20 under 40 Missoulian

SUMMER 2017

WESTERN MONTANA BUSINESS

20 UNDER 40 MEET THE TOP YOUNG PROFESSIONALS WHO EXCEL IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP, LEADERSHIP, CREATIVE VISION, INNOVATION AND DEDICATION TO THE COMMUNITY

2 — Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40 Publisher Mike Gulledge

TABLE OF CONTENTS Hank Green‌

Chad Dundas‌

Bracha Tenenbaum‌

Nate Souther‌

Editors Gwen Florio Ashley Klein

YouTube video developer, page 3

Reporters Kim Briggeman Rob Chaney David Erickson Peter Friesen Dillon Kato Ashley Nerbovig Keila Szpaller Cory Walsh

product manager for Submittable, page 4

Farmers State Bank employee, page 12

Pedro Marques‌

Brendan Work‌

Stephanie Land‌

Casey Smith‌

Photographers Tom Bauer Tommy Martino Olivia Vanni Kurt Wilson Advertising Director Jeff Avgeris 406-523-5216 Mailing address P.O. Box 8029 Missoula, MT 59807-8029 Phone 406-523-5240

watershed restoration program manager, page 5

writer, page 5

Apryle Pickering‌

director of population health and government programs at Community Medical Center, page 6

Laura Olsonoski‌

occupational therapist, owner of Eat.Move.Grow., page 7

Peter Kern‌

owner of The Bicycle Hangar, page 8

Meg Rogosienski Whicher‌ outdoor recreation specialist, page 8

Western Montana InBusiness is a publication of the Missoulian

Missoula County Public Schools teacher, page 13

owner of Straight 6 Archery, page 14

Kate Skinner‌

owner of Great Divide Physical Therapy, page 14

Ryan Torres‌

vice president of marketing and promotions at Logjam Presents, page 15

Caitlin Hofmeister‌

senior producer for SciShow, page 16

Aimee McQuilkin‌

owner of Betty’s Divine, page 17

Robert Rivers‌

Holly Biehl‌

Michelle Huie‌

Kelli Hess‌

co-owner of Imagine Nation Brewing Co., page 9

SUMMER 2017, VOL. 5, NO. 2

writer, page 11

founder of VIM & VIGR, page 10

outreach and marketing director for Clark Fork Coalition, page 18

Missoula Food Bank, director of operations, page 19

Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017 — 3

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Green always on hunt for effective humans, communication skills ROB CHANEY rchaney@missoulian.com‌

‌ or someone who F knows that hundreds of thousands of viewers want to see his next video, Hank Green takes a surprisingly laid-back approach to the media production world.

“You can run a business without pushing people so hard,” Green said at his Missoula production facility, which houses several facets of the HankGreen.com empire. “You can do it without trying to instill a culture of die-hard, 80-hour work weeks. If you want to run a business outside these big centers, you have to accept people are looking for more than money or changing the world through software. They’re looking for quality of life.

There has to be a time when you stop working.”

Green said firms in media hubs like San Francisco and New York often insist on employees working late nights or long weekends. While it brings in more productivity per person, it also reduces the number of jobs available in the community.

“They end up making a lot of money, but there’s a high cost of living” Green said. “In Missoula, you can find great people, but you’re not going to find great people who work when it’s gorgeous out or never take a snow day.

HANK GREEN Age: 36 Occupation: YouTube video developer Sometimes people want to go skiing, or be done with work so they can be with their friends and family.”

Green earned a master’s degree in environmental studies at the University of Montana. A 2006 funding grant from YouTube allowed Green and his brother John Green to start a production company in Missoula with seven other employees.

Now, the web of channels, platforms, conventions and other activities connected to HankGreen. com supports more than 50 workers.

Rife with their own vocabulary like nerdfighteria, DFTBA (Don’t Forget To Be Awesome), and VidCon, the Vlogbrothers Hank and John entertain and educate a YouTube community of more than 100,000 subscribers. The annual three-day VidCon he leads brings upward of 20,000 video producers and fans together in southern California.

While it may be easier to head-hunt for talent in major metro areas, he finds it equally productive to nurture new talent locally, he said.

“There comes a point where you bring people here or they work remotely on something,”

he said. “But it’s surprising. Sometimes what you’re really looking for is not a skill set. You want a really efficient, thoughtful, friendly communicator. That’s not something … where someone who’s gone through a certain program would have a higher chance of developing it.

We’re looking for effective humans, not some Hank Green particular kind of communication.

“I’m on the lookout.

Whenever I meet anyone, especially in the service industry, I’ll be having a conversation in line at the grocery store or the flower shop: Do you like this job? Would you like to apply for this thing coming up?”

With the YouTube world constantly on the hunt for the next new thing, Green said having co-workers who aren’t already immersed in the media world can be an advantage. Instead he seeks people with a willingness to go after the job with intensity, building new online ideas from scratch.

“A lot of people come here with a background in film, which is literally something we have to unteach” Green said of the SciShow production staff.

“You have to be faster and dirtier in this world of online video. It’s got to be cheaper. That’s the main thing.”

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

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4 — Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Tenenbaum trades Brooklyn for Montana DILLON KATO dillon.kato@missoulian.com‌

‌Bracha Tenenbaum traded in the grind of New York City for the quality of life in Missoula and said she hasn’t looked back since.

The 27-year-old is a product manager at Missoula tech startup Submittable, working with the designers and software engineers on the development of the company’s online submission services.

After growing up in Brooklyn and graduating from Columbia University, Tenenbaum said she and her husband Danny decided that once he graduated from New York University’s law school that they wanted to move out West.

“We were done with New York, done with that race race,” she said.

After a stint in Colorado, where her husband worked as a public defense attorney, the couple moved to St. Ignatius in spring 2015 when Danny secured a fellowship through NYU to work with the reservation’s public defense office.

“He saw that (attorneys) wore jeans and button-down shirts and said. ‘No suit, no tie?

I’m in’,” Tenenbaum said. “I had never been to Montana but as soon as I saw it I was like, yes.”

When she moved, Tenenbaum was working remotely for a New York-based online coding school, but decided to find a job closer to her new home. She said she found out about Submittable by simply making a Google search for “Missoula startups.”

Despite being able to work remotely at Submittable, Tenenbaum said she found herself commuting into Missoula to work out of its downtown office more and more, and about a year ago she and Danny moved into town. Her husband now works as an attorney with the state appellate

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

Bracha Tenenbaum defenders office.

“We just bought a house.

That’s something we would never have been able to do in New York. The quality of life is so much higher here,” she said.

While she still misses parts of St. Ignatius, including waking up to the sun over the Mission Mountains, Tenenbaum said she loves the outdoor opportunities available around the Missoula Valley, adding that she and her husband have taken up

BRACHA TENENBAUM Age: 27 Occupation: Product manager, Submittable trail running since moving to the state.

“I think we fit into the Missoula culture pretty well,” she said.

In addition to her work, Tenenbaum said she felt it was important to get involved in her

new community in other ways.

When the first round of refugees settled in Missoula, she volunteered with Soft Landing and the International Rescue Committee, helping with things like driving a family around and teaching a weekly English class.

She and her husband even took the children out on their first skiing trip.

“It was great, and a disaster.

We put the kids on skis. They hadn’t even seen snow before.

