Economic development is inseparable from quality of life. The more money businesses make, the more tax dollars are allocated to local schools, parks, roads and general infrastructure. The more money businesses make, the more locals make working at the business, and the more non-local professionals move into the area to work and spend money. A town grows and becomes a hub that provides not only living essentials but also luxuries to residents. For Piute County, the start of the economic development chain is its school system; specifically, the weekly schedule.

Christmas on Commercial Street

Piute County School District shifted to a four-day school week beginning in the 2023-2024 school year. The decision has often been framed as an education policy decision, but local leaders see it differently. For them, it is a workforce strategy designed to protect instructional time, support working families and adapt schooling to the economic needs of a rural county.

Geography decides

Piute County is not close to much of anything. A dentist appointment, medical visit or grocery run can require a 40-minute to hour-long drive. Locals often bundle several errands into one trip because of the distance involved. For students, that travel reality translated into frequent, full-day absences from school for basic needs and school-sponsored sporting events.

“Attendance on Fridays was a huge problem for us,” Shauna Bagley, principal of Piute High School, says. “For all of our extracurricular activities, … you have to travel quite a distance to play other teams.”

When sports teams travel for state tournaments, non-athlete students also travel to support and cheer on players. With only around 130 students in grades seven through twelve, those who didn’t travel to show support would skip school as well, knowing there would be minimal instruction that day.

“When you don’t have half of the kids in your class, it’s hard to move on,” Bagley says. Over time, low Friday attendance created a cycle: fewer students showed up because little new instruction could reasonably take place.

An attendance problem

Piute County School District Superintendent Koby Willis says the current four-day week emerged from a close look at how Friday school days were actually being used. When he and his wife — both teachers — realized they had not taught their senior classes on Fridays for weeks due to absences, the district began analyzing attendance data.

“There was just so much instruction time lost on those Fridays, and that was just making it a very unproductive school day,” Willis says. “It started us down the rabbit hole of research.”

Willis notes that the Piute County School District had previously run its high schools on a 4-day school week until the state phased out the practice from all districts in the early 2000s. While looking into solutions for the district’s attendance issue, he rediscovered why the unique schedule worked well for the area and that several schools in Utah had been approved by the state board of education to return to the practice.

The key metric required by the Utah State Board of Education is 990 hours of instruction per year. To meet the requirement while also eliminating an inefficient day, the district lengthened Monday-through-Thursday instructional days.

From initial conversations to final approval, Willis says the process took one school year. During that year, the school board and Willis held several meetings, hosted public town halls, and sent out surveys to parents and students to gather input on the decision.

“In urban districts, you’d have to worry about what happens to thousands of kids on Fridays. We don’t have those same variables.”

Koby Willis

“The public gave us a lot of good comments on how to make it better, more efficient. We believe the benefits of a four-day school week aren’t just about if you do it, it’s really in how you do it,” Willis says. “There are a lot of ways to do it wrong, and so I feel like we got a lot of good feedback on ways to make it better and more effective.”

Aligning education with rural labor patterns

In Piute County, the school district is the largest employer. If parents aren’t working in education, they likely work in agriculture. The workforce spread heavily affected the implementation of the four-day school week. Initially, many community members were concerned that having no school on Fridays would negatively impact the local workforce. The concern wasn’t necessary.

“When [the schools are] not working on Fridays, [parents] can be home with their kids,” Bagley says. For other families, older students at home can help care for younger siblings or contribute directly to farm and ranch work.

Willis says Fridays have really become a meaningful extension of the local workforce pipeline. Many Piute students are enrolled in work-based learning programs, and the additional full day provided by a shorter school week allows them to meet employer expectations without missing any instructional time.

“We have a pretty heavy proportion of our high schoolers who work while they’re going to school,” he continues. “[The four-day school week] just allowed them to add another day and have two full days of work on a Friday and Saturday.”

To maximize efficiency, the district paired the four-day school week with a block schedule, allowing students to take more career and technical education courses and pursue clearer pathways aligned with local economic needs.

“We are able to offer so many more classes because of the block schedule,” Assistant Principal and school counselor Eric Jessen says. “CTE and pathways have been a big emphasis, and additional classes have been able to be added.”

Recruiting talent to rural Utah

The four-day school week has also become a competitive advantage in teacher recruitment and retention — a critical economic development factor in rural communities.

“It’s hard to recruit people to live in Piute County if they don’t already have ties here,” Bagley says. When the district hired a new language arts teacher last year, the four-day schedule was a significant selling point.

Teacher turnover remains low, and staff report reduced burnout. “They come back on Mondays refreshed and ready to work,” Bagley says, a factor that reduces costly turnover and supports long-term community stability.

Stable outcomes, broader benefits

Academically, student performance remains stable through the transition. “We’re performing at the same level we were on a five-day week,” Jessen says. While national research on four-day school weeks shows mixed academic results, Piute County’s data shows that community input and careful design can prevent negative results.

With the new schedule, Bagley says the high school has specifically campaigned for students to get more involved in the community or extracurricular activities, ensuring they stay engaged and connected beyond the classroom. The district has seen 97 percent of students join a group.

Willis is clear that Piute County’s model is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Research shows four-day school weeks are overwhelmingly rural, where distances are greater, economies are family-based and communities are tightly interconnected.

“In urban districts, you’d have to worry about what happens to thousands of kids on Fridays,” Willis says. “We don’t have those same variables.”

In Piute County, the four-day school week operates more as an infrastructure adjustment than a perk, aligning education with the county’s economic realities.

For a rural community competing for talent, supporting working families and maximizing limited resources, Piute County’s approach suggests that education policy can double as an economic development strategy when it is designed with local conditions in mind.

Within K-12 education, maybe career specialization can wait

Juliana Feinberg is the founder and CEO (aka Chief Embroidery Officer) of Feinberg Ltd. embroidery studio (aka your favorite place for embroidery west of the Mississippi). Specializing in custom embroidery, live event personalization, chainstitch and monogramming, Feinberg Ltd. services companies such as Ballerina Farm, Crocs, Gozney and Dorai.

How Flights From Home makes travel affordable for everyday families

And that’s just this year.

Feinberg officially launched her company in 2020. At the time, she didn’t even own an embroidery-specific machine and actually blew her knee out the same month. Within three months, COVID-19 would crush the U.S. economy. Safe to say, not a great space or time to start a company.

“But [registering the company] gave me that North Star,” Feinberg says. “I wasn’t going to give up on it.”

Starting a company in a creative industry was always in Feinberg’s future. At age three, she redecorated her mother’s new white couch with a crayon rainbow. At nine, she set up a lemonade stand with a cousin and earned $200. Throughout childhood, she sold Girl Scout cookies door-to-door.

After growing up in Rochester, New York — and never having visited the West — she followed a hunch all the way to a campus tour around the University of Utah (the U). She was hooked when the guide stopped to show visitors the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute.

While attending the U, Feinberg became a director at the Institute, gaining early and pivotal leadership experiences. She also became an ambassador for ASOS, the online fashion retailer — a pursuit that fed her creativity.

“I just loved seeing what other people were working on, and seeing that we [at Lassonde] could give them an opportunity to advance as entrepreneurs,” she says. “But I also love fashion. I love everything about clothing, style and expressing myself.”

Feinberg graduated from the U with a bachelor’s degree in business management and began working at Goldman Sachs as an analyst. After a few years, she returned to the U for a master’s degree in entrepreneurial studies. Through it all, she experimented with various creative pursuits such as painting, jewelry crafting, clothing upcycling and even a bit of embroidery using a sewing machine she’d purchased in 2015.

“When I first got the machine, I was making bandanas for my friends. We were going to Coachella, and I would make little small things,” she says. “There was something about the texture that I just really loved. And then the machine broke, and I couldn’t get it to work for years. … I kind of forgot about it, because then I was dabbling with all these other outlets.”

With a graduate degree in hand, Feinberg continued her career in finance as an assistant VP at Zions Bancorporation. While sitting at work, she would often read Utah Business and dream of a venture that might land her in the pages. Her creative and entrepreneurial itch kept her testing out projects in her spare time until a fellow artist told her she needed to just pick a medium and stick with it.

A few months later, she was in an online course when someone mentioned embroidery.

“Out of the blue, I was like, ‘I want to get a new embroidery machine,’” she explains. “I bought a four-needle, and I just fell passionately back in love with the art. There’s something so classic about it. It’s unique. It’s playful. It’s a really fun, tactile medium.”

The itch to stitch

Nicole Procida, a project manager for Natural Retreats, met Feinberg at the U, and they’ve been friends for the last 10 years. While pursuing her own career, Procida has purchased, tested and witnessed every turn in the road for Feinberg and her business.

“From the minute I met her, she always talked about having a company,” Procida says. “She’s so personable and very fashionable. I knew she was gonna go places.”

Having witnessed the variations of Feinberg Ltd. live, Procida says the company’s entrance into embroidery and the live event space felt “kismet.”

Feinberg’s first live embroidery booth was a practice run at her local pilates studio. Hollie Mason, owner of The Point Pilates, noticed her clients loved using grip socks during classes. She knew Feinberg had recently gotten back into embroidery and asked if she’d be interested in hosting a custom embroidery bar at the studio so patrons could personalize their socks.

“We knew people were going to be into it, but I don’t think we knew how much,” Mason says. “There was a line out the door. She had so many socks, she had to take them home with her. It was crazy. … And I think that was a pivotal thing for her in the beginning of her business — very validating. This is a thing people want.”

A few months after the success with The Point Pilates, Gozney, a pizza oven manufacturer, hired Feinberg to do live embroidery for a corporate event. She brought a small design of a hand holding a pizza and walked into an event that would change her company forever.

“It was so much fun to bring the machines and watch people’s reactions,” Feinberg says. “It is why I love this job so much.”

Since then, the gigs and events have been nonstop; Feinberg has had to work out the kinks and finetune her in-person process on the job. Thankfully, Procida accompanies her to most events to help balance the art of embroidery with customer service.

Sustainability creative

Feinberg Ltd. is not only an embroidery studio but also a fashion brand. When business meets fashion, the conversation of sustainability is never far behind. Utah’s fashion industry has particular experience with fast fashion and big brands overtaking product, mass-producing and cheapening carefully designed and beloved pieces.

Feinberg’s personal ethics and interests have naturally driven her business toward sustainability. In fact, Feinberg Ltd.’s products began with Feinberg upcycling her own closet and thrifted pieces.

“She’s always been really into thrifting and flipping,” Procida explains, noticing Feinberg’s growing passion for embroidery merge with sustainable practices. “[She was] realizing that sustainability could be a bigger thing that encapsulates her whole company. … She was purchasing things from Savers and fixing them. Those clothes are not going to end up at the dump anymore.”

Feinberg also began upcycling some of the items she already owned with embroidery. Upcycled items became closet staples, and her customized embroidery transformed old clothes into lifelong heirlooms — one-of-a-kind pieces. Her creativity grew along with her ideas of what this path meant for her business. When she stepped into the live event space, she knew the same principles would apply.

“When you go to an event, and you get something, you’re like, ‘I don’t want this tchotchke,’ so you throw it away,” Feinberg says. “But when you have a take-away item that you want to use — and it’s personalized — it makes such a difference. You remember that experience. You remember that event.”

Mason says Feinberg Ltd.’s dedication to sustainability resonated specifically with her business. “It goes hand in hand with what we’re providing as a Pilates studio. We want to take care of ourselves, we want to take care of the Earth.”

As the company grows, Feinberg hopes to provide the customization and upcycling she delivers at events to anyone online. She’s playing around with a drag-and-drop system where customers can upload their own products to the website, then add various patches and embroidery designs. This new iteration of Feinberg Ltd. spreads awareness of the need for sustainability while empowering any customer to upcycle and create heirlooms in their own life.

“We’ve been calling it ‘clothing tattoos,’ because it really is just like patches all over. It’s such a cool way to create personalized items while using her designs, her thought process,” Procida says.

Currently, the Feinberg Ltd. website boasts bandanas, luggage tags and other various items for personalization. All products available are currently manufactured new by the company. Keeping with the mission to create heirloom-quality products, Feinberg says all her manufactured goods are of the highest quality.

“[Our products are] well crafted and withstand the tests of time. Quality and natural fibers are first for us. You don’t want polyester on your body. It doesn’t feel good,” she says. “I’m all about sourcing the best natural fibers so that we feel good. When we feel good, and we’re dressed in our own personalized product, it creates a ripple effect. We show up differently.”

Inspired by the Western sky

Feinberg Ltd. has flourished in the desert landscape, drawing its tenets from the beauty and craftsmanship Feinberg sees embodied in Utah. She leans into a rugged Western lifestyle that values quality, and her creations tell a story. Being “your favorite embroidery studio west of the Mississippi” is more related to emotion than location.

“There’s something about the vastness of the Western sky. It really does make you ‘feel a way,’ like anything is possible.” Feinberg explains. “I feel creatively inspired by [the Western] sunrise and sunset: the gradient tones all throughout the year, a sunset in the desert or against a snow-capped mountain. These are the colors that feel particularly grounding and like home.”

