with a network exceeding 35,000 therapists in all 50 states.
BEFORE BARDAVON: He previously built ARC Physical Therapy+, another scaled outpatient rehabilitation business.
SUCCESSION: Condon handed Bardavon’s operating reins to Alex Benson, saying the company’s next phase required a different leadership skill set.
KC BOOSTER: “This community has been amazing to us,” Condon told us, crediting Kansas City with helping Bardavon raise capital and build nationally.

Jon Cook
Global CEO, WPP Creative; Global CEO, VML

Jon Cook’s influence in global advertising expanded dramatically this year when WPP placed him over its newly created WPP Creative organization, uniting VML, Ogilvy, Burson, AKQA, Landor and Design Bridge & Partners under a single leadership structure while preserving their individual brands. He joined VML in its infancy, and now leads some of advertising’s most storied global names.
COLLEGE: B.A., Journalism, University of Missouri
NEW REACH: WPP Creative encompasses six major agency brands and places Cook on WPP’s Executive Committee.
VML SCALE: He continues as CEO of VML, with approximately 25,000 people operating across more than 55 markets.
THE MODEL: WPP says the new structure is designed to let individual agencies retain their brands and cultures while giving clients broader access across the group.
AI ERA: WPP is increasingly organizing its creative businesses around WPP Open and AI-enabled marketing capabilities, making Cook one of the central executives responsible for applying that transformation to client work.

Keith Copaken
Principal, Copaken Brooks

Keith Copaken’s decades-long bet on Lenexa City Center is still producing new pieces of Johnson County’s emerging urban core. The latest phase surrounds AdventHealth’s campus, where Copaken Brooks has broken ground on a mixed-use building slated to open later this year and has lined up new dining concepts, filling in 2-million-square-foot district Copaken helped envision from the ground up.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics, University of Pennsylvania; Master of City Planning and Real Estate, University of California-Berkeley
PLACEMAKER: Copaken has led the master development of Lenexa City Center, along with major work at Renaissance Park, Plaza Colonnade and the former NCAA headquarters.
NEXT PHASE: The Village at AdventHealth mixed-use building will combine Class A office space with restaurants including Urban Egg and Stoney River.
OTHER ASSIGNMENTS: Copaken has also led owner-representation and development-consulting work for Kiewit, Black & Veatch, AdventHealth and the Overland Park Farmers Market redevelopment.

John Cosentino
Vice President, Cosentino’s Food Stores

For John Cosentino, growth still comes one neighborhood at a time. The family-owned grocer’s 2025 acquisition of Marsh’s Sun Fresh in Westport expanded the portfolio to 32 stores while preserving the acquired store’s work force. It also extended a family enterprise whose third generation is increasingly taking operational roles alongside the second.
COLLEGE: B.A., Marketing and Communications, Missouri State University
FAMILY SCALE: More than two dozen members of the extended Cosentino family now work in or lead parts of the grocery enterprise.
MULTIPLE FLAGS: The portfolio includes Price Chopper, Sun Fresh, Apple Market and Cosentino’s Market locations across the metro.
DOWNTOWN BET: Cosentino has called opening the Downtown Market in 2009 his best business decision—a move made when civic leaders argued residential growth needed a full-service grocery.
KC WISH: A baseball fan with deep local roots, Cosentino has long favored a Downtown ballpark, and just might get that wish as the Royals push ahead on their plans for a Crown Center relocation.

Fred Coulson
Founder and Managing Partner, Five Elms Capital

After 20 years, Fred Coulson’s Five Elms Capital is still growing; the software-focused growth-equity firm most recently closed its sixth fund at $1.1 billion, pushing assets under management above $3 billion. Its 80-plus professionals have made it one the nation’s increasingly significant growth-investment platforms.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, University of Kansas; Ingram’s 40 Under Forty, 2012
TRACK RECORD: The firm reports 42 exits and realizations, including Kansas City-based SelectQuote, which went public in 2020. In the year before closing Fund V in 2021, eight exits generated $3.8 billion in exit value.
SECOND ACT: Coulson also co-founded Spring Venture Group in 2006 and remains its chairman. Five Elms describes the digital health-insurance platform as a 1,000-plus-employee enterprise with more than $300 million in revenue.
CIVIC: Trustee, Children’s Mercy Hospital Endowment and Pembroke Hill School Endowment.

Tim Cowden
Pres/CEO, Kansas City Area Development Council

With Tim Cowden at the helm, KCADC helped deliver the region’s World Cup moment and used KC House, match hosting and tailored experiences to engage nearly 40 global corporate targets and decision-makers, including 13 premier site selectors. “The tournament lasted 39 days —but it sets the stage for a 30-year opportunity for Kansas City, he says.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Oklahoma
WORLD CUP FOLLOW-THROUGH: “This is no time to rest.” Churchill’s line applies: “the end of the beginning.” Capitalize on a reset global brand.
NEXT PRIORITY: Continued investment across the entire OneKC region—infrastructure, development and quality-of-place—not a single project.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Enough trained talent for the jobs here now and the jobs coming.
COMMUTE HABIT: Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh for coffee and gas, then a business nonfiction book or podcast—“with a little OU football mixed in.”

David Cummings
Founder, Owner and Chairman, Tradebot Systems

Tradebot is the high-frequency trading firm that Dave Cummings built in Kansas City when most of the industry was based in Chicago or New York. Yet, its impact is unmistakable: Cummings helped transform electronic trading, built BATS into a major stock exchange and recycled his success into technology companies, real estate and other Kansas City ventures. 
COLLEGE: B.S., Computer and Electrical Engineering, Purdue University; Ingram’s 40 Under Forty, 2008
SMALL START: Cummings launched Tradebot in 1999 from a spare bedroom with $10,000; the firm has since generated more than $1 billion in trading profits.
MARKET MAKER: He founded BATS Global Markets in 2005. It grew into America’s No. 2 equities exchange before its $3.4 billion sale to CBOE in 2017.
KC MULTIPLIER: Through Tradebot Ventures and related interests, Cummings has invested in startups and real estate and has become a major financial backer of NorthPoint Development.
SECOND ACT: His investment interests now include Tradebot Ventures, Tradebot Holdings and other entities spanning venture capital and real estate.

Wiley Curran
Principal and Co-Founder, CPC

CPC is not a traditional private-equity fund—and Wiley Curran wants to keep it that way. Built from the Curran family office and C3 Capital, the firm takes controlling positions in operating businesses with the intention of owning them indefinitely. Its buy-build-and-hold model has put Curran’s family business inheritance to work across aerospace, manufacturing, field services and other industries.
COLLEGE: B.A., Finance, Miami University; MBA, SMU Cox
PEDIGREE: He’s the son of the late Pat Curran, entrepreneur, investor and a founder of what today is Sporting Kansas City. Wiley consolidated the family’s business holdings before co-founding CPC.
BUY, BUILD, HOLD: CPC typically invests $60 million–$120 million-plus for control and targets only one or two acquisitions annually, with no predetermined exit timetable.
OPERATING REACH: Curran has led investments in 14 businesses employing nearly 3,000 people across aerospace, manufacturing, industrial services and other sectors.
EARLY IMPACT: He was recognized in Ingram’s 20 in Their Twenties in 2013 and again in 40 Under Forty in 2021.

Dennis Curtin
Owner, RE/MAX Regional Services

Fifty-one years after becoming the first RE/MAX franchisee outside Colorado, Dennis Curtin is still expanding. Regional Services’ acquisition of RE/MAX Iowa and Nebraska upped his network to nearly 300 offices and more than 4,500 associates across nine states, producing more than $20 billion in 2024 sales volume, far removed from an enterprise that began with a single franchise in 1975.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration and Marketing, Rockhurst College
PIONEER: Curtin bought RE/MAX’s first franchise outside its Colorado birthplace just two years after the company was founded.
SUCCESSION DEPTH: The Iowa/Nebraska acquisition also brought veteran Jeff Berlin into the Regional Services management team as operations manager.
EARLY WIN: Before moving into regional franchising, Curtin built his original operation to three offices, 110 associates, $200 million in volume and a 43 percent market share.
LEADERSHIP RULE: “I believe every leader should be willing to do any and all jobs in the organization, whatever they might be.”
ROOTS: He learned that philosophy working in a grocery store through high school and college, watching an owner who considered no job beneath him.

Tim Danker
CEO, SelectQuote

Tim Danker’s transformation of SelectQuote from an insurance distributor into a broader health-services company became much more tangible this year. It exited the year with nearly $50 million in run-rate adjusted EBITDA, and operating cash flow improved by $44 million. Danker is now pushing the company toward something investors prize even more than rapid growth: durable cash generation.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business Administration, University of Missouri; MBA, University of Kansas
2025 reveNues: $1.56 billion (Ingram’s Public Companies list No. 11)
CASH TURN: SelectQuote generated $31.9 million in operating cash flow in fiscal 2026 after reaching $11.7 million the previous year.
DEBT RESET: A new $415 million credit package refinanced existing term debt and pushed major maturities out to 2031.
PHARMACY SCALE: SelectRx ended the fourth quarter with more than 109,000 members as health services became a larger contributor to the business model.
NEXT EFFICIENCY: Technology-enabled workflow changes are expected to produce more than $30 million in annual expense savings.

Brian DeFrain
CEO, D&L Transport

Freight brokerage has hardly offered a forgiving operating environment, but Brian DeFrain’s agent-centered model keeps producing growth. D&L Transport increased 2025 revenue 19.4 percent last year. The operating premise remains deliberately simple: give independent freight agents the pricing, financial backing and support of a large brokerage without burying them beneath corporate layers.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Finance, Baylor University; J.D., University of Missouri School of Law
2025 REVENUES: $372.15 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 74)
ACCESS: D&L’s current leadership pitch is unusually literal: executives, including DeFrain, give agents direct access rather than routing issues through layers of management.
THE MODEL: DeFrain says the brokerage exists to make its agents stronger rather than control their businesses.
LEGAL EDGE: His law degree complements an executive team with deep transportation experience and in-house expertise in industry law.
OTHER BET: DeFrain has also invested in Ace Pickleball in Olathe, extending his interests beyond transportation.
LONG RUN: D&L has operated from Overland Park since 2004 and now supports a national agent network.

John Dicus
Chairman/Pres/CEO, Capitol Federal Financial

John Dicus is leading perhaps the biggest strategic repositioning in Capitol Federal’s modern history: From residential mortgage lending, the nearly $10 billion institution is becoming a fuller commercial bank. Commercial loans reached $2.47 billion by June, up $357 million since September, while Capitol Federal expands treasury management, private banking, wealth management and digital services.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business; MBA, University of Kansas
COMMERCIAL SHIFT: Commercial loans now represent roughly 30 percent of the loan portfolio, up from 26 percent at the start of the fiscal year.
EARNINGS MOMENTUM: Q2 net income reached $23.6 million,. its eighth straight quarter of net-interest-income growth and margin expansion.
WEALTH BUILD-OUT: Trust and advisory services are undergoing a major upgrade in technology and services, while private banking is being positioned alongside lending and deposit relationships. New initiatives include instant digital-card issuance and plans to integrate self-directed and automated investing.
FAMILY LEGACY: Dicus joined Capitol Federal in 1985, worked across its operating functions and ultimately followed his father into the top leadership position.

Mark Dohnalek
President/CEO, Pivot International

Mark Dohnalek’s value to Pivot International has always been breadth: a company capable of moving from concept and engineering through manufacturing, supply chain and commercialization across multiple industries and continents. Pivot now operates 18 locations worldwide, with more than 150 engineers and 300,000 square feet of electronics manufacturing space across three continents.
COLLEGE: B.S., Economics/Business, Cornell College; MBA, Keller Graduate School of Management, DeVry University
GLOBAL FOOTPRINT: Pivot’s operations span North America, Europe and Asia, supporting engineering, sourcing and manufacturing across all three regions.
ENGINEERING DEPTH: The company team of multi-disciplinary engineers supports clients from early design through commercial production.
MANUFACTURING SCALE: Its facilities include 51 assembly lines and more than 300,000 square feet of manufacturing capacity.
ACQUISITION DNA: Since acquiring Pivot in 2012, Dohnalek has used acquisitions to add capabilities in electronics, optics, medical devices, motor controls and other technical fields.

Mark Donovan
President, Kansas City Chiefs

Mark Donovan is helping steer the biggest physical transformation in Chiefs history. He was key in negotiating the move to a $3 billion enclosed stadium in Kansas City, Kan., and a new $300 million headquarters and practice facility in Olathe. With surrounding mixed-use districts, the projects will establish an entirely new year-round footprint for one of professional sports’ most valuable brands.
COLLEGE: B.S., Organizational Behavior and Management/Political Science, Brown University
NEXT HOME: The Kansas facilities are scheduled to open in 2031.
NEW HQ: The Olathe headquarters and practice facility will cover roughly 155 acres; Populous is lead architect and Burns & McDonnell the lead engineering concern.
DEVELOPMENT PLAY: The Chiefs and Hunt Midwest recently launched Two-Point Development to create mixed-use districts surrounding both new facilities.
WORLD STAGE: Donovan played a major role in bringing the 2026 FIFA World Cup to Kansas City and preparing Arrowhead for six matches, including a quarterfinal.
BEFORE KC: He held executive roles in the NHL and with the Philadelphia Eagles before joining the Chiefs in 2009 and becoming president in 2011.

Ed Dowling Jr. 
President/CEO, Compass Minerals

Ed Dowling was brought in to stabilize Compass Minerals, and the past year shows the outlines of that reset. His “Back-to-Basics” approach has centered on debt reduction, stronger execution in the company’s core salt business and tighter operating discipline. In fiscal 2026, Compass eliminated its nearest debt maturity while benefiting from a stronger winter season and improved salt pricing.
COLLEGE: B.S., Mining Engineering and Mineral Processing; M.S., Mineral Processing; Ph.D., Mineral Processing, Penn State University
CORE BUSINESS: Compass generated approximately $1.23 billion in fiscal 2025 revenue, including $1.02 billion from salt and $206.3 million from plant nutrition.
BALANCE SHEET: The company retired its remaining $150 million of senior unsecured notes due in 2027, removing its nearest debt maturity.
LABOR STABILITY: Union employees at the Goderich mine ratified a new three-year collective-bargaining agreement in 2026.
DEEP EXPERIENCE: Dowling brings more than three decades in international mining and previously served as CEO of SSR Mining and Alacer Gold.
HIS PATH: He joined Compass’ board in 2022 and became CEO in January 2024.

Dan Duffy
Founder/CEO, United Real Estate Group

Despite some difficult years in the housing market, Dan Duffy has strengthened United Real Estate’s technology and operating platform; now he is preparing to press the accelerator again. Agent count rose sharply in 2025, United climbed to No. 2 in Kansas City residential volume and transactions, and Duffy says the company is focusing on  large-scale affiliations and acquisitions again.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Indiana University; MBA, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
2025 REVENUEs: $523.68 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 60)
KC SCALE: United’s Kansas City operations produced $3.63 billion in residential sales and more than 10,200 transaction sides in 2025.
AGENT GROWTH: Its Kansas City agent count increased 38 percent in 2025 through recruiting and merger activity.
AI PUSH: Duffy is leading an AI-enablement initiative built around United’s proprietary BullseyeAI platform and a team of more than 40 tech/operations professionals.
M&A RESTART: After pausing major acquisitions while capital markets tightened, Duffy says United is reopening that channel in the second half of 2026.

Leslie Duke
Chair/CEO, Burns & McDonnell

At a company founded in 1898 to bring electricity to rural America, data centers and electric infrastructure are riving Burns & McDonnell’s growth.  Leslie Duke calls it “one of the most dynamic moments in modern construction history.” Locally, the employee-owned firm is owner’s representative with CAA ICON on the Chiefs’ practice facility and headquarters in Olathe.
COLLEGE: B.S., Civil/Structural Engineering, Texas Tech University
2025 REVENUES: $8.6 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 5)
KC EDGE: She says this region has become a national epicenter of construction talent, with university programming as well as nationally recognized firms in energy and mission-critical work.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Champion the team’s careers and defend their decisions. Credit to them when it goes well; accountability stops with her when it doesn’t.
GOALS: As a leader for a nationally recognized engineering and construction firm, she says she’s drawn to goals “so big, so far out, you honestly cannot see how you will get there.”

Terry Dunn
Founder, DD Ranch Leawood

The longtime chief of one of the nation’s largest contractors is now promoting start-ups and social causes, most recently by “strategically gifting assets to a charitable foundation.” To lock in World Cup momentum, he wants the region to “invest and strive to be a world destination with focus on a welcoming, safe, fun and friendly environment,” plus an east-west trolley and reinvestment east of Troost.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, Rockhurst University; MBA, University of Missouri–Kansas City
BACKGROUND: President/CEO of J.E. Dunn for more than two decades; Kansas Citian of the Year (with wife Peggy) in 2024.
WORK-FORCE FIX: “Preparing at-risk individuals for successful business careers,” he says.
STRATEGY HABIT: Include others in planning so they own the plan; lead with face-to-face conversation.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Coaching others on living-life and living-business plans.

Timothy Dunn
Chairman/Chief Investment Officer, JE Dunn Construction

Tim Dunn represents fourth-generation family stewardship at JE Dunn, where he directs the way the company deploys capital. That responsibility carries more weight as JE Dunn operates at record scale; he uses the company’s balance sheet to support real estate investment and regional economic-development initiatives.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., Accounting, University of Richmond; Master’s, Entrepreneurial Real Estate, University of Missouri-Kansas City
2025 REVENUES: $8.05 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 6)
FAMILY LEGACY: Dunn is the great-grandson of company founder John Ernest Dunn, and became board chairman in 2019.
CAPITAL ROLE: He became chief investment officer in 2010 and later created JE Dunn Capital Partners to co-invest alongside development partners.
OUTSIDE EXPERIENCE: Before joining the family enterprise, Dunn worked in finance and risk-management roles outside JE Dunn.
REGIONAL INVESTMENT: He serves as a UMKC trustee and backed the regional coalition behind the $160 million NSF Critical Materials Crossroads award.

Rachel Dwiggins
Managing Partner, Forvis Mazars

Rachel Dwiggins leads Kansas City operations for one of the nation’s largest accounting and advisory firms at a time when scale and culture increasingly must coexist. Forvis Mazars has grown into a 7,000-employee U.S. organization within a global network, and in addition to Kansas City, she leads the Minneapolis office the firm launched last year.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting, Missouri State University
TOP CPA: She was named to Forbes’ inaugural list of America’s Top 200 CPAs in 2024 and its Best-in-State CPAs roster for Missouri in 2025.
LEADERSHIP: “The higher you move in an organization, the less important it becomes to be the smartest person in the room and the more important it becomes to empower others to succeed.
MEETING RULE: She wants less reporting, more strategy, decisions and actionable takeaways—with clear ownership when the meeting ends.
KC MOMENT: Dwiggins believes the World Cup’s lasting payoff depends on sustaining business, civic, educational and cultural partnerships to attract investment and talent.

Matt England
President/CEO, Triumph Foods

Matt England is putting new capital behind Triumph Foods’ St. Joseph roots. The pork processor is planning a $30 million expansion that will enlarge cold storage and shipping capacity and prepare the plant for higher production. England is investing in the talent pipeline, making Triumph the first local company to join Missouri Western State University’s new corporate education program.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, University of Nebraska
2025 REVENUES: $1.9 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 29)
WORK-FORCE SCALE: Triumph employs nearly 3,000 people in St. Joseph and processes more than 5.5 million hogs annually.
EDUCATION BET: Employees, spouses and dependents can receive a 20 percent tuition discount at Missouri Western, layered with Triumph’s tuition-reimbursement program.
THE CLIMB: England joined Triumph in 2006 as director of strategic planning, later serving in strategy and operations leadership before becoming CEO in 2022.
LOCAL COMMITMENT: England describes the expansion as an investment not only in capacity but in employees and the St. Joseph community that has supported Triumph for two decades.

Warren Erdman
Chairman, Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission

Warren Erdman’s railroad career ended in 2025, but retirement hasn’t diminished his reach. After more than three decades with Kansas City Southern and successor CPKC, he now chairs Missouri’s Highways and Transportation Commission, keeping him squarely involved in decisions about the infrastructure that will shape the state’s next generation of economic growth.
COLLEGE: B.A., Westminster College
PUBLIC HONOR: Erdman received the Harry S. Truman Public Service Award in February 2026, joining a roster that includes former presidents, senators and nationally prominent civic leaders.
TRANSPORTATION ROLE: He was named to the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission in 2022; fellow commissioners subsequently elected him chairman.
MERGER HAND: After helping shepherd Kansas City Southern through its combination with Canadian Pacific, Erdman stayed through April 2025 as executive adviser for strategic projects.
CIVIC HONORS: The Downtown Council honored him with its 2026 J. Philip Kirk Jr. Award for community vision and Downtown stewardship.

Jason Evelyn
CEO, Cerris

The rebranding of MMC Corp into Cerris was only the beginning for Jason Evelyn. Since taking the CEO post in 2024, the nearly 30-year company veteran has turned the unified identity into a platform for geographic and acquisitive growth, adding offices in several fast-growth markets and extending the employee-owned construction enterprise to roughly $1.5 billion in annual revenue.
COLLEGE: B.S., Construction Management, Texas A&M University
2025 REVENUES: $1.5 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 34)
EMPLOYEE OWNERSHIP: Cerris traces its roots to three brothers who started a plumbing business in 1932; it became 100 percent employee-owned in 2002.
EXPANSION: Under Evelyn, the company has expanded into markets including Huntsville, Phoenix and Bentonville while adding specialty capabilities through acquisitions.
NEXT DEAL: Cerris’ corporate timeline records another acquisition in 2026—Allen’s Mechanical—as the company continues building out its national footprint.
THE CLIMB: Evelyn joined the organization straight out of college as a project engineer, later ran its building operation and became COO before taking the top job.
WHY THE REBRAND: He says the Cerris identity was not a transaction but a way to clarify what had become a national construction-solutions enterprise.

Bill Ferguson
President/CEO, Central Bank of the Midwest

Bill Ferguson looks at the World Cup experience with a banker’s eye on, which he says gave Kansas City a business-development opportunity, not just a hospitality moment. “The key now is disciplined follow-up: identify the companies, investors, and site selectors who experienced the city, then pursue them consistently. The exposure opened the door; long-term growth depends on converting it.”
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, University of Nebraska; Executive MBA, UMKC Bloch School
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Regional transit and the road and bridge network connecting both states—“helping people move reliably between where they live, work, and spend.”
WORK-FORCE FIX: Close the gap between the talent we have and the talent employers need by putting employers, schools, apprenticeships, and skills-based hiring on the same track.
MEETING PET PEEVE: People who withhold feedback in the room, then share concerns afterward. “If we are in the room, that is the time to speak up.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Deal with issues quickly. “What you resist, persists.”

Jim Ferrell
Chairman, Ferrellgas Partners

Sixty-one years after returning home to rescue his father’s struggling propane company, Jim Ferrell is shifting from empire builder to institutional steward. He remains chairman there, and 2026 brought tangible progress in succession planning, capital structure simplification and refinancing—steps designed to make Ferrellgas more durable beyond the founder’s era.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business, University of Kansas
STABILITY: Ferrell continues to lead the board even as Zertuche’s employment agreement has been extended to provide operating continuity.
SUCCESSION: Pamela Breuckmann became vice chair in May, while veteran energy-finance executive Andrew Safran joined the board.
BALANCE-SHEET WORK: Ferrellgas refinanced senior notes due in 2026, extended its credit agreement and converted outstanding Class B units into Class A units.
NATIONAL SCALE: The company serves customers in all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, while its Blue Rhino unit reaches roughly 65,000 retail locations.
SIX DECADES: Ferrell joined the family business in 1965 and turned what was then a small propane operation into one of the nation’s largest marketers.

Wesley Fields
Office Managing Partner, Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner

Wesley Fields has spent his entire legal career at Bryan Cave and successor BCLP, but his influence extends well beyond managing one of Kansas City’s largest law offices. His practice sits at the intersection of private development and public policy, where he has helped structure more than 100 regional development and infrastructure projects.
COLLEGE: B.S., Political Science and African-American Studies, Yale University; J.D., University of Virginia
OFFICE LEADER: Fields has served as Kansas City office managing partner since 2019, becoming only the sixth lawyer to lead the office in more than three decades.
DEVELOPMENT IMPACT: His work has included structuring and documenting more than 100 development and public-infrastructure projects totaling more than $5 billion.
TIF EXPERIENCE: Fields has long served as counsel to Kansas City’s Tax Increment Financing Commission, placing him close to some of the region’s most consequential redevelopment decisions.
HONORS: Earlier this year, the Kansas City Metropolitan Bar Association honored Fields with its Distinguished Counselor Award.

