Connect Business Magazine » bpoy

Pamela J. Year

Daniel Vance — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:30:51 +0000

Business Person of the Year 2010

Pamela J. Year verbally chisels out one point crystal clear: Mankato-based MRCI WorkSource is a $46 million private nonprofit business. It has never been nor will ever be a government agency. MRCI WorkSource’s 335 paid staff members create innovative employment programs for more than four thousand people with disabilities.

Jerry Dulas

Carlienne Frisch — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:30:43 +0000

Business Person of the Year 2010 - Runner-Up

Jerry Dulas is much more comfortable moving dirt from the seat of an excavator cab than sitting at an office table answering a magazine writer’s questions. That’s why his daughter, Tanya Pierce, offered to buffer the experience by joining in the interview. It was Tanya who nominated her father for Connect Business Magazine Business Person of the Year 2010, somewhat to his dismay.

Bryan Sweet

Daniel Vance — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:30:10 +0000

Business Person of the Year 2010 - Runner-Up

In roundabout fashion, sour has become deliciously sweet for Bryan Sweet. To begin, when he was only age four, his father and mother’s marriage soured down in Blue Earth. Then Dad decided to live much closer to Mankato and would not utter another word to Bryan the rest of his life. It was painful.

John Finke

Daniel Vance — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:00:55 +0000

Business Person of the Year 2009

John Finke, our Business Person of the Year 2009 and president of Mankato-based, $155 million HickoryTech Corporation, also accents his conversations with a choice word. It’s “certainly,” an adverb, which means definitely, positively, undoubtedly or unquestionably.

I Hate Winter

Jeff Irish — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:00:49 +0000

I abhor snow. I despise ice. The razor sharp edge of a howling north wind, the hours of darkness, the scraping, scratching, sniffling and shoveling, the huffing, puffing, panting and freezing.

Sam Gault – Runner Up

Carlienne Frisch — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 13:00:28 +0000

Remember the tintype photos of buttoned-down bankers wearing vested suits, their glasses perched on their noses? It’s the stereotype from 125 years ago, about the time Sam Gault’s great-grandfather, Zuriel Gault, went to work at Nicollet County Bank.