The 50 Most Influential Portlanders

Defining the Decades

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

1900s
Harvey Scott
A statue atop Mount Tabor pays tribute to Scott’s five-decade reign as editor of the Oregonian. A conservative Republican, he promoted the Oregon Historical Society and the Lewis and Clark Exposition of 1905 while opposing “radical” causes like women’s suffrage and public high schools.

1910s
George Baker
A glad-handing theater impresario, Baker led an administration marked by police crackdowns on unions and socialists and flirtation with the Ku Klux Klan, smothering progressive politics for a half-century. Business-minded voters on the new east side gave him a 16-year run as mayor.

1920s
Ernest B. MacNaughton
As Reed president from 1948 to 1952, he rescued the college from financial instability. But ’20s-era Portlanders knew him as a real estate manager, banker, and civic leader who championed modern office blocks and affordable housing.

1930s
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Not exactly a Portlander. But the New Deal stamped the city and region like nothing before or since. Cheap electricity from Bonneville and Grand Coulee dams dragged the Pacific Northwest into the 20th century. No New Deal dams. No Silicon Forest, or Google and Facebook data centers.

1940s
Edgar Kaiser
Industrialist Henry J. Kaiser sent son Edgar to run huge shipyards in Portland and Vancouver, which rolled out hundreds of ships during World War II. Edgar bypassed local officials to build the Vanport housing project. The racially diverse crews the shipyards attracted changed Portland’s social mix forever. He also imported “master builder” Robert Moses to give the city its first freeway plan.

1950s
Robert F. Kennedy
In ’50s Portland, gambling racketeers and corrupt Teamsters ran the city with payoffs to police and officials. As chief counsel for the US Senate’s muckracking McClellan committee, Kennedy turned the national spotlight on Portland, upending a conservative, corrupt city, and ushering in a new, progressive era.

1960s
Howard Vollum
Cofounder of Tektronix, Vollum built a tiny radio lab into a huge electronic instruments company, the first sapling of the Silicon Forest.

1970s
Henry Richmond
As the first director of 1,000 Friends of Oregon, Richmond hammered Oregon cities and counties to create a tight urban growth boundary, an energized city center, and suburbs that can’t zone away the poor.

1980s
Gus Van Sant
The city was already home to fine writers like William Stafford and Ursula K. Le Guin. But with Drugstore Cowboy (1989) and My Own Private Idaho (1991), writer-director Van Sant made Portland a star of edgy mass culture—status the city probably wouldn’t have achieved without him.

1990s
Peter Kohler
In 18 years as president, Kohler transformed Oregon Health & Science University from a midsize med school to a biomedical powerhouse. He doubled OHSU’s employment and septupled research dollars. Upon retirement in 2006, he left the university financially overextended but among the top 20 med schools ranked by the National Institutes of Health.

Image: Brian Jim

2000s
Vera Katz
This daughter of Menshevik refugees shaped Portland’s progressive politics, first in 20 years in the legislature (including six years as Speaker of the House), then in 12 years as mayor. In her push for signature urbanist policies, Katz earned a bronze effigy overlooking the Eastbank Esplanade.

2010s
Carrie Brownstein
Brownstein certified Portland’s coolness when her band Sleater-Kinney chose the city as its base. A decade later, her TV satire simultaneously mocks and mines our creativity, while pinning Portland quirkiness in the nation’s mind like a specimen butterfly.

Portland State University professor Carl Abbott’s new book is Portland in Three Centuries.

To Heir is Human

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

THE SCHNITZERS

HAROLD & ARLENE The late patriarch started out polishing metal in his dad’s scrapyard—then, with wife Arlene, built a vast real estate empire and a philanthropic legacy that reshaped the city. Harold died last April.
JORDAN With gifts for downtown’s Director Park and a University of Oregon museum, among others, the only son is generous. But at age 60, he has yet to find the focus to match the fortune.

THE KNIGHTS

PHIL The cofounder of Nike transformed American sports, global trade, pop design, and Oregon’s economic base. And the 73-year-old Portland native, now cutting big checks to make his beloved University of Oregon an athletic titan, hasn’t even really retired.
TRAVIS Phil bankrolled and set his now-38-year-old son atop budding Portland animation powerhouse Laika. The studio has employed superb craftspeople, been roiled by layoffs and departures, and produced a critical and commercial smash in Coraline. Laika’s second film, due this year, will signal the scion’s staying power.

THE GOODMANS

DOUG He began parking cars as a Grant High student; he went on to become downtown’s largest property owner, with a near-monopoly on the city’s parking business—a boffo cash crop fellow bigwig Bob Scanlan once likened to selling drugs.
GREG AND MARK With Greg leading and Mark heading up operations, look for the brothers Goodman to turn more surface lots into buildings, like ODS and 12 West, and scoop up east-side properties (most recently at SE 20th and Clinton). Once a civic arm-twister in downtown, Greg now says his focus is shifting to education.

