405 BUSINESS Dec/Jan 2022 by 405 Magazine

THE INNOVATION DISTRICT RESTORE OKC | WALRUS AUDIO THE COWBOY’S TIM TILLER

10 FOR THE NEXT 10 10 LEADERS WHO WILL CHANGE OKC IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS

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Features

D E C /J A N 2 02 2

10 for the Next 10

Driving OKC’s Innovation

10 industry leaders who will change Oklahoma City in the next 10 years.

Katy Boren, Innovation District president and CEO, is charged with pushing OKC’s innovation community forward to spur new economic growth.

Departments

D E C /J A N 2 02 2

S TA RT U P 14 Q&A Matt Stansberry talks purpose 16 My Daily Media Diet with Schnake Turnbo Frank’s Russ Florence 18 Ask the Mentor How to prepare for 2022? 20 The Future of … The Future of the 405

SW E AT E QU I T Y 26 Small Business Walrus Audio perfecting guitar pedals 28 Giving Back Restore OKC 30 How I Did It John Lippe achieves entrepreneurship through acquisition

E X I T S T R AT E GY 58 Downtime Amir Farzaneh strings it together 60 On Topic What changes would you like to see in OKC in the next 10 years? 62 Linked In Networking events across the 405 64 Out of office The Cowboy’s Tim Tiller

Volume 1 Issue 1

On the Cover OKC Mayor David Holt Photo by Charlie Neuenschwander

26 30

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

This is 405 Business Magazine I A M OVER -TH E- M O O N pleased that you are holding in your hands the first-ever issue of 405 Business Magazine. This is your first time to read it, but, trust me, 405 Business Magazine has been a labor of love for our staff for a long time now. We’re excited to present a publication that will focus on the people behind the businesses in Oklahoma City and the surrounding metro. We’ll tell you their stories. We’ll highlight emerging businesses and emerging leaders. We’ll have industry experts weigh in on how to better your business, engage more with your employees or just offer advice that can help move you forward. All of these concepts and ideals are jammed-packed inside these pages. For this first issue, we’re talking about Oklahoma City’s future. And, we’ve talked with just about every heavy hitter in town. You’ll hear from Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, OKC Chamber of Commerce President Roy Williams and OKCPS Superintendent Sean McDaniel about what Oklahoma City will look like in 10 years. (pg. 20) For the cover, we’ve named 10 outstanding people who will change Oklahoma City in the next 10 years. (pg. 32) These are OKC leaders who are gearing up to make big changes in their industry, for their community and for this city – after they’ve already made a big splash in their respective fields. It’s been a thrill to talk to each of them – and to hear their vision for what OKC should look like in a decade. I’ve heard how the biotech industry is poised to grow and how aerospace could leapfrog oil and gas to be our No. 1 industry in the coming years. And I’ve also heard these visionaries explain where we need to improve – how diversity and inclusion must be a part of every conversation moving forward or how workforce develop-

While interviewing, we heard:

David Holt Oklahoma City Mayor When I’m a voter, I always prioritize experience. And some people want the exact opposite. They want to throw the bums out and get someone that hasn’t ever done this before. But the reality is that if you don’t have the experience to lead you’ll be learning on the job and everyone will suffer.

ment and quality, accessible education for all will be crucial to capitalizing on current wins. We also talk to some great business leaders about their passions. Read about Restore OKC and its mission to grow the economic impact of northeast Oklahoma City through job creation. (pg. 28) In fact, we’re pleased to announce 405 Business Magazine selected Restore OKC as its philanthropic partner for 2022. We’re off and running, OKC. Check out all our social channels and visit our website at 405business.com. Then sign up for our weekly newsletter, The Morning Rush, to see some headlines to get your Mondays started right. Let’s start talking about Oklahoma City’s economy, businesses, entrepreneurs and leaders. We’ve got a lot to say, so let’s start talking.

Kayte Spillman EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Rachel Cope CEO, 84 Hospitality Group I’m not always looking for a hole in the market, sometimes things just find me. I love diving into a project and creating a concept to fit that area. Have a concept that you are passionate about and find a space that fits it.

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S TA RT UP OKC in 2031 Some of Oklahoma’s biggest leaders forecast what the 405 could look like when we are almost a third of the way through this century. p.2O

Q&A 14 MY DAILY MEDIA DIET 16 ASK THE MENTOR 18 THE FUTURE OF 20

Q&A

S TA RT U P

Why is this an emerging trend in business?

79%

people believe companies should work to address social justice issues

78%

consumers would tell others to buy products from a purpose-driven company

66%

would switch from a product they typically buy to a new product from a purpose-driven company

79%

would be more loyal to a brand driven by purpose than one that isn’t

*According to a 2018 Cone/Porter Novelli Purpose Study

and they want to see that impact, according to a 2018 Cone/Porter Novelli Purpose Study. Doing business for the greater good is not a trend. I believe it’s what businesses are here to do. I call it doing business on purpose.

Matt Stansberry, founder, CEO and partner at Nominee, a brand consultancy, talks about how your business should have purpose – and how it can impact your bottom line. What role do purpose-driven businesses have in today’s economy? Gone are the days when

brands could stamp an empty promise on a campaign or fool customers with greenwashing. Consumers want to align themselves with brands that consistently and authentically prove that they are driven by purpose. The brands that prove they care for the well-being of other people and our planet end up with more loyal, consistent, engaged consumer bases. You can’t fake purpose. In the short term, it might seem like a smart move to loosely tie your brand to the latest social justice cause; but in the long run, dedicating your brand to an authentically driven purpose will always reign supreme.

As consumers continue to ask more of the brands they invest in, brands led by authentic, purpose-led leaders will succeed today, tomorrow and in the future. Ok, but let’s back up: What does it mean for a business to have ‘purpose?’ Bill Theofilou, se-

nior managing director for Accenture Strategy, said purpose was the reason why a company or a brand exists. It is the underlying essence that makes a brand relevant and necessary to its customers. Purpose sits firmly at the center of a brand’s vision and informs every business decision. And 89 percent of consumers see a brand’s purpose defined by how they benefit the greater good,

Nowadays, the term “purpose-led brand” is not as foreign of a concept as it was five years ago. The demand for businesses to have a strong sense of purpose is being driven by the customer.

And why do you think we are seeing it emerge now? A pandemic, immense racial tension and

political turmoil have completely changed the way we view brands now. We are living in an era of radical transparency. Consumers – now more than ever – are conscious of a brand’s actions. They want all the contextual information they can get, diving deep into the history, motives and actions of the brands and companies they consume. When brands fail to adhere to ethical, inclusive or overall practices deemed by their target audiences as good, consumers take note. And finally, how can a business go about defining its purpose? The truth is that all businesses

have a purpose. It might not be well defined, but it’s in there. In defining purpose, the best place to start is by asking the right questions. Start by asking, “Why do we do what we do?” and every answer should lead to another “Why?” until the deepest, most human and most meaningful reason is reached.

PHOTO PROVIDED

Doing Business on Purpose

Why is this an emerging trend in business right now? In short: It’s good for business.

M Y D A I LY M E D I A D I E T

S TA RT U P

My Daily Media Diet Russ Florence, president, chief operating officer and inclusion officer at Schnake Turnbo Frank, provides a glimpse into what media he is consuming right now, and he tells us what we should be reading and listening to as well.

Where do you get your news first? The Oklahoman for local news, The New York Times for national and world news. I suppose I’m a traditionalist in this sense, though, I do read them both via tablet or phone.

What app do you open first in the morning? Twitter. My feed is a mix of news, music, baseball, politics and friends and strangers who entertain me. It’s kind of my whole world in one app.

What newsletter always gets clicked open? Austin Kleon, who’s a writer, artist and creative force in Austin, Texas, sends out a brief bullet-pointed newsletter every Friday morning. It’s quick, and consistently inspiring, especially as it relates to the creative process.

What podcast do we need to be listening to? My podcast-listening jumps around a lot. Malcolm Gladwell’s “Revisionist History” covers topics that are historically overlooked or misunderstood. I’m also a fan of “Broken Record,” a music podcast he co-hosts with producer Rick Rubin.

What music should we add to our playlist right now? For my money, Jason Isbell is the best songwriter of the last 10 years. His album “Southeastern,” in particular, just knocks me over. It’s so personal. Songwriting is a challenge, given the confined space. It’s like writing on a postage stamp. Yet, Isbell paints these vivid images of human emotion.

What social accounts should we be following? I keep up with several nonprofit, independent journalism enterprises on Twitter. Several here in Oklahoma are doing some great work, covering topics with a depth not seen elsewhere. OKC Mayor David Holt also does a great job with his social posts – authentic, informative and sometimes just goofy.

What books are making you think? I just finished Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent by Isabel Wilkerson. It’s a history and examination of caste – human classification, if you will, often by race. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand race in our country. One Two Three by Laurie Frankel is the best novel I’ve read this year. Is there any other media you consume that we’ve missed? We’re not big TV watchers, but we’re enjoying “Reservation Dogs” – distinctive characters, nice cinematography, great music.