They fell over a lot,” she said.

Tenenbaum also volunteers with an organization, the Free Verse Writing Project, to teach creative writing at the juvenile detention wing of the Missoula County jail. As with Submittable, Tenenbaum said the opportunity was just a Google search and a phone call away.

“It’s surprisingly not hard to get involved. You can reach these groups and just get started,” she said.

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Writer Land takes on title of ‘social justice warrior’ ‌On Nov. 12, 2015, the widely read news and opinion website Vox published an article by Missoula freelance writer Stephanie Land entitled “I spent 2 years cleaning houses. What I saw makes me never want to be rich.”

The first paragraph is emblematic of Land’s gift for intriguing storytelling: “Let me tell you something you already know: Your housekeeper spies on you. We work alone. We get bored. What do you expect?”

Land had pitched 15 different pieces to Vox before that, but they were all rejected. Finally, they accepted that piece. It immediately went viral and was viewed by 600,000 people in the first week. It’s been seen by at least a million people since, and it earned Land a book deal.

She’s currently working on a memoir based off the piece,

“Every time my car broke down, I broke down too,” she recalled. “I thought, ‘What am Occupation: Writer I doing? I’m a single mother getting an art degree, this is how government policies affect ridiculous.’ But a lot of it is stubbornness. I was focused on what the poor.

Land has written several other I wanted to do and did anything that got me closer to that.” opinion pieces for major media Writing is not always a pleasoutlets, including “The Class Politics of Decluttering“ for the ant experience, Land explained.

“I am writing about the hardNew York Times. She’s earned est time in my life, and to live in a reputation as someone who that space doesn’t always make offers an insightful perspective for happy thoughts,” she said. on the struggles faced by those In the end, though, Land, who in poverty. That’s because she’s now has two kids and a husband been there. to go along with a new home, is Land was a single mother when she went to the University glad she picked Missoula as her permanent spot to settle down of Montana to get an English after leaving her native Alaska degree — and took on at least and living in rural Oregon. $55,000 in debt to do it.

“Missoula is an amazing “It was a huge leap of faith community,” she said. “When I on my part,” she said. “But I’ve first came here, it had a different wanted to be a writer since I vibe for a tattooed single mom was 10.” with a kid that likes to wear Land knows first-hand what tutus and not much else. It’s it’s like not to have enough been awesome.” money to save.

STEPHANIE LAND

DAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com‌

Age: 38

Stephanie Land to be called “Maid: A Single Mother’s Journey from Cleaning House to Finding Home,” scheduled for release in fall 2018.

Land’s work is focused on social and economic justice, and she doesn’t shy away from the

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

term “social justice warrior” that has been bestowed on her by others. One of her idols is Barbara Ehrenreich, who wrote the famous book “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America,” an investigation of

Marques brings his work in two hemispheres to Missoula ROB CHANEY rchaney@missoulian.com‌

‌Working on both the northern and southern halves of the Western Hemisphere helped make Pedro Marques keenly aware of the importance of how landowners relate to their landscapes.

“There’s a lot of similarities between people who work the land with their hands,” said Marques, who worked as a communications specialist for the World Bank in Brazil and Panama before coming to Missoula to complete an environmental studies degree. “It’s interesting now working in the Big Hole, matching grant and private-sector money with landowner values to get things done.”

Marques is the staff restoration project manager for the Big Hole Watershed Committee. The

PEDRO MARQUES Age: 39 Occupation: Watershed restoration program manager project finds ways of repairing ecological damage from decades of smelter smoke blowing in from Anaconda’s copper mining operations. He previously worked with Watershed Consulting LLC on restoration efforts at Anaconda’s Superfund cleanup sites.

“Pedro was one of the first restoration practitioners to put drones to work as a design and monitoring tool,” said colleague Mark Vander Meer. Marques pioneered ecological restoration techniques for the steep and eroding slopes around the Anaconda Smelter Hills, and brought together the team of scientists and land managers needed to win

Pedro Marques approval for the design.

He also has been an active member of the Missoula Chamber of Commerce’s Leadership Missoula program, where he served as the Natural Resources Committee

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

chair in 2014. At the University of Montana, Marques mentors students through the forestry capstone program, and occasionally teaches semester-long courses.

He said studying stream ecology

for his master’s degree with the environmental studies program provided a strong foundation for his work on Superfund and related remediation projects.

“Pedro was a founding member of the Bad Goat Forest Products team. As the chief operations officer, he built up the business and kept it running,” Vander Meer said. “He was involved in all aspects, from bookkeeping, designing new products, marketing, human resource duties, to stacking lumber. Of special note is his involvement with the Mandala Project where they use Bad Goat sawdust for their project.”

Marques grew up in Brazil and frequently plays and sings with Brazilian-focused local bands such as Canta Brasil. He also enjoys hunting, hiking and picking mushrooms with his growing family.

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Pickering followed unexpected path to unique role in health care “When I started graduate school, I had a much different picture of what I would be doing.

Sometimes people plan their lives to be a certain way and that doesn’t always work out. And sometimes that’s for the best.”

KIM BRIGGEMAN kbriggeman@missoulian.com‌

‌She wanted to be an anthropologist. That’s what brought Apryle Pickering to Missoula and the University of Montana in the first place.

Fifteen years and two master’s degrees later, the Vermont native has settled deftly into her new role at Community Medical Center, in a job that at first blush has little to do with anthropology.

Pickering is CMC’s director of Population Health and Government Programs, which needs some breaking down for us lay people.

While in a similar role at Providence St. Patrick across town, she was handpicked to lead an effort called “Meaningful Use,” the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ program that’s worth millions of reimbursement Medicare dollars to local health systems employing certified electronic health records.

Population health management, Pickering explained, means looking at hospital populations in a holistic way.

“In health care typically we’ve done episodic care in the clinic setting,” she said. “With population health, we’re focused more on looking at our entire patient population and making sure they stay healthy, whether or not they come into the office or not.”

That means meeting patients at home, looking at social determinants of health and “what else could be going on in their lives that impact their health and wellness,” she said.

By all accounts, Pickering is good at what she does. When she came to Community Medical Center in December, it was her third promotion in three years, according to Paul Tripp, a former administrator at Providence St. Patrick who nominated

— Apryle Pickering

Apryle Pickering administrator should strive to be — and achieve,” Tripp said.

Age: 38 “She’s remarkable,” said Dr. Occupation: Community Medical David Lechner, her current Center, director of Population boss as chief medical officer at Health and Government Community and president of its Programs physician group. “Apryle has a job and a title that is not necesPickering for the Missoulian 20 sarily easy to understand. It’s a complicated, difficult subject, Under 40 recognition. and she truly is the subject “Apryle is a leader whose matter expert in this for our business acumen, professional corporation, if not for the state demeanor and intellectual of Montana in general.” capacity is truly beyond paralPickering’s mother Sue is a lel and serves as an example nurse, “so I think that may be of what every health care

APRYLE PICKERING

in 2008. Meanwhile, she was getting a taste of hospital life as a receptionist at St. Pat’s and the Western Montana Clinic.

“My focus has really been the health of the patient the whole time I’ve been in health care, and when I had the opportunity to take a position in population health it seemed to really match my interest and I became, I’d say, very passionate,” she said.

