He was on the precipice. It was December 2004. The antagonistic managers of his ten bus companies had just attempted a bloodless coup d’etat. Their set of demands included having Floyd Palmer relinquish control over the day-to-day management of the school bus company he had owned and managed since 1974.
Business Person of the Year 2010
Pamela J. Year verbally chisels out one point crystal clear: Mankato-based MRCI WorkSource is a $46 million private nonprofit business. It has never been nor will ever be a government agency. MRCI WorkSource’s 335 paid staff members create innovative employment programs for more than four thousand people with disabilities.
CEO of $2.5 billion Fairmont corporation ranked No. 184 on Forbes 500 listing of privately owned businesses.
A Mankatoan, upon first learning of Rosen’s Diversified and its $2.5 billion beef processing and agriculture-related corporate empire, likely would begin thinking of Chief Executive Officer Tom Rosen as the “Glen Taylor of Fairmont.”
Brothers help third-generation, 300-employee, Mankato family business expand into national entity.
Lewis and Clark, Simon and Garfunkel, Brooks and Dunn, Procter and Gamble, Currier and Ives, Gilbert and Sullivan. Each male duo noted above has at least one attribute shared with the others: each developed (or has developed) synergies from their partnership to accomplish much more than each person could have individually.
An Historical Special
Imagine a businessperson from southern Minnesota with a legacy far greater than Bill Bresnan, Glen Taylor, Lowell Andreas, and the Rosen brothers’—combined. One such person existed, and yet his cherished name has been nearly forgotten around here, save for a few dusty books hidden in an abandoned Garden City building and the plastic lettering on two local schools.
President of 500—employee New Ulm Medical Center
Eingang zur Klinik. It’s German for “Entrance to the Clinic.” New Ulm Medical Center has a healthy number of these Eingang zur Klinik signs in its hospitable hallways to help send ailing German tourists to the appropriate doctor. The signposts are fitting indicators. In heavily Teutonized New Ulm, after all, people would expect hospital and clinic signs to speak auf Deutsch.
Former Target VP and Trendmaster
In 1975, Mankato State senior Robyn Niichel looked like most other students walking across Stadium Road to their parked automobiles. Not much stood out. She hailed from small-town rural Minnesota—even attending a one-room schoolhouse for one year. Only a few years before had she begun controlling her stuttering.
Business Person of the Year 2009
John Finke, our Business Person of the Year 2009 and president of Mankato-based, $155 million HickoryTech Corporation, also accents his conversations with a choice word. It’s “certainly,” an adverb, which means definitely, positively, undoubtedly or unquestionably.
President/CEO of Greater Mankato Growth
“Once an Eagle Scout, always an Eagle Scout,” says Jonathan Zierdt, a boyish grin spreading as smeared peanut butter and jelly all over his facial features. At one time, Zierdt was more than just a highly decorated Eagle Scout. Nearly fifteen years ago, he also oversaw about 1,500 Boy Scouts in dozens of Owatonna-area troops and packs and was this close to becoming a lifelong Scouting executive. With the Scouts, he began applying lessons learned.
