Inside Memphis Business February/March 2015

FEB / MAR 2015 | VOLUME IX | NUMBER 3

THE NEW MBQ AW A R D W I N N E R S LAURITA JACKSON W. SCOTT STAFFORD JEFF WEBB KERI WRIGHT

DELTA BLUES AEROTROPOLIS AT THE CROSSROADS

Supplement to Memphis magazine

Laurita Jackson CEO, 1 SOURCE OFFICE & FACILITY SUPPLY

23 RD ANNUAL PRESENTED BY

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©Jeffrey Jacobs Photography

FEB / MAR 2015 VOLUME IX | NUMBER 3

fe a t u r e s

AW A R D WINNERS pg. 21 1000+ EMPLOYEES

200-1000 EMPLOYEES

50-200 EMPLOYEES

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ON THE COVER: Laurita Jackson, CEO of 1Source Office & Facility Supply.

JEFF WEBB

W. SCOTT KERI STAFFORD WRIGHT

PHOTOGRAPH BY LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

VARSITY BRANDS

EVOLVE BANK & TRUST

UNIVERSAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

LAURITA JACKSON 1SOURCE OFFICE & FACILITY SUPPLY

COLUMNS 4

FROM THE EDITOR >>> BY RICHARD J. ALLEY

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FROM THE PUBLISHER >>> BY KENNETH NEILL

7

IN MY OPINION >>> BY JOHN MALMO

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SC A R BORO FA R E >>> B Y

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D R .

D O U G L A S

S C A R B O R O

CHINA, INC. >>> B Y

D AV I D

S .

WA D D E L L

30 F O U N D A T I O N S 12 S P O R T S > > > BY F R A N K M U R TA U G H

With roots in Memphis, the architecture firm brg3s keeps scraping the sky. >>> BY HANNAH BAILEY

13 E D U C A T I O N >>> BY DR. JOHN SMARRELLI JR.

14 T O U R I S M > > > B Y J O N AT H A N LY O N S

15 L A W > > > B Y T O N Y S I LVA

16 D I N I N G >>> BY SUSAN ELLIS

DEPARTMENTS 19 M E M P H I S B E A T 50 P O W E R P L A Y E R S 53 T H E H O T S H E E T 57 O L D B U S I N E S S 59 A P P O I N T M E N T B O O K

38 T H E D E L T A B L U E S

Aerotropolis at the Crossroads ossroads >>> BY TOBY SELLS

60 T H E O F F I C E 62 C O M M U N I T Y P A R T N E R S H I P 64 M A D E I N M E M P H I S

36 P R O F I L E

Graham Reese Design Group >>> BY LESLEY YOUNG

F EB/M A R 20 15 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM |

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F ROM

T H E

E DI T OR

> > >

BY

R I C H A R D

J.

A L L E Y

Step inside the new MBQ.

INSIDEMEMPHISBUSINESS.COM EDITOR CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Richard J. Alley Brian Groppe

MANAGING EDITOR

Frank Murtaugh

ASSISTANT EDITOR

Anna Cox

EDITORIAL INTERN

Hannah Bailey

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR

Michael Finger, John Malmo, Marilyn Sadler, Katherine Barnett, Sally Lyon, David S. Waddell, Lesley Young, Dr. Douglas Scarboro, Toby Sells, Jonathan Lyons, Susan Ellis, Tony Silva, Dr. John Smarrelli Jr. Christopher Myers

GRAPHIC DESIGNERS

Dominique Pere, Bryan Rollins

PHOTOGRAPHY

Brandon Dill, Larry Kuzniewski

ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Bruce Meisterman

ADVERTISING OPERATIONS DIRECTOR

Margie Neal

P U B L I S H E D BY C O N T E M P O R A RY M E D I A , I N C .

CEO CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER DIRECTOR OF NEW BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT EDITORIAL DIRECTOR DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL/OPERATIONS ADVERTISING DIRECTOR

Kenneth Neill Jennifer K. Oswalt

Richard J. Alley, Editor richard@insidememphisbusiness.com

Penelope Huston Jackie Sparks-Davila

I N S I DE

S C O OP

Britt Ervin Lynn Sparagowski Ashley Haeger

IT DIRECTOR

Joseph Carey

IT ASSISTANT

Ashlee Taylor

RECEPTIONIST

Martin Lane

Inside Memphis Business is published six times a year by Contemporary Media, Inc., 460 Tennessee Street, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101 © 2015, telephone: 901-5219000. For subscription information, call 901-575-9470. All rights reserved.

Periodicals postage paid at Memphis, TN. Postmaster: send address changes to Inside Memphis Business, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Opinions and perspectives expressed in the magazine are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the ownership or management.

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we hope to go beyond the CEOs’ desks and offer a magazine that is of interest to the end user of their companies’ products or services.

Business these days transcends time clocks and pushes past office walls, so we’ll look at the way the changing face of corporate America is reflected in the glass walls of Memphis’s institutions.

Thank you for looking inside, and I hope you’ll come back again and again. Now that you know our name, drop me a line and let me know what you think. I look forward to hearing from you.

Molly Willmott Matthew Writt

ACCOUNTING COORDINATOR

and new perspective. Going forward, we’ll be looking at businesses in an expanded way, by doing just what our new name suggests — getting inside to learn local companies’ secrets of success, at how and why they were founded, and what those founders are passionate about today. Most importantly, though, we’ll look at what exactly is Memphis’ place on the national and global stage today.

We’ll get inside businesses big and small, and look at nonprofits as an industry to learn who leads them, who benefits, and how they lift our community as a whole.

The niche of Inside Memphis Business is as a B2B — a businessto-business — publication. But

Bruce Vanwyngarden

EVENTS MANAGER MARKETING CONSULTANT

What you hold here in your hands is the culmination of many weeks of discussion, trial and error, building and rebuilding. After eight years, MBQ, which was what this magazine was called until now, certainly had a solid foundation. But it needed some upgrades. It needed to be remade to look more like the Memphis of today, and to reflect what is closer to all of our interests.

And so it all begins with the name: Inside Memphis Business.

What’s in a name? Everything. Just ask Memphis State University, Auto Shack, Seessel’s, or Federal Express.

Our old name fit for a while and served us well. But it had begun to stretch at the seams, pinch a bit at the collar. We needed a new look

Jeffrey A. Goldberg

DIGITAL MANAGER

READER SERVICE COORDINATOR

I’d like to invite you to step inside. Come inside Memphis banking and innovation, sports, tourism, manufacturing, philanthropy, dining, distribution, and recreation.

“When Delta and Northwest declared bankruptcy in the same courthouse at the same time on the same day, we started preparing to close the hub.”

— JOHN GREAUD, Vice President of Operations for the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority (retired) pg. 38

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

“. . . the city of Memphis is working daily to support innovative strategies, tactics, and initiatives that focus on retaining, recruiting, and growing the talent necessary to ensure that Memphis is a place where economic empires and the ideas that create them can flourish.”

— DR. DOUGLAS SCARBORO pg. 9

“I think my clients enjoy working with me because I build on what already is in their heads.

Restaurants will be themed to whatever the concept is.”

— GR AHAM REESE pg. 36

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INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

I N

M Y

OPI N IO N

> > >

BY

J O H N

M A L M O

The power of one The guys were cussing up a storm when Richard Drew walked into the auto paint shop. It was the 1920s, two-toned cars were popular, but when the painters pulled off the tape separating the two colors it peeled off the paint.

Drew had just spent two years as part of a research team at what would later be called the 3M Co. The team hadn’t accomplished much. So it was disbanded and Drew had been re-assigned to selling sandpaper.

But that day in the paint shop he vowed to develop an adhesive tape that could be removed without lifting the paint.

After two years of disobeying orders and working pretty much in secret, Drew patented Scotch Brand Masking Tape. He kept it up and, in 1930, patented what we know today as Scotch Tape. More than 400 varieties of tapes are sold under the Scotch and 3M brands today.

One man with absolute determination created multi-billiondollar products after a team had produced nothing in two years.

About that same time, Procter & Gamble’s research team was working on Product X. The team logged 200,000 hours before giving up. One team member, David Byerly,

was given permission individually to continue to pursue Product X. After two years of Byerly’s independent work, Product X became Tide Detergent, a $3 billion brand today with dozens of SKUs. Again, one man with absolute determination created a multi-billion-dollar product after a team had produced nothing.

In the office recently

client’s brand position.

“Who wrote them?”

I asked. One young man answered that it was the team.

“The team came up with it,” he said.

“No it didn’t,” I said.

“Teams don’t write copy. Teams don’t have ideas. Individuals do.”

A team may collect ideas from its members.

Teams can help sort things out. Teams can critique, criticize, round

ONE MAN WITH ABSOLUTE DETERMINATION — RICHARD DREW — CREATED A MULTI-BILLION-DOLLAR PRODUCT AFTER A TEAM HAD PRODUCED NOTHING. I was looking over some work for one of the agency’s clients. It included a two-word headline that showed up several times.

It was terrific work, a wonderful job. I said those two words were so good that they actually could define the

off rough edges. The seed, the original idea, the concept, brilliant word-carpentry, all come from individuals.

Finally he admitted that he had said those words first.

That was important.

Teams change. Members

come and go. Team make-up one day isn’t the same the next day. Obviously, you can’t expect the same level of work today from yesterday’s team.

You have to know more than just the product of a team’s work. You have to know which team member(s) is responsible.

If Richard Drew’s work had been mingled with a team from which came Scotch Masking Tape, 3M might never have known who really was responsible for the breakthrough. If he had continued to be saddled with a team, he then might not have created Scotch Tape.

There’s nothing wrong with the concept of teams in the workplace.

Just be sure you know who on the team is hitting home runs.

A former reporter for The Commercial Appeal, John Malmo founded his eponymous advertising agency in 1967, and has been a fixture on the Memphis media scene ever since. His former company was merged in 1991 to form archer>malmo, where he still works as an independent consultant. In 2011, Malmo was among the “35 Who Made A Difference” in Memphis magazine’s 35th anniversary issue.

F EB/M A R 20 15 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM |

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From your Evolve Family,

Congratulations to

Scott Stafford

on being selected as one of 2015’s CEO’s of the year!

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EQUAL HOUSING

LENDER

S C A R B ORO

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> > >

BY

D R .

D O U G L A S

S C A R B O R O

Nurturing talent in Memphis doesn’t have to be an Olympian feat.

During the summer of 1996, I was a rising senior at Morehouse College in Atlanta, spending that summer completing an internship. In addition to gaining work experience, I had the opportunity to witness the Olympics being held there that summer.

While the games were spectacular, it was the organization, the teamwork, and the logistics that came together to pull off this massive undertaking that was truly amazing. This collaboration was the seed planted that allowed me to understand the importance of talent.

Many make the mistake of thinking that Atlanta hosted such a successful Olympic Games because of its robust economy. Yes, Atlanta had a burgeoning economy, but it didn’t create itself. People (talent) built the economy and those same people formulated the idea to host the Olympics, and

turned that idea into an awesome reality.

When I think back on that summer, I realize that one of the reasons I was so amazed by the outcome of the Olympics was that I got to see some of the planning firsthand.

Those for whom I was interning were holding meetings with other local people right in front of me and formulating, cultivating, and executing ideas that helped to shape

been written. As a city, Memphis does not have to try to copy Atlanta.

Atlanta has its economic empires and the talent and ideas that built them would not necessarily have flourished in Memphis. Instead, in order to create more economic empires and foster our current and developing empires, Memphians must work together to plant, nurture, and harvest our own bountiful

IT IS MY JOB TO HELP THE CITY BE INTENTIONAL ABOUT ITS EFFORTS TO IDENTIFY ITS POTENTIAL AND BUILD TALENT TO MAXIMIZE THAT POTENTIAL. what became the 1996 Olympic Games. These people were not superheroes. They had never before planned an event of that scope and magnitude. They were just audacious, willing, bold, talented people from a variety of backgrounds who were geeked enough to set out to do what had never before been done in that city.

Years after those Olympics, and long after I graduated from college and left Atlanta, I read this in Jim Clifton’s The Coming Jobs War: “Wherever the most talented choose to live is where the next economic empires will rise.” Truer words have never

and diverse crop of talent.

As the Executive Director of the Office of Talent and Human Capital for the city of Memphis, it is my job to help the city be intentional about its efforts to identify its potential and build talent to maximize that potential. To do this, I work to support organizations like Emerge Memphis, Start Co., and the EpiCenter, as they plant and nurture empire seeds. I also work to support education reform efforts and increase college attainment rates through Colleges of Memphis and Drive to 55, in an effort to ensure that our K-16 fields are better able to produce

fresh talent annually.

Like the organization, the teamwork, the logistics, the talent that came together to pull off the massive undertaking that became the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, the city of Memphis is working daily to support innovative strategies, tactics, and initiatives that focus on retaining, recruiting, and growing the talent necessary to ensure that Memphis is a place where economic empires and the ideas that create them can flourish.

I am a follower of the “Never Eat Alone” theory, so if you have ideas about how to help the city grow and retain its talent, I can be reached via Twitter @dscarboro or by email at douglas. scarboro@memphistn. gov. I’ll consider your tweets and emails in writing future columns.

Thanks for listening and I look forward to working with you, the talent of Memphis.

Dr. Douglas Scarboro is the Chief Learning Officer for the city of Memphis and Executive Director of the Office of Talent and Human Capital. He has a B.A. in political science from Morehouse College, an MBA from Campbell University, and an Ed.D. in Higher and Adult Education from the University of Memphis.

F EB/M A R 20 15 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM |

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Is the Chinese property market a house of cards?

According to the Chinese Constitution, prior to 1978’s economic reforms “no organization or individual may appropriate, buy, sell, or lease land, or otherwise engage in the transfer of land, by unlawful means.” Post1978, China began establishing land values by privatizing farmland and ascribing land use duties to activate industrial sites.

Land only became transferable in 1988 and full commercialization didn’t occur until 1998 when the state allocation system was finally eliminated. Therefore, the Chinese real estate market (as we

The Chinese save 30 percent of household income compared with 5 percent in the U.s. understand real estate) has only really existed for the last 16 years.

Unlike America’s comforting social safety net, the Chinese lack a modern entitlement

system. This creates financial insecurity for Chinese households.

As a consequence, the Chinese save 30 percent of household income compared with 5 percent in the U.S. The rapid rise in Chinese incomes has therefore created a sizable pool of investment demand. Unfortunately, due to the restricted and underdeveloped financial marketplace, savers have very few investment options. They can deposit money into low-yielding bank accounts, purchase securities on the domestic casino-like stock exchanges, or purchase tangible real estate.

Real estate investment returns have far outpaced those of bank deposits and local stock indices. In fact, over the last decade land prices have increased nearly fivefold and roughly 20 percent of Chinese property owners own more than one property. This enormous escalation in price and investment demand has many concerned that China’s property market has become a bubble.

Memories of real estate disasters in Japan and the U.S. strike fear into the hearts of investors still sleepless after 2008. Reports of “ghost cities” and leaping leverage have gestated even broader concerns over the sustainability of

China’s economic rise.

Is the Chinese property market a house of cards?

We must put the rise in property prices over the last decade into context with the youth of the overall property market.

Identifying appropriate equilibrium price levels takes time and, while prices have surged at current levels, they do not seem out of line with global comparisons of rental yields or price-to-income ratios. Additionally, mortgages did not exist until 1998, so China’s current mortgage debt equals 15 percent of GDP compared with over 80 percent in the U.S. Therefore, the price appreciation has occurred without a debt accelerator, relying on more elemental forces of price discovery.

China has a goal of increasing its urbanization level from 51 percent today to 70 percent by 2030. Accomplishing this goal requires new urban housing units for 247 million Chinese. With migration at this magnitude there will inevitably be periods of over- and undersupply. Fortunately, the pace of demand growth means oversupply will be quickly absorbed.

Housing supply actually failed to keep pace with demand up until 2011, stoking price pressures.

At that point, developers went into overdrive creating the widely reported

“ghost city” oversupply issues. Recognizing the oversupply, the Chinese government instituted an array of policy measures to slow property development. As a consequence, construction activity fell more than 25 percent.

With construction activity accounting for 15 percent of Chinese GDP, this drop explains nearly all of the recent slowdown in China’s economic growth rate.

As the balance between demand and supply has now improved, Beijing has begun relaxing restrictions. This should help support economic growth as we enter 2015.

Bottom Line: China’s property sector is unlikely to be a house of cards.

With household debt levels low, urbanization levels rising, and Beijing willing to preempt marketplace imbalances, the risk of a Japanese or U.S.style property collapse seems remote. The recent stresses popularized in the press represent cyclical pains that we should expect as China tries to equilibrate housing stock while urbanizing 20 million people per year.

David S. Waddell, CEO of Waddell and Associates, is spending a year in China and will delve into the economics and culture for readers of Inside Memphis Business.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

S P OR T S

New tournament director ready to serve up “sizzle” at the Racquet Club. > > >

ABOVE: Erin Mazurek moved from Michigan and the NHL to take the reins of the annual tennis tournament in Memphis.