Local and international brands relate.

Feinberg embroidered aprons at a media day for Ballerina Farm this summer. She designed Jibbitz-esque patterns for an event with Crocs. For each client, Feinberg carefully considers her capacity for how many guests she can accommodate, creates custom designs using unique color schemes, and sometimes even meticulously sources quality products to be embroidered. Her preparation helps her stay cool and collected on event day, allowing her to spend one-on-one time with guests and especially the clients.

“Watching her these last few years, she’s problem-solving in such a different way,” Procida says. “She’s really molding things to match her own business and her own aesthetic a lot better. I think that’s why Feinberg Ltd. is doing as well as it is now.”

The next pivot — and the one after that

Feinberg isn’t likely to stop innovating. She’s one year into doing live events and already has a laundry list of pivots, paths and partnerships she’s excited to pursue. The art of hand-cranking a chainstitch machine would provide a uniquely vintage Western look to creations. A brick-and-mortar location would bring custom goods directly to locals and give Feinberg a daily opportunity to show up as an artist. Innovations in fashion technology spur new revenue possibilities.

“She looks at everything with these giant eyes; things can only get better,” Procida says of Feinberg. “She just started doing events, and she’s already thinking about starting a donation fund and a shelter. She has really bright ideas, and she has been one of those business people I’ve watched actually be able to make those ideas come true with time.”

As Feinberg Ltd. continues to grow and morph, Feinberg herself stays grounded in her intuition and wholly trusts in timing. Her advice to other young founders is to try everything.

“It’s good to have structure and a nine-to-five; take as much as you can from that,” she says. “But if you feel like you’re destined for something bigger, just go for it. You’ll figure it out on the way.”

Inside Kenzie Bates’ world of high-end events and Instagram-famous celebrations

We need to take the long view. We must have people who are translating discoveries. Utah’s biotech sector does that really well, and that’s a great aspect of working in this environment.

Wesley Sundquist

Wesley Sundquist

Samuels Professor & Co-Chair, Department of Biochemistry | University of Utah

A renowned scientist recognized among TIME’s 100 Most Influential People for his pivotal contributions to HIV drug development, Wesley Sundquist’s research on capsid proteins paved the way for lenacapavir — an HIV prevention drug with near-perfect efficacy in clinical trials.

Nola Sundquist, Chris Hill, Tomáš Cihlář, Gilead Sciences, President Taylor Randall and Magic Johnson. These names, along with countless research fellows, students, coworkers and community members, are the reasons we can celebrate the success of Wesley Sundquist, PhD.

“The person who is the PI (primary investigator) gets the awards for what everyone accomplished together,” Sundquist says. “If that doesn’t get conveyed, it’s — first of all — not fair to those folks, but also it’s not an accurate description of how it really works.”

In 2025, Sundquist was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in the world for his lab’s research that has now led to a highly effective HIV prevention drug. Sundquist and his teams began studying HIV in 1991, right after Magic Johnson announced his diagnosis. At the time, many other groups and labs had developed invaluable, life-saving research to treat HIV. Sundquist didn’t want to compete or “double up” on research, so he decided to focus on how the HIV particle, specifically the proteins in the capsid, was assembled.

“We [Sundquist and partner Chris Hill] came to realize that the architecture of the capsid was a structure which is called a fullerene cone,” he explains. “There was a short period of time when we tested it and … showed that the capsid is really important for the virus.”

With this new information, biopharmaceutical company Gilead Sciences developed lenacapavir.

“And in multiple clinical trials involving tens of thousands of people, lenacapavir has shown 99.9 to 100 percent efficacy in preventing HIV — results that Sundquist describes as ‘spectacularly successful,’” explained an April 2025 press release from the University of Utah.

While lenacapavir’s success is just getting started — the drug was approved for worldwide use in June 2025 — Sundquist’s groundbreaking research actually happened 20–30 years ago, early on in his lab’s lifetime. He’s now excited to see what researchers and drug developers can do with years’ worth of more recent research.

“I think every basic scientist wants their work to make an impact on real-world problems, but everyone has to understand that that takes time,” Sundquist says. “There was a lot of translation between understanding that the capsid is important and developing a drug and then clinically testing it to make sure it’s safe and effective. It’s been a little bit unusual in the sense that there was this long delay where really good people were working hard, but we were less involved than when we started.”

To fellow researchers, Sundquist advises taking satisfaction in what you do every day. Discovery research takes time and dedication, so working on projects that feel fulfilling in the moment is paramount.

To the wider business community, particularly in Utah, Sundquist applauds the long-term approach to investments and emphasizes the need for continued basic research.

“We need to take the long view. We must have people who are translating discoveries. Utah’s biotech sector does that really well, and that’s a great aspect of working in this environment,” he says. “But we also have to be willing to invest in the long-term future and understand how things work. NIH funding is in jeopardy. Next year, it won’t be a disaster, but three years from now, we’ll really be feeling it. In 15 years, it’ll mean we’re not saving lives.”

Intermountain’s recognition and investment in children’s health is phenomenal. As that continues, we will be able to have the very best kid healthcare for children in the country.

Katy Welkie

Katy Welkie

Former CEO & VP | Intermountain Children’s Health

Katy Welkie’s 43-year career at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital culminated in leading the creation of the groundbreaking Primary Promise program — expanding pediatric and behavioral health services, opening a second hospital campus and rallying the community to raise over $600 million to elevate children’s healthcare across the Intermountain West.

As the leader of the only quaternary care children’s hospital in the area, Katy Welkie dedicated her service and career to creating an institution ranked among the best of the best.

“We look at the U.S. News and World Report. They put out a yearly best children’s hospitals list, which we use as guidance on where we need to focus our efforts,” Welkie says. “In recent years, we’ve scored in the top 50 in all 11 areas. That’s an amazing, amazing accomplishment, but because we are the community’s resource, we have to keep ourselves there.”

Welkie began her career 43 years ago as a pediatric nurse at Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. She capped it off by serving as the hospital’s CEO and VP of Intermountain Children’s Health starting in 2019. She retired in August 2025.

Welkie earned the hospital its distinguished marks through many years of devoted work. Her efforts culminate in the Intermountain Health’s Primary Promise program, described on the website as a “once-in-a-generation vision to build the nation’s model health system for children.”

“When we started to create this vision, we thought about kids all across the continuum, from the womb of a mother all the way up to adolescence,” Welkie says. “We needed to think about: How do you expand care so more kids can get care? How do you address emerging health needs?”

Among many initiatives that stemmed from the vision, Welkie and her team had noticed that youth in the Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital service area were increasingly struggling with mental and behavioral health. Welkie wanted to provide more targeted services for adolescent mental health, or at least have more bed availability to keep up with the need.

“Sometimes there were up to 25 kids waiting for beds. … There just was not enough capacity; I’m not sure if there ever will be, but we recognized that we weren’t doing as much as we could,” Welkie says. “This was an opportunity to step up and increase capacity and improve the way kids are cared for.”

As part of the Primary Promise program, Intermountain Health built a family-centered behavioral health center in Taylorsville, Utah. The $96 million flagship campus provides nearly a 50 percent increase in inpatient beds.

When Welkie initially rolled out the plan for the Primary Promise program and what needs Intermountain Health wanted to meet through it, the team’s goal was to raise $500 million. At the time, the number felt unachievable.

“We’d never raised anything like that — within Intermountain, within the state, anything — for children,” Welkie recalls. “Then, we were pushed by our community to increase the goal from $500 million to $600 million. Then, we blew right through that target! What an incredibly generous community we have.”

With the generous donations of the Intermountain community, Welkie’s Primary Promise program built the second campus of Intermountain Primary Children’s Hospital. Dedicated in February 2024, the campus is “the most significant enhancement in pediatric healthcare in Utah and the Intermountain West in more than a century,” claims an Intermountain Health press release.

“Intermountain’s recognition and investment in children’s health is phenomenal,” Welkie says. “As that continues, we will be able to have the very best kid healthcare for children in the country.”

Katherine Heigl’s Badlands Ranch: From Hollywood hustle to heartfelt entrepreneurship

When I click on her profile picture, I learn that her U-Haul, full of crucial items for an upcoming event, was towed the night before. I’m shocked and quickly change my first question for the interview. After we say hello and I introduce myself, I ask: How are you doing?

Bates tells me fall and Halloween are her busiest seasons. From haunted houses to Thanksgiving, corporate Christmases and end-of-year celebrations, her and her team are everywhere, doing everything, all at once. She tells me it is hard to live in the moment. She tells me she’s worried about work-life balance and making sure she’s spending enough time with her kids. She tells me her children’s after-school program costs two dollars a minute, that she’s recently divorced, and that all her event supplies from all seven of her previous storage units now live at her house.

It sounds like chaos, but the way Kenzie tells it is impressively calm. I’ll soon learn that’s her specialty. “I feel like my whole job is putting out fires,” she says. “It’s not a lack of coordination, it’s not a lack of organization — it’s just part of the industry that I’m in.”

Teresa Homer, an event manager with Kenzie’s Events, says it is exactly Bates’ perspective on the job that makes her great to work with. Even when everyone is stressed on an event day, Homer says Bates “Knows there are going to be little things that go wrong every day, but we’re just gonna deal with it and roll with the punches.”

The cool and collected manner Bates employs was won through the trials of building her business. Her calm resonates with customers, employees and contractors, allowing her creativity to shine through any mishaps and her calendar to fill up quickly.

The learning and development phase

Bates’ career in creativity began early. As a teenager, she wrote songs and played the piano while attending a music academy in Arizona. She helped put on concerts, quickly learning the ropes of ticket sales, stage design and event flow. Her dream was to attend Berklee College of Music in Boston and become a music writer, working with the rich and famous.

When she first left home, however, a short stop in Idaho to see a friend quickly turned into a job. Another friend’s parent had created a product, and they needed help getting it into stores. Her creativity and hard-working personality took her around the country, setting up custom display tables to market the product at Walgreens locations. She found she excelled at crafting the display tables and enjoyed expressing her creativity to benefit a business.

“I could see that this was a job that made my parents proud,” Bates explains. “People could understand it. I wasn’t going to be this poor musician who’s just trying to sell the next best song. I was now at the actual bigwig company, making good commissions and money. So I stuck to that.”

Instead of Berklee, Bates continued to study music at nearby BYU-Idaho. College classes fed her creative side while work taught her the basics of QuickBooks, company administration, warehouses and operations. Within a few years, Bates married and moved to Utah. She changed her major to business and finished her degree online while working another corporate job. She enjoyed developing her business skills but longed for a creative outlet.

To fill the gap, Bates started planning birthdays, baby showers and weddings for family members in Utah. As the raving reviews came in, she decided to find a new job that would allow her to dedicate more time to events. She soon found a position as a personal assistant.

“I figured if I could get in with a wealthy family, I would start being surrounded by people who could afford bigger events,” Bates explains. “I went into the job letting them know that I was trying to build my business. They said, ‘Well, that’s great! We hold a lot of events. We own seven companies. You could do all of our company events and decorate our house for the holidays.’”

With that, Bates began curating her portfolio of event work and meeting many future clients. Her business spread through word of mouth from impressed clients and event attendees.

Brady McDonald, founder and resident DJ of Rock the Mic Entertainment, knew Bates for years before she started her business, becoming a frequent contributor to many of her events. McDonald has been a witness to the growth of Kenzie’s Events and has a unique respect for her work.

“My business has grown based on the needs of what clients have asked for, and I think Kenzie is identical to that,” he says. “She has had to step out of her comfort zone … to pull off some fun things. She’s dealt with crazy budgets and pulled off miracles. Sometimes you take something to grow it or to get into a new part of the industry. She’s done so very well.”

Only the best

Kenzie’s Events started gaining traction, but as just one person, Bates knew she would need to be strategic. If she wanted to create the big, luxurious, show-stopping events she dreamed of, she needed a clientele willing to pay for them. Eventually, Bates found her dream client.

“There was a specific event where it was very high-end, and my client came in with a good chunk of money, and I just, I nailed it. Still to this day, those pictures are iconic for me from that event,” she reminisces. “It was such a big event, and seeing how I could transform the room — … I constantly say it’s like a high.”

The memories of these events are ones Bates knows her clients will remember forever. This specific party helped her finally see what she was capable of when given an opportunity, some trust and a good budget. Not only did she flex her artistic muscles, but she also broke through her limits and truly delivered the celebration she’d dreamed of. Once she’d given birth to her first child, Bates decided to go all in on the company.

“As adults, we kind of get into a routine where our life becomes old. If we don’t create moments that are exciting or moments to be celebrated, like birthdays or Halloween, life can fall into a stagnant place. I hope [Kenzie’s Events] inspires people to take time to appreciate moments and create little magical things for themselves.”

Teresa Homer

“Seeing as I was doing these events, and seeing that people really trusted me and appreciated my work, I thought, ‘OK, I think I found this clientele,’” she says. “And that’s when I started requiring a minimum. … I know a lot of people want to work with me, and wish that they could; but there’s only one of me, and I also have to make money.”

