I focus on helping your family have fun
Brad Thomas
- MSU degrees:
- Bachelor’s in management and marketing, 1984
- Master of Business Administration, 1987
- Career:
- President, Silver Dollar City Attractions
For Brad Thomas, it is acceptable — no, expected! — to ride roller coasters, eat funnel cakes and see a saloon show, all while on the clock.
Thomas’ office is near the front gates of Silver Dollar City, the Branson theme park that attracts about 2 million visitors a year. He also spends time at White Water and the Showboat Branson Belle, other Ozarks properties owned by the Herschend Family Entertainment group.
Thomas manages teams of people who talk about every business aspect of these attractions: industry trends and tactics, human resources, revenue and expenses. He and his teammates use market research to determine which new rides will roar to life, which new festivals or events will attract visitors, which foods will fill the air with their aromas and more.
“Our research involves those who visit us, those who love us, those who know us, and those who may have chosen to not visit us. We’ll ask our loyalists, and we’ll ask those who don’t visit us, ‘If you had your options of a new ride at Silver Dollar City, would this particular ride motivate you to visit us?’ Or we may ask potential visitors to help us prioritize concepts for a new show or festival.”
Thomas’ interest in business started early. “I worked in retail during high school and college. While I was a sophomore at Missouri State, I was one of the original employees at Famous Barr in the Battlefield Mall.”
He was promoted to management before he even finished his bachelor’s degree. He worked for Heer’s department store during his master’s program and beyond, but “in the back of my mind, I knew that I always wanted to work at Silver Dollar City.”
He had a great impression of the park during his first visit in seventh grade, and since then his admiration has grown.
“The business allows people to have fun. I also knew that Silver Dollar City’s owners loved their employees, customers and community, which I thought would be a solid foundation for a career.”
In 1991, Thomas began his career at SDC in an entry-level leadership position.
Now, as a regional president, he sees himself first and foremost as an encourager — a role once played for him by mentors in the MSU marketing department: senior instructor Sherry Cook, professor Dr. Stephen S. Parker and marketing department head Dr. Ron Coulter.
He’s ready to lead SDC as the park opens Fireman’s Landing in 2015, an area with 10 new rides and attractions.
Also new this summer is a six-week performance run by the Harlem Globetrotters.
One thing that won’t change: “Our stockholders — the Herschend family — are very, very, very serious about the guest experience. Our goal is to bring families closer together. That’s our passion. That’s our vision.”
I make sure military helicopters are airworthy
Col. William (B.J.) Thomas Jr.
- MSU degrees:
- Bachelor’s in agriculture, 1989
- Career:
- Commander of Missouri Army National Guard’s 1107th Theater Aviation Sustainment Maintenance Group (known as TASMG)
When Col. William Thomas Jr. is at work, he may be flying a repaired UH-60 Black Hawk, overseeing a team making a custom piece for an AH-64 Apache damaged in battle or figuring out the logistics of getting a CH-47 Chinook to another state.
In the whole country, there are just four aviation sustainment/depot maintenance facilities that support the National Guard. Thomas commands the facility in Springfield, which services a 14-state region.
“We’re the crown jewel, as far as I’m concerned, of all of the four. We have the best facilities. We have the best people. We have the best reputation.”
Thomas had never piloted an aircraft before reporting to Fort Rucker, Alabama, in January 1990 after going through the ROTC program at Missouri State. He requested to join an aviation unit for a simple reason: “It’s flying! This is really cool stuff.”
Now, he can pilot just about any Army helicopter used in the last few decades.
From his facility’s campus, he and his team of officers, engineers, machinists, citizen soldiers and more — many of whom are also Missouri State graduates — solve complex mechanical problems related to military helicopters. They may strip a helicopter to the frame and rebuild it. They may create a one-of-a-kind piece using sheet metal or a 3-D printer.
“A lot of the repairs performed are nonstandard — they don’t currently exist, so we create them here. Once our strategy has been validated, it can be used by the Army again and again.”
Each year, they fix about 100 helicopters and make or repair thousands of components — everything from radios to transmissions to engines — that are then sent around the country. Thomas’ facility saves the government millions of dollars each year. For one thing, a repaired helicopter means the Army doesn’t have to buy a new one at a cost of at least $17 million to taxpayers.
The component-repair process is also cost-effective. Buying a new rotor blade for the Chinook model, for instance, would cost about $197,000. Having one repaired by Thomas’ team would cost, on average, $2,083. Multiply that by the thousands of repairs they do each year, and you can see why this facility is thriving — and expanding.
His team recently completed the second phase of a four-phase construction project. Thomas is currently focused on phase three, which will improve his back-shop repair capability and bring additional National Guard jobs to the Springfield area.
His team doesn’t just serve in Springfield: They are also trained to do the most complicated levels of maintenance and repair in a theater of war. Thomas’ unit, the 1107th, has been deployed to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan several times. Thomas deployed with the 1107th in 2006, then again in 2010. Each deployment lasted a year, and the unit had no casualties during either stretch.
Thomas will likely be with this unit until 2018, his mandatory removal date as a commissioned officer. There’s no telling how many test flights he’ll do between now and then.
“The best part of my job is the interaction with the soldiers. It’s just a real privilege. Couple that service opportunity with a helicopter flight every now and then — it’s hard to beat.”
I manage all the yeast for Anheuser-Busch
Kendra Bowen
- MSU degrees:
- Bachelor’s in chemistry with a minor in marketing, 1993
- Career:
- Manager of global yeast dispatch and preservation for Anheuser-Busch
Every Budweiser brewed anywhere in the world starts in Kendra Bowen’s laboratory.