That passion comes in handy in staying on top of the complex evolution of health care.

“We’re seeing a lot of changes in the way we are paid and providing care, with a lot more changes to come, I’m sure,” Pickering said, adding, “I believe deeply that where we’re TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌ headed in health care payment reform is the best option for the patient.”

And it turns out, she’s right where my interest started in in her educational wheelhealth care,” she said. house. Pickering took medical She grew up in Florence, anthropology courses at Union Vermont, and went to Union College, which is described as College in Schenectady, New the study of “human health and York, where she majored in disease, health care systems and anthropology. Family, scenery and the University of Montana’s biocultural adaptation.”

“When I started graduate anthropology department school, I had a much different drew her west in 2002 with picture of what I would be Justin Clook, her high school sweetheart and now husband of doing,” she said. “Sometimes people plan their lives to be a nine years.

Pickering earned a master’s at certain way and that doesn’t UM in applied anthropology in always work out. And some2004, then one in public health times that’s for the best.”

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Olsonoski found her calling in helping others DAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com‌

‌Laura Olsonoski loves helping people achieve their goals.

That’s why she became an occupational therapist and started her own company dedicated to helping people with disabilities, especially children, gain the physical and social skills they need to become successful and happy.

“We ensure that individuals can participate in activities that are meaningful in life,” she said. “Anything from being able to independently get dressed to teaching social skills to children with autism. We do a lot of physical rehabilitation, especially for the upper extremities.”

Olsonoski is from Minnesota, and came to the University of Montana to get an undergraduate degree in psychology. She then earned a doctorate in occupational therapy at Pacific University in Oregon.

The company she started in 2015, called Eat.Move.Grow., offers occupational therapy services, as well as consultative direct care and educational services. She has one employee, and she sometimes works 70 hours a week and anticipates her company growing rapidly.

She especially loves early intervention and pediatric care.

“There’s a huge demand for this type of service,” she said.

“I haven’t done any marketing. All my clients come from word of mouth, especially in this area. There’s not many pediatric therapists, and there is no occupational therapy school in Montana. So getting trained professionals in is more difficult.”

She said it’s “absurd” that there is no occupational therapy school in the state, especially considering that Montana has an aging population.

“With the baby boomers retiring, this profession is on

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

Laura Olsonoski with client Cody Nulliner

LAURA OLSONOSKI Age: 29 Occupation: Occupational therapist, owner of Eat.Move.

Grow. the rise,” she said. “And there’s not a lot of skilled professionals here.”

She works with a lot of people who have cerebral palsy and/or Down syndrome.

On a recent afternoon, she

was working with one of her wheelchair-bound clients at the Missoula YMCA. “Today we were working on visual motor activities and transfers from the floor to the wheelchair,” she said. “It’s really important. If he were to fall with nobody around, it’s important for him to be able to get up again. It’s huge for his independence.”

Her goal is to give people greater autonomy over their

own lives so they can more fully enjoy everyday activities without needing a caregiver.

She said rather than just barking out orders at her clients, she tries to do everything through play and applied behavior analysis.

In her spare time Olsonoski likes to play rugby, basketball and go hiking or kayaking. She volunteers with the Special Olympics ski team in the winter, the Special Olympics

basketball team in the fall and spends time with “Littles” from the Big Brothers Big Sisters program that she volunteered with when she was an undergrad at UM. She’s also really into pottery. However, her chosen career is her true passion.

“I always knew I wanted to help people. I just didn’t know what it would look like until I discovered occupational therapy,” she said. “I’ve been obsessed ever since.”

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BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Kern keeps family business rolling DILLON KATO dillon.kato@missoulian.com‌

‌ his spring Peter Kern, owner T of The Bicycle Hangar, taught his 4-year-old son Hank how to ride without training wheels in the parking lot of the Brooks Street store.

“He was hanging out in the shop and just jumped on one of the bikes and started going, so I got right behind him,” he said.

It was a big moment for 30-year-old Kern, who took over managing the shop in 2009 and eventually bought it from his father Rick, who started The Bicycle Hangar in 1980.

“It’s a huge sense of responsibility and also pride. He ran it for 30 years and there’s a huge amount of family pride in running the family business and keeping that going,” Kern said.

Since then, he’s continued

PETER KERN Age: 30 Occupation: Owner, The Bicycle Hangar to grow the company, including opening a second location downtown in late 2014. But the mentality of being a local, family bike shop has always come first.

“I get people who bought their first bike from my dad and now they are bringing their kid in because it’s time to buy them a bike,” Kern said.

Finding ways to give back to the community is also something Kern sees as a responsibility of owning a local business. He is the president of the local alumni association of the Sigma Nu fraternity — which he credits for teaching him leadership and organizational skills while a student at the University of Montana — and leverages the

bike shop to help out organizations in Missoula.

“It would be easy for me to take a day off and go volunteer, but one person volunteering doesn’t do as much as organizing,” he said.

Twice a year, Kern hosts blood drives at the store for the American Red Cross, a move spurred after his wife Hailey was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia in March 2014. Hailey went through months of chemotherapy at Providence St. Patrick Hospital before the cancer was declared in remission.

Each time the American Red Cross sets up in the parking lot of the shop, Kern encourages his employees to help sign up their family and friends.

For the past three years, while the event was held in Missoula, Kern was on the leadership team of the Montana Special Olympics

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Peter Kern State Summer Games. In May, during the third and final year of the games being hosted in town, each of the athletes brought their cycles to the shop for a safety inspection, with Kern saying they gave out free rentals to the people whose bikes his staff didn’t feel confident certifying as fully safe.

On the day of the cycling events, Kern closed down both of his locations for the day so all of his employees, as well as more than 30 other volunteers, could help out at the biking events.

“It was a great time. We all got to be out there working together and having fun.”

Whicher opens outdoor opportunities for Missoulians ASHLEY NERBOVIG ashley.nerbovig@missoulian.com‌

‌Access to recreation is a right, not a privilege, said Meg Rogosienski Whicher, outdoor recreation specialist with Missoula Parks and Recreation.

In the three years Whicher has worked for Parks and Rec, she has made this a reality for many in the Missoula area.

“My job is to specifically work on getting more people outdoors and active,” Whicher said.

Whicher runs the Missoula Outdoor Recreation and Education program and in her short time with the department, she has created dozens of new programs focused on giving people of all ages and abilities access to the outdoors. The program has scheduled coffee walks, summer camps for children with and without disabilities and a youth mountain biking team with at least 225 participants.

MEG ROGOSIENSKI WHICHER Age: 33 Occupation: Outdoor recreation specialist “We’ve got little dudes on striders all the way up to 15-year-olds,” Whicher said.

Missoula is an active community, but some things prevent people from connecting with the outdoors, Whicher said.

Those can be financial barriers, fear, or lack of understanding, but everyone is capable of being active, she said.

Her big push is to remove those barriers. Whicher has made a rope course in McCormick Park accessible to people with physical disabilities, as well as promoted wheelchairaccessible rafts, and hand cycles.

She has also just encouraged kids to stick with the programs they join.

Meg Rogosienski Whicher “One of my proudest accomplishments was watching a kiddo bike up a trail for the first time,” Whicher said.

