Ingram's May 2024

MARJORIE POWELL ALLEN POWELL GARDENS

JERRY REECE REECENICHOLS

DAVE RUF BURNS & MCDONNELL

Before she left us all too soon at the age of 63, back in 1992, Marjorie Po well Allen was a trailblazer in an era sociologists refer to as the second wave

Connect the dots between a ruptured water-storage tank and a Kansas City real-estate empire: The line runs right to Jerry Reece, who moved here with his

“On a farm,” Dave Ruf once told us, “you get all kinds of responsibilities at a young age. And if anything breaks, you’ve got to fix it.” Well, in 1985,

of the feminist movement. Born in the same decade that saw American women granted the right to vote, she grew up to be a force in education, philanthropy, business and, yes, marriage and motherhood. Her father, George Powell, had been president of Yellow Freight, and the family had sufficient means to donate the land that would, through her vision, energy and leadership, become Powell Gardens southeast of Kansas City. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physical education and recreation, she taught high school and college classes, raised two daughters, and became president of the Powell Family Foundation. She also founded the Women’s Employment Network and co-founded the Central Exchange.

wife after their cattle ranch lost its water supply. A rancher instinctively knows the land; Reece would quickly embrace the sale of it—in large quantities. After starting his big-city career with the Kroh Brothers, he bought that brokerage’s residential real estate division in 1987, and J.D. Reece Realtors was born. It didn’t take long to assert its place in the hierarchy of residential realty firms. By 2002, he merged with the legendary J.C. Nichols Residential Real Estate to form Reece & Nichols, consistently among the top brands in regional home sales. After signing on as part of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway empire, he became chairman emeritus. His extensive board history includes the UMKC trustees, trade associations, Commerce Bank, the American Cancer Society and many others.

things at Burns & McDonnell were as close to broken as they could be under the ownership of Armco Steel. The number of engineers there had plunged by half under 14 years of Armco management. Drawing on his farm-boy roots, Ruf fixed it, putting together a leadership team that ponied up a significant amount of capital—and personally risked going without paychecks if it didn’t take off under employee own- ership. By 2002, when he hit the mandatory retirement age of 65, Burns & McDonnell had charged back to become the region’s second-largest design firm. It was then positioned for a series of all-star CEOs to step in and, most recently, have hit No. 1 on the region’s list of top engineering employers as a global powerhouse in de sign, engineering and construction.

BETSEY SOLBERG FLEISHMAN HILLARD

DAVID STANLEY PAYLESS CASHWAYS

JIM STOWERS AMERICAN CENTURY/THE STOWERS INSTITUTE

After 30 years of helping build Fleish- man Hillard’s Kan sas City office into the regional leader, Solberg retired but was called back before long after a

Before there were big-box home-im- provement ware houses on the scale we know today, there was Payless Cashways in Kansas City. At one point,

He was a World War II aviator who thought about fol- lowing his grand father and father as doctors. Instead, Jim Stowers opted to serve small in-

series of leadership changes. But there was always more to her than the day job. For starters, she held leadership roles on behalf of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce and the Area Development Council, duties that reinforced what she’d learned about the quality of the executive workforce in Kansas City. “What you see in Kansas City is a level of CEO who cares a lot about the quality of life and a willingness to have not quite the ROI personally, in order to make sure there’s a finer quality of life for their employees, neighbors, stakeholders, even competitors,” she once told us. “I believe that is part of what sets Kansas City apart from all others.” She also has held board seats for Midwest Airlines, the UMKC Foundation and Ferrellgas.

before Home Depot even existed and Lowe’s was a regional enterprise in the Carolinas, Payless Cashways was the third largest enterprise of its kind. After taking the reins in April 1980, David Stanley positioned the company for new markets and bigger things, hoping to capture both the bigger-city weekend DIY crowd as well as the professional contractors and rural buyers who frequented its sprawling lumber yards. Revenues shot past $1.2 billion and the plan was working—until a hostile takeover prompted Stanley to take the company private in 1988. The debt from that proved unmanageable, and Payless Cashways descended toward bankruptcy. Stanley resigned in 1998, a year after it filed for Chapter 11 protection.

vestors, pooling $100,000 from two dozen shareholders to form Twentieth Century Investments in 1958. Nearly 40 years later, it was a regional and national power in wealth management, and with a new century approaching, it rebranded as American Century. But his impact would go much further before his death in 2014: As cancer survivors, he and his wife, Virginia, donated the vast majority of their $2 billion fortune to create the Stowers Institute for Medical Research. That helped put Kansas City squarely on the map for U.S. biomedical research, creating critical mass that has drawn additional life-sciences investment, rese arch acumen and executive leadership to the region.

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