THE MARKSES

MELVIN (“PETE”) After his New York real-estate baron father bought three historic Portland buildings in 1949, Pete Mark built an empire of office towers, garages, and suburban office parks, while championing (and often writing huge checks for) civic causes like Pioneer Courthouse Square and the Portland Art Museum.
JIM Along with brother-in-law Scott Andrews (see page 56), Pete’s son is giving the business a modern makeover. In 2010, the family firm effectively created its own bank, the Melvin Mark Capital Group, and in 2011 launched a Washington County outpost of the Indus Entrepreneurs, the Silicon Valley technology start-up mentor—all while continuing civic service.

THE MOYERS

TOM A colorful ex-boxer assembled a formidable downtown property portfolio and built two office towers. Now 92 and suffering advanced Alzheimer’s, he’s faded from public involvement.
VANESSA STURGEON Tom anointed his 33-year-old granddaughter, but much of his large, unruly clan is suing to unseat her. An icon of the uncertainty—both for the Moyer clan and the larger generational transition of the city’s wealth—can be found at the somber hole in the ground of the tenantless, barely started Park Avenue West.

Where Isn’t Charles Wilhoite?

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

SCROLL THE ROSTERS of Portland’s influential boards of directors and high-octane commissions and you’ll notice a certain repetition: the name of 47-year-old businessman Charles Wilhoite. This Zelig of Portland affairs seems to be everywhere.

“Right now, I think I’m on six boards,” Wilhoite says—acknowledging that he may be forgetting one or two. And the Arizona native, who works by day as managing director at the financial advisory firm Willamette Management Associates, did not go knocking to oversee some of the city’s most powerful institutions. Every single one recruited him (as did some anti–Sam Adams partisans during the 2008 election season; Wilhoite passed on a mayoral bid).

What’s the secret? Admirers cite his money skills, fundraising connections, and passion for health and education, among other issues. (Some also hint that within this public-spirited persona lurks a wicked sense of humor.) Wilhoite himself acknowledges that being African American makes him attractive to boards looking to diversify in a mayonnaise-flavored city.

Wilhoite, though, seems neither a token nor a résumé-builder, but rather a quiet driver of change. When he served on Jesuit High School’s board, for example, he persuaded the elite Catholic high school to expand its outreach to low-income students. “In some instances, you have to roll your sleeves up” as a board member, Wilhoite says. “How do you not get passionately committed to something like that?”

It’s Thomas Lauderdale’s Universe!*

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

Pink Martini
Lauderdale’s 17-year-old band created its own retro-world-classical-jazz genre—an
unlikely concoction that’s sold millions of albums.

Pioneer Courthouse Square
Lauderdale sits on the board that runs Portland’s signature public space.

Sam Adams
When an early-term scandal snared Portland’s mayor, Lauderdale staged the first press conference in Hizzoner’s defense—and helped prove that, in a recession, most preferred Adams to stay.

PICA & Cascade Aids Project
Lauderdale’s private concerts, often auctioned spontaneously, are surefire fundraising draws for both organizations.

Occupy Portland
In a Pioneer Courthouse Square performance, Lauderdale gave the renegade economic justice movement visibility.

Oregon Symphony
Lauderdale sits on the board of the city’s classical mother ship. His musical and fundraising appearances sell tickets and raise cash for major projects, like the ensemble’s critically acclaimed concert at Carnegie Hall last year.

His holiday party
His generous, raucous annual fête’s invite list stretches from übernerd to übercool—i.e., from Congressman Earl Blumenauer to fashion designer Adam Arnold.

Mary’s Club
He just loves it!

Memorial Coliseum
When city hall pushed to level the old arena, Lauderdale championed it as an architectural treasure.

Jefferson High School
Lauderdale helped raise money (and public ire) when the North Portland school faced closure.

*And the rest of us are just in orbit.

Nimby Nation

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

THE OLD SAW that all politics is local is an understatement here. In Portland’s unique political culture, neighborhood associations enjoy a hefty say, particularly on what gets built where. This microfederalism makes for epic battles—from nascent neighborhood groups’ seminal fight against the 1970s Mount Hood Freeway to the Northwest District Association’s role in stopping sainted Steve Jobs from building a modernist Apple store in the quaint mishmash of NW 23rd Avenue in 2006.

Last fall, a multimillion-dollar telecom found out what happens when hyperempowered Portland residents go on the warpath. Clearwire wanted to build a wireless Internet pole in Northeast’s Irvington neighborhood. Irvington’s 51-year-old Community Association said oh-no-you-don’t.

The Irvingtonians condemned the pole as a potential eyesore in a neighborhood that just last year became a National Historic District (yes, all of it). “They couldn’t even tell us how high the pole would be,” notes William Archer, the association president. He and his fellow activists enlisted an arborist, who concluded that construction would damage the neighborhood’s sumptuous oak trees. In letters, public meetings, and an association vote, the neighbors worried about the pole and its radiation—about cancer, headaches, anxiety, and other health problems.