Building relationships with

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

parents and community members is huge for Whicher’s position. Tyler Decker “the yin” to Whicher’s “yang,” facilitates the programs volunteer outreach, in

addition to supporting the disc golf program in the parks and helping out in other areas.

Beside Whicher and Decker, the rest of the program staff are either volunteers or paid through program fees. Reaching out to other local groups and partnering with people in Missoula is important to Whicher’s program.

“One of the best things in Missoula is if we all collaborate together, the whole community thrives,” Whicher said.

To help innovate some of the outdoor activities, the program did a GoPro adventure filmmaking camp with the kids’ work later getting screened at the Roxy Theater. Putting a camera on a kid’s head and telling him or her to go shoot something can make someone less tentative, Whicher said.

“There is no greater joy than sharing what you love with somebody else,” Whicher said.

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Brewer Rivers combines beer and bonding ROB CHANEY rchaney@missoulian.com‌

‌After a dozen years traveling conflict zones with peacebuilding organizations, Robert Rivers has found a radically different outlet for his communitybuilding skills.

“We needed something with more stability,” Rivers said with his wife, Fernanda, at their Imagine Nation Brewing Co. on the banks of the Clark Fork River. “While we were traveling, we met this Mexican woman in Tijuana who had built a community center in a gang neighborhood because she wanted a safe place for kids to go. Things like that can have a massive impact on the world.”

The Rivers’ version was to combine a craft beer brewery with a community center. In the two years since it opened, Imagine Nation has logged meetings from more than 1,300 local groups, clubs and organizations.

During the interview last week, two different gatherings were taking place simultaneously in the brewery’s conference room and on the riverside patio.

Knowing that alcohol and education rarely appear together in the same format, Rivers carefully styled the business to be welcoming and thoughtful. Big, loaded bookshelves line several walls. Tables big enough to spread blueprints or art materials mix with open areas set up for open-mic performance or professional musicians.

“Beer is like a tree,” Rivers said. “It can give shade, provide wood to build a home or wood to make spears to use on an enemy.

It’s what you do with beer that counts.”

Fellow brewer Kennden Culp credited Rivers with the mentorship necessary to get Culp’s own Matchwood Brewing Co. functioning in Sandpoint, Idaho.

“As an aspiring brewer, I knew that we would need commercial

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Robert Rivers with his wife Fernanda Menna Barreto Krum

ROBERT RIVERS Age: 39 Occupation: Co-owner, Imagine Nation Brewing Co. experience if we were to have a successful brewery,” Culp said.

“My wife and I walked into INBC one day and asked Robert if he would be willing to take me under his wing as an apprentice.

Without hesitation, he agreed to do so. Robert’s willingness to freely share with me his knowledge of brewing and to trust me without question speaks

volumes of his commitment to educating and community development.”

In a world far removed from Missoula beer-brewing, Rivers also worked for the Nonviolent Peaceforce, training more than 4,000 civilian peacekeepers how to operate in nearly 100 countries around the world. He holds a master’s degree in peace and conflict studies from the European University Centre.

Then he spent seven years building up his training in beer brewing and business. While he modeled the atmosphere of

Imagine Nation on the friendly watering holes he and Fernanda knew in Brazil, his upbringing in Helena convinced them that Big Sky Country was the place they wanted to try their idea.

“I think we’ve succeeded and done well because Missoulians are doing it for themselves,” Rivers said. “About 175 different organizations have hosted things here. We worked with the Missoula Redevelopment Agency so they invested in the property in return for getting public parking to help develop this part of Missoula. You can’t

get people to pull strings if your only goal is to make money.

The whole mission has to be beyond beer.”

That said, Rivers knows Missoulians also love their beer.

He’s been attentive to which taps empty fastest, and adjusts recipes accordingly.

“We’ve found that what they do like is definitely hops,” Rivers said. “We’re making a New England-style IPA that has incredible flavor profile but almost no bitterness. We go through an entire tank, about 180 gallons, in 12 days.”

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Huie changes perception of compression socks KEILA SZPALLER keila.szpaller@missoulian.com‌

‌ ompression socks aren’t C ugly anymore.

They’re colorful, covered in stripes, polka dots and flowers.

Their evolution comes thanks to Michelle Huie, who is based in Missoula and founded VIM & VIGR. From here, the socks that boost circulation go to more than 800 retail locations in the United States and abroad.

Most of the shops haven’t ever carried compression socks before. Now, they’re selling stylish pairs to athletes, professionals who spend many hours on their feet, travelers boarding long flights, pregnant women and others.

“It’s been exciting in that we’re kind of changing the perception of compression socks,” said Huie, who has a background in health care as well as marketing, sales and analytics.

VIM & VIGR started three and a half years ago, after Huie herself felt her legs get achy and tired at the end of her day job.

She looked for socks and found only ugly, boring ones, or neonyellow pairs, but nothing cute or with any personality.

A light bulb went off in her head: “I’m sure that there are tons of other people who would want a product like this.”

Since then, the socks got stitched and sold, and the headlines got splashed across national media, with more to come. Last year, the New York Times featured VIM & VIGR socks — in its style section.

Martha Stewart Weddings recommended the socks for traveling brides who don’t want swollen ankles. (“They are not like the ones your grandma wore.”)

Coming up? A story on “Good Morning America” and a feature on QVC.

MICHELLE HUIE Age: 36 Occupation: Founder, VIM & VIGR VIM & VIGR is a success story, but Huie went through rough patches, too.

Early on, with customers clamoring for socks and the product on back order, Huie got a faulty batch of 1,500 pairs.

Every single sock was too long; she ate the loss and donated the socks instead of selling them.

The businesswoman with an economics degree from the University of Chicago and MBA from Kellogg at Northwestern University had advice to get her through: “In order to start your own business, you have to be irrationally optimistic.”

“I’ve actually really taken that to heart,” Huie said. “The reality of starting a business is the highs can be really high, but the lows can be really lonely, just to be completely frank about it.”

At the same time, Huie looks to turn negatives into positives. VIM & VIGR gets boxes of orders from Taiwan, and an excellent quality control process means it hasn’t gotten a bad pair of socks since.

In her own talks about business, Huie offers this advice: “If you build it, they won’t come.”

That’s right.

Many people think that a good idea will produce its own customers, Huie said, but the truth is different. Rather, she said a good idea requires execution to become a reality in the hands of customers.

“You have to put in a lot of thought, strategy and planning,” Huie said.

VIM & VIGR employs 15 people, and last month, the company was moving to a new location on West Broadway, having outgrown its

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

Michelle Huie

“I try to work with people’s strengths and what they want to work on to challenge all sides of their brain.” headquarters off Brooks Street. (“We have one bathroom, and we have 15 people here.”)

For talent, she mines her own team members. The designs on the most recent sock collection come from Huie’s accountant,

to work on to challenge all sides of their brain,” Huie said.

As a source of inspiration, — Michelle Huie she also looks to her own team.

Staff members show her which areas of the business need her focus, and they help drive the a numbers mastermind who company forward. also happens to have a degree “We push each other. And we in fashion and is working on the designs for an upcoming collec- all hold each other accountable for what we need to do every tion as well. day to move the business for“I try to work with people’s ward,” Huie said. strengths and what they want

Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017 — 11

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Missoula novelist Dundas debuts with ‘Champion’ CORY WALSH cory.walsh@missoulian.com‌

‌In the annals of literary fiction blurbs, “five out of five suplexes” surely ranks among the most memorable.