What role does media literacy play in business? It’s big. Leaders need reliable information – on the economy, the political landscape, social issues, popular culture and everything else – in order to stay up-to-date and relevant. Go down the wrong path, and you’ll be making decisions through an out-of-focus lens. How do you ensure you remain media literate? First, don’t just rely on one source. Follow several outlets and seek objectivity. Don’t hang your hat on one sensational story that was covered by your favorite outlet, just because you like what it says. Learn to recognize the difference between news, opinion and entertainment. If you choose to follow media outlets because they fit your worldview, be sure to recognize them for what they are.

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Frequently people ask me how do I get better? How do I grow? How do I improve? Which are all good questions – and if you don’t ask yourself these questions – you should! The first step in getting better, growing, and/or improving is to figure out where you are starting. Without knowing the starting point it is impossible to know how to get to where you want to go. As an example – think about driving. If I do not have a starting point – it is impossible to know how to get to the end point. Not only how to get there, but also how long it will take, how difficult it will be, etc. So how do we evaluate the starting point – the best way is to use three simple questions. Let’s use a sales call as an example. After the sales call is over – ask yourself these three simple questions = 1 – What went well? 2 – What went okay, but not really well? 3 – What did not go well? Now asking yourself the questions is not the key to growth and improvement – the true benefit comes in answering them. However you must ask them to be able to answer them. Let’s go deeper.

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1. What Went Well?

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2. What Went Okay, But Not Really Well?

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3. What Did Not Go Well? When we ask ourselves this question it allows us to understand what did not work, and why. Understanding this helps us identify what we need to do differently. (DIFFERENT)

Think of this as MORE, BETTER, DIFFERENT – when we understand this about the sales call it allows us to understand our starting point. Once we know this we can chart a course to work on getting better. This three question concept works wonderfully for many things in life (not just sales calls). Our clients find ways to use it for many things in their professional worlds – as well as many things in their personal worlds. Not only for yourself, but for your employees, team members, friends, family, etc. So let me ask – what do you need to do MORE of, what do you need to do BETTER, and/or what do you need to do DIFFERENTLY? If you are not 100% sure and/or if your answers bother you – you are not alone; many people struggle with this. You would want to find a Business Growth Consultant who can help.

S TA RT U P

ASK THE MENTOR

How Do You Prepare for the Upcoming Year? Jeremie Kubicek is the author of four books about leadership, and he is the executive chairman of the OKC-based GiANT Worldwide, a leadership company certifying coaches and consultants to train and serve companies and their employees. Here, he provides advice on how to prepare for 2022.

year. Some want it, while others just go through the motions, but at midnight of every January 31, we get to count down to usher in the start of the next New Year. According to a recent Finder survey, 74 percent of Americans made a New Year’s resolution, up 15 percent from the year before. It’s no wonder we saw an increase as we all weathered the storms of 2020 hoping for a new start. And so begins another opportunity to finish the old and begin anew – to use this holiday season to look back and plan ahead. Several years ago, I made a conscious effort to become as intentional as possible. New Year’s planning is one of those segments, so let me help you do what I do for myself. I ask questions and allow those questions to guide me to what I want for the New Year and what I want to see change in my life. Start with a good and thorough review. The secret to creating the future is to review your past. Now, to the questions: I T C OM E S E V E R Y

What relationships need to be reset for the next year? Every one of us had some sort of re-

that happened in 2021. Plan to thank the people who helped you with the good things on your list.

lationship drama affect us in some way. So far as it depends on you, do you need to make things right? Do you need to apologize to anyone? Peace with people often leads to peace with yourself, and this will help you prepare for the New Year in a healthy way.

How was my schedule or calendar in 2021 and what would I want to change? Review every single meeting you had in

What positives do you need to renew for a New Year? Notice that I haven’t talked about

What was good about 2021? Make a list of the good things

the year and ask the question, should you have taken the meeting? If not, why did you take it? Did you travel too much? Did you try to do too much? List it so you can alter it. For me, I like to list my dissatisfaction, so I know what I need to accomplish. I find the dissatisfaction leads me to a clearer vision of what I want for the year ahead. It also gives me clarity around next steps.

goals. This review process will get you ready for your goal setting. First, look back. Clear the air, review your calendar, list what went right, scrub your calendar, rebuild relationships and set the tone for a healthy view of 2022. Do these things and you will be set up to not be the majority of people who fail their New Year’s resolutions in the first two months.

Peace with people often leads to peace with yourself, and this will help you prepare for the New Year in a healthy way.

THE FUTURE OF

The 405 in 10 Some of Oklahoma’s biggest leaders from some of the state’s largest spheres of influence – Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, OKC Chamber of Commerce President Roy Williams and OKC Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Sean McDaniel – discuss the future of Oklahoma City. BY K AYTE SPILLMAN

On what Oklahoma City will look like in 10 years

Over the next 10 years, Oklahoma City is primed to become one of the top 15 biggest cities in America. The reason for the growth we’ve seen and will see is because of the diversification of the economy and Oklahoma City investing in itself. The MAPS program has been one of the most successful incentive programs in the country. It’s a model nationally. And Oklahoma City has worked hard to diversify its economy. Thousands of people will move inside of Oklahoma City in the next 10 years because of it.

LT. GOV. MATT PINNELL:

On how OKC will change physically in the next 10 years

Physically, we’re building out a billion dollars’ worth of MAPS projects, which will dramatically change the look of the city. And we are seeing a tremendous amount of commercial building. The Innovation District will change, as healthcare and bio science grow. We’ll have a lot of highway structures that will change over the next decade. We are poised for a lot of very positive physical growth while a lot of other cities are stagnant or losing population. Demographically, Oklahoma City-proper grew by 101,000 people over the last decade (in the recently released 2020 Census). Only 14 cities in the United States grew by 100,000 or more. We’re part of a select group of cities. … OKC is a city now where the minority populations are the majority. Our ethnic

ROY WILLIAMS:

S TA RT U P

“Over the next 10 years, Oklahoma City is primed to become one of the top 15 biggest cities in America. The reason for the growth we’ve seen and will see is because of the diversification of the economy and Oklahoma City investing in itself.” — Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell

Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell

makeup is changing. That’s all very positive. You certainly wouldn’t want the opposite. Living in a diverse city is much more interesting than living in a sterile community. You get diverse housing, a diverse workforce, diverse restaurants. You get all kinds of things that [you wouldn’t] if you stayed with what you had and you just get more of the same. On how the educational landscape will change in the next 10 years for Oklahoma City Public Schools

DR. SEAN MCDANIEL: An interesting question. That will depend somewhat on who our state leaders are at that time and the importance they place on education, particularly on public education. My belief is that in the next 10 years, respect and admiration of teachers and the teaching profession will be restored and that public school funding will be paramount in the legislature and in the governor’s office. Additionally, I believe Oklahoma City Public Schools will be a model for urban schools across the country; that we will be known for our attention to the mental health and wellness of our students, families and staff and that our academic offerings, growth and achievement will be exemplary. I believe enrollment will be on the rise and that OKCPS will be the district of choice for OKC families.

OKC Chamber of Commerce President Roy Williams

On how the economic landscape will change in the next 10 years for OKC

ROY WILLIAMS: It’s been a long-term goal of ours to focus on the economic diversification of the economy. Thirty, 40 years ago, oil and gas was dominant and people were saying we’ve got to diversify. And we have. The energy sector has continually gone down. It still has significant economic impact but a declining employment impact. Before the pandemic, the fastest growing sector was the hospitality sector – hotels to destinations to restaurants. It was creating jobs faster than any other sector. COVID put the brakes on that, but the good news is that the hotel/motel tax is right about where we were before the pandemic. As an industry, it’s really come back strong. We anticipate that will continue. We’re seeing growth in other industry sectors like aviation and aerospace, bio science and health care, and not one of those sectors do we see that pace slowing down.

On what industries in Oklahoma City will emerge or strengthen in the next 10 years:

LT. GOV. MATT PINNELL: Our aerospace industry will probably become the No. 1 industry as it might overcome even our energy industry in the state in the next 10 years. It’s No. 2 in the state right now. And as secretary of tourism, I am watching the tourism industry very closely, and OKC is a tourism destination. It truly is a ‘choose all of the above’ kind of tourism town. Oklahoma did a record $9.6 billion in direct spending related to tourism and had 21.5 million visitors in 2018, which was a 7.3 percent growth since 2017. Tourism creates an extremely valuable sales tax revenue for Oklahoma City. It’s an industry that is critical for the success of Oklahoma City.

On how a changing Oklahoma City will change its public schools

DR. SEAN MCDANIEL: OKCPS will continue to place emphasis on mental health and wellness as a foundational building block for student success. Less focus on one-time state standardized testing and more focus on students being able to demonstrate proficiency and mastery of standards. More focus on multiple career and life pathways and workforce readi-

OKC Public Schools Superintendent Dr. Sean McDaniel

S TA RT U P

THE FUTURE OF

ness for students and less focus on traditional and many times inconsequential activities. A stronger tie between K-12, Career Tech and higher education. And more family educational opportunities inside the schools. On what changes need to occur to usher in new growth in Oklahoma City

LT. GOV. MATT PINNELL: Workforce development is always at the top of our list. When we talk to a company wanting to relocate, they want to know about our workforce development program and our public education systems. Our career tech system must be a big part of that solution, training kids to meet the demands of our workforce. Middle schools and high schools that have joint partnerships with the career techs. We need to be absolutely tenacious about those partnerships, and we need to be investing a proper amount of dollars into those classrooms and creating a teacher pipeline so that as teachers phase out and retire, we have a good pipeline to replace them. If we don’t do those things, then luring a large company with thousands of employees proves to be more difficult.