Dave Flickinger
EVP, Kiewit Power

If data centers, electrification and grid expansion are creating one of the biggest construction waves of this decade, Dave Flickinger is positioned directly in its path. The Penn State-trained engineer leads Kiewit’s power operations from Lenexa, where the business spans generation, transmission, renewables, energy storage, and emerging technologies, operating at a multi-billion-dollar scale.
COLLEGE: B.S., Civil Engineering, Pennsylvania State University
2025 REVENUES: $3,87 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 15)
POWER MIX: Kiewit works across renewable generation, transmission and distribution, storage, gas-fired generation and other utility-scale infrastructure.
ENERGY SHIFT: He has described clean energy not as a niche for Kiewit but as a fundamental growth market, with renewable work already rivaling or surpassing traditional fossil-fuel activity.
THE CLIMB: He started with Kiewit as a field engineer more than three decades ago and later managed safety, quality, HR, business development and market strategy.
KC PRESENCE: Kiewit’s substantial Lenexa campus anchors one of the region’s largest concentrations of engineering and construction talent.

Julie Francis
President/CEO, MGP Ingredients

Barely a year into the job, Julie Francis is putting her stamp on MGP Ingredients at a difficult point in the spirits cycle. With bulk whiskey demand under pressure, she has tightened costs, rebuilt pieces of the sales and marketing organization, and leaned harder into premium-branded spirits. This month, MGP took an especially visible step: putting its own name on a flagship bourbon for the first time.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, Alfred University
2025 Revenues: $536.4 million (Ingram’s Public Companies list No. 14)
NEW BRAND PLAY: MGP Chapter One: Out of the Shadows is a 10-year bourbon carrying the distiller’s own name rather than one of the many labels it has supplied behind the scenes.
PREMIUM PUSH: Penelope Bourbon sales rose 13 percent in the second quarter, while the company’s broader premium-plus portfolio increased 5 percent.
DISCIPLINE: Francis has emphasized waste elimination, tighter spending and what MGP calls an “ownership cost management” initiative as the industry works through excess whiskey inventories.

Mike Frazier
President/CEO, ReeceNichols

Despite low inventory, higher rates, inflation and geopolitical shocks, Mike Frazier still steered ReeceNichols toward growth. “What I’m most proud of is that through all of the challenges, we’ve increased our business and helped more people on their homeownership journey.” Frazier wants the region to keep “being ourselves” after World Cup exposure.
COLLEGE: William Jewell College
NEXT PROJECT: Rebuilding the core of the city through housing infill to ease the inventory shortage and expand homeownership.
MEETING PET PEEVE: People checking smartwatches every few minutes. “Checking your notifications sends a signal that the meeting isn’t where your attention is.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “You are defined by the people you surround yourself with. Hire the right people who fit your culture and then trust them.”
COMMUNICATION: Direct face-to-face is always best so people can ask questions and challenge ideas in real time.

Dan Funk
President/CEO, Associated Wholesale Grocers

If you eat, you can thank Dan Funk and his team at AWG, which is marking its 100th year supporting independent grocers across much of the country, as well as its vendor partners and teammates—“proudly celebrating this milestone throughout 2026.” Funk wants the region to use World Cup visibility to recruit companies while the spotlight is still on Kansas City.
COLLEGE: University of South Dakota
2025 REVENUES: $12.2 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank 3)
WORLD CUP: Aggressively pitch and recruit outside businesses to relocate or expand here in a brief, high-visibility window.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Rapid upskilling in emerging technologies to keep the local workforce ahead of tech trends.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “Just be who I am, not try to fit someone else’s mold. Authenticity builds confidence.”

Cameron Garrison
Managing Partner, Lathrop GPM

Cameron Garrison is taking Lathrop GPM into another expansion cycle. Most recently, by combining with intellectual-property boutique HG Law on Jan. 1, adding New York and London offices, strengthening its Silicon Valley presence and pushing its attorney headcount to roughly 370. It further transforms Kansas City’s oldest law firm into a broader national—and now international—platform.
COLLEGE: B.A., Government and History, University of Virginia; J.D., Washington and Lee School of Law
NEXT SCALE: The HG Law combination is expected to lift annual revenue for the combined firm to approximately $300 million.
KC INVESTMENT: Lathrop GPM moved its largest office—about 100 lawyers and 95 staff—into 47,000 square feet at Crown Center this summer.
SECOND TERM: Garrison has been reappointed managing partner through June 2028 and continues to chair the firm’s Executive Committee. He joined predecessor Lathrop Gage directly from law school and has spent his entire legal career there.
LEADERSHIP TEST: His stated priority is keeping Lathrop GPM a firm “our clients trust and our people are proud to work for.”

Ty Garver
Chief Lending Officer, Academy Bank

Ty Garver sits at the center of Academy Bank’s effort to translate a much larger balance sheet into business-banking growth. As chief lending officer and commercial executive, he oversees lending relationships across the Kansas City market while parent Dickinson Financial operates with more than $4.8 billion in assets, $3.2 billion in loans and more than 90 banking locations.
COLLEGE: BBA, Finance, Wichita State University
LENDING ROLE: Garver’s portfolio spans middle-market commercial and industrial lending, commercial real estate and construction/development finance.
DIRECT ACCESS: Academy’s commercial model emphasizes flexible structures and direct access to decision-makers rather than pushing borrowers through a highly centralized chain.
SECTOR RANGE: The commercial team works with clients across manufacturing, distribution, restaurants, aviation, construction and wealth-management.
INDUSTRY VOICE: Garver has written publicly about one of banking’s long-term challenges: attracting younger talent into the profession.

Bill George
Founder/CEO, WHC Worldwide

Bill George spent years assembling a national ground-transportation platform; the World Cup gave Kansas City a chance to see that scale put to work at home this year. WHC expanded its local fleet for the tournament, including electric and luxury vehicles, while operating in three host cities. The broader enterprise now handles more than 22 million trips annually across 38 cities in 20 states.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, University of Kansas
SCALE: With more than 2,800 vehicles, WHC supports more than 3,400 drivers.
ACQUISITION RUN: George has overseen roughly 60 acquisitions during nearly four decades in passenger transportation.
BRAND FAMILY: WHC’s holdings include zTrip, SuperShuttle Express, Execucar and zDryve.
WORLD CUP: For Kansas City’s matches, WHC added 20 electric vehicles and about a dozen luxury vehicles to meet expected demand.
LOCAL READ: George said afterward that regional travelers generated stronger demand than international visitors—useful intelligence for future mega-events.
OPERATING MODEL: Safety, finance, compliance, technology and analytics are centralized, while individual markets retain local operating identities.

Brent Giles
CEO, Hawthorn Bancshares/Hawthorn Bank

Brent Giles just made Hawthorn Bank materially bigger. On Sept. 3, the Jefferson City-based bank completed its acquisition of Farmers State Bank of Cameron, adding nine branches and extending Hawthorn deeper into northern Missouri. The transaction should push the combined organization to roughly $2.2 billion in assets and gives Giles a larger platform for his community-banking strategy.
COLLEGE: B.S., Banking and Finance; MBA, University of Missouri-Columbia
DEAL SIZE: The Farmers State transaction was valued at approximately $28.3 million and brought roughly $384 million in assets.
EARNINGS TREND: Hawthorn’s second-quarter net income rose 20 percent year over year to $7.3 million, with return on average equity of 16.39 percent.
KC BENCH: Giles has recruited veteran Kansas City banking figures including Grant Burcham and works alongside longtime banker Bob Regnier, adding substantial market experience to his advisory team.
THE CLIMB: He joined Hawthorn in 2023 after stints Bank of Blue Valley and BankLiberty, where he took the latter public and expanded it through acquisitions and organic growth before its 2019 sale.

Lisa Ginter
CEO, CommunityAmerica Credit Union

Lisa Ginter now runs something Kansas City has never really had before: a hometown credit union with genuine national scale. CommunityAmerica’s merger with UNIFY pushed assets to roughly $9 billion, membership above 600,000 and branches into five additional states. It remains headquartered in Lenexa, a national power without surrendering its Kansas City identity.
COLLEGE: B.S./B.A., Accounting, Rockhurst University
2025 REVENUES: $345.57 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 79)
WHAT CHANGED: The November 2025 UNIFY merger converted CommunityAmerica to a federal charter and added branches in Arkansas, California, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas.
ANOTHER MERGER: CommunityAmerica added WeDevelopment Federal Credit Union on Sept. 1, 2026, while keeping its East Kansas City branch open.
MEMBER RETURN: Its 2026 Profit Payout distributed $10 million to more than 120,000 members, pushing cumulative distributions since 2012 to $110 million.
THE CLIMB: Since becoming CEO in 2015, Ginter has taken CommunityAmerica from $1.5 billion in assets to almost $10 billion.

Douglas Girod
Chancellor, University of Kansas

Doug Girod arrived at KU as a head-and-neck surgeon more than three decades ago; today, he leads the entire university. Chancellor since 2017, Girod oversees an institution reaching from its Lawrence flagship to KU Medical Center. Under his leadership, KU has reached record enrollment, topped $500 million in annual research activity for the first time and launched a $2.5 billion fundraising campaign.
COLLEGE: B.A., Chemistry, UC-Davis; M.D., UC-San Francisco; residency and NIH research fellowship, University of Washington
WHITE COAT: Girod advanced to chair the otolaryngology department at KU Med and later served as interim executive dean of the School of Medicine and executive vice chancellor of KUMC.
MILITARY: He was in the U.S. Navy Reserve from 1982 to 1997, topping out as lieutenant commander and recipient of the Meritorious Service Medal.
GLOBAL SERVICE: Has participated in or led a dozen medical missions to countries including Uganda, Guatemala, Mali, the Philippines and Mexico.
NATIONAL REACH: He’s chaired the Association of American Universities board and Big XII board, and is a member of NCAA Division I board and Board of Governors.

Chris Giuliani
President/CEO, Spring Venture Group

For Chris Giuliani, Spring Venture Group’s achievements start with the people producing them. The past year brought a string of individual and team honors at the health-insurance brokerage, reinforcing a leadership philosophy built around trusted decision-makers, strong communication and recognition for contributions across the organization.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Missouri–Columbia; MBA, Baker University
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “A leader cannot be involved in every decision and outcome, as time simply doesn’t allow it,” Giuliani says. Building a team of trusted partners is essential. 
KC OPPORTUNITY: He says the region must systematically market itself as a destination for national and regional headquarters after the World Cup. 
WORK-FORCE THREAT: Coastal employers, he believes, who are recruiting Midwest workers remotely can turn Kansas City into “a talent supplier rather than a talent creator/retainer.” 
ALTERNATE CAREER?: Would be coaching sports—especially baseball—where he could guide and mentor young athletes.

John Goodbrake
President/CEO, Master’s Transportation

John Goodbrake built Master’s Transportation around solving vehicle needs other companies overlooked; now he has built the physical capacity to take that model much further. The first phase of a planned $72 million Kansas City headquarters has consolidated formerly scattered operations, dramatically expanded production capability and positioned the company to add hundreds of employees.
2025 REVENUES: $236.8 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 50)
NEW CAMPUS: The headquarters project consolidates five former south-Kansas City locations and is designed as a three-phase expansion.
JOB ENGINE: Master’s has said the campus expansion can support roughly 250 additional jobs in engineering, technical, sales and related roles.
NATIONAL MODEL: The company sells, rents, leases and services buses, shuttles and passenger vans for schools, universities, churches, governments and commercial operators nationwide.
ON LEADERSHIP: “There is no overnight success in this company,” he’s said, citing a veteran leadership team and a “positive, can-do attitude.” Growth has come from pursuing transportation solutions competitors either could not—or chose not to—provide.

Sean Goodman
CFO, AMC Entertainment

Sean Goodman arrived at AMC just months before COVID-19 shuttered theaters worldwide, giving him one of corporate finance’s tougher opening acts. Six years later, the Leawood-based CFO is helping steer a much different financial story: AMC posted record quarterly revenue and adjusted EBITDA in 2026 while refinancing debt, raising capital and extending significant maturities to 2029 and beyond.
COLLEGE: Business Science degree with honors, University of Cape Town; MBA, Harvard Business School; CPA
2025 REVENUES: $4.85 billion (Ingram’s public companies list, No. 4)
BIGGER PORTFOLIO: Beyond finance, Goodman oversees AMC’s international operations, information technology and procurement.
TRIAL BY FIRE: Joined AMC in December 2019 and became CFO in February 2020, just as the pandemic effectively shut down its global theater business.
BEFORE AMC: CFO, Asbury Automotive Group; earlier CFO roles at Unifi and Landis+Gyr, strategy and finance leadership at Home Depot, investment banking at Morgan Stanley and accounting at Deloitte.

Bill Grant
COO, SelectQuote

Bill Grant has spent four decades building SelectQuote from an insurance startup into one of the Kansas City region’s largest public companies. A co-founder in 1985 and now chief operating officer, he has helped turn an early direct-to-consumer insurance model into a national platform spanning senior, life and auto-and-home coverage—and, increasingly, health-care services.
COLLEGE: B.A., History, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $1.53 billion (Ingram’s public-company list No. 11)
FOUNDER: Co-founded SelectQuote in 1985 and has served in senior leadership roles across much of its four-decade history.
PEDIGREE: Son of the late Robert E. Grant, former chairman and CEO of Kansas City-based Business Men’s Assurance Co. of America.
LONG VIEW: Led SelectQuote as president from 1998–2006 and again from 2017–19 before becoming COO.
BEYOND INSURANCE: Helped oversee SelectQuote’s expansion into health-care services, including SelectRx, its rapidly growing medication-management and pharmacy operation.

Bob Grant
President, SelectQuote

Bob Grant brings an investor’s perspective to the family enterprise. After a career spanning investment banking and private equity, he returned to SelectQuote and now serves as president, helping steer the Overland Park company beyond its insurance-marketplace roots. That evolution increasingly includes health-care services, giving SelectQuote another avenue for growth.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Kansas; MBA, Washington University in St. Louis
2025 REVENUES: $1.53 billion
SECOND GENERATION: He’s also the son of the late Robert Grant, but unlike his brother, he initially answered a different calling; he spent nearly two decades in investment banking and private equity before joining SelectQuote’s leadership team.
BEFORE SELECTQUOTE: Managing director at FTL Capital; earlier investment-banking experience with Piper Jaffray.
NEW GROWTH ENGINE: Helps steer SelectQuote’s expansion beyond insurance distribution into health-care services, including SelectRx pharmacy operations.
BOARDROOM: Has served on multiple corporate boards, bringing an investment and governance perspective to the operating role.

Greg Graves
Board of Directors, University of Kansas Health System

His book, Create Amazing, surpassed 15,000 copies sold and hit No. 1 on Amazon’s Business category. Former Burns & McDonnell chairman and CEO Greg Graves, who remains engaged on multiple boards, still presses the region to “feed on success” after the World Cup and to pursue the health system’s vision of a National Institute for Alzheimer’s Treatment and Discovery.
BACKGROUND: Retired chairman/CEO of employee-owned Burns & McDonnell; lead independent director, UMB Financial.
WORLD CUP IMPACT: Regional leaders, he says, should capitalize on the image the city generated by hosting matches in 2026: “Feed on success always. Double down when possible. Continue the Chamber’s Big 5 Goal to become America’s most entrepreneurial city.”
MEETING PET PEEVE: When others are not in person.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Henry Bloch’s advice: “Listen, Greg, just listen.”
COMMUNICATION: “High-stakes written communication is for cowards,” he says. He much prefers face-to-face discussion.

Nathaniel Hagedorn
President/CEO, NorthPoint Development

Nathaniel Hagedorn turned NorthPoint Development from a Northland niche firm into a national powerhouse. A defining early move came at Logistics Park Kansas City, transforming a struggling intermodal project into a massive logistics hub. Today, its reach extends across more than 169 million square feet of industrial space, multi-family housing and an emerging data-center platform.
KC GAME-CHANGER: NorthPoint took control of development at LPKC in 2012; the Edgerton intermodal hub has since grown into one of the region’s largest logistics and employment centers.
NATIONAL SCALE: In addition to its massive industrial property footprint nationwide, it has developed more than 5,900 multifamily apartment units.
CAPITAL MACHINE: NorthPoint and its affiliates have raised nearly $20 billion in capital, with assets under management exceeding that figure.
NEXT WAVE: Hagedorn previously said that NorthPoint could acquire up to 40 million additional square feet of industrial property this year—roughly $4 billion in assets.
POWER PLAY: NorthPoint is expanding into data centers, including major planned campuses that move the company into power-intensive digital infrastructure.

Marc Hahn
President/CEO, Kansas City University

Marc Hahn has spent more than a decade turning Kansas City University from a long-established osteopathic medical school into a broader health-sciences institution with campuses in KC and Joplin. Its medical, biosciences, psychology, dental and health-professions programs now form a critical work-force pipeline, supplying clinicians to urban and rural communities where shortages can turn geography into a barrier to care.
COLLEGE: B.S., Biology, Syracuse University; D.O., Des Moines University
CAREER PERSPECTIVE: Before entering academic leadership, Hahn was an Army anesthesiologist at Walter Reed, serving Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and later led pain medicine at Penn State.
INSTITUTIONAL SCALE: KCU is home to the Midwest’s largest medical school and the nation’s fifth-largest, giving Hahn’s institution an outsized role in supplying physicians across Missouri, Kansas and beyond.
BROADER MISSION: The university now encompasses osteopathic medicine, dental medicine, biosciences and health professions, including clinical psychology and a new anesthesiologist-assistant program created in response to provider shortages.
TWO-CAMPUS: The Joplin expansion placed medical and dental education closer to rural and underserved communities, complementing KCU’s century-old presence in KC’s urban core.

Donald J. Hall Jr.
Executive Chairman, Hallmark Cards

Don Hall Jr. carries stewardship responsibilities that extend well beyond one of Kansas City’s signature companies. The third generation of his family to lead Hallmark, he now serves as executive chairman of an enterprise spanning Hallmark, Crayola, Hallmark Media and Crown Center. But the family imprint is also heavily visible in philanthropy, arts and culture, education and research.
2025 REVENUES: $3.5 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 18)
FAMILY LEGACY: Grandson of founder Joyce Clyde “J.C.” Hall and third generation of the Hall family to lead Hallmark; joined the company in 1971 and became CEO in 2002.
PHILANTHROPY: Chairman, Hall Family Foundation, one of Kansas City’s cornerstone philanthropic institutions, supporting education, health, neighborhoods, arts and civic initiatives. And earlier this year, was named to succeed Evelyn Craft Belger as chair of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art’s board of trustees.
CIVIC REACH: Hall’s civic resume includes trustee for MRIGlobal; member of the Kansas City Civic Council and the board of advisors for the KU School of Business.
NATIONAL SERVICE: He’s also a former trustee for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

Brad Hampton
CEO, Helzberg; CEO, BH Jewelry Group

Brad Hampton has a bigger jewelry box to manage these days: He also leads Berkshire Hathaway Jewelry Group, bringing the century-old Kansas City retailer together with Seattle-based Ben Bridge. That pairs stewardship with reinvention: preserve two storied brands while modernizing stores, expanding digital capabilities and adapting the jewelry-buying experience for a new generation.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics and Latin American Studies, University of New Mexico; MBA, LeTourneau University
CENTURY BRANDS: The two jewelers bring more than 200 years of combined history; Helzberg dates to 1915 and has more than 160 stores nationwide.
REINVENTION: He oversaw Helzberg’s rebrand, dropping “Diamonds” from the name while investing heavily in e-commerce, customization and omnichannel retailing.
BEFORE HELZBERG: He worked at Lockheed Martin, then spent 20 years at Sprint in financial and operating leadership, including business-unit CFO.
CIVIC RESUME: Board member, Make-A-Wish Missouri & Kansas; president, Center Place Restoration School board; former Junior Achievement of Greater Kansas City board member.

Michael Hargens
Office Managing Partner, Husch Blackwell

Earlier this year, Mike Hargens took the helm of a century-old Kansas City law office that is part of a national firm with roughly $782 million in revenue in 2025. He is focused on “continuing the momentum” while remaining an active litigator and joining the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City. World Cup hosting, he says, “increased our visibility both nationally and internationally.”
COLLEGE: B.A., Psychology, University of Missouri; J.D., University of Missouri School of Law
2025 REVENUES: $781.6 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 50)
CIVIC ROLE: A 26-year Kansas Citian who wants the metro to remain “a tremendous place to live, work and play.”
EVENTS: Proving the city can serve thousands of visitors “should position Kansas City to be an attractive destination for other large sporting events and conventions.”
ORIGIN: Born and raised in St. Joseph, son of two educators.

Dave Harrison
President/CEO, VanTrust Real Estate

Dave Harrison’s VanTrust has crossed another scale marker: more than $8 billion in development and acquisitions since its creation, with projects now spanning six regional offices and multiple commercial property sectors. Yet one of Harrison’s most consequential current projects is close to home—the future Lockton headquarters in Leawood, a centerpiece of the 34-acre Hallbrook North development.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, Rockhurst University
KC ANCHOR: VanTrust began work this summer on Lockton’s new global headquarters in Leawood, where the insurance firm plans a major expansion.
NATIONAL SCALE: That $8 billion in development and acquisitions has been driven by a staff that has grown to roughly 80 employees.
THE ORIGIN: Harrison and Cecil Van Tuyl founded Caymus Real Estate in 2010; it became VanTrust in 2012 under Van Tuyl family ownership.
SECOND MISSION: Harrison also serves as president of Driven Development, the non-profit focused on expanding attainable and affordable housing in Kansas City.
PRODUCT MIX: VanTrust develops industrial, office, multifamily, mixed-use and science-and-technology properties nationwide.

Ken Heinz
CEO/Co-Founder, LODGING ONE HOSPITALITY

Twenty years after Ken Heinz co-founded Lodging One Hospitality, the Overland Park hotel company is still adding to its footprint: It celebrated that anniversary in June and expects to open its 15th hotel this fall. But Heinz’s entrepreneurial interests extend beyond lodging. Midwest Recovery Centers, another of his ventures, has pushed beyond its Kansas City operating base with the acquisition of a new facility in Iowa.
COLLEGE: B.A., Accounting, Kansas State University
TWO DECADES: He and brother Chris launched Lodging One in 2006, building a hotel ownership, development, management platform that works with properties across five states.
WORLD CUP: The regional opportunity now, Heinz says, is coordinated outreach to companies, visitors, media, sponsors and international contacts generated by the tournament: “not simply celebrating the event itself.”
CONNECT THE REGION: His next big infrastructure priority would be a high-capacity transit network strengthening links among KCI, Downtown, pro stadiums, KU Medical Center, Johnson County, the Plaza and entertainment districts.
HOUSING = WORKFORCE: Heinz sees attainable housing as a business issue. Rising costs and limited availability affect where employees live and whether companies can retain them.

Jason Hendricks
President/CEO, Performance Contracting Group

Jason Hendricks traded professional baseball for construction, but kept the team-first philosophy. Since becoming CEO of Performance Contracting Group in 2020, he has helped propel the employee-owned Lenexa company into the top tier of U.S. specialty contractors. PCG now deploys nearly 11,000 employees across commercial and industrial construction.
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, University of Arizona; Academic All-American baseball player
2025 REVENUES: $2.92 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank 21)
DRAFT DAY: Selected by the Montreal Expos in 1998 and played two seasons of minor-league baseball before entering construction. He joined PCG in 2003 as Los Angeles branch controller, eventually becoming COO, president in 2019 and CEO in 2020.
NATIONAL RANK: ENR ranked PCG No. 9 among U.S. specialty contractors in 2025 and No. 1 in walls and ceilings.
EMPLOYEE-OWNED: PCG traces its current form to 1987, when employees acquired Owens Corning’s contracting operation.
BROAD REACH: More than 25 specialties spanning interiors, insulation, fire protection, cleanrooms, industrial services, environmental work and other disciplines.

Josh Herron
CEO/Co-Founder, Southwind

For the growth Southwind has generated, Josh Herron measures the company’s progress by something other than revenue or acquisitions: what happens to the people who join it. Employees who started on trucks or in entry-level positions have become managers, directors and senior leaders, validating Herron’s belief that a growing company should provide people with the means to alter the trajectories of their lives.
COLLEGE: B.A., Organizational Leadership, MidAmerica Nazarene University
THE REAL SCORECARD: ”Scale only matters if the people inside the organization are growing with it,” Herron says. Creating opportunities for employees willing to work, learn and grow is the Southwind achievement that makes him proudest.
KC: He would make talent development and retention a regional priority, with KC becoming known as one of America’s best places to start a career.
POST-WORLD CUP: The objective isn’t merely attracting visitors. Herron says business and civic leaders need one compelling Kansas City story—and then must make it easy for people and businesses introduced to the city to invest here.
REGIONAL: Better transportation and infrastructure linking neighborhoods, business districts, KCI, entertainment areas and suburbs would strengthen Kansas City.

Brad Hewlett
Dealer Principal, Bob Allen Ford; Founder, City Rent-a-Truck

Bob Allen Ford remains the long-established retail anchor, but City Rent-a-Truck—launched by Brad Hewlett in 2012—has developed into a distinct commercial-vehicle platform serving customers beyond traditional dealership geography. The combo gives Hewlett exposure to both consumer auto sales and business demand for trucks and vans.
DEALER ROOTS: Hewlett joined Bob Allen Ford in 1991 as a service assistant, following his father into the automobile business.
SECOND ACT: He founded City Rent-a-Truck in 2012, creating a complementary business focused on commercial transportation rather than retail vehicle ownership.
FORD BENCHMARK: Bob Allen Ford has earned Ford’s President’s Award multiple times, recognizing customer satisfaction and dealership performance.
STILL FAMILY-OWNED: Bob Allen continues to market itself explicitly as a family-owned and operated Kansas City dealership.
INDUSTRY ROLE: Hewlett serves on the board of the Automobile Dealers of Kansas City.
EARLY SIGNAL: Ingram’s recognized Hewlett in its 2010 40 Under Forty class, well before City Rent-a-Truck was launched.