“IF WE’RE DOING OUR JOB RIGHT, THIS WILL BE A FESTIVAL FOR TENNIS FANS AND CASUAL FANS.”

12 |

BY

F R A N K

M U R TA U G H

Officials at the Racquet Club of Memphis knew they had something special when Bjorn Borg won the 1977 U.S. National Indoor at the private facility. The Swedish baseliner had won the first of what would be five straight Wimbledon titles the previous summer, so his Memphis win made the christening of pro tennis in this city international news. Thirty-eight years later — with Memphis championships for John McEnroe, Jimmy Connors, Andre Agassi, and Pete Sampras since Borg’s inaugural win — pro tennis at the Racquet Club begins anew with the Memphis Open (February 7-15).

Last March, a local group headed by Dabney Collier and Steve Valentine partnered with the United States Tennis Association (USTA) to purchase the club and

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

tournament from Sharks Sports & Entertainment, an outfit based in San Jose, California. With a new general manager (Valentine) and tournament director (Erin

Mazurek, hired by the USTA), one of this city’s biggest sporting events is playing with new strings this winter.

While world-class tennis has been a constant, profitability has not as the local tournament has suffered the collision of two forces. The first is a general waning of interest in tennis as the world’s top ten is currently filled with foreign talent, most notably Switzerland’s Roger Federer and Spain’s Rafael Nadal (neither of whom has played in Memphis).

The second force is a hyper-competitive sports-entertainment market, both globally and locally. As recently as 2000, remember, there was no such thing as a Memphis Grizzly.

“When you have an owner from afar, there’s rarely a focus on the local market,” says Mazurek, who moved to Memphis last fall from Michigan, where she spent five years as director of private event sales for the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings. “I think [the previous owners] lost some of the pulse on the community. This tournament has to be sold from the grassroots up. It’s as much a community event as it is a professional sports-andentertainment function.

You have to remember there are people at the core, relationships.”

The tournament has been without a title sponsor since 2012, when it was known as the Regions Morgan Keegan. (ServiceMaster is the event’s new presenting sponsor.)This is significant, Mazurek explains, as a title sponsor generally covers a tournament’s prize

money. (In 2014, the tournament awarded just under $570,000 total, including $103,100 to champion Kei Nishikori.) According to Mazurek, the tournament’s total revenue is generally split evenly between sponsorship partners (in the range of $10,000 each) and ticket sales. Ticket prices have been reduced between 5 and 20 percent this year, with a range between $25 and $85 (depending on daytime or evening sessions, with a ticket to Sunday’s final starting at $50). The Racquet Club’s stadium court seats 2,800 and the brand-new grandstand court will seat 1,000.

Mazurek is embracing the tennis component of her new job, but she stresses the need to enhance a ticketbuyer’s experience away from the court. “We need more pre-match entertainment,” she says. “More sizzle to the show. Let’s face it: There are people who go to a Grizzlies game and barely pay attention to what’s happening on the court. I’m that person who loves the atmosphere, the music, the promotions, the branding. If we’re doing our job right, this will be a festival for tennis fans and casual fans.”

The Memphis Open remains one of just 10 ATP (Association of Tennis Professionals) tournaments in the United States. Two-time defending champion Nishikori — a finalist at the 2014 U.S. Open — has committed to defending his title.

Frank Murtaugh is managing editor of Inside Memphis Business and Memphis, and a life-long sports fan.

E DUC AT IO N

PHOTOGRAPH BY LIGHTKEEPER | DREAMSTIME

The STEAM and STEMM programs focus on preparing high schoolers for a rigorous collegiate experience in fields where we know demand will only grow.

Our higher education institutions are coming off the bench for the community. > > >

BY

D R .

J O H N

S M A R R E L L I

J R .

This past November, I stood and cheered with thousands of my fellow Buccaneers when Christian Brothers University played the University of Memphis men’s basketball team at FedExForum. In case you’ve forgotten, or somehow missed the news, CBU won that game 74-70 in overtime. It may have been only an exhibition game, but that didn’t stop Buc Nation from reveling in our victory.

The real victories in our community, of course, will come, not through athletic competition between Memphis’ universities, but through diligent, focused cooperation and collaboration on our core missions: building a stronger community through education.

Right now, more than 300,000 adults in the greater Memphis area have no post-secondary degree. At the same time, the Greater Memphis Chamber

estimates that 14,000 local manufacturing jobs are unfilled because employers simply can’t find the workers with the skills they need.

The cumulative impact of these statistics is lost wages, missed opportunities for upward mobility, and a lingering drag on our regional economy’s growth.

That’s why CBU is proud to join with our fellow local colleges and universities on some important ongoing programs focused on making sure Memphians enter college and graduate ready to succeed in a competitive economy.

Chief among these is Governor Haslam’s “Drive to 55” initiative which seeks to raise post-secondary attainment across our state from 32 to 55 percent.

With the generous support of the Lumina Foundation, the Colleges of Memphis believes that we can play a critical role in that effort, and intend to award more than 144,000 scholarships and degrees by 2025.

We also support the ambitious goals of the new Greater Memphis Alliance for a Competitive Workforce.

This new entity, which sprang from the Brookings Institute’s Regional Economic Development Plan for Memphis, will focus on aligning K-12 curricula with specific employment needs in local industries.

At the same time, we know that work towards college graduation and gainful employment cannot begin with high school seniors. At CBU, we are reaching deeper and earlier to help Memphis’ kids succeed.

THE “DRIVE TO 55” INITIATIVE SEEKS TO RAISE POST-SECONDARY ATTAINMENT ACROSS OUR STATE FROM 32 TO 55 PERCENT.

Across the street from CBU’s Midtown campus, we have partnered with Shelby County Schools to assist with the curriculum and teaching at Middle College High School and the new Maxine Smith Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math (STEAM) Academy; at Christian Brothers High School, we have launched the Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and Medicine (STEMM) Co-Lab. These programs focus on preparing high schoolers for a rigorous collegiate experience in fields where we know demand will only grow.

CBU takes enormous pride in our record-setting freshman enrollment numbers and 92-percent job placement rates. But more important work remains.

Proverbs 14:23 reminds us “in all toil there is profit, but mere talk tends only to poverty.”

More than one-quarter of Memphis’ population lives in poverty, and our unemployment rate exceeds the statewide average. Addressing the gaps in our education system requires years of hard work from multiple colleges, businesses, non-profits, and agencies of government.

Tens of thousands of Memphians are already in overtime.

What we need now is a team effort.

Dr. John Smarrelli Jr. is president of Christian Brothers University.

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PHOTOGRAPH BY CLEWISLEAKE | DREAMSTIME

T OU R I S M

Memphis: A destination city > > >

BY

J O N AT H A N

LYO N S

Tourism is an integral part of the U.S. economy. According to the U.S. Travel Association, the industry generates $2.1 trillion in economic output and supports 14.9 million jobs.

Congress recently reauthorized an additional five years of funding for Brand USA, a public-private partnership with the mission of promoting travel to the United States. In 2013, the program brought an additional 1.1 million visitors to the country, generating $3.4 billion in visitor spending and $1 billion in federal, local, and state tax revenues.

But what does that mean for Memphis?

Local tourism is a $3.2 billion industry. In fact, tourism and hospitality support 35,000 jobs in Memphis and Shelby County with a payroll of $580 million, and $136 million in local and state taxes. These are outside dollars spent in area hotels, restaurants, attractions, and shops.

Who are all these tourists and where are they coming from? They are a mix of leisure visitors (traveling independently or with a tour group) checking out attractions like Graceland, Beale Street, and the Memphis 14 |

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

Zoo. They are meeting and convention delegates.

And they’re people driving in for a special event like Memphis in May or a concert at FedExForum.

The city appeals to international visitors as well, and these tourists tend to stay longer and spend more money.

Because we’re home to some of America’s most iconic attractions — Graceland, the National Civil Rights Museum (with its recently completed $27 million renovation), and Beale Street — Memphis is an ideal destination for the global visitor who’s already been to New York, Florida, or the West Coast. To build interest and demand, the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau has representation in the United Kingdom, Germany,

LOCAL TOURISM IS A $3.2 BILLION INDUSTRY. France, and Japan.

Because of these efforts, more than 200,000 hotel room nights booked by international tour

operators each year can be tracked.

The city also has tons of competitive advantages overseas such as Memphis, the Broadway musical currently performing in London’s Shaftesbury Theatre. The CVB manages Memphis-themed taxis that cruise London streets. And Elvis Presley Enterprises just launched the new exhibit, “Elvis at the O2,” which will run through August.

In 2014, Memphis had its best year in hotel occupancy since 2006. We even led the Southeast region in hotel room demand. Signature, high-impact events will continue to make their way to town in 2015, including National Baptist USA, which will generate 12,000 hotel room nights. Other major, upcoming events on the books include the NCAA Men’s Basketball Regional Finals (March 2017) and the return of National Contract Bridge League (March 2019).

Memphis has carved tourism niches for itself based on regional, geographic, and cultural amenities: We’re a prime

LEFT: Inside view of the Memphis Visitor Center.

Images include a riverboat, Victorian Village, cotton fields, and musicians.

destination for youth sporting events thanks to facilities like First Tennessee Fields and Mike Rose Soccer Complex; the new Beale Street Landing welcomes visitors arriving on the Mississippi River from a cruise on the American Queen; Shelby Farms Park, the largest urban park in the country, is in the midst of its Heart of the Park expansion; new music attractions like the Memphis Music Hall of Fame and Blues Hall of Fame will open this year; Bass Pro Shops at The Pyramid is expected to lure outdoor enthusiasts from around the region; and 2016 will see the Harahan Bridge become the Big River Crossing, giving cyclists access to ride across the Mississippi River and raising the city’s profile as an outdoor destination.

Known famously as the “Home of the Blues” and the “Birthplace of Rock ’n’ Roll,” the city’s offerings for tourists are rapidly expanding, and positioning Memphis as a regional and global destination.

Jonathan Lyons is Director of Public Relations for the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau.

PHOTOGRAPH BY BERKSHOTS | DREAMSTIME

L AW

What businesses can expect from the Executive Order on Immigration. > > >

BY

TO N Y

S I LVA

On November 20, 2014, President Obama announced several initiatives to address issues with the current U.S. immigration system, many of which may have a direct impact on businesses.

ABOVE: Immigrants swearing allegiance to the flag of the United States as part of a naturalization ceremony making them American citizens.

WITH THE INCREASED EMPHASIS ON INVENTORS, RESEARCHERS, AND ENTREPRENEURS, COMPANIES MAY SEE GREATER OPPORTUNITIES TO ATTRACT INVESTORS.

First, Obama announced plans to expand the government’s use of prosecutorial discretion, directing governmental agencies to focus resources on the deportation of “felons, not families; criminals, not children.” The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, originally announced in 2012, will ease some of its more restrictive requirements and allow individuals to apply who can demonstrate continuous presence since January 1, 2010 (in lieu of the original June 15, 2007, requirement).

The expanded program will also remove the upper age limit (currently 31) and increase the initial DACA period and employment authorization

to three years.

Additionally, Obama announced a new plan, quite similar to DACA, entitled Deferred Action for Parental Accountability (DAPA).

Under DAPA, undocumented individuals who are parents of U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents can apply for protection from deportation and may also receive employment authorization. As with DACA, DAPA recipients would have to pass background checks and demonstrate no threat to national security or public safety.

Both programs may result in an increase of available workers.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, approximately 4 million individuals could be eligible under these programs. Accordingly, employers may see an increase in presentation of “updated” or “new” Social Security numbers or employment authorization cards from their current employees.

Not all such changes, however, are evidence per se of undocumented status, and care must be

taken to avoid discrimination. In investigating any potential issues of prior unauthorized employment, companies are well advised to apply policies equally, consistently, and in a non-discriminatory fashion. Moreover, it is advisable for employers to adopt a routine system for auditing I-9s and any other immigration documentation to ensure compliance with laws and regulations.

Obama also announced plans to “modernize, improve, and clarify immigrant and nonimmigrant programs to grow our economy and create jobs.” Though specifics were not made available, several critical problems were addressed in the announcement.

For example, temporary foreign workers seeking to become permanent residents often face incredibly long wait times for visas to become available because the U.S. places annual per-country limitations on visa availability. Under a newly proposed plan, foreign workers would be able to change employers more easily during this waiting period, allowing for greater job mobility and career progression.

Other highlights include improvements and clarification to programs designed to attract foreign inventors, researchers, investors, and entrepreneurs.

Finally, foreign students present in the U.S. studying “STEM” profession subjects — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — would be eligible for expanded and extended use of the Optional Practical Training (OPT) program, which allows for employment and practical training in those disciplines

after the completion of the course of study.

With the increased emphasis on inventors, researchers, and entrepreneurs, companies may see greater opportunities to attract investors and offer services in related industries. Similarly, with the anticipated changes to worker portability and mobility, companies may be in a better position to identify and recruit talented foreign workers who are eager to further their careers in a new position.

The changes to DACA and the implementation of DAPA will occur within 90-180 days of the November 20th announcement. The other programs, however, require the issuance of regulations and guidance prior to implementation. Given the current political climate, the timeframe for issuing the required regulations and guidance is speculative at best. At the time of writing, a coalition of 17 states had filed a lawsuit claiming that Obama acted illegally in issuing the Executive Order on Immigration. Several commentators, however, have opined that President Obama acted within his authority and in line with previous presidents’ executive actions on immigration.

Until more guidance is provided, businesses, investors, foreign workers, and families wait patiently for more news.

Tony Silva is principal of Silva Law Firm in Memphis, and a frequent writer and speaker on immigration law issues.

Inside Law is presented in collaboration with the Memphis Bar Association, a memberbased organization where attorneys grow, connect, and serve. Find out more at memphisbar.org.

F EB/M A R 20 15 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM |

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DI N I NG

A SENSE OF PLACE rg3s Architects is the firm behind three ambitious projects: Bounty on Broad, Chiwawa, and the Truck Stop.

Both Bounty and Chiwawa represent reinvention. Bounty, Jackson Kramer’s farm-to-table restaurant/butcher, is set in an old building on Broad Avenue. The building had to be gutted, but elements from the old building resurface in such features as a bar top with tile from the bathrooms and salvaged wood in the pretty patchwork accent walls.

Chiwawa, the taco and hot dog spot on the edge of Overton Square, is in the old Chicago Pizza Factory site. It is a marvel of modern design with its plywood accents and pops of orange coloring. But the space, too, calls back to the Chicago Pizza Factory. The brick walls of the original building ground the restaurant and jut up as a reminder of its provenance.

The glass facade was chosen to connect the restaurant to Overton Square.

For Truck Stop, brg3s is creating a space from scratch, using repurposed shipping containers. “The site is at the intersection of Central Avenue and Cooper Street that’s adjacent to railroad tracks, so there are trains with cars filled with shipping containers passing by behind it, so it’s sort of a poetic gesture,” says brg3s architect Jason Jackson.

“Memphis is a unique city with a rich dynamic culture, and I think we’re seeing the architecture of these spaces represent that,” says Jackson. “It’s about embracing the wonderful elements that make Memphis versus some anonymous chain restaurant that could be anywhere.”

Looks Count

Interior of Chiwawa in Overton Square

Big ideas on restaurant design > > >

BY

S U S A N

E L L I S

“You eat with your eyes first” is a phrase that is bandied about quite a bit by chefs, foodies, and various interested parties. It refers to, of course, the food, but it also certainly extends to restaurant design.

A CHANGE OF PACE arah Spinosa of Sarah Spinosa Interior Designs has worked with Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman on all three of their restaurants.

Spinosa and a partner worked with a miniscule budget when designing Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, but they did have a clear directive.

“They wanted it to feel like going to somebody’s house for Sunday dinner,” says Spinosa.

The restaurant has undergone a recent massive upgrade, with new space added at the back for a large bar area with vaulted ceilings and a bar made of wood from old high school gym bleachers. The patio includes a new fireplace and bricks reused from a wall at Hog & Hominy. The gold throughout the restaurant has been replaced with gray and neutral colors.

S

“MEMPHIS IS A UNIQUE CITY WITH A RICH DYNAMIC CULTURE, AND I THINK WE’RE SEEING THE ARCHITECTURE OF THESE SPACES REPRESENT THAT.” —JASON JACKSON, brg3s

16 |

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Spinosa says Hog & Hominy was a change of pace — a relaxed bar scene, a place for hanging out in jeans and a T-shirt.

Flourishes include both the modern and funky — silver and bright-yellow chairs, an old metal washtub for the hostess stand.

Porcellino’s is a hybrid: butcher/coffee bar/ sundry/grab-and-go spot/ wine bar/restaurant. For this space, Spinosa was going for a 1920s feel that harkens back to markets like the one where Ticer’s grandmother once worked. To that end, she visited markets and butchers in New York City’s Little Italy for reference points. Deep, masculine purple on the walls, the tile floor, and Edison light pendants all contribute to the ambience.