“One thing that stands out here is we have the second lowest unemployment rate (1.9 percent) of any metro in the United States (with more than one million in population).” — Roy Williams, OKC Chamber of Commerce president

On how OKC’s workforce will adjust to this growth

One thing that stands out here is we have the second lowest unemployment rate (1.9 percent) of any metro in the United States (with more than one million in population). The 1.9 percent unemployment rate is the lowest unemployment experienced by the Oklahoma City MSA in modern history. Talent is talked about in every conversation, impacting every business and every company. It’s putting pressure on wages. We’re looking at all kinds of strategies when it comes to recruiting talent. Companies and businesses and employers are going to have to rethink their business models. With changes in employee habits because of COVID, employers are going to have to figure out in this tight labor market how they still do what they do but do it differently – or with less people. Our workforce is drying up and we have to restructure how we work. This issue will be front and center for a long time to come. It’s hard to grow out of it real fast.

ROY WILLIAMS:

On the role of public-private partnerships in OKC during the next decade

We will continue in a construction boom. Residential is booming. Commercial activity is booming. Retail sector has really picked back up. Our new convention center and new MAPS projects – you are going to see a lot of private sector leverage of all that. Public investment leads to private investment. And the biggest public investment we’ve made is happening in the next decade. Then, add in all this federal stimulus money. We will have $1.9 billion to spend in the next 3-5 years. And the state and counties have millions more. What kind of infrastructure will come out of that? We are going to have a onetime opportunity to do some stuff that we haven’t had the opportunity to do in the past. ROY WILLIAMS:

Ask the Executive Become a thought leader in the 405 Special Advertising Opportunity for February/March 2022! This profile is an opportunity to help others by sharing insight gained through past experiences, words of wisdom and mentors that have helped you along the way. Showcase your business and share your hard-earned knowledge with others.

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S W EAT EQU ITY Striking a Chord

CHARLIE NEUENSCHWANDER

Walrus Audio’s strength as a guitar pedal manufacturer will allow the company to ship 60,000 units this year. p.26

SMALL BUSINESS 26 GIVING BACK 28 HOW I DID IT 30

SMALL BUSINESS

Pedals Down Walrus Audio crafts thousands of guitar pedals for musicians in OKC and all around the world. BY GREG HORTON PHOTOS BY CHARLIE NEUENSCHWANDER

called “Walrus Audio,” the story of the name is going to be excellent, right? “It’s not a fun story,” owner Colt Westbrook said. “The previous owner had another company called Mammoth, so I think he just liked tusked animals.” Westbrook joined the Oklahoma City-based company, famous for its guitar pedals, in 2014 when there were only three employees. Leaving his job at Chesapeake Energy was a risk, but he said he embraced the general manager role initially, eventually becoming a minority owner. (The company has been owned by a private equity firm since 2018, with Westbrook bearing the title of president.) Music has long been a passion, though. “I played the local music scene for a while, but I had a fulltime job,” he said. As to how popular the band was: Any chance anyone locally would know the name? “Absolutely not,” Westbrook said and laughed. The pedals Walrus produces are known both for their quality and their beauty. Yes, beauty. Gone are the days of dingy, institutional gray metal pedals. The designs coming out of Walrus combine names inspired by sounds — albums, riffs, bands, etc. — beautiful artwork, and the latest technology, all encased in a product with a lifetime warranty. The graphic designers are a diverse pool of artists from as far away as South Africa and the United Kingdom to as close as OKC and Westbrook’s circle of friends. So, what exactly do the pedals do? “When you’re listening to keyboards, bass, guitars, you’re always listening to textures in sound processing,” Westbrook said. “Engineers and musicians call them reverb, vibrato, overdrive, distortion. The pedals allow them to create those textures.” One musician famous for creating beautiful textures with Walrus Audio equipment is Tom Renaud, guitarist for the Michigan-based indie/alt band Lord Huron. Renaud met the team after a gig in Norman. “We had a day off from touring, so we drove up from Norman, tried out some pedals and even recorded a song in their garage,” Renaud said. “I took some pedals home after that visit in 2015, and I’ve used them ever since.” Renaud heard about Walrus Audio from their tour manager, who had learned of it through his work with a previous W H E N S O M ETH I N G I S

Graphic designers create a look for the pedals as diverse as the artists: From pedals with scuba divers and skeleton astronauts to a limited edition Black Friday floral series, design is the first differentiator from other pedals on the market.

S W EAT EQ UITY

Jason Stulce, Walrus Audio general manager and lead engineer, and Walrus Audio President Colt Westbrook stand inside the company’s headquarters.

The pedals Walrus produces are known both for their quality and their beauty. Yes, beauty. Gone are the days of dingy, institutional gray metal pedals.

band. Word of mouth is important among touring acts for a variety of reasons, and Westbrook said that network has been crucial to the company’s success. “Brand advocacy and public reviews via word of mouth were crucial, and so too was people understanding that we were designing and producing something we think is remarkable,” Westbrook said. Renaud is very specific in his praise: “I think Walrus’s strength as a pedal manufacturer, aside from the cool art on the tin, is taking pretty standard, classic guitar effects and adding extra features and layers of tweakability and doing so in a way that’s always accessible and

user friendly. They sound great and are super versatile, but the learning curve for their stuff is always really simple. That’s especially useful in a live performance setting — it’s easy to tweak on the fly. If I need an app, Bluetooth and a 50-page manual to operate your guitar pedal, I’m probably just not going to bother with it.” Affordability has been a factor in its success, too. Westbrook said the company stays close to the $200 price point: It’s a number that’s easy for a professional musician and realistically aspirational for a teen in a garage band. The company will ship 60,000 units this year, to everyone from lead guitarists in well-known bands to hobbyists.

GIVING BACK

Bridging Barriers The nonprofit focuses on skill building, job placement and so much more to help empower and embolden members of the northeast Oklahoma City community. BY JORDAN REGAS

the Director of Jobs at Restore OKC, was first captivated by the work of the nonprofit organization when he came out for one of its Second Saturday workdays as a volunteer with his church in 2017. The Second Saturday workdays are a part of Restore OKC’s Restore Homes program, where volunteers repair homes throughout northeast Oklahoma City. It’s one part of Restore OKC, whose mission is to serve the physical, social, emotional, educational and economic needs of northeast Oklahoma City. A lot of that work comes through helping people with job placement. At the time Veal got involved in 2017, WellSpring Cleaning Company, a commercial and residential cleaning company, was the only employment opportunity offered through Restore OKC, with only five employees, 20 residential clients and three commercial clients at the time. Veal eventually came on as a consultant in early January 2020, helping the team create an organizational chart and lead a planning session that he said got everyone really excited. Then the pandemic hit. “For our team, we were faced with a decision,” Veal said. “There was an opportunity to pull back and stay at home or press forward and see what other opportunities were out there.” He didn’t want to make the decision. He wanted to empower the team. They chose to drive forward. WellSpring lost most of its residential clients at that time, so it pivoted its focus from primarJ O NAT HA N VEAL , NOW

ily residential to commercial cleaning while getting certified in CDC COVID-19 remediation. A couple days after making the announcement, WellSpring received a call from Homeland Grocery, which had an outbreak in its Marietta location. The WellSpring team kept the staff at Homeland calm, and after going through their process, the store was able to reopen. Homeland management was blown away and asked if WellSpring could be its designated COVID-19 remediation team moving forward for locations all over the state, he said. “From April to July, we added on another 27 team members, which was pretty cool to see take place,” Veal said. That team has continued to grow. Restore Jobs is just one program of Restore OKC, which also encompasses Restore Homes, Restore Schools and Restore Farms. Everything at Restore Jobs comes down to relationships. “ROI for us is to invest in them on the front end and find out what their hopes and dreams and goals are and then to walk alongside them and launch them to where that end goal is,” Veal said. “We want to see them get to where their goal is.” Veal described the organization’s role as something like a bridge, removing barriers for the participant and building relationships with employers. As an organization, they prefer the word reconciliation.

PHOTOS PROVIDED

Restore Jobs program members work at The Market at Restore OKC. Restore Jobs is one of the programs of Restore OKC, which also encompasses Restore Homes, Restore Schools and Restore Farms.

S W EAT EQ UITY

“ROI for us is to invest in them on the front end and find out what their hopes and dreams and goals are and then to walk alongside them and launch them to where that end goal is.” — Jonathan Veal, Restore OKC director of jobs

Above: The Market at RestoreOKC is a micro-grocer inside The Market at Eastpoint in northeast Oklahoma City. Below: A Restore OKC group with cleaning supplies as a part of WellSpring Cleaning Company, which is a job-training branch of Restore OKC.

Restore OKC’s training program has an 85 percent graduation rate, with 23 students graduating in the first class.

