Inside Memphis Business October/November

O C T/ N O V 2 0 1 8 | V O L U M E X I I I | N U M B E R 1

THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS WINNER

VAN TURNER

MEMPHIS GREENSPACE

Supplement to Memphis magazine

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2017

project location size project type

Ensafe Office Campus Memphis, TN 10,000 sf Office - Renovation

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OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018 VOLUME XIII | NUMBER 1

THE 2018

COLUMNS 4

FROM THE EDITOR

Tomorrow is happening right now.

••• B Y J O N W. S PA R K S

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SMART BUSINESS

Think the city’s low salaries are good for innovation? Think again.

••• B Y TO M J O N E S

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CREATIVE COMMUNICATION

features

31INNOVATION

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

41 Where are they now?

Let’s catch up with how some of our past Innovation Award winners are doing.

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B Y

J O N

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S PA R K S

Leaders have to know how to think, manage ... and mentor.

WINNER

GEBRE WADDELL

••• B Y A N D R E A W IL E Y

SOUND CREDIT

10 F I N A N C E & I N V E S T M E N T

Innovation in Big Tech doesn’t mean much without ethics.

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AWARDS

••• B Y D AV ID S . WA D D E L L

12 W E S A W Y O U

Taking care of business during the South Main Trolley night, and cool timepieces at Mednikow.

••• B Y MIC H A E L D O N A H U E

DEPARTMENTS

48 Invasion of the ROBOTS!

Kathy Buckman Gibson on running Buckman Laboratories and KBG Technologies.

They’re here to stay, but whether they’ll be a friend or foe of the workplace remains to be seen.

••• B Y F R A N K M U R TAU G H

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16 L E A D E R S H I P

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SPECIAL REPORT

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A N D Y

WINNER

BRIAN BOOKER ONE STEP INITIATIVE

M E E K

20 C O M M U N I T Y

PARTNERSHIP

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Agape Child and Family Services teams up with the Memphis Area Transit Authority.

••• B Y E MILY A D A M S K E P L IN G E R

22 I N S I D E L A W

Who’s the intellectual who knows all about intellectual property law?

Just ask Mark Vorder-Bruegge.

••• B Y A N N A T R AV E R S E

57 S M A L L B U S I N E S S

CENTRAL

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WINNER

59 C - S U I T E

Jim Canfield is rewriting the book on how to be a first-rate CEO.

VAN TURNER

MEMPHIS GREENSPACE

••• B Y J O N W. S PA R K S

62 T H E O F F I C E

Hotelier Doug Browne is at the helm of The Peabody.

••• B Y S A M U E L X . CIC CI

64 F R O M T H E A R C H I V E S

Jose Velasquez had a vision for the James Lee House that turned it into a five-star bed-and-breakfast.

Nadia Price was one of the city’s busiest and most versatile photographers.

••• B Y J O N W. S PA R K S

••• B Y VA N C E L AU D E R D A L E

WINNERS

ALBERTO PAPPO, MD & MICHAEL DYER, PHD

ST. JUDE SOLID TUMOR NETWORK

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS.COM |

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F R O M

T H E

E D I T O R

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Cherish the Innovators

Want to know what’s next? It’s happening right now.

INSIDEMEMPHISBUSINESS.COM EDITOR

Jon W. Sparks

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Brian Groppe

MANAGING EDITOR

Frank Murtaugh

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Samuel X. Cicci

COPY EDITOR

Michael Finger

EDITORIAL CONTRIBUTORS

ADVERTISING ART DIRECTOR PRODUCTION OPERATIONS DIRECTOR GRAPHIC DESIGNERS PHOTOGRAPHERS EDITORIAL INTERN

Alex Greene, Tom Jones, Emily Adams Keplinger, Vance Lauderdale, Andy Meek, Maya Smith, Anna Traverse, David S. Waddell, Andrea Wiley, Cindy Wolff Christopher Myers Margie Neal Jeremiah Matthews, Bryan Rollins Brandon Dill, Karen Pulfer Focht, Larry Kuzniewski, Jon W. Sparks Olivia Bates

PUBLISHED BY CONTEMPOR ARY MEDIA , INC .

PUBLISHER EDITORIAL DIRECTOR CONTROLLER DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR OF STRATEGIC INITIATIVES DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER SPECIAL EVENTS DIRECTOR EMAIL MARKETING MANAGER

Kenneth Neill Bruce VanWyngarden Ashley Haeger Jeffrey A. Goldberg Anna Traverse Leila Zetchi Matthew Preston Molly Wilmott Britt Ervin

IT DIRECTOR

Joseph Carey

ACCOUNTING ASSISTANT

Celeste Dixon

RECEPTIONIST

Kalena McKinney

Inside Memphis Business is published six times a year

by Contemporary Media, Inc., P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101 © 2018, telephone: 901-521-9000.

For subscription information, call 901-575-9470. All rights reserved.

Periodicals postage paid at Memphis, TN. Postmaster: send address changes to Inside Memphis Business, P.O. Box 1738, Memphis, TN 38101. Opinions and perspectives expressed in the magazine are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent the views of the ownership or management.

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We love giving out our Innovation Awards. Inside Memphis Business has been doing it for six years and each year we are astonished at the achievements of our winners. For our judges, it’s not just about choosing who does something better, it’s about taking an idea to the next level. And that’s why we gave the nod to a variety of efforts in town: St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital team Michael Dyer and Alberto Pappo for sharing their Childhood Solid Tumor Network; Van Turner’s creative solution to follow the will of the people by removing statues celebrating the Confederacy; Brian Booker’s initiative to give youth a chance to be international ambassadors; and Gebre Waddell’s savvy solution for using digital data to give credit to musicians in the studio.

We also have gone back to some of our previous winners and asked them to update us on where their Innovations have taken them. It’ll make you feel good about the creative mind-set in Memphis.

Elsewhere in the issue, Andy Meek takes a look at what’s happening as robotic technology continues to expand in the city.

There’s no question it will have an impact on jobs, but the question is, how are we preparing for it?

We also focus on several individuals who are making a difference in their respective areas: ◗◗ Kathy Buckman Gibson is interviewed by Frank Murtaugh and talks about her career serving as president of Buckman Labs and now as CEO of KBG Technologies.

◗◗ I ntellectual property attorney Mark Vorder-Bruegge speaks to Anna Traverse about the ever-changing legal landscape of ideas. ◗◗ Jim Canfield, an expert on what it takes to be a great CEO, talks about his new book CEO Tools 2.0. ◗◗ The James Lee House in Victorian Village was deteriorating badly a few years ago before Jose Velasquez got hold of it and turned it into a five-star bed-and-breakfast.

Our columnists are rocking it again in this issue: ◗◗ Tom Jones says that Memphis’ low salaries don’t favor robust innovation. Our city’s vibrant innovation environment would be even more dynamic if better

wages were the norm. ◗◗ D avid S. Waddell observes that tech innovation is springing up all over, but monopolistic tendencies in the biggest corporations mean it’s more important than ever to demand ethics from Big Tech. ◗◗ Andrea Wiley takes a look at how the business community can be mentors and role models for young people.

In the past, our Hot Sheet listing of corporate milestones, including new hires, promotions, acquisitions, and awards, has run in IMB. We’ve moved it to our weekly Tip Sheet email newsletter. If you’re not getting Tip Sheet, go to insidememphisbusiness.com and take 30 seconds to sign up for it.

Like a Boss?

Every year, Inside Memphis Business honors four CEOs who have proven to be exemplary in their fields, leading their companies to success on local, regional, national, and international stages.

Nominations for the 2019 CEO of the Year awards are open. Memphis is graced with tremendously talented, inspiring executives in charge of their companies and organizations, and we want to hear from you about the best in the business.

Email your nomination to sparks@insidememphisbusiness.com and include the CEO’s resume and a description of why he or she should get the award: vision, achievements, business philosophy, employee relations, management style, special qualities.

We give out four awards in categories according to the number of employees in the companies: 1-50, 50-200, 200-1,000, and 1,000 and up, so include that information as well.

The deadline for CEO of the Year is November 16, 2018. When the nominations are in, an impartial panel will consider the nominees and pick one for each category. Each will be notified and interviewed for the February/ March 2019 issue of IMB — and each will appear on the cover of the magazine. A breakfast in late January will honor the four CEOs.

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018

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SMART BUSINESS

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J O N E S

Innovation in Memphis is often viewed the same way we see our music: in the rearview mirror.

Just as we know the names of the Sun Records’ Million Dollar Quartet and the legends of Memphis’ unique brand of soul music, we know the stories about Fred Smith, Pitt Hyde, Abe Plough, Kemmons Wilson, Clarence Saunders, Wallace E. Johnson, and Robert Church.

And yet, like our music, innovation is very much a thing of the present, a fact proven again with this year’s Innovation Awards.

These role models of innovation could not come at a better time. After all, we live today in an innovation economy in which economists calculate that about 50 percent of U.S. GDP growth is attributed to innovation.

In its last City Vitals report, CEOs for Cities defined innovation by measuring patents, entrepreneurship, venture capital, and small business. In a ranking of the 130 largest MSAs, the Memphis region ranked #118 in small business, #117 in entrepreneurship, #60 in venture capital, and #67 in patents. In the ranking of just the largest 51 regions, Memphis trends toward the bottom, which speaks to the importance of celebrating current innovations and innovators whose success can inspire others.

The good news is there is renewed emphasis here on creating an ecosystem that breeds innovation and startups, particularly those technology-based ones that have an outsized impact on economic growth; however, it calls on us to be honest about the price we pay for our reliance on low-wage jobs.

Looking across all occupations, Memphis has a mean salary of $42,940,

Here’s a Tip!

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which is 78 percent of the mean salary in Minneapolis, 80 percent of Chicago, 85 percent of Atlanta, and 94 percent of Nashville.

“Usually, this would be represented as good news: you can move your business to Memphis, pay lower wages, and be more profitable, but the opposite may be true,” said David Ciscel, economist emeritus for University of Memphis’ Fogelman School of Business. “The lower salaries here – with a tradition of very low salaries for African American workers – will have the impact of thwarting economic development. The low salaries result in business sluggishness, the lack of need to innovate and invest to make a profit.

“Could it be our fate that Memphis salaries are just too low to inspire innovation and development in the local economy? Low wages do not inspire new capital investment. Business finds that using old technology is sufficient to make a good return – in the present.

But without development, the future is very uncertain. The spurt that logistics clearly gave the local economy did not last, and part of the factor of regional stagnation may have been that Memphis wages, not just in logistics but throughout the local economy, were just too low to inspire large investment in innovative and labor-saving im-

locations like ours may actually insulate provements to the regional economy.” businesses from the need to be innovaWith our region’s historic reliance on tive. When costs are low and labor is low agriculture and commodities and small paid, mitigating risks, reducing human margins for error, the focus was long on capital costs, and putting training on cheapness – cheap labor, cheap land, the back burner are priorities. cheap utilities. In that environMeanwhile, research ment, banks were timid suggests that cheap with capital, especially housing tends to venture capital, and attract and retain the emphasis on low-skilled workers, cheapness in turn and as a result, low attracted more cost housing markets companies drawn have lower skilled by low costs and labor forces. low wages.

It is a vicious cycle.

The irony of our We have built a model of long-time mantra competitiveness that sugabout a cheap place to do gests low cost is always business is that some of the a winner, but in a rapmost expensive places in idly changing innovation the U.S. with the highest economy, it is the ability wages and highest taxes to create new breakare succeeding the most.

Low cost throughs, new products, That’s because they are locations like and new businesses that investing in a culture of ours may are more and more the entrepreneurs and innovawinning strategy. tions. The kinds of compaactually insulate In maintaining the labor nies that we are attracting businesses from force of the past, we ultito Memphis – and why the need to be mately weaken our ability people like FedEx executive to compete in the future. and Greater Memphis innovative.

That’s why innovators matChamber chairman Richard ter so much. They are pointing us toward a Smith say we have to “up” our game – are those which avoid these economically better economy for Memphis. dynamic cities.

Tom Jones leads Smart City Consulting and Portland economist Joe Cortright, is the primary author of the Smart City who has spoken in Memphis several Memphis blog, recognized by the Pew Parttimes and understands its economy, nership for Civic Change as “one of the most said the environments of those cities engaging” civic-minded blogs in the United drive innovation, because it is key to States. You can reach him at tjones@ survival and success. smartcityconsulting.com.

The opposite is also true: low cost

ILLUSTRATION BY DREAMSTIME

Innovation in Memphis needs the long view

If you’re not getting the Tip Sheet, now would be a good time. Each Friday, Inside Memphis Business magazine emails its Tip Sheet newsletter to subscribers. It’s a quick read but with useful information for people in Memphis business: short features on small enterprises, a rundown of news items from the week, and links to news stories in other local publications. We’ve added a couple of features from the magazine as well: Hot Sheet and Power Players. The Hot Sheet is a listing of corporate milestones, including new hires, promotions, acquisitions, awards, and the like. We also include a Power Player each week taken from our list of hundreds of influential Memphis people that fill up our April Power Players issue. So sign up for the Tip Sheet — it takes less than a minute — by going to insidememphisbusiness.com and scroll down a bit. You’ll see the signup box on the right. Easy as that.

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CREATI V E COMMUNICATION

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Connecting the Dots with Social Capital

TV Shows • Columns • Radio Show • Books • Podcast

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The intent is to learn more about ourselves, each other and how we can impact the Memphis high schoolers we will be working with throughout the year to increase post-secondary attainment and career awareness.

After just the first three days of the program, I gained a deeper understanding of the interconnected issues facing our community and found that I was already armed with positive, practical ways in which I can personally make an impact.

As we planned ahead and set goals for what we want to accomplish in the next year, we were faced with a challenge: As business professionals, how can we best have an impact on the high school sophomores and juniors we will be working with this year as we conduct leadership training and participate in neighborhood service projects?

Providing internship opportunities, teaching resume building, conducting mock-interviews — all are initiatives that we could implement but we would most likely be duplicating existing programs that offer all of those opportunities. We want to do more.

One of my Leadership Memphis classmates, Melvin D. Watkins Jr., pastor at Mt. Vernon Baptist Church in Whitehaven, raised a question to the group: “When you were growing up, how many people did

even realizing it.