That was the verdict Pro Wrestling Illustrated rendered for Missoula writer Chad Dundas’ debut, “Champion of the World,” a historical novel about wrestling set in the 1920s.

After the book was published last summer by respected house G.P. Putnam’s Sons, it earned praise from both the sports press and the literary world, such as Kirkus Reviews.

Dundas said he was “delighted and surprised at how well the book was received” by the media and readers. Given its nicheinterest subject matter, he didn’t know quite what to expect.

“Champion of the World” is both a work of literary historical fiction and a wrestling novel.

His protagonist is Pepper Van Dean, a disgraced former champ reduced to the life of a carnival sideshow. He and his wife Moira are given a chance at money — and redeeming his reputation — when he’s recruited to train Garfield Taft, an African-American heavyweight, for a title bout. (Dundas, a fourth-generation Montanan and native Missoulian, took the opportunity to set their training camp in his home state.)

The plot gave Dundas room to explore the development, or descent, of wrestling from respected sport to spectacle and its relationship with race, while subverting the expected beats of a sports story.

Dundas drew on dual aspects of his background, including detailed descriptions of the fights that are accessible to those unfamiliar with wrestling.

Dundas is now a lead mixed-martial arts reporter for Bleacher Report, the national sports site, where his articles regularly draw five-digit reader

CHAD DUNDAS Age: 39 Occupation: Writer numbers. He and fellow Missoula-based MMA reporter Ben Fowlkes, a USA Today columnist, have a podcast, CoMain Event, that just passed its fifth anniversary.

The Hellgate High School and University of Montana journalism graduate found that career route after several stints as a sportswriter and columnist at the Missoulian. (Like Fowlkes, he has a master’s in creative writing from UM.) A lifelong wrestling fan, Dundas had noticed that his sport of choice was nonexistent in the literature section.

“I looked around literature and always wondered where all the wrestling books were, because popular fiction is rife with boxers and boxing books, there are boxers everywhere, but there are no wrestlers,” he said. “As a wrestling fan, maybe my lofty goal was to write the great American wrestling novel.”

“Champion” originated as a short story that Dundas published in Thuglit, a small noir fiction journal in New York. He was about a hundred pages into a novel when an agent who’d seen the story contacted him.

G.P Putnam’s was so enthusiastic about his work that it signed on “Champion” and a second novel he had formulated.

Kevin Canty, a novelist and one of Dundas’ creative writing professors, said “what makes Chad stand out to me is his focus, persistence and drive.” Dundas wrote the book while starting a family — he and his wife now have three small children.

“He made that novel happen in difficult circumstances, and he did a lovely job of it,” Canty said.

“All the luck in the world

OLIVIA VANNI, Missoulian‌

Chad Dundas

although he’s long been a fan of crime fiction. He compared the rewriting process on such a book to a game of Jenga. “You can only pull out so many pieces — Chad Dundas and move them before the whole thing falls over,” he said.

It’s a different feeling writing life — he suffered a traumatic this book — when he started brain injury that has damaged writing “Champion” there was his memory, robbing him of freedom from anyone’s expectachildhood recollections. After tions of success. But he tries not he witnesses a deadly fire, he’s pulled into solving the mystery. to think about things that are beyond his control.

This brings him into contact “As far as book sales or audiwith his ex-girlfriend, a reporter ence appeal, I try not to think at the local paper who’s also about that too much, preferring, investigating the blaze.

I guess, to focus on the process It’s Dundas’ first attempt of writing,” he said. at the densely plotted genre,

“As far as book sales or audience appeal, I try not to think about that too much, preferring, I guess, to focus on the process of writing.” won’t help you if you don’t have the writing done when luck stops by.”

By the time “Champion” was released, Dundas was already a year into work on the followup, which has a working title of “Missing Pieces,” a crime novel set in Montana. A soldier returns from war in the Mideast to his hometown in Montana, where he hopes to sort out his

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Focus key to Souther’s diverse banking roles KIM BRIGGEMAN kbriggeman@missoulian.com‌

‌ he last thing Nate Souther T recalls hearing on the most important day of his life was BOOM. He saw stars, then nothing else for five days.

It was Thanksgiving Day in 2000 and Souther, 19, had been hunting with a buddy on an Idaho back road by Lake Coeur d’Alene. He’d just rolled his 1994 Ford Ranger pickup on a sharp corner and was flung out the window in the bargain.

“I ruined Thanksgiving that year for a lot of people,” said Souther.

He’s 36 now, and the recently promoted vice president and manager of Farmers State Bank’s Lolo branch. Also the bank’s facilities manager. And its security officer, and inhouse appraiser, and manager of its real estate properties.

“It’s probably the most unique position I’ve ever seen,” said Dan Kosch, vice president and commercial lender at the Lolo branch who’s been in the banking business for 43 years.

“He’s got about 12 jobs, from being a lender to changing the light bulb system to property management. I kid him all the time: ‘You’ve got to be a young guy to do all this stuff.’ ” It seems a far cry from the teenager who lay unconscious on the mountainside all those years ago. Souther suffered a traumatic brain injury that prompted doctors in Coeur d’Alene to induce a coma for four days.

“For months we did not know how much he would recover,” said Souther’s mother, Marcia Babowicz of Hamilton.

Souther spent a week in the intensive care unit, and just one more in a Spokane hospital before his family took him home.

NATE SOUTHER Age: 36 Occupation: Farmers State Bank vice president/Lolo Branch manager/consumer loan officer/ security officer “It was like, ‘I’m not staying here. This doesn’t work for me,’” he said. “It was my mission in life to get past this and to be able to look back on it, if not fondly, at least to say it definitely helped carve my path.”

He shed what he characterized as an aimless life, set goals and started picking them off.

Within months he’d licked the most enduring effect of the accident, short-term memory loss. Often working two jobs at a time, he graduated from North Idaho College in his hometown of Coeur d’Alene and moved to western Montana where, he said, “I’m related to half the Bitterroot Valley.”

By the time he’d earned a business degree from the University of Montana in 2005, Souther’s job resume ranged from fast food, to golf course, lumber yard and auto parts work, to bartending and waiting tables to fueling airplanes.

In 2007 he was pulling shifts at the Mustard Seed in Missoula and looking for a career-path job with nights and weekends off when Souther ran his resume past his mother.

Babowicz, who is retired from a career in banking, recognized his potential and forwarded his resume to Farmers State executives. Soon he had a job offer, and he hasn’t looked back.

After a year as teller at the same Lolo branch he now manages, he moved to the new Missoula branch, then was transferred to headquarters in Victor. There he spent 2½ years during the depths of the recession in the collection

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Nate Souther

nominated her son for the Missoulian’s 20 Under 40 recognition.

“If you are stuck, need a jump start, or how to find the secret code to re-set your remote access code, he is the guy,” she said.

As facilities manager, Souther converted the Lolo building’s fluorescent lights to LED, then — Nate Souther coordinated similar conversions at each of the other six branches from Missoula to Darby.

