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BANKING
• EnerBank USA, a Salt Lake City-based consumer lender helping business partners and independent home improvement contracts increase sales, has promoted Rob Palmer to executive vice president and bank operations manager, with overall responsibility for operations and information technology. He will continue to serve as chairman of the company’s IT committee. Palmer previously was senior vice president of IT and IT manager. He joined EnerBank in 2012. Prior to that, he worked in various IT management roles, including stints at Volvo Financial Services, Verisk Health and custom software solution providers.
DIRECT SALES
• Young Living Essential Oils, Lehi, has promoted Michael Green to chief information officer. Green has more than 17 years of experience with startups, direct sales and global consumer product companies. He joined Young Living in 2017 as senior vice president of information technology. Prior to that, he was chief information officer at Plexus Worldwide.
DIVIDENDS
• The board of directors of People’s Utah Bancorp, American Fork, has declared a quarterly dividend payment of 11 cents per common share. The dividend is payable Feb. 11 to shareholders of record Feb. 4. People’s Utah Bancorp is the holding company for People’s Intermountain Bank, which has 26 locations in three banking divisions, Bank of American Fork, Lewiston State Bank, and People’s Town & Country Bank; a leasing division, GrowthFunding Equipment Finance; and a mortgage division, People’s Intermountain Bank Mortgage.
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
• The Economic Development Corporation of Utah has announced that Alan Rindlisbacher will join the organization to lead its Community Strategy Initiative. EDCUtah invested two years ago to create the Department of Community Strategy to assist communities across the state by offering more access to economic information, a clear understanding of how a community fits into the statewide economic development strategy, and better preparation to build community wealth through economic development. Rindlisbacher has spent the past 22 years in the private sector as Layton Construction’s director of corporate communications. He began his career in economic development 34 years ago with the Salt Lake Chamber and was at EDCUtah when it began in 1987.
EDUCATION/TRAINING
• Sandler Training of Utah, a sales and management training company, has hired David Pettit as director of leadership programs. Pettit has started three companies — a third-party logistics company, a small-parcel consolidation company and an export trading company — that were successfully sold. Over the past several years, he has served as a Vistage chair and a certified implementer of the EOS Entrepreneurial Business System. Pettit earned a degree in finance from the University of Utah and an MBA from Brigham Young University.
• Registration has opened for SheTech Explorer Day 2019, a Women Tech Council (WTC) program that inspires, activates and engages high school girls to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) through hands-on experience and mentoring. This year’s event April 9 at the Mountain America Expo Center in Sandy will include 3,000 girls from across Utah, making it the largest event in the program’s six-year history. Together with hundreds of industry mentors, they will explore STEM fields through activities like coding; virtual reality; 3D printing and modeling; and several new industry-specific activities, including sports tech, fashion tech, design tech and music tech. Attendance is free. Registration is open for all high school girls grades 9-12 at www.shetechexplorer.com.
INVESTMENTS
• Kuali Inc., a Lehi-based higher education-focused cloud technology company, has secured $12 million in Series A-1 funding from Mercato Partners, based in Salt Lake City, and Owl Ventures, based in San Francisco. Kuali began in 2005 as a nonprofit, open-source community initiative for developing higher education administrative systems. In 2014, the Kuali company was created to accelerate software development, improve the user experience, and bring Kuali products to the cloud, while continuing to support open source and expand the user community. Over the past four years, Kuali has grown to almost 100 employees and 184 customers.
• Filevine, a Provo-based cloud-based legal case management software company, has announced $8.3 million in Series A funding, led by Signal Peak Ventures, Salt Lake City, and joined by existing investors Peak Ventures and Dealersocket founder Jonathan Ord. The funding will be used to accelerate product development, and sales and marketing efforts. The round as the company, launched in 2015, reaches a milestone of a customer base of 1,000 law firms.
LAW
• Shawn C. Ferrin and Richard J. Angell are new members of the board of directors at Parsons Behle & Latimer, Salt Lake City. Both are vice presidents at the firm. Also elected are returning members Hal J. Pos, president and chief executive officer; Kristine E. Johnson, vice president and secretary; and Bruce H. White, vice president and treasurer. Ferrin is the former head of Parsons’ real estate group. He focuses his practice on real property transactions, with an emphasis on office lease, retail, resort and community development; land use planning and entitlement; and economic and development incentives. Angell is currently the head of Parsons’ environmental, energy and natural resources practice group. His practice focuses on a broad range of environmental compliance, transactional and litigation issues, including hazardous materials and wastes, risk management, accident prevention and regulatory compliance, as well as emergency response and long-term remediation. The firm also announced that Raymond J. Etcheverry has chosen to step down as chairman of the firm’s board after serving for 25 years in that capacity.
• Holland & Hart has hired Steve Clayton for its Salt Lake City office. He has 12 years of experience as in-house counsel helping a nascent real estate company grow into a private real estate investment trust. He services real estate owners, developers and managers with a variety of matters from offer through diligence and acquisition, from leasing to ongoing management support. He also is an adjunct associate professor at the University of Utah’s S.J. Quinney College of Law, teaching contract drafting and co-teaching an intellectual property and business law survey course.
MILESTONES
• Instasize, a Salt Lake City-based company that provides a toolkit for social media content creators, announced it reach 12 million monthly users and 500 paid subscribers in 2018. The company also reached $14 million in revenue. The app was downloaded 50 million times in the Google Play store and ranks in the top 40 photo/video Apps in the Apple Store. The basic Instasize app is free, while the premium subscription is $4.99 per month and provides access to an entire collection of filters, beauty retouching tools and professional fonts.
