Ingram's May 2024

C2FO Year Founded: 2008

DAIRY FARMERS OF AMERICA Year Founded: 1998 Headquarters: Kansas City, Kan. Sector: Agribusiness/Dairy Products Number of Employees: 18,500

Headquarters: Leawood, Kan. Sector: Financial Technology Number of Employees: 600

C2FO exploded onto the local, national and global scenes almost simultaneously with its visionary take on financial tech services. The Leawood company, founded in 2008 by banking-family scion Sandy Kemper C2FO, has developed a platform that allows quicker business access to accounts receivable funds, trading a small piece of the anticipated receipts for immediate delivery. Inspired by his own cash flow challenges as an entrepreneur, Kemper has built an organization with stunning metrics: roughly 50 million approved invoices are approved daily for more than 2 million in-network businesses across the globe. That pencils out to more than $333 billion in funding since launch, yielding more than $1.3 billion in EBITDA for enterprise buyer customers and $2.2 billion in estimated new earnings for C2FO’s supplier customers.

A relative newcomer to any list of Kansas City’s most influential companies is Dairy Farmers of America, which took its form in 1998 when four dairy cooperatives across the country merged into one. That was the birth of what would become this region’s largest private-sector enterprise, with 2023 revenues of $21.7 billion. Though fewer than 500 are employed at the Wyandotte County headquarters, more than 18,500 people nationwide are involved in the production of milk, cheese, ice cream, and other dairy products bearing nearly more than three dozen dairy-case brands, all flowing from 11,000 family farms across the U.S. Among them are names like Borden’s, PET and TruMoo, with most being hyperlocal to various markets. Dennis Rodenbaugh is the current CEO, having assumed command after a long run by Rick Smith, one of the driving forces behind the creation of the cooperative.

DST SYSTEMS Year Founded: 1969 Headquarters: Formerly Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Tech Services Number of Employees: 13,000 (peak)

KCP&L/GREAT PLAINS-EVERGY Year Founded: 1882 Headquarters: Kansas City, Mo. Sector: Energy Number of Employees: Appx. 5,000

Few companies attest to the power of innovation the way DST Systems did: A tech company spawned by … a railroad company. It started as a subsidiary of Kansas City Southern, originally tasked with creating software to monitor freight shipments. The leadership quickly realized the digital potential, calving it off as a separate company incorporated in 1978. Under the leadership of CEO Tom McDonnell, it grew into a national provider of technology and advisory services for companies in health-care and financial services. Before it was acquired by SS&C Technologies in 2018 for $5.4 billion, it employed more than 13,000 people. It also was a powerful agent for change, leading the transformation of the Quality Hill neighborhood and helping set a civic agenda for business growth and the broader Downtown renewal that would follow.

As a technical point, Evergy is still a corporate kid, just six years old. Don’t let that obscure an organizational history that goes back more than 140 years, to when a pair of entrepreneurs wired 13 businesses in Downtown Kansas City under the brand Kawsmouth Electric Light Co. In 1922, it became Kansas City Power & Light, following a growth arc that tracked with other regional energy companies, then merging with them right up to the 2018 union of parent Great Plains Energy and Topeka-based Western Resources. Today, the powerhouse serves more than 1 million residential and commercial clients in the greater Kansas City and bi-state region, and is upgrading facilities to lower emissions while increasing the energy supply to feed ravenous appetites of data centers and large manufacturing plants. David Campbell, the current CEO, came on board in 2021.

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May 2024

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