Ingram's May 2024

50 Who Shaped Kansas City, 1974-2024

And, yes, we know: Any examination going back to an American era that no longer exists will, by definition, produce a field of honorees that doesn’t look like the Kansas City business class today. Again, not to twist anyone off, but we think the contributions of those who paved the way for a region’s success are worth remem bering. We’re well aware of equity and inclusion and when deliberating over the selection of this group, folks will notice the absence in equity including color and gender. We’re reporting it as we see it based purely on contributions from the absolute most productive and achieved over the course of the last half a century. It’s largely a different list from the 20 Ingram’s Legends you will see beginning on page 19 of this issue; that’s because the lat ter feature is devoted to the folks who—still living—are approaching the end of their ca reers, if not already retired. Ingram’s editors name Legends every five years. This group of stars are, in our eyes, the brightest over the past half a century. We hope you’ll agree. Please enjoy what our editors will agree may be the most challenging selec tion process of the three decade our team has published Ingram’s . Enjoy !

The dictionary definition of “melee” reads thusly: “A struggle. Especially: a hand- to-hand fight among several people.” That’s about as close as we’ll come to describing the process that produced this half-century take on the most influential business figures in Kansas City. Right up front, let’s agree: There will be no agreement. If you asked nearly 70,000 monthly readers to produce such a list, you’d probably get nearly 70,000 lists of varying degree. It’s never a pleasant con versation when a group of editors must to some extent subjectively assess relative levels of influence in collection of talent this big, even when some objective mea sures are available. For starters, the candidate pool was more than 250 deep. That’s a standard Pa reto distribution: 20 percent of those being considered will make it, and 80 percent won’t. We don’t do this to hurt the feelings of anyone not included here. But we do see a value in helping our readership—espe cially those who haven’t been part of the regional business scene for most of those years—understand how this city’s business ecosystem developed, and who played the biggest parts in that.