Adam Hill
President/CEO, Scarbrough Global

Adam Hill can now point to a physical European footprint after Scarbrough’s acquisition of Amsterdam-based FlowFreight. It gave the Kansas City logistics company its first European office, adding to North American operations and creating a trans-Atlantic forwarding platform at a moment when tariffs and trade uncertainty are making international logistics expertise more valuable, not less.
COLLEGE: B.A., William Jewell College; MBA, Fogelman College of Business & Economics, University of Memphis
EUROPE: The FlowFreight acquisition added air, ocean and ground import/export expertise from an Amsterdam base.
CUSTOMS EDGE: Earlier in his career, he helped make Scarbrough one of the first 20 U.S. customs brokers using the federal Automated Commercial Environment.
TECH FOCUS: Hill continues to push technology deeper into freight operations while emphasizing that logistics remains fundamentally a relationship business.
MARKET TEST: He has described the post-pandemic freight downturn as one of the toughest periods in the company’s history, but Scarbrough chose to preserve its work force rather than pursue broad layoffs.

Michael Hoehn
President/CEO, Automatic Systems, Inc.

Under Michael Hoehn’s guidance, ASI began commissioning the largest and most complex project in company history this year—“rewarding for all of us to see the customer’s site come to life after years of collaboration,” he says. The industrial automation firm designs and installs turnkey conveyor, robotics and material-handling systems for automotive and airport clients, among others.
COLLEGE: Georgetown University; YPO Presidents’ Program, Harvard Business School
2025 REVENUES: $409.1 million (No. 69 on the Ingram’s 100)
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “It’s all people. The people-side of our business isn’t simply an important part; it’s the only part that truly matters in the long run.”
COMMUTE HABIT: The Acquired podcast series.
SCALE: Nearly 400 employees across six offices; four-time General Motors Supplier of the Year.

Paul Holewinski
President/CEO, Dickinson Financial Corp.

Paul Holewinski’s influence now extends well beyond the $4.8 billion entity he leads. Just this month, he was elected chairman of the Civic Council of Greater Kansas City, putting him at the head of a CEO organization focused on regional competitiveness, investment and economic growth—a natural extension for an executive who has led his banks into new markets, technology and services.
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, Saint Louis University; J.D., MBA, Saint Louis University School of Law; Colorado School of Banking
2025 REVENUES: $220.48 million (Corporate Report 100 No. 85)
CIVIC ROLE: Before becoming Civic Council chairman, Holewinski served as vice chair and helped lead Kansas City Tomorrow, its leadership development program.
TWO BANKS: Academy serves conventional consumer and commercial markets, while Armed Forces Bank provides a separate national platform focused on military members, veterans and their families.
DOWNTOWN BET: Dickinson moved its headquarters to 1201 Walnut, where Academy opened a flagship banking center putting its name on the Kansas City skyline.
LONG TENURE: Holewinski has been CEO of Armed Forces Bank since 2014, Academy Bank since 2017 and Dickinson Financial since 2020.

Jason Hooper
President/CEO, KVC Health Systems

Jason Hooper is bringing KVC’s children’s mental health model to another major metropolitan market. A 77-bed pediatric mental health hospital developed with St. Louis Children’s is preparing to open late this year, extending a KVC network that now employs more than 2,800 people at 65 locations in five states—and demonstrating how far the Olathe-based non-profit has grown in scope.
COLLEGE: B.S., Psychology/Sociology, Baker University; M.S., Social Work, University of Kansas
ST. LOUIS: The new Webster Groves campus will combine inpatient, residential, partial hospitalization and intensive outpatient treatment for children ages six to 18.
BROAD REACH: KVC operates across Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Kentucky and West Virginia and provides training and consultation elsewhere through the KVC Institute.
THE CLIMB: Hooper started more than 30 years ago in direct service with children and families, spending eight years on the front lines before moving into management.
SECOND CEO: He succeeded Wayne Sims in 2016 and is only the second chief executive in KVC’s modern history.

Jenny Housley
President, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City

Jenny Housley is spending 2026 running much of Blue KC while becoming its next CEO. Promoted to president last fall, she was tabbed to succeed the retired Erin Stucky. Meanwhile, Housley is already putting her imprint on the region’s largest not-for-profit health insurer as affordability and measurable health outcomes dominate the industry agenda.
COLLEGE: B.A., Communications, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $2.74 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 18)
NEXT UP: Blue KC’s board selected Housley after a formal succession process; she became president immediately in October 2025 and CEO-designate for 2026.
RARE DISTINCTION: Blue KC earned NCQA Health Outcomes Accreditation this summer, a designation held by only about 10 percent of NCQA-accredited commercial health plans.
ACCESS: A new agreement with NKC Health preserved uninterrupted in-network access while addressing affordability for members and employers.
LOCKTON YEARS: Before joining Blue KC’s leadership team in 2016, Housley spent 21 years at Lockton advising employers on benefits.

Grant Hromas
Vice President–Development, SomeraRoad

For Grant Hromas, the West Bottoms has moved decisively from rendering to reality. Streets, utilities and public spaces are being rebuilt; the historic Moline Plow building is becoming 121 apartments; and the first public gathering space is scheduled for completion this year. Hromas remains SomeraRoad’s Kansas City point man for the $526.7 million undertaking.
COLLEGE: B.A., Architecture, University of Oklahoma; Master of Urban Design, Washington University in St. Louis; M.S., Real Estate, DePaul University
FIRST DELIVERY: The Moline Plow conversion is designed to produce 121 residences with ground-floor retail while preserving a century-old industrial building.
PUBLIC REALM: Union Square Plaza/The Depot and associated streetscape improvements are scheduled to come online as the neighborhood’s new gathering core.
LONG GAME: The overall redevelopment is planned across multiple phases over 10–15 years, combining historic rehabilitation with new residential, office, retail and hotel construction.
PUBLIC PARTNER: Kansas City is committing roughly $45.8 million to supporting infrastructure for the broader $526.7 million project.

Yvonne Hsu
President, Hill’s Pet Nutrition

A year after taking the top job at Hill’s Pet Nutrition, Yvonne Hsu is broadening what a science-driven pet-food company can sell—and the markets in which it can compete. This summer, Hill’s entered the fast-growing refrigerated fresh-food category while continuing to roll out therapeutic nutrition and emerging protein technologies, giving Hsu an innovation-heavy first full year in that role.
COLLEGE: B.S., Psychology; MBA, Cornell University
2025 REVENUEs: $4.1 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 10)
SCIENCE BENCH: Hill’s employs more than 220 veterinarians, Ph.D. nutritionists and food scientists to support its nutrition research and product development.
NEW TECHNOLOGY: Hill’s and Bond Pet Foods received an FDA no-objection letter for a lamb protein produced through precision fermentation, opening another potential avenue for pet-food innovation.
THE CLIMB: Hsu joined Colgate-Palmolive in 2000 and moved through marketing, innovation, digital transformation and global-growth roles before becoming Hill’s president in July 2025.
GLOBAL VS. U.S.: Her promotion moved her above the domestic business; Rauf Gurbuz succeeded her as U.S. president/general manager in October 2025.

Sam Huenergardt
CEO, AdventHealth Mid-America Region

Sam Huenergardt’s title has become increasingly descriptive of his reach: The CEO of AdventHealth’s Mid-America Region oversees a network extending from the Kansas City area to AdventHealth Durand in Wisconsin. At home, that portfolio continues to expand with the year-old Lenexa City Center hospital, a new Neuroscience Institute and AdventHealth’s first physical presence across the state line in Missouri.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, Union College; MBA, Baker University
2025 REVENUES: $4.4 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 14)
NEUROSCIENCE: The new institute combines neurosurgery, neurology, pain management and an inpatient epilepsy unit, with comprehensive stroke and endovascular services expected this fall.
LENEXA: AdventHealth Lenexa City Center marked its first anniversary in August, with another medical office building planned to expand services there.
PROVIDER GROWTH: During 2025, AdventHealth Medical Group added 26 primary-care and 68 specialty providers, plus eight specialty services.
CROSSING STATE LINE: The system opened its first Missouri primary-care practice near 103rd and State Line, extending its physical footprint beyond Kansas.

Clark Hunt
Chairman/CEO, Kansas City Chiefs

Clark Hunt made the biggest real estate decision in Chiefs history in 2026. After more than six decades at the Truman Sports Complex, his family committed the franchise to a $4.5 billion Kansas development anchored by a $3 billion enclosed stadium in Wyandotte County and a new headquarters and training complex in Olathe. It turns the Chiefs from stadium tenant into the catalyst for two major mixed-use districts.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Southern Methodist University
THE NEW HOME: The 70,000-seat enclosed stadium is scheduled to open in 2031, with more than 20,000 parking spaces and an ETFE-panel roof.
FAMILY CAPITAL: The broader Kansas investment includes the stadium, a $300 million Olathe headquarters/practice facility and $1.2 billion in ancillary real estate.
NEW BUSINESS: The Chiefs and Hunt Midwest formed Two-Point Development in August to create mixed-use districts surrounding both facilities.
OWNERSHIP: The franchise remains owned by the families of Lamar Hunt’s four children—Lamar Jr., Sharron, Clark and Dan.
THE RUN: Since Hunt became CEO in 2010, Kansas City has won three Super Bowls and five AFC championships.

Marco Ilardi
Managing Partner, V2 Ventures

Marco Ilardi occupies an unusual corner of Kansas City’s investment community: V2 Ventures is less a conventional venture fund than a long-horizon company builder. Its portfolio reaches from mobile advertising and AI-enabled education to robotics, space technology and the minerals underpinning digital infrastructure. His digital operating experience now aids businesses far removed from advertising.
COLLEGE: B.S., Truman State University
THE TRANSITION: Ilardi joined Adknowledge as chief strategy officer in 2010, became president less than two years later and took the reins when the enterprise evolved into V2 in 2017.
INVESTMENT STYLE: V2 says it partners with founders from initial concept through successive growth stages rather than working within a narrowly prescribed investment window.
WIDE LENS: Portfolio interests include mobile advertising, industrial technology, robotics, space technology and natural resources—lithium, nickel, copper and iron ore.
DIGITAL DNA: His earlier work at Adknowledge centered on mobile advertising, performance marketing, audience development and product development.

Cliff Illig
Principal Owner, Sporting Kansas City

Twenty years after Cliff Illig helped rescue professional soccer in Kansas City, 2026 brought both culmination and transition. The World Cup arrived in a city whose soccer infrastructure he helped build, while the Illig family monetized their Sporting KC investment by selling its majority stake in the team in a transaction valuing the franchise at roughly $700 million.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting and Business Administration, University of Kansas
OWNERSHIP SHIFT: The Illig family sold most of its Sporting KC equity to Creative Planning’s Peter Mallouk, who now owns more than 80 percent. Under the unusual arrangement, the Illigs continue managing the club, with Illig remaining its representative on the MLS Board of Governors.
WORLD STAGE: Illig served as an honorary co-chair of KC2026, bringing the World Cup to a market whose soccer credentials he had spent two decades helping build.
KC HONOR: The Greater Kansas City Chamber named Illig and Kathy Nelson its 2025 Kansas Citians of the Year for their efforts to raise the region’s national profile.
FIRST LEGACY: Long before the soccer investment, Illig and Patterson co-founded Cerner in 1979 and built it into one of Kansas City’s defining technology enterprises.

Roy Jensen
Director, University of Kansas Cancer Center

Few executives have done more to reshape Kansas City’s identity as a destination for advanced medicine. Since taking command in 2004, Jensen has led KU Cancer Center from regional contender to the area’s only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center—and now toward a new model integrating research, treatment and cellular-therapy production.
COLLEGE: B.S., Biology and Chemistry, Pittsburg State University; M.D., Vanderbilt University
NATIONAL STANDING: He led efforts to earn initial NCI designation in 2012 and comprehensive status in 2022, placing KU among fewer than 60 such centers nationwide.
BUILDING MOMENTUM: The new cancer research and clinical building topped out in August and is scheduled for completion in late 2027. It will unite laboratories, patient-care space and cellular-therapy manufacturing.
FEDERAL SUPPORT: A new $36 million federal award will complete all research floors, supplementing $69 million previously secured for the project and the Sunderland Foundation’s $100 million lead gift.

Dana Jermain
Kansas City Managing Partner, Deloitte

Dana Jermain’s third year leading Deloitte’s Kansas City office finds her increasingly focused on something no technology can automate away: building capable teams. An accountant who has spent her career advising public and privately held companies, Jermain says one of her most important leadership pivots was recognizing that solving every problem herself could actually inhibit others’ growth.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting, Northwest Missouri State University
LEADERSHIP PIVOT: “I can’t fix every problem”—and trying to do so can prevent the team from learning and growing.
MEETING RULE: Beware “discussion without decision.” Jermain wants less tactical reporting and more debate and decision-making.
KC OPPORTUNITY: Treat the World Cup as “a starting point, not an endpoint,” converting relationships into investment, jobs and talent.
WORKFORCE: Stronger employer-education connections can help close the gap between required experience and opportunities to acquire it.
DAILY RESET: Her commute marks the transition from mom and wife to executive—and the trip home reverses it.

Dave Johnson
Chairman, Maxus Properties; Founder/Principal, Chicken N Pickle

Dave Johnson’s unlikely second act turned 10 this year. Chicken N Pickle began after a 2015 trip to Phoenix exposed the veteran real estate executive to a little-known paddle sport; the first North Kansas City venue followed in 2016. Today, it has 13 locations nationally—but Johnson is adjusting the growth model rather than blindly chasing the boom he anticipated years before everyone else.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., University of Missouri-Columbia
DECADE OF GROWTH: Chicken N Pickle celebrated its 10th anniversary this summer, having helped create the now-crowded pickleball “eatertainment” category.
ORIGIN STORY: Johnson discovered pickleball while visiting a friend in Phoenix, noticed the courts were constantly busy and returned to Kansas City convinced that the sport could anchor a social experience.
FIRST CAREER: Johnson began at Arthur Andersen before building his real estate career and eventually becoming chairman of Maxus Properties. He’s also in banking, as controlling shareholder of Missouri-based Verimore Bank.
MIZZOU HONOR: The Mizzou Alumni Association recognized Johnson with its Distinguished Alumni Award in 2025.

Jolie Justus
CAO/General Counsel, University Health

The title suggests the breadth of Jolie Justus’ influence at University Health. As General Counsel and CAO she operates across legal affairs, administration and strategy at KC’s essential hospital, applying a résumé that includes law, Missouri Senate and Kansas City Council service. Her focus brings threads together: behavioral health, access and the civic systems that determine whether people get the opportunity to succeed.
COLLEGE: B.S., Communications, Southwest Missouri State University; J.D., University of Missouri–Kansas City School of Law
THE PORTFOLIO: Justus became University Health’s general counsel in 2020 and added Chief Administrative Officer responsibilities in 2025, widening an assignment already positioned at the intersection of law, health care, public policy and community needs.
BEHAVIORAL HEALTH: She points to a broader continuum than a single facility: reopening a drop-in center for people experiencing homelessness, expanding housing and group-home options and growing substance-use-disorder services.
CONNECT KC: Her next major regional priority is mobility. Streetcars, buses and bike lanes are a start, she says, but Kansas City needs “a truly connected regional transportation system that is accessible to everyone.”

Travis Kelce
Tight end, Kansas City Chiefs; entrepreneur

Travis Kelce is considerably more than an All-Pro tight end for the Chiefs; he’s an entrepreneur in his own right, with a national media-and-hospitality brand whose podcasts, apparel and restaurant bets travel farther than the roster. His business ventures—he has a lot of them–also include 1587 Prime, the Downtown steakhouse he co-founded with his partner on the field, Patrick Mahomes.
COLLEGE: B.A., Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Cincinnati
RING OF HONOR: For anyone living on another planet in this solar system, he also cut the bachelor cord with his July marriage to Taylor Swift.
OTHER VENTURES: He’s leveraged his handsome career earnings with the Chiefs (estimated at more than $111 million from the Chiefs alone) into support for a number of brands, including Alpine F1, Cholula, Hydrow, and RealTruck; launched his own clothing brand, Tru Kolors; and co-founded Hilo Nutrition. His New Heights podcast reportedly rivals his career football earnings: a $100 million deal with Amazon’s Wondery.
RECORDS: No tight end in NFL history surpassed 13,000 receiving yards faster than Kelce, who has 15,080 heading into the 2026 season–nearly 8.6 miles’ worth. He holds league records for most career playoff receptions, most consecutive and overall seasons with 1,000 receiving yards as a tight end, among others.

Laura Kelly
Governor of Kansas

Laura Kelly will leave office having presided over a remarkable reset of Kansas’ economic-development profile. Since 2019, the state has attracted more than $25 billion in business investment, capped by Panasonic Energy’s $4 billion De Soto battery plant. But the broader record stretches from advanced manufacturing and semiconductors to animal health and logistics.
COLLEGE: Bradley University; M.S., Indiana University
MEGAPROJECT: She signed the bipartisan APEX incentives program in 2022, giving Kansas the tool that helped land the Panasonic plant, the largest economic-development project in state history.
WINNING STREAK: Kansas earned Area Development’s Gold Shovel Award four consecutive years, an unprecedented run for the state.
TURNAROUND: Kelly entered office in 2019 and restored the Kansas Department of Commerce as a cabinet agency, rebuilding the state’s business-recruitment operation.
BY THE NUMBERS: By late 2024, Kelly’s administration had logged 1,312 successful economic-development projects in 87 of Kansas’ 105 counties, representing more than $20 billion in committed private investment and nearly 70,000 jobs created or retained.

Jonathan Kemper
Chairman Emeritus, Commerce Bank

Jonathan Kemper’s connection to Commerce Bank became entirely honorary in the past year: After leaving day-to-day management in 2018, he retired from the Commerce Bancshares board in September 2025. But retirement from banking has hardly meant retreat from Kansas City. He retains his long-running interests in history, architecture, education and philanthropy.
COLLEGE: A.B., MBA, Harvard University
BANKING LEGACY: Kemper became CEO of Commerce’s Kansas City operation in 1991; assets increased more than tenfold during his leadership before he stepped away from executive duties in 2018.
HISTORY BUFF: His passion for history and architecture earned him admission to I Tatti, Harvard’s Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, a particularly apt post-banking pursuit for a lifelong student of history.
LIBRARY LEGACY: Kemper spent 17 years as president of the Kansas City Public Library board, part of civic service that also has included Pembroke Hill and the Hall Center for the Humanities.

Mariner Kemper
Chairman/CEO, UMB Financial Corp.

After executing the largest acquisition in UMB’s history, Kemper’s challenge has shifted from making the deal to ensuring that a larger enterprise retains the qualities that got it there. His approach is grounded in preparation, disciplined risk-taking and a willingness to choose a different course when circumstances demand it—principles that carry added weight as UMB operates on an expanded geographic and financial scale.
COLLEGE: B.S., Political Science, University of Puget Sound
BE PREPARED: Kemper’s most enduring leadership lesson is straightforward: “Always be prepared and don’t be afraid to chart your own path.” In an environment where each day can produce a different challenge, he says, UMB must take new risks seriously while remaining ready for what comes next.
NEW SCALE: The Heartland Financial acquisition last year expanded UMB from eight to 13 states and added more than 1,000 associates, dramatically increasing the reach of a banking enterprise that remains headquartered in Kansas City.
MORNING ROUTINE: Physical activity gets his brain moving before work. Then comes an intensive sweep of local and global news so he arrives at the office current on events.
LONG VIEW: Kemper’s fascination with history extends beyond banking: He is working his way through a personal goal of reading every presidential biography.

Sandy Kemper
Founder/Chairman/CEO, C2FO

Sandy Kemper can put a huge number against the itch he started scratching nearly 20 years ago: In March, C2FO crossed $500 billion in cumulative working capital funding. More than 1 million businesses in 180-plus countries and territories have used the platform, turning Kemper’s solution to the ancient problem of slow-paying invoices into a globally consequential technology enterprise.
COLLEGE: B.A., American History, Northwestern University
THE MILESTONE: C2FO says that half a trillion dollars was funded with zero credit loss—an important distinction because suppliers are accelerating money already owed to them rather than taking on conventional debt.
GLOBAL PLUMBING: The platform now handles roughly 50 million approved invoices each day, supports 14 languages and offers early-payment options in 48 currencies.
AFRICA: A $30 million investment led by the World Bank Group’s International Finance Corp. is helping C2FO expand in emerging markets, including Nigeria.
THE SPARK: The concept grew from Kemper’s own cash-flow crunch at an earlier startup: A customer agreed to pay a $1 million invoice 30 days early in exchange for a 1 percent discount.

Jim Klausman
CEO/Co-Founder, Midwest Health

Jim Klausman was barely into his 20s when he bet that his fellow Baby Boomers would eventually demand something better than the traditional nursing home. Nearly 50 years later, Midwest Health has made the largest acquisition in its history, adding 15 Kansas assisted-living communities, about 600 apartments and 315 employees, and has more than 100 communities across six states.
COLLEGE: B.A., Political Science, Washburn University
NEW SCALE: Midwest Health now serves roughly 4,000 seniors each day and employs more than 3,800 people across Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Missouri and Illinois.
FAMILY BUSINESS: Senior care was familiar territory long before Midwest Health: Klausman’s grandparents operated a nursing home in Easton, Kan., his parents owned one in Valley Falls, and he worked there while in high school.
THE START: Klausman and Eaton leased their first nursing home in 1977.
BEYOND SENIOR CARE: His holdings extend into real estate, restaurants and golf; he also has a majority interest in GreatLIFE Golf, which owns or manages courses around the country.

Mark Kleeman
President, Safe Haven Security Services

The growth curve has flattened a bit, but only after Mark Kleeman and team had reached a remarkable altitude: Safe Haven remains the nation’s largest authorized ADT dealer, with a national footprint built from North Kansas City. After going from $10 million in revenue in 2012 to nearly $400 million a dozen years later, the story now is sustaining that scale in the home-security market.
2025 REVENUES: $366.27 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 75)
NATIONAL FOOTPRINT: Now with 105 offices in 43 states, it has more than 2,100 employees.
THE CLIMB: Kleeman started the business in 1999 and incorporated it in 2002; revenue reached $10 million by 2012, quintupled by 2015 and crossed $100 million in 2019.
ADT POWER: Safe Haven swept three major honors at the 2024 ADT Dealer Convention—No. 1 Top Dealer, the Sales League Award and Circle of Champions.
FAMILY TIE: Son Dustin joined the enterprise as a project manager after earning his industrial-engineering degree from Mizzou in 2018.
STILL LOCAL: Despite that national operating reach, current state filings continue to place Safe Haven’s principal headquarters at 520 E. 19th Ave. in North Kansas City, with Kleeman listed as president.

Greg Klein
President/CEO, Inland Truck Parts

Inland recently opened its newly constructed Colorado Springs facility—its 33rd company-owned location—and pushed the total number of service bays to 500. Greg Klein says the World Cup showed the best of Kansas City; the follow-through is simple: “Make opening or expanding a business in the KC area as easy as possible. Minimize the red tape.”
COLLEGE: University of South Dakota
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: A southern interstate loop from I-70 near Oak Grove south of Belton to I-35 at Gardner to pull trucks off I-470 and I-435.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Shortage of tradespeople. “Not everyone is best served by attending college. There is an oversupply of college grads and an undersupply of trade-school grads.”
MEETING PET PEEVE: Overuse of PowerPoint—“too full of needless content.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Don’t be afraid to delegate. “Trust your team to get things done.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Professional sports agent.

Randy Klindt
Founding Partner/Co-CEO, Conexon

For years, Randy Klindt made explosive growth look routine: Conexon spent seven straight years among the region’s 10 fastest-growing companies as rural broadband funding and electric-cooperative demand propelled it forward. That leveled off in 2025 after Conexon had built a national platform now helping connect more than 1.8 million fiber subscribers.
2025 REVENUES: $271.31 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 87)
RURAL REACH: Conexon says it has assisted more than 300 electric cooperatives, with 80 deploying fiber networks, and helped clients secure more than $2 billion in federal, state and local support.
STILL BUILDING: Its Connect operation completed its 14th fiber project nationally this year and surpassed 240,000 homes and businesses reached in Georgia alone.
THE PIONEER: Before founding Conexon in 2015, Klindt conceived and led the Co-Mo Connect and OzarksGo deployments, now among the country’s largest electric-cooperative fiber networks.
NEXT FUNDING WAVE: New Louisiana BEAD awards are helping extend fiber toward roughly 60,000 homes and businesses across 20 parishes.