“There’s not anything like this in Memphis,” Spinosa says.

ONE COMPLETE THOUGHT t’s nearly impossible to eat at restaurants in Memphis without doing so in one designed by the Graham Reese Design Group, so extensive is the firm’s list of clients.

Recently, Graham Reese has partnered with

I

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY BRG3S

b

Farmhouse Marketing on such restaurants as Oshi, Tamp & Tap, and Agave Maria.

The firms, Graham Reese says, team up at the beginning of projects to develop “one complete thought,” a theming of the project, from the menu to the graphics on the walls.

Reese describes Oshi, Jeff Johnson’s Asianinfluenced gourmet burger bar on South Main, as a “cultural hodgepodge.” The white and reds of the restaurant are a nod to Japan’s understated aesthetic.

The cowhide fabric on the booths, and the wild mural of John Belushi as the iconic samurai character, speak to both Japanese and American cultures.

In carving out an identity for a restaurant, Reese says it depends on the client. “It’s really the theme, whether it’s Local or Maui Brick Oven or Binion’s or Oshi — these all have very distinct menus, different concepts.

Some restaurants are easier to take on the road and franchise than others.

You could take something like Maui Brick Oven or Oshi or Local and replicate that elsewhere.”

Saturday

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M E M PH I S

B E AT

Ten news items you might have missed since our last issue

12.11

Target announces its intention to move one of its online fulfillment centers to Whitehaven, creating more than 400 new jobs. The company will invest nearly $50 million into a new 900,000-square-foot facility at 5461 Davidson Road. The facility — which hopes to be operational by mid-2015 — will be managed by a third-party vendor, Innotrac, and will service the Southeast.

12.4

Around 70 locals took part in a “die-in” protest at the National Civil Rights Museum in peaceful protest over the police deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in New York City, and the grand jury investigations that led to no criminal charges in each case.

12.12

Delta Airlines cuts more routes at Memphis International Airport, including its nonstop flights to Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

In addition to stopping service to Chicago, Delta will eliminate nonstop flights between Memphis and Indianapolis International Airport, and Raleigh-Durham International Airport, and will switch flights to Orlando International Airport from daily to Saturday only.

12.15

No longer will Memphians have to travel to Atlanta to stock up on Ikea furniture. The Swedish-based home goods retailer announces it will open its first store in Tennessee right here in the Bluff City, located at Germantown Parkway and I-40. The store itself is proposed to be 269,000-square-feet and will be situated on the 35-acre tract of land behind the Dick’s Sporting Goods shopping center and a Costco store. Slated to break ground in late 2015, construction would bring about 500 jobs, the company says. The tentative open date is fall 2016 and, once open,

The Swedish invasion continues as Hennes & Mauritz — better known by its initials H&M — announces it will open a 20,000-square-foot store in Collierville’s Carriage Crossing retail center. Memphis is the beneficiary of an aggressive expansion strategy

by H&M, which plans to open 375 new stores worldwide this year.

St. Louis Cardinals contributing around $2 million in addition to the $4.5 million that was part of the deal that had the Cardinals purchasing the Memphis Redbirds last year and the Cardinals leasing the ballpark from the city. The improvements include the creation of a new stadium club on the second level behind home plate, new grass berm seating down the foul lines, a redone playing surface, and new LED boards aimed at enhancing the fan experience.

12.22

1.7

the warehouse-sized store could employ about 225.

12.19

The Memphis Tigers beat BYU 55 to 48 in the Miami Beach Bowl, the Tigers’ first bowl game appearance since 2008. A week earlier, University of Memphis officials announced they reached an agreement on a contract extension with football coach Justin Fuente. In his third year at Memphis, Fuente led the Tigers to a 9-3 record and a share of the American Athletic Conference Championship — their first league title in more than 40 years. He was the unanimous choice for American Athletic Conference Coach of the Year and a finalist for the Eddie Robinson National Coach of the Year award.

1.1

Loeb Properties pays $450,000 to acquire the Newby’s property on the Highland Strip near the University of Memphis. Highland University District LLC, an affiliate of Memphis-based Loeb Properties, acquired 535 and 539 South Highland Street from Paragon Bank, according to a Dec. 29 deed of trust. The Shelby County Assessor of Property’s combined 2014 appraisal for the two buildings is $467,800. The two properties are adjacent to each other on the west side of the Highland strip near the University of Memphis in an area booming with development.

1.6

AutoZone Park’s makeover is now underway. When renovations are completed, they will total about $6.5 million, with the

The long-vacant Tennessee Brewery Downtown could be reborn as a largely residential project, pending the redevelopment proposal on January 13. The development team behind the brewery project, led by businessman Billy Orgel, is considering renovating the current building into residential units, the ground-up construction of a new residential building adjacent to the existing structure, and a new parking garage with ground floor commercial space to be built directly across the street.

The $27.5 million project includes approximately 142 residential units, 8,000 square feet of commercial space, and a 280-space public parking garage.

1.8

Tanger Factory Outlet Centers Inc. — a major force with a portfolio of 44 outlet centers in 26 markets in the U.S. and Canada — is teaming up with Memphis-based Poag Shopping Centers LLC to develop the 310,000-square-foot retail center at Interstate 55 and Church Road in Southaven. The development team plans to break ground immediately and be open for this year’s holiday shopping season. The 33-acre site, owned by businessman William Adair, can handle a 100,000-square-foot expansion, which would push the total footprint to 410,000 square feet filled with brand name designer outlet facilities.

F EB/M A R 20 15 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM |

19

dhgllp.com

Dixon Hughes Goodman is honored to co-sponsor the CEO of the Year Awards for the third year.

We celebrate the skillful decision-making, indomitable commitment, and inspirational mentoring of the nominees. We are eager to see where these leaders take their businesses, and Memphis, in 2015.

The nominees for the 2015 CEO of the Year were selected by the best panel possible: their peers.

As a group, they reflect the highest ideals of leadership in Memphis. Dixon Hughes Goodman is honored to applaud their vision and guidance.

As one of the largest CPA and advisory firms in the Southern U.S., Dixon Hughes Goodman understands the changes and challenges that businesses face, and strives to maintain the leadership required to navigate these evolutions successfully. With both national resources and local relationships, we assist companies in attaining the best position to thrive and create new opportunities for Memphis.

It is only through the growth of Memphis’ business community that we have been able to flourish, and we honor these leaders’ contributions to our collective success.

Sincerely, P. Anthony Clark Regional Managing Partner Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP – Memphis/Dallas-Ft. Worth

1000+ EMPLOYEES

WINNER

JEFF WEBB VARSITY BRANDS

200-1000 EMPLOYEES

To choose a CEO worthy of being designated a “winner” in Memphis is a little like choosing your favorite barbecue joint in this town. There are so many great ones that the task is a bit overwhelming, but it sure is fun getting to know them.

Welcome to the 2015 CEO of the Year Awards in the newly redesigned Inside Memphis Business.

Memphis is a city built on commerce, from its advantageous spot on the Mississippi River to its centralized placement within the country. Our business community has changed the way the world ships, travels, and recreates, and is never short on leaders.

The four leaders honored in the following pages are no exception. They are exemplars in their respective industries and on the stage of local, regional, national, and international business. Narrowing the field down was no easy task, but those we’ve chosen, we believe, are representative of the Memphis community as a whole.

Thank you for reading. And now, the winners . . .

WINNER

W. SCOTT STAFFORD EVOLVE BANK & TRUST

50-200 EMPLOYEES

WINNER

KERI WRIGHT UNIVERSAL ASSET MANAGEMENT

1 - 50 EMPLOYEES

WINNER

LAURITA JACKSON >>>CEO PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARRY KUZNIEWSKI >>> PHOTOGRAPHS OF KERI WRIGHT PROVIDED

1SOURCE OFFICE & FACILITY SUPPLY

Team Spirit

Jeff Webb, founder and CEO of Varsity Brands, is peerless in his life’s work.

He built a company with sales exceeding $1.2 billion and, with it, transformed cheerleading in America. Today, Varsity Brands is the umbrella company to three businesses — Herff Jones, Varsity Spirit, and athletic retailer BSN SPORTS — each the top player in its market sphere.

1000+ EMPLOYEES

WINNER

JEFF WEBB VARSITY BRANDS > > >

BY HANNAH BAILE Y

“Life-long entrepreneurs who’ve built considerable-sized companies will tell you that you have to have a vision and a concept, but then along the way you just have to be really opportunistic,” Webb says.

Opportunistic he was. Webb ditched plans to attend law school after graduating from the University of Oklahoma for a job offer with the National Cheerleaders Association (NCA), where he worked summers as a trainer and later as camp director. He quickly became NCA’s general manager. Young and industrious, Webb sought to modernize cheerleading camp clinics, incorporating complex gymnastics and entertainment.

In 1974, at the age of 24, he founded the Universal Cheerleaders Association (UCA), which later grew into Varsity Spirit. He set up in Memphis (central geographically and demographically to cheerleading enthusiasts at the time), hired the country’s top cheerleaders, and held 20 camps that first summer.

“I had something that I really liked to do,” Webb says. “I thought it provided great value to people, made me feel good about what I was doing, and I believed in it.”

Over time, UCA’s growth and advanced athleticism led to the sport retail apparel industry. The companies supplying uniforms and equipment couldn’t keep up, and they didn’t have performance fabrics or the proper footwear. At the same time, money was tight and Webb struggled to spread the camp’s footprint beyond the South.

“How do we get people in other parts of the country to see what we’re doing and pay us to come to them?” Webb says. “We said, ‘Well, why don’t we create a competition and get what we’re doing on television?’”

In 1981, Varsity Spirit ran its first televised competition on ESPN in Orlando, Florida, and signed a three-year contract with the network. Cross-marketing its merchandise and camps divisions, Varsity Spirit grew with ESPN. “One of my basic business tenets is that when the wind’s at your back, you run,” Webb says.

“You have to have a vision and a concept, but then along the way you just have to be really opportunistic.”

Varsity Spirit faced opportunities and obstacles over the years. In 1988, Webb turned to a private equity group to build corporate structure and capital and, in 1991, went public. To pay off private equity debt, it merged with Riddell, a football helmet company, later selling the affiliate.

A management-led buyout eventually returned Varsity Spirit to a private entity.

In 2011, Varsity Spirit was acquired

by Herff Jones, a supplier of class rings, gowns, and yearbooks. Webb became CEO of the overall company in July 2013, just as the company bought direct-to-school athletic gear retailer BSN SPORTS and established Varsity Brands as the umbrella identity over the three divisions: cheer, athletic retail, and student achievement.

Structure follows strategy. Last December, Varsity Brands again rebuilt its corporate fabric, forming an acquisition agreement with leading private equity firm Charlesbank Capital Partners.

“If we want to continue to grow and build this company, we have to be opportunistic and we have to have capital,” Webb says.

As the largest player in the cheer landscape, Varsity Brands is just getting started fully utilizing the synergy of its three entities — to not just cross-market and increase profit, but to create unique value for schools.

“We’re honing the program right now, but it puts us in a position where we can help a school with its branding, its school spirit, and school morale,” Webb says.

Herff Jones led a program at Chaparral High School in Las Vegas, where the graduation rate was 30 percent, to reaffirm the value of academic success in the students.

It redesigned the school’s logo and mascot, created signage, and developed a plan to inspire academic achievement. After two years, the graduation rate is 70 percent.

Varsity Brands plans to incorporate BSN SPORTS and Varsity Spirit in school rebranding efforts, and a significant investment in PlayOn! Sports, a technology platform for schools’ students to broadcast major events, will build schools’ recognition in the community.

“I believe it’ll create a real legacy company that will be immensely successful long after I’m gone,” Webb says.

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23

Growth Story

W. Scott Stafford sees value in the foundation of Evolve Bank & Trust, a past that dates back to its founding in Parkin, Arkansas, about 30 miles from Memphis, in 1925. Primarily concerned with the Delta then, counting the region’s farmers as its main customers, the bank survived wars, a depression, and interest rates that seemed to reach for the stars. Financial centers shift, though, and the banking industry has been, well, evolving, over time.

200-1000 EMPLOYEES

WINNER

W. SCOTT STAFFORD EVOLVE BANK & TRUST > > >

BY RICHARD J. ALLE Y

“They have a great history,” Stafford says. “For a long time they were kind of ‘the bank’ in the Delta.”

Stafford, born and raised in Memphis, majored in corporate finance and portfolio management at the University of Alabama.

By 1990, a year that would begin a decade of scarce hiring in banking, he would go on to work for the National Bank of Commerce where, he says, “some folks were kind enough to reach out to me.”

Out of several thousand applicants, Stafford was one of six chosen for an executive training program. “For almost a year, they’d run you through the entire bank and teach you the business, and then they’d send you out into the wild and put you in your area of interest.”

In 2005, Stafford and a team of investors purchased Evolve Bank & Trust. “When we bought it, it was a $17 million bank,” Stafford says. “As of today, we’re about $400 million.”

The bank was recapitalized, a leadership team was put in place, and trust management was added as a main part of their strategy.

Since that time, they’ve grown from one branch and three staff members to more than 450 employees in 19 states. Evolve has been recognized by Inc. Magazine in its annual Inc. 500|5000 with a 235 percent growth rate over a three-year period. From January 2012 to June 2013, 203 net new jobs have been generated, placing it number three among private business job creators within the state of Tennessee and number eight among financial institutions nationwide. The trust division is up to a little over $600 million. There are 55 shareholders today with headquarters located in the Triad Centre of East Memphis.

“We’ve got the team in place to grow to the next level.”

“It was always our plan to grow,” Stafford says. “We felt like if we were going to do this, we wanted to be a growth story.

Couple that with doing things the right way and bringing in a team to do things the right way and we’ve got the team in place to grow to the next level.”

Stafford is a self-proclaimed “customer service freak” who carries the mantle of community bank with great pride. But, he says, there’s always room to learn. “I’ve been very fortunate that people have taken an interest in me and have wanted to see me do well. I’ve had older gentlemen that have walked alongside me to help point me in the right direction when that’s warranted.”

At the top of that list of mentors is his father, who worked for Principal Financial Group for almost 40 years. “Everybody’s got their hero, my hero’s my dad,” he says.

“People always ask what the greatest gift is he gave me. Besides the obvious of providing and the life he gave his family, he taught me a Depression-style work ethic. He came from humble means in Milan, Tennessee, and was self-made.”

Because Evolve is a community bank, and because he’s rooted in the community with his work and family, Stafford sees the importance of giving back. “It’s paramount,” he says, “and I think we put our time and our money where our mouth is on this and we’re proud of that. When Evolve went from just an idea on a napkin to looking to the future, we always said that, once we can, we want to give back.”

Evolve is involved with the Neighborhood Christian Center, the corporate sponsor for the Cooper-Young Festival, and primary sponsor for Opera Memphis.

“We’ve been very fortunate over the past several years that we’ve had real meaningful growth and returns, and we’ve taken some of that money and a lot of that time to give back to the community.”

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PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY KERI WRIGHT

Cleared for Takeoff

To chart the accomplishments of 32-year-old Keri Wright, one might need to file a flight plan. She first piloted an aircraft solo before she could legally drive a car, became a private pilot at the age of 17, a flight instructor the next year, and founded an all-women’s air race around the United States while still in college. And, of course, she took the yoke of Universal Asset Management, a Memphis-based global firm that buys, sells, manages, leases, disassembles, and recycles a wide variety of commercial aviation assets.

50-200 EMPLOYEES

WINNER

KERI WRIGHT UNIVERSAL ASSET MANAGEMENT > > >

BY RICHARD J. ALLE Y

But none of that might have happened had she not attended an airshow as a teenager in her home of Richmond, Illinois, just north of Chicago. “I saw a squadron of F16s land and a woman hopped out of one of them,” she recalls. “That was the first time I connected the dots and I said, ‘Oh, that’s something I could do.’”

She asked for flying lessons the next Christmas. In addition to that initial gift, Wright worked at a bakery and at the airport pumping gas to support her newfound flying habit. She amassed the funds for lessons and, along the way, a healthy work ethic.

She was accepted into Purdue University’s flight program, one of only six women selected, and became involved in every aspect of it. By her sophomore year, she was rated as a multi-engine commercial instrument flight instructor.

“I was very curious, I refused to not be good enough,” she says. “If I didn’t know it, then I’d figure out a way to learn it.

And when you’re really good at something, be sure and help someone else.”

At the local flight school, she taught all ranges of student — from a 15-year-old up to a 65-year-old woman. Instructing, she says, “was the best thing I ever did; that was how I learned to manage. When you’re in an airplane, every person learns differently, grasps information differently, but at the end of the day you have to get them safely back on the ground. I had to be able to communicate with my words and with my actions how to get them there, I couldn’t do it for them.”