Along with those networks came the education of soft skills that may not have ever been verbally taught. Instead we learned through observation of our role models’ actions. Giving a firm handshake, maintaining eye contact, the ability to confidently have a conversation with someone you just met, and knowing which one of your parents’ friends to call when you needed a you know that owned their own summer internship or your first job business?” I immediately thought out of college. of my grandfather who owned his We have a responsibility as construction company, my best leaders in the business community friend’s dad who had an insurance that goes beyond writing checks to agency, and my neighbor’s dental fund programming in our practice, just to name schools and nonprofit a few. Then he raised organizations. We must another question, “Can “It is up to make time to volunteer you imagine growing up and mentor today’s without knowing anyone us to be the who owned his or her professional elementary, middle, and school students business? Or not having role models.” high who are not growing up anyone in your family with the advantages that we had. who went to college or graduated It is up to us to be the professional high school, or never even left the role models that are not otherwise neighborhood they were born in?” available to demonstrate another That question made me perspective, another opportunity, realize how different everyand to present another possible thing would be if that path. These students represent the were my reality. My future talent that our businesses perspective, my depend on to be diverse and opportunities, inclusive in order to thrive for the things generations to come.

I believed Though a school year is not a very were in the long time, my hope is that our Leadrealm of possibility ership Memphis Class of 2019 can for my life. It made share our social capital with these me realize that it isn’t just students, arming them with the about telling the students tools they need to succeed beyond what they need to do to be graduation as they further their edsuccessful, it’s more about showing ucation and/or enter the work force them how so they can start to conto fully contribute to society and live nect the dots for themselves. a sustainable lifestyle.

Pastor Watkins challenged us to take time with the students.

Andrea Wiley is director of account To listen and think about how we management at DCA Creative can share our social capital, the Communications Consulting, and networks of relationships among is an adjunct professor teaching people who live and work in a advertising at the University of particular society, enabling that Memphis. She was the 2015-2016 society to function effectively. As president of the American Advertisbusiness professionals, we take ing Federation, Memphis Chapter, those networks for granted because and can be reached at awiley@ many of us were already connected dcamemphis.com. to them at a young age, without

ILLUSTRATION BY DREAMSTIME

I recently embarked on a new journey as a participant in Leadership Memphis’ Executive Program, Class of 2019. I am one of 80 business professionals representing a wide range of industries such as journalism, banking and financial services, healthcare, logistics, arts and entertainment, faith, higher education, government, nonprofit, construction, marketing communications, and many more.

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018

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••• BY DAVID S. WADDELL

The Next Innovation: Ethics I recently received a shipment of wine from a low-yield vineyard in Napa Valley. I ordered the shipment at the winery and used my American Express card for payment. On the day that I received my wine I began seeing banner ads across my media feeds promoting trips to Napa and wine from that very vineyard. How did the advertisers know? Did the vineyard sell me? Did Amex sell me? Did the postal service sell me?

Welcome to the mysteries of the networked world. We have all become readily discoverable thanks to a plethora of innovations. Siri and Alexa eavesdrop on our conversations, internet bots track our key strokes, and facial recognition software monitors our urban movements. Soon, geolocation and the Internet of Things will incessantly “ping” us with coupons, maintenance requests, upgrade alerts, and alternate routes. Instagram likes and Snapchat streaks deliver addictive dopamine-like highs for users.

Technological innovation hasn’t only compromised our privacy, it may be compromising our sanity.

In a world of hyper technological innovation, the next frontier may not be even more sophisticated marketing intrusions, but the adoption and application of digital ethics.

Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Apple have a combined market value of $3.3 trillion, a number larger than all but four economies on the planet (USA, China, Japan, Germany).

Google drives 89 percent of all internet search. Facebook facilitates 77 percent of social media traffic. Apple harvests 91 percent of all smartphone profits, and Amazon processes more than 50 percent of online retail sales.

The U.S. government has a history of breaking up companies with outsized market share and influence — but not these companies. Why? Because these companies use their monopoly power to drive prices down, not up. As such, there isn’t

Throughout history, scale invites corruption and repudiation. Big Tobacco and Big Oil overreaches led to consumption shifts toward healthier lifestyles and lower carbon emissions. Likewise, privacy concerns, information manipulation, and suspicious A.I. intrusions could decrease Big Tech utilization.

According to USA Today, 52 percent of those surveyed believed that Big Tech companies negatively influence a clear case that the size of these marketplaces. Should that number companies disadvantages consumescalate further, “know thy vendor” ers. Additionally, these companies may increasingly service a global marimpact purchase ketplace that lacks decisions leading to a global regulator. more local and less The larger they get, Consumers must digital consumption. the more innovademand that Once mistrust infects tive they become, ethics accompany a corporation or inthe more essential dustry, fickle buyers they become to innovation. flee. For example, consumers and Facebook lost $150 billion in market therefore, the more powerful. In cap on a single day on investor conthe past, small meant innovative. In cerns that users will activate their the present, large means innovative privacy settings. Facebook makes and, as a consequence, start-up $22 a user selling your information to rates and public listing activity advertisers. You are Big Tech’s prodhave waned. In fact, over the last uct. As online user awareness and vigilance grow, more commerce localization and more information privatization will force higher levels of accountability from these behemoths. Consumers must demand that ethics accompany innovation.

Bottom Line: Technological disruption, once the handicraft of smaller firms, has shifted upstream to the largest and most profitable firms. While innovation carries a positive connotation, not all innovators are benevolent. More and more intrusive marketing practices, distorted information feeds, and Pavlovian stimuli have consumers second-guessing the intentions of Big Tech. Marketplace 20 years, the number of publically listed companies in the United States relationships long on innovation and short on trust are ripe for reaphas declined nearly 50 percent. In praisal and rejection. In the absence truth, these Big Tech hegemons are of a global regulatory authority, monopolies cornering innovation, consumers must fill the regulainformation, and online influence. tory void by holding innovators Also in truth, monopolies tend to accountable. misbehave.

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Bremont Chronometers Event At Mednikow on August 23, 2018 • • •

BY

M I C H A E L

D O N A H U E

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Toney Walsh III just had to glance at his Bremont watch to make this statement about his recently born son, Toney Walsh IV: “In two and a half hours he’ll be two weeks.”

Walsh is the watch buyer for Mednikow Jewelers, which hosted an event for the English-based Bremont Chronometers watch line, which the jewelry store carries. The purpose of the event was to showcase the brand “for future and potential customers,” Walsh says.

Walsh wore an MB II watch. “‘MB’ stands for Martin Baker, a British ejection seat company. Their seats are in 70 percent of Western world jets. They came to Bremont and said, ‘You’re British. We’re British. We’d like for you to make us a watch that can survive live ejection from a jet.’”

Which Bremont did.

Also attending the event were members of the British Car Club of Memphis, who brought their automobiles. Bob Mednikow, CEO emeritus, brought his sapphire blue Sunbeam Alpine roadster, which is the same type car Grace Kelly drove in the 1955 movie, To Catch a Thief.

Bremont watches sell for between “$3,800 to $7,000 in the core collection,” Walsh says. “They have some special editions which are more expensive.”

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1 Dave Hanson and his son, Lucian Hanson 2 Vincent Housley 3 Dr. Blas Catalani 4 Toney Walsh III, Carol McGuinness, Kevin Farrington, president/CEO Jay Mednikow 5 Paige Miller and Will Hayden 6 Nick Thomas 7 Bob Mednikow 8 Julie Maddox

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South Main Trolley Night On July 27, 2018 • • •

BY

M I C H A E L

D O N A H U E

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Stock & Belle on South Main was rocking during July’s Trolley Night Memphis.

“Through the night we have 1,000 people pass through here,” says Stock & Belle interior stylist David Quarles.

Stock & Belle is one of the businesses that opens its doors to visitors on Trolley Night, which is held from 6 p.m. “until” on the last Friday of every month on South Main. People stroll up and down the street dropping in on various establishments.

Some people are buying, some are just looking.

In Stock & Belle, people were buying coffee and examining the merchandise. Quarles describes their business as a “modern general store,” which sells furniture, clothing, and local art.

It encompasses Salon 87, a hair salon; and Low Fi Coffee, which sells coffee, tea, and confections.

Asked the importance of Trolley Night to Stock & Belle, Quarles says, “From a scale of 1 to 10, it’s a 20.”

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1 Pam Beall, Brad Beall, Jayren Foster, Brian Beall 2 Nick Seccombe 3 Michael Patrick 4 Francky Samson, Kristen Dannemiller and Nico Peperoni 5 Drew Erwin 6 Matt Nelson and Joan Forbes 7 Lester Watt 8 Antonio D. Smith and Brent Hooks 9 April Gates and Schuyler O’Brien

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F R A N K

M U R TA U G H

Try telling cancer about your leadership qualities. When Kathy Buckman Gibson was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013, she had just reached a 20-year milestone with Buckman Laboratories, the company founded by her grandfather, Stanley Buckman, in 1945. As chairman of the board of Bulab Holdings Inc. (the parent company of Buckman Laboratories), Gibson influenced decisions that steered a business with international impact. (Buckman’s original breakthrough was a biocide that changed the paper-making industry.) Having returned to Memphis in 1993 — persuaded by her father, Robert, then Buckman’s CEO — Gibson’s impact was 16 |

that much greater as a woman in an industry still dominated by males. And the cancer-career conflict was merely secondary in Gibson’s life. She had two daughters — twins in preschool — to raise.

“I got diagnosed in April 2013, finished chemotherapy in July, had a double mastectomy in September, and took the COO job [at Buckman Laboratories] in November,” says the CEO and president of KBG Technologies, today the only woman-owned, full-service chemistry provider for pulp and paper.

“It was a couple of challenging years. My daughters had me laughing every day, and that was a godsend.”

Gibson grew up in Raleigh, on Lake Windermere, where she developed a passion for water. Be it a lake, beach, or island destination, Gibson fills any down time she can capture on or near the water. (She now lives in what was once her grandparents’ home ... on Lake Windermere.) After graduating from St. Mary’s, she attended Duke University, where she discovered her first calling.

“I knew I wanted something where I could use my intellect,” reflects Gibson, “and it had to be something that I wouldn’t get bored doing. Law seemed like a natural opportunity. I did a clerkship my senior year to get a taste, and I loved law school.”

Gibson graduated from Emory University’s School of Law (she earned a joint degree in business) and settled in Atlanta, establishing career roots with a law firm where she learned an early lesson on leadership extremes. “There was a managing partner and a senior partner,” explains Gibson, “and their personalities could not have been more different. One was a yeller and screamer. The other wouldn’t raise his voice. It was fascinating to work directly for both of them. I tried to take the best from each.”

Despite growing up with an international brand as her surname, Gibson didn’t feel a pull to Buckman Laboratories until she had established herself in Atlanta, in the legal world. During a phone conversation with her dad, Gibson heard a tone less than celebratory.

As she recalls, “He said, ‘First, I hope you do something to improve your profession.’ Then he said, for the first time ever, ‘I hoped you’d come back and work for the company.’ My parents were always really good about encouraging us to do what we wanted to do, to follow our dreams. I was grateful for that. That was the first time he suggested [I work for Buckman]. I needed to feel like I could stand on my own two feet before I felt comfortable putting myself in that situation.”

Gibson received calls from her dad every six months or so with an offer, but it wasn’t until one actually fit her skill set — that of general counsel — that she decided to return home, to Memphis and Buckman Laboratories. “It was a great way to learn the business,

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and I brought some expertise,” says Gibson.

From general counsel, Gibson grew into the chairman of the board and later chief operating officer.

She stepped down as chairman in 2017 to form KBG technologies, an opportunity to diversify the chemistry-supplier industry with a woman-led enterprise. “Buckman provides specialty chemicals,” explains Gibson, “but they don’t provide commodity chemistries.

If you go to any paper mill, they use both. I’m building relationships with sources of commodity chemistries. I can be an incubator for new and different opportunities.” (Commodity chemistries don’t require expertise in handling and tend to be readily available in the market.) For the “I’m a collaborator. time being, KBG is a two-woman operaThere’s always tion: Gibson and her a solution. It’s a executive assistant, matter of letting Nancy Glover.

Gibson acknowlpeople bring edges the family ideas to the table, name has helped her and creating an develop what she considers central to environment any business transwhere they can do action, those relathat and respect tionships. “It gives us access to people,” she diversity of notes. “I’d better be thought.” the best salesperson we’ve got, right? My name is on every label, every shirt. Research shows it’s always the third generation of a family that messes things up.

There was pressure; you want to build on the great foundation.”

When asked about leaders she’s admired, Gibson starts with her mother, Miriam Warner, and her paternal grandmother, the renowned philanthropist Mertie Buckman.

“My mother was an anthropology professor at Rhodes,” says Gibson. “She grew up in Tanzania. My grandfather was a medical missionary. She had great stories from her childhood.

She’d bring in African curios for show-and-tell and teach us Swahili.”

Gibson’s relationship with Mertie Buckman took on a special dimension upon her return to Memphis from Atlanta. (Among Buckman’s legacies is the Women’s Foundation of Greater Memphis, an organization she founded in 1995, four years before her death.) “She was determined that I get engaged in the community,” says Gibson. “She sat on our board of directors, so she was a great role model in a lot of different settings. She was able to be very humble, and yet she would ask the toughest questions, and be point-on. She lived in the present and the future, always concerned about what was going on today.”

As for her own brand of leadership, Gibson leans toward that quiet partner at her Atlan-

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ta law firm, keeping cool when issues — or tempers — get hot. “In high-pressure situations, my heart rate slows down,” she says. “I get calmer, my voice gets quieter. It’s a coping technique. I’m a collaborator. There’s always a solution. It’s a matter of letting people bring ideas to the table, and creating an environment where they can do that and respect diversity of thought.”

Gibson considers new, young leaders to be central to growth in Memphis and the MidSouth, whether it’s measured in terms of business development “It’s our or community engageresponsibility ment. “It’s our responsibility to grow the next to grow the generation of communext generation nity leaders,” she says. of community “We tend to go to the same people in Memleaders.” phis, tap into the same groups for certain things. Younger folks need to see themselves with opportunities [to effect change]. Otherwise, they see themselves as shut out. What difference does it make?

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Gibson’s devotion to her business is matched by her passion to improve the city. “It’s our responsibility to grow the next generation of community leaders,” she says.

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“And I keep bringing things back to early-childhood education. If we don’t do what we need to do in that zero-to-eight-years time frame, we’re failing our children and we’re short-changing our community. How do we give these kids a lot more to succeed? It’s community responsibility. It can fundamentally change who we are.”

