Best Brains

Book Smarts, Street Smarts & Smart Alecks!

November 2008

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Mark Addicks. Senior vice president and CMO of General Mills.

Margaret Anderson–Kelliher. DFL state representative since 1998 and Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives.

Nina Archabal. Director of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Barbara Armajani. Founder of Ampersand and art patron.

Sgt. John Bandemer. Full-time investigator in human trafficking for the St. Paul Police Department.

Tom Barnard. KQRS radio personality.

Steve Beck. Managing director of the investment banking firm Goldsmith Agio Helms, recently bought by Lazard Ltd.

Rebecca Bergman. Vice president, science and technology, of Medtronic.

Kathleen Blatz. Former Minnesota State Supreme Court chief justice.

Steve Bosacker. City coordinator for City of Minneapolis.

Mary Brainerd. President and CEO of HealthPartners.

Peter Brosius. Artistic director of the Children’s Theatre Company.

Bob Bruininks. President of the University of Minnesota.

Philip Brunelle. Artistic director and founder of VocalEssence; internationally renowned conductor, choral scholar, and performer.

Ralph Burnet. Art investor, hotelier, and real estate entrepreneur.
Marilyn Carlson Nelson. Chairman and CEO of Carlson Companies.

John Camp. Author of the best-selling John Sandford Prey series of novels and Pulitzer Prize-winner for a Pioneer Press series.

James Campbell. Past chair and CEO of Wells Fargo Bank, Minnesota; recent chairman of Minnesota’s Itasca Project; interim co-dean of the Carlson School of Management.

Lynn Casey. Chair and CEO of Padilla Speer Beardsley.

Frank Cerra. Senior vice president of Health Sciences at the University of Minnesota.

Gabrielle Civil. Associate professor of English, women’s studies, and critical studies of race and ethnicity at the College of St. Catherine; awarded a Fulbright Fellowship.

Richard D’Amico. Cofounder with his brother Larry of D’Amico & Partners, a dining empire that includes D’Amico Cucina, Campiello, D’Amico & Sons, Cafe & Bar Lurçat in Minneapolis and Naples, Florida, and catering services.

Maria Damon. Professor of English and creative writing at the University of Minnesota.

Richard Davis. Chairman, president, and CEO of U.S. Bancorp.

James Dayton. Architect and founding principal of James Dayton Design.

Dennis Dease. President of the University of St. Thomas.

John Deedrick. Cofounder and managing director of Accuitive Medical Ventures.

Jim Dolan. President and CEO of Dolan Media.

Mark Dienhart. Senior vice president for external affairs of the University of St. Thomas.

Joe Dowling. Artistic director of the Guthrie Theater.

Ed Driscoll. Entrepreneur, founder of WAM!NET and CEO of Rational Bioenergy, which will soon begin producing bioenergy from biomass and municipal waste.

Karla Ekdahl. A “connector,” board member of Minnesota Film Board, Illusion Theater, and Project Success.

Louise Erdrich. Native American author of novels, poetry, and children’s books; owner of Birchbark Books in Minneapolis; Guggenheim Fellow; winner of National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction.

Pat Fallon. Founder and chairman of Fallon Worldwide.

Kaywin Feldman. Director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Michael Francis. Executive vice president and chief marketing officer of Target Stores and Target officer; director of The Advertising Council.

David Frauenschuh. President of Frauenschuh Companies.

Nate Garvis. Vice president of government affairs for Target Corporation and treasurer of Target’s four political action funds.

Julie Gilbert. Senior vice president of Best Buy.

Luella Goldberg. Corporate director, civic leader, and former president of Wellesley College.

Steve Goldstein. President and CEO of the University of Minnesota Foundation; former GM of WCCO Radio.

Michael Gorman. Founding managing director of Split Rock Partners and former managing general partner of St. Paul Venture Capital and president of the Minnesota Venture Capital Association.

Dan Grigsby. Mobile/Web strategist.

John Harrington. St. Paul police chief.

Sarah Hatsuko Hicks. Minnesota Orchestra’s lead conductor of the Inside the Classic Series, concurrently staff conductor at the Curtis Institute of Music.

Jack Helms. Managing partner with Goldsmith Agio Helms, sold to Lazard, a global financial management and advisory firm.

William “Bill” Gerard Hillsman Jr. Political consultant and advertising executive best known for his offbeat, populist political ads as media director for Democrat Paul Wellstone’s U.S. Senate campaign; founder of North Woods Advertising.

Karen Himle. Vice president for university relations at the University of Minnesota.