Charlie Koch
President, Bank Midwest

The transaction Charlie Koch was preparing for a year ago is now real: Bank Midwest’s parent, NBH, completed its $377.4 million acquisition of Vista Bank in January, creating a regional banking enterprise with roughly $12.6 billion in pro forma assets. The integration gives Koch’s Kansas City commercial operation considerably broader capabilities and geographic reach.
COLLEGE: B.A., Accounting/Finance, Baker University
2025 REVENUES: $37.1 million
KC FRANCHISE: Bank Midwest currently has an estimated $2.15 billion in Kansas City-market assets and $1.83 billion in deposits, ranking No. 12 among locally active banks.
COMMERCIAL FOCUS: Koch leads the bank’s middle-market team, bringing more than two decades of treasury-management and commercial-banking experience.
THE DEAL: Vista added operations in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Lubbock and Palm Beach, along with $1.9 billion in loans and $2.2 billion in deposits.
THE CLIMB: Koch joined the organization in 2004 in treasury management, later became managing director of treasury and has led commercial banking since 2019.
EARLY RECOGNITION: Ingram’s selected him for its 40 Under Forty class of 2010.

Ann Konecny
President/CEO, Foley Equipment Co.

Ann Konecny continues pushing an 85-year-old family enterprise into new territory—quite literally. Foley Equipment opened its newest Missouri operation at Lake of the Ozarks in April, adding construction-equipment sales and rental capacity in one of the state’s fastest-growing regions. The expansion gives the third-generation CEO 18 locations and more than 1,400 employees.
COLLEGE: B.A., Finance and Economics, Wichita State University
FAMILY LINE: In 1997, Konecny became president of the company her grandfather founded, then helped broaden what had been Foley Tractor into a more diversified equipment enterprise.
POWER PLAY: Foley Power Solutions introduced a new Cat natural-gas and propane generator line this summer for commercial, contractor and property applications.
BROAD PLATFORM: Foley now encompasses equipment sales and service, rental, power generation, truck service, construction technology and railcar movers.
WOMAN-LED: The company is certified as a Women Business Enterprise, with Foley crediting Konecny’s stewardship for building it into one of the region’s largest equipment suppliers.

Alex Kopulos
CEO, Regal Distributing

Seven decades is a considerable run for any family business; Alex Kopulos is making sure Regal Distributing isn’t marking the occasion by standing still. The specialty distributor, founded in 1955, is pairing its anniversary with a new headquarters in Lenexa, another marker of the growth that has extended a Kansas City family enterprise into a national distribution operation. 
COLLEGE: University of Missouri–Columbia, College of Business
70 YEARS: Kopulos calls Regal’s 70th anniversary—and construction of its new Lenexa headquarters—the company’s most significant milestone of the past year.
THINK BIG: What should Kansas City do with its World Cup exposure? Kopulos’s answer is less a project than a mindset: Believe “that it can handle anything.”
NEXT UP: The region’s next priority? Kopulos doesn’t hesitate: an NBA team.
WORK-FORCE PRIORITY: Connect more young people with skilled occupations that artificial intelligence can’t duplicate, creating career paths while addressing employers’ need for talent.
MEETING RULE: Come prepared. Nothing undermines a leadership meeting faster, he says, than participants who haven’t done their “homework.”

Pam Kramer
CEO, KC2026

For Pam Kramer, countdown hit zero in 2026—and Kansas City delivered. The smallest U.S. market hosted six World Cup matches, including a quarterfinal, while operating a regional transportation network, a fan festival and a sprawling public-safety and visitor-support effort. Her real achievement was converting years of committees, plans and promises into execution for a global audience.
COLLEGE: B.A., English/Journalism, Benedictine College
FULL CIRCLE: Kramer worked on Sprint’s sponsorship of the 1994 FIFA World Cup, making this year’s tournament a remarkable return to the event that helped launch her sports-business career.
TRANSPORTATION TEST: ConnectKC26 deployed a regional motorcoach strategy that went beyond FIFA requirements; Kansas City was the first host market to secure bus leases.
SPORTS RESUME: Between Sprint and KC2026 came executive roles with the Chiefs and a stint as transitional CEO helping launch the Kansas City Current.
THE RESULT: The first four group-stage matches alone drew 275,079 spectators, averaging 68,770 per game—above the tournament average.

Lisa Krigsten 
Kansas City Office Managing Partner, Dentons

Lisa Krigsten operates at the intersection of law and civic leadership, managing Dentons’ Kansas City office while coming off a two-year term as Civic Council chair. A former federal prosecutor and senior Justice Department official, she sees Kansas City’s next opportunity in building infrastructure for AI-powered industries—and argues that growth must include housing to sustain the work force.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Kansas; J.D., University of Iowa College of Law
CIVIC VOICE: As Civic Council chair, she pushed “research-driven, strategic leadership” with inclusive prosperity at the center of regional decision-making.
AI OPPORTUNITY: Krigsten says KC has a “once-in-a-generation opportunity” to leverage AI across existing strengths in health care, manufacturing and national security.
WORKFORCE: Affordable housing is fundamental: “A strong economy depends on a workforce that has access to safe, stable, and affordable housing.”
AT JUSTICE: She’s a former federal prosecutor who later served as a Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in Washington.
SECOND ACT: Would be an architect: “Architects do not merely create buildings; they create community.”

Bill Krueger
CEO, The Andersons

A track record building one of the region’s larger entrepreneurial success stories has added new significance as a national leadership story: Bill Krueger helped transform Lansing Trade Group from a $100 million grain merchant into a $5.6 billion enterprise, helped engineer its sale and ultimately rose to lead the acquiring company—an $11 billion North American agribusiness.
COLLEGE: B.S., Agribusiness, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; MBA, Finance, Keller Graduate School of Management
LASTING LEGACY: He joined Lansing Trade Group in 1995, became president in 2003 and CEO in 2005, leading what became one of KC’s five largest private companies.
THE BIG DEAL: The Andersons acquired the remaining 67.5 percent of Lansing for approximately $305 million in a transaction completed in January 2019.
RISE TO THE TOP: After leading trade and processing and serving as COO, Krueger became President/CEO of The Andersons in October 2024.
CURRENT SCALE: The company generated $11.01 billion in 2025 revenue across agribusiness and renewable fuels.

Michael Kulp
President/CEO, KBP Brands

No stranger to growth through acquisitions, Michael Kulp directed KBP’s expansion of its SONIC footprint to 164 locations across eight states with the addition of 78 drive-ins in Ohio, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia—“our second SONIC acquisition in under two years and makes us the fourth-largest franchisee in that system,” he says.
2025 REVENUES: $1.6 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 31)
WORLD CUP: “Kansas City has to make sure business, civic and philanthropic leaders are pulling in the same direction.”
NEXT PROJECT: Continued investment in public transit across a large, spread-out region.
MEETING RULE: Clear goal and agenda; nothing that could be handled asynchronously; no spectators. “Time is one resource you can’t get back.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Never be afraid to seek out people who are smarter—“there are fingerprints of great mentors throughout our business.”

Brad Lager
President/CEO, Herzog Enterprises

His St. Joseph rail specialist was selected as winner of three jobs, each in excess of $1 billion, so yes, it’s been a monster year for Brad Lager and his team. “While we have had jobs of this magnitude, we have never had this many at once.” Lager’s systemic priority for the region: more companies making Kansas City their headquarters after the Cerner loss.
2025 REVENUES: $1.157 billion
WORKFORCE/HQ: “Companies invest in their HQ cities differently than regional or strategic locations.”MEETING PET PEEVE: Excessive phone or laptop use—“not present in the moment and that can be disruptive.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Be patient on big decisions. “Information only gets better… don’t rush the decision.”
ALTERNATE CAREER: “I grew up on a farm, and that is what I still love today. I would be a farmer!”

Gordon Lansford
President/CEO, JE Dunn Construction Co.

Gordon Lansford continued the expansion of JE Dunn, moved into another state this summer with its acquisition of century-old Henry Carlson Construction in South Dakota. The company also launched a power-generation business to capitalize on the electricity demands of data centers, manufacturing and electrification. At this scale, Lansford is still finding new places—and sectors—to build.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting/Business, Baker University
2025 REVENUES: $8.05 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 5)
NEW VERTICAL: Its new Power Generation unit targets rising demand driven by AI/data centers, domestic manufacturing, electrification and an aging generating fleet.
KC BUILD: The hometown portfolio includes projects from CPKC Stadium and KCI’s parking garage to the KU Gateway District and the new American Royal complex.
THE CLIMB: Lansford joined JE Dunn in 1996, served as CFO from 1998 through 2013 and became the first non-Dunn-family CEO in company history.
CIVIC BENCH: His board work has spanned the American Royal, Baker University, Blue KC, Civic Council, Greater Kansas City Chamber, UMB and MRIGlobal. 
SCALE WITH OWNERSHIP: It had 5,400 employee-owners before the Calrson deal.

Jeff Laurendeau
Regional Director, Amazon Logistics

Jeff Laurendeau helps run the logistics network behind one of Kansas City’s biggest industrial transformations. Amazon’s regional footprint has grown from early Lenexa operations into major fulfillment centers in Edgerton and Kansas City, Kan., plus sortation, delivery and air capacity across the metro. The result is millions of square feet of thriving industrial space and thousands of jobs.
COLLEGE: B.A., Criminal Justice, Norwich University
EARLY FOOTPRINT: Amazon already operated in Lenexa when it launched a major Kansas City-area expansion in 2016.
LPKC: Its 800,000-plus-square-foot Edgerton fulfillment center brought roughly 1,000 jobs to Logistics Park Kansas City, reinforcing the emerging intermodal hub.
KCK SCALE: Amazon followed with an 850,000-square-foot robotics fulfillment center in Kansas City, Kan.; by 2018, it employed about 2,000. Fulfillment centers were followed by sortation, last-mile delivery and Amazon Air operations, creating a multi-layered regional distribution network.
STATEWIDE IMPACT: By 2020, Amazon reported more than $2.9 billion invested and 4,500 jobs created in Kansas alone.

Carlos Ledezma
Owner/Pres/CEO, Cable Dahmer Automotive Group

Carlos Ledezma spent years talking about the scale he believed Cable Dahmer could achieve; by 2026, much of that vision was already in the rear-view mirror. The region’s biggest minority-owned enterprise has grown into a $3.7 billion automotive group, and Ledezma—Ingram’s 2026 Executive of the Year—is now aiming beyond nine dealerships toward a network of 15 to 20 stores.
2025 REVENUES: $3.7 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 16)
NEXT GEAR: The late-2025 acquisition of Lawrence Kia brought Cable Dahmer to nine dealerships and moved Ledezma closer to the scale he envisioned decades ago.
FLEET POWER: Fleet sales and national vehicle leasing helped transform the enterprise, while a new 20-stall commercial-service operation adds another revenue stream.
OWNERSHIP: Ledezma remains sole owner rather than relying on outside equity, while creating opportunities for key operators to build ownership stakes of their own.
HUMBLE ROOTS: The Texas native began working on a ranch at age eight and entered automotive sales at 22 because top salesmen got access to a demo car.
LEADERSHIP RULE: “My job is to be the dumbest guy in the room every day of the week. If I’m the smartest guy, I’ve got the wrong people.”

Brian Leitner
Managing Director , Wealth Solutions, Mariner

Brian Leitner helps turn Mariner’s growing footprint into something clients and advisers can actually use. After adding specialized teams, new service capabilities and billions in acquired assets during 2026, Leitner’s strategic growth role increasingly centers on connecting advisers nationwide with a financial services platform that has moved far beyond traditional wealth management.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business/Economics, State University of New York-Oneonta; M.S., Taxation, Fairleigh Dickinson University
THE ROLE: Leitner works across Mariner on strategic growth, helping advisers understand and deploy the firm’s expanding resources, capabilities and initiatives.
2026 EXPANSION: Acquisitions announced this year added teams specializing in entertainment professionals, first responders and multigenerational wealth, along with broader insurance capabilities.
CLIENT CARE: Mariner also added family care and health care navigation support this summer, broadening the definition of what an adviser can help a family manage.
BEFORE MARINER: At UBS, Leitner worked with ultra-high-net-worth clients and oversaw planning for the $2 million to $10 million segment.

Jim Lewis
Chairman/CEO, Security Bank of Kansas City

Jim Lewis has spent more than four decades building Security Bank; now one of his most important leadership acts is preparing it to thrive after him. Scott Coup assumed the presidency in 2025, ending Lewis’ 34-year run in that role, while Lewis remained chairman and CEO. The handoff comes with Security sitting near $3.8 billion in assets and ranking among the region’s largest locally based banks.
2025 REVENUES: $183.53 million
SUCCESSION: Coup’s arrival gives Security something every enduring community bank eventually needs: a deliberate transition rather than an abrupt transfer of leadership.
SCALE: Through year-end, Security had $3.78 billion in assets, $3.13 billion in deposits and $50.2 million in net income.
CREDIT DISCIPLINE: Non-current loans represented just 0.02 percent of lending in that same data set—remarkably clean credit performance.
THE BUILDER: A decade ago, Lewis helped combine seven separately chartered banks into the Security Bank brand, creating the scale the institution enjoys today.
HOME BASE: He’s remained deeply identified with Wyandotte County, including years of support for education, literacy and organizations serving lower-income residents.

Kevin Lewis
President/CEO, Henderson Companies

Four years into Kevin Lewis’ tenure at the top of Henderson, the numbers show that an internal succession plan did not simply produce a caretaker CEO. Since 2022, the employee-owned design and construction enterprise says revenue has increased 55 percent, and its national office count has grown from 12 to 15. This year, EY named Lewis a Heartland Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
COLLEGE: B.S., Mechanical Engineering, Kansas State University; MBA, Bloch School of Management, University of Missouri-Kansas City
2025 REVENUES: $293.69 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 85)
FROM WITHIN: Lewis joined Henderson in 2004 and in 2022 became just the fourth CEO/president in the company’s history.
BUILDING BENCH: Henderson brought in Jon Runyan as president of Henderson Building Solutions last fall, putting day-to-day leadership of that growing construction arm in experienced hands.
NATIONAL REACH: Under Lewis, Henderson has added offices and emphasized aviation, data centers and other technically demanding building sectors.
EMPLOYEE OWNERS: The parent remains 100 percent employee-owned.

Matt Linski
Kansas City President, Bank of America

Having risen from banking intern to market president in roughly 15 years, Linski now connects one of the world’s largest financial institutions with Kansas City’s businesses and civic priorities. This year, that meant translating the global World Cup sponsorship of a national mega-bank into a distinctly local experience for the smallest market serving as a host city for those matches.
COLLEGE: B.A., Accounting and Finance, Missouri State University
THE WORLD CUP WIN: Linski points to the bank’s host-city activation and its highly popular Fan Bands, which helped capture “the emotion of sports and community.”
KEEP IT GOING: “Simple, just talk about it. Learn from the good and understand opportunities. Keeping the atmosphere alive is key.”
LEADERSHIP ADVICE: Remain “flexible and excited about new challenges” while embracing difficult conversations.
BEST CONNECTION: For consequential strategy, he prefers “in person—face to face—nothing beats that energy and vibe.” The question he asks himself each day: “How can I help my team today?”
ALTERNATE CAREER? Politics or event planning.

Ronald Lockton
Chairman/CEO, Lockton Companies

Ron Lockton is the second-generation steward of a Kansas City company that has become a global insurance and benefits power. Nearly 60 years after his father, Jack, founded the firm, Lockton now has a reach that extends to more than 150 offices worldwide. Now, a new global headquarters coming in Leawood signals that its hometown remains central to the next generation of growth.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $4.08 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank 13)
PEOPLE: Lockton has more than 13,100 associates worldwide, roughly 1,845 of whom are based in Kansas City.
SECOND GENERATION: He joined the family business in 1990, became president and CEO in 2017 and chairman in 2020.
INDEPENDENCE: Family ownership allows Lockton to reinvest earnings and operate without the quarterly pressures that publicly traded competitors face.
KC COMMITMENT: That new 12-story, roughly 450,000-square-foot Leawood global headquarters will accommodate continued growth, with a second phase planned.

Angie Long
Founder/Co-Owner, Kansas City Current; CIO, Palmer Square Capital Management

Angie Long’s original wager on women’s professional soccer has paid off. With CPKC Stadium selling out and the Current established as one of the NWSL’s most valuable franchises, the next move is expansion: Plans unveiled this summer call for adding roughly 6,500 seats to anchor a larger riverfront sports-and-entertainment district.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics, Princeton University
BIGGER HOUSE: Proposed expansion would take CPKC Stadium from roughly 11,500 seats to about 18,000, a striking second act only two years after opening.
PLAYER FIRST: Long’s thesis from the beginning was that women athletes deserved facilities designed around them rather than borrowed from men’s teams. The stadium followed the Current’s purpose-built training complex.
WORLD CUP CIRCLE: After helping KC2026 secure and stage the men’s World Cup, Long watched the tournament unfold in a city whose soccer profile she helped transform.
ATHLETE ROOTS: A Kansas City native and former soccer goalkeeper, she became a two-time national rugby champion and All-American at Princeton.
DAY JOB: She remains CIO and a principal owner of Palmer Square.

Chris Long
Chairman/CEO, Palmer Square Capital Management; Co-Owner, Kansas City Current

The newest development around Chris Long may eventually prove more consequential than anything Palmer Square has done since he founded it after the financial crisis. Bloomberg reported this month that the $37 billion credit manager has hired advisers and is exploring a possible sale, with potential buyers being narrowed.
COLLEGE: A.B., Economics, Princeton University; MBA, Harvard Business School
SCALE: Palmer Square reported more than $37.1 billion under management as of July, up from a business Long launched in 2009 to exploit opportunities created by the credit-market collapse.
CLO POWER: Its collateralized-loan-obligation platform accounts for roughly $27 billion of that total, according to S&P Global data cited in reporting on the possible sale.
RIVERFRONT BET: Away from finance, he and Angie are turning the Current’s stadium investment into Current Landing, a mixed-use waterfront neighborhood combining residences, restaurants, entertainment and public gathering space.
BIGGER VISION: City approval this summer advanced a broader $1.4 billion riverfront development and stadium-expansion plan.

Greg Maday
Chairman & CEO, SpecChem

Serial entrepreneur Greg Maday has spent nearly four decades turning relationships into businesses—and businesses into platforms for still more ventures. Chairman and CEO of 20-year-old SpecChem, he also co-founded Rock Island Capital, helped buy the Kansas City Wizards and transform them into Sporting KC, and is behind Homefield and BHM’s ambitious development portfolio.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., University of Missouri-Columbia, 1986
SERIAL BUILDER: Ventures include SpecChem, Rock Island Capital, Sporting KC, Homefield and BHM; Rock Island has deployed $320 million in private equity capital.
SPORTING BET: Joined five partners in buying the Kansas City Wizards from Lamar Hunt in 2006, helping set in motion the transformation into Sporting KC.
LEADERSHIP: After a boss gave him Winning Through Intimidation, “I quit a month later.” His takeaway: “Smart, hard work trumps intimidation every time.” 
KC NEXT: Backs Luminary Park over I-670 for its potential “creation of community.”
SECOND ACT: “I would write lyrics for country songs if I could make a living doing so.”

Mike Maddox 
Dir., CVB Financial Corp. and Citizens Business Bank; Former Pres/CEO, CrossFirst Bankshares

After leading CrossFirst Bank through years of multistate expansion, a public stock offering and its $900 million-plus combination with First Busey, Mike Maddox took things in a new direction this year. He has moved into a board-level role with California-based CVB Financial and Citizens Business Bank.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business, University of Kansas; J.D., University of Kansas
HIS NEXT ACT: He joined the boards of CVB Financial and Citizens Business Bank effective July 22, 2026.
CROSSFIRST TENURE: He became CrossFirst Bank CEO in 2008 and president/CEO of CrossFirst Bankshares in 2020, eventually taking it public.
TRANSACTION: CrossFirst combined with First Busey and Busey Bank in March 2025, creating a banking organization initially projected at approximately $20 billion in assets.
BUSEY CHAPTER: Maddox served as president and vice chairman of First Busey and president/CEO of Busey Bank from March 2025 until January.
KC CONNECTION: Before CrossFirst, he managed Intrust Bank’s operations in northeast Kansas and remains a 2004 member of Ingram’s 40 Under Forty.

Patrick Mahomes
Quarterback, Kansas City Chiefs

Three Super Bowl rings made Patrick Mahomes Kansas City’s most recognizable global ambassador, but his impact increasingly extends beyond football. He has planted deep roots here through restaurants, franchises, philanthropy and ownership stakes in three local professional sports franchises. He’s turned athletic stardom into an increasingly diversified Kansas City business presence.
COLLEGE: Texas Tech University
ROOTS: Mahomes and wife Brittany have built their family home at Loch Lloyd, where they are raising three children: Sterling, Bronze and Golden.
HOME-TEAM INVESTOR: He’s a part-owner of the Royals, Sporting KC and Kansas City Current; he became the first active NFL player with an equity stake in an NWSL club.
POWER COUPLE: Brittany was a founding member of the Current ownership group and has emerged as a prominent force behind the franchise.
BUSINESS: He’s an investor in 1587 Prime with Travis Kelce and a partner in KMO Burger, the Whataburger franchise group expanding across the region.
GIVING: His 15 and the Mahomies Foundation has awarded 175-plus grants and more than $4 million.

Peter Mallouk
President/CEO, Creative Planning

Peter Mallouk cites expansion of specialist teams as the biggest recent achievement at one of the nation’s largest independent wealth managers, and the biggest in Kansas City: “The financial world has become so complex and we are constantly working to stay ahead of what our clients will need,” says Mallouk, who built a wealth management behemoth out of the boutique investment firm he acquired in 2006.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Kansas; MBA, J.D., University of Kansas
ASSETS: More than $700 billion combined AUM/AUA. Acquisitions in recent years have both expanded the Overland Park firm’s national footprint, and rocketed it to the top of the region’s wealth management firms as measured by assets controlled.
MEETING DISCIPLINE: Ask whether a meeting is necessary at all, then keep it short and limit it to those who must be there.
DAILY QUESTIONS: “What more can be doing for our clients? What else can we do to make this the best place to work?”
SPORTS FAN AT HEART: In addition to joining the Royals ownership group under John Sherman, Mallouk has purchased a significant share of Sporting Kansas City from co-founder Cliff Illig and owns more than 80% of the franchise.

Matt Malott
President/CEO, MULTIVAC US

Matt Malott has spent nearly four decades learning MULTIVAC from the inside—an unusually deep operating background for the man running the U.S. arm of a global packaging-technology company. From its Kansas City headquarters, MULTIVAC supplies integrated systems spanning processing, packaging, labeling, inspection and handling, with regional centers from California to the East Coast. 
COLLEGE: Park University
THE CLIMB: Malott joined MULTIVAC in 1988 and worked in package design, manufacturing, sales, marketing and senior leadership before becoming president/CEO in 2018.
KC ANCHOR: The company’s U.S. headquarters and Central Region Customer Support Center remain in Kansas City, complemented by regional centers in Illinois, California, New Jersey and North Carolina.
THE PLATFORM: MULTIVAC’s systems extend well beyond packaging machinery into processing, portioning, labeling, marking, inspection and material handling.
HOMEGROWN: Malott is a Kansas City native who raised three daughters here with his wife, Vicki.

Korb Maxwell
Capital Solutions Chair, Polsinelli PC

Few Kansas City lawyers operate closer to the intersection of business investment, development and public policy than Korb Maxwell, Polsinelli’s Capital Solutions chair. That vantage point informs both his work and his regional outlook: Remove barriers, welcome investment and execute. Inside a firm that has crossed $1 billion in revenue, he applies the same urgency to attracting talent, serving clients and sustaining growth.
COLLEGE: B.A., University of Kansas; J.D., University of Texas
MOVING ON UP: With Maxwell’s contributions, the firm is knocking on the door of the Am Law 50 by revenues. That momentum, he says, helps the firm recruit leading attorneys and compete for top-tier clients nationally.
REGION OF YES: World Cup exposure must now become investment; he wants Kansas City to make it easier to build and grow here, embrace data centers and resist the development barriers emerging in other major markets.
SETTING THE STANDARD: Reject the “lifestyle firm” mentality, he says. Hire exceptional people, establish demanding expectations and keep the focus on meaningful work, excellence and elite client service.
SAY IT CLEARLY: Whether the medium is written or face-to-face, he favors extremely direct communication. Leaders owe their clients, teams and organizations clarity.

Kirk McCarty
President/CEO, Research Medical Center

Kirk McCarty returned to Research Medical Center as chief executive in 2024, bringing his career back to the institution where he spent 12 formative years in nursing and hospital leadership. He now directs a 590-bed tertiary hospital whose trauma, stroke, cardiovascular, neuroscience, oncology and transplant capabilities place it among the region’s most consequential centers for complex care.
COLLEGE: B.S.N., Truman State University; M.S.N., Research College of Nursing
2025 REVENUES: $5.07 billion
MILESTONE YEAR: “This year, Research Medical Center marks 140 years of caring for the Kansas City community,” McCarty says, connecting a lengthy institutional history with investments intended to extend its influence.
TRAINING INVESTMENT: Research opened the new Research College of Nursing and HCA Healthcare Center for Clinical Advancement, a state-of-the-art facility for educating and training the next generation of health-care professionals.
NEXT-DOOR PIPELINE: Locating that facility beside the hospital expands hands-on learning opportunities, allowing students and working clinicians to connect instruction, simulation and patient-care environments more directly.

