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BANKING
• J.P. Morgan Private Bank, Salt Lake City, has hired Kristin Schaefer as an executive director and banker. In this role, Schaefer works with executives, business owners and influential families to support their total wealth plans and goals. Schaefer has more than 20 years of experience in banking and financial services, having worked in different markets and across financial segments throughout her career that include wealth management, commercial banking, global treasury management and international banking. Prior to joining J.P. Morgan, she was a global banking consultant with Wells Fargo in Silicon Valley.
CONSTRUCTION
• Reaveley Engineers, a Salt Lake City-based structural engineering firm, has announced internal promotions of five new principals and two associates. Justin Nadauld, Corey Price, Oliver Burt, Jessica Chappell and Mark Thimm have accepted principal positions at the company. Nadauld’s structural expertise has been put into action for many venues, including Salt Lake City’s Eccles Theater, the O.C. Tanner flagship store, and the McKay-Dee Hospital Ambulatory Surgery & Orthopedic Center in Ogden. After moving to Utah from Alaska, Price has helped devise structural solutions for The Summit at Snowbird, the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre in Cedar City, and the Marmalade Library in Salt Lake City. Burt began his career at Reaveley and has worked on many government, educational and healthcare projects, including the Utah Valley Medical Center, Brighton High School and the Dixie State University Human Performance Center. Chappell has significant experience in healthcare, civic and cultural, and religious structures, including Alta View Hospital Campus, Museum of Natural Curiosity, Primary Children’s Hospital in Lehi, and at the Cedar City Utah Temple. Specializing in concrete structures, Thimm has worked on seismic upgrades and repairs for the Salt Lake City and County Building, Church Office Building parking structures, and the Park City Mountain Resort Center Ice Rink Plaza. Jake Anderson and Clayton Burningham have been promoted to Associates at Reaveley. Anderson has experience at architectural firms as well as construction firms. Burningham has expertise gained through his Ph.D. in civil and environmental engineering.
ECONOMIC INDICATORS
• Utah has the No. 10 shortest average one-way commute time, compared with other states and Washington, D.C., according to an analysis by Coverage.com. Utah has an average of 21.7 minutes. Coverage.com used data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, released in December 2019. Utah’s average is 18.4 percent lower than the national average. Workers with commutes over 60 minutes accounted for 4.7 percent. Seventeen percent of workers commute outside their county of residence. Tooele County has the longest average among Utah counties, at 28.8 minutes, followed by Morgan and Summit counties. Kane County has the shortest, at 11.7 minutes, followed by Garfield and Grand counties. Details are at https://www.coverage.com/insurance/auto/states-with-the-best-and-worst-commutes/.
EDUCATION/TRAINING
• Salt Lake Community College has named Jon Beutler as the new director at The Mill Entrepreneurship Center, an incubator and co-location facilities organization. Beutler’s experience includes serving as alumni manager for Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Businesses program and director of the Park City Business Resource Center. For the past several years, he has taught startup curriculum and recently established the Everyday Entrepreneur Program (EEP) for early-stage entrepreneurs wanting to get started quickly.
• Rocky Mountain University of Health Professions, Provo, has appointed Cameron K. Martin as vice president of operations and chief of staff to the Office of the President. Martin previously was vice president of university relations at Utah Valley University and also served as assistant to the president for institutional development and planning and is a former director of the Utah Valley State College Alumni Association. He also served as associate commissioner for economic development and planning at the Utah System of Higher Education. Martin holds three degrees from Brigham Young University, including a Ph.D. in educational leadership and foundations, an MPA from the Marriott School of Management’s Romney Institute of Public Management, and a B.S. in political science.
ENVIRONMENT
• ATS, a Midvale-based company focused on products for advanced water treatment, has hired Steven Goldsmith as vice president of product management. He will be responsible for corporate B2B and B2C product management of commodities such as chemicals and the development of joint ventures, strategic partnerships and digital transformation. Goldsmith began his career at ATS, where he worked from 1999-2007. Starting in the warehouse blending chemicals, he advanced to a project manager position where he led U.S. Department of Defense projects for military facilities like Dugway Proving Grounds and Hill, Nellis and Creech Air Force bases. In addition to hands-on fabrication and equipment installation, he also composed the company’s technical documents, case studies, operations manuals and more. Since 2007, Goldsmith has continued to develop his knowledge of water treatment and mining technologies, working for WesTech Engineering for 12 years and at Ovivo Water as a sales and business development manager working with teams across North America.