No surprise, the project stalled. Irvington then quickly moved to the next battle. The new historic status sent city fees for renovations soaring, since ensuring compliance with new regulations requires more bureaucratic labor. But the Community Association argues that, soon, porches and roofs won’t get repaired or replaced due to the cost hikes. “The fees are outrageous,” he says.

Anyone care to bet who will prevail on this one?

Power Breakfast

Fri, 16 Mar 2012 09:00:00 -0700

THE BIJOU

This demure downtown café has been the place to talk development and political strategy since it first served (pre-buzzword) local and organic chow three decades ago.

WHO’S EATING

The 7 a.m. opening means even the deadline-driven pollsters from go-to firm Davis, Hibbits and Midghall (headquartered next door) can squeeze in a morning meet-and-eat. “I do power meetings there because one of my mentors did power breakfasts there,” says environmental and progressive advocate Gerik Kransky. “I thought, well, this must be the place to see and be seen.”

WHAT THEY’RE EATING

Kransky swears by the oyster hash.

THE SKANNER MLK DAY BASH

For the last 26 years, 1,000 or more people—certified power brokers and plain-old civilians—have filled an Oregon Convention Center hall on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, at the invite of venerable African American newspaper the Skanner.

WHO’S EATING

“It attracts a who’s-who of Portland,” says City Commissioner Nick Fish. “Typically, the governor, one or two senators, one or two members of Congress….” Amid this excellent networking opportunity, Skanner publisher Bernie Foster hands out up to $40,000 in social justice scholarships.

WHAT THEY’RE EATING

Industrial bacon and eggs

THE PORTLAND SOCIETY

Of course Portland has a regular klatch of cycling-oriented power women. Once a month, the Portland Society—a two-year-old alliance of ladies in the bike business—draws between 15 and 40 to Northwest’s Corsa Café (located inside a bike shop!). They listen to talks from invited experts on topics like negotiation and social media.

WHO’S EATING

Cycle-powered entrepreneurs with a deal-making sensibility. “I’ve seen houses bought and sold, jobs sought and found, and new businesses launched,” says cofounder Elly Blue.

WHAT THEY’RE EATING

Gluten-free coffee cake

THE HEATHMAN

In Portland, you can get a sit-down with just about anyone. The downside: they often want to sit down at dawn. Quoth one relative newcomer to the city’s inner circles: “People are always saying, ‘Sure, let’s talk! Can you meet me at the Heathman at 7:30?’ And I’m like, ‘Are you kidding?’”

WHO’S EATING

Set your alarm, and you could be sandwiched between a wired political consultant and a dowager heiress.

WHAT THEY’RE HAVING

Surely the “Lakeshore French Press” coffee comes in handy.

The 50 Most Influential Portlanders

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 09:00:00 -0800

THE WORD “INFLUENTIAL” means many things. In Portland, the adjective could apply to elected politicians, radio talk-show hosts, and political consultants—all of whom we chose not to name here.

What matters for a city figuring out what it wants to be when it grows up (or if it wants to grow up) isn’t influence alone, but how the influential meld their sway with other qualities. Vision. Clout. Judgment. Taste. Connection. Principle. Grit. Gravitas. And—in a time in which another key element, power, can be so fleeting (ask the mayor and the president)—momentum.

Change is at hand. Portland soon will restock city council with fresh faces. The city’s old economy continues to sputter, but tech start-ups and small businesses are percolating. Our population is diversifying, as are the markets for everything from our lumber (which China can’t get enough of) to our indie rock bands. Huge institutions are redefining themselves for the new era that other, more nimble and youthful enterprises have already begun to create.

With all of this in mind, here are 50 people (including a few groups) we think possess the spark and will to craft Portland’s future. (Add your own choices in our ballot form to the left.) We hope you’ll agree that this eclectic roster harnesses enough raw energy to influence any city—whatever influence may mean right now.

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B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Image: Andy Batt

Nichole Maher, NAYA

Nichole Maher

A Native American leader reshapes her community—and now the state.

GR P R

Signature move: At age 22 in 2001, Maher became leader of the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA). Since, the nonprofit’s annual budget vaulted from $215,000 to $10 million. In the city with the ninth-highest urban Native American population, NAYA now serves 10,000 people a year with education, social, and cultural services. Kids in NAYA’s education program are five times more likely to graduate high school than other Native children.
What’s next: On a growing list of community roles, this Tlingit tribal member and mother of two serves on Governor Kitzhaber’s education investment board, set to redesign education statewide—she’s the youngest member. (MR)

James Curleigh

The Keen CEO is a poster-child boss for the millennials.

F G R

Signature move: Aside from hauling in $200 million last year? Guiding his company’s cash into creative philanthropy (like sponsorship of ambitious new-media coverage of the Gulf oil spill) and building a superefficient, 15,000-square-foot factory to make shoes on Swan Island.
What’s next: Untucked and tousled, the 45-year-old may look crunchy, but Keen now aims for blue-collar workers, with a new line of steel-toed boots. Meanwhile, the company’s own footprint grows: in November, Keen nabbed Nike merchandising vice president Ron Hill to amp up its retail efforts. (BB)

“We can all talk about what’s wrong. A lot of people want to fix what’s wrong.”
—Dan Ryan, all hands raised

Don Krahmer

A hyperconnected lawyer nurtures the next generation of leaders.

