Brian Hammons doesn’t know how to stop running. As President and CEO of Hammons Black Walnuts in Stockton, he runs the family business as the “head cheerleader” of the third-generation company. In his spare time, he runs marathons, including 11 times in the Boston marathon. This year, Hammons is being honored with the Leadership Missouri Alumni Lifetime Achievement award and—according
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Each year, the Missouri Chamber selects a local chamber of commerce that sets the standard in economic development, advocacy, and innovation. The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce was selected from more than 200 local chambers that serve communities all across the state. “The St. Joseph Chamber of Commerce raises the bar for chambers all across Missouri and beyond,” says Dan
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The path to growth doesn’t start in the boardroom at Saint Luke’s East Hospital. It starts at the bedside. Hospital President and CEO Ron Baker says everything begins with having highly engaged employees and physicians who provide high-quality care to patients. “What makes Saint Luke’s East Hospital successful are the people who work here and practice medicine here,” Baker says.
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Even in the early days of the subprime mortgage crisis, it was easy to understand one of the basic causes: the financial industry loaned too much money to the wrong people. The subprime crisis had exposed the limits of credit scores. The industry simply needed a better tool to assess lending risk. “It became obvious to us that a credit
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Companies often have to evolve before reaching their full potential. For Moneta Group, evolution has been constant during its nearly 140-year existence. Founded in 1869 as an insurance business, today’s Moneta Group is a client-centered financial services company managing more than $14 billion. Over the last three years, company revenues have increased by nearly 50 percent. Principal, Chairman, and Managing
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Although Columbia-based Bluebird Network may not be a household name, the company has quietly become part of many Missourians’ everyday lives. Over the last sixteen years, Bluebird has laid more than 6,000 miles of fiber-optic cable across Missouri and Illinois. Today, many residents and businesses—especially those in rural areas—rely on this high-speed network for everything from transmitting local hospital scans
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When David Wegenka joined with Staci Thornton, Patrick Hawkins, and Keith Hawkins in 2008 to buy IMKO from Jim Hawkins (Patrick and Keith’s father), they had big dreams for the small company. What started as one office in Saint Joseph in 1972, has now turned into five locations in Missouri and many more throughout the Midwest. Their explosive success in
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