Jo Ann Radlinger was an all-conference, high school basketball player in Butternut, Wisconsin, and while finishing a business degree at University of Wisconsin-Superior chose to return home to coach junior varsity basketball.
Read MoreIt was a merry Mankato fest this time around in our annual Business Person of the Year competition. Our Minnesota State University College of Business panel of professors judged CEO/president Steve VanRoekel of Ridley Inc. our Business Person of the Year.
Read MoreThe live album The Last Waltz and the same-named Martin Scorsese film, in part, helped score my late teen and early college years with a sentimental spot, where brain synapses still connect with other synapses to contain all my best ‘70s memories.
Read MoreIt was a tough four-year stretch for 45-year-old Dani Andersen from 2008-2012, a period in which she had Stage 3 ovarian cancer, fractured her spine, became separated from her husband, and divorced.
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2015 Business Person of the Year
According to 54-year-old President/CEO Steve VanRoekel of Mankato-based, $568 million (2014 revenues) Ridley Inc., the business he leads doesn’t manufacture animal feed per se, but more the high-tech nutritional ingredients and supplements that go into making other animal feed better—similar to the way Intel chips make computers manufactured by others faster and better.
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Family physicians Carrie and Keith Stelter grew up in Michigan and Lake Benton, Minnesota, respectively. Nothing in their backgrounds would indicate any clue they would own or manage a retail store, which explains why the opening of The Fair Emporium has been more a social cause than a business decision.
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Imagine being seven years old and permanently having to leave behind your mother, sister, and extended family, fearfully flying to an unfamiliar land, and beginning life anew with a foreign family you had never faced.
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The daughter of two schoolteachers, 33-year-old Erika Urban is carrying on a family tradition. Rather than music and social studies, like her parents, her “teaching” involves helping women give birth to healthier babies. She opened River Valley Birth Center in March.
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