John McCarthy
Owner, McCarthy Auto Group

John McCarthy built a single dealership into one of the Midwest’s larger family-owned automotive groups. Today, nine McCarthy rooftops stretch from Johnson County and eastern Jackson County to Lawrence, Topeka and Sedalia, representing six major brands. Behind those lots is a sizable regional employer with a huge array of sales, service, collision and finance operations.
ROOTS: He’s the son of a police officer and stay-at-home mother; attended Kansas State University, where he played football and initially hoped to continue in the sport.
FIRST SALE: Followed his wife to Tucson after college and entered the automobile business selling Cadillacs and Oldsmobiles.
ENTREPRENEUR: Returned to Kansas City and earned his first dealership ownership opportunity after being recruited to turn around a struggling Chevrolet store.
FAMILY BUSINESS: Son Ryan joined the company in 2000 and became a co-owner, extending McCarthy Auto Group into a second generation.
PEOPLE: The company has reported a workforce of more than 750 serving more than 200,000 customers.
GIVING: McCarthy formalized decades of community support by establishing the McCarthy Family Foundation in 2017.

Kenneth McClain
Partner, Humphrey Farrington & McClain

Few area trial lawyers can match Ken McClain’s impact—local, statewide or even nationally—on complicated litigation cases. His courtroom record and effective leadership in mass-tort and product-liability matters have built a national reputation in personal-injury and complex litigation, including cases involving toxic exposure, defective products and catastrophic injury.
COLLEGE: B.A., Graceland College; J.D., University of Michigan
CIVIC CHAMP: He’s also worked with his wife, Cindy, to infuse Independence Square with millions of development dollars, creating a dining/shopping magnet there.
GROUNDBREAKING WORK: He helped secure major verdicts for microwave-popcorn plant workers exposed to butter-flavoring chemicals, litigation that drew national attention to occupational risks associated with diacetyl.
THE FIRM’s IMPACT: Humphrey, Farrington & McClain reports more than $1.5 billion in verdicts and settlements for clients, reflecting both the stakes and geographic reach of its work. The firm continues to pursue large, complex cases, including litigation challenging Jackson County’s 2023 property tax assessment process on behalf of a certified class of homeowners.

Laura McConnell Perin
Chairman/CEO, Labconco Corp.

Laura McConnell Perin took Labconco into its second century with an unusual combination of continuity and reinvention. The Kansas City manufacturer celebrated 100 years in 2025, but its current agenda is decidedly forward-looking: smarter biosafety systems, lower-energy laboratory equipment and products serving fields from biotechnology to battery-materials research. 
COLLEGE: B.S., Biology; B.A., Dance, Denison University
CENTURY MARK: Founded in a Kansas City garage in 1925, Labconco now supplies laboratory equipment used in more than 130 countries.
NEXT CENTURY:  “With investments in sustainable design, cutting-edge technologies and global collaborations, we are setting the stage for labs of the future,” Perin said during the centennial.
BIOSAFETY: Labconco marked 50 years in biosafety-cabinet manufacturing in 2026 with its new Prism system, following a 2025 redesign of its Logic platform.
MADE HERE: Labconco designs, fabricates and assembles its products in the United States; its equipment is manufactured in Kansas City and Fort Scott.

Madeleine McDonough
Chair, Shook, Hardy & Bacon LLP

Madeleine McDonough’s second term as Shook’s chair is producing some of the strongest financial results in the firm’s history. Revenue surged 28.4 percent in 2025 to $643.4 million as the Kansas City-headquartered litigation firm expanded the national platform she has helped build to 18 offices and roughly 600 lawyers, growth that has defined her tenure. 
COLLEGE: B.S., University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Pharmacy; J.D., University of Kansas School of Law; LL.M., Georgetown University Law Center
2025 REVENUES: $643.40 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 55)
THE NUMBERS: Shook says its five-year compound annual revenue growth has exceeded 12 percent, while profits per equity partner have grown at a 22.2 percent compound rate.
NATIONAL BUILD: During McDonough’s chairmanship, Shook has expanded into markets including Atlanta, Boston, Hartford, Los Angeles, New York and St. Louis.
FIRST CAREER: Before becoming a lawyer, McDonough worked as a clinical pharmacist, experience that still informs her work with pharmaceutical, medical-device and other life-sciences clients.

Marc McEver
Dealer Principal, Olathe Ford Lincoln

Marc McEver extended Olathe Ford Lincoln’s extraordinary growth with another record of scale: 2025 revenue was up 8.5 percent after the dealership had already expanded nearly threefold from 2021 through 2024. Much of that growth reflects a commercial and fleet operation McEver helped create—one that has transformed a hometown dealership into a national vehicle-sourcing power.
2025 REVENUES: $1.6 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 31)
THE CLIMB: McEver started at Olathe Ford in the detail department, moved into sales and ultimately created its commercial and fleet operations.
OWNER’S PATH: He and longtime colleague Sam Mansker bought the dealership in 2003.
FLEET MACHINE: Olathe says it now sells approximately 25,000 vehicles annually, with Fleet, Commercial and FleetPool USA among the businesses added as the enterprise expanded.
BEYOND FORD: A 2026 public procurement filing says the fleet operation can source 12 major OEM brands directly and reach still more through its partner network—evidence of how far the business has moved beyond the conventional dealership model.
FORD HONORS: Olathe Ford has made Ford’s Top 100 Club 25 times, won the Triple Crown and collected 20 President’s Awards.

Mike McKeen
President/CEO, EPC Real Estate Group

EPC matured from a multi-family residential development company into a broader organization with an acquisitions and hospitality platform. “We have delivered some very significant projects,” says Mike McKeen, “but what I’m most proud of is that the company is increasingly capable of doing those things without everything running through one or two people.”
COLLEGE: B.S., Construction Engineering Technology, University of Toledo
WORLD CUP: Follow-up. Exposure doesn’t create growth; stay in front of the companies and investors who saw the city.
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Regional transportation connecting KCI, Downtown, entertainment districts and employment centers on both sides of the state line.
WORKFORCE/REGION: Less Kansas-vs.-Missouri fragmentation; stronger education, public safety and public-dollar priorities in the urban core.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Being involved in everything is not the same as leading. “If the leader becomes the bottleneck, the organization can only grow as fast as that one person.”

Ryan McMonagle
CEO, Custom Truck One Source

Ryan McMonagle took the baton as CEO of Custom Truck One Source from founder Fred Ross with a mandate bigger than preserving what Ross had built. The Kansas City specialty-equipment company now operates more than 40 locations across North America, and its next move brings the growth story back home: a planned $42 million manufacturing expansion in Kansas City expected to create more than 200 jobs. 
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Finance, Southern Methodist University; MBA, Harvard Business School
THE CLIMB: McMonagle joined the enterprise as CFO, became COO and succeeded Ross as CEO in 2023. Earlier roles included CFO/chief development officer at Smashburger and consulting at Bain & Co.
PUBLIC PLATFORM: The 2021 combination with Nesco Holdings took Custom Truck public, transforming the Ross family enterprise into a NYSE-listed company while retaining Kansas City as its operating center.
INFRASTRUCTURE PLAY: Custom Truck supplies specialty equipment to electric utilities, telecom, rail, forestry, waste-management and other infrastructure markets—placing it squarely in the investment cycle around grid modernization.

Kirsty Melville
President/CEO, Andrews McMeel Universal

Andrews McMeel Universal recently acquired Quirk Books, whose “irreference” titles—the Worst-Case Scenario series and other pop-culture mainstays—sit beside the comics and humor list for one of the nation’s premier content creators. Melville wants the region to keep the World Cup’s hospitality standard as a lasting vision, not a one-month performance.
COLLEGE: B.A., Political Science and French, University of Western Australia
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Streetcar and mass-transit expansion after World Cup buses and the Main Street line proved demand.
WORKFORCE/REGION: More common-interest work between Kansas City, Mo., and Kansas City, Kan., instead of two competitive cities.
MEETING PET PEEVE: People who don’t close the loop to confirm a task is done.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “You learn more from trying new things than from playing it safe.”
ALTERNATE CAREER: International diplomacy or aid—or running a language and culinary program in Italy.

Michael Merriman
Chairman/Pres/CEO, Financial Holding Corp.

Michael Merriman’s FHC is the privately held parent of a far-reaching financial-services enterprise anchored by Americo Life. Its extensive interests span life insurance and annuities, commercial insurance premium financing through IPFS, investments and real estate. Holdings include prominent Downtown properties, reflecting a local footprint extending well beyond financial services.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business Administration, Southern Methodist University
CORE ENTERPRISE: FHC controls Americo Life, a family of insurance companies that includes Americo Financial Life & Annuity, Great Southern Life, United Fidelity Life and National Farmers Union Life.
REAL ESTATE FOOTPRINT: Merriman/FHC interests have invested extensively in real estate, including the 18-story, 260,000-square-foot 1400 Baltimore tower Downtown, now the headquarters of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City.
LATEST MOVE: Americo expanded in 2025 with its acquisition of Kansas City-based Ozark National Life and N.I.S. Financial Services.
FINANCIAL REACH: IPFS is commercial premium-finance operation that financed more than 850,000 loans and $17 billion in U.S. volume in 2025.

Trey Meyer
President, Midway Truck Center

Midway won its 26th consecutive Ford President’s Award (29th overall), ninth-most in the country. Ford’s survey found that 97 percent of customers were completely satisfied and willing to recommend the employee-owned dealership for sales, parts and service. The company was an early adopter of the employee-ownership model, and has thrived under it.
COLLEGE: Computer science, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $951.5 million (Ingram’s 100 rank 45)
MEETING PET PEEVE: Items not followed through since the last meeting. “It is inefficient to start over.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Leave the woodpile higher than you found it—a David Stanley line from an early-1990s Ingram’s luncheon that became culture.
COMMUNICATION: Multiple face-to-face and group discussions plus written follow-up.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Engineering, electronics and robotics—still his hobbies after a career far from the computer-science major.

Bill Miller
Chairman/CEO, WellSky

Bill Miller’s nearly decade-long remaking of WellSky has entered its AI phase. After overseeing more than 14 acquisitions and building the Overland Park company into a health-technology platform serving more than 20,000 client sites, Miller is now pushing WellSky toward an AI-first architecture designed to connect care that has historically been divided among hospitals, post-acute providers and community organizations. 
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics; Master of Urban Planning and Public Policy, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $850 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 47)
THE BUILD: Miller joined WellSky in 2017 after serving as CEO of OptumInsight; earlier, at Cerner, he led managed services, outsourcing and technology services globally.
AI TURN: An expanded Google Cloud partnership integrates Gemini models and federated learning into a unified AI-first platform spanning WellSky’s network.
IN PRACTICE: In 2026, WellSky expanded its SkySense AI capabilities into long-term care and skilled-nursing settings, embedding AI into clinical workflows rather than offering it as a stand-alone application.

Bruce Miller
Global Chairman/CEO, Populous

A World Cup year offered Bruce Miller a particularly vivid demonstration of the reach of the Kansas City firm he leads: Populous-designed venues and event work were visible across North America as soccer’s biggest tournament arrived. Back home, another generational project is beginning. The Chiefs selected Populous to design their new Olathe headquarters and practice facility.
COLLEGE: B.S., Architecture, University of Cincinnati
2025 REVENUES: $552.40 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 59)
THE CLIMB: Recruited shortly after college, Miller has spent nearly his entire 35-year architectural career at Populous.
DESIGN PORTFOLIO: Miller’s own work includes Target Field in Minneapolis, Allianz Field in St. Paul and GEODIS Park in Nashville.
2026 HONOR: Miller and firm co-founder Earl Santee were jointly named EY Entrepreneur Of The Year Heartland Award winners this year.
HOMETOWN ASSIGNMENT: Populous will do more than design the Chiefs’ football facility in Olathe; it is also responsible for master planning the surrounding mixed-use development.

Jonathan Mize
CEO, Blish-Mize Co.

As fifth-generation leader of one of the nation’s oldest wholesale hardware distributors, Mize oversees an Atchison-based enterprise supplying more than 50,000 products to 1,400-plus independent retailers across 13 states. When it comes to big achievements over the past year, few can match his company: “Celebrating our 155th year in business,” he says.
COLLEGE: University of Kansas
CORPORATE ENDURANCE: Founded in 1871, Blish-Mize remains family-owned and operates a 500,000-square-foot distribution center.
WORLD CUP LEGACY: “Be welcoming. Good, Midwestern hospitality.”
NEXT CIVIC GOAL: He’d like continued expansion of Kansas City’s streetcar system.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “Be willing to change,” Mize says. For critical strategy, he favors direct, face-to-face conversations.
MEETING ANNOYANCE: “Cell phones ringing!”
MORNING FIRST: “Coffee.”
ALTERNATE CAREER? “Radio.”

Carlos Morales
Production Manager, Goodyear Topeka

Carlos Morales oversees an industrial presence that has been part of Topeka for more than 80 years. Goodyear’s sprawling manufacturing plant produces commercial tires for a global company that operates 49 manufacturing facilities worldwide, but its local significance is just as pronounced: With roughly 1,600 associates, it is one of the capital city’s most important manufacturing employers.
MADE IN TOPEKA: Goodyear identifies Topeka as its U.S. manufacturing location for commercial tires, supplying products for the trucking and other heavy-duty markets.
LONG RUN: The plant produced its first Goodyear tire in 1945, giving the operation more than eight decades of manufacturing history in Kansas.
INVESTING HERE: Goodyear committed $125 million to modernize the plant, an investment Kansas officials projected would create 40 jobs and generate $480 million in local economic impact over 10 years.
SPECIALTY WORK: The plant produces highly engineered commercial and off-the-road tires, including massive tires developed for heavy-equipment applications.
WORK-FORCE IMPACT: Goodyear recruits locally for engineering, industrial maintenance, skilled trades, environmental management and production leadership.

Todd Muenstermann
President/CEO, Durvet

Todd Muenstermann runs one of Kansas City’s more unusual high-output enterprises: Blue Springs-based Durvet generated $364.2 million in 2025 revenue with just 83 employees. The explanation lies in the business model Muenstermann has spent years refining—a central animal-health platform that connects manufacturers with 23 independent distributor shareholders whose own annual sales reach into the billions.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., Central Missouri State University
2025 REVENUES: $364.21 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 77)
THE CLIMB: Formerly Durvet’s CFO, Muenstermann moved through sales and marketing leadership before succeeding longtime President Bob Hormann in 2015.
THE MODEL: Durvet began in 1970 with 13 distributor-owners whose combined sales totaled $20 million; today it has 23 independent distributor shareholders selling billions annually.
MARKET REACH: The product mix has expanded from livestock health into equine and companion-animal lines, giving the company exposure to both agricultural and consumer pet spending.

Allison Murdock
Managing Partner, Stinson LLP

Allison Murdock has gone from Stinson summer associate and trial lawyer to architect of the firm’s national expansion. Managing partner since 2021 after 11 years as deputy, she led Stinson into California in 2025, ultimately establishing three offices there. Her management evolution has been equally significant: from winning cases herself to creating the conditions for others to succeed.
2025 REVENUES: $352.3 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 78). 
LEADERSHIP PIVOT: She learned to move from “doing to empowering”—trusting talented people rather than trying to control outcomes herself.
STAY PRESENT: She dislikes multitasking in virtual meetings and believes leaders must travel among offices to remain visible, accessible and genuinely connected.
KC PRIORITY: Murdock wants the region to turn its World Cup transportation planning into a permanent regional transportation system.
INNOVATION: She led Stinson’s 2026 firmwide adoption of Harvey generative AI after a pilot involving more than 100 attorneys.
SECOND ACT: She’d be a teacher, drawn to developing people, simplifying complex problems and seeing “a breakthrough moment.”

Timothy Murphy
Executive Chairman, Murphy-Hoffman Co.

Over more than four decades with Murphy-Hoffman Company, Tim Murphy helped turn a regional truck dealership into one of the country’s largest privately held commercial-vehicle networks. As executive chairman, his influence remains embedded in an enterprise serving the trucking fleets and owner-operators that keep an enormous share of the American economy moving.
COLLEGE: B.A., Creighton University; MBA, Rockhurst University
GROWTH STORY: He joined MHC in 1981 and became CEO in 1989, leading extended expansion in dealerships, leasing operations, service capacity and geographic reach.
NATIONAL FOOTPRINT: From its Kansas City base, MHC has grown to more than 100 locations, giving the region a significant headquarters presence in the national heavy- and medium-duty trucking industry.
FULL-CYCLE BUSINESS: Its operations extend beyond truck sales to parts, maintenance, leasing, rental and financial services.
ECONOMIC BAROMETER: Truck demand and fleet investment respond quickly to freight volumes, interest rates, fuel prices and business confidence, placing MHC near the intersection of transportation and the broader economy.

Kyle Myers
Regional President, PNC BAnk

Kyle Myers provides the local leadership for one of the nation’s largest diversified financial services companies, connecting Kansas City enterprises with PNC’s extensive lending, treasury, capital markets and wealth management capabilities. His dual grounding in the local business community and corporate banking makes him an important bridge between regional decision-makers and a major national financial platform.
COLLEGE: University of Missouri–Kansas City
KC DEPOSITS: $279.27 million
MARKET LEADERSHIP: Myers was named Kansas City regional president in 2021 after leading PNC’s corporate-banking activity here, extending a local banking career that now spans more than two decades.
TWO-LEVEL ROLE: His responsibilities combine civic-facing market leadership with the practical work of serving companies whose financing and treasury needs may reach well beyond Kansas City.
NATIONAL RESOURCES: PNC’s scale gives local clients access to specialized expertise in areas ranging from capital markets and equipment finance to international banking, risk management and succession planning.

Kathy Nelson
President/CEO, Greater KC Sports Commission & Foundation and Visit KC

Kathy Nelson and her team made a big, bold statement with its leadership World Cup host-city efforts, and now moves on to the more consequential question of what comes next. After helping direct the biggest international sporting event in this city’s history, she now has a newly elevated global profile from which to pursue the next generation of visitors, events and economic impact.
COLLEGE: B.A., Mass Communications, Truman State University
DOUBLE DUTY: Nelson has led the Sports Commission since 2011 and added Visit KC leadership to her responsibilities in 2022, becoming the first person to serve as CEO of both organizations concurrently.
WORLD STAGE: The World Cup completed an extraordinary run of major-event recruitment that also included hosting the 2023 NFL Draft.
WHAT’S NEXT: The post-World Cup inquiries started arriving almost immediately, including interest from international event organizers who had watched Kansas City perform on the global stage.
DOUBLE WIN: Sports ETA named the KC Sports Commission its 2026 Large Market Sports Commission of the Year.

Joe Neuberger
President/CEO, Kornitzer Capital Management

Joe Neuberger’s leadership is less about putting his imprint on the firm’s name than preserving an investment culture built over decades. The Mission-based adviser remains the manager behind the Buffalo Funds, and its scale is evident in regulatory filings: Kornitzer Capital reported nearly $4.8 billion in publicly traded securities alone at midyear 2026, spread across 548 positions.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Accounting, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
DEEP BENCH: Before KCM, he spent 28 years with U.S. Bank Global Fund Services, including six as president; earlier, he worked a decade at Arthur Andersen.
BUFFALO HERD: KCM continues as investment adviser to the Buffalo Funds, whose lineup spans blue-chip, early-stage, mid-cap, small-cap, international, high-yield and allocation strategies.
ACTIVE MANAGER: Its June SEC filing reported 548 publicly traded positions valued at approximately $4.79 billion—evidence of operating scale, without conflating 13F holdings with total assets under management.
ACCOUNTANT’S EYE: Neuberger is a CPA, an interesting foundation for a CEO whose organization makes its living evaluating businesses and allocating capital.

Rex Newcomer
CEO, D.H. Pace Co.

Rex Newcomer once told us that the best business decision he ever made at D.H. Pace was “not to sell the business.” The wisdom of that patience is clearly evident: In 2026, the family enterprise celebrated its 100th anniversary. Over Newcomer’s long tenure, the Olathe-based door, dock and security specialist has expanded through acquisitions and new markets into a national organization.
COLLEGE: University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $1.15 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 43)
CENTURY MARK: D.H. Pace celebrated its 100th anniversary this year, tracing its roots to the early Overhead Door distributorship business.
LONG VIEW: Another lesson from his earlier I-250 appearances: “The power of patient persistence.”
WORK FORCE: He’d strengthen science education while building a stronger support network for start-ups.
MEETING RULE: Poor data—or poor understanding of what the data actually means.
LEADERSHIP: “Be decisive” about resolving festering problems rather than allowing them to linger.

Michael Norsworthy
CEO, Kellan Restaurant Management

Michael Norsworthy isn’t merely changing the sign over the door at his family’s restaurant company. Five Four Restaurant & Drafthouse is becoming KRM’s growth ticket, with new stores opening across Texas and two more slated here this winter. The format layers pickleball, golf simulators, patios and other entertainment onto the scratch-kitchen model more than 35 years in the making.
FAMILY AFFAIR: Norsworthy helped father Tom build the business around the original 54th Street concept, founded in 1989; it remains family-owned.
NEXT CONCEPT: Five Four represents the newest version of the brand, with more contemporary design and, at selected sites, pickleball, golf simulators, yard games and expanded outdoor space.
KC BUILD: New Five Four locations are scheduled for Lenexa and Lee’s Summit this winter, with another Kansas City-area unit planned for summer 2027.
TEXAS-SIZED: The chain now stretches through Kansas City and St. Louis plus the San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin markets.
THE CONSTANT: KRM retains the operating proposition that built the company: scratch-made food, handcrafted drinks and approachable pricing.

Tyler Nottberg
CEO, U.S. Engineering Holdings

For Tyler Nottberg and team, it’s been an eventful year as U.S. Engineering doubled manufacturing capacity at Metalworks in Lawrence to 300,000 square feet and matched that expansion in Johnstown, Colo., while holding an Experience Modification Rate of 0.37. Growth in data centers, manufacturing, labs and hospitals funded the reinvestment.
2025 REVENUES: $784.7 million (Ingram’s 100 rank No. 50)
WORLD CUP: Leverage infrastructure and reputation for big events to attract talent and commit to workforce development that reaches families.
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Power grid capacity and reliability, water and sewer systems, and a stronger pipeline of skilled trades.
WORK-FORCE FIX: Reduce the stigma around the skilled trades; the Western States College of Construction model shows the path.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “Good culture is everything. Good strategy relies on good culture to take effective action.”

Tom O’Grady
President, HNTB

Locally, HNTB is “thrilled at being selected as the Architect of Record for the new Kansas City Chiefs stadium,” beams Tom O’Grady, who leads the headquarters operation. Meanwhile, his top post-World Cup priority is dealing with the homelessness challenges felt daily Downtown, and the next big capital project he favors is the Roy Blunt Luminary Park in the Crossroads.
2025 REVENUES: $2.334 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank No. 24)
MEETING PET PEEVE: Too many electronic distractions—“we have gotten better with clear expectations.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Act in the best interest of HNTB, not necessarily what is best for himself or his group.
COMMUNICATION: All media—face-to-face, town halls, written—to a variety of audiences.
ALTERNATE CAREER: Golf course design.

John Owen
CEO, Airshare

The deal that transformed Airshare in 2023 is now showing its flex: The Wheels Up’s aircraft-management deal more than doubled the company; rather than chase growth indiscriminately afterward, John Owen has spent focused on integrating that scale and broadening a national private-aviation platform, even as Owen says rapid expansion wasn’t the objective.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business Administration–Information Systems; M.A., Accounting, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $378.02 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 73)
THE LEAP: Acquiring Wheels Up’s management operation in 2023 more than doubled Airshare’s size and added more than 300 employees.
CONTROLLED FLIGHT: “We like to be more of a consultant than a service provider,” Owen has said, describing growth achieved even in a year when the company wasn’t specifically pursuing it.
THE CLIMB: Owen joined Airshare as CFO in 2016 and became CEO in 2018 after earlier financial roles at Accenture, KPMG, Mariner and CBIZ.
IMPACT: Airshare is now one of the nation’s largest private-aviation companies.

Gayle Packer
Chair/President/CEO, Terracon

Gayle Packer has taken Terracon well beyond the billion-dollar threshold, as revenue jumped another 16.9 percent in 2025 and the employee-owned Olathe company reached more than 7,200 employees. It continued extending a national platform built through both organic growth and acquisitions. For Packer, the bigger achievement may be maintaining that ownership culture amid the growth.
COLLEGE: B.A., Political Science; B.S., International Studies; M.S., Agricultural Economics, Ohio State University; J.D., University of Minnesota; LL.M., Agricultural Law, University of Arkansas
2025 REVENUES: $1.52 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 33)
THE CLIMB: Packer became president in 2018 and CEO in 2019.
ACQUISITION ENGINE: The 2025 purchase of pavement-engineering specialist Transtec was Terracon’s 26th acquisition since 2017.
NATIONAL FOOTPRINT: Terracon now operates more than 200 locations nationwide, an extraordinary evolution from the single geotechnical office where it began in 1965.
OWNERSHIP CULTURE: “Employee-ownership means everyone has a voice and a role to play in how our company evolves and innovates,” Packer says.