B E

Signature move: This 54-year-old corporate attorney (at Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt) has held a royal flush of influential posts, from past presidency of the elite Arlington Club to a current seat on the Regence Blue Cross board. The soft-spoken Hillsboro native uses his dense Rolodex to connect promising young players with each other and with established mentors. A Krahmer-orchestrated dinner is a networker’s dream of nonprofit leaders, budding businessfolk, and aspiring politicians.
What’s next: Krahmer bridges old-boys-club Portland and the fluid, more diverse networks of today. Says one admirer, “He’s pivoted from connecting the powerful to focusing on 20- and 30-somethings.” (ZD)

Dan Ryan

The schools foundation’s leader musters an education army.

B P

Signature move: In three years atop the Portland Schools Foundation, Ryan realized the nonprofit’s work boosting Portland Public Schools’ budget wasn’t enough. “We needed to get outside the city,” says the 49-year-old former Oregon Ballet Theatre fundraiser. Enter Cradle to Career, a push by all six big Multnomah County school districts, including fast-growing East Portland schools, to improve dropout rates. Ryan’s outfit adopted a new name (All Hands Raised) to match its new mandate.
What’s next: Ryan recruited a high-octane advisory council, fueled more by business, government, and nonprofit players than traditional educators, to steer a complex mix of achievement and social-equity initiatives. “We can all talk about what’s wrong,” Ryan says. “A lot of people want to fix what’s wrong.” (ZD)

Stephanie Snyder

Reed’s “art whisperer” leverages the local visual arts milieu.

C R

Signature move: In her eight years as curator and director of Reed College’s Cooley Gallery, this Oregon-born, Reed/Columbia/University of London–schooled dynamo opened the insular college to mainland Portland, presenting new work by international artists and collaborating with institutions across the city. She also writes for Artforum, curates shows (like the current Interior Margins at the Lumber Room), nominates contenders for major fellowships, and oversees a seven-year-old program that exposes school kids to art.
What’s next: Near-term: shows of titans Bruce Nauman and Kara Walker. Long-term: gently whispering “Reed Museum” in the college admin’s ear. (RG)

Jonathan Maus

A journalist-activist makes a living as cycling’s squeaky wheel.

GR P F

Signature move: When Maus, now 36, answered a 2005 Oregonian ad for bike bloggers, he’d barely heard of the blogosphere. Yet soon he quit the daily to launch his own BikePortland.org. Now the site attracts up to 10,000 visitors a day, including policy makers and news media. “If a story gets 50 comments in an afternoon,” says Maus, “mainstream news editors get excited by the controversy.” Fusing old-fashioned beat reporting with new media and bare-knuckled advocacy, the site works financially, too: ad revenue pays Maus a living wage.
What’s next: Maus successfully pushed some policy shifts—like prompting the state transportation division to adopt more bike-friendly signage—but he’s impatient. “The city feels comfortable with incremental improvement,” he says. “I don’t.” On his agenda: riding herd on city hall’s 2030 bike plan. (RD)

{page break}

B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Image: Andy Batt

Sarah Mensah, Trail Blazers

Sarah Mensah

The NBA’s only black female COO keeps the Blazers a home team.

F R

Signature move: This 47-year-old Portland native runs the Trail Blazers’ day-to-day operations. Since 2007, Mensah helped sell out every Rose Garden game; sponsorship revenue has doubled during her tenure. She also played a key role in expunging the “Jail Blazers” era in favor of the community-focused “Rise With Us” brand revival. “Harry Glickman [the franchise founder] told me that the Blazers need to equal community involvement,” she says. Mensah sits on boards for the NW Autism Foundation and All Hands Raised.
What’s next: While Blazers president Larry Miller seems like he’ll be around awhile—he appears to get along with mercurial owner Paul Allen—industry insiders predict that Mensah, the league’s highest-ranking female staffer, will become president of some NBA team in the next 10 to 15 years. (KC)

Tom Chamberlain

Labor’s local chieftain puts a blue collar on the circle of power.

P E

Signature move: Chamberlain’s leadership of the state AFL-CIO makes him, in one Portland official’s words, the “godfather” of politically potent labor. The mustachioed retired firefighter isn’t above some lefty flame-throwing (check out his speech to Occupy Portland on YouTube) but knows practical politics. “We make sure everyone’s on the same page,” he says. “When I staff a campaign phone bank, I fill it with nurses, steelworkers, and public employees.”
What’s next: The three leading Portland mayoral candidates staged a debate to court union backing last fall. So far, labor hasn’t picked a favorite. Meanwhile, Chamberlain stresses other priorities: “Between West Hayden Island—the last place for a deepwater port in Portland—and Columbia River Crossing,” he says, “our economic future is at stake.” (ZD)

Steve Bass

Oregon Public Broadcasting’s boss leads the last great newsroom.