John Hinderaker. Lawyer and cofounder of Powerline blog.

Ben Hirst. Senior vice president and general counsel of Northwest Airlines.

Marya Hornbacher. Author of Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia, The Center of Winter, and Madness: A Bipolar Life.

Peter Hutchinson. Bush Foundation president and cofounder of Public Strategies Group. Former vice president for external affairs and chairman of the Dayton Hudson Foundation, state commissioner of finance, superintendent of the Minneapolis Public Schools, and deputy mayor of Minneapolis; 2006 Independence Party candidate for governor.

Curt Johnson. Consultant, writer, former head of the Citizens League, Metropolitan Council, and chief of staff to Governor Arne Carlson.

Barry Judge. Senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Best Buy.

Sam Kaplan. Attorney, prominent DFL fundraiser.

Sylvia Kaplan. Restaurateur and prominent DFL fundraiser.

Glenn Karwoski. Managing director and founder of Martin/Williams’ Karwoski & Courage division; author of CPR for Business.

Joel and Laurie Kramer. Founders of MinnPost and community activists.

Sean Kershaw. Citizens League executive director; formerly deputy director for the City of Saint Paul’s Department of Planning and Economic Development; chaired then-Mayor Norm Coleman’s e-Government initiative and coordinated Coleman’s information technology, charter school, and education initiatives.

Jane Kirtley. Silha Professor of Media Ethics and Law and director of the Silha Center for the Sudy of Media Ethics and Law at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota; formerly executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Kevin Kling. Actor, writer.

Amy Klobuchar. U. S. senator and former Hennepin County attorney.

Michael Koppelman. Record producer and astronomer.

Mark Kroll. Inventor, holding 270 patents, the most in Minnesota and second-most for medical devices in the world; former executive at St. Jude Medical; specializes in electric physiology.

Mark Lacek. Former director of marketing for Northwest Airlines, responsible for the development of WorldPerks; formed The Lacek Group, a global marketing agency, now owned by Ogilvy Worldwide; with wife, Susan, cofounded Faith's Lodge.

Kathy Lantry. President, St. Paul city council.

Jason Lewis. Talk show host and political commentator on KTLK-FM. Master’s degree in political science from the University of Colorado. One of Talkers Magazine’s “Heavy Hundred,” a list of the top 100 radio talk shows across the country.

Dan Lieberman. Vice president of 100-year-old family company, Lieberman Companies.

Howard Liszt. Retired CEO of Campbell Mithun; Senior Fellow, School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota.

Lee Lynch. CEO of Carmichael Lynch.

Dan McElroy. Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development commissioner and former state finance commissioner, mayor of Burnsville, state representative, assistant majority leader, and Governor Tim Pawlenty’s chief of staff.

John Mowitt. Professor, specializing in history and politics of critical theory, cinema and media studies at the University of Minnesota.

John Najarian. Surgeon.

Michael O’ConnelL. Former rector of the Basilica of Saint Mary, now head pastor at the Church of the Ascension in North Minneapolis; founder of the Jeremiah Program.

Rob Oden. President of Carleton College, scholar in Middle Eastern religions, and linguist.

Steve Oesterle. Senior vice president for medicine and technology at Medtronic; former associate professor of medicine at Harvard University Medical School and director of invasive cardiology services at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

David Olson. President of the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce.

Vance Opperman. President and CEO of Key Investment, owner of Mpls.St.Paul Magazine.

Myron Orfield. Julius E. Davis Professor of Law and executive director, Institute on Race & Poverty, at the University of Minnesota. Former state representative and senator. Author of two books on regional government and the suburbs.

Kal Patel. Executive vice president for emerging business at Best Buy.

Richard W. Perkins. President, director, and portfolio manager of Perkins Capital Management.

Lawrence Perlman. Former CEO of Ceridian Corporation and influential Democrat and donor.

Mitch Pearlstein. Founder and president of the Center of the American Experiment.

Dean Phillips. President of family-owned and operated Phillips Distilling Company.

Greg Plotnikoff. Medical director, University of Minnesota Institute for Health and Healing at Abbott-Northwestern Hospital; associate professor of internal medicine and pediatrics; Bush Foundation Leadership Fellow.

Carl Pohlad. Owner of the Minnesota Twins.

Kathryn Roberts. CEO and president of Ecumen, assisted-living and senior housing development, one of the nation’s largest.

Phil Roberts. CEO of Parasole Restaurants (Manny’s, Salut, Figlio, Muffuletta, Chino Latino, Pittsburgh Blue, Good Earth).