Setting a minimum for her events helps Bates work with clients interested in parties on her level, who understand and value the effort that goes into throwing celebrations worthy of Kenzie’s Events.

“I undervalued myself for so many years, losing money on events because I wanted it to be greater than it was,” she says. “Once I had a good clientele, I was able to weed those out so that I would actually have people who could afford what I envisioned for their events.”

Go home and go viral

As Kenzie’s Events grew through word of mouth, Bates’ social media presence also helped create intrigue. Professional photos of the best events garnered an initial following, and once that grew, the company started catching the eye of influencers and celebrities.

“Even though my Google reviews are minimal, it’s been Instagram — that’s where I’ve received most of my clientele,” she says.

At the top of her page, Bates proudly features clips of Post Malone performing at a recent event and Mayci Neeley and Mikayla Matthews from Hulu’s “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,” thanking Bates for throwing them a “10/10” dual baby shower.

Instagram is also where Bates found many of her vendors and contractors. Homer initially found and reached out to Bates on Instagram for her job. She was impressed by Bates’ skills and started as an on-call staff, helping set up and take down events. Now, she’s an integral part of the Kenzie’s Events team.

“It’s pretty easy to see in the events, but also on social media, that [Kenzie] does a fantastic job. I think there are a lot of event planners who pull parties together that are great. But Kenzie truly pulls together people’s visions,” Homer says. “[The events] look exactly like the clients’ Pinterest board; she truly brings magic things to life.”

One such vision came in 2022 from Jeffery and Katie Nelson. Bates began working with the Nelsons a few years earlier on birthdays and corporate events. When the Nelsons decided they wanted to decorate their house with a Harry Potter theme for Halloween, they knew just who to call.

“We met with Kenzie, and we all brainstormed and got way out of control,” Katie says. “Now, we get hundreds of people a night. On Halloween, we have at least 3,000 trick-or-treaters.”

The Nelsons’ Halloween decor, which you can see more photos of on their Instagram (@HogwartsontheIsland), includes a great hall on their porch with a complete Diagon Alley below, a Quidditch pitch, the Weasley family burrow, a potions room and their very own goblet of fire — all of which surrounds the outside of their home. Guests can see the full extent of the decor on the Nelsons’ custom Marauder’s Map. Each item has been carefully curated and stored to grow their collection through the years.

“Kenzie helped us realize that she was able to leverage not only her own skill, but she brought in some additional vendors to support what we wanted to try to accomplish,” Jeffery says. “Kenzie is a wonderful resource and a person who helps you realize your vision. She can take your idea and make it even better than you might expect.”

The success of the Nelsons’ home and others created a wave of interest in Halloween decor by Kenzie’s Events, eventually growing into an entire “Barbieland neighborhood.”

Although the houses and events sometimes take 18-hour days to pull off, Homer says the efforts are well worth it.

“As adults, we kind of get into a routine where our life becomes old. If we don’t create moments that are exciting or moments to be celebrated, like birthdays or Halloween, life can fall into a stagnant place,” she says. “I hope [Kenzie’s Events] inspires people to take time to appreciate moments and create little magical things for themselves.”

Let the celebration begin

For McDonald, the success of Kenzie’s Events makes complete sense. He’s seen firsthand how hard Bates works for her clients and knows she is the best of the best. Despite her skills, McDonald says Bates continues to impress him most with how grounded she stays.

“She is humble. She is determined. She is a human being. She has challenges and trials and gets through them. She’s no different than anyone else,” he says.

After nearly 10 years in the business and countless cakes, dinners, balloons and shoutouts, Bates has accomplished her goal of working with the rich and famous — just not in the way she initially hoped. Instead of music, she creates the greatest celebrations with clients who are passionate and invested in her work.

“It isn’t about the money, the big office or the biggest team. It’s that I’ve met my goal of working with the rich and famous,” she says. “That sounds kind of crazy, but ultimately, those are the people who throw the events I want to create and design. It’s the best, best job ever. I love it.”

Christmas on Commercial Street

Each of Utah’s 29 counties offers unique advantages for businesses and talent alike. Let’s visit Morgan County.

Fully decorated Christmas trees, each with a unique theme and goodies tucked amongst the boughs, will soon start appearing in shops along Commercial Street in Morgan, Utah. The festive foliage comes as part of the city’s Hometown Christmas and Tree Festival, where each donated tree will be auctioned off. The Morgan Area Chamber of Commerce uses the proceeds to help those in need celebrate the season through targeted giving or food pantry support.

Rural Utah’s data center boom

In the weeks leading up to the tree auction, community members and visitors can scope out the trees by visiting each participating business.

“To try to get people to go into the businesses, the Chamber does a passport thing,” Traca Wardell, president of the Morgan Area Chamber of Commerce, explains. “We make up a little card that has every business listed that’s donating a tree and where it can be viewed. If you go into that location and view the tree, they’ll stamp your passport. Then we collect [the passports] at the festival and draw for prizes.”

From gift cards to iPads, the winnings can vary, but the effect is the same: increased business and community support. And Wardell says there is always room for more.

“I would love to see it grow, to see more businesses donating trees, to see more people come out and buy the trees,” she says. “It goes toward a good cause. … We try to divide the money and have as much of an impact as we can.”

Redeveloping a magical main street

While Commercial Street seems idyllic today, Morgan’s thriving main street businesses and day-trip worthy festivals took years to get to this point. Ty Bailey, Morgan’s city manager, says the street used to have several vacant buildings that needed redeveloping to bring them up to code.

“We gave four different grants for four different buildings, and all four of them went from vacant to new businesses,” Bailey says. These grants are possible because Commercial Street was designated as a redevelopment area (RDA) in 1993, a status that allows the city to collect and utilize a tax increment to enhance the city’s economic base through improvement projects.

Bailey says for every $40,000 given in grants, the city has seen around $500,000 in additional investment by businesses and individuals. The grants certainly helped focus and spur the development, but the city and its businesses banded together to truly bring in the Christmas magic.

With this program, Commercial Street businesses have saved their historic buildings from decline and improved them and the surrounding street areas for modern use. The program even brought Morgan its first hotel, located right on Commercial Street.

“The new problem is parking,” Bailey says excitedly. His team is already working on the solution: “We’re building an alleyway that’ll go behind most of the businesses on Commercial Street so visitors can have rear access. It will provide additional parking, and it’s going to include a plaza.”

Morgan doesn’t currently have a central gathering spot for downtown activities like festivals or farmers’ markets, making it difficult to host large events without having to shut down streets. Bailey says the new plaza provides that extra space to host events and build community.

“The festival space will be a huge thing for the community,” Wardell agrees. “Right now, we shut down Commercial Street, but it can still get a little crowded. This will open it up so that we’ve got more room, and we can hold more events.”

Time to market the magic

Although Morgan County has only 12,295 people, Bailey says the Hometown Christmas and Tree Festival attracts around 2,000 visitors each year. The number is likely to grow as, according to Justin Rees, director of tourism for Morgan County, the county-wide tourism has been steadily growing as well.

“The first thing we did was work on the brand,” Rees explains. “We opted to use the wording ‘Morgan Valley’ because we felt like it was more inviting than just a governmental organization, like a county.”

The rebrand highlights everything from the Weber River’s rafting and fishing to the hiking, camping and lake adventures at East Canyon and Lost Creek reservoirs. Rees and his team have also focused on expanding awareness through social media, influencer partnerships and a long-term destination plan that defines short-, mid- and long-range goals for sustainable tourism.

“We started inviting influencers into the valley, connecting them with local businesses … and that’s turned out to be very, very successful,” he says.

The results are visible in both the growing number of day visitors and in the renewed investment downtown. “There’s a lot of excitement,” Rees says. “We’re moving in the right direction.”

For Morgan County, the future of tourism lies in balance — preserving the valley’s small-town warmth while inviting more people to experience its magic year-round.

“Commercial Street came back to life,” Wardell says. “It’s a pretty happening little street now. It’s got that old-time feel to it.”

Why early-year celebrations and strategic kickoff meetings matter more than ever

Each of Utah’s 29 counties offers unique advantages for businesses and talent alike. Let’s visit Millard County.

In 1855, Utah’s territorial legislature met for the first time in the capital city: Fillmore, Utah. Four years earlier, Gov. Brigham Young had visited the area and personally selected the valley and site of the town. Citizens quickly colonized the area, building homes, mills and commerce. The next year, the legislature voted to relocate operations north, with Great Salt Lake City as the capital we know today. While Fillmore remains the Millard County seat, losing “capital city” recognition shifted the economy from high-density typical businesses to rural Utah’s heavy hitters — mining, agriculture, construction, transportation and manufacturing.

Base camp is burning

Today, the benefits of that shift have never been greater: The Millard County Commission has approved two rezoning requests, allowing Creekstone Energy and Joule Capital Partners to both start construction on their campuses after conditional use permits are finalized. Millard County will soon be home to two of the largest and most advanced data center campuses in the world.

Here’s the deal with data centers

At 6,572.42 square miles, Millard County is the third-largest Utah county by land area. Combined, the two new campuses will use up about 8 square miles. According to Millard County Commissioner Bill Wright, these data centers provide the best bang for the county’s buck.

“The data centers are probably the best way for us to get development, rather than a business that brings 500 people [for whom] we will have to build houses, schools and everything else,” he says, explaining that the two new data centers will provide their own power, water, infrastructure and even security. “These data centers will generally not impact our basic operation.”

The commission expects population increases to support construction efforts for a few years, but in the long term, the biggest change will be an influx of tax revenue for the county. And Wright already knows how he’d like to spend it.

“I have no [intention of building a] big kingdom,” he says. “We’re going to take the property tax we receive, take care of our normal increases … and put as much money as we can back to lower property taxes.”

Keeping the peace

As of 2023, 13,437 people call Millard County home. With a development this large, some residents worry that precious resources, like power and water, might become more scarce or expensive, or that construction and operation will disturb the area’s natural tranquility.

Vicki Lyman, a Millard County commissioner, says all fears can be put to rest. The data centers won’t be tapping into the local grid for energy; instead, she says, they will use generators. A press release announcing the Joule Capital project explains that Caterpillar’s latest G3520K generator will provide 1.1 gigawatt hours of grid-forming battery energy storage, along with backup power generation served by diverse fuel sources.

Wright says both operations sit on natural gas lines that can power generators, and that a huge draw for companies to come to Millard County is its variety of power options.

“I don’t think there’s another county in the United States that has the potential to produce power from six different resources,” he says. “Right here in our county … we have geothermal, solar, a little bit of wind, coal, gas … and nuclear on the horizon.”

For Joule, the Millard location was chosen based on personal familiarity with the land. Mark McDougal, a partner at Joule Capital Partners, is a part-owner of the farmland that was rezoned for the project.

Both commissioners reiterated that the county did not give either development any special treatment or incentives to bring the historic data centers to the area. “There’s a tremendous amount of resources here, and it kind of sets me back when I see everybody wanting to take credit,” Wright says. “We can give the Lord credit. It’s not me; it’s not the state. They came of their own free will and choice.”

Statewide success

In a recent interview with Utah Business, Packsize Chief Information Officer and Chief Information Security Officer Troy Rydman explained that “AI’s growth doesn’t just require better software. It needs energy-efficient processors, stable power grids and secure, scalable data centers to handle the load.”

As the Joule campus is set to launch with capacity by 2026 and Creekstone is already taking on a 50 megawatt agreement with BluSky AI, these new developments join a broader trend in Utah’s ecosystem and are a signal that Utah has the space and is developing the resources to support businesses in this sector.

According to the Salt Lake Tribune, the Creekstone campus alone could generate as much as $40 billion in economic activity for the area.

For Wright, he’d happily take on several more campuses. “If we’re going to change, I love data centers compared to everything else.”

Utah’s strategic investments in AI infrastructure

As leaders, C-suite executives make the hard decisions that impact their companies’ daily operations and long-term vision. Developing the strategies behind company success in an ever-changing world is no small task, but these dedicated executives are shaping Utah’s business future with reliability and ingenuity. Join us in celebrating the Executive Excellence honorees of 2025.

Photos by Beka Price Photography

Selection Committee

Cassie Myers | COO & Managing Partner | Capita Financial Network | in/cassie-myers-911a3b220

Terri Lins | Chief Credit Officer | TAB Bank | in/terri-k-lins-ba3836116

Steve Lindsey | Founding Partner & CTO | LVT | in/steve-lindsey-b385361

Krista Parry | Chief Development Officer | Visit Salt Lake | in/kristaparry

Honorees

Katie Hoffman Abby

VP, U Career Success & Assistant Dean, David Eccles School of Business | The University of Utah

LinkedIn

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Jesus Bilancieri

Chief Compliance Officer | Lane Health Inc.

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Zacc Call

President | Capita Financial Network

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Jill Calton

EVP & Executive Director, Alternative Investments | UMB Bank n.a.