“I’ve always been a hard two sons — Ty, age 8, and worker and find myself very Gage, 6 — who go to Hellgate Elementary School. In his spare lucky to work for an amazing time Souther has coached them company that recognizes my in youth soccer and says it looks efforts and has rewarded me for like he’ll become a flag football (them),” he said. “I think motivation and drive and willingness coach in the fall. to do the not-so-fun jobs with “Nate has inherited a family trait of being quite mechanically a smile on your face is the key talented and helps employees as to success. I really enjoy coming through and being counted well as customers with vehicle on.” issues,” noted Babowicz, who

“I’ve always been a hard worker and find myself very lucky to work for an amazing company that recognizes my efforts and has rewarded me for (them). think motivation and drive and willingness to do the not-so-fun jobs with a smile on your face is the key to success. I really enjoy coming through and being counted on.” department. Souther has been back in Lolo since 2011 and the climb since has been steady.

“He’s been promoted three times in the last three years, something like that, and now he’s branch manager,” Kosch said. “That’s pretty good in this profession in a threeyear period.”

Married in 2008, Souther and his wife Summer have

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BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Work educates to increase understanding, reduce Islamophobia KEILA SZPALLER keila.szpaller@missoulian.com‌

‌Closing in on the end of the school year, the students in Brendan Work’s class are selecting superhero names in Arabic.

That’s one tiny thing the 17 teenagers will do as a homework assignment at Hellgate High School.

Later, maybe at home, the students who are learning the Arabic language and culture may share their knowledge with their parents when a television news report broadcasts a story about Syria or Iraq.

Maybe much later, they’ll use their learning to help others understand, too.

“It’s no secret that Arabic is understood as an enemy language and has been portrayed that way for years,” Work said.

“Since 9/11 most significantly, but even before that, there have been negative images of the Middle East and Arabs and Muslims just about everywhere you look in the media and popular culture.

“And exploring in a positive way the culture and history of the Middle East I think has a transformative effect on students as they become socially and politically active and as they influence others’ opinions.”

Sibling rivalry drew Work to Arabic. His sister was studying the language, he wanted to do better, and he ended up sticking with it through college.

“I was the worst student pretty much every year,” he said.

As the class advanced, though, he went from being the worst of 100 students to the worst of a much smaller class, four students. And Work can flip that status on its head: “You’re the fourth-best speaker of Arabic.”

After reporting in the Palestinian territories for a year and a half, Work returned to Missoula and found Missoula County Public Schools on the hunt for a permanent Arabic teacher. An

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Brendan Work your heart.”

“When you look at Arabic Age: 28 letters, you are experiencing Occupation: Missoula County how beautiful a language can Public Schools teacher look for the first time often, because we just don’t have earlier grant had paid for teach- that experience with English,” ers to work on contract for a year Work said.

Myrt Westphal, retired at a time.

“I said, ‘I can do it,’ and I was associate dean for student life at Swarthmore College, said Work hired in the spring of 2012,” is an example of “personal intelhe said. lectual excellence and a symbol During some lectures, he of international engagement.” speaks Arabic 75 percent to 80 percent of the time, and the stu- Westphal knew Work when he attended Swarthmore, and the dents banter with him as well. retired associate dean now lives He writes on the white board in Missoula. in delicate and graceful script, “I think he is a role model for in lettering that “comes toward

BRENDAN WORK

our young people in how he lives his beliefs,” Westphal said in his nomination of Work for this series. “I think it (is) important to celebrate young educators, to encourage others to follow in those footsteps and remind residents that educators are part of our economic enterprise.”

Work teaches Arabic language and culture I, II and III at Hellgate, and he also teaches beginning and intermediate courses at Sentinel and Big Sky high schools. In the community, he works with refugees and works to reduce Islamophobia.

People need to learn about the realities of each other’s lives,

Work said. Learning a language offers one of the deepest connections to another’s culture, and the ability to navigate different cultures helps people in other endeavors, he said.

Work supports language teaching in general, but he also supports the teaching of the most widely spoken languages, ones not often taught in U.S. schools.

“It mystifies teachers of Chinese, Arabic and Hindi because those are the No. 1, No. 4, and No. 5,” Work said.

Spanish and English are Nos. 2 and 3, “and those are obviously well covered.”

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Skinner takes on ‘whole-body approach’ to physical therapy PETER FRIESEN peter.friesen@missoulian.com‌

KATE SKINNER Age: 37

Occupation: Owner, Great ‌ ate Skinner will admit K Divide Physical Therapy that her timing on starting her Great Divide: Skinner credited own physical therapy business word-of-mouth recommendawasn’t perfect. tions from loyal patients to It was in October 2013. The their friends and family for its Affordable Care Act was still continued success and commuexperiencing growing pains and the government shutdown was in nity approach.

That approach was a result full effect. of Skinner’s lack of business “It was not really a good time acumen: She said learning how anyone would pick,” Skinner to run a business over the past said from Great Divide Physical four years was one of the bigTherapy’s gym.

But in six months, Skinner had gest challenges to starting her own practice. added two more physical theraAs such, Skinner judges pists and they were seeing 60 to success not by the amount of 80 patients a week. patients they can have and the By spring 2017, Skinner had amount of fees they rake in, but added on another therapist and by employee and patient happitogether the four of them are seeing about 150 patients a week, ness and satisfaction.

“It’s not only a happy place with several Missoula’s Choice awards on the wall for their work to be, but we can do what we love,” Skinner said. “That comin the community. bination is what I would have Industry-wide physical always wanted.” therapy is growing, and so is

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

Kate Skinner

After working at a Frenchtown The clinic treats a lot of specialty cases, Skinner said, ful- clinic for a few years, she started seeing many patients for scar filling her goal when she started tissue and other problems the practice.

that developed from abdominal surgeries.

Using alternative sorts of methods, such as visceral manipulation, Skinner and her staff have been able to help patients with autoimmune disorders and hyper-mobility joint issues, as well as leg and back pain from scar tissue.

“One of the big areas I wanted to address with the clinic was to take those chronic pain people who didn’t have a lot options,” Skinner said. “We’ve kind of taken on a lot of people who had nowhere else to go.”

The next few years aren’t about numbers growth, Skinner said — they’re at about capacity for their space and number of therapists — but getting better as therapists and continuing to educate and reach out to people who don’t know their options for care.

“We get to know our clients as individual people,” she said.

“We have kind of a wholebody approach.”

Smith realizes longtime dream of starting bowhunting store DILLON KATO dillon.kato@missoulian.com‌

‌Shortly after meeting the woman who would become his wife and years before opening Straight 6 Archery, Casey Smith shared with her his dream of owning a bow-hunting store.

“We literally had sketches of what a store would look like.

One night, I even made a shoebox diorama laying it all out,” Smith said.

For five years, Smith worked at Costco in Missoula, and said his hope at that time was to move up the ranks of the company.

All the while, Smith kept thinking back to his previous job, working at a bow-hunting store in town, The Archery Center.

He said while there, he often thought of what he would do with his own store, and through

and has now passed three years in business, with Smith saying Age: 29 he’s had 30 percent growth in Occupation: Owner, Straight 6 business in the last year alone.

Archery “Across the country, it’s been a bit rough for the industry. A lot of shops have been closing down. the years started to write down But we’ve been doing really well ideas, keeping the dream in the and we’re just getting started,” back of his mind.