If anything, Gibson’s worklife challenges have grown in scope as she aims to gain traction with KBG, to build a business with new influence and a different impact than those she experienced with her namesake enterprise. But she welcomes the uncharted territory. “My kids have asked me why I work,” notes Gibson with a smile. “I tell them that I love what I do, and if I didn’t do this, I wouldn’t be a good mother. Because I wouldn’t be happy.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY KAREN PULFER FOCHT

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C O M M U N I T Y

Way To Go

P A R T N E R S H I P

Pilot program pairs Agape and MATA to benefit communities.

B Y

E M I LY

A D A M S

K E P L I N G E R

David Jordan, president and CEO of Agape Child & Family Services (left), and Gary Rosenfeld, CEO of Memphis Area Transit Authority, are partnering on a yearlong program to provide transportation for people receiving Agape services in Frayser, Hickory Hill, and Whitehaven.

Agape Child & Family Services has been active in the Memphis community for nearly five decades, a ministry dedicated to providing children and families with healthy homes. David Jordan, president and CEO of the nonprofit, says, “We began in 1970, through the Churches of Christ, working mainly with foster care and adoption for our first 25 years. Within that mission, our transformation involves going into the communities of the people we serve — before they come into those kinds of systems.”

One of the areas Agape identified as a priority in helping improve communities is transportation, which brought about a meeting well over a year ago with the Memphis Area Transit Authority (MATA). Both agencies agreed that transportation plays a defining role in meeting the needs of children and their families in the Greater Memphis area. And they decided to develop a pilot program that would benefit both organizations.

“Through our collaboration with MATA we are going to be addressing three issues impacted by transportation: education, employment, and quality of life,” Jordan says. There’s a need for children to have transportation to school and other extra-curricular activities, he says. There’s also a need for parents to have reliable transportation to be able to hold a steady job. And 20 |

overall, safety is a priority.

The Agape/MATA partnership will become operational this fall with a one-year pilot program that will provide MATA transportation for individuals and their families receiving Agape services in Frayser, Hickory Hill, and Whitehaven. Each member of the participating families will receive a swipe card that not only provides them with a ride at no cost, but also collects data to track the effectiveness of the program, which is scheduled to run through October 2019.

“We have an evidence-based model in place to track data on the individuals we work with — that was a big reason why MATA was drawn to this partnership,” says Jordan. “In terms of poverty reduction in its largest sense, families have to be able to earn a living wage, and

they need transportation to get to their jobs. Kids need transportation to get to school. We’re seeking to gather data to show how providing transportation moves the needle to improve quality of life for our families.”

Agape COO Julie Sanon provides oversight for the project, strategizing on ways to respond to the needs of the families served by Agape. “You cannot expose children to a wealth of activities in the Memphis community without transportation,” she says. “For adults, transportation plays a huge role with regard to their work life and, ultimately, that translates to the overall quality of life they can provide for their families.”

Sanon says that initially some 20 families have been identified to participate in the partnership program. Cards will be distributed and the timing of the pilot is intended to coincide with the start of the school year.

The initiative fits into Agape’s mission in the communities. “We go to areas that have high levels of incidents of children coming into foster care,” Jordan says. “It is a two-generation paradigm, and we serve the parents and the children, simultaneously, with an overall goal of poverty reduction.”

Agape’s staff works on

post-secondary education with families, “specifically assisting with barriers that prevent families from being whole and healthy,” says Sanon.

“Benecia Tuthill, our Powerline Community Network Operations Director, leads the efforts and the teams who report to her.

She handles on-the-ground responsibilities in our collaborations with our community partners like MATA. Currently we have our largest presence in the Frayser community.”

Gary Rosenfeld, CEO of MATA, says the public transportation provider had been strategically looking for ways to provide a higher level of service to the community.

One component necessary to leveraging transportation support to the families involved in this pilot program involves education about the system.

“We have a customer service arena that includes teams that go out to explain the benefits of public transportation to businesses and organizations,” he says. “Our teams are going into the communities involved in this project to help them understand the bus routes and how to best utilize public transportation to its fullest.”

Other organizations have requested services from MATA similar to this one, Rosenfeld says. “However, this pilot program with Agape provides us with the ability to track the results needed to determine our level of successfulness.

This partnership has allowed us to create a framework that, if successful, can be replicated with other organizations. A pilot like this can show impact and create believability that transportation is critical for our families — and that there are ways of doing it that can make a difference in their lives.”

PHOTOGRAPH COURTESY MATA

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I N S I D E

L A W

The Protector of Ideas

Evolving field of intellectual property demands the expert with a road map.

Mark Vorder-Bruegge Jr. has followed intellectual property law — the ownership of ideas rather than tangible things — as technology has changed today’s information economy.

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T R AV E R S E

“I couldn’t paint a painting if my life depended on it.”

Mark Vorder-Bruegge Jr. is holding forth in a formal conference room in the East Memphis offices of Wyatt Tarrant & Combs, LLP, where he has practiced since 1979. “There are a lot of things that I can’t do. But one of the things that I’ve been lucky in being able to do is that I look at things in a conceptual way.

“I can look at something and think of it the way that a law defines what is determinative about it. That’s just the way I think. A client brings you a situation, and you’ve got to be able to do two things: One, to see if it fits within the definition of a legal claim, if they’re being threatened, if their position fits within the definition of a defense. And then you’ve got 22 |

to be able to look down the chess board — to form a roadmap of where a case is going, early.”

Without a roadmap, VorderBruegge says, a legal defense can run the risk of getting “way off course.” Expensive, time-consuming, unproductive.

Vorder-Bruegge has specialized in intellectual property law for nearly his entire career, and

his interests have evolved along with the technological evolution that has taken place over the same period of time. Intellectual property law, he points out, is nothing new: patent laws, trademarks, copyrights — these concepts go back centuries.

But as the economy has evolved to more of an information economy, versus an economy based primarily on physical property, the law has evolved to keep pace.

Vorder-Bruegge defines intellectual property simply as “property that consists of ideas as opposed to tangible things.” An example?

Vorder-Bruegge explains that he was involved in a case — on

the defense side — where it was claimed that the defendant had stolen computer source code used in operating aircraft instrumentation — “altimeters, air speed indicators, things that are pretty important to the safe operation of airplanes.”

One challenge of arguing the kinds of cases Vorder-Bruegge tries, he mentions, is the learning curve — for the attorneys, for juries, for judges. To make a case, he and his team first must serve as educators. In the case of the computer source-code case, for instance, “We literally put the device on an oscilloscope and projected the oscilloscope screen

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up on a screen to the jury,” showing them fairly obvious differences between the defendants’ work and the allegedly stolen work.

Intellectual property litigation, VorderBruegge acknowledges, gets expensive — one of the challenges of this practice area. “That’s not something that I’m happy about,” he comments. Experts, expert witnesses, expert consultants — it all adds up. “We have a concept called proportionality — making sure that discovery is proportional to the needs of the case, the size of the case, the resources of the parties.

We’re not going to turn over every single rock if the cost-benefit is not there.”

Vorder-Bruegge comes across as fundamentally a pragmatist — whether in defending a client, or in his views on internet regulations, net neutrality, and the like. Google him, and you’ll find an opinion piece penned for The Commercial Appeal last December about the repeal of net neutrality — essentially, whether internet service providers, the Comcasts of the world, can “It is time for ‘Net throttle the flow of data from companies Integrity’ through like Netflix. coherent and But Vorder-Brueghonestly articulated ge sees net neutrality as only one piece of public policy.” the puzzle. In the oped, he wrote, “Rather than piecemeal anemic regulations like the net neutrality circus, it is time for ‘Net Integrity’ through coherent and honestly articulated public policy coupled with the necessary fortitude among our leaders in Washington to execute on it.”

And in our conversation, he says, “Net neutrality — I won’t say it was a red herring. It’s important. But it doesn’t focus on what the fundamental policy ought to be.” The fundamental policy, he says, should focus on a public good.

The internet is, he says, “not quite up there with water and heat, but it’s pretty important. And the lesser of evils might be a more comprehensive regulatory approach.”

In Vorder-Bruegge’s view, Memphis is a fertile ground for intellectual property — in the creative world, as well as in local industries like biotechnology and freighting. “People might think that delivering packages is not a good example of high tech,” he says, “but if you look behind the way that thing works: a guy comes up in the elevator, scans a package, leaves it with the receptionist, and they can instantly track it.

That stuff doesn’t happen by magic.”

Memphis, he says, “could call ourselves the center of this area of the country when it comes to intellectual property.” From medical startups to its musical heritage, a lot of ideas come from Memphis, and those ideas represent intellectual property.

Vorder-Bruegge is, he’ll readily admit, a bit of a computer geek. That’s part of what got him interested in this area of law in the first place:

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technology fascinated him. And he’ll argue that Memphis is a city for high-tech development, whether or not Memphians recognize this about the place.

And with that technology comes intellectual property, developed and maintained by people, often company employees who can, by the very nature of intellectual property, walk out the door with it. Vorder-Bruegge and his team work a lot of cases — from both sides — that hinge on employee mobility. That is, the phenomenon of an employee leaving and taking the product — which is an idea or set of ideas, stored in their minds — with her when she goes.

“In the olden days,” Vorder-Bruegge explains, “somebody couldn’t walk out of your business

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Vorder-Bruegge cautions business owners to study their employee cont racts to make sure they are solid.

with all your tractors. Now, people that have customer information, pricing information, product design information, financial information — they’ve got a lot of it in their heads, and they’ve got access to a lot of it.”

He has seen over and over again that companies did not implement agreements with their employees from the beginning, or implemented agreements that failed to anticipate the scope of what could walk out the door with an employee.

Vorder-Bruegge will tell “every friend of mine I have in a medium-size or small business,” he says, “‘For heaven’s sake, use any lawyer you want. But look at your agreements with your personnel. And make sure that they are solid — that if you have somebody that does walk out with the crown jewels, you can go down to court and get some meaningful relief.’”

Some people call this non-compete, others talk about trade secrets, but Vorder-Bruegge prefers “employee mobility” because, he points out, “Employees are much more mobile now than they used to be. People don’t stay with companies for 50 years and get their gold watch. They move around.”

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bio, you may notice — reading down to the end — that he lists among his interests both “military intelligence” and “pipe organ,” along with computer technology and literature. And you may think to yourself, “Huh?” But when you ask him about his curious array of interests, it turns out that they all, in a circuitous way, lead back to his work in intellectual property law. Military intelligence: “This comes from my interest in information and how it’s gathered,” he says, “and sometimes not gathered so well.”

As for the pipe organ: Growing up in Memphis, Vorder-Bruegge went to private school, where the students attended chapel services every morning. At the end of each morning’s service, the church organist would play music as the children processed out of chapel. He took a liking to the music — “it wasn’t religious music,” he “Employees are remembers, “opera much more mobile marches and all this now than they used sort of thing” — so he began taking lesto be. People don’t sons on piano from stay with companies that accompanist. for 50 years and get She didn’t normally offer organ lessons, their gold watch. just piano, but she They move around.” was willing to teach Vorder-Bruegge anyway. He grew up learning to play the pipe organ at Second Presbyterian Church.

He doesn’t get to play many pipe organs these days — “churches don’t want amateurs coming in and playing their pipe organs, when a service call from a technician is like a hundred thousand dollars” — but he still listens to organ music, and has even adapted some piano pieces to organ: a Chopin nocturne, a Wagner march.

He describes the process as a way of engaging with centuries of voices: church organs haven’t changed much since the time of Bach, and he enjoys the feeling of entering a musical conversation that is part of a shared cultural history. And, certainly, involved in this conversation is intellectual property — original work, endlessly reinterpreted.

After our conversation, Vorder-Bruegge is off to a board meeting at Ronald McDonald House, which houses parents and children who are in town for treatment at St. Jude.

The research being conducted at St. Jude, he points out, is “incredible” — and very much centered around intellectual property. From photon-beam treatments for cancers to technology to experiment how different substances interact with cells, research at St. Jude is all about, again, “ideas as opposed to tangible things.” Al Green and Isaac Hayes, leukemia treatments and photon rays, computer coding and fine art: the world of intellectual property, Vorder-Bruegge says, “is all of that.”

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WINNER

WINNER

BRIAN BOOKER ONE STEP INITIATIVE

WINNER

GEBRE WADDELL SOUND CREDIT

• • •

B Y

J O N

W .

VAN TURNER

THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS

S P A R K S

• • •

P H O T O G R A P H S

B Y

MEMPHIS GREENSPACE WINNERS

ALBERTO PAPPO, MD & MICHAEL DYER, PHD

ST. JUDE SOLID TUMOR NETWORK

L A R R Y

K U Z N I E W S K I

This is the sixth year that Inside Memphis Business has given out its Innovation Awards, and the winners are as terrific now as any of the past. Every year we discover individuals and teams who are driven to turn their dreams into reality. And every year, it’s tough to choose among the worthy nominees.

Our judges consider who on the list is doing more than improving on an existing process or product.

They look for an approach that goes beyond an incremental advance, something that solves a problem that nobody else has been able to address, brings benefits to people who are otherwise ignored, fixes a vexing problem, or delivers solutions in a particularly effective way.

The 2018 Innovators met these standards and they did it in a rich mix of categories: medicine, music, civics, education. The array of areas is a tribute to the variety of cutting-edge work being done in Memphis.

In this issue, we present not only the four Innovation Award winners and their achievements, but we take a look at some of the past awardees and find out how their work has progressed. We hope you’ll agree

that we have chosen our previous winners well as they continue to do their research, expand their companies, and raise the stakes.

None of the would be possible without our partner, the Fogelman College of Business and Economics at the University of Memphis and Dr. Marla Royne Stafford, interim dean. And we are grateful to our sponsors: Orion, NovaTech, and Travelennium.

In our previous issue of Inside Memphis Business, San Francisco-based venture capitalist Tim Smith said he liked to visit his hometown of Memphis to see its potential. What he hopes is that Memphis will aim higher. “You have permission to think bigger,” he said.

And on the following pages, you’ll see just how that’s happening.

SPECIAL THANKS TO OUR SPONSORS

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THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS WINNER

GEBRE WADDELL SOUND CREDIT

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• • •

B Y

A L E X

G R E E N E

Residents of Memphis in the 1980s might recall a neighborhood youth who was handy with arts and crafts, who even sold his handiwork to friends and neighbors. He must have exuded a certain unassuming confidence. His father was a sculptor and his mother a social worker. As he grew up, you might hear this same kid talking about something called the “internet.”

