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Michelle Hege Built a Career by Asking Before Answering
DH's first employee became its CEO by treating curiosity as a discipline. Nearly three decades later, Michelle Hege still begins with the audience, especially when the message is difficult.
The Best Message in the Room May Not Come From the Agency
DH built a communications business by giving away the most flattering role in advertising: the person with all the answers. Its campaigns begin with a quieter proposition - the people living with a problem usually know where the message should go.
Kendra Canton Has Been Building a Seat at the Table Since College
Before the degree and the policy roundtables, there was a Spokane teenager doing homework first and everything else second. A decade later, Kendra Canton's work still follows the same practical rule: earn your place, then use it to bring more people into the room.
Dan Roark Has Spent a Career Teaching Science to Move Faster
From drug-discovery robots to digital pathology, the Spokane founder keeps returning to the same stubborn problem: brilliant science trapped inside slow systems.
HyperSciences, Inc.
HyperSciences is a Spokane, Washington deep-tech company that commercializes the ram accelerator - an in-tube hypersonic engine licensed from the University of Washington - to fire projectiles through rock at up to nine times the speed of sound. Its platform technology, the HyperCore, powers products for tunneling and mining (HyperDrill, Hyperbreaker), geothermal and energy drilling, and aerospace launch (HyperLaunch). The pitch: break rock and reach orbit faster and cheaper by replacing slow mechanical drill bits and first-stage rockets with repeatable hypervelocity impact.
Mark Russell
Mark Russell is the founder and CEO of HyperSciences, a Spokane, Washington company turning a piece of aerospace exotica - the ram accelerator - into a tool that drills through rock up to ten times faster than a conventional rig. A former Blue Origin lead engineer on the crew capsule and a self-described third-generation miner, Russell fires projectiles at hypersonic speed every few seconds to crack rock for geothermal energy, mining and tunneling, and to lob payloads toward space through his sister venture Pipeline2Space. He raised roughly $9.6 million from thousands of small investors and won early backing from NASA and Shell.
John T. Ehrbar
John T. Ehrbar is a career YMCA leader who, starting January 26, 2026, takes the helm as President and CEO of the YMCA of Silicon Valley after six years running YMCA Buffalo Niagara. He has spent over two decades inside the Y movement, climbing from a high school Leaders Club kid in northeast Ohio to running an 80-million-dollar nonprofit serving 2,300 staff across the Bay Area.