LinkedIn

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Brooke K. DeWyze

SVP, Sales Operations | Trucordia

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Megan Druding

Senior Managing Director | Cushman & Wakefield

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Amy Eldredge

VP, Menu | Crumbl

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Jonathan Field

General Manager, weBoost | Wilson Connectivity

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Tami Fisher

Chief Information Officer | TAB Bank

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Andrew Gale

CFO | LVT

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Michele Teresa Grasmick

President | Toothpillow

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Adam Gunn

VP, Brand | Fullstory

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Dayna Hathaway

CMO & SVP | Extra Space Storage

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D. Scott Jackson

Managing Shareholder | Allred Jackson PC

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Madison Limansky

COO | SheMoney

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Mindy Maude

VP, Domestic Violence & Residential Services | YWCA Utah

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Jenny McCallum

VP, Marketing | Mercato Partners

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Jessica Moyer

Chief Restaurant Officer | Savory Fund

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Jeniece Olsen

COO | Wasatch Homeless Health Care dba. Fourth Street Clinic

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Clay Partain

Chief Sports Officer | Sports Salt Lake, A Division of Visit Salt Lake

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Laura Peifer

VP & Healthcare Consultant | GBS Benefits

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Tyler Pollock

Executive Director, Communications | Young Living Essential Oils

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Davy Ratchford

COO & General Manager | Snowbasin Resort

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Jared Roberts

Chief Administrative Officer | Nursa

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Chris Willis

Chief Design Officer | Domo

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Each of Utah’s 29 counties offers unique advantages for businesses and talent alike. Let’s visit Kane County.

The Dragon Bravo Fire in Arizona, near the Grand Canyon, covers 143,808 acres and is only 44 percent contained as of August 11, 2025. The progress is there, but for Kelly Stowell, an economic development professional for Kane County, the damage is already done.

One man’s trash is another county’s treasure

The fire started when lightning struck on July 4. Authorities initially decided to manage the fire with a “confine and contain” strategy. According to AP, the fire erupted over the following weekend, taking over 70 structures down amid the blaze, one being the historic visitor’s lodge at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon.

“All visitors to the North Rim … it’s over,” Stowell says. “The Grand Canyon is a big hole. There are a lot of places to access it, but that was the main one, where the pavement goes. That’s where most visitors go. That’s where all the services were and the restaurant.” Most importantly, “a lot of those visitors would stay in Kane County and then Kanab,” but with the visitor’s center gone, so are the visitors.

A visitor-less economy

Kanab, Utah, affectionately branded “Base Camp Kanab,” sits only 75 miles from the previous location of the North Rim Lodge. Within county limits, however, visitors will find sections of Bryce Canyon National Park, Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park, Dixie National Forest, Glen Canyon National Recreation Area, Zion National Park, Kodachrome Basin State Park and many, many other natural wonders to enjoy. Stowell says over 90 percent of the county is owned by the government.

With so much public land and proximity to natural wonders, it is no surprise that Stowell attributes 50 percent of the county’s economic activity to tourism. From 2019 to 2023, direct visitor spending in Kane County averaged a little over $175 million, and in 2023, visitors generated over 75 percent of local sales tax revenue, according to the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute’s travel and tourism county profile for Kane County.

Stowell says that, without the North Rim Visitor’s Lodge, local hotels and tour companies are already seeing cancellations and lost funds. Eventually, he expects to have a place where businesses can make disaster relief claims and declarations, but the county is still working out the kinks. What he can say: “It’s not good.”

Despite the North Rim Visitor’s Lodge being located in Arizona, Stowell says Kane County has a lot of support from its senators and congresswoman, Celeste Maloy, and expects a rebuild soon. The fire might even be a blessing in disguise if a new North Rim Lodge is winterized and allows for year-round guests. However, with recent budget cuts to the National Parks Service, Kane County wouldn’t be the first community left wanting for more support and infrastructure to cater to visitors.

Stowell remains hopeful, saying, “We try to employ that same spirit, to be welcoming and helpful and have a can-do attitude with all business efforts. We just try to have an open mind and a willingness to work on and make things happen.”

The county’s economy needs a new lodge, and the county’s history demands it. “Even though it is in Arizona, our economy is attached to it, and a lot of our heritage is too,” Stowell says. “It was Kanab people who developed the North Rim and made it into a reality.”

An everything economy

Like many of Utah’s more rural economies, tourism is a large piece of the economic pie, but even a large slice is just a single slice. In Kane, other slices include the Best Friends Animal Society, coal mines, film development, manufacturing, a burgeoning food scene, and a growing community of remote workers and business professionals creating what Stowell calls “Silicon Sands.” While tourism wanes for a time, Stowell says Kane County is still enjoying boosts from these other sectors.

“Kane County has always been open to new ideas and new possibilities. We’re so remote, we’ve had to be really reliant on each other and try to solve our problems,” Stowell says. “All those public lands have been there forever, but the way they’ve been managed has changed over the years, and the industries that were supported by these lands have changed.”

Even with the Grand Canyon being out of commission for a while, nature lovers should take the opportunity to explore the other, lesser-known gems available near Kanab. Stowell says no one should cancel a stay or ticket — just take a detour.

Create a magical, memorable team experience at Best Friends

Each of Utah’s 29 counties offers unique advantages for businesses and talent alike. Let’s visit Weber County.

Global Warming Potential (GWP) measures how much a specified gas will warm the Earth compared to carbon dioxide. The larger the GWP, the more potent the gas.

Railroads revitalize Iron County’s economy

As the base gas, carbon dioxide has a GWP of 1, determined by a study of the gas’s atmospheric life, potency and quantity in our atmosphere. Despite having a much shorter atmospheric life and quantity, methane’s GWP typically measures anywhere from 27-30, meaning it is much more potent than carbon dioxide. And it is the second-highest gas emitted globally.

From fossil fuel production and use to agriculture, wetlands and even termites, global methane emissions averaged 669 teragrams per year from 2009 to 2019. With only an average of 633 teragrams of methane removed from the atmosphere per year, the world’s methane budget is 36 teragrams over.

“Because there are natural emissions, you’re never going to get to zero,” Logan Mitchell, a climate scientist and energy analyst with Utah Clean Energy, explains. “The idea is: We want to reduce these human-caused emissions to as low as possible. We’re probably never going to get to zero, … but maybe eventually we’ll find alternative solutions.”

Green is good

Methane from landfills accounts for nearly 2 percent of all United States greenhouse gas emissions from human activities. In Weber County, Utah, local officials and homegrown company Qnergy have begun tackling the effects of methane from landfills with those very alternative solutions.

“[Methane abatement] is a really important tool in our toolbox in terms of reducing overall greenhouse gas emissions because methane is such an important and potent greenhouse gas,” Mitchell says.

In the late ‘90s, Weber County closed down a landfill and attempted a methane harvesting program. Stephanie Russell, Weber County director of economic development and government relations, says that though the initial program didn’t work out, it left the landfill with an operating pipe system. When Qnergy approached the city in 2023 with plans for a methane abatement pilot project to test out its new technology, Russell says everything was already in place.

“It’s an off-grid, reliable, completely autonomous system that, with a landfill gas collection system installed, can absolutely collect the methane and destroy the methane. ... [TORCH4] is completely self-powered, … and we’re able to give some power supply to the landfill owners to do other things.”

Timothy Atwater

“What’s fantastic about what we did is we’re doing the partnership around the pilot. They provided everything for the pilot. We had no investment, no cash investment, just the landfill and the pads like that we helped build, which was like $1,200,” she says. “[It was] a really, really good return on investment.”

The pilot program quickly found success and expanded, allowing Qnergy to abate over 95 percent of the landfill’s emissions. Not only is the methane being ostensibly rerouted, but it is also being repurposed into clean energy and an economic boost for the county.

‘We’re getting paid’

The first boost: usable land. Once the methane emissions and toxins are mitigated, “we will have 142 acres on the river of viable development property,” Russell says. In the meantime, the land is slowly being reclaimed and used as an archery park while Qnergy’s systems continue to mitigate methane, generating electricity during the process.

“They’re generating enough energy off that one site to power about five houses,” Russell says. “We’re cleaning the air. We’re cleaning the ground. The county’s getting carbon credits, and we’re going to be able to use that land in the long term for development purposes.”

Once created, carbon credits can be sold on the carbon market to give companies permission to produce greenhouse gases, like carbon dioxide and methane. Currently, Qnergy produces carbon credits through its CLEAR program, a comprehensive landfill methane abatement and carbon credit generation initiative.

“Weber County is going to be way ahead of the curve,” Russell says. “The federal and state governments [want counties] to clean up landfills. We’re already doing it, and we’re getting paid to do it.”

A hub for green

In March 2025, Qnergy announced the release of the TORCH4, a landfill gas-powered Stirling Engine generator and enclosed flare system. The new system is mobile and designed to collect and destroy over 99 percent of methane emissions, even in landfill gas with methane content as low as 30 percent.

“It’s an off-grid, reliable, completely autonomous system that, with a landfill gas collection system installed, can absolutely collect the methane and destroy the methane,” Timothy Atwater, general manager of the biogas team at Qnergy, says. “[TORCH4] is completely self-powered, … and we’re able to give some power supply to the landfill owners to do other things.”

As the home and headquarters of Qnergy, Weber County is proud of its public-private partnership’s success and the advancements Qnergy is making in methane abatement. Russell says they are now looking to expand and bring more green energy-focused companies to the area. The county’s partnership with the Utah Inland Port Authority will help the county provide the incentives needed to attract companies and build a synergistic, sustainability-focused business community.

“I’m trying to create a clean and renewable energy hub [in Weber County],” Russell explains. “We have been looking at ways we could start implementing sustainable practices inside the county, not just with creating an energy hub, but by being a promoter of good, sustainable practices with the businesses we support and work with.”

Amid controversy, inland ports begin construction this summer

Photos from the event can be found here.

Every year, Utah Business anonymously surveys thousands of employees to identify which companies are rewriting the playbook on workplace satisfaction. In an era where ping pong tables have lost their ping, this year’s winners prove that the secret sauce to employee recruitment and retention goes beyond the break room. These Utah companies are making work feel less like work — and their employees are actually excited to clock in.

Micro Companies | 25-50 employees

Cooper Savas

coopersavas.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Accounting

What employees love: Hybrid work, PTO, 401(k) match, parental leave, free lunches and snacks, onsite gym, flexibility

What employees are saying: “I love being able to contribute to the culture of my company. It’s a culture that allows me to become the best version of myself.”

Datafy

datafy.com

Primary Location: Ogden, UT

Industry: Computer Software

What employees love: Hybrid work, parental leave, quarterly bonus, insurance benefits, 401(k), technology stipend, flexibility, free snacks and drinks, holiday PTO between Christmas and New Year’s

What employees are saying: “I don’t think I’ve ever worked for a better company. The people in our company are superb. The team environment is inclusive and open.”

Fragomen

fragomen.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Professional Services - Legal

What employees love: Education stipend, unlimited PTO, 401(k) match, flexibility, insurance benefits, hybrid work

What employees are saying: “I love working for Fragomen. The firm is a leader when it comes to issues that are important to me, such as DEI initiatives, pro bono work and employee health.”

Hamlet Homes

hamlethomes.com

Primary Location: Murray, UT

Industry: Real Estate

What employees love: Insurance benefits, HSA, fitness stipend, education stipend, free snacks, flexibility, company parties, 401(k), profit sharing, monthly performance bonuses

What employees are saying: “Hamlet has the best culture and work environment, especially for women in construction. I have been in the industry my entire life, and I have never seen a firm so dedicated to ensuring all members become the best versions of themselves and providing every opportunity to reach for the stars.”

Philo Ventures

philo.ventures

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Venture

What employees love: Flexibility, hybrid work, insurance benefits, free snacks and catered lunches, company retreats, supportive leadership, travel discounts

What employees are saying: “Philo Ventures is a positive company that truly recognizes its employees and the value of each member. They understand that good products come from good employees. The culture day to day is healthy, recognizing employee value and contributions.”

Smart Resources

smartresources.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Human Resources

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, insurance benefits, flexibility, open door policy

What employees are saying: “Many companies claim they have a strong culture, but Smart Resources lives it. We begin every meeting with culture discussions. The entire team is driven by our amazing culture.”

Stratus HR

stratus.hr

Primary Location: Sandy, UT

Industry: Human Resources

What employees love: PTO, flexibility, “Winning Wednesday,” insurance benefits, fitness stipend, hybrid work, 401(k), employee lunches, tickets to Bees games and Red Butte Garden concerts, free snacks, company parties, employee of the month program

What employees are saying: “Culture is why I came to work at Stratus. Everyone feels empowered to do what is in the best interests of our clients.”

The Picklr

thepicklr.com

Primary Location: Kaysville, UT

Industry: Health & Wellness

What employees love: Company offsites, flexibility, 401(k), profit sharing, insurance benefits, free pickleball memberships, unlimited PTO, free drinks and snacks, weekly catered lunches

What employees are saying: “I love the excitement that comes with the rapid growth of The Picklr. Everyone is on the same team and supports each other through the pros and cons of fast growth, making it a fun, safe and exciting place to work.”

