Joe Robertson
OHSU’s president looks to thrive in health care’s stormy future.
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Signature move: Back in 2007, Oregon Health & Science University—the city’s largest employer and a research institution of national importance—put together a new strategic plan. “We somehow called it right,” says Robertson, the opthalmologist who became OHSU’s president the year before. “When the economy fell apart, we didn’t.” The hospital/school now employs nearly 13,000 and, through an alliance with Portland State University—another key force in reshaping the city—plays a vital educational and urban-development role.
What’s next: Big philanthropic scores mean major new initiatives in dentristy and nutrition. (ZD)
Jill Kuehler
A farmer puts equity on food-crazed Portland’s table.
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Signature move: Nonprofit Zenger Farm, at SE 117the Avenue and Foster Road, connects Portland’s food-conscious culture to the economically hard-hit outer east side. “That’s where we’re starting to shine,” says Jill Kuehler, Zenger’s 33-year-old executive director and one of the acknowledged stars of Portland’s urban-ag movement. “There’s so much need right here.” Zenger provides on-site education to as many as 5,000 kids a year, helped start a Lents farmers market that makes half of its sales from food stamps, WIC, and senior coupons, and teaches cooking skills at outer-Southeast schools and affordable housing complexes.
What’s next: Zenger started the area’s first community-supported agriculture program that accepts food stamps, and Kuehler hopes to scale it up to serve as a model for other farms. Also on the menu: a commercial kitchen to aid small food-biz start-ups. (ZD)
Jon Kellogg and Thad Fisco
Microdevelopment shapes some Portland’s hippest streets.
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Signature move: Kellogg leased out the Brewery Blocks’ in the 1990s, acquiring retail-curatorial skills that pair well with Fisco’s high-end East Coast construction background. The partners’ biggest splash so far came from two food-drink-bicycle-centered blocks of N Williams Avenue (the Hub, Pix, Fifth Quadrant, etc.). The duo’s reinvention of old streetscapes harnesses PDX’s entrepreneurial spirit and love of the past. “We’re not a ground-up development firm,” says Fisco. “We strip away layers of junk and take a building back to its core.”
What’s next: The duo’s next project, open to tenants this summer in SE Morrison Street’s former Spike Upholstery building, will be a hive of PR, software, design, music, and film companies, further anchoring the Central Eastside as the city’s creative beehive. (KC)
Max Williams
Oregon’s prisons chief takes over the state’s charitable mother ship.
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Signature move: Eight years running the state’s corrections department left Max Williams accustomed to a certain reception. “People are very polite,” he says, “but the prisons guy is always the prisons guy.” Handshakes will warm up come February, when the 48-year-old takes over as president of Oregon Community Foundation, the state’s billion-dollar center of philanthropic gravity.
What’s next: Intensifying focuses on kids, families, education, and economic development. Then, getting the whole nonprofit community ready for a different future, when the state’s population is aging and many of its rising leaders are Latino. “The power to get people together makes OCF as influential as any amount of money does,” he says. (ZD)
“In an era of scarce resources, how you leverage what you do have is the crucial question.”
—Joe Robertson, OHSU
Mike Houck
The urban ecologist deploys “endless pressure, endlessly applied.”
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Signature move: This 64-year-old of iron will and wily strategy has touched just about every green spot in the city, dating to installing guerrilla “WILDLIFE REFUGE” signs in his early-’80s campaign to form Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge. After creating a job at Audubon Society’s Oregon chapter called “urban naturalist,” he founded, runs, and is his own nonprofit, the Urban Greenspaces Institute.
What’s next: Houck says his next few years are all about the Intertwine: an effort to weave the region’s current and future green spaces—and the programs and money to protect them—into a single seamless web crossing all city, county, and state boundaries. “It’s about institutionalizing all we’ve accomplished,” Houck says. “It’s all coalescing in a fabulous way, if we can keep up the momentum.” (ZD)
John Jay
Wieden & Kennedy’s global nomad connects Portland to the world.
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Signature move: A former creative director for Bloomingdale’s, this son of Chinese immigrants now roams the global branch offices of the Pearl District–based ad agency. In his ambassador role, Jay spurs W&K projects that don’t look like advertising—a culture magazine run out of the agency’s India office, a record label in Tokyo—while making sure vital ideas and people make it back to the Portland base camp. Why? “Whenever someone sees something and says, ‘That’s cool,’ they make that judgment in the context of a culture and a moment,” he says. “So we’re invested in understanding culture.”
