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ACCOUNTING
• Tanner LLC, Salt Lake City, has admitted Nina M. Quarequio as an audit partner. Quarequio has more than 20 years of professional experience providing both audit and tax services. Her experience includes public offerings, reverse mergers, taking companies private, and Sarbanes-Oxley 404 implementation. She also is an advisor to her closely held entrepreneurial and investor backed private clients, advising them with cash flow management, financial projections and forecasting. Her experience includes serving as vice president of finance for a public company and chief financial officer for a private company.
BANKING
• Bank of Utah has hired Tiburon Erickson as business development officer to serve in the Ogden and Salt Lake ara. Erickson has 21 years of experience in the mortgage industry, including working at MetLife Home Loans and Veritas Funding. At Veritas, she built a marketing department that eventually included producing video and graphic design and managing social media.
DIRECT SALES
• Young Living Essential Oils, Lehi, has hired Carlos Lopez Ortega as the country manager for Colombia. Lopez Ortega has more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and operations, including for global brands Red Bull, Coca-Cola, El Tiempo and Reckitt Benckiser. He also has experience with direct sales companies such as Herbalife, Zrii and Nature’s Sunshine. Young Living also has named Jenna Dewan as 2019 brand ambassador of the company’s makeup collection, Savvy Minerals by Young Living. Dewan is an actress, dancer and mother and worked with Young Living Essential Oils in the past to reveal the brand’s essential oils collection, Scents of Self, during New York Fashion Week in 2017.
DIVIDENDS
• The board of directors of Security National Financial Corp., Salt Lake City, has authorized a 5 percent stock dividend for stockholders of record on Jan. 11. The dividend will be issued Feb. 1. It is the company’s 30th consecutive year declaring a 5 percent stock dividend.
FINANCE
• Onset Financial, South Jordan, has hired Holly Shoemaker as a new vice president of sales. She will work directly with the company’s finance committee to provide customers with structured finance solutions designed to meet their specific needs. Shoemaker has more than 20 years of experience in the equipment finance industry. Onset Financial provides equipment leasing and financing.
INVESTMENT
• Weave, a Lehi-based customer experience management platform company, has completed a $37.5 million Series C funding round led by growth equity firm Lead Edge Capital, with participation from existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Catalyst Investors, Crosslink Capital and Pelion Venture Partners. With the new funding, Weave plans to accelerate its growth in the marketplace and will double its workforce in the next year. It also plans to use round to expand in existing markets — dental, optometry and medical — while expanding into new markets. As a part of the investment deal, Lead Edge Capital partner Nimay Mehta has joined Weave’s board of directors as an observer.
• Medici Ventures, a blackchain accelerator and subsidiary of Salt Lake City-based Overstock.com Inc., has purchased a $2.5 million equity in GrainChain, a Texas-based company that offers software for farmers, buyers and grain elevators. Medici Ventures has 10 percent ownership in the company, with an option to further its acquisition for an additional 10 percent at a later date. Established in 2013 by the founders of SiloSys, GrainChain offers software that eliminates manual processes of weighing and documenting agricultural yield. The blockchain-based financial settlement system allows grain producers, buyers and sellers to create smart contracts to secure funds throughout the grain transaction process. GrainChain is currently available in the U.S. and Mexico. Medici Ventures’ acquisition will allow GrainChain to expand its market share in Central and South America.
LAW
• Ballard Spahr has hired Jacey Skinner for its Salt Lake City office as of counsel in the firm’s Government Relations, Regulatory Affairs and Contracting Group. She also will work with the firm’s Political and Election Law Group. Skinner has held several senior leadership roles in Utah state government, including serving as general counsel to Gov. Gary Herbert from 2013-17. Most recently, she served as the deputy state court administrator for the state. Her experience also includes serving as director of the Utah Sentencing Commission and president of the National Association of Sentencing Commissions. She was a deputy district attorney from 2003-09 at the Salt Lake County district attorney’s office, where she tried both felony and juvenile cases and oversaw policy development and advocacy as vice chair of the Statewide Association of Prosecutors Legislative Action Committee.