VidAngel

vidangel.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Computer Software

What employees love: Profit sharing, quarterly bonuses, flexibility, insurance benefits, unlimited PTO, weekly catering, company parties, Employee Compassion Fund, maternity leave

What employees are saying: “I love our company mission and product. Days in the office are great days where we can touch base with other departments and grow friendships.”

Small Companies | 51-100 employees

97th Floor

97thfloor.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Marketing & Advertising

What employees love: 401(k) match, insurance benefits, HSA, passes to Thanksgiving Point and Sundance Resort, parental leave, onsite gym, unlimited PTO, flexibility, company library and book club, Results Only Work Environment (ROWE), pet insurance, company parties

What employees are saying: “97th Floor is built on principles of hard work, creativity, enthusiasm for our work, respect and friendship. My successes are recognized, and I always receive support for my shortcomings. I have learned more here than anywhere else, and I’ve developed amazing relationships with my coworkers.”

Beehive Meals

beehivemeals.com

Primary Location: Layton, UT

Industry: Food & Beverage

What employees love: Free monthly meal subscription, holiday bonus, 401(k) match, “Fun Friday,” monthly spa stipend, PTO, insurance benefits, tickets to arts and sporting events

What employees are saying: “I can see myself working at Beehive Meals for a long time. The atmosphere is fun while also being very productive. The people I work with are helpful and supportive.”

BrainStorm

brainstorminc.com

Primary Location: American Fork, UT

Industry: Computer Software

What employees love: Company activities, free ski passes, service opportunities, 401(k) match, bucket list “Boom Campaign,” gym membership, PTO, tickets to sporting events, insurance benefits, monthly budget for sending gifts

What employees are saying: “BrainStorm knows how to hire well and foster a culture of giving, positivity, humor and camaraderie. There is an effort to include everyone in everything we do.”

Carpet Diem

carpetdiem.us

Primary Location: Draper, UT

Industry: Construction

What employees love: Insurance benefits, free snacks and drinks, PTO, parental leave, company vehicles, discount on flooring, TopGolf membership, HSA, birthday lunches, 401(k)

What employees are saying: “I feel like the company promotes putting the customer first and does a great job of empowering the employees to do what’s right. The people I’m surrounded by are very much in tune with one another and the companies’ values, which we do our best to live on a daily basis.”

Cicero

cicerogroup.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Management Consulting

What employees love: Insurance benefits, PTO, work-from-home Fridays, parental leave, 401(k) match, company events, professional development support, annual trip to Mexico, profit sharing, weekly catered lunches, free snacks

What employees are saying: “I feel surrounded by individuals who are extremely driven to do their very best work on a daily basis. There is a strong drive for exemplary work, and the relationships are what keep people here long term.”

Clean Simple Eats

cleansimpleeats.com

Primary Location: Riverton, UT

Industry: Health & Wellness

What employees love: PTO, flexibility, 401(k) match, free product, onsite wellness room, free drinks and snacks, yearly retreats, hybrid work

What employees are saying: “Clean Simple Eats blows every other company out of the water! They have a great mission and purpose, and they have created a one-in-a-million work culture. I truly enjoy being with all of my coworkers and my incredible bosses.”

Cozy Earth

cozyearth.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Consumer Goods

What employees love: 401(k), unlimited PTO, team activities, free lunches, maternity leave, company parties, wellness stipend, free snacks, employee discount, golf passes, insurance benefits, flexibility

What employees are saying: “We’re encouraged to be creative and take risks. We all spend time outside of work together and have created forever friendships.”

Disruptive Advertising

disruptiveadvertising.com

Primary Location: Pleasant Grove, UT

Industry: Marketing & Advertising

What employees love: 401(k) match, HSA, personal and professional development training, vacation and wellness stipends, unlimited PTO, profit sharing, flexibility, free snacks

What employees are saying: “Every day, I feel so grateful that I get to work with some of the most incredible people on Earth. A focus on giving back and having opportunities to jump into service projects together really strengthens relationships across the company.”

FOCUS Engineering & Surveying

focus-es.com

Primary Location: Midvale, UT

Industry: Consulting - Civil Engineering & Land Surveying

What employees love: 401(k) match, HSA, insurance benefits, PTO, personal development training, first-time homebuyer incentive, wellness programs, flexibility, merit-based bonuses

What employees are saying: “Focus holds its culture very tightly and swears by it. The partners and management do a great job of exemplifying the kind of culture they want to permeate throughout the company, and it’s successfully trickled down to many of the employees here.”

Grant Victor

grantvictor.com

Primary Location: Kaysville, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: 401(k), company parties, flex holidays, company retreats, PTO, insurance benefits, gym membership, free snacks, tuition reimbursement, free monthly lunches, humanitarian trips in Kenya

What employees are saying: “I appreciate the growth and development opportunities at the company. Training programs and mentorships have been very helpful in advancing my skills.”

iDrive Logistics

idrivelogistics.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Information Technology

What employees love: Flexibility, free snacks, PTO, bonus program, 401(k) match, holiday parties, birthday lunches, profit sharing, insurance benefits, service opportunities

What employees are saying: “iDrive’s culture is very entrepreneurial in nature. People are encouraged to think for themselves and own their successes and failures.”

Nectar

nectarhr.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Human Resources

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, flexibility, insurance benefits, Apple Watch and gym membership reimbursements, equity/stock options, bonus programs, employee recognition rewards, Topgolf and boating events, catered team lunches, phone plan discounts, parental leave

What employees are saying: “We believe in our leadership, we believe in our teams, and we believe in our mission. It’s a very positive place to work, grow, have autonomy and build something worthwhile.”

ObservePoint

observepoint.com

Primary Location: Pleasant Grove, UT

Industry: Information Technology

What employees love: Remote-first work environment with hybrid flexibility, insurance benefits, HSA, unlimited PTO, 401(k) match, healthy lifestyle reimbursement, corporate golf pass, pickleball league, weekly catered lunches, month-long sabbatical after 7 years, family-friendly events and parties, free snacks, phone stipend, quarterly team summits

What employees are saying: “The culture here is one of accountability, customer obsession, cooperation, alignment and feedback. It’s a great incubator for growth and success for the company and for individuals.”

Scalar

scalar.io

Primary Location: Draper, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: Hybrid work, unlimited PTO, insurance benefits, 401(k) match, weekly team activities like “Ultimate Frisbee Fridays,” free snacks, catered meals

What employees are saying: “Scalar has a vibrant and dynamic culture. Employees are encouraged to be themselves and to express themselves.”

The Children’s Center Utah

childrenscenterutah.org

Primary Location: West Valley City, UT

Industry: Nonprofit

What employees love: Hybrid work, PTO, insurance benefits, 401(k) match, annual winter break, onsite gym, employee development opportunities, staff recognition program, catered company parties and retreats

What employees are saying: “The culture in our company is positive, warm, energizing and dynamic. We work among others who are equally passionate about the service and role we play in supporting children and families in the community.”

Visit Salt Lake

visitsaltlake.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Conventions & Tourism

What employees love: PTO, insurance benefits including fertility/adoption coverage, 401(k) match, profit sharing, child care and wellness reimbursements, phone stipend, hybrid work, UTA pass, gym membership reimbursement, free snacks, Bonusly peer recognition program, event tickets and ski passes, professional development opportunities, custom-clothing allowance, summer camp stipend, community outreach opportunities

What employees are saying: “We do hard, fulfilling work at VSL. We help support a multi-billion dollar visitor economy, but most importantly, we have fun at our jobs and love the people we work with.”

Your Employment Solutions

youremploymentsolutions.com

Primary Location: North Salt Lake, UT

Industry: Human Resources

What employees love: Insurance benefits, HSA, hybrid work, PTO, quarterly bonus program, mileage reimbursement, profit sharing, phone plan perks, company parties and retreats, employee recognition, flexibility

What employees are saying: “Culture and environment is a huge piece of why I’ve stayed at the company for 10+ years. The culture is one of transparency, growth opportunities, upward feedback and rewarding success.”

Medium Companies | 101-500 employees

A Plus Garage Doors

utahgaragedoors.net

Primary Location: West Valley, UT

Industry: Construction

What employees love: Competitive pay, onsite cafe, performance bonuses, insurance benefits, flexibility, company vehicles, company activities, zen rooms, PTO

What employees are saying: “The culture is very friendly, and everyone is like-minded. We push each other to succeed. There are plenty of resources available from our teammates and management.”

ASEA, LLC

aseaglobal.com/en-US

Primary Location: Pleasant Grove, UT

Industry: Health & Wellness

What employees love: HSA, flexibility, company parties, free lunches and snacks, insurance benefits, maternity leave, PTO, 401(k), fitness stipend, annual massages, profit sharing, tuition reimbursement, hybrid work

What employees are saying: “They are continually striving to grow, develop and train employees. I’ve been promoted to several positions and have grown in many skill sets that have helped me not just in the workplace but in my day-to-day life.”

AudioEye

audioeye.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Computer Software

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, health insurance, stock options, commission structure and frequent spot bonuses, weekly family meal stipend, daily free lunches provided onsite, flexibility, hybrid work, supportive environment, opportunities for personal and professional growth

What employees are saying: “Our culture is incredible and improving every year. I think having a positive mission draws the best kind of employees.”

FinWise Bank

finwise.com

Primary Location: Murray, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: Health insurance, PTO, 401(k) match, profit sharing, flexibility, hybrid work, gym membership reimbursement, Top Golf and golf course memberships, company parties and events, tuition and education reimbursements, Calm app membership, LinkedIn Learning membership

What employees are saying: “Management is present in the office regularly, and they take the time to speak with employees. They are all very down-to-earth so I feel like I am not just a cog.”

GMRE

gmre-inc.com

Primary Location: Ogden, UT

Industry: Defense Contractor

What employees love: HSA, 401(k) match, PTO, flexibility, work-life balance, competitive compensation, generous leave, supportive leadership, employee events

What employees are saying: “The executive team leads growth and development opportunities for the company and for employees. The strong sense of commitment from the executive team helps employees feel supported and valued.”

Gozney

us.gozney.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Consumer Goods

What employees love: Flexibility, hybrid work, positive environment, team building events, unlimited PTO, pizza parties, company lunches, retirement planning, quarterly bonus program, industry discounts

What employees are saying: “The culture is fun, inspiring and inclusive. It’s unique in the sense that everyone is on mission together, and it feels that way.”

Groove Technology Solutions

getgrooven.com

Primary Location: Midvale, UT

Industry: Telecommunications

What employees love: Onsite gym, mental health therapy, massage therapy, pet insurance, company-sponsored events, 401(k), snack bars, EV charging stations, learning opportunities

What employees are saying: “Management is always interested in my professional development in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming. My team members go above and beyond to lend a hand when it’s needed.”

InfoWest

infowest.com

Primary Location: Saint George, UT

Industry: Telecommunication

What employees love: Flexibility, PTO policies, paid holidays, 401(k) match, performance bonuses, sales incentives, family-oriented atmosphere, company outings, discounts at partnered hotels and businesses

What employees are saying: “I appreciate being able to discuss and implement ideas that I think will make the company better. Management cares about us not just as employees but as people.”

JobNimbus

jobnimbus.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Computer Software

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, health insurance, HSA, hybrid work, Fridays off in the summer, Motivosity, weekly catered lunches, travel funds and programs, 401(k)

What employees are saying: “JobNimbus promotes from within as often as possible. If you’re willing to put in the work, they foster your learning and help you achieve your goals!”

Joyce University of Nursing and Health Sciences

joyce.edu

Primary Location: Draper, UT

Industry: Education

What employees love: Unlimited and self-directed PTO, hybrid work, fitness memberships, onsite massages, tuition reimbursement, 401(k) match, book clubs, professional development

What employees are saying: “I enjoy working with others who are dedicated to educating nurses and want the best for our students and coworkers. We have the same goals and are willing to help one another.”

Larson & Company

larsco.com

Primary Location: South Jordan, UT

Industry: Accounting

What employees love: Flexibility, hybrid work, health insurance paid for after certain tenure, generous PTO, reimbursements for gym memberships and cellphone bills, bonuses

What employees are saying: “Larson has a great culture that focuses on growing individuals professionally and personally. I feel like I can truly excel and be promoted when the time is right for me and not necessarily just when it’s right for Larson.”

OptConnect

optconnect.com

Location: Kaysville, UT

Industry: Technology

What employees love: Remote work, comprehensive health insurance, wellness reimbursement program, mental health days, employee recognition, 401(k), tuition reimbursement, company events

What employees are saying: “This company is absolutely a ‘people first’ organization, which makes it very easy to come into the office each day. Everybody looks out for each other and is willing to help if someone needs it.”