And even then, Gebre Waddell was imagining ways to share his handiwork.

“Waddell’s company, Soundways, is poised to radically transform the way we experience digital music, by bringing the focus back to the players who make it all happen.”

“All my life I’ve wanted to run a business,” says Waddell.

“As long as I could function, I’ve had a business in some way. I used to make little crafts that I would sell around my neighborhood. Then in my teenage years I would make websites — in some of the earliest days of websites. During those days you would dial in to a bulletin board system, before the America Online days.”

Cut to 2018, and Waddell’s prescient familiarity with the digital realm is paying off. Indeed, his company, Soundways, is poised to radically transform the way we experience digital music, by bringing the focus back to the players who make it all happen.

Imagine our habits of music consumption today: as you scroll through your favorite streaming app, one track among forty million choices strikes your fancy. But outside of the artist, or maybe the label, do you know anything about it? Producers and guest singers might get a mention just after the song title, but unless it’s a band with a bona fide band ethos, chances are you’ll have to excavate online to find who wrote the music, who recorded it, who played on that recording, or who arranged the orchestra on the LP that provided the sample for the hook.

The days of LPs and their acres of space for art and album credits are gone, at least for your average listener. At first they were replaced by cassettes and CDs, which merely meant the credits shrank, and those media had their day. But now music floats in clouds, barely graspable before it melts away, and liner notes have

evaporated. It’s robbing the music industry’s craftspeople of both recognition and income: In the music business, the two usually go hand in hand.

It was a problem that Waddell was acutely aware of, even a decade ago. By then, he was already a respected author and engineer in the the field of audio processing, and had headed his own company, Stonebridge Mastering, for years. Being immersed in the world of musicians and industry techs, he began toying with ideas for embedding credit information in the sound files themselves, as they were being created. “I had the concept in 2009, in my earliest notes. I keep an inventor’s log for patent purposes. I started the customer discovery in 2010, but I paused it.”

He had to wait for the industry to catch up with his thinking.

Some years later, a consortium of record labels, streaming service providers, and other music business players agreed, in principle, on the Recording Information Notification (RIN) standard for embedding credits in sound files. Even then, nothing was done. Someone with the technical and marketing know-how had to step up and actually create the software.

Although Waddell’s previous products were focused on studio-only software like keyboard sample libraries and audio mastering suites, he and Soundways Chief Technical Officer Connor Reviere decided to design their own approach to the RIN standard.

Waddell’s inventor’s log was dusted off and they resumed the work he’d put on pause.

By 2017, they were ready to launch a prototype. Their first customers were not the average consumers of online musical content, but its producers, who had the greatest vested interest in getting credits right. The prototype was seized upon by studios and others in 64 countries, and built significant buzz. Earlier this year, Waddell and company rechristened their prototype “Sound Credit” and geared for its general release.

In August, the platform was up and running, and well on the way to becoming the industry standard for archiving credits, liner notes and album art.

The Sound Credit platform focuses primarily on the professionals who make the music happen, and taking up as little of their time as possible. “It takes about 30 seconds to set up a song’s credits once you have the profiles loaded,” says Waddell.

Once entered, the credits are archived on the Sound Credit platform. Eventually all streaming services should connect to it directly, enhancing the listener’s knowledge of the tracks they love, and keeping accurate numbers for all those with a stake in a music track’s success.

It’s such a game-changer that Soundways has attracted some major-league attention. Just this summer, the investment group Revolution, well-stocked with some of the biggest tech investors in the world, awarded Soundways $100,000 in a competition between hundreds of startups in the interior of the U.S. “The investment support and the symbol that made, not just in the investment community, but to our potential business partners, has made this a magic moment,” says Waddell. Indeed, Soundways received a matching grant from local investor firm Innova soon after the nod from Revolution. And as for its adoption by consumers? With characteristic understatement, Waddell smiles and simply says, “We think it’s gonna be a pretty rapid uptake.”

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THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS WINNER

BRIAN BOOKER ONE STEP INITIATIVE

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• • •

B Y

S A M U E L

X .

C I C C I

For Brian Booker, founder and CEO of One Step Initiative, the most fulfilling part of his job is when students return from one of the organization’s study abroad trips.

“Students who have never been on a plane, or even seen the Mississippi River, fly thousands of miles away from home and come back with a sense of self that really shows what they want to make of themselves.”

“Study abroad really taught me a sense of purpose and direction that I didn’t have before.”

One Step Initiative, founded in 2014, gives study abroad opportunities to students who might normally be unable to pursue, or even consider, the opportunity. The organization targets students of about 20 high schools, generally between their sophomore and senior years, from underserved Memphis communities, and currently has travel programs available in African countries like Ghana, Tanzania, and Kenya. For each trip, classes are held in the morning, leaving afternoons free to pursue various recreational and cultural activities.

Agriculture and conservation programs, Booker says, have inspired youth to pursue new interests in life. Some come out of the program wanting to become veterinarians or cover those topics as world journalists.

The international trip itself is only one part of the program.

Booker explains the three phases of the One Step process: The first starts six months out from the departure date. Students go through a training and development curriculum designed to explore various cultural outlets and have meetings with executives, such as Memphis in May founder Lyman Aldrich. “These serve to get students thinking outside the box and get them comfortable with people not like them before the trip,” says Booker. Other than seminars, One Step sponsors excursions to hockey games, the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, and a variety of public events such as the Germantown International Festival.

Phase two is the actual travel. “Every day is outlined to showcase the best of the location that they’re in,” says Booker.

“Our programs cover a wide margin of topics like agriculture and sustainability, while an upcoming Japan trip is focused on technology and science. We’ve done everything from going to a bee farm to see how honey is used in medical procedures to meeting the first lady of Ghana and members of parliament.

We’ve gone to chicken farms where they see the process of how it gets to the store shelf. It gives them a firsthand account of how things really happen.”

The final phase comes when students return from the states and work on group projects.

Booker believes it’s important for the students to share their knowledge and use it to benefit the community. Following an agricultural trip to West Africa, students designed an organic farming project to address the lack of available quality food in certain Memphis neighborhoods. Other students used popular Marvel superhero Black Panther as a way to promote a discussion about geography.

“They’d never thought about how big the world is before,” says Booker. “That’s something I think is very important for them to share with their peers.”

The push for underserved travel opportunities goes back to when Booker was at the University of Memphis. “I had been studying international business and Japanese, so I applied to a study abroad program at Toyo University in Tokyo,” says Booker. “I got accepted, and within a month I’d applied for my first passport and purchased my first international plane ticket.

Study abroad really taught me a sense of purpose and direction that I didn’t have before. I kept

thinking about what I could have accomplished by now if I had started traveling at 15.”

Booker is committed to travel opportunities for students. “I’m one of those students that graduated from what is now a bottom 5 percent performing high school in the state of Tennessee, and I realized early on that I’d missed out on a lot. A lot of job opportunities are contingent on international experience. Can you speak a second language, or can you work in a multicultural environment? These are things our students can say upon leaving this program. It pushes them out of their comfort zone, and it’s good for everyone to find some type of commonality with someone from a different background or culture.”

Students continue their interest even after the program.

“Some are traveling as college freshman and are getting their parents involved, and convincing them to sign up for their first passports and plan a trip,” Booker says. The enthusiasm for travel ties in perfectly with One Step Initiative’s plans for expansion. “We’re looking to take this beyond just Shelby County,” says Booker. “There are so many students who have similar upbringings to those we work with here in Memphis, but are truly just asking for an opportunity. It’s not that students don’t have an interest in doing new and exciting things, but are just unaware that programs like this exist.”

One Step also plans to create travel opportunities for adults.

Booker has been successfully experimenting with inviting along more adult chaperones with each student group. Parents and students are buying into the opportunity to finally leave the country, and Booker and One Step are ready to help.

“It’s been a huge year for us, and we’re looking forward to next year where we can introduce even more people to the rest of the world.”

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THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS WINNER

VAN TURNER

MEMPHIS GREENSPACE

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• • •

B Y

M A Y A

S M I T H

Statues celebrating the Confederacy that stood in two Memphis parks for decades were, for many, a hindrance to enjoying those public spaces. The monuments honoring two men who were symbolic of a divisive history stood in prominent public parks intended for the enjoyment of all citizens. Complaints had been increasing for years that they were eyesores and inappropriate.

It was a problem that needed solving.

“Memphis is a great city and I think it can be even greater. It was just time for us to move forward and put the past in the past.”

Community activists called for the removal of the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Health Sciences Park, and of Jefferson Davis in Memphis Park (formerly Confederate Park). They frequently rallied near the statues, protesting with signs and bullhorns. Defenders of the statuary said they had historical importance, but the growing consensus — including the mayor, the Memphis City Council, and many citizens — wanted them out of public parks.

There was little hope, however, that the statues would be moved. After the Tennessee Historical Commission denied the city’s request to remove the statues in October 2017, the city faced legal obstacles in trying to take the statues down. But Van Turner had an idea. Turner, an attorney and a Shelby County Commissioner, created the non-profit Memphis Greenspace Inc. to get the statues removed legally. Greenspace would buy the parks, which gave it the right as a private property owner to remove the statues.

Turner says he got involved with the issue about seven months before the vote by the state historical commission.

While attending a Memphis Grizzlies game with his mentor and the city’s chief legal officer, Bruce McMullen, the topic of the monuments came up in conversation. McMullen asked Turner if he would be willing to play a role in doing something about it. Turner was eager to accept the challenge.

Over the next few months, they brainstormed how to pull it off and the idea for Greenspace was born. It was formed in October 2017 with the mission of starting, strengthening, and supporting community involvement surrounding park-based recreation.

The first order of business for Greenspace was buying the parks where the monuments stood. The city ordinance allowing for the transfer of the parks to Greenspace had to go through three readings by the city council, and on the third reading on December 20, 2017, the deal was consummated with a unanimous vote.

That night, Greenspace spun into action and coordinated the removal of the monuments.

People lined the streets surrounding the cordoned off parks looking on in anticipation of a long-awaited moment.

Resounding cheers and scattered tears rippled through the crowd. The statue of Forrest was the first to be removed.

Turner was there in the crowd that night and, as it was for many Memphians, seeing the statues come down meant a lot to him personally. Turner says his father grew up in Memphis near Health Sciences Park during the Jim Crow era. He says his dad remembers being shamed, afraid, and angry confronting the statue of Forrest every day.

“The monument of Nathan B. Forrest was there for a reason,” Turner says. “It was there to say to the African Americans in

the city ‘you’re still second class citizens.’ You can just imagine the call I made to my dad that night. I told him ‘Hey dad, I got it done.’ My father was able to live in the city after the last remnants of Jim Crow were removed. I was glad I was able to get it done before he left this earth.”

As it happened, the statues came down on his dad’s 74th birthday. He died six months later.

Turner says the statues should have never been erected in the first place because they sent a message of inferiority to people of color.

“If we pulled down the ‘whites only’ signs in public places, then why did we still have Confederate monuments up, which bolsters segregation?” Turner says.

“The remnants of segregation and Jim Crow Memphis that still survived in those public parks was a problem.”

It was a very appropriate time to release Memphis from its past, he says.

Turner says it was important to get the monuments down before the world’s eyes turned to Memphis in April for the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assanisation, a commemorative event that brought hundreds of thousands of people to Downtown Memphis.

“Memphis is a great city and I think it can be even greater,” Turner says. “It was just time for us to move forward and put the past in the past.”

Now, anyone can enjoy the parks and their kids don’t have to play in the shadows of Confederate symbols, Turner says.

“If you put your finger on the pulse of Memphis, it’s beating, moving, and progressing,” Turner says. “It’s a good time for the city, and removing the monuments played a role, I believe.”

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THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS WINNERS

ALBERTO PAPPO, MD & MICHAEL DYER, PHD

ST. JUDE SOLID TUMOR NETWORK

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• • •

B Y

C I N D Y

W O L F F

When St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital scientists Dr. Michael Dyer and Dr. Alberto Pappo decided to spark a potential cure for pediatric solid tumors, they turned to a basic childhood principle: Sharing.

“It’s all about the kids and keeping the hope alive. It’s about St. Jude, a place like no other where parents can find hope and comfort and children can live to dream another dream.”

St. Jude, in collaboration with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, launched the Childhood Solid Tumor Network last year as a way to distribute data, research, and most importantly, samples of tumor cells for other scientists to replicate and study on their own.

It’s the first network of its kind and it’s priceless. Not only does it give researchers around the world access to work completed by St. Jude scientists, it’s free from complex contracts and agreements for use. It’s literally free. The labs that request the information only pay the shipping cost.

Even though St. Jude isn’t being compensated for sharing its resources, the doctors said there’s a greater value beyond remuneration — fresh eyes.

“For every sample we grow here, if there are five or 10 other researchers around the world studying, that’s an exponential increase in research,” says Dyer, chair of the Developmental Neurobiology Department at St. Jude. “That’s a really great way to advance the mission of St. Jude. By freely sharing, what you do is dramatically expand that research.”

Dyer and Pappo are co-leaders of St. Jude’s Developmental Biology and Solid Tumor Program. It took seven years of work by their team to create data and research resources and to grow more than 15,000 vials of 100 different patient tumors from a dozen types of cancer, available for free on their network.

That means if a child is diagnosed with a solid tumor form of cancer in Japan, the doctor can look at the network catalog online to see if research and samples of that tumor are available at St. Jude. All it takes is completion of a request form

and pay the cost of shipping.

Those scientists don’t have to collaborate with St. Jude. No strings attached.

“We wanted to tear down barriers to scientists around the world studying childhood solid tumors,” Dyer says. “Every sort of traditional barrier — the cost, you have to collaborate, there’s complicated legal documents — we’ve minimized that and tried to make it as easy as possible.”

Since the network went live, scientists from America and 14 other countries such as China, Australia and, most recently, Brazil, filed more than 450 requests for information.

St. Jude sent more than 1,000 samples — tumors to grow and ones to study in their labs.

“There may be tumors that others are studying, that we are not, for example very rare tumors,” says Pappo, director of the Solid Tumor Division. “They may have the opportunity to develop that and study that model. The whole purpose is just to advance the science and try to improve outcomes for this patient.”

Solid tumors of the bone, muscle, kidney, eye, and other organs except the brain account for about 30 percent of childhood cancers. The overall cure rate is 75 percent, but the rate for long-term survival if the cancer returns remains low. Part of the problem is that there are so few samples since three quarters of the children who are diagnosed with solid tumors are cured.