In January 2014, after another he said.

To make sure he stays relevant, interview for a promotion didn’t Smith said he closely follows pan out, Smith decided it was what’s new and popular with time to make a change. bowhunters and adapts quickly He left his job, got in touch to meet demand. with his friends Ryan Revis — “If something hits the internet who works in the banking indusand gets hot on social media, try — and Eric Siegfried, the founder of Missoula’s onXmaps, I get it in stock right away,” to ask for help starting a business Smith said.

Every time he sells someone a plan, and told Jessica he was going to take the plunge and start bow, Smith follows it up with a handwritten thank-you note to an archery store. make sure they know he appreciIn May 2014, just months ates their business. after quitting his job, Straight 6 Within 10 years, Smith said Archery had its grand opening,

CASEY SMITH

Casey Smith he’s hoping to open as many locations and expand to other states. But the first addition will be right here in Missoula, and Smith hopes it will be open by the end of the year.

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

“We’re getting started on building a big indoor range. I want it to have 24-hour access like a gym, with classes, leagues and the ability to host regional tournaments,” he said.

Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017 — 15

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Torres works to keep Missoula’s speakers bumpin’ DAVID ERICKSON david.erickson@missoulian.com‌

‌On the day Ryan Torres turned 18, he left his home in Billings to pursue his passion in the music industry. It was a semi-nomadic lifestyle, as he followed the festival circuit and took odd jobs where he could.

An immersive experience in the entertainment industry eventually led him to get a degree in entertainment management from the University of Montana.

That would lead to his current position as one of the top executives at one of Missoula’s largest entertainment companies, Logjam Presents.

He is also the manager and promoter for three of the city’s largest music venues: the new KettleHouse Amphitheater, The Wilma Theatre and the Top Hat. Torres works with hundreds of famous musical artists and performers throughout the year, ensuring that they’re happy with their stay in Missoula. It’s an important gig, because the local economy gets a huge boost from out-of-town visitors who come here for live music.

Torres said the success of the three venues he promotes is due to the fact that he and his team make sure to focus on quality.

“Quality is one of our core values, and that’s one thing that’s being lost in the industry,” he said. “A lot of people focus on scale and focus on smoke and mirrors. Here, we focus on quality.”

No detail gets left out. For example, if artists want to go fishing, Torres makes sure they get a guided raft trip on a local river.

“Our crew is super professional,” Torres said. “In a lot of markets, they turn and burn.

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Ryan Torres

RYAN TORRES Age: 25 Occupation: Vice President of Marketing and Promotions at Logjam Presents, Exclusive Manager and Promoter for KettleHouse Amphitheater, The Wilma and The Top Hat They don’t get the time of day. But here, we take care of the full hospitality rider. They eat well and get their laundry done. Then they go back to their agents and management

firm and say, ‘This place is awesome.’ Then Missoula gets great reviews and we can book bigger shows.”

He credits three people with giving him a chance: Nick Checota, owner of Logjam, The Wilma and the Top Hat, JC Barber of the String Cheese Incident tour, and Stacy Kalstrom of the Railroad Earth tour.

Torres is an avid mountain biker and road cyclist, as well as a motorcyclist. His passion for the music industry isn’t just

a career choice. He estimates he’s been to 74 Railroad Earth concerts, and his time on tour taught him that teamwork is essential in the entertainment industry.

“It takes and entire village to make this whole entertainment thing happen,” he said. “If it weren’t for the amazing people involved with The Wilma, Top Hat and Logjam Presents, it wouldn’t be what it is today.

From top to bottom, everyone in this organization continues

to go above and beyond and that is what keeps the speakers bumpin’.”

Torres said all the dishwashers, swampers, bartenders, servers, cooks, door workers, sound techs, stage hands, ticket takers, ushers, security and management have to work together.

“I can honestly say I’ve never encountered a team that works harder and is more dedicated than the people within this organization,” he said.

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Hofmeister at the helm of ‘SciShow’ CORY WALSH cory.walsh@missoulian.com‌

‌Earlier this year, Caitlin Hofmeister started a podcast in her spare time called “You’re Doing Just Fine.”

She starts up candid conversations with her guests — so far they’re creative types, such as musicians — about their struggles and failures.

The concept is humanizing, enlightening and contemporary, using an emerging medium to discuss an age-old issue in a casual, approachable way.

That outlook seems to span all of Hofmeister’s work projects these days. She serves as senior producer for “SciShow,” a series of YouTube channels created by online video guru Hank Green.

He, Hofmeister and other hosts give accessible but informative crash courses in scientific concepts, attracting both science nerds and a newer audience.

At Green’s headquarters here in Missoula, Hofmeister oversees two producers and production teams for the main channel and its spinoffs: “SciShow Space,” “SciShow Psych” and “SciShow Kids.” With nine people they produce 15 episodes a week. Her job focuses on organization and scheduling with the content and video teams, and making sure the workers (“They’re awesome,” she said) have everything they need, whether it’s equipment or permission to use specific images.

Earlier this year, the team won the People’s Choice category at the Webby Awards, a prize selected by voters. (It helps that the main channel has more than 4,240,000 subscribers.)

Hofmeister hadn’t intended to stay in Missoula before she was hired as an editor in summer 2012. She’d recently graduated with her MFA in media arts from the University of Montana, and had imagined she’d return to Portland.

The native of Sandpoint,

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Caitlin Hofmeister

CAITLIN HOFMEISTER

into narrative feature filmmaking after earning her master’s.

Age: 32 However, she’d always been a Occupation: Senior producer for science nerd, and the opporSciShow tunities to communicate about science in a fun way has proven creatively rewarding.

Idaho, was living there, workIt hasn’t always been easy. ing as a personal assistant on After she’d transitioned into her independent films. She began producer job, she was the first looking at graduate schools in female host for “SciShow” on filmmaking that didn’t require specialization. The UM program a “Space” episode. The comments were sexist and cruel was an affordable fit. in just about every way you She’d studied English and can imagine. philosophy for her bachelor of “To be a normal-looking arts degree, and planned to go

woman, not like a super-model, on anybody’s screen is apparently audacious,” she said.

It was difficult, she said, and eventually she talked to her bosses and decided to confront her critics on camera.

“The end of this one episode, I’m going to be like, ‘I’m the producer, I read all the comments, and I’m not going to wear more makeup. Because your comments? It’s me who’s reading them. I’m a person and they’re not having the effect that you want,’ “ she said.

“SciShow” has since added more female hosts and she uses that early experience with trolls to help prepare them.

There are more hosts, by the way, because there are more shows coming from their shop.

She helped launch an adult show, “How F—-ing Science,” recently.

She’s a producer on a new channel, “How to Adult.”

If that wasn’t enough, she’s been getting up early so she has time to write fiction, one of her original passions, before she clocks in for work.

Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017 — 17

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

McQuilkin keeps Missoula hip ASHLEY NERBOVIG ashley.nerbovig@missoulian.com‌

‌Some parents wait until their kids are out of the house to start — or resume — a career, but for Aimee McQuilkin, having her second daughter forced her to be her best person.

“At that point I said, ‘I have to do what I love now,’” McQuilkin said.

McQuilkin took her love of playing dress-up and reinventing herself through her outfits, and turned it into a business. In the 12 years since Betty’s Divine opened, it has helped to define Missoula’s Hip Strip.

