Ingram's May 2024

Don Ahnger The success equation for Don Ahnger was both simple and elegant: “Living by God’s Golden Rule,” he says, “as well as working smart have been keys to my long success.” Both of those aspects were on display during his decades of leadership at Midway Ford Truck Center in Kansas City. Not only was it the first Ford Motor Co. truck franchise, it’s a consistent win ner of the company’s top performance awards. Ahnger’s value proposition had something to do with that: He was running the show in 1982 when Midway Ford adopted an employee stock-ownership plan. That covers both the notion of treating others as you’d have them treat you and working smart. The thing is, the first ESOP in the U.S. didn’t come along until 1956, and even 25 years later, they still hadn’t caught fire in corporate America. They did at Midway. “I took responsibility for researching ESOPs and helping Midway Ford Truck Center be approved as a very rare Ford dealership ESOP,” he recalls. “Midway’s ESOP helped our dealership become one of Ford’s most successful truck dealerships in the world,” he notes, and proudly declares that its growth continues today. Ahnger is an Illinois native who grew up in the small town of Spring Valley, working evenings at the local drug store while in high school. “I gained a work ethic from my high school years which would carry throughout my active business career,” he says. “I also remained active in my family church (The United Church of Christ) through my high school years.” After graduating from the University of Texas in 1966, he signed up with what was then Ernst & Ernst in its audit department. There, he was actively involved in auditing client businesses, providing busi ness suggestions, and overseeing client feedback. That led to a gig with a Ford dealership in Texas and eventually to Midway. The roadway wasn’t without occasional obstructions. “One of our franchises was lost in the late 1980’s when Volvo discon tinued a brand Midway had represented,” he remembers. “We decided to fight for a just legal settlement with Volvo, which we used to expand Midway’s main facility and workforce.” Though retired and spending the bulk of his time out of state, Ahnger makes occasional trips back in his capacity as Mid way’s board chairman. He tips his hat for the firm’s continuing success to Trey Meyer, who stepped in after Ahnger’s retire ment and has turned it into a billion-dollar revenue enterprise for those employee-owners.

Betty Drees For someone who didn’t set out to become an executive level administrator, Betty Drees sure has relished the challenge. Of course, it helps to be effective in those leadership roles. For 13 years she was dean of the School of Medicine at UMKC, step ping down from that position in 2014. Then, in 2018, the leader ship itch presented again, and Drees scratched it as president of the Graduate School for Kansas City’s Stowers Institute for Medical Research. Neither role was about her career ambitions; both came in response to need. “I don’t know that it was a conscious decision to go into ad ministration,” she says. “It was more a matter of things needed to be done and a desire to be part of the decision-making pro cess to improve systems and outcomes, and that naturally draws you into administration. It was more an organic evolution.” That was particularly true at UMKC, where she found that when tasks needed doing, other administrators would fre quently sound her out. But she also experienced the pull earlier in her career, working at the VA Medical Center and then on the University of Kansas School of Medicine faculty. That’s how she became chief of medicine for the VA when a similar vacancy led her to the dean’s office. When the Stowers graduate school president left town, the request came again, and she felt her skill set complemented the need. “I’ve been doing this for six years, not so much driven by wanting this position and title, but having something to offer to support the mission and fulfill it.” Drees was raised in Wellington, Kan., a wheat-growing county near the Oklahoma border. “I grew up in a supportive family that never told you there was something you couldn’t do,” she says. Most anyone raised in a farming community knows the value of hard work, but Drees also benefitted from the family’s interest in math and science—her grandmother was a teacher, as well—so she gravitated toward medicine. For Drees, over coming organizational challenges didn’t fall into categories of crises; “I think it was a collection of things,” she says. “In both organizations, what I worked toward was the infrastructure that made it so people could be successful, whether finding financial resources at UMKC or whether it was drafting policies for our initial accreditation at the graduate school at Stowers. It’s always more a matter of thinking, “Where do we need to go? What can we do now to get where we want to be in the future?” that makes things sustainable.”

20 I ng r am ’ s

May 2024

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