What’s next: “Portland’s global influence isn’t orchestrated—it’s totally organic, and that’s what gives it power,” Jay says. This year, along with partners including the Ace Hotel’s Alex Calderwood, he hopes to distill that energy at a new, low-budget-but-super-cool youth hostel at Chinatown’s gates—one of the many extracurricular projects Jay uses to express a bracing confidence in his home base as a creative hub. Jay talks about his global view on local culture at Portland Monthly’s Bright Lights discussion on Jan 9. (ZD)
Published: January 2012
Anytime you come up with a list like this, you’ll always get people complaining about who has been leftt off. That being said, how about some of these Portlanders:
Simon Tam – He’s the founder of the Asian band, The Slants, who graced the front page of the Oregonian and Portland Tribune this past year for taking on the United States Trademark Office over the right to use their name, for rejecting a million dollar contract from Bodog Ent., and for helping raise over $700,000 for charitable causes over the last few years.
Joseph Santos-Lyons – The coordinator for APANO (Asian Pacific Americans Network of Oregon) and Co-Director of OPAL (Environmental Justice for Oregon) who been rallying together comunities of color for stronger representation both in the city as well as the state.
Stephen Ying – You’ve listed his wife, Helen, but Stephen also is probably the most influential Chinese American in the city. He makes city officials tremble when he enters City Hall and has been uniting businesses in the Hold Town Chinatown district for decades.
Another Portland Monthly “best of” bites the dust. This list that has very to do with the reality of Portland. This list smacks of favoritism and it does (as another person noted) have a very clicquey, inner circle feeling too it. Bo Kwon? Really? I’m sorry but his time is over. What about real Portland Chefs like Vitaly Paley or Andy Ricker, people who are making true strides in Gastronomy and putting Portland food on the map. Not just imitating other Korean Taco trucks, al a Roy Choi, whom I worked years ago before his wild and well deserved ascent…the dude is truly a food genius. What about Camas Davis and the Portland Meat Collective? No real political movers on the list. People might not like him, but how can you deny that Sam Adams is a pretty dang influential person in Portland? And though I disliked the whole thing, I would have thought that the top echelon of Occupy Portland have been pretty damn influential this year. Like many other “TOP 50” or whatever lists I’ve read from Portland Monthly, it’s just another example of the elitist, out of touch nonsense that comes from Portland Monthly. Clearly they don’t have any boots on the ground of real Portland.
My opinion is that Bo K. has influenced a bunch of new cart owners and entrepreneurs to go into business! If you look back at their history you will see that Bo is friends with Roy Choi (KOGI) in LA and brought the Cart buzz to us in town! Thank goodness.. So yummy!
Great Job to Andy Batt for pictures! John Jay and Mark Knutsen are amazing humans as well! Go Portland!
Other influential green names left off:
Sallinger, Riskedahl, Baldwin, Jenks, Bell, DEQ Director Dick Pedersen, plus one enviro defense lawyer that probably should have made the list this year: Morford
Bo Kwon is not a mogul by any means. First of all, he stole the whole “Korean BBQ Taco” movement from Chef Roy down in LA, who had been doing this long before Bo came along. As a friend of a former employee, I’m truly disappointed to see Bo on here. He never used to pay out credit card tips, was too high to function 80% of the time, and left me with a really bad taste in my mouth. I used to think he was a really good guy, until I realized how wrong most of the stuff he was doing turned out to be. Weed and money came first and second to his employees, and that’s not how any good business owner should function. He shouldn’t get to decide if his employees “deserve” the tips they earn. Look up his tax records, then tell me if he’s been good for this community.
I’m astounded that any list of “Portland power players of the past” would exclude Neil Goldschmidt.
honored to know two of them….to Don and David…thank you for your work to make Portland a better place….
Perhaps a few more women next time?
I hate to say it, but this list has a very “clubby” feel to it. There are so many other influential people in this City – wow!
Thank you for the recognition to Nichole Maher and Mark Knutsen. Two great Portlander who are making a difference from the ground up.
Great article
Beautiful photography thanks to Andy Batt! He should be on the list!
Bo Kwon, marketing wiz???
Tasty food, sure. But the WHOLE concept – Korean tacos, roving truck, twitter updates and surprise locations – was stolen from Los Angeles’ Kogi BBQ Taco Truck, which had been doing the exact same thing 2 years before Koi…