Bob Page
President/CEO, The University of Kansas Health System

Bob Page has spent nearly three decades helping transform a financially threatened hospital into a growing academic health system with statewide reach: He’s led major expansion, clinical integration, partnerships and capital investment, pushing beyond the original Kansas City footprint. His next ambition: positioning Kansas City as a national destination for health care, research and innovation.
COLLEGE: B.A., Accounting, Illinois Wesleyan University; MBA, Saint Louis University
2025 REVENUES: $18.8 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank No. 2)
THE TURNAROUND: He came on board in 1996 as CFO when KU Hospital faced financial instability, declining volumes and patient satisfaction in the nation’s fifth percentile; became CEO in 2007.
GROWTH: Has presided over historic capital investment, clinical integration and expansion of the health system’s reach across Kansas.
STATEWIDE: Champion of the Care Collaborative, connecting nearly 70 Kansas hospitals to improve care and clinical practices.
NEXT FRONTIER: Says a new theranostics partnership can help establish Kansas City as a destination for advanced medicine and research.

Roshann Parris
Founder/CEO, Parris Communications

For nearly four decades, Roshann Parris has made a business of helping companies and policy-focused clients communicate when the stakes are highest. That description increasingly understates the reach of the Kansas City firm she founded in 1988: Parris Communications has now handled strategic, public-affairs and crisis assignments in more than 60 countries. 
COLLEGE: B.A., Indiana University; MBA, University of Kansas School of Business
36 YEARS: Parris Communications describes a client history spanning Fortune-level companies, government organizations and smaller enterprises, with crisis work extending coast to coast and internationally.
WHITE HOUSE DUTY: Parris has served on international presidential advance teams for multiple administrations, accompanying presidents and first ladies on overseas missions to scores of countries.
CIVIC VOICE: Her résumé outside the office includes chairing the Greater Kansas City Chamber—only the fourth woman to do so in the organization’s first 126 years—and extensive service with Children’s Mercy, KCADC, Boys & Girls Clubs and other organizations.

Tim Paulson
Co-CEO, ESS Companies

In a busy year, ESS Companies acquired ESCO Construction, expanding its Western Region, and Barrows Excavation, delivering more services in Northwest Arkansas and Southwest Missouri. ESSC subsidiary Emery Sapp & Sons also became the owner of the largest grinding and grooving fleet in the U.S. These milestones build long-term value for employee-owners through their ESOP.
COLLEGE: Mathematics, Evangel University; Applied Mathematics, Washington University in St. Louis
WORLD CUP: He’d like to see more investment in KCADC and local economic development corporations so World Cup opportunities translate into lasting growth.
CIVIC PRIORITY: He calls for an effort to reimagine the 384 acres at the Truman Sports Complex as the Chiefs and Royals stadium plans take shape.
WORKFORCE FIX: Closing the skilled trades gap is critical—electricians, mechanics, operating engineers, carpenters, ironworkers and more.
MEETING PET PEEVE: Leaders unprepared to operate audio-visual equipment. “Time is one of our most valuable resources,” he says.

Clifton Pemble
President/CEO, Garmin

Clifton Pemble was one of Garmin’s first engineers and, 37 years later, runs a global technology company producing record results across fitness, outdoor, aviation, marine and automotive markets. Under Pemble, Garmin has pushed far beyond GPS navigation into wearables, avionics and other specialized electronics while keeping its operational center firmly planted in Olathe.
COLLEGE: B.A., Mathematics and Computer Science, MidAmerica Nazarene University
2025 REVENUES: $7.25 billion (Ingram’s public-company list, rank 2)
EARLY ARRIVAL: Joined Garmin in 1989 as a software engineer and one of the company’s first associates; named CEO in 2013, succeeding co-founder Min Kao.
ENGINEER: Before Garmin, he developed ground- and satellite-based navigation systems for general aviation at AlliedSignal.
INNOVATION ENGINE: Garmin introduced more than 100 products in 2025 while entering new markets ranging from equine wellness to sports timing.
GLOBAL REACH: Record 2025 sales in all five operating segments; more than 20 million units shipped worldwide.

Stephen Penn
Office Managing Partner, KPMG

For Stephen Penn, leadership of KPMG’s Kansas City office extends well beyond serving the financial-services companies that have defined much of his 30-plus-year accounting career. He has made civic and philanthropic engagement part of the office culture, and this year his team ranked No. 1 across KPMG in charitable giving participation. 
COLLEGE: B.S., Accountancy, Western Illinois University
FINANCIAL FOCUS: He’s an audit specialist whose clients span banking, investment management, insurance and other financial services.
GIVING: Under Penn, the office here ranked first firmwide in charitable giving participation. “We have a long tradition of community and civic engagement, and I’m proud to see that grow.”
KC PRIORITY: After the World Cup spotlight, Penn says the region must remain focused on addressing violent crime.
MEETING RULE: Biggest productivity killer? “Open laptops.”
COMMUNICATION: “Always face-to-face for the tough conversations,” with written communication handling the day-to-day.

Mike Perry
President/CEO, Hallmark Cards

Mike Perry’s assignment is one few corporate leaders ever receive: modernize a 116-year-old brand without stripping away the emotional connection that made it valuable in the first place. Hallmark now reaches millions of consumers worldwide through everything from cards and gifts to streaming entertainment, experiential retail and Crayola, the crayon-maker.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Business Administration, University of Missouri–Kansas City
2025 REVENUES: $3.5 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 18)
THE CLIMB: Perry joined Hallmark in 1989, eventually leading Crayola and Hallmark Greetings before becoming corporate CEO in 2019.
BIG PORTFOLIO: Hallmark encompasses its namesake products, Hallmark Media, Crayola and Crown Center, with more than 20,000 employees worldwide.
RETAIL REACH: Hallmark products are sold through roughly 100,000 retail rooftops worldwide as well as its own digital channels.
CRAYOLA POWER: Perry once ran a subsidiary that Hallmark now describes as the world’s third-largest toy brand, with products sold in more than 90 countries.

Tammy Peterman
President, KC Market, The University of Kansas Health System

Tammy Peterman’s understanding of culture comes from having experienced KU Health from nearly every level from bedside nurse to leading the Kansas City Division. She has helped make staff engagement, patient safety and a healthy work environment operating priorities, an approach helped produce a fifth Magnet designation in 2026—its first Magnet with Distinction recognition.
COLLEGE: B.S., Nursing, M.S., University of Kansas School of Medicine
LEADERSHIP: “No leader succeeds alone.” Peterman says that recognizing, celebrating and supporting staff are among a leader’s most critical responsibilities.
COMMUNICATION: Prefers important messages be delivered face-to-face, allowing questions, feedback and discussion before reinforcing them through town halls and written communication.
KC BELIEVER: Says Kansas Citians sometimes underestimate their own city—and that the World Cup demonstrated how effectively its world-class assets can be showcased.
INDUSTRY VOICE: Serves as 2026 chair of the Kansas Hospital Association board, extending her leadership across the state’s health care sector.

Tim Petty
KC Market Leader, U.S. Bank

Tim Petty’s local charge has quietly become a multi-state leadership assignment. A decade after U.S. Bank named him City market president, Petty leads Institutional Client Group markets across Kansas, Oklahoma, Illinois and Michigan, extending his responsibility for middle-market, large-corporate, governmental and institutional relationships well beyond the metro.
COLLEGE: B.S., Accounting and Finance, Kansas State University; Graduate School of Banking, University of Colorado at Boulder
FULL TOOLBOX: Those clients tap services ranging from conventional credit to capital markets, treasury management and payments.
LONG RUN: Petty joined U.S. Bank in 2000 after a lengthy commercial-banking career and became Kansas City market president in 2016.
PEOPLE FIRST: His philosophy has remained strikingly consistent through the years: talent and relationships matter as much as products, and he has repeatedly emphasized helping clients and associates achieve their goals.
CIVIC ROLE: Petty remains on the Greater Kansas City Chamber board even as his banking responsibilities have become increasingly regional.

Michael Poore
CEO, Mosaic Life Care

Michael Poore is putting considerable capital behind his promise to keep advanced care close to home in northwest Missouri. Mosaic Life Care opened its new Plaza 4 outpatient facility this spring and has broken ground on a $71 million cardiac center of excellence, part of a broader push to expand local access and recruit more physicians to St. Joseph and the surrounding region. 
COLLEGE: B.S., Health Services Administration, Auburn University; MBA, University of South Alabama
2025 REVENUES: $2.41 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 23)
CARDIAC BET: The $71 million cardiac center of excellence represents a substantial reinvestment in specialized care in St. Joseph.
ONE STOP: Plaza 4 brings together primary care, pediatrics, specialty care, laboratory and pharmacy services in a new outpatient model.
TALENT PIPELINE: Poore says Mosaic has recruited more than 20 primary-care providers expected to practice at Plaza 4 over the coming year.
REGIONAL ANCHOR: Mosaic operates four Missouri hospitals plus clinics extending into Kansas, Nebraska and Iowa.

Jeanette Prenger
President/CEO, ECCO Select

The growth continues for Jeanette Prenger and her team, as ECCO Select recently acquired an East Coast technology advisory firm, widening a national book of business and changing how the staff talks to decision-makers. “It has transformed our conversations allowing us to connect technology solutions more directly to their business objectives,” she says.
COLLEGE: B.S., Management Information Systems, Park University
WORLD CUP: Follow up with companies and investors introduced to the city; each organization needs a plan to convert introductions into jobs and investment.
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: A reliable regional transit network linking KCI, employment centers and neighborhoods on both sides of the state line.
WORKFORCE FIX: Clear pathways from education into careers, and reskilling as technology changes the work.
MEETING PET PEEVE: When a quick update becomes “a one-person podcast.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Stop being the expert at everything. Set direction and give talented people ownership.

Kent Price
President/Partner, Price Brothers

After years in which the Bluhawk development was largely a story about what Kent Price intended to build, 2026 is increasingly about what the development has become—and what comes next. The 277-acre south Overland Park project draws millions of visitors to AdventHealth Sports Park, while Price Brothers builds the next phase of retail, dining, entertainment and hospitality.
LEGACY PROJECT: Price calls Bluhawk a legacy asset for his family’s century-old real estate company, combining sports, retail, residential, office, health care and hospitality.
NEXT PHASE: Construction is underway on another 160,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment space scheduled for spring 2027.
DRAWING POWER: Price Brothers says the overall development already attracts more than 4 million annual visits.
BRAND MAGNET: L.L.Bean is returning to Kansas City at Bluhawk, while Anthropologie has committed to its third metro-area store there.
SPORTS ENGINE: The first 260,000-square-foot phase of AdventHealth Sports Park includes an NHL-sized rink, courts, turf, training and entertainment facilities.

Rosana Privitera Biondo
President, Mark One Electric

Few Kansas City contractors are better positioned for the region’s data-center construction boom than the company Rosana Privitera Biondo has helped build. Mark One’s revenue surged 42.8 percent in 2025 alone. The family-owned electrical contractor now brings decades of industrial expertise to one of construction’s most power-intensive markets.
2025 REVENUES: $201.32 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 99)
SECOND GENERATION: Parents Carl and Josephine Privitera founded Mark One in 1974; Rosana became president when they stepped away from day-to-day operations in 1994, with brothers Joe, Carl and Anthony taking leadership roles.
THE BOOM: Revenue has risen from $73 million in 2021 to more than $201 million last year—growth of roughly 176 percent in four years.
DATA-CENTER WORK: Mark One’s capabilities include high-voltage duct banks, splicing and terminations, power connections and CAT 5/CAT 6 cabling—the kind of infrastructure required by increasingly power-hungry data facilities.
WOMEN-OWNED: She’s driven Mark One to the No. 1 spot on Ingram’s list of the region’s largest certified Women-Owned Businesses.

Julie Quirin
President, BJC Health West Region/Saint Luke’s

Julie Quirin approaches retirement with perhaps the most consequential assignment of her nearly 30-year Saint Luke’s career largely accomplished: integrating a major health system into the much larger BJC Health enterprise without surrendering the Saint Luke’s identity. She’ll retire in March after guiding the West Region through a combination that created a $12.1 billion organization.
COLLEGE: B.A., Marketing and Corporate Communication, Buena Vista University; M.A., Organizational Communication, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $4.59 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 9)
KC IDENTITY: Even after the enterprise rebranded as BJC Health, Quirin emphasized that the Saint Luke’s name would remain in Kansas City: “It tells the story that we’re stronger together, while leaning into that brand equity that we’ve built over the last 150 years here in Kansas City.”
OPERATING IMPACT: During her presidency, Quirin introduced a service-line approach credited with improving quality and reducing variation while advancing access and community health initiatives.

Alejandro Quiroga
President/CEO, Children’s Mercy Kansas City

Barely into his second year at Children’s Mercy, Alejandro Quiroga is putting more than $1 billion behind his vision for the institution. A new acute-care tower planned for the Adele Hall campus will increase capacity by 25–30 percent, remaking critical care, emergency and surgical facilities through 2031, along with a separate $152 million expansion at the Johnson County campus.
COLLEGE: M.D., Universidad del Rosario, Bogotá, Colombia; MBA, Grand Valley State University
2025 REVENUES: $4.21 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 11)
BILLION-DOLLAR BET: The new Downtown acute-care tower will expand the hospital’s service lines with pediatric and neonatal intensive-care units, an expanded ER and robotic-ready surgical center.
JOHNSON COUNTY: Children’s Mercy is simultaneously pursuing a $152 million expansion of its Kansas hospital in Overland Park, consolidating outpatient services and adding clinical programs.
DOCTOR/CEO: Quiroga is a pediatric nephrologist whose clinical training included Johns Hopkins, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital and Montefiore Children’s Hospital.

Michael Rainen
President, Rainen Companies

Michael Rainen has spent more than three decades finding value in real estate that other developers might overlook: distressed apartments, aging properties ripe for repositioning, historic buildings and, increasingly, senior housing. What began with the purchase of three apartment complexes from the Resolution Trust Corp. has evolved into a sprawling Midwest real-estate platform.
FOUNDER: Rainen established Rainen Companies in 1992 after acquiring three apartment complexes from the Resolution Trust Corp.
FIRST ACT: Before real estate, he founded Rainen Business Interiors and its Mid Continent Office Distributors subsidiary, which grew into what was then the nation’s largest independent office-furniture wholesaler.
THE PORTFOLIO: Rainen Companies develops and acquires multifamily, senior housing, commercial, warehouse, mixed-use and historic properties across Missouri, Kansas and other Midwestern markets.
SENIOR STRATEGY: New-construction senior apartments—both Class A market-rate and mixed-income tax-credit projects—have become a core development specialty.

Joe Reardon
President/CEO, Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce

Joe Reardon’s job has changed dramatically in a matter of months. The World Cup that dominated Kansas City’s civic agenda has come and gone, the Chiefs have chosen Kansas for their next stadium and headquarters, and the region now faces the harder task of converting a burst of international attention and massive capital investment into durable economic momentum.
COLLEGE: B.A., Political Science, University of Kansas; J.D., University of Kansas School of Law
SPORTS STAKES: During the stadium debate, he framed retention of the Chiefs and Royals as more than sports: “This is about jobs. It’s about economic development. And it’s about regional identity and competitiveness.”
POST-CUP TEST: The Chamber entered 2026 focused on leveraging the World Cup to deepen global connections and advance business growth, public safety and regional collaboration. The next test is sustaining those priorities after the visitors have gone home.
PUBLIC SAFETY: Under Reardon, the Chamber has increasingly treated crime and public safety as economic development issues rather than matters outside the traditional business agenda.

Randy Reed
Founder/Owner, Reed Automotive Group

Randy Reed built his automotive business with an unusual pre-dealership résumé: Air Force F-15 pilot. More than three decades after opening his first Northland store, the enterprise bearing his family name now encompasses five dealerships representing nine manufacturers across the Kansas City and St. Joseph markets, along with a second generation of leadership.
COLLEGE: U.S. Air Force Academy
SERVICE: The military connection continues through sons Tyler and Trevin, who joined the company after their own military careers.
FAMILY ROOTS: Reed grew up in Winterset, Iowa, where his father operated a John Deere implement business, a feed-and-grain elevator and a GMC truck franchise.
FIRST STORE: He became a dealer of Randy Reed Pontiac Buick at Englewood and North Oak Trafficway in July 1989, adding GMC before expanding beyond a single dealership in 2003.
ON DECK: Sons Tyler and Trevin Reed joined the company in 2014, the same year the organization dropped “Randy” from its branding and became Reed Automotive Group.

Jake Reid
President/CEO, Sporting Kansas City

Having helped drive the regional emergence as a soccer capital, Jake Reid and Sporting helped deliver the World Cup and its ancillary events. “Being part of the largest sporting event in the world and seeing Kansas City deliver on a global stage was incredible,” he says. The next move, Reid says, is to keep collaborating and use that proof to attract companies and more major events.
COLLEGE: Grove City College, Class of 2005
WORLD CUP: Continue to collaborate the way the region problem-solved and shared credit during the tournament.
MEETING PET PEEVE: People who stay quiet in the room, then circle back afterward with what “we should do.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Empower people to use their own methods. The job is not to make everyone work exactly as you would.
ALTERNATE CAREER: A small craft distillery—“blending great whiskey with hospitality.”

Stephen Reintjes
President/CEO, NKC Health

After orchestrating an alliance with the Mayo Clinic Care Network, Steve Reintjes says NKC Health’s physicians now have access to Mayo’s clinical expertise “at no additional cost and the ability to stay close to home.” Reintjes, a neurosurgeon who has led the system since 2020, calls homelessness the systemic challenge he would solve first.
COLLEGE: Georgetown University; M.D., University of Kansas School of Medicine; neurosurgery residency, KU
2025 REVENUES: $3.29 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank 19)
WORKFORCE/COMMUNITY: Homelessness hits health, workforce stability and the whole community—“a humanitarian responsibility and a community imperative.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: COVID reinforced that health-care responsibility extends beyond hospital walls. “Do the right thing, at the right time and for the right reasons.”
ALTERNATE CAREER: Teaching neuroanatomy—“incredibly complex, yet somehow, it all makes sense.”

Jacqueline Reses
Chair/CEO, Lead Bank

Jackie Reses brought a Silicon Valley résumé—and mindset—to a 94-year-old Kansas City bank and turned it into a fintech growth story after leading the group that acquired Lead Bank for $56 million in 2022. Just three years later, a $70 million capital raise had it valued at $1.47 billion. She has steered the pivot to technology-driven banking infrastructure to fintech, payments and digital-asset companies.
COLLEGE: B.S., Economics with honors, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
2025 REVENUES: $291.6 million (Ingram’s 100 rank 86)
FINTECH CREDENTIALS: She built lending and banking operations at Square/Block, serving as executive chair of Square Financial Services and head of Square Capital.
GLOBAL RESUME: She’s also the former Yahoo chief development officer and Apax Partners partner; her career began at Goldman Sachs.
BOARDROOM: Director of Affirm and Nubank; former Alibaba director and former chair of the San Francisco Fed’s Economic Advisory Council.
INNOVATION: Reses holds multiple patents involving payments, credit and cryptocurrency.

Ora Reynolds
President & CEO, Hunt Midwest

Ora Reynolds has spent 35 years expanding Hunt Midwest, from launching its residential business to pushing the Lamar Hunt family enterprise into multifamily, senior living, self-storage, data centers and a national industrial development platform. This year brought validation for another big bet: the record-setting sale of KCI 29 Logistics Park’s 1.5 million-square-foot Ace Hardware facility.
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, Indiana University
KC ARRIVAL: A Chicago native and Florida banker, Reynolds arrived in Kansas City at 27 and answered a Hunt Midwest help wanted ad, joining the business-development team; 35 years later, she runs the company.
THE CLIMB: Two years after coming on board, she launched the firm’s residential division.
LEADERSHIP PIVOT: Moving into the executive ranks meant getting out of “the weeds”—empowering others to own the details while keeping everyone “rowing in the same direction.”
MEETING RULE: Executives shouldn’t encounter proposals for the first time in the meeting: “Otherwise, we’re not ready to meet!”

Greg Righter
President/CEO, Berkel & Co. Contractors

Greg Righter runs a company whose work is largely invisible once a project is finished—which is precisely the point. Berkel & Co. specializes in the deep foundations, ground improvement and earth-retention systems that allow enormous structures to rise safely above them. Now Righter is extending that expertise into new markets with  a nationwide network of specialized foundation teams. 
COLLEGE: B.S., Pre-Engineering, Furman University; B.S., Civil Engineering, Clemson University; M.S., Geotechnical Engineering, Georgia Tech
2025 REVENUES: $414 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 68)
THE CLIMB: Righter joined Berkel as a field engineer in 1999, moved through project and operating roles and became president/CEO in 2017.
EMPLOYEE-OWNED: Berkel is 100 percent ESOP-owned, carrying forward an employee-ownership model established decades before ESOPs became commonplace.
UNDERGROUND EXPERTISE: Its specialties include deep foundations, drilled shafts, micropiles, shoring, underpinning and ground stabilization.
BUILT TO LAST: Founded by Charles Berkel in 1959, the company has grown into one of the country’s major piling and specialty-foundation contractors.

Jim Rine
President, UMB Financial Corp.; President/CEO, UMB Bank

With the heavy lifting of Heartland Financial’s integration behind it, Jim Rine says UMB’s formula at its new scale is remarkably familiar: keep the service model intact, remain selective in lending and execute the strategy. That continuity matters after a transformative acquisition, and Rine says the enlarged organization is already producing “outstanding results across the board.”
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance, Missouri State University
THE CLIMB: He joined UMB as a credit analyst in 1994. Three decades later, he holds the presidency of the parent company while running its principal banking subsidiary.
STABILITY: The Heartland integration didn’t require reinventing UMB, he says: “We’ve been doing the same things we’ve always done, just on a much bigger scale.”
STAY SELECTIVE: Bigger doesn’t mean chasing every opportunity. Rine says preserving UMB’s freedom to be choosy about loans remains central to its model.
FACE TO FACE: For important managerial communication, he prefers direct conversation. “Feedback is meant to make you better, not hurt your feelings,” he says. Clarity delivered tactfully leaves people knowing what is expected and where they stand.

Keith Roberts
Owner, Roberts Auto Group

The family name has been attached to Northland automotive retailing for generations, and Keith Roberts has expanded that legacy well beyond the single Chevrolet dealership founded by his father. As president and dealer principal, he oversees a multibrand enterprise built around repeat customers, long-term relationships and a willingness to invest in new facilities, service capabilities and digital retailing.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business Administration
FAMILY FOUNDATION: Roberts Auto Group traces its roots to Ed Roberts Chevrolet, established by his father. 
EXPANDED PLATFORM: Roberts and his late brother, Ed, developed the business from a single dealership into a multifranchise automotive group. 
BRAND LINEUP: The organization’s dealerships represent Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram, with an affiliated GMC operation. 
OPERATING INVESTMENT: The group has invested in updated facilities, service technology and tools so customers can handle more of the purchasing process online. 
CULTURE: The operating model emphasizes integrity, transparency, teamwork and giving managers and employees ownership of their responsibilities.

Kimberly Rock
Office Managing Partner, EY

Kimberly Rock occupies a front-row seat for one of professional services’ biggest transformations as EY pours more than $1 billion annually into AI-first platforms and products. As office managing partner, the veteran auditor is charged with translating that global investment into value for regional clients and employees while maintaining the profession’s foundational obligation: trust.
COLLEGE: B.A., Accounting, John Carroll University
BEFORE KC: She joined EY in 2004 and worked in assurance leadership in Nashville and Charlotte before coming to Kansas City in 2020.
LEADERSHIP: She says it’s less about “having all the answers” than creating an environment where others contribute their best ideas.
MEETING RULE: Updates shouldn’t dominate. Effective meetings “resolve issues, establish accountability, and create clear next steps.”
KC PRIORITY: Regional transit connecting employment centers, colleges and development corridors.
TALENT: Attraction and retention remain the systemic challenge she’d most like Kansas City to solve.

Dennis Rodenbaugh 
President/CEO, Dairy Farmers of America 

Dennis Rodenbaugh leads the nation’s largest dairy cooperative, and this region’s No. 1 private company by revenue, overseeing an enterprise with more than 19,000 employees and 5,000 member dairy farms around the country. CEO since 2022, he brings experience spanning dairy farming, agribusiness ownership, finance and investment banking, and leadership roles across DFA. 
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Finance/Economics, Washburn University
2025 REVENUES: $23.1 billion (Ingram’s 100 rank 1)
FARM TO FINANCE: Before joining DFA, Rodenbaugh owned and operated dairy farms and other agribusinesses, while building expertise in mergers and acquisitions, finance, and investment banking.
DFA VETERAN: Before becoming CEO, he led U.S. milk marketing, global marketing operations, and the ingredient business, while serving in leadership roles across multiple DFA regions.
GLOBAL REACH: Through a global marketing network, manufacturing operations, and partnerships, DFA connects its farmer-owners to customers around the world.
SCALE: DFA is also the largest U.S. dairy company.

