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ACCOUNTING
• Pinnock, Robbins, Posey & Richins PC (PRPR), Salt Lake City, have purchased the accounting practice of Alfred J. Kofoed. He will remain with PRPR in an of-counsel role as he phases in to retirement over the next five years. Kofoed was previously a partner in the Salt Lake City firm of Nievaard, Kofoed & Teran PC for 24 years and has 40 years of experience in public accounting. He began his public accounting career with Arthur Andersen in its Los Angeles office, where he worked in the commercial audit department for over three years. Kofoed has specialized in the construction, architectural and wholesale industries and serves a number of physician-based businesses and their owners. He also serves many not-for-profit associations and provides a number of ERISA audits. The firm also announced that Kevin Crump, a long-time audit and tax manager with NKT, is also now a member of the PRPR client service team. Crump has 26 years’ public accounting experience. He was the chief financial officer of a large Utah-based grocery store chain for eight years, and began his public accounting career with Fox and Co., a firm that was eventually acquired by Grant Thornton.
ARTS/ENTERTAINMENT
• The Gateway in downtown Salt Lake City has used its storefronts to display art from local artists during the holiday season. With help from the Salt Lake City Arts Council, the Urban Arts Alliance, the University of Utah, the Downtown Alliance and others, The Gateway’s Art Shop Project brought local artists the opportunity to fill storefronts with art and video installations. Participating artists include David Baddley, a professor of art/photography at Westminster College; Camille Overmore, a University of Utah communications graduate and current sculpture student; Soon-Ju Kwon; Brady Peterson; Sarina Villareal; Sarah Peterson, a senior at the University of Utah; Briana McLaren, a full-time art student at the University of Utah; Carol Sogard, Michelle Guymon and Helen McNally; and The Sign Witches.
BANKING
• Bank of Utah, Ogden, has elected Kimberlee Kennedy as a bank officer and appointed her as internal audit manager. She will oversee the outsourcing of all internal audit functions at the bank. Her experience includes several years as a senior auditor for Deloitte & Touche.
• Mountain America Credit Union, West Jordan, has selected Kelly Albiston as senior vice president of digital banking. He is responsible for the overall product development and supervision of the company’s online and mobile digital banking channels. Albiston has nearly four years of experience as vice president of information technology at Mountain America. Prior to that, he spent over a decade helping establish and grow Orbit Medical. Albiston earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Utah and a master’s of business administration at Brigham Young University.
CONSTRUCTION
• Sundt Construction Inc. has opened an office in Salt Lake City. The expansion will enable the full-service general contractor support its ongoing transportation construction work throughout the region while helping the state meet its growing infrastructure needs. Larry Luke will lead the office as area manager. The company has about 1,600 employees in offices in Utah, Arizona, Texas and California.
CONTESTS
• Nominations are being accepted through Feb. 10 for the Utah Innovation Awards 2017, presented by Stoel Rives LLP and the Utah Technology Council (UTC). The awards program recognizes Utah’s best innovations and the companies that created them. Innovations from all industries, and in all areas of technology and business, are eligible for consideration if they meet the eligibility requirements. Past years’ categories have included Clean Technology and Energy; Computer Hardware/Electrical Device; Consumer Software (including social media and mobile apps); Enterprise Software, Cloud and Big Data; Life Science/Bio Tech; Life Science/Medical Device; Mechanical/Chemical/Manufacturing; and Outdoor/Consumer Products. Nominations will be evaluated by a committee of approximately 80 representatives from private industry, government and higher education. Up to two finalists and one winner may be selected from each category. Award winners will be announced at an awards presentation April 20. The online nomination form is at https://www.utahinnovationawards.com/utah-innovations-nomination-multipage/.
CORPORATE
• ISA Scientific, Salt Lake City, has completed a rebrand and is now operating under a new name, Ananda Scientific. The company is focused on making non-psychoactive, safe and effective therapeutic products based on cannabis plant chemistry. The company said the rebranding was done to capitalize on the global cannabidiol (CBD) market, which is anticipated to reach $2.1 billion in consumer sales by 2020.
