November 2009/FEATURES

When 38-year-old Noah Wilcox, president and CEO of Grand Rapids State Bank, says, “From my great-grandfather to me, the thing that’s been consistent is managing it for the long term,” he means it. Noah is the fourth...

When the Herbert Hoover presidential campaign was promising “a chicken in every pot” in 1928, St. Cloud-area businessman E.M. Helgeson already had been selling day-old chicks throughout the Midwest for two years through his...

Did you know that family-owned businesses account for 33 percent of the S&P 500 firms, 64 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product, 80 percent of the U.S. workforce, 65 percent of wages paid and 86 percent of jobs...

Liberty Diversified International's story began as many family business stories do: modestly and with no expectation of anything other than earning a decent living. Specifically, LDI began in 1918 with a Russian immigrant...

That was in 1904 and, although Murphy is being recognized for community commitment and being a legacy finalist, that makes them the oldest of our eight finalists by a solid 10 years. It is no wonder, then, that Richard...

When Tim Doherty founded Doherty Employment Group (then Quality Temp) in a down economy in 1980 at the age of 26, it was a family business from the beginning.  His dad and brother provided business guidance and start-up...

On the first page of the application JNBA Financial Advisors submitted for these awards were two simple words, "Values Endure"-a distillation of their company credo. According to JNBA's CEO Richard Brown, the values his...

Life Innovations began when Dr. David Olson, then director of the Family Social Science graduate program at the University of Minnesota, was approached about figuring out a way to better engage couples in premarital...

When teenaged Valerie first met Tim Doherty, she knew him only as the son of the owner of the drive-in restaurant where she worked as a carhop and he flipped burgers. She never would have guessed that they would eventually...