While on a recruiting trip, it was suggested to the founder and then-CEO

“I was very curious, I refused to not be good enough.

If I didn’t know it, then I’d figure out a way to learn it.”

of UAM, Steve Manley, that he get in touch with Wright. “He offered me a job and I said, ‘no,’” she laughs.

She was working on her master’s degree and wasn’t ready to abandon it. “I made a commitment and I was going to finish it,” she says. Wright ended up taking the job and moving to Memphis, yet continued her studies through Purdue.

Hired as a project director at 22 years old, she was promoted to vice president of asset management only nine months later. Her first deal was a Boeing 777 being sold to the president of Debon, Africa. She would become COO at 25.

Manley was looking for an exit strategy from the company and Wright provided that exit. As he spent more time away, she spent more time with her hands on the throttle and purchased the company in September 2013. “The last year has been a wild ride.”

Like any good pilot, Wright is constantly looking ahead, saying, “I didn’t buy a company to sit still.” And the sky ahead is clear and blue and includes global opportunities with a footprint in Asia, and strategic formal partnerships with five companies around the world. “All to position us to have a larger market share and support of the aviation and airline market.”

UAM has become a part of Wright. She gives more credit to her team than she takes on herself and is willing to go the extra mile to see that success is achieved.

“I don’t care what my title is, you’re going to see me sweeping the floor, emptying the trash, or giving tours [of the facility],” she says. “Titles are cheap. You just go out and do it, and you be a part of people and what they are. That’s how you know what your company is. Your company is the people that are in it, you have to be a part of that.

You can’t be sitting in the corner office and focused on other things all the time.”

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This 1’s for You

“Be aware of change, embrace it, recognize how it affects your business, and adapt,” says Laurita Jackson, President and CEO of 1Source Office and Facility Supply. It’s something she has learned throughout her career and something that she finds as rewarding as it is challenging.

1 - 50 EMPLOYEES

WINNER

LAURITA JACKSON 1SOURCE OFFICE & FACILITY SUPPLY > > >

BY ANNA COX

Raised in Memphis, Jackson moved to Washington, D.C., to earn an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from Howard University and, upon graduation, began working at Xerox in Rochester, New York. She held various engineering roles for the corporation until she felt the urge to make herself more marketable and broaden her experience.

Jackson received her MBA from the University of Michigan and returned to Xerox on the business side. “I’ve always been fascinated by business and how it works — all of the components it takes to make a business successful. I knew only one small piece of that [before my MBA],” she says.

It was during her time at Xerox that she came to admire its CEO, Ursula Burns.

Jackson considers her a role model today.

“She’s an African-American CEO of a major company, and that’s extremely inspiring to me. Reading some of the ways she’s had to take that company — and that industry has changed tremendously from when I started — from analog to digital to really make sure they have a sustainable future.

It’s that ‘adapt or die’ mentality. One of the mottos I’ve read about selling is ‘I will persist until I succeed.’ Continue to be open to innovation and doing things new ways, taking suggestions from our team, and being an observer of the world in order to be a growing thriving company.”

And that’s precisely what Jackson has done at 1Source.

Returning to Memphis in 2004 for her husband’s career, Jackson started working with her father, Judge George H. Brown Jr., and her brother, Hank Brown, at what is now 1Source. “I started off doing whatever I could on a part-time basis. I got in here and just realized I really liked it,” she says with a laugh. “Once I got involved I saw how very fulfilling and enjoyable it was to apply my analytical

“Growing pains come with the territory. If you’re going to grow, you’re not going to do it easily — like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon.”

skills and what I’d learned, and continue to learn. Along the way we started diversifying our product offerings to include office products, furniture, industrial supplies, and realized we needed to change our name.”

Formerly known as Memphis Chemical and Janitorial Supply, the Memphis-based company, founded in 1968 by Edward Porter, was purchased by Judge Brown in 2000.

Since then, the business has had significant growth, gaining new clients within the MidSouth and nationally. With such substantial growth in such a short time, the name “Memphis Chemical” didn’t quite seem to accurately represent the company. “The rebrand and launch in 2013 to 1Source has been such a great change for us — the name and the new identity,” says Jackson. “It was very well received. We are able to supply anything our customers — and potential customers — need, and can do that with confidence knowing that we have hundreds of thousands of items we can sell. Our name doesn’t limit us in terms of products or geographical area.”

Another thing Jackson credits as highly important to a successful company is scalability. Once the infrastructure was in place, 1Source was able to grow off of its existing platform, enabling it to expand without unnecessary costs.

Managing a growing company while maintaining a positive office culture is what drives Jackson to keep pressing forward, though she admits the balancing act isn’t always easy. “Growing pains come with the territory. If you’re going to grow, you’re not going to do it easily — like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. There are some days when it’s a lot, but then you continue to adapt and grow and you’re able to meet those challenges the next time they come around. One of the things we’ve said from the beginning was ‘You’ve got to be profitable and the business metrics have to be met, but we want to have fun.’ Be intentional about stopping to do simple things to acknowledge the team, show them they’re valued, have fun, and remember that we’re all people.

The thing we like to keep in mind as a smaller company is that the personal touch still matters. Even with the evolution of technology it’s still important to people.”

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brg3s F OU N DAT IO N S

With roots in Memphis, this architecture firm keeps scraping the sky. > > >

BY

H A N N A H

B A I L E Y

Steve Berger, principal with brg3s, joined the firm in 1983 and worked alongside some of the most progressive designers in Memphis.

“One of the legends is he was on a job site once, up comes a carriage, and someone important-looking steps out with a guy holding an umbrella for him,” says brg3s principal Steve Berger. “The young Walk C. Jones asks a job foreman, ‘Who is that?’ and the foreman says, ‘That’s the architect.’

Walk Jones said, ‘That’s what I want to be.’”

The rest is history.

Jones apprenticed under Matthias Baldwin, the architect behind the Woodruff-Fontaine and James Lee homes in Victorian Village, as well as notable architects at Burke, Weathers, Shaw, Alsup and Hain.

In 1904 Jones partnered with Max Furbringer, creating Jones and

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRANDON DILL

s

Designs by architect firm brg3s are some of the city’s most progressive and forward thinking, but its architectural roots are the oldest in Memphis, dating back to the turn of last century.

In 1900, Walk C. Jones Sr. started The Office of Walk C. Jones Architect; however, oral history that trickled down over the last hundred-plus years from partner to partner begins with Jones’ childhood. His father was a brickmason who owned a kiln in what today is Bartlett, and he grew up immersed in the building industry.

LEFT: brg3s began as Walk C. Jones Architect in 1900. The firm’s founder, Jones Sr., is pictured here.

BELOW: A brg3s design: the new WKNO building on Cherry Farms Road in Cordova.

ABOVE: An early incarnation of brg3s, Jones and Furbringer Architects, designed the iconic Shrine Building at Front Street and Monroe Avenue. RIGHT TOP: Third People’s Hospital in Shenzhen, China. RIGHT BOTTOM: The original Memphis International Airport terminal.

Furbringer Architects.

Together they designed many early iconic buildings, making a name for themselves with projects like The Shrine Building, the Masonic Temple, The Claridge Hotel, and the original Memphis Airport.

“I think we certainly think of them as one of the grand firms of the time in Memphis,” Berger says.

Walk C. Jones Jr. joined the firm in 1935 after graduating from Yale and traveling Europe, where he embraced contemporary architecture and the Bauhaus movement. His modern design ideals collided with Furbringer’s traditional ones; Furbringer left the firm and the name changed to

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Comprehensive h Engineering and d Architecture h TOP: Francis Mah â&#x20AC;&#x153;was probably one of the strongest designers Memphis ever had.â&#x20AC;? ABOVE: In 1966, Walk C. Jones III and Mah became managing principals and changed the name to Walk Jones, Mah, Jones Architects, Inc.

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INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

Walk Jones and Walk Jones, Jr. Architects.

Five years later, the elder Jones retired and, in 1940, the ďŹ rm became the OďŹ&#x192;ces of Walk C. Jones Jr. The ďŹ rm was commissioned to build the Madison Avenue wing of Baptist Memorial Hospital in the Medical Center. â&#x20AC;&#x153;That really introduced us to the healthcare ďŹ eld, which we still do quite a bit of,â&#x20AC;? Berger says. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Certainly, that ďŹ rst relationship between (Baptist) and Walk Jones Jr. was a strong one.â&#x20AC;?

For 50 years, beginning in the late 1940s, the ďŹ rm designed many

Mah’s design for First Tennessee Bank produced the first modern skyscraper built in Memphis and was applauded in Architectural Record as a “bright new note to downtown Memphis.”

projects for Baptist Hospital.

During this time, Alfred Lewis Aydelott, principal at A.L. Aydelott and Associates, and commonly known as the father of modern architecture in Memphis, brought a new generation of talented young designers to Memphis, namely Francis Mah and Marty Gorman.

“The Joneses were great business architects,” Berger says. “But they weren’t designers and they were always looking for great designers.”

Jones hired Mah in 1958 and Gorman in 1969. Gorman, who retired in 2009 after 40 years with the company, remembers the one project that paved the way for Mah’s prolific career.

First Tennessee Bank commissioned the firm to design its Madison Avenue location, but the initial renderings were turned down. Although new to the firm, Mah criticized the drawings and said, “that’s just not good stuff,” Gorman

recalls. Jones challenged Mah with the work, giving the talented rookie architect a project of immense scale.

According to Gorman, Mah worked tirelessly day and night. His design for First Tennessee Bank produced the

TOP LEFT: The Federal Reserve Building at Third Street and Jefferson Avenue.

TOP CENTER: The Southern College of Optometry, designed by Francis Mah.

TOP RIGHT: The First Tennessee Bank building stands at Third Street and Madison Avenue.

ABOVE: Early and current staff photos.

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Architecture & Interior Design

Building Systems Engineering

Infrastructure Engineering

Structural & Seismic Engineering

Site Planning & Development

Transportation Engineering

Methodist University Hospital emergency room entry. brg3s specializes in healthcare facility design.

first modern skyscraper built in the city and was applauded in Architectural Record as a “bright new note to downtown Memphis.”

“That set Francis off to be able to cut a path through the traditionalists, those in the office who were still there, as well as with clients,” Gorman says. “He was probably one of the strongest designers Memphis ever had.”

In 1966, Walk C. Jones III and Mah became managing principals and changed the name to Walk Jones, Mah, Jones Architects, Inc. Later it became Walk Jones + Francis Mah, Inc. Gorman worked with Mah most of his career, as did a young Berger who joined the firm in 1983. The two paint Mah as an equally feared and respected head architect — albeit always dressed in jeans, hole-ridden golf shirts, and flip-flops — in an era when designers could tell the client, “This is the way it needs to be.”

When The Southern College of Optometry commissioned the firm to design its school on Madison Avenue, that’s exactly what Mah said. The school envisioned a series of collegiate buildings, but because of its urban setting and lack of space, Mah convinced the school that the project needed to be an iconic tower.

“I think it’s one of the best buildings in the city,” Gorman says.

In the 1970s, the firm designed the Hyatt Regency Hotel, now the Hilton Hotel on Ridge Lake Boulevard in East Memphis.

The circular, mirror-glassed tower still anchors and defines the Ridgeway Center office development. Shortly after, Walk Jones + Francis Mah, Inc. designed The Commercial Appeal building with its curved, north-facing, glass wall.

“Francis was always looking for simpler ways to communicate what we were doing,” Berger says.

Jones and Mah, recognizing the impact computers would have on the industry in the contin u ed on page 56

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> > >

BY

L E S L E Y

YO U N G

Jack Binion’s Steakhouse at Horseshoe Casino in Tunica.

Graham Reese Design Group 36 |

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

Graham Reese doesn’t really have a job. He has more of an avocation by which he happens to make a living.

“Really it’s just one big hobby, and I think that reflects in the work I do for my clients,” says Reese, 51, of East Memphis.

Reese owns and operates Graham Reese Design Group, an interior architectural design firm he started close to 11 years ago. He’s been called upon to design such projects as the numerous renovations and additions to Horseshoe Casino, Tunica Roadhouse, and the recently closed Harrah’s casino in Tunica; the exterior and interior design of Metropolitan Bank in East Memphis; and the interiors of some of the more recent chic and hip additions to the Memphis landscape such as 20twelve, High Cotton Brewery, OSHI Burger, Agave Marie, and Beale Street Landing.

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY GRAHAM REESE DESIGN GROUP

PROF I L E

He’s quickly becoming a go-to designer for retail, restaurants, and corporate spaces in the Mid-South, and he believes this has something to do with the understanding he has for his clients’ vision

with, they practiced “value engineering” and came up with some alternative approaches.

“We took our great big, grand ideas and brought them back to earth,” Johnson says.

“Graham was fine with

20twelve on Broad Avenue

encouraged to take his artistic skills down an architectural path, and he knew he wanted more. “I got more into design work because I knew I wanted to do it all, not just architecture,” he says. “I wanted to do the furnishings and everything else.”

He worked for the illustrious Wilson Associates in Dallas before moving to Memphis 22 years ago and putting in several years at

own unique look and it stands out. He has a very good eye for design, as well as for something that is functional. We looked at the offices, retail, and restaurants he’s done, and we knew he could give us something that fit our personality, and that both our employees and customers could appreciate.”

Reese had the space completely gutted and redesigned 27,000 square feet of a 200,000-square-

working relationship with Graham,” Tayloe says. “He has a very hands-on approach.”

His approach has helped with repeat business. “[Reese] has done 20 or more projects for us in the last five years,” R. Scott Barber, regional president of Mid-South operations for Caesars Entertainment, says. “He’s a terrific business partner.

He deeply engages with his clients, and he has a thorough understanding

“We gave it [20twelve] an excellent feel of luxury with the polished brass and the chandeliers and lighting which all help tell the story.”

and his dedication to their projects.

“You will see me on the job site any day of the week at any time,” Reese says.

When Chantal Johnson decided to open more than a warehouse space for her interior design business and go full-throttle with a retail shop, Reese’s was one of the first numbers she dialed.

“I knew the other places he had designed and I always liked his look, it lined up with mine,” says Johnson, who opened the high-end lifestyle store 20twelve on Broad Avenue last August. “Graham saw my vision immediately.”

Her vision was a cross between Tom Ford and Louis Vuitton, so Reese flew to Las Vegas to take a look at some shops. He ripped pages from magazines and met with Johnson every Wednesday. When the duo were told they had a smaller budget to work

my ideas. He never said, ‘It will never work if you do that.’ He was ideal to work with.”

The result was what Reese describes as “lux glamor”— smoked glass and French brass and a medium dark gray pallet against which she places furniture and fashion designers Tom Dixon and Zero + Maria Cornejo, large flat-screen TVs continuously displaying fashion runways, plus a small catering kitchen and, eventually, a separate parfumerie.

“We gave it an excellent feel of luxury with the polished brass and the chandeliers and lighting which all help tell the story,” Reese says.

Since the beginning, Reese was always that kid with a drawing pencil in his hand. “I was always drawing cars and golf courses and plans,” he says.

He went to school at the University of Kansas and Bauder College in Atlanta, and was

Looney Ricks Kiss and Hnedak Bobo Group.

He says it can be hard to pin down a particular style to describe him.

“I think my clients enjoy working with me because I build on what already is in their heads.

Restaurants will be themed to whatever the concept is. Oshi Burger is very quirky Vegas Oriental. Agave Marie, a ‘70s Tijuana Mexican.

Retail is similar.

It’s based on what they’re doing, like the Mighty Olive, which is focused on olive oil. I guess the restraint in contemporary style helps define who you are and what your style is.”

Although he can’t pinpoint the particular style either, Financial Federal Bank president William Tayloe knew Reese’s implicit style was what he was looking for when his growing business was ready to move.

“His office spaces are really well done,” says Tayloe.

“They all have their Graham Reese

foot office building on Aaron Brenner Drive in East Memphis where Tayloe and his 60 employees now offer commercial, private, and mortgage banking.

“I think the most important part is that we have had a good

of what the mission is.”

For Reese, it’s all in a day’s labor of love.

“It’s just one big hobby because it’s fun to do,” he says, “but also the satisfaction of helping create with someone else and help them come to their realization.”

The

Delta Blues

PHOTO-COLLAGE P PHOTO -COLLAGE BY B. GROPPE

P

> > >

BY

TO BY

S E L L S

Like it or not, a new day has dawned at Memphis International Airport.

In the simplest terms, here’s what that new day looks like: “We’re not going to be a hub again,” John Greaud, the now-retired vice president of operations for the Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority (MSCAA), says emphatically. “We’re going to be a local passenger airport. The people who live in Memphis, or people who come to visit Memphis — those are the people who are going to be our users.”

Aerotropolis at the Crossroads.

Ripples are still flowing from Delta Airlines’ June 2013 announcement that it would end its hub operation at the airport. Those ripples have touched nearly every aspect of life around the airport, from the psyches of Memphis air travelers to the physical shape and size of the airport itself.