“If you look at the root of that word, reconcile, it means that two things are separated and there is a need to bring those things back together,” he said. “As an organization we can directly make that happen by using our resources and tools to get someone from where they are to where they desire to be.” What started as a cleaning company for single moms has turned into multiple companies within the organization and a job readiness program to prepare participants to launch out into the work world. The full training program launched in September that encompasses six months of training. It starts with a financial literacy program where participants create a care plan to organize their finances. Sara Hawk, director of job training, said the focus of the program is to create small goals and walk alongside their students to help them get their life in order. “One care plan reach(es) out to all their creditors to see how much they owed,” Hawk said. The second part of the training is about a three-month jobs training class called Worklife. It helps participants understand what gifts they can bring to an employer and develop skills like resume writing and interviewing. This is where Restore Jobs leans on its industry partners to assist with mock interviews and sponsoring dinners for classes. However, the biggest

need is for companies to simply give participants the opportunity for a real interview. Participants are given every tool they need to crush an interview, but the biggest hurdle is getting the interview, Hawk said. The training program aims to remove barriers for employment, such as a prior record or no high school diploma. It has seen a lot of success with industry partners who know that a candidate has been with the program for three to six months and are willing to offer them a chance to interview. “How much more is that person gaining confidence when they feel like someone is fighting for them, someone is in their corner cheering them on and coming alongside them in this employment journey?” Veal said. So far, the program has an 85 percent graduation rate, with 23 students graduating in the first class. The end goal is for students to launch out, whether that be finding work with one of their industry partners, such as MD Building Supply, or continuing their education with partnerships like OSU-Oklahoma City’s Social Innovation program. One of the underlying benef its of the program is building a professional network students can leverage for advice and opportunities. “I think the thing we most take for granted is our own professional network,” Hawk said. The future of Restore Jobs lies in the dreams of the students and interns who come through its doors. For Veal, it’s all about engaging the community and empowering their vision, not his. This philosophy is what led to the massive growth through the pandemic. It’s all about listening to the goals and dreams of the students and empowering them to achieve those goals. It could be getting a high school diploma, finding employment or launching OKC’s next great start-up. “It takes some intentionality to not look at a person from [the perspective of ] a skill set, but for who they are,” Veal said.

HOW I DID IT

The 103-YearOld Start-Up John Lippe’s entrepreneurship-throughacquisition approach to business with his recent purchase of Federal Corporation is already netting positives for the more-than-century-old business. BY EVIE KLOPP HOLZER PHOTO BY CHARLIE NEUENSCHWANDER

FEDERAL CORPORATION IS what John Lippe calls a “103-year-

old start-up.” Previously owned and operated by four generations of the Loeffler family, the company provides industrial burner management systems and solutions. Lippe recently purchased the company in a transaction known as entrepreneurship through acquisition, which he studied under Jim Sharpe, a visiting executive at Harvard Business School, when Lippe was earning his MBA there. “I thought it was the neatest concept ever because I had always wanted to be a business owner and operator,” Lippe said. “You don’t realize how hard it is for a new company to get off the ground. It takes a lot of venture funding and [resources] to find that product-market fit. I learned about this [concept], and I was like, ‘Oh my goodness. You can buy this business that’s already out there and doing fine. You can come in, shut up, learn

S W EAT EQ UITY

“The hardest thing in your due diligence when you are considering making a huge investment of your time, money and life is the culture – and the culture is all driven by the person that’s been running it.” — John Lippe, Federal Corporation owner

Alan Loeffler talks with new Federal Corporation owner John Lippe outside the Federal Corporation, where the company, which makes industrial burner management systems, has been located for more than 100 years.

and listen. You can get to know your team and what value you provide in the industry — and then you get to innovate on it.’” Lippe called on thousands of companies before he discovered Federal Corporation. His due diligence included researching the industry and reviewing financial statements, but it also required some personal assessments: What were his overall business goals? How much time did he want to invest in the company and at the company? Could he be passionate about the company’s mission statement? And, perhaps most importantly, he said, did the company’s values align with his own? “The hardest thing in your due diligence when you are considering making a huge investment of your time, money and life is the culture – and the culture is all driven by the person that’s been running it,” Lippe said. “If you can align values with the owner, it’s going to be a much smoother transition.” Aligning values was certainly important to Alan Loeffler, whose grandfather founded Federal Corporation in 1918 and father ran the company for 60 years. He led the business himself for 40 years, and he was in the process of transitioning the company to his son, Daniel, when his son passed away from cancer. Loeffler was ready to retire, so his family business went up for sale. “John kept saying to me, ‘I don’t want to mess this up,’” Loeffler said, noting that the two discovered many shared values at the outset. “It was easy to be his cheerleader, because the better I got to know him, the more impressed I was with him. I knew that for there to be a successful transition, that my opinion of this new kid – and he was a kid, in his 30s – would be important to most of our employees. I didn’t want anything but positive opinions to be transferred from me to others, so it would maximize the chance that the company would flourish under John.” Since taking the reins in January 2020, Lippe has positioned Federal Corporation for regional growth by incorporating new technologies and training opportunities into the business. Lippe considers Loeffler his friend and mentor, and the two continue to meet every few weeks. Recently, Lippe created an employee recognition award in the Loeffler family name. Just as Loeffler’s values were shaped by his familial predecessors, the same holds true for Lippe. “It’s not about business,” Lippe said. “It’s about people. It’s always about people. That’s something my grandma always taught me, and I have definitely felt that since I joined Federal – this incredible legacy.” Federal Corporation just celebrated 103 years in business. With long-term goals in mind, Lippe hopes to add a hundred more.

FO R

405 BUSINESS MAGAZINE PRESENTS THE INAUGURAL LIST OF 10 PEOPLE WHO WILL CHANGE OKLAHOMA CITY IN THE NEXT 10 YEARS. THESE LEADERS HAVE THEIR INDUSTRY, COMMUNITY OR COMPANY BY THE TAIL, AND THEY HAVE BIG PLANS FOR EVEN BIGGER CHANGES OVER THE COURSE OF THE NEXT DECADE. WHERE THESE 10 LEAD, OKC IS SURE TO FOLLOW. By Kayte Spillman * Photos by Charlie Neuenschwander

I T WA S A N O P E N C A L L : F I N D 1 0 P E O P L E W H O

will change Oklahoma City in the next 10 years. When we met as an editorial staff, we set those qualifications – and those alone – for who to feature in both this inaugural issue and inaugural list of who will help shape the direction of Oklahoma City. We hashed out what that meant to us: We wanted to select the 405’s brightest leaders who had clear visions for both their industry and their city. Transplant or native, they had to love their city and be rooting for it to grow and succeed. But they also couldn’t live and work here with blinders on. They had to be edu-

T HE

cated in the problems the city faces and would face, and they had to be solution-oriented in their approach to solve them. Our selections are as diverse as the population of Oklahoma City, and they come from a cross section of private companies and governmental leadership. Both rising in their careers and leading in their fields with decades of experience, these 10 represent a lot of forward thinking about where Oklahoma City could – and with their leadership will – be in 10 years. Of course, more than these 10 will cause radical change in the next 10 years across Oklahoma City. And we’ll get to them

N EXT

too; don’t you worry. But, after getting to know these superstars, we confidently present to you 10 people you need to know. We can’t wait to see how these 10 people will change Oklahoma City in the next 10 years. We’ll see you in 2031 to see if we were right.

We’ve created this pipeline for development now because of MAPS. We always have new things to look forward to that we have created. And it’s no fun to live in a city that doesn’t invest in itself. We’ve made such a strong commitment to ourselves. And I never take that for granted.”

DAVID HOLT

O KC M AYO R

@ DAV I D F H O LT @ M AYO R DAV I D H O LT

Mayor David Holt is the youngest mayor in Oklahoma City in a century, but he’s also the most prepared. He served in the White House in legislative affairs for years, served as Chief of Staff for then Mayor Mick Cornett and was an Oklahoma state senator for the seven years running up to becoming the city’s mayor in 2018. And as mayor, he quickly made a name for himself with his easy-going nature and no-nonsense style, and he carries around the label by many as the architect of MAPS 4. “It’s hard to top a billion-dollar-quality-of-life initiative,” he said. “I am fully at peace and comfortable that MAPS 4, regardless of how long I serve, will be in the first sentence about my tenure as mayor. The rest is, in a sense, gravy or a cherry on top.” If the first sentence is about MAPS 4, the second sentence will surely involve the word “COVID-19.” Lauded by most for his the-buckstops-with-me style to communication about the pandemic, Holt said his approach was based on, of all things, experience inside government. “To me, it seemed like my whole adult life had been preparing me for this pandemic,” he said.

“Despite my young age, I had spent 20 years in government and experiencing crisis management at every level. I felt very comfortable in the moment and in the seriousness of the moment. You will very rarely face crisis that can affect tens of thousands of lives. This was like an Independence Day-level of crisis management. This was the alien invasion-level of crisis management. So, I told myself, ‘You’ve got to do this. It’s you, buddy.’” As a Republican, he’s wildly and boldly nonpartisan, seemingly tossing off the shackles of the current campaign and political strategy of being as polarizing as possible. And why? Because it is working: He consistently sits with an approval rating hovering around 78 percent. “Being unabashedly nonpartisan has freed me up to be myself and just do the right thing,” he said. “It’s really liberating if you really believe it. And coincidentally, I have found it to be politically popular too. “Maybe if you give them a little credit, maybe the voters are looking for someone who does the right thing and has a moral compass,” he said. “We all kind of know what the right thing is, and we should just do it. And that’s what I try to do every day.”