When Betty’s first opened, the block it sat on was half empty. It felt like a risky location choice, but a month before it opened people were knocking on McQuilkin’s door and asking if she needed help.

There is a spirit of cooperation within Missoula that helps to foster business growth unlike anywhere else, McQuilkin said.

She said people ask her on a monthly basis if they can take her out to coffee to bounce ideas off her, something she always is up for.

She helped to start the Hip Strip Society to give business owners a place to share ideas and communicate. She’s been on the board of the Missoula Downtown Association for seven years and chaired it last year.

“You’re working toward vibrancy of downtown as a whole,” McQuilkin said. “It’s not just about you or your store making it, because if the people around you aren’t doing well, then you aren’t doing well.”

Small business owners in Missoula aren’t trying to maximize their profits for share holders, she said — a lot of the time, they are just trying to make pay roll. But there is a fulfillment in working for

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Aimee McQuilkin

AIMEE MCQUILKIN Age: 39 (age of interview) Occupation: Owner of Betty’s Divine herself that she wants others to experience.

“Maybe my East Coast mother-in-law is like, ‘But you work in a shop,’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, but it’s my shop,’” McQuilkin said.

Adventure is a rule in

McQuilkin’s life, not an ideal.

She is part of a book club that travels to places they read about. She runs her own summer camp for families. She write a fashion column for Mamalode.

And she is a launching a new project with her partner Miranda Hickox.

Hickox and McQuilkin are partners when it comes to the vintage side of the store, Divine Trash. The two are creating a new website where people can

sign up to be part of a vintage clothing subscription service.

For $30 a month, people can tell McQuilkin and Hickox a little about themselves, what they like and dislike, and what about their body they want to highlight, and the pair will pick out a piece of vintage clothing and send it to the subscriber.

For years, people have wanted McQuilkin to put Betty’s online, but she resisted, because she thinks the experience at the

shop is part of what makes Betty’s so great. But this new plan seems to strike a compromise, connecting people with Missoula, even if they are far away.

Things move a little slower in Missoula, but it is a good thing, McQuilkin said. She doesn’t measure her success in profits, but in whether she feels like she is contributing to others and herself.

“So for that, I’m a millionaire,” McQuilkin said.

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Adaptable Biehl makes for success at nonprofits ASHLEY NERBOVIG ashley.nerbovig@missoulian.com‌

‌Missoula has made great strides to protect the Clark Fork River over the past 30 years and Holly Biehl’s job at the Clark Fork Coalition is to make sure people continue to support that work and not become complacent about the status of water resources.

“The common thread in everything I do is to get people to care, to have them reflect on why the river is important in their life,” Biehl said.

Biehl is the outreach and marketing director for the coalition. Her job is to connect with the community and be consistent across several platforms, whether it is on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram or the group’s YouTube channel.

Being genuine is important to connect with people in the more transparent social media environment, she said. Biehl talks the same way to the people in the community as she does to her coworkers, her friends and her boss.

And Biehl lives her work.

Beyond what she does for the environment, she sits on the board of the Blue Mountain Clinic to help make sure those who need it have access to health care.

Volunteering time, sitting on community boards — these are all things people can do to make sure the issues important to them are taken seriously in the community.

As much as Biehl wants to inform the community, half her job is also listening with an open mind to what people are telling her.

“You have to be prepared that someone might disagree with you and you have to listen to where they are coming from, not just listen while thinking about what you’re going to say next,” Biehl said.

TOM BAUER, Missoulian‌

Holly Biehl

HOLLY BIEHL Age: 40 Occupation: Outreach and marketing director for Clark Fork Coalition The nice thing is, clean water is common ground for almost everyone, from farmers and hunters, to outdoors folk to people who enjoy just sitting on the deck at Finn and Porter,

she said.

Before moving to Montana, Biehl worked in publishing in Oakland, California. She had her work self and her home self and said the different personae made her feel fake in both worlds. She was a graduate of the University of Colorado with a double major in modern dance and art history.

After an internship at a nonprofit in Bozeman, Biehl

moved to Missoula and got a master’s degree in business at the University of Montana.

From there, Biehl brought her enjoyment of the environment to the Five Valleys Land Trust as its communications manager. In 2015, she joined the coalition.

One of her first assignments on the job was doing an interview with a television station while standing on a

paddleboard, something she’d never done before. But the willingness to try something like that, and the chance she could fall face first into the water, is what being part of a nonprofit is about, she said.

“I used to be such a perfectionist and I had to let go of that,” Biehl said. “It is easy to keep doing what you’re doing. It’s much harder to try something new.”

Western Montana InBusiness, Summer 2017 — 19

BUSINESS: 20 UNDER 40

Hess keeps her plate — and others’ — filled PETER FRIESEN peter.friesen@missoulian.com‌

‌Kelli Hess loves to say yes to every opportunity, whether it’s a fundraiser or project at the Missoula Food Bank.

Hess came to the Missoula Food Bank two years ago as director of operations after 16 years as a director at the Missoula YMCA. Hess manages day-to-day operations and works in a good mix of hands-on tasks and highlevel strategic planning, to see programs through.

Under her direction, the food bank has increased service by 400 percent and expanded its programming to include thousands more people in need, from young children to homebound seniors.

“The end game is so important,” Hess said. “When a kid could be hungry after school today … that’s easy to stand behind.”

Hess said among the YMCA, Food Bank and PTA, she’s meeting her goals of doing meaningful work, that keeps her energetic and inspired no matter how many projects are on her plate.

Near the end of May, Hess was working on moving into the food bank’s new building on Wyoming Street, which opened at the end of May without — Hess was proud to say — any gap in services during the yearlong construction and move.

“Building the nicest food bank in the world is quite the accomplishment,” she said. “This is like a blank slate right now.”

Hess also stays busy as the secretary (and former president) of the Lewis and Clark Elementary Parent-Teacher Association.

“Volunteering really is my passion in life,” Hess said.

“Being involved in important work.”

Hess’ tenure on the PTA began close to seven years ago, when

TOMMY MARTINO, Missoulian‌

Kelli Hess

KELLI HESS Age: 39 (age of interview) Occupation: Missoula Food Bank, director of operations her kids started attending Lewis and Clark elementary.

Now the oldest has moved to Washington Middle School, but two kids still draw Hess’ efforts to the school, leading the yearly

fundraiser, a “hop” with different yearly themes: Disco Hop, Sock Hop, Western Hop. The one-night event brings in $10,000 to fund field trips, classroom scholarships and Missoula Writing Collaborative workshops.

Lisa Hayhurst, Lewis and Clark’s family resource center specialist, said she’s continually

impressed by Hess’ enthusiasm and ideas running the Hop. Hess updated the event’s themes and last year came in under budget and raised more than $10,000, Hayhurst said.

“She just continues to show up and shows up with a smile on her face.”

Hess explained her energy and enthusiasm for taking on project

after project as a result of her high standards and interest in staying involved.

And she has no inkling to slow down anytime soon. “(I) not only want it to be done, I want to work to make it happen,” she said. “I plan to continue to work as hard as I possibly can for causes that are important to me.”

H20 — Missoulian, Sunday, June 11, 2017

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