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BANKING
• Seacoast Commerce Bank, San Diego, has hired Jason Hutsenpiller as senior vice president and Small Business Administration business development officer. He will work in Salt Lake City. Hutsenpiller has over 13 years of experience working with small businesses by mostly providing financing through the SBA loan programs. His experience is in SBA business development, management and credit administration. He was most recently the chief lending officer at Town & Country Bank.
CONTESTS
• RevRoad, a Provo-based business accelerator, is accepting applications until Feb. 28 for its first-ever $10,000 Entrepreneur Competition, titled “Give Your Business a Shot.” The winning individual, team or small organization will be chosen based on criteria including business model, problem validation, sales pitch, pitch deck and more. A pitch event and award ceremony takes place March 10, 9 a.m.-1 p.m., at RevRoad headquarters, 1555 Freedom Blvd., Provo. Applications can be completed at www.revroad.com/comp2018. The contest is co-sponsored by Startup Utah and other community partners.
• The University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute is accepting nominations until March 15 for the Informed Decision Maker of the Year Award, which recognizes businesses, governments, nonprofits and individuals “who help our community prosper” and follow selection criteria consistent with the institute’s committable core values: unrecognized or silent warriors in our community, impact on the community, integrity, accountability, collaboration, and positive and passionate. Nominations can be submitted at gardnerinstitute@eccles.utah.edu. Nomination forms are at http://gardner.utah.edu/wp-content/uploads/IDmakerSheetFinal.pdf.
• Applications are being accepted for Utah Export Acceleration Grants. Funds can be used by companies to cover the costs of services or activities that help them pursue exporting opportunities or expand their international reach. Services and activities that are eligible include, but are not limited to, education/training, services and travel. No company match is required, but companies do have to meet eligibility requirements. Most grant awards will be $3,000-$5,000. Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis for two periods. The first period ends on April 30. The Export Acceleration Grant is funded by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and managed by World Trade Center Utah. Questions can be directed to grants manager Nicole Sherwood at nsherwood@wtcutah.com.
DIVIDENDS
• The board of directors of Extra Space Storage Inc., Salt Lake City, has declared a quarterly dividend of 78 cents per share on the company’s common stock for the 2018 first quarter. The dividend is payable March 29 to stockholders of record on March 15.
• The board of directors of Nu Skin Enterprises Inc., Provo, has increased the quarterly cash dividend to 36.5 cents from the previous 36 cents per share. The dividend will be paid March 14 to shareholders of record Feb. 26.
FOODS
• Green PolkaDot Box Inc., Mount Pleasant, and Buying Collective Holdings Inc. (BCHI) have formed a joint venture to deploy new working capital from BCHI for the development and national launch of the Health Merchant network of virtual online stores in a newly formed subsidiary of BCHI, Green Polka Dot Box LLC, until a final closing of the asset purchase agreement can occur. The LLC began business activities last July and began organizing to establish direct purchasing relationships with hundreds of the nation’s top organic, non-GMO food manufacturers and suppliers. By the end of December, more than 1,600 unique products were purchased and stocked in the LLC’s warehouse in Mt. Pleasant, short of the company’s goal to stock over 3,500 food products. A crowdfunding offering is designed to boost inventory levels. Anticipating continuing acquisition of inventory, approximately 100 of 250 Health Merchants have begun sales operations on a limited basis, but the LLC has reached or signed new agreements with several prominent food market influencers to become Health Merchants on the LLC’s digital platform and open their new stores in the coming weeks.
HEALTHCARE
• MDVIP, a personalized healthcare provider, has announced that Salt Lake City internists Dr. Stephen S. Aslami and Dr. Margaret S. Lunt have opened MDVIP-affiliated primary care practices. Both are associated with St. Mark's Hospital and Intermountain Medical Center. They join Dr. Kate Wilson, who opened her affiliated practice at the same location in 2011, as well as four other MDVIP affiliates across Salt Lake and Summit counties. Aslami earned his medical degree and completed his internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine. Lunt completed her internship and residency in internal medicine at the University of Utah Medical Center. MDVIP’s national network has 900 primary-care physicians.
INVESTMENTS
• SaltStack, a Salt Lake City-based automation platform, has announced a $15.5 million Series A financing round led by Mercato Partners. The company’s total funding has reached $28 million. SaltStack said it will use the investment to hire talent, with specific emphasis on increasing its product and engineering output and extending sales and marketing programs to accelerate customer adoption of SaltStack Enterprise.
• Kuali, a Salt Lake City-based software-as-a-service company serving higher education, has raised $10 million in funding from Owl Ventures, a San Francisco-based venture capital fund that specializes in education technology. Kuali began in 2005 as a nonprofit, open-source community initiative for developing higher education administrative systems. Over the past three-plus years Kuali has grown to more than 70 employees and 160 customers.
PHILANTHROPY
• Toyota has donated 42 iPads, valued at nearly $20,000, to the United Way of Salt Lake. The devices will be distributed to community schools throughout Salt Lake County where UWSL works. They will be used both during classroom hours and in after-school programs; to support robotics, coding and STEM education; in language instruction; and to help better connect with parents and partners throughout the school community.