Gone are the days when a full menu of nonstop flights took us to a hundred points domestic and abroad. Gone are the days of three big terminals streaming with air passengers looking for connecting flights. Gone are the days of big revenues and big-ticket sales. And gone are the days of all those passengers jamming the numerous restaurants, newsstands, and coffee shops, and leaving piles of profits and tax dollars behind them.

But gone, too, are the days of a single air carrier dictating ticket prices and some airport policies. Gone are the days of shuttling to Democrat Road to pick up or return a rental car, of shuttling miles away from the terminal or walking from a parking lot in the distance. Soon to be gone as well are the days of fluorescently lit and low-ceilinged concourses.

It’s difficult to believe that just four years ago, the MSCAA hosted the 2011 Airport Cities World Conference, with hundreds of airport executives attending from around the globe and a keynote speech given by Richard Anderson, CEO of Delta Air Lines. The event signaled Memphis’ coming-out as a genuine “aerotropolis,” a phrase coined by futurist John D. Kasarda (who also spoke at the Memphis conference) to describe how major airports were now not just airports, but “magnets for businesses, trade, information exchanges, and leisure activities.” According to Kasarda, such mega-hubs would become “urban realms in their own right, driving and shaping the very fabric of the new cities they are creating.”

Somehow, in its eager march to a brighter future, Memphis got kicked off the bus.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DREAMSTIME

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MEM 2008 How did we get here?

A

irport leaders say this new day was inevitable, that “Jesus himself” could not have prevented Delta’s de-hub. They are re-inventing the passenger airport from top to bottom, from air service to customer service. They want Memphians to be proud of MEM (the airport’s three-letter designator by the International Air Transport Association). But the leaders realize getting there will require a fight.

“I’ve prefaced a lot of my remarks [to local groups] with, ‘Folks, when I started this job a year-and-a-half ago, things were tough and they may well get worse before it gets better,’” says Jack Sammons, chairman of the MSCAA. “But we’ve got a plan and it will, indeed, get better. Well, it certainly has already gotten better.”

While Sammons might see a better situation, more than a few doubting Thomases argue otherwise. Some blame the MSCAA for not doing enough to stop Delta’s de-hubbing decision. Business leaders — especially those who rely heavily upon air travel to conduct commerce — remain concerned over the fact that flights from MEM have dropped so precipitously in just a few years.

A popular public Facebook group called “Delta Does Memphis,” boasting nearly 5,500 members, sees the shrinking airport as a physical sign of real defeat that feeds into a deepening sense of Memphis as a backwater town unworthy of a hub, and that the situation somehow invalidates our claim to be a “major American city.”

A December 2014 post from “Delta Does Memphis” summarizes the majority sentiment concisely: “The airport is a joke and a total embarrassment for the city of Memphis.”

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Before we move forward, let’s go back. Actually, let’s go way back to 1978.

That’s the year Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act. The new law removed government control over fares, routes, and market entry of new airlines into commercial aviation. Similar reforms had come to the rail and trucking industries in the Nixon and Ford Administrations. So economists and think tanks pushed for (and won) similar rules for the aviation industry during the Carter Adminstration.

The Deregulation Act up-ended the airline industry, and there were winners and losers. For instance, the Government Accountability Office has reported that median air fares fell 40 percent from 1980 to 2006 (but they rose about 4 percent from 2007 to 2012). But also, well more than a hundred airlines have filed for bankruptcy since deregulation.

In the last decade, deregulation and bankruptcies paved the way for mega-mergers of some of the airline industry’s biggest players. United Airlines and Continental Airlines merged in 2012. Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines merged in 2009 into what was then the largest commercial airline in the world.

At the time of the Delta/Northwest merger, the government did not protest. Instead, the merger passed painlessly through the anti-trust review at the Department of Justice, which issued a statement at the time saying the merger would “benefit U.S. consumers” and was “not likely to substantially lessen competition.”

But the federal government changed its tune when U.S. Airways and American Airlines announced their

PHOTOGRAPH BY TOMONIKON | DREAMSTIME

MEM 2015 merger in 2013. Antitrust regulators said that while the past mergers helped to lead the industry out of bankruptcy, this new merger would, indeed, hurt consumers and competition.

Even Tennessee’s Attorney General Bob Cooper joined in the protest. His office united with six states, the federal government, and the District of Columbia in a complaint to block the merger.

“Studies show that Tennessee’s four major airports in Nashville, Memphis, Knoxville, and Chattanooga will experience fewer flights to certain destinations and travelers will pay more for remaining flights,” Cooper said at the time. “If this merger is completed, consumers will face decreased competition and increased prices because airlines can cut service and raise prices with less fear of competitive responses from rivals.”

Tennessee and the other parties later dropped their complaint against the merger. In exchange, the new American Airlines agreed to divest itself of some slots at Reagan National Airport and LaGuardia International Airport to make way for low-cost carriers. The two airlines made the marriage official in December 2013, but it will still likely be more than a year before they fly under the singular “American” banner.

While the U.S.Air/American merger tale offers at least a peek inside the workings of (and even the legalities of) modern-day mergers, there’s no doubt that the merger that matters most in Memphis is that of Delta and Northwest.

The basic economics seem quite simple: Delta had a hub in Atlanta while Northwest’s hub was in Memphis; they were just too close together and the new Delta had to pick

Since the Northwest/Delta merger was announced in 2008, the number of daily departures at Memphis International Airport has dropped almost 75 percent, from a robust 280 in 2009 to a mere 80 in 2015. What exactly is the Airport Authority’s plan for our hubless future? And what impact will all of this have on Memphis’ traveling business community?

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flights through here by April 2013. From 2010 to 2013, the airline exited or reduced capacity on 93 percent of the routes it served through Memphis.

Fewer flights, of course, also meant fewer passengers.

In 2001, about 19 million passenger seats were available in and out of MEM. That number was slashed by 57 percent by April of 2013 when 8 million seats were available, according to a 2013 report from Campbell-Hill Aviation Group.

As the number of seats decreased, the cost of those remaining seats took off. During Delta’s tenure, fares rose at MEM well above the national average, a fact that was to gain national attention as Memphis began frequently to show up around the top of ticket price rankings in publications like the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal.

From 2000 to 2011, average fares at the Memphis airport were 15 percent higher than the U.S. average.

At one point in 2004, fares were 19 percent higher here. The Greater Memphis Chamber of Commerce convened a panel of airline executives on the high prices in 2011.

They said, overwhelmingly, that the lack of competition at the airport (read: Delta dominance) and the high cost of jet fuel were to blame. By 2013, Memphis had the highest domestic fares among the top 75 U.S. airports, according to CampbellHill. (The U.S. Department of Transportation, however, reported last January that, while fares here were still above the U.S. average by about $86, prices had fallen about 7.5 percent to around an average of $449.)

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRANDON DILL

a city. This made sense to aviation experts at the time.

Looking at the entire chessboard, they understood Delta’s play and correctly predicted its next move.

“The reality is Delta needs to build its overall connectivity from positions of strength, and Memphis brings no value to the carrier as a connection point,” reads a June 2013 report from the CAPA Centre for Aviation.

“As Delta has been cutting service from Memphis, the carrier has been strategically building up other markets, most notably Seattle, as it leverages feed from partner Alaska Air Group from its extensive network to fuel its long-haul services from Seattle, which include both of Tokyo’s airports, Narita and Haneda, as well as Beijing and Paris.”

And Delta’s move came as little surprise to airport leaders in Memphis.

“When Delta and Northwest declared bankruptcy in the same courthouse at the same time on the same day,

TOP: Vacant electric carcharging stations in the newly-built parking garage overlooking Memphis International Airport.

Despite the Northwest/Delta merger, the MSCAA went forward with construction of this facility in 2012.

we started preparing to close the hub,” Greaud says.

“Because we suspected it was just a matter of time. So what did we do? We started figuring out how to get rid of as much debt as possible as quickly as possible in addition to keeping our overall costs as low as possible.”

Delta began shrinking its flight schedule here. Then, it made the de-hub official in June 2013. That decision pulled about 230 employees from Delta operations here and resulted in the termination of about three dozen flights to and from Memphis.

Vitriol flowed from the flying public, from business leaders, and from elected officials. In the 2008 run-up to the Delta/Northwest merger, U.S. Rep. Steve Cohen (who was skeptical of the merger deal) was assured by company officials the deal would not cost Memphis flights or jobs, “two promises that have been broken,” read a news release from Cohen’s office.

The cost of doing business

I

n November 2010, Delta had 209 daily departures from Memphis. The airline flew but 91 daily

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“The relentless pursuit of frequent and affordable air service”

B

ad news stacked up. Change was in the air.

MSCAA chairman Arnold Perl abruptly retired in 2012 after 16 years as chairman and 30 years on the board. Then, longtime airport president and CEO Larry Cox retired in January 2014 after 41 years of service.

Jack Sammons, a businessman and former Memphis City Council member, took the reins as Authority chairman. Scott Brockman, a 12-year MSCAA veteran, became airport CEO in 2013 after turns as the airport’s CFO and as COO. The airport’s bad news was bad enough to unite the mayors of nearly every Shelby County city and the heads of some of the largest organizations in town. Together, they had formed the Mid-South Air Service Task Force in 2012, with the goal of addressing the decline in seat capacity and the rise in air fares, and to develop a strategy for air service overall. The group was comprised of

PHOTOGRAPH BY BOARDING1NOW / DREAMSTIME

public and private stakeholders throughout the Mid-South.

But that group was dissolved abruptly in July 2014 with a straightforward letter to the stakeholders from task force chairman George Cates. He said the need for the task force was called into question by Airport Authority leaders and “while we have the highest respect for Messrs. Sammons and Brockman,” a meaningful relationship between the two groups never formed.

“The new (Memphis and Shelby County Airport Authority) leadership is focusing significant effort on developing new air service and sees the (Task Force) as redundant to its mission,” Cates wrote. “We do not agree with that view, but unless the (Airport Authority) were to identify a productive and collaborative role for the (Task Force), there is no value in continuing unilateral (Task Force) operations.”

At the time, especially after Cates’s letter, it seemed the relationship between the MSCAA and the task force didn’t end amicably.

“Well, that couldn’t be further from the truth,” Sammons says. “That’s the way The Commercial Appeal positioned it.”

Instead, Sammons and Brockman say that the airport and MSCAA and the Task Force were simply duplicating efforts. That wouldn’t have been so bad, they say, but both groups were fighting for face time with time-starved airline executives. Sammons remembers asking a Southwest Airlines executive about the task force concept.

“They said, ‘Let me be frank with you. We ain’t got the time to meet with multiple parties.’ And to me, that was kind of the end of it,” Sammons says. “Listen, George [Cates] and I, and all of us, we all have the same goal. It’s the relentless pursuit of frequent and affordable air service. And there ain’t no pride in authorship.”

Brockman says the decision to disband the task force was a collective one and the backlash came from another place entirely.

“I think part of it was a misconception at the time that the airport was doing nothing,” he says.

The market capitalization for all publicly-traded U.S. passenger airline companies in 2012 was $32 billion. Today, the market-cap value of Delta Air Lines alone is $38 billion.

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The accidental hub

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ook at the data and listen to experts, and the real wonder is that Memphis ever had a hub at all.

There’s a slide in the 2013 Campbell-Hill consultants’ report titled: “Memphis Has a Smaller Population, Fewer Local Passengers, and Lower Median Income than All Other Failed Or Declining Hubs Except One.” The other “one” is San Juan, which had a 2011 median household income of $20,592, according to the report.

Here’s how MSCAA board member Jon K. Thompson explained it to an airport tour group last year: “Memphis is a poor city. Memphis has a 1.3 million population but only 400,000 can afford to fly. Little Rock has an 800,000 population and 425,000 can afford to fly. Nashville has a 1.8 million population and 850,000 who can afford to fly.”

New, low-cost carriers have brought down the cost of ticket prices, Thompson said, which has increased the number of Memphians who can afford to fly. But the problem is more basic (and more widespread) than that. Memphis, he said, needs to up its average household income, improve education in science and engineering, provide more manufacturing jobs, and attract more young talent to live here.

The Campbell-Hill report included a list of failed hubs

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since 1990. It’s a long list that features cities far from losing their “major American city” status. Chicago. Dallas/Ft. Worth. Denver.

Las Vegas. Los Angeles. Baltimore. Nashville.

Yes, Nashville.

When American Airlines pulled out of Nashville in 1996, Nashvillians feared the same things Memphians fear now — service blackouts, increased travel time, and higher business costs. It took nearly 20 years and a lot of re-invention since the American de-hub, but Nashville International Airport (BNA) is just recently back up to where it was before.

BNA reported more than 10 million passengers in its 2013 fiscal year for only the second time in its history, the first being in 1993 when it was an American Airlines hub.

In 2013, BNA announced 14 additional nonstop flights to New York LaGuardia, Los Angeles, Cleveland, Newark, Pittsburgh, Pensacola, Boston, and Athens, Georgia. That airport is now served by 10 airlines and offers 380 daily arriving and departing flights, including nonstop service to 50 markets.

Delta also has reduced service at Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport (CVG) last year. That airport, like MEM, finds itself in re-invention mode and is similarly focusing on local passengers while trying to attract other carriers, especially low-cost carriers.

Cincinnati business leaders are actively engaged there to keep that airport’s single international flight to Paris. But they do it, mainly, by buying tickets. Proctor & Gamble is located in Cincinnati, as is GE Aviation, which is a joint-venture partner with Francebased Snecma in manufacturing jet engines.

The long and winding road

W

hen Sammons talks about successes at MEM since the Delta de-hub, he points to quality air service. That may seem a laughable concept to the “Delta Does Memphis” crowd (as the deluge of flight eliminations still pours forth from the Atlanta-based airline), but Sammons insists he and Brockman have “burned a lot of jet fuel” over the last few months to move the ball down the field.

“We’ve added 22 flights since November of last year,” Brockman says, somewhat defensively, on the topic of air service progress.

“We have air service with Southwest to their markets. Everybody said, ‘You’ve got to get Southwest.’ We got it, OK? And it’s grown.

People said, ‘You have to get competition going west.’ Well, we got Frontier to Denver.”

Attracting air service is a complex and competitive card game. Airlines watch closely when another airline opens a flight in a city.

They read the news, looking for some deeper, hidden meaning.

Secrecy in meetings with airport officials and airlines is a foregone conclusion, say Sammons and Brockman. Put the situation on par with economic development officials

and their negotiations to bring new industry projects to Memphis.

Why so secret? Smaller airlines especially donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t want the hub carrier to know theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re trying to compete in their market. As soon as they do, the hub carrier will use their size to â&#x20AC;&#x153;beat them before they ever get in the game.â&#x20AC;?

Also, the negotiations arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t straight forward. â&#x20AC;&#x153;We canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just beat the sh*t out of (airlines) about, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hey, why arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you gonna give me a ďŹ&#x201A;ight?â&#x20AC;&#x2122;â&#x20AC;? says Sammons. â&#x20AC;&#x153;But, you know, you tell them about the exciting environment we have in Memphis, the exciting opportunities, and say, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Hereâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a chance to become the hometown airline in Memphis. It was Delta, but that girl ran oďŹ&#x20AC; with the tennis pro and took our Corvette. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re pissed.â&#x20AC;&#x2122; People in town are ready to tear up those Delta SkyMiles cards and ďŹ nd a new girlfriend.â&#x20AC;?

In a more formal step forward, the Airport Authority announced in December that it had hired a senior manager of air service research and development. Brockman says the person in the position will â&#x20AC;&#x153;wake up every morning eating, breathing, sleeping, and living air service developmentâ&#x20AC;? in Memphis, which includes understanding what the community wants and needs.

Will Livesay was hired for the post and began working in mid-December. He had worked for American Airlines since 2008 as a senior analyst of network development, looking for new domestic routes for the airline.

But at the very end of the day, airport leaders know the same facts and repeat the same mantra: Memphis air service will never come from a single, large carrier anymore. Instead, air service in Memphis will be â&#x20AC;&#x153;a mosaic of frequent, aďŹ&#x20AC;ordable air service.â&#x20AC;?

Our minimalist future

H

uge, yellow earth movers have been digging and hauling dirt around the airport since November. Crews have been removing the southern end of the A and C concourses, and that activity may be the most visible sign of the new day at MEM. Fewer ďŹ&#x201A;ights. Fewer passengers. Fewer retailers. The passenger airport has shrunk in every way imaginable. And those earth movers are ensuring the airport will shrink physically, too. â&#x20AC;&#x153;This is our future,â&#x20AC;? Greaud says.

But airport oďŹ&#x192;cials arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t shrinking the airportâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s footprint for the sake of doing so.

The move is mainly about two things: moving people and moving airplanes.

The airport is currently designed for 85 gates. It only leases 22. Those are spread out over three big concourses, which were all needed when Delta was going strong here.