DIRECT SALES
• ForeverGreen Worldwide Corp., Lindon, has appointed Shane Manwaring as general counsel and Dan Eastman as chief information officer. Manwaring most recently served as vice president of legal at the company. He has more than nine years of legal experience on both a domestic and international level, with seven years’ experience in the direct selling industry. Eastman has several years of experience in information technology, project management and direct selling for several large companies, most recently as vice president of information technology at ForeverGreen.
EXPANSIONS
• Online retailer Overstock.com Inc., Salt Lake City, has completed plans to open a customer care call center in Grays Harbor County, Washington, bring at least 150 jobs by May. The lease will encompass 20,000 square feet of space in a building housed inside the Satsop Business Park in Elma, Washington. Overstock will use an entire floor of a state-of-the-art office building built on the site of a former, never-activated nuclear power plant. The location initially will house only a customer care call center, but the company anticipates creating satellite teams with other functions.
GOVERNMENT
• Salt Lake City Mayor Jackie Biskupski has appointed Karl Lieb as the city’s fire chief. Lieb was appointed interim chief in October, upon the retirement of Brian Dale. Lieb has been with the Salt Lake City Fire Department for 21 years. With a commission in the United States Air Force and POST certification from the Montana Highway Patrol Academy, Lieb has extensive experience in public safety from federal to municipal levels. His education includes an MPA from the University of Utah.
HEALTHCARE
• Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, has named Joseph E. Fournier as vice president of human resources and chief human resources officer. Most recently, Fournier was chief human resources officer for the University of Michigan Health System. Prior to that, he was vice president and chief human resources officer for UMass Memorial Medical Center and UMass Memorial Medical Group, and senior human resources officer for UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, Massachusetts. Before entering human resources, Fournier was an attorney and Air Force officer, holding positions as a military prosecutor and in-house counsel and general counsel for the Air Force Medical Service.
INVESTMENT
• ObservePoint, Provo, has closed on a $19 million Series B funding round led by Mercato Partners and Pelion Venture Partners. ObservePoint provides automated web tag and mobile app analytics validation solutions for enterprise organizations. The capital will be used to expand operations and to support continued investment in innovations focused on improving data-driven business decisions and digital marketing returns, ObservePoint said. As part of the investment, Mercato’s Ryan Sanders will join the ObservePoint board of directors.
LAW
• Snell & Wilmer has elected Salt Lake City attorneys Cortland P. Andrews, Paul W. Shakespear and Jeremy J. Stewart to join the firm’s partnership and elected Elisabeth M. McOmber to counsel. Andrews represents clients in a variety of business matters. His education includes a J.D. from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. Shakespear focuses his practice in commercial litigation, energy and utility law and defending clients in product liability and medical malpractice matters. He earned his J.D. from Brigham Young University’s J. Reuben Clark Law School. Stewart concentrates his practice in commercial litigation. McOmber concentrates her practice in product liability defense litigation and complex commercial litigation.
MANUFACTURING
• New World Distillery has opened at 4795 E. 2600 N., Eden. The owner is Ashley Cross. It uses organic ingredients and produces GMO-free spirits. It emphasizes sustainability through state-of-the-art stills, cutting-edge fermenters that are temperature-controlled, a waste-water evaporator and a recirculating water chiller that recycles 100 percent of its cooling water. Most of the ingredients for the spirits are purchased from local suppliers within a three-state radius, all waste is recycled, their packaging is re-usable and they are the first commercial business to sign up for the Rocky Mountain Power Subscriber Solar program.
PHILANTHROPY
• Members of the Utah Trucking Association have donated over $10,000 to the families of Trooper Eric Ellsworth of the Utah Highway Patrol and Officer Cody Brotherson of the West Valley City Police Department. Both lost their lives while protecting the residents of Utah.