John Rash. Senior vice president of Campbell Mithun and publisher of Rashreport.

Art Rolnick. Senior vice president and director of research for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

Kathy Saltzman Romey. Artistic director of the Minnesota Chorale, developer and coordinator of the chorale’s nationally recognized Bridges outreach program.

Steven Rosenstone. Vice president for scholarly and cultural affairs at the University of Minnesota.

John Schumacher. Senior vice president, fixed income trading, at Northland Securities.

Cyril J. Schweich Jr. Cofounder and vice president of clinical and regulatory affairs and chief technology officer of Myocor; inventor of a heart wall tension-reduction apparatus.

Sun Yung Shin. Poet; author; coeditor of Outsiders Within: Anthology of Writing by Transracial Adoptees; community activist and creative writing instructor at the Perpich Center for Arts Education, College of St. Catherine, and the Loft Literary Center.

Julie Snow. Founder of Julie Snow Architects; fellow of the American Institute of Architects.

Jac Sperling. Sports lawyer, person most responsible for bringing the National Hockey League back to the Twin Cities.

Robert Stephens. Founded the Geek Squad when he was studying computer science at the University of Minnesota. Sold Geek Squad to Best Buy in 2002.

Tom Swain. Mayor of Lilydale and former University of Minnesota acting vice president for institutional relations, chief of staff to Governor Elmer L. Andersen, and St. Paul Companies executive.

Doris Taylor. Director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Cardiovascular Repair; led team that created the world’s first bioartificial heart.

Paul Thissen. State respresentative and former lawyer for Minnesota State Public Defenders Office and partner at Briggs and Morgan.

G. David Tilman. Regents’ Professor, McKnight Presidential Chair in Ecology, and director of Cedar Creek Natural History Area at the University of Minnesota; named most highly cited environmental scientist of the decade by Essential Science Indicators, 2000.

Jack Tunheim. U.S. District Court judge and former chair of the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Commission, chief deputy attorney general, and Minnesota solicitor general.

Kathy Tunheim. CEO of Tunheim Partners.

Robert J. Ulrich. Former CEO and chairman of the Target Corporation, credited with crafting Target’s unique brand/ marketing image and building Target into the nation’s sixth-largest retailer.

Osmo Vänskä. Minnesota Orchestra conductor; Musical America’s 2005 Conductor of the Year, winner of numerous awards for his Sibelius recordings with the Lahti Symphony Orchestra, including a 1996 Gramophone Award and Cannes Classical Award.

Sandy Vargas. President and CEO of The Minneapolis Foundation; former administrator of Hennepin County.

Olga Viso. Director of the Walker Art Center.

Win Wallin. Founder of Wallin Foundation and Wallin Scholarship Program and former CEO of Medtronic and president and COO of The Pillsbury Company.

Peter Warwick. President and CEO of North American Legal, part of the Professional Division of Thomson Reuters; president and CEO of West; and former president and CEO of Thomson Tax & Accounting.

Irv Weiser. Former CEO of RBC Wealth Management securities firm and former lawyer with Dorsey and Whitney.

Pam Wheelock. Vice president of the Bush Foundation and former executive vice president and CFO of Minnesota Sports and Entertainment and commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Finance.

Wheelock Whitney. Philanthropist and Republican activist.

Michael Wigley. CEO of Great Plains Companies; founder and chairman of the Minnesota Taxpayers League and the Freedom Club of America PAC; staunch political conservative and a long-time influential donor.

Tina Wilcox. Cofounder of Black Design, a retail strategy and marketing firm, and founder of Fame retail branding agency, sold to Omnicom Group.

Zygi Wilf. Owner of the Minnesota Vikings.

Louise Wolfgramm. President and secretary of nonprofit AMICUS.

Smart People Who Left the Twin Cities

Earl Bakken. Founder of Medtronic.

David Carr. Media columnist at the The New York Times.

Ethan and Joel Coen. Oscar-winning filmmakers.

Bill Connor. President of Columbus Association for the Performing Arts.

Tom Friedman. Editorial-page columnist at The New York Times.

William Griswold. Former director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

Kathy Halbreich. Former director of the Walker Art Center.

Arthur Kaplan. Director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Tod Leiweke. Former Minnesota Wild president.

Kevin McCollum. Former president of the Ordway; coproducer of Rent on Broadway.

Rip Rapson. President of Kresge Foundation.

Philippe Vergne. Deputy director and chief curator of the Walker Art Center.

Mark Yudof. President of the University of California.