That leaves maybe a few dozen cases a year of recurrence. It’s more difficult to organize clinical trials and make breakthroughs with a small number of cases, so offering their science to others increases the chances of a cure.

“There hasn’t been a lot of progress on these recurrent tumors,” Dyer says. “This is

what’s killing the children, so having models of the most aggressive disease allows us to try to identify better therapies.”

The idea for the solid tumor network came to Pappo and Dyer in 2010 when they were working on the St. Jude-Washington University Pediatric Cancer Genome Project. The project sequenced the complete set of genes of more than 800 children and adolescents with a variety of tumors, including solid tumors. These are some of the least understood and most difficult cancers to treat.

The project identified new mutations in childhood cancer.

That raised a new concern. “If something is discovered, then how are we going to study it?”

Dyer asked. “You can’t go back to the patient and get more tumor, usually, so we needed some way to grow those tumors.

They needed to be proactive, to create a parallel model that reproduced tumor samples to study years down the road.

They also needed fresh eyes to research these tumors as well.

Pappo and Dyer aren’t worried that another scientist outside of St. Jude might discover the cure before they do. Prizes, money, and fame aren’t why they created the network.

It’s a moral imperative.

“It’s all about the kids and keeping the hope alive,” Pappo says. “It’s about St. Jude, a place like no other where parents can find hope and comfort and children can live to dream another dream.”

“We fully embrace that,” Dyer says. “Our experience has been that it comes back. It pays forward. What will end up happening, instead of somebody taking your sample and doing something that you might have done or competing with you, they’ll make a discovery and then share that with you. The benefits far outweigh the potential limitations.”

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THE 2018

INNOVATION AWARDS

ANNA MULLINS

V

THE BRAIN TRUST

HERE COME THE JUDGES

DR. BALAJI KRISHNAN

D DR. EUGENE ECKSTEIN

P ANDY C ATES

G

eneral partner and CEO of RVC Outdoor Destinations and Managing Member of Value Acquisition Fund, an acquisition, development, and asset management company he founded in 2004. In 1999, he was Founding Chairman and Project Developer of the Soulsville Revitalization Project. In 2000, he worked with business and civic leaders to attract the Grizzlies NBA franchise to Memphis and was a limited partner in the original ownership group.

Cates began his real estate career in Dallas with Trammell Crow Company and Crow Investment Trust (now Crow Family Holdings) as a member of the team responsible for partnership and loan workouts, office and industrial acquisitions, asset management, and commercial development. After leaving Crow, he was a founding partner in Viceroy Investments, LLC and is a partner in two Viceroy sponsored partnerships.

He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration (Finance) degree at the University of Texas at Austin. He’s on the Board of Directors of Pioneer Natural Resources, the Myelin Repair Foundation based in Saratoga, California, and is the founding chairman of Memphis Fourth Estate, Inc. He recently served on the board of PICO Holdings.

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rofessor and Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Memphis. He has been in his current position since 2001, where his leadership and active scholarship have resulted in a growing topic of research that encompasses many areas related to improving human health. He holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he has held faculty positions at Harvard, the University of Miami, and University of Tennessee Health Science Center. His interests include educational methods for biomedical engineering and analysis of motions, blood flow, and artificial organs. He served as President for the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and he is a member of the Biomedical Engineering Society, American Society for Mechanical Engineering, Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, Society for Biomaterials, International Society for Artificial Organs, and the American Society for Artificial Organs. Patents he holds include a method and device for connecting biological duct to a prosthesis, a shock-absorbent prosthetic hip joint, a hydrogel surface of a urological prosthesis, and intervertebral spacers.

irector, MBA Programs, and Professor of the Department of Marketing and Supply Chain Management in the Fogelman College of Business & Economics at the University of Memphis. He has a Ph.D. in Business Administration with a concentration in Marketing from Louisiana State University, and he received his Bachelor’s in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering and Master’s in Marketing from India.

He has been instrumental in making the Fogelman MBA the largest MBA program in Tennessee. His research interests are in the area of crosscultural issues in marketing, pricing and price promotions, branding and brand equity, and services marketing. He has published a number of journal articles in prestigious journals.

Krishnan was honored with the “Best Conceptual Paper” and “Best Empirical Paper” awards in the college. He has 18 years’ experience in marketing research, consulting, and marketing education.

Krishnan has consulted with small businesses as well as multinationals in India and the United States. He currently teaches in the doctoral program and the MBA programs.

ice president of communications and Strategic Initiatives at New Memphis, a nonprofit that is forging a more prosperous and vital new Memphis by attracting, developing, activating, and retaining talent. In this role she leads the organization’s communications strategy and guides innovation as the team launches new projects and programs that will make Memphis magnetic, engage the community in positive ways, and build the city’s talent pool. With experience in both nonprofit leadership and media, Anna has worked in various roles to share stories about the people and organizations that are solving problems, looking forward, and successfully shaping our community. In 2014, she helped steward the launch of the digital magazine High Ground News, a weekly news source focused on what’s next for the city of Memphis, and currently serves as publisher for the project. In 2015, she led the team that established TEDxMemphis and continues to serve as executive director of the annual conference.

Through the TEDx platform, Memphians are able to share local “ideas worth spreading.”

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BLASTS FROM THE PAST

2016

MEKA EGWUEKWE CODE CREW INNOVATION: Coding training directly to teenagers using summer coding camps,

after-school programs, and in-school training. Draws new students and sends them into the marketplace with the realization that mentoring, networking, and partnerships are all part of building a community that goes beyond being a savvy coder.

INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS HAS RECOGNIZED TOP INNOVATORS SINCE 2013.

WE GOT IN TOUCH WITH SOME OF THEM TO FIND OUT JUST HOW THEIR BRAINSTORMS WERE WORKING OUT. AND THE NEWS IS GOOD.

• • •

B Y

J O N

W .

S P A R K S

I

f it’s good enough for kids, it’s good enough for adults. Egwuekwe saw that need after working with so many youngsters from K to 12.

There was still a need for high school graduates who wanted to become software engineers but couldn’t go to college. What they needed was a bootcamp and there wasn’t one in Memphis. “How do we fix that?

We launch one here,” he says.

The first class of 16 students — it’s a six-month, 40-hoursa-week effort — will transform them into entry-level software engineers who can be placed with employers.

“At that time of our award,” he says, “I had just come on as full-time executive director and we had two full-time employees.

At that time we had expanded to

three summer camps and a few after-school programs. We are now 12 after-school programs and eight in-school elective classes. That’s definitely a significant jump, in terms of our direct engagement with kids.”

And Code Crew has 10 full-time employees with a network of about 30 to 35 part-time contractors, mostly college students.

Code Crew also got a grant from the Tides Foundation to launch a teacher training program.

“We had our first class of 13 high school teachers that we trained, this summer, in that regard,” Egwuekwe says.

“They’ll all be taking their computer science praxis exam, which is the international exam for certifying people to teach computer science.”

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2015

2016

LISA JENNINGS

DANA WILSON

CIRQUEST LABS AND ARISTE MEDICAL

BRIDGES

INNOVATION: Jennings is founder of CirQuest Labs and co-founder of Ariste

INNOVATION: CHANGE, the youth-led social program working

Medical. CirQuest is a multi-service specialty laboratory and direct marketer of

with students in grades 8 to 12, providing them with oppor-

clinical trial logistics to the pharmaceutical and medical device industries. Ariste

tunities to become leaders who advance social justice through

Medical has developed a new class of implantable, drug-delivering devices to improve patient outcomes and lower costs of care by reducing complications associated with surgical procedures.

S

ince receiving the Innovation Award, Jennings’ enterprises have expanded their services and capabilities. “We’ve hired more staff and currently have around 25 employees,” she says, “and we moved in November 2017 to a new space.” The new facility on Collins Street is about three times the previous space.

Her research and companies are devoted to making better medicines and better monitoring of therapies. CirQuest offers specialized laboratory services in drug and drug-device development. Ariste Medical develops surgical implants to prevent common causes of device failure. “It’s been a very productive and a very exciting last few years since I won the award,” she says. “We have over 60 pharmaceutical clients that we’ve worked with since the start of the company and we

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have 35 to 40 projects ongoing throughout the year. We continue to identify local talent and hire bachelor of science, master of science, and Ph.D. degree individuals who are trained in biology, particularly, or bio-chemistry to work on projects that are related to drug and device development.

For Ariste Medical, we’re still a pre-commercial stage company. We have submitted our first product for review to the FDA and so we’re now working with the FDA to gain approval, and if things go well, we hope to have our first product on the market in early 2019.”

Jennings is an alumna of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center and was the director of the UTHSC Vascular Biology Center of Excellence and a professor of medicine at UTHSC.

community organizing.

T

he CHANGE initiative is endeavoring to work in a bigger classroom to be even more effective. “In the last year, the biggest thing is that we’ve been really focusing on building stronger networks with folks who are doing the same kind of youth-led social change work in other places,” says Wilson, vice president of Bridge Builders. The young people in the group wanted to connect with others doing similar work elsewhere in the country.

It was practical to send them all to a conference, so they decided to host one here last February. “The Youth Action Summit was organized and planned by young people in our program, along with our staff,” Wilson says, “and we hired a consultant from Los Angeles, who was very networked and connected with lots of organizations all over the country.”

Young people from 50 organizations came and swapped

ideas on a variety of issues.

Meanwhile, space in the BRIDGES complex opened up for the CHANGE program to use and the participants are closely following the BRIDGES-created website YouthActionStories.org.

Wilson says alumni of the program continue to stay involved, such as with strategic review boards that hear presentations of the young people planning out their projects and what they’re trying to do in the community. The boards may include city officials, business leaders, non-profit leaders, parents, teachers, and staff members at BRIDGES. Among the areas that the members of CHANGE are exploring are keeping students in school, gender and sexual equality, sexual harassment and assaults, and in making sure youth have a voice in civic decision-making.

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BLASTS FROM THE PAST 2013

TODD RICHARDSON CROSSTOWN DEVELOPMENT PROJECT O C T/ N O V 2 0 1 6 | V O L U M E X I | N U M B E R 1

INNOVATION: A new perspective of

redevelopment and urban renewal

WINNER

Code Crew

using the Sears Crosstown building as the hub for revitalizing a community.

W

hen the crosstown Development Project won the Innovation Award, it was still a concept that was coming together. Still, it was ambitious and remarkable enough to win the prize. Back then, Richardson says, it was about a campaign for a vision that had become a Vertical Urban Village, and the eight founding partners had committed to over half of the commercial space. “That’s what made everything else possible,” he says.

It was 2014 that was the finance year, he says, “so that’s when we were putting together the 32 different sources of funding that would make up the $200 million for the project. We closed financing in December 2014 and broke ground in January 2015 and were under construction

for two and a half years.”

The opening celebration was in August 2017 and the building is now 98 percent leased, exceeding expectations. “The apartments are basically a hundred percent leased,” Richardson says. “We’ve got, out of 620,000 square feet of commercial space, about 20,000 square feet left to lease. And then retail, we’ve got about 65,000 square feet total and about 15,000 square feet left to lease.” Also: It’s the largest historic adaptive re-use, LEED platinum certified building in the world.

He says that the entire process was a creative one, “not unlike an art project.” (Richardson is, in addition to being a key player in the project, an associate professor of European Renaissance Art at the University of

Memphis). The urban village idea emerged logically since the project was anchored in arts education and healthcare.

“How do we design a place where you have these wonderful common areas and try to incentivize people to interact and discover and to learn from each other in unexpected ways.

That’s what drove the design of the big central atrium, the big plaza, the balcony, all of the atria, and then also spending the money to have wi-fi in all of the common area spaces to encourage people to interact in those unexpected ways.”

Richardson says, “You know, because of who our tenants are, when you walk in and out of the concourse, very much, you see people of Memphis, right? It’s a pretty diverse group of folks.

And so our hope is that that continues, and that that diverse group of people — there’s 3,000 people coming and going every day — drives the right kind of development across the street and in the neighborhood.”

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BRIDGES WINNER

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2017

2016

GIANCARLO MARI, M.D.

ISAAC RODRIGUEZ

OB F.A.S.T.

SWEETBIO

INNOVATION: Obstetrical Feasible Approach to Safety Training is a simulation program

INNOVATION: A membrane made of medical-grade manuka honey

to train healthcare workers to efficiently handle obstetrical emergencies. These include

and proteins used in oral surgery to fill in gaps that occur after a

cardiac arrest, sepsis, anesthetic emergencies, respiratory distress, fetal heart rate

tooth extraction. It allows bones to regrow and gums to regenerate

distress, umbilical cord prolapse, breech delivery, postpartum hemorrhage, and other

while preventing infection.

complications. The process is key to helping reduce infant mortality.

D

r. Mari came to memphis in 2008 set on reducing the high infant-mortality rate in Shelby County. When he joined the faculty at University of Tennessee Health Science Center he also launched an innovative simulation program at Regional One Health, then called The MED. He and his team looked at models for decreasing infant mortality rates in the United States and abroad, but they ultimately decided to develop their own, called OB F.A.S.T. The multidisciplinary approach for dealing with emergencies before, during, and after delivery stresses teamwork, effective communication, shared decision-making, and exemplary knowledge of protocols for situations that require immediate response.

Dr. Mari reports that since receiving the award, the program is seeing increasing use and is continuing to go global.

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“This year, we have trained many providers at our hospital,” he says. “We have also trained approximately close to 100 providers from 20 states. In addition, our program is expanding more and more in China.” The China connection comes through Dr. Genxia Li, who had spent time working with Mari in Memphis in 2016 and was impressed with the program, particularly its multidisciplinary simulation training, which is relatively new in China. Now, Dr. Mari says, there are plans to use the program all over China.

Additionally, a second edition of the OB F.A.S.T. book is expected to be available in the next couple of months. “It continues to grow. I like the challenge,” he says. “My work in research has been focused on developing new tools and to discover new things. I always want to help other people and I want to develop new things.”

R

odriguez and his team have been pushing to expand his technology into other medical areas and to focus on, as he says, “how you’re going to innovate yourself in the marketplace. So that’s what we’ve been spending our time doing the last two years to have a fully functioning company.”

SweetBio has to meet FDA standards, from lab to manufacturing to packaging.

“That means having all that internal documentation in place so that when the FDA comes to audit us, once we are on the market, we’re able to show them the traceability of product over time.” To that end, SweetBio hired its first employee last year, someone with expertise in medical device operations, manufacturing, compliance, and quality. With Rodriguez as chief science officer and his sister Kayla Graff as chief executive officer, the team is fixed on the future, from fundraising to technological development.