T.W. SHANNON

C H I C K A S AW C O M M U N I T Y BA N K C EO, F O R M E R YO U N G E S T OKLAHOMA SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE @TWSHANNON

Being the first or the youngest to do something isn’t unusual for T.W. Shannon. After all, back in 2013, he gained national attention as he was the first Chickasaw and African American, as well as the youngest, to be Oklahoma’s Speaker of the House of Representatives. Now, he’s focused on the Chickasaw nation, serving as CEO of Chickasaw Community Bank, as he can tie back his Chickasaw heritage to the Chickasaw removal in the 1800s that brought Chickasaw people to what would be Oklahoma. “When Gov. Anoatubby asked me to serve at the bank, it was the thrill and honor of a lifetime,” he said. “The Nation has been so good to me, and it was an opportunity to give back to them. Gov. Anoatubby has a real heart of service for his community. As corporate citizens of Oklahoma City, we have really developed a culture at the bank that reflects that commitment.” Shannon’s deep Oklahoma roots will keep him here, but he said he will be pushing his home state for continued change. “I don’t plan to live anywhere else but Oklahoma,” he said. “But our greatest challenge as a state is overcoming the mindset of low expectations – the culture

of low expectations.” This state, these people, our city, we can compete with anybody in the world. But I don’t know that we know that yet.” Our state’s short history, however, means we have time to catch up, he said. “We have such a young history,” Shannon said. “We are such a young state, and a small state, with really big dreams. Because our state is so young, everybody has an opportunity to make an impact on our state when we really grow up.” And, he said the partnerships between Oklahoma’s tribes and its government is crucial to this growth. “We have 39 recognized tribes who bring enormous culture, economic commerce and value to our state,” he said. “It’s a huge part of our state identity. We must embrace that, and the partnership between the city and Chickasaw Nation is the best example of that. Look at the $400 million investment in OKC right there on the river. We used to have to mow that river bottom. Now it’s a training place for the Olympics.” Oklahoma is growing up, and T.W. Shannon will be here for it.

VINCE LOMBARDO

H E A RT L A N D P R E S I D E N T

During his last 18 years, Vince Lombardo, Heartland president, has climbed the ranks in the corporation as Heartland has climbed in dominance in the industry. Heartland, one of the largest payment and payroll processors in the country, got a boost in its arm in 2019 with a $21.5 billion merger, which extended its parent company, Global Payments, services to 3.5 million small-to-medium sized businesses and more than 1,300 financial institutions in about 100 countries. And it has pretty aggressive growth plans: Heartland plans to add 1,000 or more employees during the next 18 months, with more than 300 of those jobs located in OKC. Lombardo said as great as the growth was for Heartland, it also speaks to the growth in Oklahoma’s diversified economy. “It’s an interesting thing to have in the heart of Oklahoma City, compared to what we were 15 years ago where there was oil and not much else,” he said. Mergers and growth of companies like Heartland point to a city that is tracking with growth in the technology sector, he said. “Students who go to school here from out of state or not from Oklahoma City, they want to stay here,” he said. “They like the feel of this part of the country. There is a lot more to this old cowboy town than they thought there was. The face of the city is changing as a result of our ability to attract and retain tech talent because they want to be part of a company that is based here.” But he said it’s a company’s culture that will be the difference-maker for companies in the future, especially those looking to grow in a post-COVID world. “The pandemic taught us that life is very fragile and short, so we might as well be engaging in things that make us happy and healthy,” he said. “We must have servant mindedness about how we go to market and how we operate as teammates every day. We want people who want to be of servant mindedness, so that the world can become a little bit better.”

I hope that the fruits of my work in 10 years will look like meaningful, modern health care delivery for the kind of care people want – how they want it, when they want it. I hope my work makes a significant improvement in health care disparity. And I hope my work impacts health care leaders so that their work is exponentially more.”

DR. JULIE WATSON

C H I E F M E D I C A L O F F I C E R , I N T EG R I S H E A LT H Dr. Julie Watson, senior vice president and chief medical officer at INTEGRIS Health – Oklahoma’s largest health care system – has been, quite simply, the commanding general in Oklahoma’s war against COVID. She’s seen the ravages of the virus firsthand, and she’s led the city through it. “COVID has been the thing we confronted every day from the moment our eyes opened, and we remembered that the nightmare was still our reality,” she said. “It was brutal. It was harrowing. But we quickly knew that if we were going to do it well, we were going to band together with other health care leaders in the metro. And we did. We banded together to inform the state’s surge planning.” That brutality broke way to hope when the vaccine rolled out. “This vaccine was the single most important scientific discovery of our lifetime,” she said. “It was hope in a bottle that then got into your body.” The lessons from COVID will transform medicine in Oklahoma in the future, Watson said. For instance, INTEGRIS Health will roll out a full “hospital at home,” which will be known as INTEGRIS Health @ Home, in the first quarter of 2022 to push forward telemedicine in Oklahoma. Telemedicine and digital health will be key in the evolution of health care delivery during the next 10 years, she said. “Reliable telemedicine services were very clearly a need during the pandemic,” she said. “For me, this is going to be a really phenomenal evolution of health care delivery during the next 10 years. Health care needs to be convenient. We are too low down on the lists as Oklahomans to not be looking squarely in the face of why we can’t pull out better health outcomes.” Watson also said the pandemic underlined the need for

Oklahoma’s health care systems to focus on mental health needs and health care disparity. “I am increasingly concerned about the toll this pandemic has placed on our mental health,” she said. “Forty percent of patients admitted to our hospitals have a primary or secondary behavioral or mental health diagnosis. You cannot simply address the medical condition.” But more than all these changes, Watson wants to see the return to people going to their doctors for medical advice – not their politicians, friends, family and internet sources. “For me, my agony comes from having watched this dialogue frankly ripped from where it belonged – which was between a heath care provider and his or her patient,” she said. “We don’t ask that of politicians. We trust our healthcare professionals to walk us through our medical decisions. The heartbreak for me is watching the devastation and how this conversation has gotten so derailed and so politicized”

JAMES SPANN

F O U N D E R , B OY D S T R E E T V E N T U R E S After 30 years working in life sciences and more than a decade working around the University of Oklahoma, James Spann realized the problem in technology and innovation growth wasn’t a lack of ideas or research. It was a lack of money to get these ideas and innovations to become actualities.

“I was looking at how to be able to take these innovations that OU students and faculty were building and getting them launched,” Spann said. “The biggest gap was capital.” So, he took matters into his own hands: This past year, he founded Boyd Street Ventures, a venture capital investment firm for OU alumni to support OU by investing in affiliated early-stage businesses. “We’ve got a lot of innovation and technology and facilities and staff,” he said. “Whether it is an early-stage company still doing research or one that is ready to launch and needs to just hire a CEO, they need capital to get it going. But there hasn’t been an outlet to bring in capital to get these things going.” And now there is. Boyd Street Ventures is looking to raise $50 million in capital in the next five years. “Within five years, we will have helped 10-to-15 operating companies we’re developing off the OU ecosystem,” he said. “We’ll have two-to-three companies a year – from those still in the labs developing cancer research to things like people working on unmanned weather drones.” He said all of this is a win for OU, and it is a win for Oklahoma. “We’re doing this to support OU and to support the economic development of Oklahoma,” he said. “Let’s keep these entrepreneurs and founders in Oklahoma. I am just being the catalyst for that. We want the state – all the assets we have with energy and weather and health sciences – to stay in the state and help it grow.” For Spann, Oklahoma has all the right components for growth and just adding the funding piece could provide the accelerant to push past cities of similar size. “We’ve got great ideas inside Oklahoma,” he said. “We could totally crush cities like Austin and Denver, Colorado, if we could all just work together.”

GEOFF CAMP

O K L A H O M A S TAT E D I R EC TO R O F A E R O S PAC E & D E F E N S E @ G EO F F C A M P 1

Oklahoma’s aerospace industry – known nationally as an aircraft maintenance hub – could coast on its current successes for the next half century and be just fine, or so said Geoff Camp, the Oklahoma state director of aerospace and defense.

“We can do this with our eyes closed and our hands tied behind our back,” he said. “We could do that for the next 50 years.” But then, the aerospace industry – currently gaining ground to becoming Oklahoma’s largest industry, surpassing oil and gas – would no longer be dominant; in fact it would be all but gone. “As a whole, if you take a look around at all that is maintained, only one of those weapons will be in use in 30 or so years,” he said. “Twenty six of the 27 weapon systems will no longer be maintained in 30 years or less. For us, we could retire and be fine. What that means to our kids or our grandkids is that they are screwed. They really are.” Saying our grandkids are screwed isn’t the rosy picture of the aerospace industry that the Chamber crowd likes to tout. So, where’s the disconnect? That’s what Camp is solving. A little background: He is a self-proclaimed Air Force brat who grew up and also served in the Air Force. He made his way to state government after several decades in the aerospace private sector at companies like NORDAM and General Electric as well as some small businesses focused on aerospace maintenance, repair and overhaul. “There is a chance for me to impact some change for the state,” he said. “We’ve got to change some things. I showed up and I found out I had lots of partners who thought the same way as me. There is a big change coming and we’ve got to get ready for it.” His plans include both luring new companies and streamlining existing ones, and with the momentum in the industry, he said, those wins are coming. “The most noticeable thing I’ve been able to do – with my team – is manage to really bring home some quality wins to the state in terms of companies,” he said. “We have some really exciting new companies coming to the state with a lot of others close to the finish line. These are the kind of wins that will change Oklahoma.”