Now that Delta is less of a factor, those inactive gates make for huge gaps at the

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Hubless in Memphis, Hopeless in America? national, which moved from Cincinnati in 2013 to a location in Charlotte that’s only a 13-minute drive from that city’s bustling American Airlines hub airport.

“It was certainly one of the hardest choices that I’ve ever made,” Chiquita’s long-time CEO told The Washington Monthly in the spring of 2012. “[But] we’ve been dealing with the logistics of our business and the airport for so long now that everyone knew that the likelihood of moving was very high. It was just a matter of where and when.”

Phillip Longman, co-author of that Washington Monthly article (“Terminal Sickness”; March/April 2012), views

Between airline mergers and consolidations, over a dozen cities — most of them in “fly-over” America, as the central part of this nation is sometimes called — have seen dramatic service declines similar to the one that Memphis is now experiencing. And while there are a few exceptions — booming Nashville being foremost among them, with 10 different airlines providing daily non-stop flights to over 50 different markets in the U.S. — loss of hub service usually has had substantial negative impact upon cities like ours.

Community leaders and chambers of commerce who once dangled the carrot of easy non-stop air access as a major plus for attracting new business to their cities now find themselves on the defensive, struggling to hold on to the Fortune 1000 companies they already have. Not only has that carrot been taken away; as modern business becomes ever more dependent upon speed and efficiency, the relocation of a maCities without hub airports now jor national corporation anyplace other than a find themselves on the defensive, metropolitan area with a major passenger hub struggling to keep the Fortune 1000 airport is becoming increasingly problematic. companies they already have.

Look no further than Cincinnati for a real-life example of this phenomenon. While the southern Ohio city’s airport is still technically a Delta “mini-hub,” service has been cut dramatically, from over 600 flights daily in 2005 to 180 today. One casualty of that decline: the corporate headquarters of Chiquita Brands Inter-

Middle America’s recent loss of so many hub airports as the natural consequence of airline deregulation that began in the late 1970s. A senior fellow at the New America Foundation, where he has worked on public policy issues for 15 years, Longman suggests that national air transportation has undergone something of an invisible revolution over the past half-century.

“Until 1978,” he explains, “the United States viewed airline service as ‘a public convenience and necessity,’ and used a government agency — the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) — to assign routes and set fares.” The idea was that the CAB would ensure that citizens in one city could receive service roughly equal to others in the region, making sure that “smaller cities maintained vital links to the national air network.”

But with the government deciding how many routes were flown and where, and fares being consistently too high for the public’s taste, a bipartisan Congressional consensus in favor of deregulation emerged. The CAB was abolished, and most regulatory controls on routes and rates were removed. During the 1980s, dozens of new airlines took flight, and fares did indeed drop as a result. And well into the 1990s, market coverage grew substantially.

There was just one problem; the newly deregulated airline industry had a difficult time developing profitable business models. More than 170 airlines filed for bankruptcy between 1978 and 2004, many on several different occasions. And while fare prices were generally lower than what they had been before deregulation, such fiscal instability obviously was not sustainable in the long term.

PHOTOGRAPH BY DREAMSHOT | DREAMSTIME

Given all the local controversy generated by Delta’s stratospheric air fares and the airline’s decision in 2013 to eliminate its Memphis hub altogether, a casual observer might think that our current plight as an under-served passenger airport is something of an American anomaly. In fact, that’s anything but the case. If misery truly loves company, our city in this respect at least has more than a few fellow travelers. Just ask community leaders in places like Raleigh-Durham, Pittsburgh, or St. Louis, all of whom were “dehubbed” earlier this century, just how much they’re enjoying the new realities of passenger aviation.

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highway system that connects the entire nation and which, ironically, with a few toll road exceptions, is a defacto federal public utility, used without direct charge by citizens in all parts of the nation. Provided you fill up your gas tank at the same place, the cost in money There is a certain irony in the fact and time of driving to New Orleans or Atlanta is approxi- that Memphis, where Fred Smith mately the same, since both are roughly 390 miles from founded FedEx, has now officially Memphis.

But in today’s hyperactive lost its passenger hub status. world, travel by road is not always a viable travel option, particularly for people traveling for business, whose time is so often at a premium. And as de-hubbed airports like ours find themselves with increasingly limited air

ever financial performance, it was an all-time industry record. The market capitalization for all publiclytraded U.S. passenger airline companies in 2012 was $32 billion. Today, the market-cap value of Delta Air Lines alone is $38 billion.

While the Big Three airlines are all now generally well managed — weak management having been another consequence of deregulation — the fact that consolidation has dramatically reduced competition is a significant factor in their current financial success. In today’s deregulated business climate, the three legacy air carriers now have a relatively free hand when it comes to pricing.

Phillip Longman sees a parallel with what happened in the late-nineteenth century. “High fixed costs combined with ruinous competition in the early railroad industry created an overwhelming business incentive to consolidate and downsize, much like what’s happening in the airline industry today.”

Longman explains how these monopolistic practices led to the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887, designed to create something of a level playing field. “Railroads were regulated much as telephones and power companies came to be — as natural monopolies that would be allowed to remain in private hands and earn a profit, but not at the cost of skewing the overall efficiency, balance, and fairness of the American economy.” The ICC insured that passenger and freight charges per mile remained fairly consistent across the country.

Today, of course, passenger rail travel has largely been replaced by automobile travel, along an interstate

connectivity, maintaining or re-locating a business in Memphis that requires its employees to travel extensively is no longer as attractive an option as it once was.

Granted, getting to Atlanta is still no problem; we have 10 nonstops daily to the Delta headquarter’s hub that make that trip in just over an hour. Getting to equidistant New Orleans, however, is another story.

You’ll need at least three-and-a-half hours to get there, going, of course, by way of Atlanta; Delta dropped its one remaining daily nonstop Memphis/New Orleans flight this January.

There is a certain irony in the fact that Memphis, of all places, has now officially lost its passenger hub status. After all, air transportation historians generally give credit to our own Frederick W. Smith, the FedEx founder, for having invented the concept of a hub-andspoke airline network, the outgrowth of that famous Yale undergraduate paper for which he purportedly received a “C.” But FedEx has always specialized in moving packages, not people. Packages and overnight letters don’t mind making multiple stops along the way to their final destinations. Twenty-first century Americans do mind, however, which means that business-location opportunities in the future, no doubt, will be disproportionally tilted towards those cities that have hub airports. For better or worse, the development of a highly consolidated passenger-airline industry built around a relatively small number of hub cities will certainly alter the dynamic and shape of this country’s economy and demographic profile. — Kenneth Neill

PHOTOGRAPH BY K YRIEN | DREAMSTIME

The result has been an inevitable long-term trend towards mergers in passenger aviation. Here in Memphis, for example, Southern Airways merged with Republic Airlines in 1979. Republic established Memphis’ first-ever passenger hub in 1985, before merging with Northwest Airlines in 1986. That Northwest hub, of course, became a Delta hub when the two airlines merged in 2008.

“Merger mania” wasn’t an immediate guarantee of prosperity; Delta only emerged from its own four-year bankruptcy in 2009, just after the announcement of its merger with Northwest. Over the past decade, however, as the mainstream passenger-airline industry has coalesced around three surviving “legacy” carriers (Delta, United, and American), the airlines’ balance sheets have gotten considerably rosier. Delta’s 2013 net profit of $2.7 billion was not just the company’s best-

After deregulation, the passenger airline industry had a difficult time developing profitable business models.

More than 170 airlines filed for bankruptcy between 1978 and 2004, many on several different occasions.

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contin u ed from page 45 airport. In short, parts of the airport have become ghost towns. That becomes important to restaurants and retailers as this spreads foot traffic very thin. Many Memphis airport businesses have closed in the wake of the de-hub.

“It’s the equivalent of watching the Grizzlies play in the Jerry Jones dome [AT&T Stadium] in Dallas with 3,000 people,” Sammons says. “You go in there and you say, ‘Man, they ain’t nobody in this deal,’ you know?”

To correct this, the plan is now to focus all the airport’s activity (now spread over the A, B, and C concourses) into one place, namely, the B concourse. The consolidation is slated for the summer of 2015.

The project is just one part of a $114 million, federally funded concourse modernization plan that will take between five and seven years to complete. Included is the addition of moving walkways, expansion of boarding areas with added passenger seating, raised ceilings, increased natural lighting, and doubling the width of the B concourse.

“If we bring everybody to Terminal B, we widen the hallways, we raise the ceiling, and bring fresh sunlight into the building,” Sammons explains. “Then, when all the gates have activity, people are all of a sudden like, ‘Hey, this is a hot deal.’”

The move is also expected to focus the foot traffic in the airport, which is good news for retailers looking to lure customers.

The modernization plan will eliminate the unwanted gates and the resulting excess of gates will still leave plenty of room for growth, Greaud says.

But the Airport Authority is convinced that eliminating the gates will do more than that.

The reconfiguration is expected to make it much easier for airlines to move their planes in and out of the airport. With the airport’s current design, planes only have one-way access to and from the “courtyard” areas of the B concourse, because the south ends of the A and C concourses are in the way. This wasn’t a problem when Delta had their hub at the airport because they could better coordinate when their own planes were coming or going.

Now, with multiple airlines taking up more space at airport, it’s harder to coordinate entry and exit traffic. Demolishing the south ends of the A and C concourses will create a larger taxiway, airport officials insist, allowing planes to come and go at the same time.

The modernization plan is hoped to also have a softer impact on the psyches of Memphis air travelers. “We want everyone who comes through the place to say, ‘Dang, what an awesome facility. Memphians ought to be proud,’” Brockman says. “Then we want Memphians to say, ‘That’s my terminal. Yeah, I’m home, man. This is my terminal.’”

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University. Certified Public

sity of Notre Dam. B.S., Busi-

Mathematics, University of

Accountant. Oversaw firm’s

n e s s a n d E c o n o m ic s ,

Manchester (U.K.). Former

transition to the Pershing

Universal

University of Montana. Greg joined UAM July

Senior Vice President and CFO, Federal-Mogul

system while maintaining independence as a fully

2014 with over 25 years of finance and corporate

Corporation, a diversified $6.7 billion global

computing FINRA member. Created an internal

management experience across North America,

supplier of aftermarket products for automotive,

reporting and cost accounting system, and an

Asia Pacific, Japan, Europe, and the Middle East.

light commercial, heavy-duty, and off-highway

in-house, self-directed 401(k) plan for employees

Before joining UAM Greg was CEO of First

vehicles. Concurrently served as CFO for the

with no outside administration costs. Licensed

Leasing Company in the State of Qatar. He also

company’s powertrain division, its largest busi-

Financial and Operations Principal, General Se-

served on the Board of the American Chamber

ness segment. Chartered Accountant. Has been

curities Principal, Registered Options Principal,

of Commerce in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

with ServiceMaster since September 2013.

and General Securities Representative.

MIKE CANARIOS

WILLIAM LOSCH III

CAROL ROBERTS

Chief Financial Officer and

Executive Vice President and

Chief Financial Officer and

Senior Vice President, St.

Chief Financial Officer, First

Senior Vice President, Inter-

Jude Children’s Research

Horizon National Corporation.

national Paper. B.S., Mechan-

Hospital. B.S., Business Ad-

B.S., Business Administration,

ical Engineering, Yale Uni-

ministration, and M.B.A.,

University of Richmond; MBA,

versity. Began working with

Miami University of Ohio.

Virginia Commonwealth Uni-

IP in 1981 as an Associate

Has more than 25 years of experience in for-profit

versity. Leads the corporation’s financial activities

Engineer at the Mobile, Alabama, paper mill.

and nonprofit organizations, including responsi-

including treasury, accounting, controls, tax, financial

Former General Manager, Kraft Paper & Packag-

bilities as CFO in adult and pediatric academic

planning, strategic planning, investor relations,

ing. Previously served IP as Vice President, People

health care institutions. Member of the Executive

corporate development, vendor management, and

Development–HR; Vice President–Container, The

Committee for St. Jude Children’s Research

corporate real estate. Serves as chairman of the Dixon

Americas, Industrial Packaging; and Senior Vice

Hospital. Named CFO of the Year in 2011 for

Finance & Audit Committee, treasurer of the Dixon

President, IP Packaging Solutions. In addition to

nonprofits with $50+ million in annual revenue

Board of Trustees, and serves on the board of the

duties as CFO, leads the company’s global

by the Memphis Business Journal.

First Tennessee Foundation.

finance organization.

DAVID L. DUNAVANT

LARRY PENNINGTON

BRIAN ROBINSON

Chief Financial Officer,

Vice President of Finance and

Senior Executive Vice Presi-

Monogram Food Solutions.

Administration, Boys & Girls

dent/CFO, all Crye-Leike

B.B.A. and M.B.A., Univer-

Clubs of Greater Memphis.

Affiliated Companies. Presi-

sity of Memphis. Certified

B.S., Accounting/Business

dent, Crye-Leike Insurance

Public Accountant. Respon-

Administration from the

Agency. B.S., Business Ad-

sible for all aspects of com-

University of Memphis. B.S.,

ministration, University of

pany’s finance, treasury, accounting, informa-

Nonprofit Administration from Southwestern

Memphis. Has worked for Crye-Leike Inc. for 29

tion technology, M&A, and financial planning

Seminary. Oversees all things financial, IT, facili-

years. Notable projects include national relocation

activities. Previously held accounting/finance/

ties, and human resources. Has 20 years experi-

services for Fortune 500 companies, national and

planning positions with LEDIC, Hilton Hotels

ence with for-profits and 20 years experience with

regional financial institutions REO foreclosure

Corporation, Kellogg’s Company, Jimmy Dean

nonprofits. Oversaw the completion of the

services, and federal government agencies REO

Foods, and the U.S. Navy. Former board mem-

Oakhaven facility, upgrading of other existing

foreclosure services. Former Board Member and

ber, YMCA, Leadership Memphis, and

facilities, and building a consistent and sufficient

Treasurer of the West Tennessee American

The Family Link.

revenue stream to sustain the organization.

Heart Association.

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LINDA SAWYER

Vice President, Administration/CFO, Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau. B.S., Business Administration, Christian Brothers University. Manages all finance and accounting functions, and oversees human resources and administrative operations. CPA, Chartered Global Management Accountant.

Member of Tennessee Society of CPAs, American Institute of CPAs, American Payroll Association, and Plan Sponsor Council of America. Named 2014 CFO of the Year for nonprofits with $8+

PENELOPE SPRINGER

Chief Financial Officer, CB Richard Ellis Memphis, LLC. Bachelor of Accountancy from the University of Mississippi. Has spent 20 years with company. Started with CB Richard Ellis Memphis as Controller, promoted to Chief Financial Officer in 2006.

Board Member, American Society of Women Accountants (ASWA). Mentor for University of Memphis MILE program. Supporter of Church Health Center and Metropolitan Inter-Faith Association. Previously worked for Coopers and Lybrand.

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INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINES S.COM | F EB/M A R 20 15

ILLUSTRATION BY PONSUWAN | DREAMSTIME

million in annual revenue by the MBJ.

The HOT Sheet Appointed Expedient Data Centers, a national leader in colocation, managed hosting and cloud computing services, announced the appointment of Jim Kothe to the position of Regional Vice President to oversee its expansion into the Memphis market.

The company just recently announced plans to make Memphis its 7th market and will open its 11th Data Center in June of 2015, upon completion of facility improvements including an initial $5 million dollar capital investment.

Awarded inferno, a full-service advertising, marketing, design, and public relations firm, was awarded with 13 Davey Awards in the program’s 2014 competition. The Davey Awards is an international competition focused exclusively on honoring outstanding creative work from the best small firms worldwide, and this year’s competition received nearly 4,000 entries.

Additionally, inferno was awarded with nine MarCom Awards. The MarCom Awards is an international creative competition that recognizes outstanding achievement by marketing and communications professionals.

At Junior Achievement of Memphis and the Mid-South’s recent annual meeting, the nonprofit organization presented the following among their awards: Volunteer of the Year: Edmond Simms, Equal Opportunity Employment Commission (EEOC); Teacher of the Year: Lisa Graves, Idlewild Elementary School; Company of the Year: AT&T. Junior Achievement of Memphis and the Mid-South is a not-for-profit organization financed by

businesses, foundations, and individuals. JA’s purpose is to educate and inspire young people to value free enterprise, business, and economics to improve the quality of their lives. Simply, JA teaches children ‘how business works.’

Kazuko Sakata, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC), received a grant totaling $375,000 from the National Institute of Mental Health, a subsidiary of the National Institutes of Health.

The funds will be used to study inflexible learning, the inability to change from one course of action to another by learning from a behavioral consequence.

The award will be used to support a project titled, “Neural Mechanisms of Inflexible Learning Caused by BDNF Deficiency,” and will be distributed over a two-year period.