• Smith’s Food & Drug Stores, a division of The Kroger Co., has announced its latest milestones and results for Zero Hunger/Zero Waste, the company’s vision to end hunger in the communities it serves and eliminate waste across the company by 2025. Kroger announced Zero Hunger/Zero Waste in September 2017. Smith’s notable 2019 milestones include donating more than 14 million meals to communities across the Intermountain West; rescuing 5.6 million pounds of safe, nutritious food that could no longer be sold in its retail stores, or shipped from its distribution centers and manufacturing plants, for Feeding America food banks; increasing meal donations through its Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Food Rescue program by 15 percent; diverting 24,000 tons from landfills across its seven-state footprint; increasing year-over-year food waste diversion by 17 percent; achieving Zero Waste operations in their manufacturing plants in Layton and Henderson, Nevada; increasing total recycling efforts by 10 percent in plastic and 6 percent in cardboard; and committing to eliminating single-use plastic grocery bags from its family of stores by 2025.
EXPANSIONS
• Sportsman’s Warehouse Holdings Inc., a West Jordan-based outdoor specialty retailer, has opened a new store in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. It will be the company’s fourth store in that state. It offers more than 60,000 region-specific items.
INVESTMENTS
• Recursion, a Salt Lake City-based digital biology company industrializing drug discovery, has announced a $239 million oversubscribed Series D financing. The financing was led by Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG. The syndicate also included new investors Casdin Capital, Catalio Capital Management LP, Laurion Capital Management, Samsara BioCapital and others, and all of Recursion’s existing major institutional investors: Baillie Gifford, Mubadala, DCVC, Lux Capital, Obvious Ventures, Felicis Ventures, EPIC Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures, Advantage Capital, Intermountain Ventures and others. Recursion said the financing’s proceeds will support the clinical development of the company’s therapeutic pipeline.
• Impartner, a Salt Lake City-based pure-play channel management platform, has received $30 million in growth financing from Golub Capital. Impartner said it will focus the financing on further capturing momentum in the channel management technology market, including advancing customer success systems and resources, investing in additional research and development, and acquiring complementary technologies. The funding has already resulted in Impartner’s recent acquisition of the brand control and demand generation (TCMA) business from TIE Kinetix.
• EFileCabinet, a Lehi-based document management company, has closed a Series C funding round of $11.5 million. The round was led by existing investors Allegis Capital and Signal Peak Ventures, which are now joined by Camden Partners, Allegis Nippon Life and Oquirrh Ventures. Todd Sherman of Camden Partners will join the eFileCabinet board of directors. The company said the funding will allow it to expand its commercialization efforts deeper into industries benefiting from document management, including insurance, healthcare and human resources.
MANUFACTURING
• Purple Innovation Inc., a Lehi-based comfort products manufacturer, has closed on its previously announced underwritten secondary public offering of 13.6 million shares of its Class A common stock sold by InnoHold LLC, which includes the full exercise of the underwriter’s option to purchase up to nearly 1.8 million additional shares, at a price of $18.50 per share. Gross proceeds to the selling stockholder totaled approximately $251.6 million, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions. Purple did not sell any shares of Class A common stock in the offering and did not receive any proceeds from the offering. BofA Securities acted as the sole book-running manager for the offering.
NONPROFITS
• Sutherland Institute, a Salt Lake City-based nonprofit, nonpartisan policy and educational think tank, has named Aaron Taylor its new executive vice president. Taylor joined Sutherland Institute this year after working in Washington, D.C., for almost a decade. He has worked in public policy, both in the private sector and in the U.S. Capitol. Taylor started his policy career working for Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, on the Senate Finance Committee tax team and later for Sen. Deb Fischer, R-Neb., managing her economic portfolio. Taylor also worked at Grant Thornton LLP as director of government affairs and started his career working in the Bay Area for a private equity firm serving small-to-medium size companies throughout the western United States. His education includes graduating from Brigham Young University in 2006.
PHILANTHROPY
• Nu Skin, a developer and distributor of beauty and wellness products, is sponsoring humanitarian projects in markets where the company operates, as part of the company’s annual Force for Good Day. At its Provo headquarters, the projects include those that benefit local schools and community nonprofit organizations. More than 5,000 items are being created to support 10 different projects, including children’s-themed facemasks for local preschools, face shields themed as astronauts and fish tanks, and other creative environments for local elementary school kids and teachers, homework kits to support those not able to attend school regularly due to COVID, learning puppets for children with disabilities and meals for hungry families affected by COVID in the local community. Other projects are taking place in China, Eastern Europe, South Africa, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and the Pacific region.