I want to help out our different communities. It’s about showing up and being present. That’s the part I care about the most. I don’t have a financial goal – I just want to do as much good as I can while I’m here. And that’s what I spend my time doing.”

RACHEL COPE

C EO, 84 H O S P I TA L I T Y G R O U P

Not even 10 years ago, Rachel Cope was sitting in an Austin pizza place, and she decided she wanted to open up one of her own. Just one catch: She didn’t know how to make pizza. But she did have a location. She had just won a contest from a Plaza-located landlord to put a restaurant in what used to be a laundromat. The rest she needed to figure out. So, she did what anyone else would naturally do: She Googled it. And she found Tony Gemignani’s International School of Pizza. Scraping enough money together with the help of her parents, she flew to San Francisco and learned all she could about pizza making. “It wasn’t just, ‘Here’s how you put cheese on a pizza,” she said. She came home a Certified Pizza Maker, then – and still – the only woman in Oklahoma to hold the certification. And then after a year of transforming an old laundromat into a pizza place, Empire Slice House was born. “We started it off around the kind of the idea that there were only two places to go get food late – Beverly’s Pancake House and Flip’s,” she said. “And I felt like I had been to other cities where you could eat dinner at like 10 if you wanted to. Here, we were forced to go to a bar or go eat fast food.” That was 2013. Sales have tripled since then. And her concepts for new, different kinds of restaurants more than tripled as well. Now, she’s managing around 330 employees scattered throughout the metro at five different concept restaurants. She said COVID shook up the restaurant scene, as you’d expect, but it also brought new chefs to town looking for

a change of pace or venue – and restaurants open instead of still shuttered in larger cities where they lived. She said we’ll see many new concept restaurants in years to come because of this influx of new talent. “I probably hired every single one that came from all these places,” she said. “I’m still just picking their brains every day. Their experiences will be so awesome for people to see and know we can have more than just steak and potatoes here.” Cope said her future will be filled with trying new concepts and flexing her knowledge and experience for her peers in the industry. And, she said, she wants to proceed with an eye on what’s best for the communities she impacts. “One of the criteria I ask myself before we start a project is, ‘Does this benefit the community around us?’” she said. “‘Does it help grow and impact the community around us? Does it provide a service to them?’ We have always tried to give back in a lot of different ways. My role is to get involved more with the city and the state as a whole. I want to share what I’ve been through because I wish someone had done that with me.”

NIKKI NICE

WA R D 7 O K L A H O M A C I T Y C O U N C I L M E M B E R @ N I K K I N I C EO KC

Ask just about anybody who is making waves in and for northeast Oklahoma City, and you’ll hear the name of Oklahoma City Ward 7 councilmember Nikki Nice. She can’t seem to help it: A desire to create change where she was born, raised and still lives just seems to be in her bones. “I have a firsthand account of the frustrations and the things I grew up with and the things as a young adult I didn’t have,” she said. “I understand the politics and the community itself and the growing pains and the neglect of this community. I understand all the difficult and complicated pieces, and I am trying to put a lot of the pieces back together to complete the puzzle.” And she’s seeing some of those puzzle pieces fit together. Homeland’s The Market at Eastpoint, a 6,800-square-foot full-service grocery store, opened a few months ago, ending a years-long food desert for the area. This anchor fills in a redeveloped section housing businesses like a medical center, workout facility, coffee shop and other resources for area residents. It’s certainly a feather in the cap for Nice. “It was devastating in the beginning because we lost two stores,” she said. “It was a desperation of wanting to bring in

an immediate need and to be able to say to the city, ‘Our community matters.’ It’s been a frustration that we’ve had to wait that long to have a simple need met. But now when I go, it’s a family reunion. I go down the aisles and catch up and say hello.” She said the growth of her Ward will help stop the loss of population she’s watched for years. “This growth will produce a hunger for our younger generation to want to stay here and be more vested in what the future looks like instead of wanting to leave,” she said. “I think generationally we’ve seen the flight of a community in different aspects because of those amenities leaving and the school system not bettering itself in ways it could be better. Now we see a spark in the community interest in coming back and being part of the growth. It’s been a great collaboration to see what leadership and community is – re-see and re-envision and realign those things we know are best for those we live among and for those we serve.” And to see continued success, she said diversity and inclusion at the highest levels in every sector is the key. “I want to see more diversity,” she said. “We must have more folks that actually reflect our population in leadership roles. Not only on boards and commissions and trusts, but actual leadership. We need more diversity working for the city of Oklahoma City as directors, supervisors and managers. We can’t ask others to do the things we haven’t been able to do. “You have to have these things for your city to reflect and thrive as a city.”

DANNY MALONEY

C O - F O U N D E R A N D C EO, TA I LW I N D @ DA N I E L P M A LO N E Y

More than one million people and 400,000 different brands use the app Daniel Maloney co-created to help businesses manage digital platforms. That’s a good chunk of growth for his company, Tailwind, he co-founded with partner Alex Topiler almost 10 years ago. “We are optimizing for the very small business,” he said. “For Tailwind, the vast majority have less than 100 employees. Our goal is that someone that has literally never marketed anything before can get up and running in a matter of minutes.” Maloney is a transplant to Oklahoma by way of a childhood in south Florida. He found his way to Oklahoma when his wife started her own company here, and they’ve built a life – and a company with 60 employees dotting across the country from everywhere from New Jersey to Florida to Tennessee to California to Hawaii – for the last nine years. “Honestly, we love it here,” he said. “People are really friendly, and the city has grown up a lot.” And he’s looking for Tailwind to grow up a lot too. “We want to be growing in terms of recognition and size of customers,” he said. “Our users measure in the millions. That is still relatively small considering Facebook alone has something like 200 million businesses marketing on it.” He says his get-talent-wherever-they-live approach will help Oklahoma tech companies grow and find talent outside its borders. “More Oklahomans will be working for out-ofstate companies, which is already happening, and Oklahoma companies will be reaching out to outside talent too,” he said. “With our unemployment rate what it is in Oklahoma City, you kind of have to.” He said this shift to remote working and employees with no need of a local address will allow for a shift in Oklahoma, both economically, politically and socially. “Oklahoma City will be much more connected to the rest of the world with an increased use of technology for remote communication and collaboration,” he said. “We’ll see more diversity in terms of people who chose to move to Oklahoma, similarly to what I did. It won’t be as abstract a concept to them. And under-represented populations will begin to hold more and more prominence in OKC, and that’s good for everyone. Diversity will bring strength and new ideas, and that will be a welcome change. This will all make Oklahoma City a more fun, unique and ultimately more prosperous place to be.”

Many states and cities try to port over a plan or a program that works but you can’t port over culture. What is the culture of the company? We’re here to impact the lives of people suffering from these disorders. This is affecting the lives of many people. The unique culture of OKC is a strength that needs to be leveraged and used as one of the pillars to get these things moved forward.”

CRAIG SHIMASAKI

P R E S I D E N T A N D C EO, M O L EC U L E R A L A B S C O - F O U N D E R @ B I OT EC H B U S I N E S S

If one of your kids wants to tear into your old appliances, maybe you should let them. “Growing up, I was curious how things work,” said Craig Shimasaki. “I would take apart my mom’s toaster and ironing board just to see how it worked. I just wasn’t so good about putting it back together.” His tinkering paid off: Shimasaki co-founded and is CEO of Moleculera Labs, which focuses on diagnosing neurologic, psychiatric and behavioral disorders triggered by an autoimmune response. It’s grown rapidly from its inception in 2011 to testing more than 13,000 patients associated with 1,700 doctors in 30 countries throughout the world. It’s complicated, but breaking it down for us mortals, Shimasaki and his team are studying the connection between bacteria like strep and viruses like COVID, and the long-term responses to those disorders, with long-reaching impact for children diagnosed with disorders like OCD, anxiety, autism, ADHD and long-haul COVID. “We’ve found if you treat the infection and the immune system, these patients can experience remarkable recoveries,” Shimasaki said. “We know that there is often a biological issue rather than a psychiatric issue in a good portion of these disorders. We’re looking at some of the underlying causes of mental issues and psychiatric and behavioral disorders.” In addition, he’s founded more than half a dozen other companies, written three books on entrepreneurship in the biotech industry and he’s an adjunct professor and

the Senior Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of Oklahoma’s Price College of Business. He’s growing the next leaders in the biotech field while he grows OKC’s bio tech field himself. “Our goal is to reach people all over the world,” he said. “We want to change how medicine is practiced. The brain is really the last frontier in medicine. “ He said OKC’s biotech industry is poised for significant growth because it has the necessary components to stimulate growth. “It’s like farming,” he said. “You need good seeds, good soil, sunshine, water and an experienced farmer. If you have four out of the five, it still doesn’t work. And Oklahoma City is poised for growth because we have an entrepreneurial culture, funding sources, innovations from universities and incubator facilities being set up. You combine all that with our other resources and results will begin to grow, crop up and sprout.” He said OKC’s biotech industry, with focus, is poised to explode. “The sun is everywhere, but if you take a glass and focus that sun, you can have fire,” he said. “If we have focus, and a focus at all levels, absolutely, we’ll have fire in the biotech industry.”