The original intention was to use it in dentistry and it’s the first device to use honey in that area. But honey has been used to help heal other wounds and SweetBio is working toward those uses. “We are submitting our FDA application this year for a wound care application of our product,” Rodriguez says. SweetBio has multiple products that have already been developed with the same core technology of this composition.

That includes not only treatment for humans but for products that can be used by veterinarians.

“We are trying to get as much traction as we can there,” Rodriguez says. “We are trying to reach out to as many veterinary clinics and hospitals, just to get some trials first. Then get to the customers. Applications in veterinary are dental, but also wound and anything else that they feel like they could use it for in surgery applications.”

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BLASTS FROM THE PAST 2015

ANNE PITTS THE LEVITT SHELL O C T/ N O V 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E X I I | N U M B E R 1

INNOVATION: Fifty free concerts held in an outdoor venue of historic and cultural im-

portance to the city, bringing the community together from disparate neighborhoods and with an eye to diversity of race and socioeconomic conditions. The renovation and programming of the venue was a catalyst to nearby economic development as well.

S

ince winning the award, Pitts says, “It’s been quite a ride. Since then, we’ve raised about $3 million to do a whole new renovation. We tackled a lot of infrastructure issues that we wanted to do in the first renovation but didn’t have the funds to do then, because this was all pie in the sky.”

She says the idea of 50 free concerts a year with no natural source of revenue was generally considered, as she says, crazy.

“Then in 2016, we were able to show a great track record of success. Now we’ve done two renovations and solved a lot of our infrastructure issues such as electricity and drainage. In addition, we got a total upgrade in the lighting and the sound equipment, which has really opened the door for us to be able to bring in so many different types of groups. We

WINNER

were so limited before with the tiny little sound system that we had. It served us well for eight years, and I will always be grateful to that sound system, but it was very limiting.”

She’s proud that the Levitt Shell is “one of the shining assets of this city” and that its support is diverse and wide.

“First and foremost, it’s the people of Memphis who contribute both on the lawn at our shows by putting dollar bills in the buckets as well as sending checks in throughout the year. We also have some great support from the business community and in our foundations.” That includes the Mortimer & Mimi Levitt Foundation, the national group that contributes $150,000 a year toward administrative support, so that other donations can go

to programming. Orion Credit Union has also been a key supporter as title sponsor of the free concert series.

“One of the things Orion has freed us up to do is to be able to do more outreach programs,” Pitts says. “For example, we have a program in partnership with the Memphis Public Library called Five Fridays of Jazz.

We’re able to go to the Benjamin Hooks Library five Fridays during the spring and present free jazz music. Which has really been tremendous, and that has helped us ... The audiences are 85 percent African American, and it’s really helped us reach a much more diverse audience.”

Pitts says, “We’ve always been a lean organization, but I think the key to our success, and one of the reasons why we were recognized with the Innovation Award, is our partnerships that have grown and strengthened over the last 10 years. That’s been the absolute key to our success.”

D R. G I A N C A R L O M A R I U T H S C O B F.A.S.T.

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SweetBio WINNER

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Isaac Rodriguez CEO, SweetBio

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Anne Pitts The Levitt Shell

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2017

2014

JULIE ROMINE HABITAT FOR HUMANITY AGING IN PLACE PROGRAM

UTHSC AND US BIOLOGIC

INNOVATION: The program has served 350 families

INNOVATION: Researcher of an effective oral bait vaccine against the bacteria

by making improvements to housing

that causes Lyme disease in humans; co-founder of US Biologic, a company

so seniors can stay longer in their homes.

created to commercialize the vaccine.

T

he innovation is growing. Romine says Habitat for Humanity’s program is near its 500th client, and they are pleased about that, although the challenges remain the same.

In many cases, the improvements inside the house wouldn’t mean much unless roof problems are fixed, so Habitat is striving to accommodate those needs.

Habitat and some of its partners are embarking on a pilot involving 75 clients who are elderly Methodist patients. “We’re going to combine the services of home healthcare nurse, occupational therapist, and handyman,” Romine says. “The occupational therapist will dictate what types of modifications they need, if they need grab bars, where they need to go. In addition to

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MARIA GOMES-SOLECKI

that, we’ll do our major repair program. At the beginning and at the end of the program the occupational therapist will go through a self-assessment with the clients of their ability to perform activities of daily living before and after. Together they set the goals on the front end of what they would like to see improved, and then the whole treatment gears back to what those goals are for, and then we measure those on the front end and the back end.”

The team will also measure healthcare cost savings and have an actuary analyze that over time in hopes of enabling higher savings. “If we can prevent one fall or one year out of a nursing home, that’s an incredible savings right there.”

G

omes-Solecki continues to develop new strategies for vaccination against Lyme disease. “This time I’m targeting humans, so that work is ongoing,” she says. “I also develop diagnostic assays for Lyme disease as well as Leptospirosis which is another disease caused by spirochetes. My field of study is more or less spirochetes, so I work with both of them.”

The company she founded, US Biologic, works on diseases passed from animals to humans and is of particular interest to pest-management professionals, public health officials, and veterinarians. One thing the company has established is a service to test ticks for Lyme disease here in the area. “The idea is to engage the community

in the science that we’re doing,” Gomes-Solecki says. “If people send us the ticks that they find on dogs or a cat or their children, we’ll test these ticks for Lyme and will provide an answer within a week. We then use that data for our research project as well so that’s the advantage of that.” Her company also works with other research labs and she’s hoping to put products on the market.

And if you happen to have a suspicious tick, Gomes-Solecki encourages you to send it to US Biologic for analysis. “We cannot provide diagnosis, but we can say whether this tick is infected with Borrelia burgdorferi which causes Lyme disease or not, and so you can take action based on that.”

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BLASTS FROM THE PAST 2015

CHUCK DUNN

.

TRU-D SMARTUVC O C T/ N O V 2 0 1 7 | V O L U M E X I I | N U M B E R 1

INNOVATION: Eliminating the spread of hospital-acquired infections with a machine

that emits an automated measured dose of UV lights from a solitary position in a hospital room, ensuring 99.99 percent pathogen reduction in a single cycle, and removing the threat of human error.

WINNER

C

huck Dunn says the enterprise has done well in the past couple of years. “Sales nearly doubled, our employees, our staff members increased by about 25 percent,” he says.

“We’ve got a great sales team coast to coast, but we’ve also got technical service specialists who try to visit the sites at least once a quarter and do a lot of the preventive maintenance, customer support, and customer experience. Building out that second layer under sales, I think, has really solidified our perceptions within the customer base that we’re in this for the long-term.”

“When a hospital has put in a full-on program, meaning that they are trying to provide a standard of care for all patients, it doesn’t mean we disinfect

JULIE ROMINE

every patient room, but it means when a room is classified as at-risk, meaning they discharged someone with an infection, having that room cleaned with automation before the next patient comes in becomes critically important.”

Dunn found that his units were becoming an integral part of hospital processes, so that when service was needed, it was needed quickly.

“We’ve got enough coverage now that we’re in hospitals within 48 hours of a reported problem and that kind of exceeds the expectation in medical device service.”

He was surprised by one development: the transformation into a technology company more so than a device company.

“We’ve got as many staff

supporting IT-related issues as we do device or product-type issues and concerns, and innovation. I think we’ve had three upgrades to the device since we talked last, so those are happening every nine to 12 months.”

His biggest customer so far is the University of Wisconsin, which operates 17 devices, typically disinfecting 500 rooms a week. “Our portal logs in 9,000 cycles a week, or over half a million cycles a year, so that’s a lot of rooms disinfected.” The company is close to being in 300 hospitals with about 650 devices in play.

He’s hoping to become much more mainstream. “We’re moving out of the early-adopter kind of phase. It seems to be a growth kind of market and people in the know tell us that probably won’t level out for five or six years, so there’s a real focus on us earning the market share we feel we deserve, and I think we’re holding up very well in that regard.”

HABITAT FOR HUMANIT Y • AGING IN PLACE •

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t he 2 014

IN NOVATION awa r ds

Dr. Maria Gomes-Solecki University of Tennessee Health Science Center

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The 2015

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Chuck Dunn Tru-D SmartUVC

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Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Peter Lindy, with his robot Mako, prepares to perform a total knee replacement surgery at Saint Francis Hospital-Memphis.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY BRANDON DILL

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Invasion of the Will the robotic revolution improve life but ruin our lives?

Not if there’s some creative thinking in the workplace.

• • •

BY

A N DY

M E E K

Go under the knife at Saint Francis Hospital-Memphis these days, and chances are it’ll actually be a robot — operated by a human professional, of course — that’s holding the scalpel in place.

The hospital has for the past few years been investing in robotic arms and an assortment of other hightech, ultra-precise robotic units that’s part of a trend toward more precision and refinement in surgical care. Saint Francis-Memphis, in fact, is the first hospital in the region to start offering total knee replacements using its Stryker Mako Robotic Arm system, a step up from using that system to perform partial knee surgeries over the past decade.

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Invasion of the different than what we had when I started in the operating room back in 1987, when they were just sort of using their own eyes, right?

It’s really amazing technology.”

And it’s not just about better knee surgery results. Saint Francis-Memphis also recently invested $1.2 million to upgrade its Mazor Robotics’ Renaissance technology with the Mazor X Robotic Guidance System — the latest-generation technology available from Medtronic for use in spinal surgeries. As with the knee surgery robot, this system lets surgeons start a spinal procedure armed with a highly precise and detailed surgical plan that can be executed using the Mazor X system’s trajectory guidance.

It makes sense to see robotic technology showing up in operating rooms and major hospitals. The important thing about Saint Francis’ investment in robots, though, is that it’s a reminder of what’s coming in general, even beyond healthcare. It extends across a slew of industries, in fact, to different employers in different fields and in a way that will

The surgery team at Saint Francis Hospital-Memphis working with Mako the robot.

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potentially reshape the Memphis economy in a profound way.

Which is not to say this is only a Memphis thing either, of course. Robots and algorithms and machine learning are already reorienting our daily lives and rearranging the pieces of what normal life feels like in modern-day America.

It’s everywhere you look. Did you order a package from Amazon recently? Robots and automated package sorters helped guide it on its journey from the warehouse to your door.

FedEx founder Fred Smith himself told an audience last year at an event at the University of Memphis — the National Council on Undergraduate Research conference — to not fear innovations like robotics. “It makes goods less expensive,” he said. “It makes life better.”

As a visual demonstration, he showed off “Lil’ Rico,” the name of a robot used in a FedEx TechConnect repair center in Collierville to ferry items around the facility, a productivity advantage that saves workers time.

A few weeks before, Smith said, FedEx had

PHOTOGRAPH BY BRANDON DILL

The way the robotic arm system works — it looks just like it sounds, built around an arm — is like a machine controlled by surgeons who can use it to create a customized surgical plan, one that includes optimized implant positioning using a CT scan of the patient’s knee.

During the surgery, the surgeon uses feedback delivered from the robotic arm to make real-time adjustments to the plan. So, with that accurate 3D model of the patient’s knee provided before the procedure, the surgeon now knows everything from the shape of the bone to the size of the implant that’s needed and where to make the most precise cut so that the implant fits better.

All of which, says Heather Livingston, director for nursing surgical services at Saint Francis-Memphis, helps reduce pain and minimize hospitalization for patients, in addition to helping give them a quicker recovery.

“As the surgeons are actually doing the surgery, they’re using that 3D plan for orientation and alignment based on each patient’s unique anatomy,” she says. “It’s awesome and much

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installed a robot named Sam that customers would encounter in a FedEx office location in Manhattan. This robot, too, ferries items around a facility.

On a related note, FedEx’s chief executive has spoken publicly several times about how autonomous vehicles are coming to the package delivery giant, a company with human-operated delivery trucks decorated with FedEx’s familiar logo on the side that have become a highly recognizable part of its cultural cachet.

Depending on how you look at this, it can sound like a far-future reality, the stuff of science fiction. Robots taking our jobs. Robots as pets, robots that can interact with us at a near human-level of understanding. But the fact of the matter is that even in a place like Memphis — which is almost as far removed as you can get from the techies on the coasts and all the venture capital that sloshes around Silicon Valley — the robot revolution coming to America is already here. And we can see its effects.

Not only that, but companies, the general workforce, schools, students, professionals — basically everyone — will be affected it to one degree The robot revolution by or another. coming to America “Emerging techis already here. The nologies are rapidly the general workforce, transforming professional landschools, students, scape as we know it,” explains Cody professionals — Behles, assistant basically everyone director for innova— will be affected tion research and support at the U of by it to one degree M’s FedEx Instior another. tute of Technology.

“Robotics represents one of the greatest opportunities for new careers, but it also means a great deal of disruption and requires us to rethink the relationship between work and society. By its very nature, robotics are most easily applied to repetitive and manual tasks such as manufacturing, food service, and even driving a car. As with automation of any industry, the introduction of technology reduces the requirement for human labor, leading to fewer jobs overall.”

That, he continues, leads to the need for a conversation on robotics that should be focused on how we provide for anyone whose job is displaced by the new technology. And that we should work to mitigate the creation of a permanent underclass, so that everyone has an opportunity to have a better quality of life in this new world.

White Station High School robotics team members (from left): Will Eggleston, Angus McKee, Dinah Patt, Joanna Xiao.

“The invention of the car may have put blacksmiths and horse-drawn carriages out of business, but it created auto mechanics, driving jobs, and manufacturing positions that never existed when horses were the primary mode of transport,” Behles says. “We sit at a similar junction, and we shouldn’t see change as a good or bad, it just is and we should think creatively about how we move forward.”

One way that thinking creatively is done is by educating the people who are coming into this workforce, before they actually get into

it. It requires exposing them to concepts like robotics and STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math), which prepares them for the jobs of tomorrow that are already arriving today.

Along those lines, the blight at Frayser Plaza over the next 12 months or so is making way for what will become Harmony Plaza, transforming the former shopping center into a multi-use concept anchored around Memphis STEM Academy. The school is moving there after operating out of an incubator space in-

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side a church for a few years, adding some 150 new students to boost its enrollment to 450, and introducing them to everything from drones to subjects like science and math.

The academy’s parent organization, Harmony Schools, also includes several components of the Memphis Business Academy network that teach students how to be coders and how to build robots.