• Bank of American Fork recently donated 7,918 teddy bears to at-risk children in Utah. The annual Project Teddy Bear features a drive to collect and donate stuffed animals to Utah crisis centers. This year’s project included the teddy bears and other stuffed animals for the Salt Lake County Family Support Center, the Utah Valley Family Support & Treatment Center and the Family Connection Center in Clearfield. Among the standouts contributors this year were Bingham High School, which collected 125 stuffed animals; the American Fork High School Marching Band, with students, parents and faculty donating time to put together boxes, pack up all the stuffed animals and sort the boxes; the Spanish Fork Letterman’s Club, which collected nearly 2,000 stuffed animals; and Bailey’s Moving & Storage, which provided all of the boxes, labor and a large moving truck to deliver teddy bears to three support centers. In the 17 years of Project Teddy Bear, more than 118,547 stuffed animals have been donated. The stuffed animals were donated by customers and community members.
REAL ESTATE
• Windermere Utah Real Estate has hired Mark Shepherd as branch manager. He will lead a team of 10 agents in the company’s new Layton office, which will serve home buyers and sellers in northern Utah, especially Davis, Morgan and Weber counties. The Layton office, at 2244 N. University Park Blvd., is the company’s fifth in Utah. Shepherd is mayor of Clearfield. He has been a real estate agent for 12 years. He previously was the broker and owner of RE/MAX Unlimited. Prior to his career in real estate, Shepherd worked for AIG as a regional manager over consumer lending.
RECOGNITIONS
• Two Utah entities have been named winners of the World Ski Awards, part of the World Travel Awards. Deer Valley Resort was named the United States’ Best Ski Resort, and Stein Eriksen Lodge Deer Valley was named United States’ Best Ski Hotel. Deer Valley Resort earned the honor for the fourth consecutive year. Votes were cast by leading ski tourism professionals worldwide, including senior executives, travel buyers, tour operators, agents and media, as well as thousands of luxury travel consumers. Winners were celebrated at the 2016 Ski Oscars gala ceremony in November in Kitzbühel, Austria.
• High West Distillery, Park City, has received the Distiller of the Year award in Whisky Advocate’s 23rd annual awards program. The awards are recognition of a combination of excellence, innovation, tradition and great-tasting whisky.
RESTAURANTS
• Sizzling Platter, a Utah-based restaurant management company with nearly 400 restaurant units globally, has launched a new catering and delivery service, Sizzling Catering. The initial rollout is taking place at three of the company’s Dunkin’ Donuts locations: 7219 S. Grandeur View Way, Midvale; 5693 S. Harrison Blvd., South Ogden; and 217 E. 400 S., Salt Lake City. In addition to selecting one of several fixed Sizzling Catering specials, customers have the option to add individual food items to their order or build their own customized food pack based on preferred amount and food type.
RETAIL
• Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage Inc. will open a store at 10622 S. Redwood Road, South Jordan, in the spring, bringing 18 jobs. The company has more than 3,000 employees at 130 stores in 19 states. The new South Jordan store will be about 15,000 square feet.
SCHOLARSHIPS
• KeyBank recently awarded two scholarships to students attending local schools. A $4,000 scholarship was awarded to Isabella Bean, a fourth-year student studying finance at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. The company also granted $10,000 to the Salt Lake Community College Partnerships for Accessing College Education (PACE) program. PACE is a scholarship program created to increase college participation and graduation rates for local high school students.
SERVICES
• City Wide, a building maintenance management company, has opened an office in Salt Lake City to serve commercial properties in Salt Lake, Utah and Wasatch counties. Gerry Ogris owns and operates City Wide of Salt Lake City. He has more than 20 years of experience in business-to-business sales, operations and business management.
SPORTS
• The Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation has hired Zachary Hall as biathlon manager at Soldier Hollow Nordic Center. His experience includes skiing four years as a varsity team member at Dartmouth College and as a member of the U.S. Biathlon Development Team. Upon retiring from competition in 2011, Hall returned to Alaska to work and got involved with biathlon across the state. Together with Olympian Lars Flora Hall helped grow the NANANordic and Skiku programs and developed an Anchorage-based competitive youth biathlon team. Hall also served as the biathlon coordinator and head coach for Team Alaska’s ski and snowshoe biathlon teams for the 2014 and 2016 Arctic Winter Games in Fairbanks, Alaska, and Nuuk, Greenland.