P C E

Signature move: When Bass moved from Nashville six years ago, he viewed OPB as gravy atop its audience’s news diet. Then recession and digital battering sent traditional print and broadcast powerhouses into full retreat. “I take no joy in what’s happened to journalism,” Bass says, “but our total number of donors increased during the recession.”
What’s next: With a 1.5-million-strong following, three new bureaus, and eight new reporting hires—contrasting with shrinking staffs at the Oregonian and elsewhere—Bass plans to cross-pollinate radio, TV, web, and mobile devices. Meanwhile, he’ll fight for endangered federal funding: “Losing it would cause havoc with our ability to serve the state.” (ZD)

Ralph DiNola

Green Building Services’ principal makes sustainablity a hot export.

F G

Signature move: DiNola’s initial gig with GBS was the Pearl District’s Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center, the first LEED Gold historic restoration job in the nation. His firm’s fingerprints can now be found on more than 100 LEED projects around town, including Mercy Corps’ Platinum-rated Global Headquarters in Old Town.
What’s next: In March, DiNola and crew began work on a $5.5 billion development in Qatar’s capital, Doha. Will global expansion bring more of the other green back to Portland? (BB)

Bill Wyatt

The Port’s leader commands a broader gateway to the world.

B P F E

Signature move: In 10 years at the helm, the Port of Portland’s exec has overseen a $1 billion building binge. Many projects, like rail expansion at the huge Rivergate industrial zone, serve Wyatt’s core strategy: exports, especially to Asia. “China has 700 million people to bring out of poverty,” Wyatt says. “They need more from us.” That means high tech, and—less glamorously but as vital—wheat, soybeans, and potash.
What’s next: The 61-year-old über-insider, once chief of staff to Governor Kitzhaber and head of the state’s largest industry alliance, will need his political mojo to push new port facilities on wild West Hayden Island—800 currently woodsy acres coveted by both business and environmentalists. (ZD)

Image: Andy Batt

Andrew Proctor, Literary Arts

Andrew Proctor

This Canadian gave bookish Literary Arts a jolt into the future.

C R

Signature move: Three years ago, Proctor moved from New York, where he’d worked for PEN’s American Center, to find tight budgets, an aging audience and patrons, and a library-quiet identity. Now, he’s landed Lit Arts in a sleek new downtown space, elegantly cobbled from pro bono architecture and salvaged hardwood.
What’s next: The down-to-earth 39-year-old craves a more vigorous role. A hardwired connection to OPB and new initiatives like a high school poetry jam fest will make the new HQ an all-ages nerve center for a wordy city. “We can support literary culture in all sorts of ways,” he says. (ZD)

{page break}

B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Charles McGee III

The Black Parent Initiative’s founder changes families.

GR R

Signature move: McGee burst on to the civic scene six years ago, staging a quixotic (and unsuccessful) run for school board as a 19-year-old. More quietly, that same year he founded the Black Parent Initiative. Today, BPI runs educational programs to boost parenting, health, financial, literacy, and academic skills in Portland’s African American community. The work has helped scores of families—and marked McGee as a grassroots star on the rise.
What’s next: McGee plans to double the number of households BPI serves through a partnership with the state’s Department of Human Services, and to expand the organization’s programs to the growing black population on the outer east side. (ANW)

Robert Sacks and David Schrott

Stark Street’s reinventors decode Portland’s development DNA.

B F

Signature move: Sacks, an attorney, and Schrott, his development partner (and nephew), began transforming SW Stark Street nearly a decade ago with a base hit: rehabbing a used bookstore into American Apparel. Then came a grand slam: the old Clyde Hotel became the retrocool Ace, populated with Kenny & Zuke’s deli, Stumptown Coffee, and acclaimed restaurant Clyde Common. Final score: a 300-yard-long pocket of curated cosmopolitanism capturing an ultra-hip Portland few knew existed.
What’s next: Turning an old bowling alley across from NE 82nd Avenue’s Madison High School into a huge mountain-biking center. “We know more about redevelopment than about mountain biking,” Schrott says, “but we know the community is hungry for it.” (ZD)

“Our world is less predictable and certain than it used to be, but that’s not all bad.”
—Bill Wyatt, Port of Portland

Portland Incubator Experiment

The Wieden & Kennedy–backed program seeds a tech hotbed.

GR F R

Signature move: In 2011, PIE—hatched by the city’s talismanic ad agency and some tech-scene players—invited eight mobile app start-ups to Portland from an applicant pool of 300. Each received $18,000, office space, and three months of exposure to mentors from Coke, Nike, Target, and Google. Among the beneficiaries: buzz-magnet Simple, which aims to replace traditional banks, and PHPFog, a platform for other start-ups to tap cloud technologies.
What’s next: After two firms in the project’s first “class” landed funding, expect future alumni lists to rise on various “Best Apps” lists while helping W&K divine media’s next mutation. (MP)

Mike Golub

An ex-Blazers exec turned the Timbers’ buzz into box-office bonanza.