Over at White Station High School, many of the 50 or so students who have joined the school’s competitive robotics team say they’ve done so because of the satisfaction of coming together to build something tangible like a robot.

Such a project lays the groundwork for a future career and for sustained interest in what will only be a more relevant and more significant industry as time marches on.

Right now, the team is in its off-season. So no competitions on the horizon, but members are still meeting regularly to plan, learn, and hone their skills.

“We have a lot One interesting stat: almost 30 percent of of fun together. the team is female.

It becomes like “I’m the head of a family, and it’s the business team,” 10th-grader Dinah cool to see what Patt explains, showall these brilliant ing how robotics minds can come also doesn’t have to be exclusively about together and do to coding and computcreate something ers. There are, in fact, really cool.” other opportunities that come with it, such as the marketing and sponsorship kinds of tasks that are required to support the school’s team. “We have a lot of fun together. It becomes like a family, and it’s cool to see what all these brilliant minds can come together and do to create something really cool.”

Team captain Andrew Rutledge adds that most of them are doing this because they have some degree of interest in the field. Senior Joanna Xioa agrees that the team aspect is what makes the group’s efforts so compelling. “Because there aren’t many times you’re able to be a part of something like this and work together to make something,” she says.

While everyone is waiting and wondering about when some kind of Hollywood-inspired vision of our robotic future will eventually arrive — well, it’s like that line from HBO’s The Wire, about life being all the things that happen while you’re waiting for moments that never come. The robots, the machines — they’re already here. They’re already having an effect, on everything from education to the operation of companies today. And we can make some assumptions about what tomorrow will look like based on the influence this technology is already having now.

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Every year, Inside Memphis Business magazine honors four CEOs who have proven to be exemplary in their fields, leading their companies to success on local, regional, national, and international stages.

Nominations for the 2019 CEO of the Year awards are open. Memphis is graced with tremendously talented, inspiring executives in charge of their companies and organizations, and we want to hear from you about the best in the business.

Email your nomination to sparks@ insidememphisbusiness.com and include the CEO’s resume and a description of why he or she should get the award: vision, achievements, business philosophy, employee relations, management style, special qualities.

When the nominations are in, We give out four awards in an impartial panel will consider categories according to the the nominees andinnovation pick one for number of employees in the Utilizing state-of-the-art technology, each category.

Each will be companies: 1-50, 50-200, is at the forefront of our mission to transform notified and interviewed for the 200-1,000, health and 1,000 care, education, research, clinical care, February/March 2019 and up, so include and that public service. issue of IMB — and each information as well. will appear on the cover of the uthsc.edu magazine. A breakfast in late January will honor the four CEOs.

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Take iQor, a global company with a major presence in Memphis that repairs and provides support for electronic gadgets.

This spring, the company announced an expansion here in support of its “360-degree customer and product experience offering.” One hundred new jobs will boost the total workforce at the 570,000-squarefoot facility in South Memphis to around workers.

“You need human 1,000 David Travis, iQor thought in a lot director of innovation, says the compaof what we’re ny has several robots doing today, and in use on the floor in we want to put Memphis. Walking through what the our people in company uses those positions where robots for, and why, provides insight into they can think more and be more the use that businesses see for robotic involved.” technology. And also where humans, with all our frailty and fallibility compared to a robot, fit into the picture.

“We have a fully automated receiving line, where there’s a conveyor system that has intelligence controls built in behind it to route and move material around when we perform our receipt operations,” he explains.

“We also have robotic arms on the floor that are picking up and handling and manipulating products. The automated receiving

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Friday November 9, 2018 at 6:30pm 2018 Wine & Dine Presented by Joshua Spotts, Crye-Leike, REALTORS Germantown Village Wine & Liquor West Tennessee Crown Distributing Cotton Row Uniques

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line right now we use to receive about 40,000 units a day into the facility. And it basically goes in and scans barcodes on all the products and then performs a sorting operation based off of criteria that we have. The robotic arms are focused on picking product up and moving it in three-dimensional space in front of an array of cameras. So I can use machine vision and machine learning to analyze that product and identify if there are any cosmetic defects in it that would need to be repaired in the refurbishment operation. We’re using that machine vision and machine learning to go in and basically take subjectivity out of the operation.”

Tasks that require repetition and lots of repetitive motion are what he says robots are perfect for. And they free up human workers to do other things and add value in different ways to the company.

“We’re not necessarily trying to eliminate the operators,” Travis says. “That’s not the goal. The goal is to eliminate the task that people don’t want to do, because it’s repetitive, it’s monotonous, it’s boring. A lot of what we’re doing today requires human thought.

Nobody’s taught a robot to untie knots, especially random knots of cables. You need human thought in a lot of what we’re doing today, and we want to put our people in positions where they can think more and be more involved with the operation than picking up something at Point A and putting it down at Point B.”

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Find the Good in Grief

The death of a loved one can be overwhelming.

Finding support can bring new hope. The Baptist

Centers for Good Grief help children, teens and adults openly grieve and discover healthy ways of coping. With three centers in the Mid-South, our

grief centers connect families to bereavement services, camps, plus individual and group counseling—and all services are free of charge.

baptistgriefcenters.org KEMMONS WILSON FAMILY CENTER FOR GOOD GRIEF 1520 W. Poplar Ave. Collierville, TN 38017

MILLA’S HOUSE 28 S. Evergreen St. Memphis, TN 38104

NEA BAPTIST CENTER FOR GOOD GRIEF 1717 Executive Square Jonesboro, AR 72401

OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018 | INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS.COM |

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THE POWER

of PLACE. More than a museum, a public square.

There is power in experience.

More than exhibits, lessons.

There is power in knowledge.

More than events, opportunities.

There is power in connection.

More than history, today and tomorrow.

There is power in moving forward.

More than a destination, a journey.

There is power in purpose.

S E E . L E A R N . E N G A G E . A C T.

450 Mulberry Street | Memphis, TN 38103 | civilrightsmuseum.org

NCRM-InsideBizMM_PowerofPlaceAd.indd 1

9/10/18 3:36 PM

S M A L L

B U S I N E S S

James Lee House

C E N T R A L

How a vision restored a grand old home to life.

• • •

B Y

J O N

W.

S PA R K S

PHOTOGRAPH BY JON W. SPARKS

Their dream was a long time coming.

Jose and Jennifer Velasquez, owners and proprietors of the James Lee House in Victorian Village, had wanted to have a bed-and-breakfast since their honeymoon.

“We stayed at this fabulous place in Vermont,” Jose says. “We were struck by the setting, the history, the excellent service, the excellent food. The ambience was just so unique and different. We looked at each other and it was like, someday when we grow up, we’re gonna do this.”

And it persisted through gradkeep it in repair. In 2011, the city uate schools, job opportunities, issued a request for proposals a child, and the passage of time. nationally and Velasquez heard They’d spend weekends looking about it. at old houses, creating business “We felt that it was the right plans, and dreaming how it could time to pull out the stops,” he says, come to pass. “to make this dream come true.”

“When we moved to MemBut it wasn’t easy getting support phis in 1998, we came and visited for such an unusual endeavor. these homes,” Jose says. “We had “We had a number of individuals afternoon tea with our 5-year-old whom I trust and look up to who daughter at the Woodruff-Fonhave done remarkable developtaine House next door. I rememment work in the city, and they ber looking at this one and being looked at me and said, you’re crapuzzled by the notion zy. That can’t happen. of an old wonderful Memphis is not a bedmansion sitting there and-breakfast city.”

“We wanted collecting dust and Not everyone said people to be able he was crazy, howdeteriorating. We never imagined that 20 ever. “I had not been to experience years later we would able to get anyone to the space in be the ones doing buy into the vision and something with it.” their own terms, be a financial partner,” The city was interJose says, “but J.W. and providing them ested in saving the naKathy Gibson stepped a true Victorian tional historic site at in and not only immediately saw what we 690 Adams that began experience.” wanted to do here, but as a two-story farmthey believed in us and put their house completed in 1848. Over the money behind it and their reputayears and through three owners, tion. They made this happen. And it was expanded and remodeled. they have been the most incrediTycoon James Lee acquired it in ble cheerleaders ever since.”

1890 and the family lived there The Gibsons brought connecfor decades. In 1929, his daughter tions to the table and lent credRosa deeded the property and ibility to a project that no one the Woodruff-Fontaine property else was willing to look at. “That next door to the City of Memphis immediately meant that a bank to become the James Lee Memowould talk to us seriously, where rial Art Academy, the precursor before that, it was not going to to the Memphis College of Art. happen. They really believed in When the art school moved out this with an eye for the redevelin 1959, the James Lee House was opment of the entire area.” shuttered and little was done to

Jose Velasquez is owner and proprietor of the James Lee House.

As Jose notes, he and Jennifer were painting a picture of a successful, first-rate B&B in the middle of the medical district, and the Gibson’s were expecting good outcomes.

The Velasquez-Gibson partnership got through the paperwork and on August 21, 2012, the City Council sold the James Lee House to Jose for $1. It was a triumphant moment, but the work was really just beginning.

Jose and Jennifer wanted to blend the old and the new. “We wanted to celebrate the families that lived here and what they

represented, but we also wanted to make sure that this was not necessarily a museum,” Jose says.

“We wanted people to be able to experience the space in their own terms, providing them, like we did here in the parlor and the dining room, a true Victorian experience.”

They wanted to make those two rooms look as much like they did in 1872 when that section was finished. “The original mirrors are here, the original fireplaces are here,” he says. “This is the original flooring. We were also extraordinarily blessed that we

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The Memphis magazine Fiction Contest for Mid-South writers is back ...with a lean and hungry new look!

T

he Very Short Story Contest welcomes entries up to 750 words, maximum. Beginning in October 2018, winning stories will be published in Memphis and will be archived on memphismagazine.com.

Whereas the fiction contest was in years past a once-a-year event, the Very Short Story Contest will recognize ten winning entries annually, every month except February and August.

The Very Short Story Contest is presented by Novel, Memphis’ newest independent bookstore. Winning authors will be honored with a $200 gift certificate at Novel.

CONTEST RULES: 1. Authors are strongly encouraged to bring Memphis or the Mid-South into their stories.

How to do this is open to your interpretation.

2. Entries will be accepted throughout the year. The winning entry in any given month must have been received by the end of the second month prior (i.e. October’s winner must be received by the end of August).

3. Each story should be typed, double-spaced, and should not exceed 750 words.

4. With each story should be a cover letter that gives your name, brief author bio, address, phone number, and the title of your story. Please do NOT put your name anywhere on the manuscript itself.

5. Manuscripts may not have been previously published.

6. Manuscripts should be sent to fiction@memphismagazine.com as .doc, .rtf, or .pdf files.

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INSIDE MEMPHIS BUSINESS.COM | OCTOBER / NOVEMBER 2018

The Isabel Suite at the James Lee House is one of five guest rooms.

looks like. And they stay busy. “We’re dealing with as much as we can handle,” he says. “We have guests that are local and from around the world. We have a lot of anniversaries, birthdays staycations, and babymoons (a vacation you take with your spouse before you have your baby).

Jose, a former director of Latino Memphis, is amused when first-time visitors to the city bring some baggage from what they have heard in Nashville or New Orleans. “It’s fascinating to see all that peeled off and for us to be able to be part of an extraordinary Memphis experience,” he says. People say they’ll be back and then they really do come back. “Not only that,” he says, “but not many startup ventures that are as highly speculative as we were can break even the first year.”

In fact, a refinancing deal was approved in 2016 that reduced the Velasquez’ monthly payments since the B&B had been operating successfully.

“It’s so rewarding to see Memphians embrace something unique and different and be proud of the legacy that is embodied in this place,” Jose says. “It meant thinking outside the box and it can happen in Memphis.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY JON W. SPARKS

had, through my wife’s family, inherited all these pieces that we’ve been carrying for 28 years. They finally found a place where they belong. That 1898 Steinway piano has been in my wife’s family since day one. It was just meant to be.”

Go in the kitchen, however, and it’s state-ofthe-art. And the rooms, while evoking stories of the families that lived there, have what travelers want: Tempur-Pedic mattresses, Keurig machines, cable, wifi. “You can make the experience that you want,” Jose says. Plug into the internet or, as Jose says, “pretend that you are in Downton Abbey. The building really dictated what we could do with it. We just followed what the building said and did our very best and we’re happy with the outcome.”

Now, five years after it opened, the James Lee House is, Jose believes, rewriting the book on what a bed-and-breakfast city really

I N S I D E

T H E

C - S U I T E

A Manual for Success

Jim Canfield shows how to sharpen CEO tools.

• • •

B Y

J O N

W.

S PA R K S

PHOTOGRAPH BY JON W. SPARKS

Who wrote the book on being a successful CEO? We could start with Sun Tzu and Marcus Aurelius before getting into the scads of contemporary how-to publications.

But one particular book has garnered attention for its sound and practical advice coming from someone who knew from experience.

Kraig Kramers was one of the the continent. It was already great most thoughtful exponents of the content, but it was written back in art and science of being a CEO. In 2001 and a lot had changed since then, so we wanted to add what2002 he published CEO Tools: The ever would make it relevant today Nuts-N-Bolts of Business for Every and tie those great stories togethManager’s Success, and got positive er in a way that a new reader can reviews for its approach. access and implement.”

Kramers was, over the years, a CEO of eight companies and was One big change was taking into in demand as a speaker around account the changes in technolothe country to CEOs, universigy. “A lot of it is how we commuties, and management groups. He nicate,” Canfield says. “Though was asked to speak to a group by some concepts are the same, Jim Canfield, an executive manwe’ve actually gained a lot and ager with strong Memphis ties lost a lot. It’s easier sometimes who has brought diverse CEOs now to send an email to someone together to learn from each other. who’s just two cubicles away, than The two became it is to have a converfriends and Canfield sation. And yet, we was impressed not know that it’s in that “It’s not just only by CEO Tools, conversation that we but by Kramers’ prelearn and engage so that data and sentation, which had much more, and that information are an impact above and trust is built in such readily available, a different way, that I beyond the typical lecture. It had staying think it was important but how do we power, and CEOs who to say, to remind peouse that to get heard him buzzed ple, how is it we build the results we about him and his trust in personal comideas long after. munication? Part of really want?”

Kramers died in it is knowing people 2014, “which prompted many of personally, and the second is bethose who had heard him to woning able to listen to what they’re der if there was a way to continsaying in a way that has them felt ue his message,” Canfield says. heard, not just listening to wait Richard Kopelman, CEO of Apuntil we speak next, because I rio, LLP in Atlanta, acquired the think too often that’s the case.”

