Connect Business Magazine

Bad news often unravels lives.

Yet it caused this passionate bunch and their co-workers to dream dreams together and plunge headfirst into business ownership. Ultimately, their bad news would precipitate great good and through it hundreds of southern Minnesotans would experience healing from life’s hurts.

Up North, amid emerald-green Norwegian pine forests that overlook crystalline walleye lakes and throngs of moose and bear and wolves, grew Dr. Bill Rupp, president and chief executive officer of 2,100-employee, $200 million ISJ-Mayo Health System.

He spent his first 18 years of life in 5,290-population Chisholm, a boom-and-bust mining outpost that straddled U.S. 169 seven miles north of Hibbing. There, Rupp’s father Clarence and uncle Glenn co-owned two businesses, Rupp Furniture and Rupp Funeral Home.

You have to know where you’re going to find CHAMP Software.

The office building of the company is like a little island, separate from the apartments, houses and other buildings in its Mankato neighborhood and, at first glance, seemingly located in the middle of an intersection.