D R IV I N G

OKC’ S

INNOVATION

DISTRICT

INNOVATI O N KATY BOREN, OKC’S INNOVATION DISTRICT

THE NONPROFIT’S RESOURCES AND PROGRAMMING TO PUSH THE CITY’S SCIENTISTS, RESEARCHERS AND INDUSTRY LEADERS TO CREATE NEW JOBS AND SPUR ON OKLAHOMA’S ECONOMIC GROWTH. BY GR EG H OR TON

KATY BOREN PHOTO BY LEXI HOEBING

PRESIDENT AND CEO, IS CHARGED WITH GROWING

INNOVATION

DISTRICT

ATY BOREN USES THE METAPHOR OF A

Swiss army knife to describe her role as the president and CEO of Oklahoma City’s Innovation District, the 1.3-square-mile area just east of Interstate 235 as it bisects downtown and northeast OKC that is working to be an incubator of research and programming to create innovation across various tech industries. “In my career, one of my roles was the vice president of regulatory affairs for Cox Communications for the eastern half of the country,” Boren said. “The job included anything from strategic leadership to external affairs to acting as a liaison between corporate and field contractors. It was one of the aspects of the job that really appealed to me, and this job offers the same sort of Swiss-armyknife set of roles.” She is now in charge of an international award-winning district, too, receiving the Association of University Research Parks’ designation as the Outstanding Innovation District of the Year for 2022. Boren accepted the award in Salt Lake City in October. AURP gives the annual award to innovation districts, science parks and research parks that “make significant contributions to their regions by supporting robust environments for innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization activities alongside educational institutions, as well as impacting the growth of scalable business and local economic health in their regions.” Boren graduated Heritage Hall, earned a bachelor’s degree in mass communications at the University of Denver, and then pursued a law degree at the University of Oklahoma. After graduation, she worked for the Arizona Superior Court and Cox Communications, owned her own law firm and acted as the chief of the Utilities Regulation Unit for the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office. She was working in the latter role when she heard about the Innovation District job search. “Not only did the job as described work well with my skills, it gave me an opportunity to be part of the growth I’ve seen over the decades as I left and came back,” Boren said. “It was thrilling to think about contributing to that.” Boren said the job on day one was to oversee all that being a startup entails, and her legal background was crucial in her ability to navigate the new demands. “We had to craft bylaws, file paperwork, develop a strategy — so many things had to be done all the way down to creating a brand and choosing a logo,” she said. “There also was the reality that we had to get on the path to MAPS 4, since there were four proposed projects in the district.” With so many tasks in such diverse areas of responsibility, prioritizing was incredibly important, including “setting a strategy for an organization that had not existed before.” “There are only a small number of these districts in the world, so bringing people along on what we’re creating and why was important,” she said. “Ultimately, we want to create opportunities for interaction and collaboration, programming and activating the district. That can mean conferences on autonomous systems, student conferences, STEM programs — ways to activate the workforce.” Ultimately, the Innovation District is part of Oklahoma City; that seems obvious, but innovation districts can silo outside the normal traffic patterns and operations of their home city. Because she’s a native Oklahoman, Boren said she has extra incentive to get it right. She loves the city, and for most of her life, it’s been home, so she loves the idea of making it even better. “Every innovation district is different based on city factors,” she said, “but successful ones are all authentic to the assets it has locally.”

A rendering of what the Innovation District could develop to be, according to the Innovation District and Oklahoma State Capital Environs Land Use and Strategic Development Plan.

“Ultimately, we want to create opportunities for interaction and collaboration, programming and activating the district. That can mean conferences on autonomous systems, student conferences, STEM programs — ways to activate the workforce.” – KATY BOREN

USING INNOVATION OKC’s Innovation District will reshape northeastern Oklahoma City with MAPS 4 funding and other incentives in the next several years. However, shaping those changes to ensure they reflect a diverse, inclusive path forward – and not gentrification – is the work of the Innovation District board.

AY O R D A V I D H O LT S A I D I T ’ S I M P O R TA N T T O K E E P

in mind that the Innovation District “isn’t happening on an island.” Emphasizing that the OU Health Sciences Center and surrounding medical facilities are a “foundation on which to build,” Holt also talked about the importance of the district in diversifying Oklahoma’s economy. “The city’s leadership has been focused on a diverse economy since at least the ‘80s,” Holt said. “That requires focusing on sectors beyond oil and gas, while maintaining a commitment to energy. It’s been a great year for energy; they’ve contributed to Oklahoma having the lowest unemployment in the country. The district unites many other sectors under one cohesive brand, though, and creates places where innovation — broadly understood — can grow.” Katy Boren, Innovation District president and CEO, said one of the ways the district leadership is avoiding the island effect is in the different models of development between previous strategies and the current one. “In contrast to previous developments — taking property, eminent domain, etc. — we’re making the community part of the process, from input to engagement, but also opportunities to participate in development,” she said. Innovation districts worldwide are showing tremendous potential to reshape urban and exurban areas, leading to reinvestment, repurposing, new growth and an influx of

53 A rendering of what the Innovation District could develop to be, according to the Innovation District and Oklahoma State Capital Environs Land Use and Strategic Development Plan.

Below: Plans include an enhanced 10th Street bridge with a linear park, shade trees and safe walkways to encourage greater walkability.

TO BRIDGE INCLUSION risk-taking firms and residents. The downside can always be related to how development occurs: gentrification that ignores existing neighborhoods and residents, or equitable development that provides opportunity and inclusivity to residents, businesses and organizations with a long history in the area. “Innovation is needed,” Councilmember Nikki Nice (Ward 7) said. “But it has to be inclusive and give access to all, including northeast residents who have a stake in those neighborhoods and surrounding areas. That intentionality begins with the board. It needs to be inclusive, with residents who are adjacent to the district, HOAs and people who live, work and play there.” Boren said she is working with Nice to bring about a more inclusive district. “We’re looking at ways that residents can own businesses, develop properties and have access to capital,” Boren said. “The TIF earmarks specific funds to be reinvested in STEM programs in northeast OKC. We have programs going in area high schools, a STEM program in Thelma Parks Elementary and of course, MAPS 4 provides funds for four projects in the district, including the Henrietta B. Foster Center.” The center’s full name is the Henrietta B. Foster Center for Northeast Small Business Development and Entrepreneurship, for which MAPS 4 allocates $15 million, a tiny portion of a nearly $1 billion package. Nice said the center isn’t enough of an investment in legacy businesses and historic neighborhoods, and said the small amount seems to solidify her point. Where

Boren and district leadership can help is in bridging the divide between new, massive projects with price tags in the hundreds of millions of dollars and small businesses owned by entrepreneurs who have been working for decades in the northeast quadrant. “There is an inadequate pool of businesses ready and equipped to take advantage of these opportunities,” Quintin Hughes said. Hughes is a strategic advisor for community development in the private sector and president of the board for Northeast OKC Renaissance, an organization created “to advocate for ethical redevelopment considerate of housing, education, safety, wellness, economic development and preservation of African American arts and culture.” He is also the newest member of the board of the Innovation District. “The district can help with small business beyond just the Foster Center, and they can help existing businesses and potential stakeholders take advantage of these opportunities,” Hughes said. “As for the Foster Center, though, the board needs to support community efforts to decide what the center will look like.” For Hughes and other community leaders, that means working with existing structures and organizations like NEOKC Renaissance, the Black Chamber of Commerce and surrounding neighborhoods. According to Hughes, Boren has already taken positive steps in that direction.

Rendering of a planned 100-room hotel in the Innovation District with additional retail and restaurants surrounding the development.

“In contrast to previous developments — taking property, eminent domain, etc. — we’re making the community part of the process, from input to engagement, but also opportunities to participate in development.” – KATY BOREN

“I have seen her do a tremendous amount to grow diversity on the board,” Hughes said. “She also sits on the board of NEOKC Renaissance. She’s reached outside the district to foster relationships, too. These are positive signs, but it will take a long time to build trust given that it was broken over generations, including elder stakeholders now who actually lost land and assets in previous development plans.” Both Boren and Holt spoke about the importance of reconnecting northeast OKC with the growth and development experienced in the urban core as a result of the MAPS Projects. “What city leaders and I would like to see is a reconnection to the larger community around the Innovation District,” Holt said. “We want to see longtime and new residents benefit from the district. We’re funding projects with MAPS, and we’ve seen the private sector respond to what’s happening, and so there is movement to bring those communities back into the larger scope of what is happening in OKC.” Boren said the investment dollars must work to bridge the entire area together. “Some of the money we’re investing in the district is designed to create pathways to the STEM jobs that will be here,” Boren said. “That’s why we’re investing in public schools, neighborhood organizations and small businesses. We want to create an inclusive district.” The commitment to remove what Hughes called physical, economic, emotional and metaphorical walls between the northeast side and the rest of OKC — symbolized best by the ways highways were intentionally designed to segregate communities — is what’s in view here. All the stakeholders talk about it as if it’s a possibility, and Boren’s name comes up in multiple ways as someone who is committed to diversifying the Innovation District so that, to borrow a phrase from Nice, everyone concerned can have access to housing, connectivity, entrepreneurial opportunities and placemaking in an inclusive and equitable manner.