PHILANTHROPY
• Prior to the end of the partial federal government shutdown, Alsco Inc., a Salt Lake City-based linen and uniform rental company, donated $100,000 to underwrite expanded visitor and custodial services at Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches national parks, in order to keep them open through at least Presidents’ Day weekend. Alsco was the first private-sector partner to underwrite the parks in Utah. Because the federal government shutdown ended before the money was used, Alsco will work with the natural history foundations — the Zion Forever Project, Canyonlands Natural History Association and the Bryce Canyon Nature History Association — to apply the remaining funds toward high-priority park programs.
REAL ESTATE
• Colliers International, Salt Lake City, has hired Annastasia Kaessner for the firm’s downtown Salt Lake City office. She previously worked at Cushman & Wakefield, where she was a member of the firm’s leading office brokerage team.
RECOGNITIONS
• Cox Automotive has presented its annual Barbara Cox Woman of the Year Award to Gail Miller, owner and chairman of Larry H. Miller Group of Companies. The award is presented to women who demonstrate business leadership and community advocacy, as well as a commitment to advancing the automotive industry. Gail Miller and her late husband, Larry, started their business with a single Toyota dealership in 1979. The Larry H. Miller Group of Companies has grown to include more than 60 car dealerships throughout the West; the Utah Jazz, the Salt Lake City Stars, the Salt Lake Bees, theater complexes; and a variety of other automotive, financial and real estate companies. Gail Miller also is involved in many business, civic and educational activities.
• Peter Makowski, business recruitment and retention manager for Salt Lake City’s Department of Economic Development, has been selected as a winner in the economic development profession’s “40 Under 40” awards, the only award of its kind recognizing young talent in the economic development industry. An independent, five-member selection committee chose the winners from a pool of more than 170 qualified candidates based on their exceptional accomplishments and contributions to the economic development industry. The award’s program was managed by Development Counsellors International (DCI), a New York-based firm that specializes in economic development marketing, and Jorgenson Consulting, a national executive search firm serving organizations in economic and community development industries. The announcement came during the International Economic Development Council Leadership Summit in Florida. Salt Lake City says that through community partnerships, engaging city staff, and taking a proactive approach to economic development, Makowski’s work has resulted in attracting over 8,500 jobs, over 4 million square feet of new construction, and over $800 million in capital investment.
• John Kendall Garff, dealer principal at Ken Garff Honda Downtown in Salt Lake City, was one of four regional finalists for the 2019 Time Dealer of the Year award. He is one of 51 dealer nominees nationwide that was recognized at the 102nd annual National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Show in San Francisco. Ally Financial Inc. donated $1,000 to the charity of choice for each of the 51 dealer nominees and will provide $10,000 to the nonprofit selected by the Dealer of the Year winner. The four finalists will each receive a $5,000 grant for the nonprofit organizations of their choice. Garff was chosen to represent the New Car Dealers of Utah in the national competition and was nominated from more than 16,000 dealers nationwide.
• The Park City Council has approved the official renaming of Guardsman Connection Road to Wheaton Way in honor of Deer Valley Resort’s former president and CEO, Bob Wheaton. The renaming was recommended by the Park City Area Lodging Association. Wheaton was appointed Deer Valley’s general manager in 1988, vice president of operations in 1989 and president in 1997. In 2015, Wheaton led the negotiations and purchase of Solitude Mountain Resort by Deer Valley Resort Co., acting as its president until October of 2017 when Deer Valley was acquired by Alterra Mountain Co. Alterra then purchased Solitude Mountain Resort in July 2018. Wheaton retired from his role as Deer Valley’s president and COO and transitioned into an advisory role at Alterra Mountain Co. in January of this year.
RESTAURANTS
• SLC Eatery has opened at 1017 S. Main St., Salt Lake City. It offers modern American food through dim sum service — a style of food service in which guests can select food from small plates on carts pushed throughout the restaurant. The owner is Paul Chamberlain, and the chef is Logen Crew.
TECHNOLOGY/LIFE SCIENCES
• Listen Technologies, a Bluffdale-based provider of assistive listening systems, has promoted Doug Taylor to the newly created position of chief product officer. Taylor has been executive vice president of product management and business development the past two years. In this new position, he will continue to lead product management and product marketing and will add responsibility for establishing the product vision and strategy, and partnering with engineering, marketing, sales and company leadership. Taylor has more than 22 years of global sales and product management experience. Prior to joining Listen Technologies, he held senior positions in sales, marketing and product management at GE Healthcare and Eaton.
• Central Logic, a Salt Lake City-based transfer center software company, has hired Michelle McCleery as vice president of business development and Barry Dennis as vice president of sales. McCleery will lead Central Logic’s business development efforts as the company extends its products and SaaS platform with partnerships and strategic alliances. She was most recently the vice president of strategy and chief clinical officer for PerfectServe. McCleery holds a doctorate degree in human factors, an MBA, and is a registered nurse. She has worked more than 15 years in the healthcare industry. Dennis has been a long-time innovator in the transfer center industry. He holds an MBA and bachelor’s degree in organizational leadership and is also an RN. He was most recently the chief operating officer for Conduit Health, the transfer center outsourcing business for Mercy Health in Ohio. He also founded Navilife, which was later sold to PHI.