Business Person of the Year 2010
Pamela J. Year verbally chisels out one point crystal clear: Mankato-based MRCI WorkSource is a $46 million private nonprofit business. It has never been nor will ever be a government agency. MRCI WorkSource’s 335 paid staff members create innovative employment programs for more than four thousand people with disabilities.
Sleepy Eye: Railway Bar & Grill – Dan and Sue Helget had their open house for Railway Bar & Grill at 300 First Avenue North about a year ago.
New Ulm: The Splendid Nest – Kathleen Connell recently opened The Splendid Nest at 210 North Minnesota in the former Grand Hotel.
New Ulm: European Antiques – Aini Isaksson was born in Hosko, Finland, and early on with her parents moved to Sweden. In time, she owned a cleaning business there.
Business Person of the Year 2010 – Runner-Up
Jerry Dulas is much more comfortable moving dirt from the seat of an excavator cab than sitting at an office table answering a magazine writer’s questions. That’s why his daughter, Tanya Pierce, offered to buffer the experience by joining in the interview. It was Tanya who nominated her father for Connect Business Magazine Business Person of the Year 2010, somewhat to his dismay.
Business Person of the Year 2010 – Runner-Up
In roundabout fashion, sour has become deliciously sweet for Bryan Sweet. To begin, when he was only age four, his father and mother’s marriage soured down in Blue Earth. Then Dad decided to live much closer to Mankato and would not utter another word to Bryan the rest of his life. It was painful.
Waseca: Waseca Enews – Waseca Enews launched on August 11 webcasting print, video, and audio over its WasecaEnews.com website.
Garden City: Red Barn Retreats – Shelley and Marty Leenhouts began Red Barn Retreats on August 22 with a well-attended grand opening.
Mankato: Vanderberg Clean – You could almost say Joshua Vanderberg has cleaning supplies coursing through his veins.
If not for being shaped and sharpened by challenge after challenge, Brett and Dynette Niebuhr almost certainly wouldn’t have had the background or passion to start Wells-based B&D Metal Works—let alone grow and adapt it so well—to serve the metal working needs of Upper Midwest customers.
“Many businesses manufacture hardware, many produce software; we do both,” said Mark Gaalswyk, owner and CEO of Easy Automation, Inc. “Our business hits dead center on the line where those two meet.”
CEO of $2.5 billion Fairmont corporation ranked No. 184 on Forbes 500 listing of privately owned businesses.
A Mankatoan, upon first learning of Rosen’s Diversified and its $2.5 billion beef processing and agriculture-related corporate empire, likely would begin thinking of Chief Executive Officer Tom Rosen as the “Glen Taylor of Fairmont.”
Brothers help third-generation, 300-employee, Mankato family business expand into national entity.
Lewis and Clark, Simon and Garfunkel, Brooks and Dunn, Procter and Gamble, Currier and Ives, Gilbert and Sullivan. Each male duo noted above has at least one attribute shared with the others: each developed (or has developed) synergies from their partnership to accomplish much more than each person could have individually.