Pura

pura.com

Primary Location: Pleasant Grove, UT

Industry: Consumer Goods

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, monthly lunch budget, flexibility, mental health support services, generous parental leave, baby bonuses, 401(k), Nectar points, book club, bonuses

What employees are saying: “I have had so many opportunities to grow and advance my business knowledge. Everyone is so willing to share information and help me be a better leader. There is a great level of transparency from upper management, and I think that cascades down.”

Squire

squire.com

Primary Location: Orem, UT

Industry: Accounting

What employees love: Flexibility, remote work, affordable and extensive health insurance coverage, HSA, 401(k), Christmas gifts, Motivosity, fitness reimbursement program

What employees are saying: “Squire has a great work culture when it comes to truly caring about and investing in their employees.”

Strider Technologies

striderintel.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Consumer Software

What employees love: Daily catered lunches, hybrid schedules, unlimited PTO, annual wellness stipends, wellness programs, parental leave, mission-driven culture, development opportunities

What employees are saying: “Our management has found the balance between management and leadership skills. They’re able to maintain the large scope of our goals and aspirations while getting into the details of the projects and managing those appropriately. We practice a ‘zero ego’ perspective and focus on feedback and growth opportunities.”

Tanner LLC

tannerco.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Accounting

What employees love: Flexible PTO, company-sponsored trips to Disneyland, 401(k), HSA, access to gym facilities, appreciation initiatives, CPA exam reimbursement, career development

What employees are saying: “Tanner has been very committed to my growth and development within the company. They want to do what it takes to keep great people at Tanner.”

Utah First Federal Credit Union

utahfirst.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: High-incentive pay, profit sharing, employer-funded HSA, 401(k) match, PTO, paid maternity leave, monthly incentives and bonuses, company parties, tuition reimbursement

What employees are saying: “Utah First hosts several charity events throughout the year. It feels great knowing we are helping others and putting together all kinds of kits and donations. People genuinely enjoy their jobs and are willing to help and teach.”

VLCM

vlcm.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Information Technology

What employees love: Flexible work arrangements, 401(k), relaxed workplace culture, tickets to sporting events, opportunities for learning and growth, wellness program

What employees are saying: “VLCM fosters collaboration, inclusivity and open communication, which makes me feel valued and supported. The emphasis on teamwork and mutual respect creates a welcoming atmosphere where everyone is encouraged to share ideas and contribute.”

Large Companies | 501-2,500 employees

IMA Financial Group

imacorp.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Insurance

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, flexibility, opportunities for stock ownership, bonuses, onsite gym, well-stocked snack stations, sabbatical programs, lifestyle spending accounts, extended holiday weekends

What employees are saying: “I feel that I am able to succeed and grow at this company for years to come. The company promotes from within, and there are a lot of opportunities to grow.”

Layton Construction

laytonconstruction.com

Primary Location: Sandy, UT

Industry: Construction

What employees love: Employee stock ownership, company vehicles, gas cards, comprehensive health coverage, flexibility, remote work options, end-of-year bonuses, company-sponsored events

What employees are saying: “They encourage moving up in the company and provide a lot of internal training and development. If you show that you can perform tasks outside of your current responsibilities, you are supported in that growth.”

Okland Construction

okland.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Construction

What employees love: 401(k) match, flexible PTO, bonuses, HSA, fitness centers, team-building activities, employee achievement rewards, company vehicles, fuel cards, free snacks, catered meals

What employees are saying: “I like the solid foundation for growth with training programs and diverse projects to grow my skill set. Investing in and providing ongoing opportunities for employees is a genuine priority from leadership.”

Progressive Leasing

progleasing.com

Primary Location: Draper, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: Flexibility, work-life balance, gym reimbursement, family planning benefits, generous PTO, parental leave, 401(k) match, volunteer opportunities, bonuses

What employees are saying: “Management makes you feel heard and recognized for your hard work. They do a good job of integrating the interest of the company with individual interests.”

Select Health

selecthealth.org

Primary Location: Murray, UT

Industry: Healthcare

What employees love: Flexibility, gym memberships, 401(k) match, pension programs, tuition reimbursement, wellness programs, inclusive culture, recognition programs

What employees are saying: “Select Health’s goal is to help people live the healthiest lives possible. There is an emphasis on preventive healthcare, proactive health screenings and healthy lifestyle choices. Select Health also sponsors many community outreach programs and is actively trying to improve the healthcare options of economically disadvantaged communities.”

Utah Jazz and Utah Hockey Club

nba.com/jazz

nhl.com/utah

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Sports & Entertainment

What employees love: Unlimited PTO, flexibility, free or discounted event tickets, wellness programs, gym memberships, 401(k) match, free lunches, cross-department learning opportunities

What employees are saying: “I love working here and feel so bought in because of the transparancy that exists. They truly want to transform Utah for the better!”

Waystar

waystar.com

Primary Location: Lehi, UT

Industry: Healthcare

What employees love: Hybrid work, Headspace meditation app, Virgin Pulse for fitness tracking, pet insurance, parental leave, weekly catered lunches, swag, HSA, learning incentives

What employees are saying: “We are a fast growing company with no shortage of opportunities to jump in and solve big problems while getting new skills and experiences.”

Young Automotive Group

youngautomotive.com

Primary Location: Layton, UT

Industry: Automotive

What employees love: Flexibility, work-life balance, discounts, insurance coverage, PTO, retirement benefits, career advancement, training, spiff bonuses, recognition programs

What employees are saying: “I feel grateful to be a part of a company that puts such an emphasis on positivity and family. The dedication to making sure everyone knows and lives by the mission statement and core values is unlike anywhere else I have worked.”

Extra Large Companies | Companies with 2,500+ employees

CBIZ & CBIZ CPAs

cbiz.com

Primary Location: Salt Lake City, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: Company-provided meals, flexibility, hybrid work, comprehensive health insurance, fitness facilities, PTO, CPA assistance, opportunities for career development, retirement contribution matches

What employees are saying: “Management is working hard to make everything run smoothly. If there is a conflict, open communication is initiated, both sides are heard and an equitable solution is implemented.”

Leavitt Group

leavitt.com

Primary Location: Cedar City, UT

Industry: Insurance

What employees love: Flexibility, remote work options, mental health programs, wellness initiatives, positive work culture, company events, PTO, maternity leave, 401(k) match, profit sharing

What employees are saying: “One of my favorite things about the Leavitt Group is the culture. The employees and leaders all understand that while we are working to make a profit for the company, prioritizing employees’ needs is equally important. The culture of support, friendship and devotion to each other as much as the company is unlike any other company I have ever worked for.”

Mountain America Credit Union

macu.com

Primary Location: Sandy, UT

Industry: Financial Services

What employees love: Outstanding insurance options, HSA, flexibility, 401(k) match, gyms, cafes with employee discounts, onsite medical clinics

What employees are saying: “Mountain America encourages growth and development, and it provides the tools and resources to help you achieve your goals.”

Trucordia

trucordia.com

Primary Location: Lindon, UT

Industry: Insurance

What employees love: Flexible PTO, remote work, concert tickets, HSA, monthly lunches, appreciation events, stocked break rooms, 401(k) match, bonus structures, opportunities for growth

What employees are saying: “Management is incredible. I can talk with everyone, and we all help each other out when needed. I don’t feel like I’m alone.”

Having spent his youth in the Central African Republic and Nigeria, Christoph Gorder developed an intuitive understanding of diverse environments and people — a skillset he honed further in his 14 years at Americares and over a decade with charity. “I didn’t set out to build a career in disaster response, but the rush and purpose of this work have kept me engaged and committed,” he says. Now living in Utah with his family, Christoph’s extensive experiences have taught him that good people can be found anywhere you journey. “Even though people look very different or societies feel very different, ultimately we’re all the same.”

‘Always hi, never hello’

Travelpro Platinum Elite Softside Expandable Carry on Luggage

“I was on 81 flights last year. I flew four times around the globe, 100,000 real miles. I’m flying almost every week. I’ve had a lot of other bags, but they don’t hold up like this one.”

Universal Travel Adapter

“Certain oddball countries have plugs that you have never seen before. [The Universal Travel Adapter] is really helpful when you have that. I’ve had a whole bunch of [travel adapters], and I think this one is the most universal.”

Owala FreeSip Water Bottle

“The top closes. All the cool kids have them!”

Uniqlo Ultra Light Down Jacket

“I’ve been wearing the Uniqlo Ultra Light Down for years. My boss in my last job, who traveled even more than I did, turned me on to it. I’ve been through multiple generations of them now, grown with them over 15 years. I always keep one in my bag; I have one in my bag right now. You can’t go wrong.”

Moleskine Classic Hardcover Pocket Notebook

“If I’m in a meeting and I need to take notes, it’s much more polite to take them in a notebook as opposed to typing them on my laptop or into my phone. [A notebook] really shows a sign of respect [and that] what you tell me is going to be important enough for me to write down.”

Haribo Goldbears

“[My favorite color] is the green.”

KINeSYS Fragrance Free Clear Spray Sunscreen

“Best sunscreen in the world. … Nobody’s ever heard of them, but it spreads really, really easily, and it’s not greasy. It’s hypoallergenic. It’s not gloppy. It’s transparent. Somebody will figure out how to market it, and it’ll do really well.”

Ultimate Ears WONDERBOOM 4 Portable Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker

“I spent the last 11 years, before I joined Airbnb, working mostly in Africa. … I spent long hours in the car, and being able to pull [this speaker] out and have a great jam was fun. You have fun with the driver and the local host, and it’s just a vibe.”

Bose QuietComfort Ultra Bluetooth Headphones

“Being on a plane and being able to remove that ambient sound, which is actually very loud, really makes a big difference. I listen to Spotify. I’ve got a couple of really long playlists. It’s pretty eclectic.”

Bracing for rough air ahead

Each of Utah’s 29 counties offers unique advantages for businesses and talent alike. Let’s visit Iron County.

Lund, Utah, is a ghost town. Thirty-three miles from Cedar City, it was once a train station stop for travelers on their way to Utah’s national parks. Today, there is a railroad sign and a single habitable house.

Grand County’s ‘highly commended’ film commission

The Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad, later Union Pacific, ran the line between Lund and Cedar City. Forty 11-passenger auto-stages ferried tourists closer to Utah’s natural wonders. The last passenger trains stopped in 1969, but rail lines have stayed relevant, attracting business to Iron County’s larger population areas like Cedar City.

In 2017, Danny Stewart, then the economic development director for Cedar City and Iron County, started to hear rumblings of “inland ports” in Salt Lake City. Knowing his county’s economy heavily relied on transportation infrastructure, the topic “instantly grabbed [his] attention.”

“Most of the success we’ve had in Cedar City, Iron County, was based on our geographic location. Proximity to major Western markets — one day’s trucking to LA and Phoenix — is a big deal,” he says, explaining that an inland port area, dedicated to improving and facilitating transportation, felt like the perfect fit for the county’s economic strategy and a needed upgrade for existing railroads.

A waterless port?

Even with roads and rail connecting Iron County to other economic centers, local manufacturing companies struggled to fully utilize the transportation options, specifically the railroad, because there was no way to move goods between road and rail.

“I would regularly get calls from companies throughout the region saying, ‘We need to unload something off the rail,’” Stewart recalls. “Transloading is something we seriously started looking at about the same time I was hearing talk of the inland port concept. I said, ‘It makes sense for us to do transloading here. I know there’s a business case for it. Would partnering with the Inland Port Authority help us?’ It certainly has.”

Since the Utah Inland Port Authority (UIPA) approved the Iron Springs Inland Port Project Area in 2023, two railroad transload facilities have opened for business. These facilities help local companies move steel, lumber, food-grade and fuel oils, and mined materials from train to truck and back again.

In the last two years, Stewart says BZI’s RailSync transload facility has processed 600 rail cars, unloading over 100 million pounds of materials. A recent press release states that RailSync has taken more than 2,500 inbound semi-truck loads off highways between Salt Lake City and Phoenix in that time. Transloading capabilities have already begun attracting companies and jobs to the area.

Transloading costs

Since helping launch the Iron Springs Inland Port Project Area, Stewart has transitioned into a new position as the associate VP for regional project area development with UIPA. In partnering with UIPA, Iron County’s inland port development is fast-tracked for success.

Under the jurisdiction of UIPA, instead of the county collecting 100 percent of all new taxes and distributing them regularly, the county will only collect 25 percent of the taxes on development in the area for 25 years. The other 75 percent goes to UIPA, which then returns it to businesses in the project area to assist them in development.

“We’re reinvesting it back into that area in the form of roads, water, sewer, fiber — whatever it takes to make it more valuable,” Stewart says. “At the end of 25 years, that new value will go back to the regular tax entities and our agreement ends.”

Although UIPA oversees 14 total project areas, all increased tax from the Iron Springs Inland Port Project Area stays in Iron County to support the community. There is no statewide pot for redistribution; everything is invested right where it was generated.

Use all available resources

David Johnson, the current economic development director for Cedar City and Iron County Economic Development, says the benefits of having the rural inland port in Iron County are unquantifiable.

