
A corporate exit, a franchise that never opened and one useful question led Teresa Fox to a second act in luxury travel. The itinerary was accidental; the method was not.

Before Power Personnel made more than 40,000 placements, its founder had a thesis, a telephone and no clients. Three decades later, Cynthia Stewart is still making the case that access to work can alter a family, a business and a city.
The Kansas City funeral professional saw a gap between ceremony and everything that follows. Laurel is his answer: calm, practical help before, during and after a death.

The advertising executive who scaled Young & Rubicam's Western operation and built a three-decade boutique agency is bringing an old professional habit to Rancho Santa Fe: listen first, weigh the tradeoffs, and make the decision you can defend.

A former band director spent four decades turning rehearsal-room lessons into an agency philosophy. His final act as CEO was the least theatrical one: preparing other people to lead.

After nearly two decades inside Mower, Stephanie Crockett inherited a founder’s chair and an employee-owned future. Her method is less corporate theatre than candor, community and the steady work of earning trust.
Before she sold strategy, Marion Crawford sold bar-code scanners, wrote television news on the ride back to the station and learned to keep the day's number on a sticky note. Those old habits still explain the agency she runs today.

From a Big Ten court to Disney, Warner Bros., Johnson Controls and SKYGEN, Donald Polite has built a career on a deceptively simple idea: good marketing begins when the organization learns to listen.

After three decades selling ideas, places and institutions, First Hawaiian Bank’s marketing chief has learned that a legacy brand stays relevant by showing up in the life of its community.

From a family brokerage in Cloverdale to the C-suite and a national board seat, Christine Young has built a career around a deceptively simple idea: insurance works better when people stay close to one another.

At Pajar Canada, a fifth-generation shoemaker translates family memory into modern footwear. Across Montreal, she applies the same instinct - make useful things, keep people close, and give tradition somewhere new to go.

Before Chris Bosworth marketed canoe trips, cycling routes and Muskoka weekends, he learned the terrain from a store at Opeongo - then paddled 420 kilometres around it.

At Payworks, Jaclyn Christie has spent more than a decade translating payroll software into a story about trust, service and Canadian identity. Her playbook is less about volume than consistency - a brand grows when the product, the people and the promises keep matching.

At The Hanover, Jennifer Luisa turned longevity into a form of motion - crossing functions, building connections and keeping a 174-year-old insurer legible to the people it serves.

From Saint Paul City Hall to global reinsurance, Erin Dady has built a career around a deceptively practical idea: institutions earn trust by making their purpose visible in the places they serve.
Chuck Collins (Charles M. Collins) is a Harvard-trained lawyer, MIT city planner, and former real estate developer who spent nearly two decades as President and CEO of YMCA of Greater San Francisco, transforming it into an organization serving more than 42,000 children annually across three Bay Area counties. Born in San Francisco's Fillmore district in 1947 and raised as one of the first Black families in Mill Valley, he brings a lifetime of crossing boundaries to his work at the intersection of community, equity, and opportunity. Now a Presidential Fellow at USF's Leo T. McCarthy Center for Public Service, he continues to shape the region's civic life.

Hydra Mendoza is the VP and Chief of Strategic Relationships in the Office of the Chair and CEO at Salesforce, where she builds and stewards key stakeholder relationships across government, community, and corporate sectors. A native San Franciscan born to a Filipino military family, she made history as the first and only Filipina ever elected to office in San Francisco - serving three terms on the SF Unified School District Board. Her career spans community organizing, mayoral advising, school board leadership, and overseeing communications for the nation's largest public school system before joining Salesforce, where she co-architected the company's original educational investments alongside Marc Benioff.