Ingram's August 2022

Stephanie Riven The Riven Company St. Louis

Kirk Presley Presley & Presley Kansas City

The desire to do good comes to many who succeed in business. The tools to act on that desire can be harder to come by. In too many cases, Stephanie Riven can tell you, “They don’t really have the knowledge and experience

It came to Kirk Presley in a flash during a high-school field trip to observe oral arguments in a case before the Missouri Southern District Court of Appeals. “I knew that day that the law would be my career,” says Presley. A Springfield

native, he earned his degree in business administration from hometown Drury University in Springfield, recognizing its value as a stepping stone. “I felt a business degree would give me some insight on running a successful legal practice,” he says. He eventually decided that he would wield his law degree in the rigorous competition of litigation. “It isn’t for the faint of heart, particularly the kind of practice I have, which deals with severe and disabling injuries as well as wrongful death,” Presley says. “It’s never good news that someone needs my help, but I always felt I could give my clients one less thing to worry about by making a significant financial recovery for their benefit.” In addition to his legal practice, he sits on the Appellate Judicial Commission, tasked with delivering to the governor its recommendations of three candidates for any appellate or Supreme Court vacancy, and he’s also volunteered time with the Victim’s Compensation Fund. “Our obligation as lawyers doesn’t end in the courtroom,” Presley says. “It seems as if we, as a profession, are constantly combating a negative perception, and I believe the more we do in the community, the greater our inroads at turning that belief around.”

to work on it. They know the product development side, they understand things on the non-profit side and the delivery side, but they’re not as good at building the infrastructure, the business side of a non-profit.” Helping them attain that kind of sustainability is now her mission with the consultancy she operates in St. Louis. Riven’s is a name familiar to many in the arts community there. Outside the billionaire-philanthropist space, she may have done more to elevate appreciation for the arts in St. Louis than anyone else. She was the first director of COCA, the Center of Creative Arts, and over the course of 23 years there, took an $85,000 budget and built it into a regional force; today, it’s the fifth-largest multidisciplinary community arts center in the country, serving 50,000 kids. She moved to New York for a spell, then returned in 2010 and launched her firm. Riven grew up in Nashville in what she calls “a family of leaders,” and they provide the inspiration and guidance for her own leadership goals. “We have a great tradition of philanthropy in St. Louis,” she says. “This community is extremely generous and interested in bringing stability and quality to these organizations.”

Fred Ross Custom Truck One Source Kansas City

Shelley Seifert First Bank Creve Coeur

Creating a business environment with a family feel wasn’t the biggest challenge Fred Ross has ever undertaken: His parents had 12 kids, and nine of them have been part of Custom Truck One Source as employees, owners, or both

Why banking? Let Shelley Seifert walk you back on her career path: “Banking just resonated,” she says. “It represented a wonderful blend of finance, people, strategy, and community.” Notice anything missing in there? None of those factors

since he co-founded it with a business partner in 1996. Today, it’s a $1.6 billion publicly owned titan of construction and earth-moving heavy equipment, with Ross as its CEO. But neither the company nor his career have been overnight successes. As a kid, he spent plenty of time, with occasional chores, at his grandfather’s gas station, became a partner in it at age 18 after the elderly man’s death, then expanded into towing services, salvaging trucks for repair resale, then selling trucks and parts. Building from almost nothing and doing it with family, Ross says, “Teaches you a sense of family and drive. And not to accept no or failure. Having a close-knit family, that’s a big deal.” Why? “Everybody had a job and did that job; that’s the main thing. They understood and worked as a team because work was an extension of family. At some companies, they struggle to work with family; we didn’t have that problem—as a matter of fact, it’s our greatest strength.” Last year, the Ross family enterprise was acquired for $1.47 billion by Nesco Holdings, a public company that kept the Custom Truck brand. Other than that, he says, not much has changed, other than “now, I have to deal with investors, not bankers.”

involve personal gain, rank, or status. The latter were products of a focus on the former. That’s something one might expect from a community banker working for family ownership four generations deep—even if First Bank, where she’s chairman and CEO, is a tad larger than most community banks, with $6.9 billion in assets. A St. Louis native, she worked at large banks throughout the Ohio Valley until 2014, when First Bank’s Dierberg family came calling and made her COO, and three years later, gave her the keys. Her value set runs right back to lessons from Mom, “who believed anything was possible,” Seifert says. “My brother and I grew up understanding the importance of supporting the community in which we lived and cultivating relationships. We learned at an early age the importance of giving back and being grateful for what we have.” Perhaps as never before, the community-banking dynamic has come shining through since the pandemic onset, which, she says, especially with the Paycheck Protection Program and its small-business impact. “It was natural for the community banks to lead this effort,” Seifert says, “because we know our clients and our communities well and are structured to build relationships rather than conduct transactions.”

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