Fred Ross
Founder, Custom Truck One Source

The company Fred Ross built with his siblings remains one of Kansas City’s great entrepreneurial stories. From a small specialty-truck operation launched in 1996, Custom Truck One Source grew into a billion-dollar national enterprise and a publicly traded company. Ross remains a director, and also flexes his entrepreneurial energy in development and hospitality interests at Lake of the Ozarks.
FAMILY STARTUP: Ross, one of 12 children, and some of his siblings launched Custom Truck in 1996 from a three-bay operation in Kansas City; the company traces its roots to skills Ross learned while working at his grandfather’s service station.
BUILDOUT: Custom Truck grew from roughly 10–15 employees into a national specialty-equipment powerhouse; Ross remains a director after stepping down as CEO in 2023.
BIG EXIT: Blackstone acquired a majority interest in 2015; the expanded enterprise went public in 2021 through a $1.47 billion transaction.
KC LEGACY: Custom Truck transformed part of the former Armco Steel complex in Northeast Kansas City into its national headquarters and manufacturing campus.
LAKE LIFE: Ross also owns Big Thunder Marine and has emerged as a major Lake of the Ozarks investor and developer.

Adam Rossbach
President, TFL

Adam Rossbach helped turn a local ticket reseller into a $112 million acquisition target. Kustom Entertainment agreed just this month to acquire TFL, combining its live-music and TicketSmarter operations with the TFL platform. He and TFL’s executive team are expected to remain under long-term employment agreements, giving him a role in the next stage of a larger live-entertainment enterprise.
COLLEGE: B.A., Marketing/Finance, University of Nebraska
THE CLIMB: Rossbach joined TFL as COO in 2019 and was promoted to president in 2023, succeeding founder Dan Rouen in that role while Rouen remained CEO.
BEYOND RESALE: TFL has evolved into a technology and distribution partner for teams, athletic departments and other rights holders.
INSIDER VIEW: Before TFL, Rossbach worked for the Chiefs as director of corporate partnerships, giving him experience from the property side of sports economics.
FAN MODEL: The company emphasizes a no-per-ticket-service-fee approach and uses preferred and exclusive partnerships to drive event access and attendance.
MAHOMES TIE: Rossbach serves on the board of 15 and the Mahomies Foundation; TFL has sponsored its annual gala since the foundation’s launch.

Bill Ryan
Founder/CEO, Shamrock Trading Corp.

Forty years after Bill Ryan launched a freight brokerage serving agricultural and commodity shippers, Shamrock Trading has become something much harder to categorize. The Overland Park enterprise now combines freight brokerage, factoring, fuel programs, payments, technology and export-finance services for customers in more than 40 countries. 
GLOBAL REACH: Shamrock’s transportation and financial services now reach companies in more than 40 countries.
FAMILY OF BRANDS: Ryan Transportation was followed by RTS Financial, RTS International, RTS Carrier Services and ProTransport, creating an interconnected logistics and financial-services platform.
SUCCESSION BENCH: Ryan remains CEO, while Martin Ryan serves as president and Pat Ryan as executive vice president.
PEOPLE FORMULA: “When one combines the right people with the right business model, the potential for success is unlimited,” Ryan says.
KC CAMPUS: Shamrock’s national headquarters remains in Overland Park, anchoring a company that now operates across 12 locations.

Earl Santee
Founder/Chairman Emeritus, Populous

Long before stadium design became one of Kansas City’s most recognizable exports, Earl Santee saw buildings for sports as something more consequential than containers for games. He has helped redefine the modern ballpark and use stadiums as catalysts for urban redevelopment around the world. Santee and CEO Bruce Miller also shared EY’s 2026 Heartland Entrepreneur Of the Year honors.
COLLEGE: Bachelor’s degree, Architecture and Environmental Design, University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $552.4 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 59)
THE BEGINNING: Santee joined what became Populous in 1985 and helped build a Kansas City sports-design practice into a global architecture firm.
THE BALLPARK: His work helped establish the stadium-as-urban-catalyst approach through projects in cities including Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Houston, Denver, Miami, New York and St. Louis.
WORLD CUP: Populous’ 2026 footprint included match venues across the United States, Canada and Mexico, along with event, training centers and fan experience work.

Edward Schatz Jr.
Founder/CEO, HeartLand LLC

Edward Schatz has turned an acquisition strategy into one of Kansas City’s fastest-growing national enterprises. HeartLand, launched in 2016 with the acquisition of Signature Landscape, now operates across more than 26 states while preserving the local brands and leadership of companies joining the platform. The formula pushed 2025 revenues up nearly 50 percent in just three years.
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance/Real Estate, Florida State University
2025 REVENUES: $643 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 56)
GREEN ROOTS: Schatz grew up in the landscaping business, learning from his father before founding Austin Outdoor in Florida in 1994.
SELLER’S VIEW: He sold Austin Outdoor in 2008 and remained with successor Yellowstone Landscape until 2015—experience that now informs HeartLand’s approach to owners considering a sale.
THE MODEL: Acquired companies retain their brands and considerable local autonomy while gaining technology, business intelligence, training and purchasing power.
OPERATING BELIEF: He built the platform around preserving local entrepreneurship and established customer relationships.

Jeffrey Schmid
Pres/CEO, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City

Jeff Schmid entered 2026 with something few Kansas City executives ever possess: a direct vote on U.S. monetary policy. After dissenting from rate-cut decisions late last year, the lifelong banker continued bringing a Main Street financial perspective to Federal Open Market Committee deliberations as inflation, employment and interest rates pulled policymakers in competing directions.
COLLEGE: BBA, Finance/Economics, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Banking Leadership, Southwestern Graduate School of Banking, Southern Methodist University
THE DISTRICT: Schmid leads nearly 2,000 employees serving the seven-state Tenth Federal Reserve District from offices in Kansas City, Denver, Oklahoma City and Omaha.
STRATEGIC RESET: The bank’s five-year plan emphasizes talent development, technology and artificial intelligence, stronger regional connections and more advanced analytics.
BANKER’S LENS: Unlike many central-bank policymakers, Schmid spent most of his career running banks, including American National Bank and Mutual of Omaha Bank.
GLOBAL TABLE: The KC Fed presidency also makes Schmid host of the annual Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium, one of the world’s most closely watched gatherings of central bankers and economists.

John Schultz
Partner, Freeman Mathis & Gary

John Schultz helped build one of Kansas City’s most respected litigation boutiques before taking its capabilities onto a national platform in July. The firm he co-founded in 1992, eventually known as Franke Schultz & Mullen, joined Freeman Mathis & Gary, where Schultz is now a partner in FMG’s Kansas City office, extending his regional trial practice through a firm with more than 600 lawyers nationwide.
COLLEGE: B.A., J.D., University of Missouri–Columbia
COURTROOM RECORD: A nationally recognized trial lawyer, Schultz has served as lead counsel in more than 180 jury trials across six states, frequently handling high-exposure cases involving catastrophic injuries and substantial financial or reputational risk.
HIGH-STAKES WORK: His practice encompasses complex product-liability, trucking, construction and intellectual-property disputes, along with medical and legal malpractice claims. He also serves as “parachute counsel” when difficult cases are approaching unavoidable trials.
NATIONAL PLATFORM: The former FSM operation brought 28 attorneys and 20 staff members into FMG, establishing offices in Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield and giving its clients access to broader national resources.

Neal Sharma
Civic Leader/Investor

Neal Sharma spent two decades building one of Kansas City’s most successful digital businesses; more recently, the enterprise he has helped scale is Kansas City itself. Sharma is a central player in regional work-force and economic development initiatives, and helped execute Kansas City’s largest international undertaking as a vice president and Executive Committee member of KC2026.
COLLEGE: B.A. (cum laude), Communication, Legal Institutions, Economics and Government, American University; MBA, University of Kansas
WORLD STAGE: As a KC2026 officer and Executive Committee member, Sharma helped oversee the non-profit charged with delivering Kansas City’s FIFA World Cup host-city responsibilities.
WORKFORCE FOCUS: His civic work has included leadership with KC Rising, the regional collaboration aimed at improving economic growth and workforce competitiveness.
ENTREPRENEURIAL ROOTS: Sharma co-founded DEG in 1997, built it into a nationally recognized digital agency and remained CEO after its 2018 sale to what became Dentsu.

Charlie Shields
President/CEO, University Health

For Charlie Shields, University Health’s next big undertaking extends the system’s safety-net mission on a scale Kansas City has rarely seen: moving forward with the state on a $300 million behavioral-health center. But Shields sees an even larger lesson in the region’s recent run of civic achievements. Kansas City, he says, now knows it can execute complicated projects at scale.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., Marketing, University of Missouri
BEHAVIORAL HEALTH: Shields calls the planned $300 million behavioral-health center University Health’s most consequential community undertaking of the past year.
THINK BIGGER: His post-World Cup takeaway isn’t exposure but confidence: Kansas City has demonstrated that it can tackle “big, complex, difficult projects” requiring metropolitan cooperation.
NEXT UP: Shields would make a nationally recognized innovation district the next transformational civic undertaking, linking universities, hospitals, entrepreneurs, corporations and investors around health care, technology, AI and advanced manufacturing.
TALENT GAP: Employers need good people and workers want better jobs, he says, but education and employment systems don’t connect them well enough.

John Sherman
Chairman/CEO, Kansas City Royals

After years of searching, negotiating and absorbing setbacks, John Sherman appears to have finally put an address on the Royals’ next era: The club and Hallmark unveiled plans in April for a new Downtown ballpark at Crown Center, and in August, Kansas City approved the project framework and a 30-year lease designed around a 2030 opening.
COLLEGE: Ottawa University
THE SITE: The Crown Center plan pairs the new ballpark with broader redevelopment in partnership with Hallmark, anchoring two deeply rooted Kansas City institutions downtown.
ENTREPRENEUR: Before baseball, Sherman founded LPG Services Group and later Inergy, building his fortune in energy and propane.
BASEBALL APPRENTICESHIP: He entered Major League Baseball ownership with a minority stake in Cleveland in 2016, giving him three years of experience before assembling the investor group that bought the Royals.
LOCAL OWNERSHIP: MLB approved Sherman’s Kansas City-based investor group to purchase the franchise from the Glass family in November 2019.

Gregory Silvers
Chairman/CEO, EPR Properties

Greg Silvers has spent years arguing that consumers will continue paying for experiences they can’t replicate at home. EPR Properties put considerable capital behind that thesis in 2026, investing $440.8 million during the second quarter alone—a post-pandemic quarterly high—as the Kansas City REIT expanded beyond its traditional theater base into attractions, fitness, wellness and immersive entertainment.
COLLEGE: B.S., Tennessee Technological University; J.D., University of Kansas
2025 REVENUES: $718.36 million (Ingram’s Top Public Companies list No. 13)
SIX FLAGS PLAY: EPR acquired seven former Six Flags attraction properties for $304.4 million, including Kansas City’s Worlds of Fun.
DIGITAL GOES PHYSICAL: Another 2026 investment brought Netflix House in King of Prussia, Pa., into the portfolio—an example of digital entertainment brands creating revenue-producing physical experiences.
THE PORTFOLIO: EPR had roughly $7.5 billion in total investments at midyear, with experiential properties accounting for 95 percent.
MORE TO COME: After deploying $492.2 million through June, EPR raised full-year investment guidance to $600 million–$700 million.

Jeff Simon
Partner, Husch Blackwell

Jeff Simon has stepped away from managing Husch Blackwell’s office here, but not from the work that established his influence or the civic contributions he makes. After more than a decade in the office leadership role, he remains an active partner, commercial litigator and civic presence whose reach extends from complex intellectual-property disputes to some of Kansas City’s most consequential community organizations.
COLLEGE: B.A., English; J.D., University of Missouri
LEADERSHIP RUN:  Simon led the Kansas City office from 2014 through 2025. 
IN THE COURTROOM: He represents Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders in commercial, intellectual-property and class-action litigation and leads the firm’s rail-industry efforts.
RECOGNITION: His current honors include Chambers USA recognition for commercial litigation and Benchmark Litigation’s designation as a Local Litigation Star. He’s also an Ingram’s 40 Under Forty alumnus, was that group’s 2024 Alumnus of the Year and has also been recognized among our 50 Missourians You Should Know.
COMMUNITY CONSCIENCE: Simon chairs the boards of KC Common Good and Great Jobs KC and is chair-elect of the Greater Kansas City Chamber. 

Chase Simmons
Chairman/CEO, Polsinelli PC

Chase Simmons has taken Polsinelli through a financial threshold few area professional-services firms ever reach. Polsinelli surged past $1 billion in annual revenue in 2025, with growth fueled by health care, private equity, real estate and rising data center demand. For Simmons, the result underscores a transformation from a regional law firm into an Am Law 100 national competitor.
COLLEGE: B.A., Southern Methodist University; J.D., University of Georgia School of Law
2025 REVENUES: $1.21 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 39)
THE CLIMB: Before becoming chairman/CEO, Simmons chaired Polsinelli’s Real Estate Practice, helping build it into one of the firm’s national strengths.
DEAL TABLE: His own practice combined real estate, public finance, incentives and public-private partnerships, including work involving major corporate and sports assets.
GROWTH ENGINE: Polsinelli expanded to more than 1,000 attorneys in 28 offices while continuing to add depth in markets including health-care M&A and private equity.
KC ROOTS: Although its reach is increasingly national, Polsinelli remains headquartered in Kansas City, where the firm was founded in 1972.

Kelvin Simmons
Founding Partner, Nexus Group

Few Kansas City business leaders bring Kelvin Simmons’ combination of government experience, private enterprise and institutional relationships. A former state official appointed to posts by three Missouri governors, he now works at the intersection of business, legislation, economic development and public-sector decision making as a founding partner of Nexus Group.
COLLEGE: B.A., Communications and B.A., General/Interdisciplinary Studies, University of Missouri–Columbia; Executive MBA, UMKC
DISTINCTIVE RESUME: Nexus says Simmons is the only registered Missouri lobbyist to have been appointed by three governors to three different state positions.
FIRM FORMATION: He and three partners established Nexus Group in 2018 after leaving Dentons.
PUBLIC-SECTOR EXPERIENCE: His previous roles include serving as Missouri’s commissioner of administration and as chairman of the Missouri Public Service Commission.
PRACTICE RANGE: Nexus works in legislative strategy, state procurement, appropriations, development incentives, infrastructure, real estate and regulatory affairs.

Brad Skinner
CEO Emeritus, Milbank Manufacturing

Brad Skinner’s 2026 story is now a career handoff. After nearly four decades at Milbank—starting on the manufacturing floor and ultimately running the company—Skinner relinquished the CEO post in August to Chris Buelow. He remains CEO emeritus and adviser through year-end at one of Kansas City’s oldest family-owned manufacturers, closing in on its 100th year in business.
COLLEGE: Park University
SHOP FLOOR: Skinner began at Milbank on the production side, eventually becoming plant manager before moving into sales and executive management.
EARNED ALONGSIDE IT: Milbank says Skinner used the company’s tuition-reimbursement program to finish his college degree while working there.
THE TOP JOB: He became president in 2016 and CEO in 2018 after holding posts including general manager, vice president of sales and marketing and chief sales officer.
MADE HERE: Founded in 1927, Milbank remains family-owned and manufactures electrical metering and power-distribution equipment in the United States.
NEXT MARKETS: Recent product development has expanded into EV charging infrastructure and other emerging power distribution applications.

Brian Sloan
CEO, Wachter

Brian Sloan didn’t arrive at Wachter with an executive résumé; he was 18 and an electrician, three weeks shy of high school graduation. Today, he leads a national technology-solutions integrator whose 2025 revenues topped half a billion dollars. That shop-floor-to-CEO trajectory underpins a company culture in which seven of its 10 senior executives came through field operations.
2025 REVENUES: $505.6 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 61)
THE CLIMB: Sloan worked as an electrician, project manager and rollout director before becoming COO in 2013 and CEO in 2018.
NATIONAL FORCE: Wachter deploys more than 2,000 field employees and says it has become the nation’s fifth-largest fire-protection company.
CUSTOMER-BUILT: Electrical work grew into data, security, access control, fire protection, AV and other technologies largely because customers kept asking Wachter to solve additional problems.
LONG VIEW: “I make every decision thinking 20 years out,” Sloan says, arguing that the time horizon forces leaders to value relationships over short-term wins.
STAYING POWER: The average executive-team tenure: 23 years.

Mark Slyter
President/CEO, Stormont Vail Health

Barely a year into his return to Kansas, Mark Slyter is already putting a physical and organizational imprint on Stormont Vail Health. The system broke ground this spring on a new Emporia campus, then moved to retire the Cotton O’Neil name and bring its clinics and services under a single Stormont Vail identity—two early signals of a CEO pushing both regional access and systemwide integration.
COLLEGE: B.S., Exercise Science; M.H.A., University of Kansas; Doctorate, Health Services Administration, University of Alabama at Birmingham
2025 REVENUES: $3.29 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 29)
COMING HOME: An Augusta, Kan., native, Slyter returned after leading Dignity Health’s Arizona East Valley Market, including two academic medical centers.
REGIONAL BUILD: The new Emporia campus will consolidate primary care, behavioral health, cardiology, orthopedics, imaging, laboratory and other services in one location.
ONE NAME: Sunsetting Cotton O’Neil is intended to simplify scheduling, billing and navigation across a clinical partnership dating back to 1995.
THE PLATFORM: Stormont Vail serves a 15-county region with nearly 5,700 employees and more than 500 employed physicians and advanced-practice providers.

Jeff Spencer
Senior Vice President/Shareholder, Holmes Murphy & Associates

Jeff Spencer opened Holmes Murphy’s Kansas City operation in 2003 and has spent more than two decades building it into one of the region’s most substantial employee-benefits practices. He leads the local office’s sales strategy, recruiting and culture, with an explicit emphasis on developing the next generation of leaders.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, University of Kansas
BUILT FROM SCRATCH: Spencer opened Holmes Murphy’s Kansas City branch after serving as director of national accounts for UNUM.
LOCAL SCALE: The operation here has grown from its startup roots to roughly 100 employees.
ON THE DIAMOND: Spencer was captain of the University of Kansas baseball team before beginning his insurance career.
LONG GAME: He has more than 30 years in insurance, spanning both carrier and brokerage sides of the business.
PEOPLE FIRST: What inspires him? “Seeing others on my team develop their skills and achieve their goals.”

Anne St. Peter
Founder & CEO, Global Prairie

Anne St. Peter built Global Prairie around the proposition that purpose and profit need not compete. Since the firm she co-founded became 100 percent employee-owned in 2018, its share price has soared nearly 1,700 percent. She’s also one of Kansas City’s most broadly engaged civic leaders, bringing that same inclusive-growth philosophy to health care, entrepreneurship and development.
COLLEGE: B.A., Political Science, Wellesley College
OWNERSHIP: Global Prairie’s share value has risen nearly 1,700 percent since becoming an ESOP in 2018—“proof positive of the power of employee ownership.”
CIVIC FORCE: She chairs Blue KC’s board and UMKC’s Regnier Institute; also serves Civic Council, BioNexus KC, United WE and the KU Hospital Authority.
MEETING RULE: “If a meeting doesn’t drive a decision or action, it probably doesn’t need to happen.”
LEADERSHIP: “Culture is built in the everyday choices we make”—what leaders reward, tolerate and how they treat others.
ALTERNATE-Universe Career: Architecture and design. She loves considering how a space “looks, feels, and functions for the people who use it.”

Tyler Staszak
Co-founder/President, Southwind

Tyler Staszak helped start Southwind with a single home-services franchise in 2007. The Overland Park company has since scaled that model across the United States and Canada, becoming a multistate platform whose growth depends on repeatable operating systems, leadership development and the ability to turn local service businesses into a coordinated enterprise.
COLLEGE: San Jose State University
STARTING POINT: Staszak and Josh Herron entered business together in 2007 by acquiring their first 1-800-GOT-JUNK? franchise. 
CURRENT SCALE: Southwind reported more than 50 locations across the United States and Canada as of July 2026. Combined revenues in 2025 was $364.5 million.
DIVISION OF LEADERSHIP: Herron handles the duties of CEO; Staszak is president. 
OPERATING MODEL: The enterprise applies centralized recruiting, finance, training, marketing and technology support across locally delivered home services. 
INVESTING IN PEOPLE: Southwind sank $145,000 in internal leadership training during 2025, alongside mentoring and professional-development programs.

Robert Steer
President/CEO, Seaboard Corporation

Robert Steer has spent four decades learning the moving parts of one of Kansas City’s least conventional global enterprises. The longtime Seaboard executive and former CFO now leads a $9.75 billion conglomerate whose businesses stretch from U.S. pork production and Caribbean shipping to international commodity trading, milling, renewable fuels and power generation.
COLLEGE: Kansas State University
2025 REVENUES: $9.75 billion (Ingram’s public-company list, rank 1)
CONTINUITY: He became CFO in 2011 and president and CEO in July 2020, following the unexpected death of third-generation chairman and CEO Steven Bresky. Seaboard turned to Steer—then a 36-year company veteran and nine-year CFO—to lead the enterprise; Bresky’s widow, Ellen, became chairwoman.
GLOBAL FOOTPRINT: Seaboard businesses span pork production, ocean transportation, commodity trading and milling, renewable fuels, sugar and alcohol, and electric power.
PEOPLE: Leads nearly 14,000 employees worldwide, working across farms, plants, ships and offices.

Philip Straub
EVP/Managing Director–Aviation, Garmin

For Philip Straub, Garmin’s aviation business combines two things that have defined virtually his entire professional life: engineering and flying. The veteran engineer helped create some of Garmin’s landmark cockpit systems before taking leadership of the aviation business, where he now oversees everything from product development and certification to sales and customer support.
COLLEGE: B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Missouri
2025 REVENUES: $7.25 billion (Ingram’s Top Public Companies list No. 2)
EARLY INFLUENCE: Straub earned his private pilot license at 17 and worked as a flight instructor while attending college.
ENGINEER FIRST: He was a key contributor to Garmin’s landmark GNS 430/530 navigation systems and G1000 integrated cockpit before moving into management.
THE BUSINESS: Straub carries P&L responsibility for aviation while overseeing product development, certification, flight operations, sales, marketing and support.
STILL FLYING: An airline transport-rated pilot, he has logged more than 5,800 flight hours and holds multiple aircraft type ratings.

Patrick Stueve
Founding Partner, Stueve Siegel Hanson

Patrick Stueve is a disruptor who helped turn the traditional economics of corporate litigation on its head. How? By assuming the financial risk of complex cases, getting paid when clients win. That contingency model has produced more than $3 billion in verdicts, arbitration awards and settlements while establishing a national plaintiffs’ practice in Kansas City.
COLLEGE: B.A., Benedictine College; J.D., University of Kansas School of Law
THE PIVOT: After roughly a decade representing corporate defendants, Stueve switched sides, focusing on plaintiffs in high-stakes commercial and class-action litigation.
LANDMARK CASE: He was co-lead counsel for Kansas corn farmers in a $217.7 million verdict against Syngenta that ultimately led to a $1.51 billion nationwide settlement.
2026 MARK: The firm celebrated its 25th anniversary with Band 1 Chambers USA rankings for both plaintiffs’ litigation and plaintiffs’ labor and employment work.
PERSONAL STANDING: Chambers again ranked Stueve individually at Band 1 for plaintiffs’ litigation in Missouri.
GIVING BACK: Stueve and his partners committed $1 million to scholarships for Black students at KU Law, where he serves on the Board of Governors.

Kent Sunderland
Chairman, Sunderland Foundation

Kent Sunderland has spent the second act of his career converting a family industrial legacy into one of the city’s greatest philanthropic forces. A former Ash Grove Cement executive, Sunderland turned full-time to philanthropy after the company’s 2018 sale. Now he chairs the family foundation as it prepares its most consequential chapter yet: accelerating its remaining before sunsetting in 2030.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business Administration, Trinity University
NEW MISSION: After Ash Grove’s sale, Sunderland said philanthropy would become his full-time career: “And that’s what we’re doing now.”
HONORED: With brother Charlie, formerly Ash Grove’s CEO, was named Ingram’s 2018 Philanthropist of the Year.
FAMILY BUSINESS: The two represented the fourth generation of a family that led Ash Grove Cement from 1909 until its $3.5 billion sale in 2018.
IMMEDIATE IMPACT: The foundation helped steer landmark commitments, including $75 million for Children’s Mercy research and $66 million for the Cambridge Tower at The University of Kansas Hospital among endless other gifts throughout the region.

Greg Swetnam
Principal, Director of Office Brokerage, Kessinger Hunter & Co.

Greg Swetnam has endured enough real estate cycles to know that relationships still close deals. The KH principal and director of office brokerage has spent more than 30 years there, navigating the post-pandemic upheaval in office demand while helping it move into another emerging property class—data centers. In 2026, the firm also bought out a third-party investor to regain 100 percent control.
COLLEGE: University of Missouri-Columbia
THE CLIMB: Swetnam spent a decade with CB Commercial before joining Kessinger/Hunter as a principal in 1993; he was CB’s No. 1 KC producer three times.
REGIONAL WISH: If “King for a Day,” he’d move the Missouri-Kansas line 25 miles west—the border remains an impediment to thinking regionally.
OLD SCHOOL: He’d also restore the full five-day in-office workweek: “the face-to-face contact is what I continually crave.”
LEADERSHIP: “Show up regardless and do what you say you are going to do.”
CLIENT RULE: Put yourself in the client’s shoes: “do the right thing and listen!”
MEETING REALITY: His brokers are independent contractors—when the phone rings, “we answer it!!!”