“I don’t think any of that would have been possible had it not been for the Utah Inland Port Authority,” he says, explaining that he only sees current development and economic prosperity continuing to snowball.

One of the first companies to join the Iron Springs Inland Port Project Area was BZI Steel, a steel erector and fabricator that works on large building projects across the nation. Previously, BZI had been trucking steel to its fabrication shop in Cedar City but was in search of a better, more efficient mode of transportation.

Once initiating the property finding process, Drake Howell, project executive at BZI Innovation Park, says the company acquired 820 acres along the Union Pacific Railroad and began working with the county to build a transload operation.

“We’ve had a vision of developing the rest of the acreage out and making it available to other industries and manufacturers to attract them to Cedar City and Iron County, lifting the whole economy,” Howell says. “Our partnership with the Utah Inland Port Authority … stretches our dollars to make development of this scale possible.”

Phase one of the BZI Innovation Park was recently completed, opening 330 acres for business, including all utilities and roadways completed and operational. Howell says his team is excited to be in “full business recruitment mode,” but without UIPA’s support, the story could have been very different.

“If the port hadn’t been involved, there would likely be a BZI operation at some scale but probably just a private operation,” he says. “With the port, it has opened the door to serve not only BZI but the economy and public as a whole.”

Chugging toward the future

What began in the ’20s for tourism is now the basis for Iron County’s economic present and future.

The project area did not just happen, though. It took leaders like Stewart and community support. “Project areas are only established based on requests from the local communities, support from elected officials, and recommendations of economic development staff,” Johnson says. “UIPA allowed us to better tell our story of what a manufacturing hub we are and how diverse our economy is, even though we are historically a rural community.”

Amid controversy, inland ports begin construction this summer

How many networking events did you attend last year? Or last month? Or even last week? Emily Rushton takes meetings at coffee shops and restaurants at least 3-5 times a week and attends countless evening events, parties, presentations and community gatherings. “You should see my expenses,” she tells me. “I love it, though. It’s all in the name of connection.” While food easily breaks down barriers, Emily has perfected cutting to the chase when it comes to mingling on the go: accept the awkwardness. “A lot of people don’t like networking. It’s uncomfortable,” she says. “If I go into the room with that premise, I’m more confident. It’s not about what you say; it’s about the proactiveness.” Her basic guidelines are 1) don’t be a jerk, 2) don’t interrupt people, and 3) don’t make it about yourself.

What’s behind the Murphy Door?

Conversation starters

“Two truths and a lie is an excellent conversation starter with a newer, larger group of people. There are always those interesting facts that are impossible to forget.”

Selfies

“I have taken this shameless approach of just saying, ‘Let’s take a picture together!’ [Asking for a photo] is the biggest compliment.”

‘Hi’ (Hire Integrated) branded gift bags

“Gifting is high on my [list of love] languages, so I never like to go anywhere empty-handed and love leaving something physical behind with those I spend part of my day with. [It makes] networking so much more meaningful, and you have an opportunity to develop a relationship with that person.”

Colgate Max Fresh Wisp Disposable Mini Travel Toothbrushes

“You are a good person if you’re willing to tell someone they have something in their teeth. I always try to keep these around, especially before meetings.”

Olukai Women’s Ohana flip-flops

“Once I leave the house in the morning, I’m usually out all day in back-to-back events and in-person meetings, so these are critical for getting through the day. There have been many times when I forgot my flip-flops, and I’ve had to go buy flip-flops because I just cannot walk in heels that long.”

Sweet tea + other drinks to chat over

“I love me some Southern Breeze sweet tea, but I’ll reach for a good matcha green tea as well, or my everyday drink — Mixhers.”

The Conqueror

“My husband signed up, so I joined. We are doing the Lord of the Rings quest. We have other friends in our group and can see where they’re at on the map. It’s a great way to connect and bond with someone outside of business.”

American Heart Association

“My [American Heart Association] red dress pin is starting to make it on my blazer more often these days as I proactively look to raise funds and awareness for a cause near and dear to my family.”

The Other Place

“There is nothing pretentious about this place — just amazing Greek food that gives community vibes with warm smiles and familiar faces. Get the souvlaki plate!”

ClassDojo

“My son just started kindergarten. As a working mom, I love this app because they’ll post pictures with the kids throughout the day. If he’s being exceptional that day, I’ll get notifications. They have direct, immediate access to me and vice versa.”

How Emily Rushton founded Hire Integrated

Utah’s 29 counties each offer businesses and employees something different. Named the best state in the nation two years in a row, Utah’s varied counties provide opportunities for all. Let’s visit Grand County.

A historic Garfield industry rises from the ashes

A Q&A with Bega Metzner, director of the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission.

What are your days like as director of the Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission?

No two days are alike, ever. It’s a very inconsistent job because of the nature of the film industry. I’m basically a liaison between any type of media production and the [geographical] areas that I represent, which are Grand County and San Juan County. That is why it’s the “Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission,” or for more of a visual experience, “Thelma & Louise” to “Forrest Gump.” These filming locations have been used for filming for over 75 years. [We are] the longest ongoing film commission in the world; we started in 1949.

How did the film commission get started?

At first, it wasn’t funded through the county; it was donation-based and came from public demand. People wanted it as citizens because they saw John Ford [shooting films in the area] with this really cool guy named John Wayne. I think it is often forgotten that film and film history bridged an economic gap during the depression, making [Grand County] a viable area for a different type of economic impact.

The idea of a film commission came up [as a way to help film crews]. What are their needs? They need food. They need places to stay. Whatever the needs were then, I still deal with them today, just in a different way.

Today, I am funded by transient room taxes. I like to look at it in the business sense of things as a self-generating entity. It’s an allowable use for transient room taxes because it’s promoting the area. Any job that comes in here is feeding into that pot of transient room tax dollars, which would then fund the film commission.

What is the economic impact of the film commission on Grand County? How has that changed over time?

[The economic impact] is a blind spot. Films come here, but nobody sees them unless you’re driving up the river road and see all their trucks at their base camp. No one’s driving by a hotel and seeing all the cars in the lot with 110 people in four different hotels and going, “Oh, those must be film people,” unless they happen to know what a film truck looks like.

Some years are better than others, and some months are better than others. Can I tell you what’s going to come here next year? Can I tell you what my being at the Cannes Film Festival is going to bring in terms of ROI next year? No, I cannot. I’d love to say there was a math problem that you could just put it together, but the screen tourism part isn’t until after a movie comes out, when it gets recognized that that was Utah. Thelma & Louise Point is an actual location that used to be called Fossil Point. You can’t Google “Fossil Point” anymore. You have to Google “Thelma & Louise Point.” You know why that is? Screen tourism.

Often, it’s hard to distinguish between what comes in as a film production versus what comes in as screen tourism. A study from a couple of years ago said 37 percent of people come to Utah because they saw it in a movie. Utah locations are often used as doubles for other locations. We need to get the word out there that these movie scenes were filmed here!

Tell me about the award you recently won!

I go to the Cannes Film Festival because it’s a networking and marketing opportunity. A couple of weeks before, I saw that the 2025 Global Production Awards presented at Cannes would have a Film Commission of the Year award. I submitted in two separate categories with a lot of help from one of the producers and the production designer from “Horizon: An American Saga.”

Both submissions were shortlisted, and I was a finalist in both categories. I didn’t win [one of the categories. But for the other,] I was the only one who got a “highly commended” award, [which isn’t first place] but a huge honor. They literally made a specific award [just for me.] That’s a really big deal on a global stage. And for me, it felt like a really big deal because I was amongst strangers, but I was also amongst colleagues from film commissions from across the world.

What do you want filmmakers to know about Utah?

I went to Sundance six or seven years ago, and I met a German guy. He came to the space that I was [presenting in], and there was a looping reel [of Utah production locations]. I was like, “Look, that’s Utah. That’s Moab. That’s Moab. That’s Moab.” He said, “You mean, it’s real?” I said, “It’s three and a half hours down that way, I’ll take you!” [I want filmmakers to come] see Utah with their own eyes because it makes a difference. Every day has different weather. The cloud cover is different, and the contrast on the rocks is different. When there’s snow on the red rocks, it’s extraordinary, and it is real.

The show must go on: The economic impact of the relocated Ruth and Nathan Hale Theater

Once a month, Utah Business hosts Founder Friday, a free event that showcases the wisdom of Utah-based founders. In June, Kiln hosted a conversation between Utah Business Executive Editor Catherine Bennett and the CEO and Chairwoman of FJ Management Inc., Crystal Maggelet. This event was sponsored by Kiln and Northwestern Mutual. Here are a few takeaways from the conversation.

Finding yourself in the freezer aisle

1. Be confident. Stay committed.

Both of Maggelet’s parents taught her vital lessons that would stick with her throughout her career. Her mother was a businesswoman and a constant cheerleader, believing her daughter could do anything she put her mind to and instilling that confidence in her along the way.

Her father began his career at 24 and was also a lifelong entrepreneur. Unlike his modern counterparts, Maggelet says her father never considered selling the family business or going public.

“He was extremely committed,” Maggelet says. “Even in an era where people do that all the time, as the second generation, I have a huge desire to continue our legacy and our family, which I know I got from him.”

2. Ignore the naysayers.

When Maggelet came to Salt Lake to found the Crystal Inn Hotel & Suites, she says the rumor mill wasn’t always kind to her.

“‘She has no clue what she’s doing.’ ‘They’re gonna fail,’” Maggelet recalls. “Those were probably the biggest naysayers … in my life. … I’ve been deaf to naysayers [since] I got on my feet and became confident and failed a few times. … You can’t have other voices [telling] you that you’re not good enough. It’s just not productive.”

3. Step into your opportunities.

When Maggelet was 18, she became a board member of Flying J. She attended every quarterly meeting, even while at Harvard, and stayed up-to-date on company proceedings throughout the following years.

In 2008, the price of oil dropped and Flying J faced bankruptcy. Maggelet sat her family down and decided to leave and take at least the next six months to help in any way she could. Around three weeks later, she became CEO and has been ever since. A year and a half after that, the company came out of bankruptcy and paid everyone back plus interest.

“Opportunities don’t always come when you want them, or when you’re prepared. You have to step into them and embrace them and make them work.”

2023 Utah Business Leaders of the Year: Clark Ivory & Crystal Maggelet

Last month, Utah Business partnered with Live Nation to host a roundtable on community and employee engagement. This conversation was moderated by Roxann Smith, a women’s sports journalist.

Evolutions and strategies for revenue operations in 2025

How does your company invest in creating community goodwill through brand deals, corporate sponsorships and entertainment?

Nikki Walker | Founder | NWPR & Consulting

Figuring out what the North Star is for the organization and seeing how that aligns with potential sponsorships is important. When doing sponsorships, it’s also so important not to just slap your brand onto the back of something. That is not a partnership; that is an advertisement. Get out into the community. Figure out the ways that you can fit into that organization and provide value for your employees.

Cassie Meyers | COO & Managing Partner | Capita Financial Network

We like to partner with things of meaning and value to the community. Every once in a while, because wealth management isn’t a sexy industry, we like to do something fun and memorable. … I think it’s OK to negotiate those, and I think it’s OK to think outside the box. … We did that with Stadium of Fire. … We said, “We’ll be the main sponsor for the drone show.” It was such a cool moment because … you see this incredible drone show, and at the very end: “Brought to you by Capita.” They put our logo in the sky. I knew it worked because me and my business partners’ phones flooded. We nailed it.

What goes into your company’s decision-making process when choosing who to sponsor? Do they always align with your industry or do they sometimes branch out?

Kaili Spear | VP, Marketing | JobNimbus

Most of our partners and sponsorships have been mainly roofing industry-focused. We get to work with blue-collar trades, and our whole mission as a company is to make contractors heroes. We partner with distributors and manufacturers and roofing suppliers and fencing suppliers. … When I think of all the sponsors we have, [I’m focused on] what they are doing to help us make contractors’ lives easier. [Contractors are] very community-driven.

Stephanie Rendon | Sr. Director, Operations & Business Development | Beddy’s

Our customer is predominantly the mom in the home, so we market mostly to the mom. We hear customers often saying, “My husband’s not on board with the price tag.” … How do we get into a male-based audience? How do we get validity behind our product when we’re mostly online? … The sports world is huge for that. If you see the name of a company on the side of a ballpark, it immediately elevates the brand into a trusted place. … So we started conversations with [Miller Sports + Entertainment]. … We just made them our friends, and they loved us because we just didn’t go away. By the time they were ready [for sponsorships], there we were.

Sharlene Wells | SVP | Mountain America Credit Union

We actually separate our marketing dollars and our community engagement dollars. … I work very closely with the marketing department to see what they’re sponsoring, but they’re tied to ROI. We are not. … My whole philosophy with my team and community engagement is: What’s best for the community? … It’s not a big ROI at all, but that allows us to really put a focus on that community engagement.

Merry Osborne | Director, Marketing & Client Experience | Tanner LLC

With an accounting firm, they do an ROI. But we’re a relationship-driven firm. We focus on our relationships with our clients, which are very long-term. For sponsorships, we track not just our ROI, but also the data of what relationships are created. If a sponsorship has just a logo, that’s much less appealing than being able to attend something or be there with actual human beings.