POLICY
• The University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute has announced new and expanded staff positions. Juliette Tennert, who directs the economic and public policy research at the institute, will now serve as chief economist. Michael Christensen serves as a scholar in residence. He will advise the research of the institute, mentor staff, and will author a book on state and local public finance. His service follows a 40-year career in public policy in Utah, including appointment as the director of Legislative Research and General Counsel for the Utah Legislature, executive director of Utah Foundation, and state planning coordinator and deputy director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Budget. Christensen holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Utah. Dejan Eskic serves as a senior research associate. Eskic will work closely with the Ivory-Boyer Construction Database, a database on permit authorized construction at the county and city level in the state. He holds a master’s degree in real estate development from the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah and a bachelor’s degree in urban planning, also from the UofU. Thomas Holst serves as a senior energy analyst, conducting research on the economic impact of Utah’s energy industry and analyzing energy economic development scenarios. He was a refined products trader in Hamburg, Germany; London and Moscow and opened new enterprise offices for Unocal in Rio de Janeiro and Moscow. Holst also worked on the Angola LNG project as the gas supply manager before serving as Chevron’s country manager in Romania. He earned a B.S. in chemical engineering and an MBA from Brigham Young University. Angela J. Oh is a senior economist for the economic and public policy research team at the institute, analyzing Utah’s economy and researching public policy issues that affect the state. Oh previously served as the budget manager at the Utah Department of Transportation and as a staff economist and senior statistician for the Utah Legislature. She earned her B.S. and M.S. in economics from the University of Utah. Meredith DeMordaunt King serves as a research associate with a specialty in economics, public policy and survey research. King spent two years working for TargetPoint Consulting in Washington, D.C. She holds a B.A. in political science from Brigham Young University.
REAL ESTATE
• Dakota Pacific Real Estate Partners has acquired a building at 6301 N. Landmark Drive, Park City, from The Boyer Co. Financial terms were not disclosed. The two-story, 45,000-square-foot, Class A office building is in the Park City Tech Center at Kimball Junction. It serves as the global headquarters of audio products company Skullcandy. Dakota Pacific is making the investment through its Dakota Pacific Real Estate Partners Fund. L.P. Kip Paul of Cushman & Wakefield represented the Boyer in the transaction.
• Affinity56, a luxury apartment community on 35 acres in West Jordan, is pre-leasing. It consists of 531 units ranging from 711 to 1,500 square feet. It is owned by Uinta Land Co. and Mike Schultz Construction Inc. and is managed by Alliance Residential Co.
RECOGNITIONS
• The Ogden-Weber Chamber of Commerce honored several people during its 2018 Annual Gala. The Wall of Fame honorees are George and Mary Hall. The Large Business of the Year is Wadman Corp. The Small Business of the Year is Wasatch Pharmacy Care. The Athena Leadership Award recipient is Emily Jane Ballard. Volunteer of the Year is Chris Zimmerman, Weber School Foundation. Chairperson of the Year is Darren Rogers, Workforce Development. The Chamber Impact Award recipient is Myers Mortuaries. The Sue Westenskow Award recipient is John E. Lindquist.
• Alta Gateway Station has received the 2017 Development of the Year award from the Utah Apartment Association. The 289,767-square-foot, 277-unit community has four levels and is located at 500 West and 100 South in Salt Lake City. Rimrock Construction was the general contractor with Kent Kay as the superintendent.
• Supplemental Health Care, a Park City-based staffing agency, has earned Inavero's 2018 Best Of Staffing Client and Talent Awards for providing superior service to its clients and job seekers. Presented in partnership with CareerBuilder, Inavero's Best of Staffing winners have service quality based entirely on ratings by their clients and the employees they've helped find jobs. Less than 2 percent of staffing agencies in the U.S. and Canada have earned the award for service excellence.
• The Crown Council, an international association of independent dental practices, has announced that it has named Henry Schein Cares as its Humanitarian Partner of the Year. Henry Schein Cares is the global corporate social responsibility program of Henry Schein Inc. and was honored in recognition of its longtime support for the Smiles for Life Foundation, Crown Council's children's charity arm. Henry Schein has supported Smiles for Life for more than a decade, making annual donations of toothbrushes and other oral health supplies to the foundation in support of its members' humanitarian missions to underserved communities around the world.
SERVICES
• Serendipity Labs Coworking has awarded franchise rights to Renascent Hospitality for the Salt Lake City-to-Lehi area. Renascent will own and operate shared office and coworking locations in the area.
TECHNOLOGY/LIFE SCIENCES
• TaskEasy, a Salt Lake City-based automated property maintenance organization, plans to relocate this month from South Salt Lake to 669 S. West Temple, Salt Lake City. CBRE negotiated the 33,000-foot-lease for the company. Barb Johnson and Vic Galanis, first vice presidents in CBRE’s Salt Lake City office, represented TaskEasy in the transaction.
• MasterControl Inc., a Salt Lake City-based software company, has expanded its executive team to include Sara Bresee as executive vice president of marketing and Dave Edwards as executive vice president of sales. Bresee has more than 20 years of experience in integrated marketing, both in the client and agency sectors. Most recently, she was chief marketing officer at Morpho Detection. Prior to that, she served as senior vice president and group managing director of MRM//McCann-West. She also served as the global account director for Intel Corp. Edwards has more than two decades of sales, manufacturing, customer service and general business management experience. Prior to MasterControl, Edwards served as the chief operating officer at 3form. Prior to that, he worked at Danaher Corp. and TenFold Corp., an enterprise-wide software company. His education includes a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Utah.
• Canopy, a Salt Lake City-based cloud-based practice management platform for tax and accounting professionals, has hired James Sukhan as vice president of sales. Before joining Canopy, Sukhan served as director of sales at Podium and worked in various sales and leadership positions Qualtrics. He earned a bachelor of science in psychology degree from Brigham Young University.