Karen C. Johnson, MD, MPH, who has brought more than $40 million in research dollars to the University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) and is the principal investigator on five currently funded research grants or contracts, has been awarded the UTHSC College of Medicine Endowed Professorship in Women’s Health. The professorship, conferred because of her excellence in research, her national reputation, and her history as a strong collaborator at UTHSC, is supported by the Kathryn Sullivan Bowld Endowment Fund. In August, Johnson, a professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine, was named to the Thomson Reuters list of “The World’s Most

Influential Scientific Minds: 2014.” The distinction is based on the significant number of articles she has published and the frequency of which they are cited by fellow researchers.

Certified Jason Salomon, an attorney with the law firm of Wyatt, Tarrant & Combs, LLP, has been certified as an Estate Planning Specialist, joining a select group of lawyers throughout Tennessee that have completed a rigorous certification process required by the Tennessee Supreme Court.

The Tennessee Commission on Continuing Legal Education and Specialization recently awarded the certification to Salomon, which makes him one of only 25 lawyers across the state to receive this certification.

Tennessee attorneys are required to have years of experience in their field to receive the certification, pass a detailed examination, and receive positive recommendations from other attorneys, judges, and their clients. Of the 25 attorneys in Tennessee certified as Estate Planning Specialists, six are with Wyatt.

Elected Bruce Hopkins, President of the West Tennessee Region of First Tennessee Bank, has been elected as the Board Chairman of ArtsMemphis, which provides communitywide funding for the arts community in Memphis. During 2014, ArtsMemphis distributed $3.3 million in grant funding to arts groups and individuals.

Also serving on the ArtsMemphis Executive Committee will be: Trow Gillespie, Executive Committee Co-Chairman; Lucy Lee, Vice Chairman; Jimmie Williams, Secretary; Glenn Mitchell, Treasurer; Bob Craddock, Immediate Past

Board Chairman; Gary Wunderlich, Endowment Chairman; Anne Stokes, Enhancement Chairman; Gretchen McLennon, Member at-Large; and Pat Danehy, Member-at-Large.

Newly elected to a three-year term, the ArtsMemphis Board of Directors is Jonathan Moorehead, Audit Partner with Deloitte & Touch LLP. Larry Zehnder, Senior Parks & Recreation Planner at Barge, Waggoner, Sumner, and Cannon, Inc., has been elected to the American Academy for Park and Recreation Administration.

Zehnder was inducted at the Academy’s annual meeting during the National Recreation and Park Association Congress in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Zehnder, a Certified Park and Recreation Professional, has over 40 years of professional experience in parks and recreation including management roles for the City of Chattanooga; Norfolk, Virginia; and Charleston, South Carolina.

He served for 15 years as Parks and Recreation Administrator for the City of Chattanooga. In 2000, he was appointed Southeast Region Executive Director for the National Recreation and Park Association. Zehnder is past president of both Tennessee and Virginia recreation and park associations along with founding chairman of the Tennessee Leadership Development. The Academy is a group of distinguished practitioners and educators who are leaders in the field of parks and recreation. The Academy is limited to 125 active members.

Expanding The University of Tennessee Health Science Center (UTHSC) campus of the future will have at least 15 new

buildings to meet expanding academic, research, clinical care, and support needs. It will also have improved pedestrian and bicycle routes, better traffic flow, more parking, well-designed green spaces and landscaping, prominent signage, 10 renovated buildings, and updated housing options.

The improvements are part of a Campus Master Plan designed to enhance UTHSC’s stature as an urban academic medical center and secure its spot as the nucleus of the evolution of the Memphis Medical Center district. The plan, drawn by the award-winning architecture and design firm of Perkins + Will after more than a year of discussions with faculty, staff, students, and community stakeholders, focuses on giving UTHSC’s urban campus a more clear sense of identity, showcasing existing and emerging research and clinical centers of excellence, strengthening use of Health Sciences Park as the campus heart or center.

Hired Pickering Firm, Inc. hired the following new employees in the Memphis Office: Heather Antilley has joined the firm as Accounting Manager. Heather has a Bachelor of Science in Forensic Accounting from Franklin University, Columbus, Ohio; Summa Cum Laude. She has 14 years of experience. Valerie Johnson-Herron has joined the firm as Human Resource Generalist. Valerie has a Master of Arts in Human Resource Management from Webster University, St. Louis, and has nine years of experience.

Paragon Bank has added Brittney Rowe to the team as Business Development Officer.

She will report to Mike Edwards, President and COO of

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The HOT Sheet Paragon. Prior to joining the bank, she worked at DuncanWilliams, Inc. for seven years.

Rowe received a Bachelor of Science in Commerce and Business Administration from the University of Alabama. She currently serves as the Associate Board Chairman for Make-AWish Mid-South; Fellows Graduate and Advisory Board Member for New Memphis Institute; Member of Junior League of Memphis; and is a NEXUS Leadership Graduate.

Lacey Hibbard has joined Cushman & Wakefield | Commercial Advisors as Senior Brokerage Services Specialist. In her new role, Lacey will be responsible for market surveys and analysis, as well as assisting the business services team with new business development.

Greg Spillyards has joined Cushman & Wakefield | Commercial Advisors as Executive Vice President of Community Advisors, a new service line which is focused on the Memphis city core with a goal to provide real estate advisory services to assist in the revitalization of the city’s underserved areas with passion, creativity, entrepreneurship, and in cooperation with and service to those already living and leading in their neighborhoods.

Justin Totty has joined Gateway Group Personnel as a Research Associate for the Executive Search division. In his new role, Justin will be focused on sourcing the best candidates for clients across numerous fields and industries, specifically targeting accounting, finance, and engineering.

Grant & Co. New Homes hired Misty Jones and Greer Goodwin as the latest additions to the company’s sales team. Jones joins Grant & Co. following 16 years of work in the real estate sector, where she has worked for clients such as Kaizen Realty, Fogelman Management Group, Renaissance Realty, and Keller Williams. She is a member of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors as well as the Tennessee Association of Realtors. She received the Best Presentation award at the 2006 VESTA Home Show, where she represented multiple builders and prepared marketing. Jones has been hired full-time and will go through 30 days of training before receiving a designated sales territory.

She attended the University of Memphis and in addition to her valuable experience, she offers skills in project management, report preparation, office management, marketing/sales, and customer service. Goodwin is a recent graduate of the University of Memphis, where she received a Bachelor of Business Administration with a major in finance and concentration in real estate. She has experience working in the customer service industry as well as in an organized office setting, and her educational background in business and real estate gives her the skills necessary to successfully manage the building and selling processes of Grant & Co. Dixon Hughes Goodman LLP hired Kim Sheley as the newest partner in its Memphis office. A native of Sardis, Miss. and graduate of the University of Mississippi’s undergraduate and master’s programs in accountancy, Sheley joined Dixon Hughes Goodman (formerly Rhea & Ivy) in 2004 after working at

Kemmons Wilson, AutoZone, and KPMG. As partner, Sheley’s goal is to reemphasize educational and personal development for new talent in the Memphis office, especially women.

Bailey Hill has joined Crone & McEvoy, PLC as a staff attorney. A Hutchison School graduate, Ms. Hill went on to earn a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Memphis in 2011 and her juris doctor from the Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law in 2014. Licensed in the state of Tennessee, she is a member of the Memphis Bar Association and Tennessee Bar Association.

Prior to her new role at Crone & McEvoy, Hill interned at local law firms Lawrence & Russell and Rosenblum & Reisman.

MTS’ newest addition to the executive team is Dr. Keith Gaskin, vice president of advancement. Gaskin brings to MTS over 25 years of professional experience in the areas of fundraising, public relations, personal sales, and journalism.

While also serving as an adjunct instructor at Mississippi State University and Mississippi University for Women, the majority of Keith’s career has been focused on major gift fundraising in higher education.

In his most recent positions, Keith has served as associate vice president for advancement at The University of Alabama and senior director of development for the Mississippi State University Foundation. He has helped lead efforts to raise gifts totaling over $35 million for higher education initiatives during his career.

Reynolds, Bone & Griesbeck adds Ali Sinkular as Audit Partner. Sinkular brings more

than 20 years of extensive experience in the public accounting sector along with a reputation for stellar client service. Sinkular was with the Memphis office of a national firm for eight years before making the move to a regional firm where she served as its first female partner for seven of her 12 years there. In 2013, she left public accounting to become a CFO in the private sector.

Sinkular is a graduate of Delta State University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and Accountancy. She is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the Tennessee Society of Certified Public Accountants, the Accounting & Financial Women’s Alliance, and is a participant of Women on the Move. Sinkular is on the finance committee for Girl Scouts Heart of the South and serves on the executive committee of the board of directors of the Humane Society of Memphis and Shelby County.

Merged The law firms of Perkins, Jones, and Associates and The T.D. Moore Law Firm have merged to become Perkins, Moore, & Jones PLLC., located in Brinkley Plaza at 80 Monroe Avenue downtown. Partner Samuel Perkins, the current President of the Tennessee Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, one of the few presidents from the Memphis area and the first black president in the organizations more than 40-year history, joins TeShaun Moore and James Jones, bringing together their expertise in criminal and family law, divorce, bankruptcy, and personal injury to create one full-service law firm.

Named John Bryant has been named the chief meteorologist for WATN-TV Local 24 and WLM-TN CW 30, the ABC and CW stations in Memphis. Bryant is a native Memphian and graduate of Mississippi State University with a degree in Atmospheric Science and emphasis on Broadcast Meteorology. He holds seals from both the American Meteorology Society and the National Weather Association.

Fisher & Phillips LLP announced the law firm has been named 2015 “Law Firm of the Year” for Labor & Employment Litigation by U.S. News - Best Lawyers. The firm also received “First-Tier Rankings” for its Employment and Labor Law practices. Additionally, 21 of the firm’s offices received “Metropolitan Tier 1 Rankings” for Employment Law, Labor Law, Employee Benefits, and/or Labor and Employment Litigation. They are Atlanta, Boston, Charlotte, Cleveland, Columbia, Dallas, Denver, Fort Lauderdale, Irvine, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Louisville, Memphis, New Jersey, New Orleans, Orlando, Portland (Maine), Portland (Oregon), San Diego, San Francisco, and Tampa.

The firm has been included in all five editions of the prestigious rankings. Fisher & Phillips is dedicated solely to representing employers in labor and employment matters with 300 attorneys in 31 offices.

Promoted Katie Sneed has been promoted to the role of Client Coordinator at Cushman & Wakefield | Commercial Advisors. In her new role, Sneed will be providing client and administrative support to the brokerage team.

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F OU N DAT IO N S contin u ed from page 3 4 1980s, purchased two CAD workstations from an aircraft company.

The firm saw an influx of national work, taking on commercial and medical projects in Massachusetts, Texas, Kansas, and California.

In 1986, they merged with local firm Yeates Gaskill and Rhodes, forming the firm of Jones, Mah, Gaskill, and Rhodes, Inc. or JMGR. The postal service hired JMGR to develop what became known as its Kit of Parts — a computergenerated system for designing post offices across the nation.

JMGR developed an international presence as well. Kai Wang, a young Chinese architect, asked to work at the firm, eager to learn American hospital design methods. A year later in 1993, he initiated JMGR business in China.

Over the next decade the firm grew to 95 employees and

continued to design hospitals and schools in China. In 2001, Boston firm TRO/ The Ritchie Organization acquired JMGR, looking to expand international projects. The Memphis branch continued to work on a local, national, and global scale. In 2006, a merge with Boston firm Jung|Brannen created TRO Jung|Brannen.

The Memphis office of TRO Jung|Brannen split from the company in 2011, becoming today’s brg3s, named for its six principles: Berger, Brett Ragsdale, Susan Golden, Jon Summers, Ed Scharff, and Jay Sweeney.

“The economy was part of it,” Berger says. “We found ourselves in conflict with business development, the types of projects we wanted to go after. If they would have said, ‘Don’t waste your time doing $10 million projects, we want you to do $100 million projects,’ well, there are only a few of those in Memphis. It was partly that.”

Today’s brg3s is named for its six principals: Steve Berger, Brett Ragsdale, Susan Golden, Jon Summers, Ed Scharff, and Jay Sweeney.

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As part of a national firm, the Memphis architects gained valuable experience, opportunities, and training that enhance their small local firm. An expertise in designing complicated healthcare buildings, work only one or two other local firms could handle, gives brg3s an edge and accounts for much of its business.

Recently, brg3s designed the new front door to the Methodist University Hospital in Midtown and its emergency department expansion, a $30 million project.

“We’re involved in some big, complex building, but we’re doing some things that are just fun,” Berger says, noting the Truck Stop restaurant concept and the Kroc Center.

“Trying not to replicate things that are already here, that’s the legacy of the firm. I feel like we continue to instill that in our staff. I hope that will be something that continues for another century or so.”

BOTTOM LEFT: The Hotel Claridge on Main Street is known today as the Claridge House Condominiums.

BOTTOM RIGHT: The Humane Society of Memphis & Shelby County in Shelby Farms Park.

OL D

B U S I N E S S

Wilson Field > > >

BY

VA N C E

L A U D E R D A L E

A subdivision now covers one of our city’s early airports.

“AIRPLANES REMAIN ON THE FIELD FROM WORLD WAR II TRAINING DAYS. WEEDS AND YOUNG TREES GROW THROUGH THEIR FUSELAGES.”

The wreckage remained visible for years, joining a fleet of other demolished and dismantled aircraft that caught the eye of anyone driving past the dirt runways and hangars at the northeast corner of Ridgeway and Raines Road.

Wilson Field was owned and operated

by Harry T. Wilson. A self-taught pilot since 1915, Wilson had flown in the Signal Corps during

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF MEMPHIS LIBRARIES

Six years after Amelia Earhart vanished in the Pacific, her airplane crashed and burned at a little airport just outside of Memphis.

If that sounds like an episode from The Twilight Zone, perhaps we should explain that the two-engine Lockheed Vega was one of the first aircraft that Earhart purchased, but she replaced it with a larger plane shortly before her ill-fated fl ight around the globe in 1937. The Vega crashed upon take-off here on August 26, 1943, while it was being ferried across the country to a new owner.

World War I and teamed up with Vernon Omlie, one of this area’s first aviators, in the 1920s.

He took over Omlie’s Mid-South Airways Corporation after the older pilot died in a crash near St. Louis in 1938.

Wilson moved the company to Memphis Municipal Airport, but had to relocate several miles east when the U.S. Army commandeered the city’s main airfield during World War II. During the war he supervised pilot training for the military. In later years, he provided flight classes, aircraft maintenance, and other services

and sales and slowly built up a sprawling “boneyard” of vintage airplanes and parts. In the 1960s, a reporter visited Wilson Field “in the quiet countryside” and noted that “airplanes remain on the field from World War II training days. Weeds and young trees grow through their fuselages. Wilson says one man wants one of the old planes as a plaything for his children.”

Wilson, hailed in the Memphis Press-Scimitar as “a pioneer figure in aviation in Memphis,” died in 1975.

A subdivision now stands atop the grass runways of Wilson Field.

LEFT: The wreckage of Earhart’s plane. ABOVE: Harry Wilson (pictured on left) with his chief pilot, R.S. Weaver, in 1950.

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“ Ron is not just

a man of success; he is a man of value.

”

CHRISTINE DI STADIO FORMER WREG-TV COLLEAGUE

AAF Memphis honors Ron Walter with the 2015 Silver Medal Award CREATIVE. HONORABLE. AN EXEMPLARY LEADER. Those who have worked with, for, and around Ron Walter

As president and general manager of WREG-TV as well

for the past three decades share words like these to

as in his roles with more than thirty Memphis associations

describe AAF Memphis’ 2015 Silver Medal Award

and organizations, Ron is known as a respected

recipient. The Silver Medal Award is awarded to an

communicator, passionate advocate, and accomplished

exceptional industry leader for a career of outstanding

author. He embodies the values of AAF Memphis and is

accomplishment and advertising contribution.

an inspiration to our entire community.

The mission of AAF Memphis, the Memphis chapter of the American Advertising Federation, is to inspire, empower and applaud the professional growth of marketing communications specialists.

aafmemphis.org

A PP OI N T M E N T

B O OK

Business events, networking opportunities, and cultural highlights: February / March 2015 > > >

C O M P I L E D

BY

A N N A

C OX

FEBRUARY 3 GADGETS AND GIZMOS:

2:00 - 5:00 p.m. presented by Memphis Area Association of Realtors. Using such gadgets as a Livescribe® pen that records your voice and a personal surveillance system that looks like a keychain, this action-packed class will teach you the benefits of tools that will help you stay competitive, save money, and help the community you serve.

You’ll learn about the latest cloud-based tools, mobile apps, software, and tech-savvy gadgets available in today’s market to better manage your business.

MAAR Education Center, 6393 Poplar Avenue. 901-685-2100.

FEBRUARY 5 ROADMAP TO SUCCESS: Creat-

ing a Business Plan that Works.

