Ingram's March 2023

Richard Stinnett BTCO Inc., Wichita Finding good employees is a challenge for any company, but one Kansas organization has found success by tapping into the historically underemployed population of individuals with disabilities. Richard Stinnett is president of the non-profit BTCO, which provides digital document conversion,

John Stilwell Grant Thornton LLP, Fairway It may be hard for everyone to see the line that connects John Stilwell’s degree in mechanical engineering from K-State and his current career at Grant Thornton, one of the leading independent audit, tax, and advisory firms. But it makes sense to him. “In both fields, you’re supporting large-scale projects

open-source web research, and precise tolerance engineering plot printing for commercial, government, and military clients. Serving everyone from the Air Force to public school districts, Stinnett has been with BTCO (which also serves as a support organization to the Cerebral Palsy Research Foundation of Kansas) for nearly 18 years, helping it grow from one office in Wichita with eight employees to three locations (Wichita and Topeka) and 56 staff members. “There is no better testament than to have someone join our team, gain marketable skills and confidence, and to move on to a bigger and better opportunity with one of our local companies,” he says. Originally from northern California, Stinnett spent a couple of early years in Wichita and returned after a career in the Army to work as an IT consultant. He’s proud of not only the work done at BTCO but also the strides the team has made to ensure they’re inclusive of all people—and always people-focused. “As an IT tech and consultant, my role often engineered people out of the equation to gain efficiencies,” he said. “But through my role … we strive to engineer the equation around our people.”

and working alongside clients to achieve their goals,” he said. “Consulting work is highly dependent on in-depth problem-solving skills, which are very common in engineering disciplines. Plus, both are challenging careers that require extensive knowledge of the industry you’re operating in—and I’ve always enjoyed a challenge.” When Stilwell graduated, he said large consultancies were looking for candidates with technical backgrounds—and his skills translated well. “There has never been a day where I’ve looked back or wanted to do something else.” Now serving as a principal at the firm, Stilwell has more than 20 years of consulting experience in areas such as enterprise applications, cloud solutions, data governance and more, and has written more than 20 publicized white papers and methodologies. Still, the Shawnee Mission East grad tries to always remember his Fairway roots and follow the advice of a sign he keeps on his desk: “It says that great leaders lead by example, drive the culture, share the vision, lead with optimism, connect with their team, focus on the process, continuously improve, and stay humble and hungry.”

Tony Szot Superior Excel, Hoisington In the wide-open, sparsely populated stretches of Kansas, it can be tough for employers to find talent. Manufacturers, though, know that the workforce in smaller communities is precisely what they need to operate at higher levels of productivity. But distance is no shelter from broader

Drew Talbott Acension Via Christi, Pittsburg One might think an organization with a third of a billion dollars in annual revenue has got it made. Drew Talbott can tell you that it’s not about the money: It’s about the sector. And his is acute health-care delivery in Pittsburg, an increasingly challenging field for a community hospital with 76 beds. Ascension Via Christi’s

facility there plays a significant role in the economy of Pittsburg as an employer as well as a health-care provider, with nearly 3,300 annual patient discharges and close to 12,000 patient days logged. Talbott, who holds a master’s degree in health science administration from Southwest Baptist University, is at the forefront of the battle for community hospitals to remain relevant. His, in fact, was something of a white knight that rode into Fort Scott, 30 miles to the north, to help plug a gap after the closing of Mercy Hospital there in 2018. Mercy officials agreed to keep at least the emergency room open until Ascension could secure licensing to step in. Here’s what was at risk had that not happened: Over the next two years, more than 16,000 emergency room patients were treated at that site, which also conducted more than 20,000 imaging studies and 54,000 lab tests. In an interview last year, Talbott said that expanding services beyond those wouldn’t be possible without additional funding, either federal or from local taxpayers. “We accepted the community’s invitation to serve because ensuring Kansans’ access to care is in keeping with our mission as a non-profit Catholic health care system,” he said.

national workforce trends, which is what compelled Tony Szot, plant manager for Superior Excel, to plead his case for city assistance with workforce child-care needs. In his pitch before the City Council last spring, Szot addressed not only the needs of roughly 220 employees but the plant itself, where 25 open positions were straining the production scheduling effort. And that was before an additional 25 spots were expected to come online following a plant expansion. “We can’t get people to work the night shift,” he told the council. “One of those reasons, I assume, is because the night shift is where the inexperienced, young people go to earn their tenure before a day shift spot opens up. These are the people with children.” The irony is that manufacturing jobs pay quite well; the majority of openings when Szot made his appeal paid between $50,000 to $62,000 per year. “If we continue to have trouble getting people to fill positions,” Szot cautioned, “my fear with Superior Essex being a big corporation is they will take the equipment and move it where they can find employees.”

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