F C E

Signature move: Business and polit-ical circles are still kibitzing about team owner Merritt Paulson’s coup in moving the Timbers to Major League Soccer. A good share of the behind-the-scenes credit goes to Golub, whom Paulson headhunted to run the club’s business side. After selling out all 17 home league games, moving merchandise by the ton, and tapping hip, social-media-powered marketing to establish a ubiquitous local brand, Golub won the league’s exec of the year award.
What’s next: With 15,000 season tickets already sold out for 2012, the next challenge is maintaining a pitch-perfect relationship with soccer’s local demographic—an amalgam of DIY-culture types, ethnic communities, soccer neophytes, and those who insist on calling the game “football.” (MP)

Image: Andy Batt

Bo Kwon, Koi Fusion

Bo Kwon

This Korean-American marketing wiz creates a street-food empire.

GR C R

Signature move: After attaining viral celebrity with his roving Koi Fusion Korean taco truck (and frequent Twitter updates), Kwon launched locations across the city and a cash-spinning outpost in upscale, suburban Bridgeport Village. Says Kwon, “It’s just a matter of turning a ‘roach coach’ into a powerful marketing tool.”
What’s next: The 33-year-old Kwon is sketching plans for brick-and-mortar taco stations across central Portland and suburbs that, as his Bridgeport beachhead shows, are hungry for streetwise, cart-tested cuisine. (BT)

“We missed the sense of community, so we set out to create that consciously.”
—Developer Dave Schrott

Trevor Solomon and Zale Schoenborn

Two eclectic tastemakers build Portland’s national music cred.

F C

Signature move: MusicfestNW is a club-hopping urban frenzy; Pickathon, a rustic chill-out. Both invite formidable acts to jam with Portland’s inimitable vibe. When Solomon took over MusicfestNW five years ago, he turned a scrappy local festival into a national talent-booking force—last September, the festival packed Pioneer Courthouse Square for Iron & Wine, Band of Horses, and others. Schoenborn nurtured Pickathon from a humble bluegrass/folk fest into a cross-genre gem (last summer’s lineup reads like a wise hipster’s iPod playlist), beloved for its family-friendly ethos and sustainability focus.
What’s next: Managing success. Solomon wants even bigger bands while maintaining the festival’s grassroots connections. Schoenborn recently turned to Pickathon’s fanbase for direct feedback on whether to raise ticket prices or expand capacity. (AW)

Scott Andrews

The PDC chairman charts a new course for our “other government.”

B F E

Signature move: Long a power center second only (and only sometimes second) to City Hall, PDC remade the city during the boom years. In Andrews’s three-plus years at the helm, the agency changed tack. The focus: jobs in specific industry “clusters,” like sustainability, software, sportswear, and manufacturing. Observers credit Andrews as a quiet force for order and focus, helping Mayor Sam Adams pull off coups like last May’s announcement of SoloPower’s 500-job manufacturing plant.
What’s next: PDC’s cluster strategy comes with a side helping of cash to remake main-street business districts in neighorhoods desperate for jobs, like the east side’s Cully and Parkrose. (ZD)

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B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Jim Winkler

The Portland Art Museum’s new chairman of the board thinks big.

B C E

Signature move: In his years as a patron, board member, and treasurer, this developer (who, among other projects, remade an old hospital into Adidas’s North American headquarters) helped smooth PAM’s transition from the flashy, deficit-riddled regime of ex-exec John Buchanan to the steadier, thriftier management of chief Brian Ferriso.
What’s next: Now board chair, Winkler faces a question: can he launch the museum’s next phase (and perhaps a significant addition) without the muscle of previous deep-pocketed expansionists Melvin “Pete” Mark and the late Harold Schnitzer? (ZD)

Let Us Build Cully Park!

A multiethnic coalition battles to create a patch of green.

B GR G

Signature move: Cully is a vast tract of Northeast being transformed by immigrants and new homeowners. Amenities remain in short supply, but there is a 25-acre former landfill perfect for a park. In an all-too-rare instance of a neighborhood organization trying to build something rather than stop something, this coalition is leveraging neighbors’ skills—from engineering to landscaping to grant writing—to push the project. Let Us Build recently landed a $150,000 grant and completed much of a needed environmental assessment.
What’s next: Turning this new model of DIY infrastructure into barn-raising reality and, hopefully, green jobs for Cully residents. (DP)

Doug Stamm

The Meyer Memorial Trust’s leader takes altruism in new directions.

B C E

Signature move: Early in his nine-year tenure at the charity built on grocery tycoon Fred Meyer’s estate, this ex-Nike lawyer marveled at its clout. A trustee reality-checked him: “Doug, $650 million isn’t what it used to be.” Stamm responded by making MMT a model regional foundation, steering its meaty endowment into creative new—and now nationally copied—tools, like bonds to fund lending in low-income zip codes.
What’s next: Expect more innovation, like MMT’s recent alliance with other charities to fund socially responsible, market-rate investments in developing countries. “It’s probably a hangover from Nike,” Stamm says, “but I want to apply the competitiveness and rigor I absorbed there to the work we do here.” (ZD)

Paul King and Walter Jaffe

White Bird Dance’s founders rally the troupes.