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E X I T S T R ATEGY

DOWNTIME 58 ON TOPIC 60 LINKED IN 62 OUT OF OFFICE 64

CHARLIE NEUENSCHWANDER

Sweet Sounds Immigration lawyer Amir Farzaneh finds sweet stress relief from playing his violin for hours every day. p.58

DOWNTIME

Stringing Together a Passion Immigration lawyer Amir Farzaneh came to Oklahoma after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, and he is now one of the most distinguished immigration lawyers in the metro. He could take his passion for the violin to the masses. Instead, he prefers his closet. BY K AYTE SPILLMAN PHOTOS BY CHARLIE NEUENSCHWANDER

T H I RTEEN Y EA R S AG O , immigration lawyer Amir Farzaneh went into a music shop to buy some flashcards for his children to help with their piano lessons. He walked out with a violin, instead. “You know, for the first few years, you don’t really make any great sounds come out of that violin,” he said. After years of slow-and-steady improvement, Farzaneh now studies with an internationally renowned, Persian composer in Vancouver, where they play together through Skype. “I had been playing for over 10 years before I started with him, and the way I play now is not even comparable,” he said. In fact, his entire life now is not even comparable to that of his childhood. Farzaneh was born in Iran and lived through the Iranian Revolution of 1979. “That really changed the political and social landscape of the country,” he said. And it changed the trajectory of Farzaneh’s life. After the revolution, he came to Oklahoma to go to college, following two brothers to the University of Oklahoma. He was planning on going to medical school after earning his bachelor’s in nuclear medicine and master’s in health administration, but he switched to law school and focused his attention to helping immigrants navigate through the immigration process. “Immigration law is one of the most complicated parts of the law,” he said. “You either have to dedicate yourself to it full time or you are not going to keep up.”

Among his peers, and now with decades of experience, Farzaneh has the reputation of being one of the best immigration lawyers in the state – and the country. “When you start having a good name in those communities, that starts to build on itself,” he said. “We do take cases that are harder or more complex that other attorneys think will be too much work or take too much time. It comes through all these years of experience that we have; we get out there and fight for our clients.” His success with immigration law and the violin isn’t as far apart as it might seem. He said the dedication for both starts the same way. “Just like anything else, for any achievement, there are several phases,” he said. “But the first phase is to make the decision. When I started the violin, I didn’t read any music. I couldn’t even read the notes. Nothing. If you would have said, ‘What are the notes?’ I wouldn’t have known any. The first thing is you make the decision. And the second thing is to just carry it out. Just carry it out to the next decision, the next day, the next thing. You don’t have to worry about anything else. Just do the next thing in that decision.” About one million next decisions later, Farzaneh is an accomplished violinist.

Among his peers, and now with decades of experience, Farzaneh has the reputation of being one of the best immigration lawyers in the state – and the country.

“The best and most effective way to reduce stress for me is by playing the violin,” he said. “Those hours when I play violin are the hours when my mind is completely at rest. It is focused on one thing and one thing only — playing music. You have such a euphoric feeling when you are playing music.”

EX IT S T R AT EGY

Above left: Immigration lawyer Amir Farzaneh with his law partner Neelam Patel. Above: Farzaneh plays his volin outside his law offices in Moore, Oklahoma.

But does he gather his family and friends or play for audiences? No. Instead, it’s his wardrobe that gets a nightly concert. “In our master bathroom, we have a storm shelter with almost a foot deep concrete wall,” he said. “And I go in there and play and nobody hears me – especially as loud as I play. There isn’t a day that I don’t play. By 10 p.m. or so when all the work is done and dinner is done, I go to that closet, and I play for a couple of hours.” He’s come a long way from the dad looking for flashcards. “My wife says now that she really enjoys it,” he said. “When I started, she wasn’t a big fan of it. But now she says it’s amazing. And the violin is so amazing. It’s one of the best things that has ever happened to me.”

EX I T S TR ATE GY

ON TOPIC

What changes would you like to see in OKC in the next decade?

Rachel Gruntmeir

Matt Wilson

Chaya Pennington

OWNE R TH E B LACK SC INT ILLA a midtown retail boutique

M A N AGIN G PA RTN E R V ICTO R U M CA P ITA L a venture capital and private equity firm

PA RTN E R K IND R E D SP I R ITS a tapas bar and restaurant

“Our city has grown so much over the last 5-7 years from everything from the Boathouse District to the growth we’ve seen in the film industry. But it’s still amazing to me that many are still so unaware how vibrant and strong our small business community is in OKC. Shopping local puts 81 cents of every dollar back into the community.

“Oklahoma City has a bright future. To maximize our potential, Oklahoma City needs to be creative and innovative with investment in high growth industries like technology, biotech, aerospace, electric transportation, etc. and capitalize on prevailing trends toward remote workforces.”

“As a lifelong resident of northeast OKC, I have watched this city grow into one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. I love the development of so many districts in the city’s core while I have watched my neighborhood stay the same. I am excited for the changes MAPS 4 will bring to my community and the hope of new developments that are inclusive to the current residents. It is my hope that as our city grows over the next decade that, that growth is representative of how diverse the city actually is.”

If you want to help OKC grow, shop local. It helps build better roads and provide better schools. People don’t realize what their dollar goes – the don’t realize the power they have with their dollar. “

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KATHY LEE

Three business owners from different industries tell us what they want OKC to look like in 10 years.

LINKED IN

Bow Wow for Bar K Bar K, a combination dog park and bar and restaurant, recently held its groundbreaking in the Boathouse District. The space is set to open next fall. development in the Boathouse District will open in 2022. New to the OKC market and the third of its kind in the nation, Bar K will be a fully-staffed dog park with a bar, restaurant and event space. “We are excited to get shovels in the ground and start moving dirt so we can bring the Bar K experience to the community of dogs and dog lovers in Oklahoma City,” said Dave Hensley, Bar K founding partner. The outdoor space will allow for many different puppy-related activities, like dog yoga. “This is an important milestone in activating the Boathouse District for even more people (and dogs) throughout the city,” said Mike Knopp, Riversport Foundation executive director.

T H E F I R ST PR I VATE

1 DOGA – or dog yoga – followed the groundbreaking ceremony. 2 A rendering of the completed Bar K. The dog park and restaurant is scheduled to be completed fall 2022. 3 Bar K and RIVERSPORT OKC leadership shovel the first dirt during the groundbreaking. 4 Multiple pups attended the groundbreaking ceremony.

EX IT S T R AT EGY

Flying High Organizations within the aviation and aerospace industry recently celebrated the state’s fifth annual Oklahoma Women in Aviation & Aerospace Day. Women in Aviation & Aerospace Day celebrated Oklahoma’s women aviators and advocated for young girls and women to pursue aviation. “As Oklahoma’s second-largest and fastest-growing industry, aviation has a significant impact on the lives of our citizens,” said Grayson Ardies, Oklahoma state director of aeronautics. “This annual event is a unique opportunity to gather Oklahoma military, aerospace companies, private and commercial pilots, airport managers, municipal officials, drone pilots, educators, flying clubs and the many users of the Oklahoma Airport System to discuss Oklahoma’s strong aviation heritage and how the industry continues to solidify our state as a worldwide leader in aviation, aerospace and defense.”

THE ANNUAL OK L AHOMA

1 Miss Oklahoma 2021 Ashleigh Robinson listens to the keynote presentation from aviation pioneer Wally Funk. 2 Veronica Salazar, Debbie Uglean, Chanda Sanders, Katy Williams, Kim Sheppard and Carla Hackworth. 3 Shivanjli Sharma, NASA Ames Research Center; Astronaut John Herrington; Michelle Coppedge, FAA Mike Monroney Aeronautical Center. 4 Oklahoma City Mayor Holt presents the key to the city to keynote speaker Wally Funk. 5 Gov. Kevin Stitt addresses the crowd.

OUT OF OFFICE

EX I T S TR ATE GY

The Office of #HashtagTheCowboy National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum’s director of security and operations services, became a viral sensation across the globe during the height of the pandemic and now has settled in as the museum’s spokesperson on social media. Since his first post in March 2020, the museum’s social media following increased 81 percent on Facebook, 429 percent on Instagram and a whopping 2,698 percent on Twitter. And, he’s also received coverage from the likes of The Wall Street Journal, “CBS Sunday Morning” and NPR, among many others. Here’s a look inside his office at some of the treasures he’s collected from before his fame and after.

T IM T ILLE R,

#HashtagTheCowboy sign: This sign hung above a special exhibition about the social media campaign at the museum that began March 17 of this year – which marked the one-year anniversary of his first social post. More than 500 people from 8 countries and 40 states left notes to Tim at the exhibition to tell him how much his comments during the pandemic meant to them.

Map: State of Oklahoma map from before Oklahoma had interstates. Tucked in the corner of the frame is a newspaper clipping from the Oklahoma County News circa 1957 of Tim’s father and grandfather baling oats on their family farm near Jones, Oklahoma.

Arby’s hat: Arby’s sent Tim an official Arby’s hat to celebrate his international fame.

Tim’s mug: Now an iconic image of the social media campaign, Tim’s mug has inspired 1,745 people to buy the same mug for themselves.

Celebrity photos: Tim, with Western movie star Sam Elliott and country music star Blake Shelton.

CHARLIE NEUENSCHWANDER

Face mask: Tim’s museumbranded facemask often appeared in posts – selling 1,093 facemasks to fans.

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