Nate McDonald | Director, Government & Community Relations | Clyde Companies

At Clyde Companies, most of our work is business-to-business. We don’t do a lot of brand deals;

We do mostly corporate sponsorships, primarily for the community aspect. … When we do corporate sponsorships, so much of it is focusing on the priority of the community we’re trying to work with. That doesn’t always align with our industry. I think there’s an opportunity to recognize that their priority becomes our priority.

Trish Leishman | Sr. Marketing & Operations Manager | Alsco Uniforms

At Alsco Uniforms, we provide uniforms, linens, restroom supplies and first aid to all of the arenas we partner with. Not only do we partner with the teams, we also service all of the arenas and all of the major sports companies. Like Nikki was saying, rather than just placing your logo places, being able to have that partnership where you’re providing services on both sides is a priority of ours.

When is the right time to pursue corporate sponsorships?

Mary Stuart | Corporate Partnerships Strategist | Best Friends Animal Society

In 2016, we rolled out our no-kill initiative: to make the nation no-kill by 2025. Along with that, we had to start searching for companies that would help us push to get to a hundred percent. In 2018, we decided to build a pet resource center down in Bentonville, Arkansas, which helped build relationships with Walmart, getting them on our advisory committee. It’s been a long process of really nurturing those relationships, getting them involved at every level we can. That has led to this year being the first year they have ever brought on a partner like us and featured us in their stores. We are the first animal welfare nonprofit to ever be a part of Walmart, and it was extremely successful. … It’s taken a long time, but once we made this no-kill goal in 2016, we started aligning ourselves with brands that would help us achieve our mission. It’s really paying off.

Robyn Cohen | SVP | Universal Media

The right time to pursue corporate sponsorship would be now in this environment. [When corporations are] rolling back DEI initiatives and there is backlash against Pride month, these are the moments when corporate sponsorships mean everything. If you are part of a firm or a company that is brave enough and courageous enough to take a stand, those, to me, are the moments where corporate sponsorships really go a long way.

Nate McDonald | Director, Government & Community Relations | Clyde Companies

I would say never hesitate to ask for corporate sponsorships. Recognize that corporations do have timing: Budgets matter and when you ask matters. But for starting the relationship, the timing doesn’t matter. You want to do that whenever.

Kaili Spear | VP, Marketing | JobNimbus

If someone can pitch me an opportunity, small or big, and they can clearly identify, “This is the audience you’re going to be talking to and this is the kind of results we’ve seen in the past,” and it’s something that aligns perfectly with my goals, I have way more flexibility to say yes. … As we get to our bigger manufacturing and supplier partners, most of the time, the budget’s not the problem. It’s that they can’t add it to their own queue to do themselves. … If you can present something that’s 90 percent of the way there, that’s creative, that’s something they haven’t done before, most of the time it’s a yes.

Why do some partnerships fail despite being a good fit?

Sharlene Wells | SVP | Mountain America Credit Union

Lack of accountability. There are so many times when you have such high hopes that something is going to go well, but when you get to the end of the event or project, they just don’t provide the right report. They don’t show you the use of funds, and it’s hard to do it again. If people came better prepared with a pitch on the accountability side of things and follow through, I want to stay partners.

Trish Leishman | Sr. Marketing & Operations Manager | Alsco Uniforms

Open communication, making sure that partners understand what the deliverables are and that we understand how they’re going to be presented, that’s what really makes it work.

Jeff Call | Co-Founder & President | Just Ingredients

Ultimately, the accountability falls on you to make sure you’re having somebody in your company follow through on commitments, making sure that when you have a contract in place, you specify what you specifically want and hold [your partners] to that. … We had a partnership in another state and they promised us the world. … When we saw what they had actually done compared to what they pitched us, it was completely different. We said, “Hey, that’s not what we talked about.” We went through and they fixed it. It was no problem. But if we had not been involved, they would’ve done that all year long — for the length of the contract — and we would never have known. It’s up to us to make sure they keep their word.

How does social media influence partnerships, brand deals and overall brand relevancy?

Chris Meek | VP, Corporate Strategy & Brand Partnerships | Gabb

The influencer generation has made such a huge impact on our business. Within the first three years of our business, we could attribute a large percentage of our revenue to influencers on social media. That has shifted over the past couple of years because consumers are far more aware of influencers being paid or commissioned to promote a product. We had to pivot on how we look at social media affiliates and influencers. If we’re focusing on the influencer that has hundreds of thousands or a million-plus followers, we notice that our engagement and our conversion isn’t as productive anymore. Finding the real moms and the people who are authentic, that’s really where we get the benefits.

Stephanie Rendon | Sr. Director, Operations & Business Development | Beddy’s

Beddy’s was built on social media influencing. Our founding owner is still an influencer with a really large audience. She continues to be our most powerful influencer for Beddy’s products, and not because of her audience or her following, but because she’s authentically talking about the product. … We’ve had to look for those more impactful, smaller audiences.

Mary Stuart | Corporate Partnerships Strategist | Best Friends Animal Society

On our end as a nonprofit, we sometimes will get companies approaching us that want to work with us because they want to leverage our audience. That can get really tricky because we are mission first. We are totally open and try to be really upfront [about our standards]. We can do social media with you, but it has to be organic toward both of our brands. We have to approve this and make sure that it’s not just a big advertisement toward our audience.

When should a company reevaluate its entertainment or sponsorship strategy?

Nikki Walker | Founder | NWPR & Consulting

It’s all relevance. … I can remember doing sponsorships and not being able to fill a table. There might be a reason to reevaluate that partnership if you can’t get the interest and the engagement from the people you’re trying to engage with the partnership.

Merry Osborne | Director, Marketing & Client Experience | Tanner LLC

Even when it’s going well, we [reevaluate]. We reevaluate partnerships every year if it’s a return sponsorship. … We will have people who are the champions of a sponsorship present on it to our partner-director group about what the sponsorship meant to the company that year. Even when it’s going well, having that kind of analysis and that data is positive.

How can companies make smarter, more strategic choices when deciding who to partner with?

Cassie Meyers | COO & Managing Partner | Capita Financial Network

When we decided to go to market and spend our dollars, we wanted to be more than just financial planners. We wanted to engage in the community and truly help. … We’ve decided to do a great big event for women in business. Then we helped with Show Up for Teachers. We’ve helped nurses, and we’ve helped mental health. … We had Intermountain Healthcare approach us and ask if we would give free education to their employees. We said, “Sure.” … Then we had [requests to] help retirees. We’re like, “Yeah. We’ll spend an hour with them.” What looked like sunk dollar costs … became our biggest growth moments. … As you’re analyzing your numbers and your data, what you think might not work is the exact thing that will work. Sometimes, just putting good karma out there with no expectation of return is actually where your return comes from.

Robyn Cohen | SVP | Universal Media

I’m always trying to think of ways I can add more value to the advertisers we’re working with. A lot of our media assets are in retail environments, so there is an opportunity to do something onsite that can provide additional ROI to campaign funds. On the event side of things, … you need to make sure that the experience is worth the sponsorship. Make them as mission-driven as possible.

Chris Meek | VP, Corporate Strategy & Brand Partnerships | Gabb

At Gabb, whenever we attach a social initiative or community-driven impact piece to what we’re doing, those become our biggest moments in growth. Strategically, you have to think about both. Here’s the financial impact, and here’s the community impact. If you marry those, it’s always resulted in greater returns for us.

Jeff Call | Co-Founder & President | Just Ingredients

It comes down to what you’re wanting to accomplish. … Our whole mission is to educate first. Products only, in reality, help us with our goal of educating. We want to help people become healthier and live healthier, happier lives. … We look at who’s the best person to work with or the best group to work with. The Jazz are great, but ultimately, it’s about getting our name in front of people so they become interested in who we are. It doesn’t really matter from that perspective. It could be anything.

Click, watch, buy

In a world where most CEOs have corner offices, Jeremy Barker has hidden ones — tucked behind bookshelves that open with the pull of “The Art of War” or the nudge of “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” As the mastermind behind Murphy Door, Barker spends his days helping people conceal everything from panic rooms to potato chip hoards. “Basically, I make it harder for your kids to steal your Oreos,” he explains with a grin. But Barker isn’t content merely helping people disguise their rooms — he’s on a mission to unlock business potential wherever he finds it. Between refining factory workflows, inventing ladders, creating software and dispensing entrepreneurial wisdom on his “90 Proof Wisdom” podcast, he embodies his own philosophy: “I don’t just open doors; I create them — and sometimes walk into them.” With the same planning that goes into designing the perfect hidden passage, Barker is proving that in business, as in architecture, the most transformative opportunities are often the ones hiding in plain sight.

“The Game” podcast by Alex Hormozi

“No fluff, just straight-to-the-point business advice that actually moves the needle. If you’re serious about scaling, this one is a must.”

Murphy Ladder

“Running commercial properties and factories means I’m always fixing, adjusting or checking something out of reach. This ladder folds small, fits anywhere and is a lifesaver for a guy who never sits still.”

Roborock Q5 Max+ Robot Vacuum Cleaner with Auto-Empty Dock

“It’s not glamorous, but it saves me from wasting time cleaning up the office or my home. More time thinking, less time sweeping — that’s a win.”

Milwaukee Clear Safety Glasses Fog-Free Lenses

“Not something you’d expect a CEO to need, but I still love jumping in and modifying equipment at the factory. Hands-on work keeps me connected to the process.”

Generac Home Standby Generator with Wifi Connectivity

“Power outages don’t care if you have deadlines or food in the fridge. Whether it’s keeping my businesses running during an emergency or making sure my family has what they need, backup power is essential.”

Elite Gourmet Classic Stovetop Coffee Percolator

“My coffee setup is old-school, and I like it that way. No fancy espresso machines — just strong, chewable coffee that gets me through the day.”

Otter.ai

“This thing transcribes my meetings, voice notes and brainstorm sessions instantly. I can just talk out my thoughts while driving and … organize them later. Every executive should be using this.”

Signature Refreshment and Safe Room Murphy Doors

“Security and peace of mind are underrated until you need them. Whether it’s protecting valuables, favorite drinks or having a storm-safe shelter, these doors give homeowners an extra layer of protection they don’t even know they need — until they do.”

Evernote Scannable

“I’m always scribbling ideas in my Moleskin notebook or signing contracts on the go. This app turns any document into a digital file instantly, which means I can keep everything organized without losing important paperwork in the black hole that is my truck.”

A brief tour of Brandon Fugal’s office: Movie props, rare books and other oddities

Chief Administrative Officer | Nursa

in/jared-roberts-8bb43223

At Nursa, Jared Roberts is credited with driving a culture of innovation and efficiency. Since joining in 2022, he has played a crucial role in bolstering Nursa’s mission of ensuring there is a nurse at the bedside of every patient in need. By implementing strategic metric tracking and goaling initiatives, Jared has guided Nursa through its largest growth period to date.

Jared has been instrumental in forging impactful partnerships to enhance Nursa’s two-sided marketplace, benefiting both healthcare facilities and clinicians. By creating Nursa’s advisory council, he ensures continuous product and service improvement guided by stakeholder input.

His leadership style emphasizes clear expectations and open communication, encouraging collaboration and trust. Jared believes in iterative learning, allowing teams the space to shape and bring the company’s vision to life. His focus on mentorship is deeply rooted in recognizing potential and cultivating diverse perspectives among mentors, benefiting from their unique insights and challenges.

Jared’s impact is evident not just in his work but in the relationships he cultivates at Nursa and beyond, leaving a lasting impression on those around him. His commitment to creating sustainable improvements ensures his contributions resonate through the industry and into the broader community.

SVP, Sales Operations | Trucordia

in/brookedewyze

Brooke K. DeWyze is a formidable leader in the insurance industry, with three decades of experience shaping strategic growth and fostering innovation. Now serving as SVP of sales operations at Trucordia — following her tenure as chief development officer — Brooke leverages her extensive expertise in M&A to drive the company’s geographic expansion and strategic development.

Her approach integrates collaboration with agency owners, bankers and the Trucordia team, nurturing a harmonious, growth-oriented business environment. In 2024 alone, she guided Trucordia through more than 20 significant transactions, creating a sustainable pipeline aligned with the company’s accelerated growth strategy.

Dedicated to mentorship, particularly for women in insurance, Brooke advocates for empowering future leaders by fostering environments where diverse perspectives are honored. Her initiatives extend to community engagement through education on financial literacy and leadership development. Brooke believes in leaving a legacy that transcends the organizational confines by shaping sustainable, scalable systems.

Navigating personal and professional challenges, she’s cultivated resilience and empathy, especially as a Certified Mental Health First Aider. Brooke’s philosophy emphasizes growth, integrity and the intentional development of teams. Her balanced leadership style demonstrates that success is not just about professional achievements but also about the freedom to inspire future generations within her industry and beyond.