Ingram's August 2022

Peg Griswold MTM St. Louis

Bob Gilbert Bartlett & West Jefferson City

Problem-solving as a skill presented itself to Bob Gilbert when he was growing up in Cedar Hill., Mo., and observed how his father practiced it as an engineering technician dealing with electrical systems. The intrigue deepened in high school, under the influence of teachers and

Peg Griswold is living proof that in business anyway, the sequel can be a much bigger hit. After the widowed Topeka retiree reconnected with Lynn Griswold, an old high school friend, and married him in 1993, they

founded Medical Transportation Management in St. Louis in 1995. Transitioning away from her duties as MTM’s chairman, she leaves behind the largest woman-owned company in town, with their children as owners. “Lynn and my legacy will forever be to show that in America, an average couple who only have a small savings of seed money, but an attitude of working long, hard hours, maintaining a desire to only offer integrity and a quality product, could fulfill their desire to provide for their family and grow their business beyond their expectations,” Griswold says. Their initial $10,000 CD has blossomed into a corporate value of $1 billion. “We provided the start-up framework, the direction, established core values, developed the people-first culture and the hands-on example of leadership,” she says. “We were then smart enough to pass the torch to the bright, fresh, energetic, fearless, and innovative second generation (including daughter Alaina Macia, the CEO) who ran with that opportunity. We are proud to say that to this day, MTM faithfully improves health outcomes, removes community barriers, and promotes independence.”

guidance counselors. “Problem-solving was something in my nature and something I was pretty good at in school,” says Gilbert, chief operations officer for Bartlett & West’s Jefferson City office. And as a high-school distance runner, logging 70 miles a week, he incorporated aspects of the “determination and perseverance that are absolutely part of who I am today.” After picking up his civil engineering degree from Mizzou, he spent seven years with HNTB in the Kansas City area before jumping to Topeka-based B&W. Along the way, he was exposed to projects in roads, water systems, waste/stormwater, and water-resources development from collaborations with state transportation projects. A road that crosses a bridge, after all, touches on issues of a drainage system, bridging, water quality, bioretention, wetlands, and other disciplines. “It’s not just lines, grades, and simple geometry; it’s more tied to the environment, with lots of different possible solutions where I could be more creative,” he says. He also helps smaller communities find solutions to intractable problems of aging infrastructure and sparse populations to finance repairs.

Steven Harris RubinBrown St. Louis

Elizabeth Kennedy Missouri Western State University St. Joseph Elizabeth Kennedy was drawn to psychology by the mystery of the human brain. In higher education, though, she’s shaping minds, not just studying them. As president of Missouri Western, she leads an undergraduate

Engineering was the original plan when Steven Harris set foot on the campus of the University of Missouri-St. Louis. Then a fun thing happened. No, not a funny thing, a fun thing. “I took some accounting

classes, and had this great professor, David Ganz, who made it fun and practical,” says Harris says the managing partner for the RubinBrown accounting firm. “Learning that, and applying it at home with the family business, made me think this is something I wanted to do. The courses were more collaborative, compared to engineering, and I loved working with people.” Harris is a St. Louis native who grew up watch ing the way his father comported himself running a drapery installment business, and some of the lessons learned then inform his leadership today. “I got to watch him develop a strong work ethic and strong network, work with people, see how he treated people, his humility,” Harris says. “It taught me that you have to be a servant leader, lead from the heart, lead with empathy, and if you do, good things will come to you.” In his case, good things also flowed from a stable of mentor ing influences at the firm, where he started as an intern and never strayed. “I look back at every stage of my career, and someone at the firm was encouraging me along the way,” Harris says.

enrollment of nearly 4,400 students—many of whom helped lure her here from Ohio two years ago. “Once I interacted with the students, faculty, and staff, I knew I needed to become part of this amazing university,” she says, and having been raised in Kansas City—she’s a Ruskin High grad—was also a bonus. “The opportunity to come home to Missouri was just too great to pass; I am much closer to family, and that means the world to me,” Kennedy says. Her attraction to higher education was part of a lifelong pursuit for understanding. “I have always been a ‘why’ person; even as a little girl, I can remember wanting to understand human behavior,” she says. “Learning, memory, language, problem-solving, creativity, perception, emotional regulation—exploring how our brains engage in such complex functioning, and many times without conscious direction to do so, has always been fascinating to me.” Her journey through various administrative roles at other colleges, she says, “provided opportunities to enhance my administrative skills and, most importantly, develop my own vision for and philosophy of the role of higher education in our society.”

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