C E

Signature move: Since arriving in 1996, King and Jaffe have been an arts power couple—status they put to use after the 2008 financial crisis by founding the Portland Arts Alliance. At quarterly meetings, as many as 40 arts entities gather to strategize. Heavyweights like the Portland Art Museum and Oregon Symphony mingle with bantams like Polaris Dance and Profile Theatre. Results include a dramatic expansion of a program providing $5 event tickets to food-stamp recipients.
What’s next: This unity will be crucial if a campaign for public arts education funding on November’s ballot goes forward. (DP)

Lisa Sedlar

New Seasons’ CEO keeps the green-grocery empire growing.

B F G

Signature move: This 45-year-old Michigan native took over day-to-day operations of Portland’s homegrown grocery chain in 2005, after the company’s founders reduced their duties, and she got the CEO title last year. Under Sedlar, New Seasons has expanded, weathered the recession without one layoff, and balanced a private-equity investment with its bottom-up culture.
What’s next: Likely one or two new stores a year—and an anonymous January survey of employees to check on how well the company walks its talk. (DP)

“I think I’ve got some vision—and a lot of energy.”
—Andrea Durbin

Carmen Rubio

The young Latino leader lifts Portland’s fast-growing ethnic group.

GR R

Signature move: Since Rubio departed City Commissioner Nick Fish’s office to take charge of the grassroots Latino Network in 2009, education has been her chief priority. This past summer, the organization launched an academic program serving more than 40 Hispanic high school students, and it plans to expand to middle schoolers this year.
What’s next: An education center providing alternate paths to high school diplomas. (KM)

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B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Image: Andy Batt

Andrea Durbin, OEC

Andrea Durbin

Our oldest homegrown green group works macro and micro.

P G R

Signature move: The 43-year-old Oregon Environmental Council is enmeshed in initiatives ranging from a new carbon-reduction certification program for wineries to state and federal climate policy. Durbin, OEC’s executive director, isn’t afraid to throw elbows in this multifront fight. “I think I’ve got some vision—and a lot of energy,” the 41-year-old Northwest native says. Recently, her stewardship paid off in Multnomah County’s ban on BPA, on which OEC led the charge, and negotiations to close the coal-fired Boardman power plant.
What’s next: Durbin sits on Kitzhaber’s global warming commission, which plans to release a draft 10-year plan this spring. Meanwhile, she expects OEC to jump into February legislative battles over funding for state environmental agencies. (ZD)

Sandra McDonough

The Portland Business Alliance’s CEO plays well with others.

F E

Signature move: After inheriting the teethmarks bulldog-like predecessor Kim Kimbrough left on the legs of city officials, McDonough, an ex-journalist and energy-sector vet, defused much of the animus with her chipper, collaborative style. Over her seven-year reign, she’s turned PBA into a key player in discussions about education reform and jobs growth, rather than just old faves like taxes and regulations.
What’s next: With more than half of city council up for grabs, PBA will see if its endorsement serves as a coveted blessing (as it would most places) or the kiss of death (as it often has here). (ZD)

Gene Sandoval

An architect brings the world to Portland—and vice-versa.

B F G P

Signature move: Zimmer Gunsul Frasca, the city’s largest architecture firm, designed much of downtown. But as it neared five decades old, ZGF needed a jolt of boldness. Enter Sandoval, a 44-year-old Chinese-Filipino immigrant. “I left everything to come to the US,” the UO grad says now. “I went full monty.” His recent designs—like glimmering University of Oregon athletic complexes, downtown’s sleek 12 West, and hypergreen Port of Portland headquarters—shape an international vernacular with a marked Northwest accent. “People sometimes think of Portland as small and provincial,” he says, “but it can be global.”
What’s next: Selling new clients in Asia and elsewhere on Portland’s green values (and his own: “Where I grew up, we didn’t call it recycling, we called it surviving”). And at least one major project that’s hush-hush for now. (ZD)

Image: Andy Batt

Chandra Brown, United Streetcar

Chandra Brown

A streetcar factory cheers blue-collar workers and eco-urbanists.

F G R

Signature move: In 2005, 11 years after she started as a temp at Clackamas’s burly Oregon Iron Works, this now-43-year-old Chicago native piloted the launch of that company’s United Streetcar subsidiary. As the only manufacturer of modern streetcars in the country (and with the Obama administration bullish on the technology), United and Oregon Iron Works have created 133 jobs and an all-American supply chain.
What’s next: As Oregon Iron Works’ VP for business development, she’ll help conquer other new frontiers—like building wave-power generators for deployment off the coast. (RR)

Bob Speltz

The charitable force makes the Standard the standard.