OUTDOOR PRODUCTS/RECREATION/SPORTS
• The Kearns Athlete Training and Element Event Center, 5658 S. Cougar Lane, recently had a ribbon-cutting event. The $12 million, 36,700-square-foot center next to the Utah Olympic Oval was planned and executed by several organizations, including the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation, Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center, US Speedskating, Salt Lake County and the state of Utah. It will secure state-of-the-art training space and US Speedskating’s permanent home in Kearns, create a new wing of fitness space for Kearns Oquirrh Park Fitness Center, and serve as a destination for community and corporate meetings.
PHILANTHROPY
• Aptive Environmental, a Provo-based pest control company, recently donated $250,000 to the United Nations’ “Nothing But Nets” campaign, which provides insecticide-treated mosquito nets and other tools to areas of the world afflicted with malaria-carrying mosquitos. It was part of a year of service. Company representatives in January helped rebuild a half-mile of road leading to the Saminay El-Legado School in the Andes Mountains of Ecuador and donated 10 computers to the school, for a donation totaling nearly $150,000. The company also pledged to plant trees in areas of Utah and California ravaged by wildfire over the summer for every customer who signed up during the month of September — for a total of more than 5,000 trees —in conjunction with the nonprofit organization One Tree Planted. The company also is providing Christmas gifts for 150 families in need throughout the Salt Lake Valley.
• Ultradent Products Inc., a South Jordan-based developer of dental materials, devices and instruments, recently announced it will donate $10,000 toward a humanitarian medical and dental education fund started by the Adams, Gladwell, Durham Foundation based in Salt Lake City. The money will go toward providing professional medical and dental education to underserved populations through online lectures and hands-on training provided to students through virtual reality programs.
RECOGNITIONS
• Stacey Koehler, general manager of the Olive Garden restaurant in South Jordan, recently was presented with the company’s “People Developer” award. She is one of 10 managers selected this year from more than 850 Olive Garden restaurants in North America. Presented annually, the award recognizes managers who have “consistently demonstrated a passion for developing the people who work on their team, ensuring that in addition to delivering a warm, friendly dining experience, their team is equipped with the tools to grow their careers with Olive Garden,” the company said. Koehler has been with Olive Garden for 12 years.
• The American College of Bankruptcy announced that Elizabeth Tashjian, professor of finance and Garn Faculty Fellow at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, will be inducted as a Fellow of the college. The ceremony will take place March 15. Thirty-six nominees from 18 states and four foreign countries will be honored and recognized for their professional excellence and exceptional contributions to the fields of bankruptcy and insolvency. Tashjian is one of only two professors being inducted, and she is the first-ever true finance professor to be inducted into the college. The American College of Bankruptcy is an honorary professional and educational association of bankruptcy and insolvency professionals.
• Three Utahns have been selected as 2018 HousingWire Vanguard Award recipients: Steve Smith, CEO, chairman and co-founder of Finicity; Matt Hansen, founder and CEO of SimpleNexus; and Mark Ladd, vice president of regulatory and industry affairs at Simplifile. This year’s 52 honorees were chosen by HousingWire magazine’s editorial board for their influences on both their companies and the industry as a whole. HousingWire produces news and information for the U.S. mortgage and housing markets. Winners will be recognized in HousingWire’s December/January issue.
• Domo, an American Fork operating system company, has been named a 2018 Gartner Peer Insights Customers’ Choice for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms. The Customers’ Choice program is based on recognitions of vendors submitted by verified end-user professionals, and considers both the number of customer reviews and the overall user ratings.
RETAIL
• Torrent Cycle has opened a boutique cycling studio at 252 E. Broadway, Salt Lake City. The 3,200-square-foot studio will feature specialty cycling and workout areas, full-service locker rooms and towel service. The company’s $600,000 investment will result in 15 new jobs.
SERVICES
• ConsultNet, a South Jordan-based provider of IT staffing and solutions, has hired Amy Esser as vice president of human resources. She will oversee organizational development and employee relations for the company. Esser has more than 16 years of human resources experience, most recently working as a senior vice president and regional director of human resources at the McCann World group.
• EdgeFive Group, Salt Lake City, has officially launched as a fully-integrated, turnkey event production provider. Built on the experience, expertise and growth of Corporate Staging over the past 50 years, EdgeFive will work hand-in-hand with Corporate Staging to ensure personalized relationships with clients to deliver customer service, event production and exclusive pricing.