CEO Tools assets and chose CanCanfield, as a frequent speaker, field to write the new version of will remind his audience that he’s Kramers’ book. not revealing much that’s new “The timing was right for me to about setting direction, tracking metrics, and hiring smart, but do something new,” Canfield says. that there’s a big difference be“I was familiar with the book and tween knowing and doing. “I’ll had an affinity for Kraig, so we tell my audience, ‘If I was here to considered building that consulttalk about health and fitness, do ing and coaching practice around

Jim Canfield

you think I’d probably talk about diet and exercise and water and sleep? Not all of us are practicing that as often as we might.’ So part of it is reminding them that there are things that are still important today even as we have all these technologies that are now supporting the way we might run our business.”

In fact, he says, metrics offers a fine example. “With the amount of data that can now be collected, information is readily available.

Sometimes what we miss is about tracking and then creating a feedback loop so that people can interpret what’s being tracked, and then change behaviors to get a result that we really want.

Sometimes I think we’re better at tracking things, than using them. It’s not just that data and information are readily available, but how do we use that to get the results we want?”

Another thing Canfield added to the book was how to create an autonomous organization, one that gets back to thinking about process and systems, as opposed

to just relying on people. “This is important for two reasons,” he says. “In relatively recent surveys by Wells Fargo, when they talk to their CEOs and business owner clients, 85 percent are still reporting that they have to be available day-to-day, or work in the business day-to-day just to keep the basic business moving.

That chapter was really meant to say that there are some ways to get yourself out of that position, and let the organization run and really depend on the people that you hired to do that work, and try to get out of the way. It was a new chapter for the book, and it was one that I felt really compelled to speak to.”

Canfield recalls the old saying that fish can’t see the water they’re swimming in. “In some ways, the entrepreneurs are the last to see what’s happening,” he says. “Yes, things are delegated, but then someone comes back in and takes it back, or they’re too engaged once it’s delegated.

My advice would be, ‘Your job is to move from being a manager

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of the business, to a CEO of the business, to an owner of the business. That’s your natural progression.’ It’s almost as natural as getting married, having children, then becoming a grandparent. Your love of the family is still the same, just like your love of the business is still the same, it’s just your role shifts over time.

I think too often they get stuck in the direct parenting mode, in some cases past the time that it may be necessary or even valuable to be in that role.”

WHAT’S NEXT

S

Love a little, die a little and break the law.

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60 |

ince CEO Tools 2.0 is about tools, Canfield had taken the liberty of adding another one, the What’s Next Tool. “It’s designed to allow a company to think about the future, because oftentimes we get so busy with what’s happening today,” he says. The What’s Next Tool takes into account the current situation and what’s likely to happen next and options to take steps. Canfield cites the example of Harley-Davidson, which had sales fall 30 percent in three years. The research showed there was a sales curve of people in their 40s and 50s who were now getting into their 60s: aging out as buyers of motorcycles.

“It’s a great example of needing to understand that if you just thought it was a sales problem, you might throw sales and marketing at it, but no amount of sales and marketing will get a 65-year-old to buy a Harley.”

The company took another look and realized female riders were under-represented, in part because they weren’t taught to ride growing up the way boys were. “So they did training programs at dealerships with women-only rides to let them feel the cameraderie that others have felt in Harley circles. Also, Hispanic buyers, particularly in the American Southwest, were under-represented, so they positioned this as a way to own an American icon.

And the last is what they call urban buyers — I think they mean hipsters — but people who are in a densely populated metropolitan area.

Harley is pitching it as a way to get around crowded streets easier, easy to park and low use of resources.”

Canfield wondered, as anyone would, how Harleys could be easy to navigate in a city, but then he saw that the company had acquired part of Alta Motors, a company that makes electric dirt bikes. The collaboration is expected to attract those very urban buyers.

Canfield says dealing with the immense amount of data means whittling it down to what’s truly relevant. “When I talk to CEOs I remind them what it’s like getting a physical.

The doctor measures a whole bunch of things, but the report will focus on five or six key elements, like blood pressure, body mass index, blood sugar levels. They’ll tell us in a few metrics about our health and our expectations about our life and how well we live.”

In that same way, the CEO has to know

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which KPIs — Key Performance Indicators — are the ones to watch. “If we know those, we know a lot about the business,” Canfield says. “If something’s off, make the specific change needed to get that back on track.”

And yet, even if a change is decided on, there are still potential obstacles. Canfield did rigorous research on which company case studies he would include in the book. He examined about two dozen and says, “Even in the ones I didn’t include, there was an ongoing and robust way of feeding information back to the organization so that they could use it.” He points out that if a patient gets a printout from the doctor and does nothing about it, then why bother? “Too often we track things, but there’s not a mechanism built in to say, ‘Therefore here’s what we do.’” And a big part of that is reviewing the data frequently with an eye to change. He likens it to someone getting on the scale every day as opposed to weekly or monthly. The frequent weigher is more likely to take action.

Life is why we encourage you to take care of yourself as you take care of your loved ones.

STRATEGY

S

trategies typically are things that you want to accomplish over a two- to three-year horizon at a minimum,” Canfield says. It can go longer, even be permanent, he says. And the tactic might be identifying prospects and targeting them.

Best Buy, for example, looked at its data and noticed that while millions of people walk into their stores every year, it’s only four categories that account for 85 percent of sales. And they characterized those categories as four individuals. “They studied them, where they lived, how much money they made, what kind of car they drove, how often did they come to the store, if they had children and if so, how old.”

As an example, one of the profiles was that of “Mary,” a suburban housewife who liked being referred to as a housewife, with kids between 10 and 17. “When she came to the store, she very rarely bought for herself,” Canfield says, “and in fact she usually came in with something either written down or on her phone that said this is what I’m supposed to get. Best Buy figured that the worst thing they could do for Mary, is say, ‘We don’t have that one, but this one’s just as good,’ because she gets home, somebody says, ‘Mom, that’s not what I wanted,’ and now she has to return it.”

Figuring out who buys your product or service and then acting on it is key. “We wanted the book to be something that anyone could use who really wanted to run their piece of the business, or even understand how businesses run better so that they can move up through the organization,” Canfield says. “I was with someone recently who had bought a franchise, and he said: ‘They taught me how to do the business that they’re in, but nobody taught me how to be a CEO.’ That’s a pretty common thing.”

My daughter is why.

Everyone has a reason to live a longer and healthier life. What is yours?

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Douglas Browne The Peabody Hotel

• • •

B Y

S A M U E L

X .

C I C C I

• • •

P H O T O G R A P H S

B Y

L A R R Y

K U Z N I E W S K I

There is a belief that when the Dalai Lama blesses and gives you a white scarf, you receive an extra year of life. When the Buddhist leader stayed at The Peabody during a trip to Memphis, he crossed paths with Douglas Browne several times. “He was with us about two or three days,” says Browne. “After greeting him the first day, I ran into him about halfway through his trip and he handed me another scarf. I saw him again when he’s departing and I got yet another scarf. When we were finished, I leaned toward him and asked, ‘Your excellency, does this mean I get three extra years?’ He smiled and said, ‘Yes.’” !1

THANKS TO THE SPONSOR OF

T H E

O F F I C E

N O VA T E C H . C O M

!1

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As president of Peabody Hotels & Resorts, Browne has rubbed shoulders with many famous celebrity guests during his tenure.

Photos of Browne with Queen Noor of Jordan, Bill Clinton, George Bush (41 and 43), and

many more notables adorn the walls of his office.

Despite the star power coming to The Peabody on a frequent basis, Browne remains grounded. The numerous awards across a table in his office, he says, are a product of a collective

team ethic. “Over the years since I’ve been in Memphis, around 16 years, I’ve got some awards. I have these because of our 550 associates. The reality is, I wouldn’t be getting any of it if it weren’t for them, so these are really their awards.”

The trophies are testament to the work Browne and his team have done for a decade and a half, striking a fine balance between The Peabody’s traditional appeal and updating the hotel with modern developments.

Larger changes, such as $10 million renovations to the guest rooms, are in the works, but

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Browne has also focused on the little details. “This is probably one of my favorite renovations,” says Browne, “which has a slightly different look: the sofas, even though they look historic, they all have plugs in them now so you can power your devices. But unless you really look down for it you’re not going to see it, so it’s not really disruptive. And of course our staff is trained to point it out.”

Another renovation Brown points to is the upkeep of wi-fi services. “It’s interesting how there’s free wi-fi at places, but many times it’s not very

good,” says Browne. These days, with people generally having multiple devices with internet connectivity, it can a be difficult for a network to accommodate so many people.

“It’s possible we could have a couple thousand people in here all with phones, tablets, computers. The draw on technology is huge, so one of the things we take pride in is constantly trying to stay ahead of that and have fiber optic lines, having enough bandwidth so that the speed remains constant.”

Browne and his associates create an impressive team,

but perhaps one of the most important members is Tango.

About a year and a half ago, Browne started bringing his dog to work every day.

“I wasn’t sure how it would go over at first, but it seems to have been a success. Associates that probably never would have even thought of coming by my office now come by to pet her. We have vendors that stop in every day just to say hi. The mailman stops in every day too. I don’t know if I should be disappointed that they don’t really care whether I’m here or not.”

Tango and Browne recently

presided over The Peabody’s 149th anniversary celebration, a testament to the institution’s longevity and the reverence Memphis holds for it. But Browne isn’t resting on his laurels. “The big milestone is next year! From January on we’ll be doing lots of things to celebrate.” Specially branded bottles of Dom Perignon, partnerships with Bliss Family Vineyards and Jack Daniel’s, and historic-looking keys are all part of the promotions for The Peabody’s 150th. With such an occasion on the horizon, why not pop in to see the ducks?

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F R O M

T H E

A R C H I V E S

Nadia Price

One of this city’s most successful commercial photographers said, “God was good to this chick.”

VA N C E

L A U D E R D A L E

PHOTOS COURTESY PIXIE AND RICHARD WOODALL

• • • B Y

Born in Memphis in 1919, Nadia Price was the daughter of Olive and Raymond R. Price, who owned Southern Motors, the largest Cadillac dealership in the Mid-South.

She was the older sister of Billy Price, who (perhaps better known as Billy Price Carroll) became one of this city’s most acclaimed painters. Both women attended the old Memphis Art Academy, with Billy studying painting and Nadia taking classes in sculpting and drawing.

When she was 16, her father gave her a Speed Graphic press camera, and she told reporters, “Naturally, I photographed everything I could capture on film. My favorite shots were ‘human interest’ photographs.

Thus began my collection.”

After graduating from Miss Hutchison’s School in 1937, she began an internship with commercial photographer Avery N. Stratton, where she learned film processing, printing, and retouching skills.

When World War II started, she began working as one of the first — and quite possibly the only — female draftsmen (or should I say draftswoman?) for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

She was fond of saying that her life “came in thirteens.” She was employed by Stratton for 13 months, worked for the Army for 13 months, and then took an 64 |

assignment that lasted — yep — 13 months as a photographer for the Fisher Aircraft Works, a former General Motors factory in Memphis that had been converted to making parts for B-25 bombers. Working in a man’s world, she photographed the production lines and made ID tags for workers, again making the news as quite possibly the only female photographer for the Army — and General Motors — until the war ended.

In 1946, she teamed up with another photographer, Caroline Jenkins, and opened a studio in an old house on Union. They called the business “Photography

by Nadia” and their specialty was children’s portraits, but they soon branched out to include all kinds of photography: commercial, architectural, family portraits, camp meetings, church groups, weddings — even insurance claims. By 1949, the two women opened a larger studio in a corner of the old Baggott Sheet Metal Works company at 187 South Cooper.

With her distinctive touch, Nadia converted that hum-drum building into an eye-catching art-deco-style

studio, complete with pink neon lighting and an apartment on the second floor. Jenkins left after a few years, and Nadia continued on her own, in such demand that clients often had to book her services a year in advance. One client told a reporter, “Nobody seemed to have a wedding photo in the paper unless it said, ‘Photography by Nadia.’”

One of the few women in Memphis known only by her first name, Nadia caught the attention of the Downtown Association of Memphis, which in 1966 named her one of the “Five Outstanding Women Who Work.” A newspaper reporter noted, “Capturing the essence of Nadia would equate to catching water in a sifter.” In addition to her photography, in her spare time she worked on detailed drawings and paintings of plants and flowers, illustrated cartoons, and sculpted animals (usually horses, her favorite) in ceramic and bronze.

In 1971, she married William Bates, a sales executive for Republic Steel, and moved to a farm near Quitman, Arkansas.

She shut down her photography business in Cooper-Young, but continued to take pictures of anything and everything that suited her. By the time she

officially retired in 1974, she estimated she had photographed more than 50 weddings a year (sometimes two in one day) and had filed away more than 100,000 negatives.

William passed away in 1982.

Still living in Arkansas, Nadia met Oscar Strid, a retired railroad executive. They married in 1985 and moved to a lovely home on Greer’s Ferry Lake. After Oscar’s death, Nadia returned to Memphis in 2005, moving into an apartment behind the home in Central Gardens where her niece “Pixie” lived with her husband, Richard Woodall. Still painting and sculpting, she passed away at home on September 27, 2013, at the age of 94.

More than 600 of her images that captured African-American life in this region, part of an exhibition called “A Delta Era Gone By,” were donated to Arkansas State University. Another large group of her photographs now comprise the Nadia Price Collection at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

Nadia was fond of saying, “God has been good to this chick” and she hoped others benefited as much from life as she did. She had a simple aspiration: “I hope that through my photographs people will feel inspired to love each other.”

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9/7/18 3:09 PM

No ve m

P 4 M ber 10 • 10A

M

Crosstown Concourse Plaza

Free admission! 80+ Entertainment by

DJ Jordan

local vendors!

fun for the

Supporting

Rogers whole family! memphiscraftsanddrafts.com

T:9” S:7.875”

A moment of joy.

A source of inspiration.

An act of kindness.

A reason to believe.

What’s inside?

What will it bring?

An old friend.

A new beginning.

Some welcome relief, perhaps.

Or a cause for celebration.

A first impression.

A second chance.

The opportunity of a lifetime.

The help you’ve been looking for.

A distinguished past.

A promising future.

What’s inside, you ask?

Possibilities What we deliver by delivering.

SM

© 2018 FedEx.

S:9.875”

T:10.875”