B F C E

Signature move: Speltz steers the insurance and finance giant’s charitable might. “Whenever I want to get a com-pany involved in a good idea, one of my first calls is to Bob,” says one prominent local. Besides $2.7 million in annual giving (as of 2011), Speltz pushes 2,500 workers to take volunteer roles, and trains qualified employees to serve on nonprofit boards—65 so far. “It’s about investing money wisely,” he says, “but also about putting scale and talent to work in different ways.”
What’s next: Off the clock, Speltz becomes chair of the Oregon Cultural Trust’s board this year, overseeing a nonprofit that aids 1,300 cultural organizations across the state. And as one of the more prominent gay corporate players in town, he plans to continue active roles with Basic Rights Oregon and other equality-focused organizations. (ZD)

“People think of Portland as small and provincial, but it can be global.”
—architect Gene Sandoval

Helen L. Ying

An Asian leader hopes to capture a Metro Council seat.

GR P

Signature move: From chairing the Asian American Youth Leadership Conference to helping the city create the Office of Equity, Ying has long been one of the guiding hands behind fast-growing Asian communities.
What’s next: Ex-congressman David Wu’s ignominious departure leaves our Pacific Rim city with an anemic representation of elected Asians. Ying hopes to start changing that with a spring campaign for an open Metro seat focused on equity for marginalized groups. (DP)

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B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Joe Robertson

OHSU’s president looks to thrive in health care’s stormy future.

B F E

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.

GR G R

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)

Image: Andy Batt

Jon Kellogg

Image: Andy Batt

Thad Fisco

Jon Kellogg and Thad Fisco

Microdevelopment shapes some Portland’s hippest streets.

B F

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.

B E

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.”

B GR P G

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.

F C

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)

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B = Builders GR = Grassroots P = Policy F = Financial

G = Green C = Culture E = Establishment R = Rising Star

Image: Andy Batt

Tom Manley, PNCA

Tom Manley

A former professor turned the Pacific Northwest College of Art into a creative-class crown jewel.

B C R

Signature move: In Manley’s decade as president, PNCA has doubled its student body and started five graduate programs, the school’s first. And its physical expansion has been stunning: since 2008, the formerly propertyless college snapped up buildings it rented on Northwest Johnson Street, the Museum of Contemporary Craft, and, most recently, the historic building at 511 NW Broadway.
What’s next: With a 511 rehab slated for 2014, Manley hopes not only to create a dynamic hub of studios, libraries, labs, and commons, but to define a new “creative corridor,” bridging the Pearl District with Old Town. (RR)

Carrie Welch and Mike Thelin

Portland’s celebrated food scene gets an international festival.

B F C R

Signature move: Recent Portland transplant Welch rose from intern to PR at the Food Network and helped create the New York Wine and Food Festival. The endlessly connected Thelin (a former contributing editor to Portland Monthly) turned the 2010 International Association of Culinary Professionals convention into a Portland love fest, then went on to reenergize Austin’s moribund Texas Hills Food and Wine Festival and run Eater’s youthfully prestigious national awards.
What’s next: Next September, the duo will launch Feast Portland: Food and Drink Festival, with renowned chefs like Aaron Sanchez (of the TV show Chops) and Jon Shook and Vinny Dotolo (of noted LA restaurant Animal), plenty of press, and big sponsorship alliances. “In our first conversation,” says Thelin, “we both said it’s time for Portland to have this.” (RG)

Image: Andy Batt

Mark Knutson, Augustana Lutheran

Mark Knutson and Rick McKinley

Two pastors reinvent Christianity for postreligious Portland.

GR R

Signature move: From strikingly different Christian traditions, these two make faith thrive in a church-shy city. At mainline Augustana Lutheran, the 59-year-old Knutson reversed national shrinkage of traditional denominations; his congregation multiplied from 200 to 800, in part due to jazz and Native American–flavored services and vigorous activism on war, immigration, and gay rights. Imago Dei, founded by McKinley in 2000, shattered evangelicalism’s megachurch image by steeping itself in Portland culture (it runs a Pearl District gallery and promotes indie musicians) and giving cash to the city to fight human trafficking. “We started by asking what a church for the city would look like,” the 42-year-old McKinley says. “The city’s responded.”
What’s next: Knutson expects new initiatives on sustainability and economic inequality. McKinley’s congregants are launching entrepreneurial social missions. (ZD)

David Chen

An investor looks to fund the future of green enterprise.

F G

Signature move: Four years ago, after becoming arguably the city’s most prominent tech venture capitalist, David Chen decided “that the key to a sustainable future wasn’t going to be a better widget.” He founded Equilibrium Capital, a group that essentially invests in investors: Chen and partners scout promising, sustainability-focused asset managers and bankroll them. “Most of our entrepreneurs have been investing in relative obscurity,” Chen says. “We think their time is now.”
What’s next: Equilibrium’s portfolio includes construction, agriculture, energy, and water. “A farmer friend recently said, ‘In the ’90s I thought I should sell and go into dot-coms,’” Chen says. “‘Now, everyone wants to talk about farming.’” (ZD)