REAL ESTATE
• Green Courte Partners LLC, a Chicago-based private equity real estate investment firm and owner of The Parking Spot, a near-airport parking company, has acquired an 869-space parking facility serving Salt Lake City International Airport. The property, which is leased to and operated by Park N’ Jet, is contiguous to The Parking Spot’s existing near-airport parking facility. This acquisition expands Green Courte’s presence at SLC to 2,900 parking spaces and increases Green Courte’s near-airport parking portfolio to 38 facilities at 22 airports containing more than 77,000 spaces nationwide.
• HiCap Management LLC, New York, has acquired South Parc Townhomes, an 88-unit, 12-building multifamily property at 2249 S. 440 E., Salt Lake City. Ryan Jameson, Scott Williams, Jesse Weber and Andrew Behrens with CBRE’s Debt and Structured Finance group, arranged the $14.5 million loan from lender MF 1 Capital on behalf of HiCap, which acquired the property off-market for an undisclosed total sum from a confidential seller. HiCap is planning a capital improvement campaign to renovate the building exteriors and unit interiors. South Parc Townhomes is its first acquisition in Salt Lake City.
• Dakota Pacific Real Estate Partners, Salt Lake City, has hired Marc Stanworth as chief operating officer. Stanworth will join the firm’s Investment Committee and will be responsible for overseeing Dakota Pacific’s portfolio and future growth initiatives alongside company founder and CEO John R. Miller. Stanworth’s 20-year career spans direct investment, development and leadership responsibilities totaling nearly $2 billion worth of all major commercial property types, including multifamily residential. A native of Salt Lake City, Stanworth returns to the Intermountain West after holding senior leadership roles with various Texas and California-based private investment and development firms, including Hillwood, Capstone Advisors and, most recently, as a principal at HP Investors. His education includes graduating from Brigham Young University.
RECOGNITIONS
• Several organizations and projects were honored recently with Summit Awards, presented by the Utah Office of Outdoor Recreation at its seventh annual Outdoor Recreation Summit in Provo. They are: Stewardship Award, Jordan River Commission; Every Kid Outdoors Award, Get Outside; Social Investment Award, DPS Skis; UORG Project of the Year, Bridger Bike Park; Economic Impact Award, Utah State University’s Outdoor Product Design and Development Program; and the Outdoors Together Award, Coaltree, St. George City, Stoke Nature Center, Utah State Parks, Canyon Country Discovery Center, SOS Outreach, Elevated Mountain Guides and the Utah Motorsports Campus.
• Four Utah companies are listed on the 2020 Forbes Cloud 100 list, a ranking of the top 100 private cloud companies in the world, published by Forbes in partnership with Bessemer Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures. They are No. 50 Podium, Lehi; No. 58 Lucid, South Jordan; No. 79 Weave, Lehi; and No. 87 BambooHR, Lindon. The rankings were compiled by a panel consisting of public cloud company CEOs and used four factors in its evaluation process: market leadership, estimated valuation, operating metrics and people and culture.
• The I-215 and Redwood Road Interchange project of Sundt Construction, Salt Lake City, has been named the best project in the Highway/Bridges category by Engineering News-Record Mountain States. ENR is a construction trade publication. The project had four major components: the resurfacing of Redwood Road from 500 South to Center Street and Recreation Way to the county line, the I-215 roadway, the full widening and reconstruction of Redwood Road, and the new bridge and diverging diamond interchange.
RETAIL
• Overstock.com Inc., a Salt Lake City-based e-commerce home furnishings retailer, recently opened a fulfillment center in Fontana, California, in partnership with UPS Supply Chain Services. The new center “further aligns Overstock’s logistical footprint with key customers, significantly improving shipping speed, providing more accurate delivery estimates as well as a quicker port to warehouse process,” said the company, which also has fulfillment centers in Pennsylvania and Kansas.
SERVICES
• Neighbor, a Lehi-based peer-to-peer self-storage company, has hired Marcel Sanchez, Matt Smith and Allie Hurley. Sanchez, the company’s head of growth, previously was head of acquisitions at Marcari. Smith, the new head of engineering, previously was engineering director at Instructure and also worked at Microsoft and FamilySearch. Hurley, head of community, most recently was head of support at Carta. All three will be based in Neighbor’s home office in Lehi. The company is a Andreesesen Horowitz-funded startup.