Charlie Tetrick
President/CEO, Walz Tetrick

Charlie Tetrick has spent more than three decades proving that an independent Kansas City advertising agency can keep reinventing itself. Walz Tetrick more than doubled revenues from 2021 through 2024 by expanding its media, content and strategic capabilities, acquiring InQuest Marketing and building partnerships that pushed the agency well beyond the standard creative-shop model.
COLLEGE: B.A., Journalism/Advertising, University of Kansas
THE START: Tetrick launched his own agency fresh out of college, then merged with Walz Advertising and ultimately bought the business while still in his 20s.
GROWTH CURVE: Revenues rose from $70.5 million in 2021 to $152.9 million in 2024, earning Walz Tetrick a fourth consecutive appearance on Ingram’s 2025 CR100.
BEYOND ADS: The agency has added TorchHouse Studio for content production, acquired InQuest Marketing and partnered with Tico Productions.
SECOND PLATFORM: Tetrick also is president of Osceola Group Marketing, the Native-owned agency he helped establish with O.B. Osceola Jr.
CIVIC REACH: His current regional leadership includes service as a co-vice chairman of the American Royal’s Board of Governors.

Jonathan Thomas
President/CEO, American Century Investments

Assets under supervision across American Century strategies hit $350 billion in August, keeping it near the pinnacle of regional wealth-management firms. Avantis Investors crossed $150 billion in July after passing $100 billion only about seven months earlier. He credits founder Jim Stowers’ line: if clients succeed, the firm succeeds—and 40 percent of dividends still fund the Stowers Institute here.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics, University of Massachusetts; MBA, Boston College
LEADERSHIP LESSON: A mindset shift: treat the work as helping people, not as a job. That drove the move from a mutual-fund shop into ETFs, CITs, SMAs and a second brand, Avantis.
STOWERS LINK: Also chairman for the Stowers Institute, American Century’s largest shareholder.
ALTERNATE CAREER: The Institute’s medical-research mission is already the other profession he cares about most.

Gregg Thompson
Deputy to Commanding General, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center

Three-star generals come and go at Fort Leavenworth, but Gregg Thompson provides continuity at the Army’s intellectual center. A retired colonel and 30-year Army veteran, Thompson is the senior civilian executive serving the leadership of the Combined Arms Center, helping shape an enterprise responsible for leader development, professional military education and doctrine.
COLLEGE: B.S., Economics, University of Nebraska; master’s degrees in adult education and strategic studies
ECONOMIC FORCE: Fort Leavenworth generates an estimated $2.04 billion in annual economic impact, including more than $611 million in military and civilian payroll.
THOUGHT LEADER: He co-authored a 2025 article making the case for sustained investment in Army civilian education and leader development; has also helped advance the Army’s renewed emphasis on professional military writing.
SENIOR RANK: Entered the federal Senior Executive Service in 2019, putting Thompson among the Army’s highest-ranking civilian leaders.
IN UNIFORM: Retired after 30 years in the Army, with assignments in Panama, Korea, Germany and Hawaii.

Paul Thompson
Thompson Family

For Paul Thompson, the defining business act of the past year was knowing when to let go. His family sold Country Club Bank to FNBO in October 2025, ending four decades of Thompson-family ownership while placing the institution inside another multigenerational, privately held banking company. The transaction turned 2026 into a year of transition after decades of leading a signature local bank.
COLLEGE: B.S.B.A., Finance, Creighton University; MBA, Rockhurst University; Graduate School of Banking, University of Colorado
FAMILY BUSINESS: Thompson’s father, Byron, acquired control of Country Club Bank in 1985; Paul eventually led a second generation that included five family members in executive roles.
SCALE AT SALE: Country Club Bank entered the FNBO transaction with $2.2 billion in assets, $1.8 billion in deposits, 20 branches and a trust operation managing $2.8 billion.
THE TEST: He said any buyer had to share Country Club Bank’s dedication to clients; the family ultimately chose FNBO, he said, citing aligned culture and values.
BANKER’S BANKER: His industry service includes as a Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and chairman of the Missouri Bankers Association.

David Toland
Lieutenant Governor/Secretary of Commerce, State of Kansas

David Toland has gone from rebuilding his hometown economy in Iola to engineering one of the biggest economic-development runs in Kansas history. Since taking over Kansas Department of Commerce in 2019, the seventh-generation Kansan has rebuilt the state’s recruitment apparatus and helped secure the $4 billion Panasonic battery plant and the coming Chiefs stadium.
COLLEGE: B.A., Political Science; M.P.A., University of Kansas
RESULTS: More than $25 billion in new business investment has landed in Kansas since Toland took over the Department of Commerce in 2019.
MEGA-WIN: He led recruitment of Panasonic Energy’s $4 billion, 4,000-job De Soto battery plant, the largest economic-development project in state history.
TOOLMAKER: Helped shepherd passage of APEX, giving Kansas a new weapon for competing nationally for billion-dollar projects.
REBUILDER: Overhauled Commerce’s in-state, national and international recruitment operations and revived the Kansas Main Street program to promote growth broadly.
BEFORE HOME: He held economic-development and planning leadership posts in Washington before he spent 12 years leading Thrive Allen County.

Tucker Trotter
CEO, Dimensional Innovations

Point of pride for Tucker Trotter: DI and its family of companies became 100 percent ESOP at the start of the year, giving every employee a share in long-term value. The firm also partnered with JE Dunn to complete the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library—“one of the most remarkable museum projects and buildings ever created,” Trotter says.
WORLD CUP: “Believe we belong on the biggest stage.”
NEXT PROJECT: Redevelop the Country Club Plaza with a fresh vision while respecting the original master plan.
WORKFORCE FIX: Lead in trades and skills education for the decade of construction ahead; leadership development is a close second.
MEETING PET PEEVE: Lack of willingness to have tough conversations—“it erodes trust and leads to indecision.”
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Good to Great and Traction, plus mentors who pushed him out of his comfort zone.

Angelo Trozzolo
CEO, Trozzolo Communications Group

Angelo Trozzolo took the baton on an entrepreneurial platform, rather than a finished product. He joined the communications firm his father founded as its eighth employee and has since transformed it into an enterprise with more than 100 on staff, increasingly national in reach. He’s now relinquishing day-to-day operational duties to focus on the next level of expansion.
COLLEGE: B.S., Advertising, Marquette University; MBA, Rockhurst University
THE CLIMB: Joined father Pasquale’s firm in 1998 as employee No. 8; became president in 2008 and CEO in 2014.
LEADERSHIP: “My job isn’t to be the smartest person in the room.” It’s assembling the right people, setting direction and helping them succeed.
KC CONFIDENCE: The World Cup should change “how we see ourselves.” He wants KC to recruit and market itself without behaving like a secondary market.
FIRST THING: Music, chosen each morning deliberately to match “the mood, the day or where my head is at.”
SECOND ACT: Meteorologist. Nicknamed “Tornado Trozzolo” by his mother, he’d give Gary Lezak “a run for his money.”

Michael Valentine
CEO, Netsmart

Michael Valentine has spent 15 years pushing Netsmart deeper into the areas of health care that have historically received less technology investment—behavioral health, human services, post-acute and community-based care. Now the next transformation is artificial intelligence: Netsmart has moved aggressively into augmented intelligence and automation and AI tool development.
COLLEGE: B.S., Industrial Engineering, Kansas State University
2025 REVENUES: $700 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 51)
THE CLIMB: Valentine joined Netsmart in 2011 after 13 years at Cerner, where he rose to executive vice president/COO and oversaw delivery and client relationships worldwide.
TRANSFORMATION: Since his arrival, Netsmart has more than doubled its client base and revenue while adding businesses in data analytics and revenue cycle management.
AI AT WORK: By May, 86 percent of identified Netsmart software-development roles were using AWS’s Kiro agentic-AI development tool in their daily workflow.
NATIONAL SCALE: The Overland Park company employs more than 2,500 people and serves thousands of provider organizations across its specialty health-care markets.
BOARD ROOM: Valentine’s corporate governance includes board service with Blue KC.

Doug Van Meter
President/CEO, GBA

Doug Van Meter, now CEO of the Kansas City–based engineering firm after more than 25 years at GBA, calls World Cup hosting proof of what the region can do when business, civic and public sectors rally. The follow-through is “the same level of collaboration” on infrastructure, transportation, workforce and development.
COLLEGE: B.S., Architectural Engineering, Kansas State University
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Better regional connectivity, scaled with data rather than overbuilt for peak demand—lessons he saw moving fans during the World Cup.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: “You don’t always need to have the answer. Sometimes the most important thing you can do is step back and ask the right questions.”
BACKGROUND: Started as a GBA intern in 1998; previously led the firm’s mission-critical market.

Randy Vance
President & COO, Sunderland Foundation

Randy Vance has occupied a unique seat in the evolution of the Sunderland legacy. The former president and CEO of Ash Grove Cement helped lead the family enterprise through its $3.5 billion sale, then shifted his executive skills to the Sunderland Foundation. Today, he runs the day-to-day operation of one of the region’s largest and most consequential philanthropies.
COLLEGE: B.A., Business Administration, MBA, Finance, UMKC
LONG RUN: Before becoming Ash Grove CEO, held senior operating and financial leadership posts at the century-old family enterprise.
THE OPERATOR: As president and COO, Vance is the foundation’s principal paid executive, managing an organization whose lifetime giving has surpassed $1 billion.
FINAL MISSION: Now charged with helping execute an accelerated Greater Kansas City grantmaking strategy before the foundation closes in 2030.
NEW MODEL: Giving is expanding beyond traditional capital projects into housing, economic stability, health and behavioral health, and youth development.
CIVIC: He previously served on United Way of Greater Kansas City’s board.

Julia Vander Weele
Office Managing Partner, Spencer Fane

Julie Vander Weele leads the headquarters office of a 22-city business law firm that posted record revenue last year, while maintaining a full employee-benefits practice of her own. She leads one of the biggest law firms in the region, where she says the productivity killer in leadership meetings is “the inclination to get bogged down in tactical decisions instead of focusing on high-level strategy.”
COLLEGE: University of Iowa; J.D., University of Iowa College of Law
2025 REVENUES: $404.0 million
DAILY HABIT: Review prior-day time entries, then set a priority to-do list.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: The influence from career mentors that she says continues to shape her today is “you have to take the time to listen to be an effective leader.”
ALTERNATE CAREER: If she could pick another line of work, she thinks it might be working as a travel agent.
RECOGNITION: Vander Weele has repeatedly been named among Missouri Lawyers Media’s Top Managing Partners.

Enrique Venegas 
President/CEO, NASB Financial and North American Savings Bank

Enrique Venegas took the top job at NASB just as the nearly century-old institution completed a fundamental strategic shift. A career lender and credit executive, he now leads a $2.9 billion-asset hometown bank moving away from selling residential mortgages into the national market and toward portfolio lending—putting commercial and residential credit at the center of its future.
COLLEGE: Missouri Southern State University; Graduate School of Banking, University of Wisconsin–Madison
THE CLIMB: He joined NASB as chief credit officer in 2013; later became executive vice president and chief lending officer before succeeding Tom Wagers as CEO in 2025.
LENDER’S LENS: Has overseen nationwide mortgage lending, commercial real estate, construction and development lending, loan servicing and portfolio credit risk.
NEW MODEL: Venegas now leads NASB as it pivots from selling nationally originated mortgages toward commercial and residential loans retained in its portfolio.
PUBLIC COMPANY: NASB Financial shares trade publicly on OTCQX—an unusual distinction among locally headquartered banking companies.

Marc Warrington
SVP, Group Benefits Distribution, Sun Life U.S.

Marc Warrington’s insurance career was built around a consistent specialty: selling employee benefits to businesses. The former president of Assurant Employee Benefits became part of Sun Life after a 2016 acquisition, and today leads distribution in a U.S. business increasingly focused on connecting traditional insurance with health services, digital benefits administration and improved access to care.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics, Cornell University
THE PLATFORM: Sun Life U.S. provides employee and government benefits to roughly 48 million Americans, with offerings spanning dental, disability, absence management, life, supplemental health, stop-loss and health-care navigation.
KC CONTINUITY: He spent more than a decade leading Assurant Employee Benefits before the Sun Life acquisition.
SALES ROOTS: His career began with Unum and Fortis Benefits before he moved through senior sales leadership at Assurant.
MARKET RANGE: The group-benefits operation serves everything from small employers to major corporations, requiring distribution strategies across dramatically different workforces.

Carl Wasinger
Founder/CEO, Smart Warehousing

Carl Wasinger points to a pair of milestones over the past year that stand out at this Overland Park-based third-party logistics provider, which now manages more than 11 million square feet nationwide: unlocking AI to handle the complexities of modern fulfillment centers and marking 25 years of service. “We couldn’t have done it without a great team and a shared vision,” he says.
COLLEGE: B.S., Business (Information Systems), Kansas State University
WORLD CUP FOLLOW-THROUGH: A longer-term “Now you know” campaign so “KC isn’t a secret anymore.”
NEXT IDEA: Become a national hub for robot maintenance, perhaps with JCCC in the lead.
SYSTEMIC FIX: “Focus more on the possibilities of change versus the fear of change.”
MEETING PEEVE: Smartphone distraction.
ALTERNATE PATH: Demographics, leveraged with AI.

Rick Weller
Executive Vice President/CFO, Euronet Worldwide

Rick Weller has spent nearly a quarter-century helping Mike Brown turn Euronet Worldwide from an emerging electronic-payments company into a $4.24 billion global fintech enterprise. CFO since 2002, Weller oversees financial planning, acquisitions and treasury for a company that processed 20.3 billion transactions in 2025, extending the reach into more than 200 countries and territories.
COLLEGE: B.A., Accounting, University of Central Missouri
2025 REVENUES: $4.24 billion (Ingram’s public-company rank 5)
LONG RUN: Named Euronet CFO in November 2002, giving Weller nearly 24 years in the financial cockpit during the company’s global expansion.
PORTFOLIO: Oversees financial planning and analysis, acquisitions and treasury operations for the Nasdaq-traded payments company.
BEFORE EURONET: Served as COO of ionex telecommunications and CFO of information-technology outsourcing provider Intek Information.
SPRINT CLIMB: Rose through multiple finance posts at Sprint, including vice president of finance for Consumer Services and leadership roles in Business Services and corporate internal audit.

Richard Wetzel
Co-Founder, Centric

The 100 percent employee-owned construction firm, long focused on Kansas City office, hospitality, residential, and public work, opened a growth chapter in Northwest Arkansas in 2025 and will have an office there by year-end 2026. “Until now,” Richard Wetzel says, Centric “hadn’t actively focused growth outside our region.” He and Steve Swanson were among the founders of Centric in 2010.
COLLEGE: Architecture, University of Kansas; MBA, Entrepreneurship, UMKC Bloch School of Management
2025 REVENUES: $233.2 million
WORLD CUP: The event “captured Kansas City’s attention more than any other—both internally and externally.”
NEXT ASSETS: Finish the stadium projects and support the new owners of the Country Club Plaza.
MEETING HABIT: Almost no one takes notes; he wants to hand out pads and pens.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Volunteer for brand-new initiatives that have no precedent.

Patrick Whalen
Chair/Managing Partner, Spencer Fane

Patrick Whalen’s long-running growth strategy at Spencer Fane reached another national milestone this year. The firm entered New York through a combination with Golenbock Eiseman Assor Bell & Peskoe, adding roughly 50 lawyers to a platform that has expanded far beyond its Kansas City roots. That move helps explain why Spencer Fane now ranks among the nation’s 100 largest law firms by attorney count.
COLLEGE: B.A., Economics/Political Science, University of Kansas; MBA, Accounting/Finance, University of Texas–San Antonio; J.D., University of Texas School of Law; Executive Education, Harvard Business School
2025 REVENUES: $404 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 70)
ANOTHER TERM: Spencer Fane’s partners have unanimously elected Whalen to a third four-year term as firm chair.
THE MODEL: His strategy has stressed low overhead, financial discipline, decentralized leadership and expansion where clients and talent justify it.
GROWTH CURVE: Revenues jumped 25.5 percent last year, continuing a sustained run that has repeatedly put Spencer Fane among the nation’s fastest-growing law firms.

Debbie Wilkerson
Pres/CEO, Greater Kansas City Community Foundation

The dollars Debbie Wilkerson helps donors put to work reached another extraordinary level in 2025: donor-advised funds at the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation directed more than $756 million to charities, the highest total in its history. Behind that figure is a philanthropic platform that finished the year with nearly $8.9 billion in assets and more than 8,300 charitable funds.
COLLEGE: B.A., Psychology, University of Kansas; J.D., University of Kansas School of Law
RECORD GIVING: “We celebrate that generosity every day,” Wilkerson says of the record $756 million in donor-advised grants, encouraged that more families, individuals and businesses are setting aside charitable resources for needs now and later.
KC PRIORITY: Wilkerson points to Roy Blunt Luminary Park and the Housing Gateway initiative as examples of civic investments that strengthen quality of life.
HUMAN STAKES: “Addressing homelessness requires partnership across sectors, and we must approach the issue with humanity, helping people move into stable housing with dignity.”
FACE TIME: For high-stakes strategy, her choice is unequivocal: “Face-to-face conversations are always my preference.”

Bridgette Williams
Executive Director, Heavy Constructors Association of Greater Kansas City

Bridgette Williams spent a career where infrastructure, organized labor, work-force development and public policy intersect; in 2026, that portfolio widened again. She became chair of the Kansas City Area Transportation Authority board while continuing to lead the Heavy Constructors Association, exerting influence on transit, roads, bridges, utilities projects and the work force needed to build them.
COLLEGE: B.A., Communication, Pittsburg State University; B.A., Liberal Arts, Ottawa University; MBA, Helzberg School of Management, Rockhurst University
THE HEAVIES: Her association represents roughly 150 contractors, suppliers and service companies responsible for major public and private infrastructure regionally.
BARRIER BREAKER: Williams is the first woman and first African American to lead the nearly 75-year-old organization.
LABOR ROOTS: She began as a part-time receptionist at the Greater Kansas City AFL-CIO and ultimately became its president—the first black woman in the nation elected to lead a metropolitan AFL-CIO organization.
WORKFORCE VOICE: She has consistently promoted construction trades as well-paying career paths that do not necessarily require a traditional four-year degree.

Chad Williams
Chairman/CEO, Quality Growth Companies and QII

A year ago, Chad Williams promised his post-QTS chapter would produce another operating company. Mission accomplished: His new QII platform targets one of the economy’s most capital-intensive opportunities: powered campuses for AI factories, data centers and advanced manufacturing, designed around the increasingly difficult task of aligning land, electricity, capital and construction.
SECOND BUILD: Williams stepped away from QTS in April 2025 after more than two decades building the data-center company and returned full-time to the family investment platform now called Quality Growth Companies.
STARTING SCALE: QII says its development model is intended for powered campuses ranging from 100 megawatts to multiple gigawatts.
EXPERIENCE COUNTS: By the time Williams departed QTS, Quality Growth Companies says the data-center enterprise had grown to a valuation of roughly $65 billion.
BUILDING THE BENCH: QII has recruited executives with backgrounds in energy, institutional capital, development, construction and commercial transactions.
THE THESIS: Williams argues that AI-era infrastructure can no longer treat power, land, capital and construction as separate workstreams; those decisions have to be synchronized much earlier.

Simon Witdouck
President–Americas, TVH

Simon Witdouck’s latest expansion move takes TVH into a new North American market. The Olathe-based Americas operation acquired a majority interest this spring in Canadian agricultural-parts specialist G2Bpro, giving the global industrial-parts company a platform for extending its agricultural catalog and distribution capabilities across Canada.
COLLEGE: Master’s, Law, Ghent University and London School of Economics; postgraduate degree, Corporate Finance, KU Leuven
2025 REVENUES: $664 million (Ingram’s 100 No. 53)
GLOBAL TO LOCAL: Witdouck joined Belgium-based TVH in 2012 and held corporate-development and operating assignments before relocating to the Americas headquarters in Olathe.
BEFORE TVH: He practiced corporate law with Linklaters in Brussels and Antwerp.
THE NETWORK: TVH operates more than 90 branches worldwide, supporting customers in 180 countries with a parts database approaching 50 million item numbers.
FAMILY CONTROL: Despite that global scale, the company remains majority-owned by one of its founding families.

Joseph Wittrock
Senior Vice Pres/Chief Investment Officer, Security Benefit

Joseph Wittrock’s influence at Security Benefit is measured through the enormous investment portfolio that supports the company’s retirement-products business. Since taking over as chief investment officer, he has built an investment organization whose performance has contributed materially to the growth of one of the Kansas City region’s largest private enterprises.
COLLEGE: B.A. (summa cum laude), Finance and Banking, Buena Vista University; MBA with honors, Quantitative Finance and Strategic Management, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
2025 REVENUE: $11.77 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 4)
CURRENT RESPONSIBILITY: He’s a senior vice president who serves as Security Benefit’s chief investment officer. He oversees an approximately $63.8 billion investment portfolio, which soared roughly 27.6 percent in 2025.
TEAM: Wittrock oversees an investment operation of more than 100 professionals spread across three locations, including Topeka.
CAREER PATH: He joined Security Benefit as vice president of investments in 2014 and was promoted to CIO less than three years later.

Doug Wolff
CEO, Security Benefit

Doug Wolff has overseen Security Benefit during a period of rapid growth that elevated the Topeka company into the upper ranks of the region’s private enterprises. His task extends beyond producing retirement and investment products: It includes preserving a large Kansas employment base while competing nationally for customers, capital and specialized financial talent.
COLLEGE: B.S., Finance/Actuarial Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
2025 REVENUE: $11.77 billion (Ingram’s 100 No. 4)
AT THE HELM: Wolff has served as Security Benefit’s CEO since 2022.
ENTERPRISE SCALE: Security Benefit has spent most of the past decade near the top of the Ingram’s 100 list of the region’s largest private companies. It has a huge financial services footprint in Topeka, with roughly 1,200 of its 2,000 employees there.
PERFORMANCE: Security Benefit earned a place on the Ward’s 50 list of top-performing life and health insurers.

GROWTH STRATEGY: Wolff has emphasized organic growth, continued recruitment and retention of specialized talent, and maintaining the company’s long-standing northeast Kansas base.

Eric Wollerman
Pres/CEO, Kansas City National Security Campus

The growth continues for Eric Wollerman and the NNSA, which purchased a 700-person classified office building—the first phase of a multi-phase real estate plan to add office and manufacturing space. “The first building was delivered ahead of schedule and on budget,” he says. Honeywell FM&T operates the campus for the Department of Energy.
COLLEGE: B.S., Industrial Engineering, and M.S., Industrial & Systems Engineering, University of Wisconsin–Madison
WORLD CUP ROLE: KCNSC employees helped train and outfit NNSA Nuclear Emergency Support Team radiological detection crews at U.S. host cities.
NEXT INFRASTRUCTURE: Roads, power, water, sewer, or continued public-transportation investment.
WORKFORCE FIX: Investment in teachers, STEM curriculum and real-world K–12 learning.
LEADERSHIP LESSON: Becoming a certified Lean expert and running a large production facility—now standard operating procedure at KCNSC.

Tamria Zertuche
President/CEO, Ferrellgas

Three years into the CEO role, Tamria Zertuche has moved well beyond the succession phase at Ferrellgas. Fiscal 2025 produced higher volume, revenue, gross profit and adjusted EBITDA, and this summer the company extended her employment agreement as it pursues the next stage of its strategy. Her emphasis remains familiar: focus on technology, logistics, efficiency and people.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., Management Computer Systems, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; MBA, Colorado State University; doctoral studies, Organizational Learning, Performance and Change, Colorado State University
2025 REVENUES: $1.94 billion (Ingram’s Top Public Companies list No. 9)
THE CLIMB: Zertuche joined Ferrellgas through its 2004 acquisition of Blue Rhino, where she was senior director of IT, then advanced through CIO and COO roles before becoming CEO in 2023.
OPERATING GAINS: Adjusted EBITDA reached $330.7 million in fiscal 2025, up 4 percent, while gross profit surpassed $1 billion.
EMPLOYEE-OWNED: Ferrellgas’ ESOP structure makes its workforce owners in a national propane business serving customers across the country.

Keith Zimmerman
President/CEO, HCA Midwest Health

Keith Zimmerman oversees the region’s largest health-care network: seven acute-care hospitals, a psychiatric hospital and more than 150 sites supported by over 10,000 employees and 1,500 physicians and providers. Yet his responses frame that scale in distinctly personal terms—developing future caregivers, empowering other leaders and grounding each workday in faith, service and stewardship.
COLLEGE: B.B.A., University of Louisiana at Lafayette; MBA, Regis University
2025 REVENUES: $16.85 billion (excludes clinic/other revenue)
WORK-FORCE IMPERATIVE: “The demand for care will continue to grow, and we cannot recruit our way out of that challenge,” Zimmerman says. His answer is earlier exposure and more accessible clinical-career pathways.
FULL PIPELINE: HCA Midwest’s earn-and-learn programs and educational partnerships help participants acquire credentials while working, while advancement programs give existing health-care employees opportunities to build skills and move forward.
PHYSICIAN DEVELOPMENT: The system operates 12 accredited residency and fellowship programs training approximately 200 physicians, strengthening the likelihood that more doctors will establish careers and lives in Kansas City.

PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 2026