2:00 – 5:00 p.m. Memphis Area Association of Realtors. Behind every successful business owner is a road map that helped them get there. Are you ready to ditch the chance model and build the roadmap to your success? A map for your business gives you direction, clarity, and focus, three key elements for success. We’ll delve into a systematic business plan that focuses on real-world applications and daily practices that will help you reach your personal and professional goals.

MAAR Education Center, 6393 Poplar Avenue. 901-685-2100.

FEBRUARY 5 TALENT MAGNET: “Attracting

Let us know about your group’s events at anna@ contemporary-media.com.

and Maintaining Top Talent by Building a Magnetic Culture” with HRO Partners, featuring Kevin Sheridan at Memphis Bioworks. Join community leaders, senior executives, and HR professionals at this free event. Inspiring keynote by Kevin Sheridan, New York Times bestselling author of Building a Magnetic Culture and The Virtual

Manager. Coffee and breakfast served at 8:00 a.m. and presentation begins at 8:30 a.m.

Memphis Bioworks Foundation, 20 S. Dudley St., Memphis TN 38103; complimentary garage parking is available off Monroe Ave. For more information call 737-0123 or email support@ hro-partners.com.

FEBRUARY 11 ANNUAL CHAMBER LUNCHEON MEETING: honoring

Fran Persechini. 11:15 a.m. - 1:00 p.m. This month the lunch will honor Fran Persechini, President & CEO of the Collierville Chamber of Commerce, celebrating 20 years of service to the chamber and community. Reservations required. $20 per person. Please register online or by calling the office at 901-853-1949. Kindly give 48 hours notice of cancellation or charges will apply.

Sponsor is First Tennessee Bank.

Ridgeway Country Club, 9800 Poplar Avenue, Memphis, TN 38139. colliervillechamber.com.

Memphis, TN 38117. thelpbc. com.

FEBRUARY 17 HOUSE OF GENIUS: Cowork

Memphis: Monthly evening sessions bringing together a group of wide-ranging minds and business presenters to focus collective creativity and experience to explore, discuss, and solve important problems.

Registration required. Cowork Memphis, 902 S. Cooper St., houseofgenius.org/memphis.

FEBRUARY 21 – 22 AND FEBRUARY 28 – MARCH 1 30TH ANNUAL “BOWLIN’ ON THE RIVER” BOWL-A-THON:

benefitting Junior Achievement of Memphis and the Mid-South, Inc. Teams of five are asked to raise a minimum of $350 and each member will receive a souvenir T-shirt. Individuals raising at least $150 will get to select prizes from a variety of prize categories. All funds raised benefit Junior Achievement.

Reserve your lanes today by contacting Priscilla Williams at 901-366-7800, Ext. 1140, or priscilla@jamemphis.org.

FEBRUARY 24-25 MEMPHIS NATIONAL COLLEGE FAIR: Tuesday 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.

FEBRUARY 12 LIPSCOMB PITTS BREAKFAST CLUB: “Female Business Leader

Lunch.” 12:00 p.m. - 1:30 p.m.

This female-focused lunch is always a hit and brings business leaders and up-andcoming leaders together as an opportunity to share and discuss various topics, as well as serve as a brain trust to cultivate programs focused on women in business. Lunch is Dutch treat for simplicity. Napa Cafe, 5101 Sanderlin Avenue,

and Wednesday 9:00 a.m. 11:30 a.m. Free admission. Over 100 colleges and universities will be in attendance. Agricenter International; for additional info contact: 703-299-6823 or visit nacacnet.org.

FEBRUARY 26 ARTSMEMPHIS CULINARY SERIES: 6:00 p.m. Taste Your Soul Dinner at Royal Studios. Chefs Brown Burch, Erik Proveaux (Fuel Food Truck, Fuel Café), Angus Brown (Lusca, Octopus Bar – Atlanta, GA), and Heather Ries (Ladybugg Bakery & Café,

Hernando, MS) and stylist Augusta Campbell (Memphis magazine, Laurelwood Shopping Center) team up to deliver a meal resonating with the beat of the South. Hear the STAX Music Academy live. This event is $300 per person. For more information, contact Annie Bares at abares@artsmemphis. org or 901.578.2787. culinary. artsmemphis.org/dinners/tasteyour-soul.

MARCH 1 ACCELERATOR APPLICATIONS DUE: Beginning in May, Start Co. will run four accelerators for B2B, women-led, social impact, and logistics startups. Twelve to 15 select information technology teams will earn $25,000 in equity investment to kick off the 100-day accelerator program that will take an entrepreneur from concept to product success. f6s.com/startco.

MARCH 13-15 SOUTHERN WOMEN’S SHOW IN MEMPHIS: Friday: 10 a.m.

- 8 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. - 7 p.m., and Sunday 11 a.m.-6 p.m. Cost: $10 for adults, $5 for children 6-12 years old, and free for children 6 and under with paying adult. Agricenter International; for additional info call 800-849-0248 or visit southernshows.com/wme.

MARCH 17 HOUSE OF GENIUS: Cowork Memphis. Monthly evening sessions bringing together a group of wide-ranging minds and business presenters to focus collective creativity and experience to explore, discuss, and solve important problems. Registration required.

Cowork Memphis, 902 S. Cooper St., houseofgenius.org/ memphis.

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The Office Dr. Chuck Brady The Memphis Zoo

1 1. Model airplane: “A replica of the famous airplane that delivered the pandas and was called the ‘Panda Express.’ I think the largest accomplishment [the zoo has seen in my tenure] would be bringing the giant pandas to Memphis and building the China exhibit.

It is thought to be one of the best giant panda exhibits anywhere.

People from Europe, China, and other parts of Asia that have giant pandas visit and always think it’s the best exhibit in the world.

We hear that all the time. We just brought 15 Chinese zoo directors here for a week to study how U.S. zoos operate. They spent four days here, then we flew them to Atlanta for four days. They all marveled at our exhibit.” Memphis is one of just four U.S. zoos, along with Atlanta, San Diego, and the Smithsonian National to have giant pandas.

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>>> PHOTOGRAPHS BY LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

“Sure, look around, I’ve got a few artifacts,” chuckles Dr. Chuck Brady, CEO of the Memphis Zoo. A quick glance around his office overlooking the zoo’s main plaza proves “few” is an understatement.

A native New Yorker, Brady migrated to Memphis 28 years ago after a stint at the Smithsonian National Zoo, but his passion for animals of all kinds took hold long before that and is rooted in conservation. “I’ve always been interested in animals, and I did both my undergraduate and graduate work in biology and zoology,” he says. “My interest is really animal behavior. Before I was the CEO [at the Memphis Zoo], I was the Director of Animal Programs 60 |

where I was behind renovations such as the China exhibit, Northwest Passage, and Teton Trek.

Even as we speak we’re building a new exhibit, the Zambezi River Hippo Camp, set to open in 2015.”

Brady has helped Memphis go from a municipal zoo to a private nonprofit zoo and a world-class institution with more than 1.1 million visitors a year.

His knowledge is vast and varied, and his experiences and adventures are as wild as the

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creatures he’s fighting for (the guardian lions at the entrance to the China exhibit? He bought them on a back street in Beijing.).

When asked what his favorite animal is, he answers, “African elephant. They’re majestic creatures, they’re in desperate need of help, and they symbolize all that’s needed to conserve wildlife. They’re persecuted throughout their range, and if we don’t save them, many other animals will go along with them.”

2. Wild jaguar photo: “One of the projects I personally worked on [in our conservation efforts] was tagging jaguars in South America and Brazil. We immobilize them, put radio collars on them, then track them with airplanes. It’s been an ongoing study for close to 10 years now.”

6 6. African Elephant photo: A color photograph of mature elephants with their young, taken in the wild, captures the spirit of what Brady considers his favorite animal.

7. Native Hook: “The First Nations People crossed the Bering Strait from Asia. I went to Anchorage and explained that I wanted to get genuine artifacts from the First Nations People for our Northwest Passage exhibit, and they told me to go to the hospital. I was confused why they would send me there, but I found out they sell their art to offset the cost of hospital stays. The hospital sets up a place for them to sell art and other goods, and our purchases directly went back to their benefit. This is what was used to fish for halibut 100 years ago.”

3 3. Watercolors: “These are paintings my wife, Susan, did and the one in the middle is of my two boys. We had a farm when they were little and that’s them chasing frogs — see the little green?”

4. “Foo Dogs” or guardian lions: “When we built the China exhibit, all the tiles, artifacts, and art, we either bought them or had them manufactured and transported from China.

There ended up being 27 shipping containers full of materials. The person in charge of firing all the tiles gave me these as a gift.”

This is also true of Teton Trek and the Northwest Passage exhibits. All of the materials patrons see are from the location to add to the authenticity of each exhibit.

5. W.P.A. Plate: “A lot of the original zoo work was done by the Works Progress Administration, and we had a series of five grottos that were right where the new Zambezi hippo camp is going to go. The story goes that there was a crew of four or five men that came out here and just mixed the concrete and built it until it was done. Can you believe that? Now it would be a big construction bidding war.”

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Most folks in the Mid-South should recognize the interlocked “D” and “W” of the Duncan-Williams, Inc., logo by now. As a major sponsor and partner of some of the Memphis area’s largest charitable, nonprofit, and cause-related organizations, the logo of Duncan-Williams has generously helped over half a dozen groups raise support and awareness over the last five years. But that linked DW isn’t just the company’s initials, it’s also in their mission statement: Do Well.

Duncan-Williams’ sponsorship portfolio includes the Germantown Performing Arts Center, the Indie Memphis Film Festival, the Soundtrack

the “Do Well” motto. “‘Do Well’ serves as a common thread that weaves through our consumer-facing initiatives,” Lendermon says.

“Our philosophy is that if our clients do well, our community will do well; and if our commu-

and worth of their brands, and practice all of the elements of good brand management.” In other words, not just any nonprofit in town can qualify. “We want partner brands,” Lendermon continues, “that have the ability to raise their own

Duncan-Williams’ employees sit on boards and governing bodies for more than 14 local nonprofits, schools, and houses of worship.

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What makes DuncanWilliams unique within its field, however, is its commitment to meaningful marketing.

“A critical strategy of producing meaningful marketing grew out of a desire to clarify [Duncan-Williams’] mission and what it means to our firm, our clients, and our community,” says Gary Lendermon, Vice President of Marketing and Communications.

According to Gary Lendermon, DuncanWilliams’ meaningful marketing is a combination of corporate social responsibility, cause marketing, strategic philanthropy, sustainability, and purpose-based branding. Thus was born

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nity does well, then our employees will do well.”

Using Sponsorium software as a basic matchmaker of sorts, Duncan-Williams is able to determine the best strategic sponsorships for its vision.

“The challenge for us,” says Lendermon, “was finding nonprofits that understand the meaning

brands by association, as well as foster loyalty and turn stakeholders into ambassadors.”

Eventually, DuncanWilliams developed a list of criteria for qualifying groups, which includes commitment to brand meaning and value to everyone who represents the organization; understanding the target

LEFT: Duncan Williams, president of the firm that bears his and his father’s name. The company has helped over half a dozen nonprofits raise support and awareness over the last five years.

audiences’ impressions of the brand and using that information to make improvements to strengthen the bond with consumers; and developing relevant extensions, as well as marketing and communications programs, that will expand reach and impact.

“Our first sponsorship asset was Live at the Garden in 2010,” says Lendermon, referring to the concert series held at Memphis Botanic

EVENT PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY DUNCAN-WILLIAMS

Project, and the hugely popular Dragon Boat Races for the Tennessee Clean Water Network.

Founded in 1969 in Memphis, DuncanWilliams is one of the largest privately owned investment firms in the country with clients in all 50 states, offices in 14 locations nationwide, and a capitalization of $30 million. It’s a firm with national presence, but local roots.

And the company’s employees are no strangers to community involvement and doing well, either. Nearly every member of DuncanWilliams’ management team boasts faith-based, nonprofit, or charity involvement on his or her resume. Combined,

PHOTOGRAPH BY LARRY KUZNIEWSKI

THE INVESTMENT FIRM PRACTICES MEANINGFUL MARKETING TO BOOST LOCAL NONPROFITS’ BOTTOM LINES AND INCREASE BRAND AWARENESS.

Garden. Proceeds go directly back to the Botanic Garden to help fund facilities, programs, and employee salaries.

“Music is one thing all Memphians can agree on, and Live at the Garden consistently brings the best in live music acts to Memphis. Coupled with the media and public relations value, the series is a big success.”

Lendermon is excited about the new year and says that 2015 “will include a huge sponsorship announcement with a major global brand, so stay tuned.”

TOP: Dragon Boat Races benefitting the Tennessee Clean Water Network.

LEFT: Indie Memphis Film Festival boosts the recognition of independent film-makers in Memphis.

ABOVE: The “Live at the Garden” series at Memphis Botanic Gardens.

Discover more about Duncan-Williams, Inc. at duncanwilliams.com.

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“Anybody who knows cues,” original founder Bob Meucci says, “they’re going to order a Meucci.”

Meucci Cues produces five lines of professional pool cues built from southern ash and fine exotic hardwoods from all over the world, inlaid with designs of stained wood and precious metals. Not only are the cues beautiful, but each is carefully engineered for maximum performance, offering players more power with less effort.

From the Yellow Rose of Texas, inlaid with yellow puka shell, to those designed with Central American cocobolo wood and mother of pearl, the cues produced here are carried by more than 2,400 dealers and distributors worldwide and used by hundreds of top players in the American Poolplayers Association.

The lowest-end model of Meucci cue is around $300, and the average purchase

— but it didn’t play out.

After that initial setback, Meucci found two investors for $5,000 each to support a startup fueled by the skill he had carried with him for so long. Following its first year in business, Meucci Cues grew by 50 percent each year for 10 years.

Those two investors got a final cut of $200,000, and Meucci eventually severed all ties and gained his independence.

Since then, a changing economy and increased foreign trade in the U.S. has led Meucci to alter his business model. Unable to compete with the high volume of imports from Asian manufacturers that spiked under new tariff laws in the late 1990s, Meucci switched gears, aiming production toward a high-end market with lower production numbers. While the numbers may not be as big as those first few years, Meucci Cues has hit a sweet spot in the hearts

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price paid by distributors is around $750.

A machinist by trade, Meucci has been mastering his skill since the age of 12, when he started working in his father’s tool and die shop. Helping to build kidney dialysis machines and jar lids for Kraft food products at a time when you still “had to do it with your brain,” using hand machinery, as he recalls, Meucci was also honing an invaluable skill set in an era before the CNC (Computer Numerical Control) machinery used to build the same products today.

At 19 years old, he built his first pool cue.

“It became second nature,” Meucci says of the building and production experience he gained growing up. “To make a pool cue was nothing for me. Where everyone else who made them back then used wood chisels and wood lathes and sandpaper and no two were ever the same,

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and pool halls of players across the country.

After a few years spent enjoying his success on nearly 2,000 acres in Senatobia, Mississippi, the owner has increased his presence at the warehouse and given Meucci Cues a new tagline — Bob’s back. Most days, Bob can be found in the factory, talking with employees or teaching pool in the billiards room, where he offers lessons to amateurs and professionals alike.

With his expertise and supervision, business is steady and growing with current projects like a sponsorship for Roku’s The BILLIARD Channel and professional players Loree Jon Jones and Max Eberle on staff as product representatives.

Bob recently started designing another product for his factory to produce — duck calls, just as beautiful and unique as each cue he produces.

Meucci’s hand-crafted products have quickly become must-have collectors’ items. His most expensive cue is a $50,000 model with a design of the Taj Mahal set in precious stones, originally purchased by a collector in Japan and recently sold for the third time for just under $300,000. That one Bob made just for fun.

The custom cue of any collector’s dreams is just a short drive away from the Bluff City — and for a nominal fee, Bob will grab a marker and sign that classic “M.” For more information on Meucci Cues, including where to purchase, please visit meuccicues.com.

Katherine Barnett is a freelance writer and former intern for Contemporary Media Inc. who now works full-time at Chi Omega Executive Headquarters in Memphis.

PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY MEUCCI CUES

Building a pool cue takes 300 steps and 55 machines. Just south of the Mississippi state line in Byhalia, Bob Meucci has it down to an art.

From the calm of the billiards room in the Meucci Cues warehouse and headquarters in Byhalia, nothing but the faint smells and sounds of construction suggests the craftsmanship behind its walls. Every pool cue that leaves this facility, and each machine used to build it, is a Bob Meucci original, and each cue’s trademark cursive “M” marks one of the most recognized billiards brands in the world.

I made them within a thousandth of an inch, because I used metalworking equipment. And that started the whole thing.”

The technology Meucci developed during this time blazed a trail for the future of the industry.

Today, nearly every pool cue made in the United States is based on technology developed by Meucci more than 50 years ago.

A natural entrepreneur, Meucci traveled the country for years supporting different startup companies, working independently, yet was continually sought out for his expertise in pool cue technology. When an invitation came to relocate to the Memphis area and start his own company in 1975, he took the chance

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