Bowen and her team of four other people are responsible for maintaining the health and quantities of Anheuser-Busch’s yeast, as well as distributing yeast to breweries around the globe that make the company’s 30 or so brands.
This is not just any yeast you can pick up at the store: This is a library of thousands of strains cultivated to meet the needs of one of the country’s biggest brewing companies.
“Yeast is one of the key ingredients of beer taste,” Bowen said. “It can impart floral or fruity notes, and it also affects the way the beer finishes.”
The oldest strain in her laboratory — the “mother culture” — dates back to the 1800s.
“This is the original strain. So, the yeast that I make today for Budweiser is a descendant of the mother culture that was the original Budweiser yeast,” Bowen said.
The “master cultures,” which Bowen’s team makes from that mother culture, are kept at -185 degrees Celsius in a locked cryogenic freezer.
Bowen is the only person in the world with a key to that freezer.
Every week, she takes a small amount of yeast out of the freezer and lets it thaw. That is added to a glass bottle containing “wort,” a sweet liquid made from grains (basically, unfermented beer).
The yeast consumes the sugar in the wort and grows. Her team gives the yeast more wort, and the process starts over. Eventually, there’s so much yeast it must be transplanted to a larger container, where it gets more food. By the end of the process, the yeast is living in a 2,000- barrel steel tank at the St. Louis brewery.
But not all of it stays in St. Louis.
“We ship it around the globe in specially designed containers. First, the yeast is put into kegs that are similar to regular beer kegs. Those kegs are put into big, insulated containers with ice gel packs in them.”
The cold helps the yeast survive trips to far-flung places.
Bowen is the first woman to manage the yeast center. She started at Anheuser-Busch in flavor analysis, using her science background to ensure the consistency of the beverages. “We want the beer that you taste in China to taste exactly like the beer that’s brewed in St. Louis.” Scientists test samples made in each place to see if the beers have the same chemical compositions.
Next, she moved into freshness control. The yeast center job opened up a few years ago, and she has been there ever since.
She didn’t intend to enter the sciences when she enrolled at Missouri State as a business major. “Biochemistry with Dr. Anthony Toste was my favorite class — it was also a class I didn’t do very well in! I didn’t understand chemistry at the time, so it was probably the hardest class I had ever taken. Specifically because it wasn’t easy for me, it sparked my interest. I’m a curious person, and chemistry, to me, is how everything works.”
Outside of class, she loved going to Bears games. Bowen dated her husband, Todd, ’93, all the way through college, and they now have three children.
She’ll likely continue to be a part of every Budweiser consumed around the world.
“As a native St. Louisan, if somebody offers you a job at Anheuser-Busch, it’s a dream job,” Bowen said. “There’s a certain pride in working here. It is a cool job, there’s no doubt about it.”
I write award-winning, acclaimed fiction
Kevin Brockmeier
- MSU degrees:
- Individualized bachelor’s in creative writing, philosophy and theatre, 1995
- Other degree:
- Master of Fine Arts, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, 1997
- Career:
- Writer/author
In Kevin Brockmeier’s unflinchingly honest 2014 book, “A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade,” he writes of himself: “Kevin is good with stories and always has been.”
That was acknowledged by his classmates in 1985 — when he was a sensitive, smart boy in his hometown of Little Rock, Arkansas, traversing an always-confusing, sometimes-cruel year — and it’s acknowledged now by some significant authorities within contemporary literature.
Brockmeier is a fiction and fantasy writer whose work includes novels and short story collections. His novels, including “The Illumination” and “The Brief History of the Dead,” deal with hard subjects such as pain, isolation and the afterlife.
“I don’t know that there’s ever an easily derived message from any of my books. What I really want to do is examine various subjects closely, and often through unusual methods. For example, ‘The Illumination’ lends a cast of fantasy and magic and luminosity to a subject that is otherwise very difficult: human suffering. I wanted to explore: What could all the suffering that life exposes us to possibly be any good for? What if our suffering was what made us beautiful? What does it mean if our suffering makes us beautiful to God — is that comforting or disturbing? I don’t know the answer, but in this book, pain and beauty were inextricably entangled together.”
There are often elements of fantasy in Brockmeier’s work. “I grew up reading science fiction and comic books — and still do today — but at MSU I began discovering classics and great contemporary literary fiction, which opened windows and rooms of narrative I simply didn’t know were out there. Missouri State was the time in my life when I first began studying creative writing with rigor, and my reading life became deeper. I had teachers who cared a lot about the discipline and were very generous to me and my stories.”
He has been able to write full-time since his first book deal in 2000, and sometimes serves as a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Brockmeier is now crafting his next project from his office in Little Rock.
“I have started something new, but I am never willing to talk about these things until they are finished; I’m afraid the threads will tease apart if I do. … I work sentence-by-sentence, perfecting each small unit before the next. It’s terribly slow and painstaking, but I can’t imagine any other way. If a sentence is ugly, I don’t have it in my character to leave it standing that way.”
I plan banquets and events for NASCAR
Dawn Schaefer
- MSU degrees:
- Bachelor’s in public relations with a minor in advertising and promotion, 2006
- Career:
- Senior manager, content and production, NASCAR Events Group
Dawn Schaefer has more than a bit of motor oil in her veins.
“I grew up in mid-Missouri, which has a strong racing presence.”
Her dad and uncle raced two-man cruisers at local dirt tracks, and “my dad was a fan of NASCAR; it was always on our TV on the weekends.”
So it’s no surprise that she wanted to combine her interests in racing and public relations.
After graduation, she became a media buyer for an ad agency in Warrensburg, Missouri. She researched demographics and placed ads on TV, radio and in print.
She liked the work, but she was dreaming of being an event planner for a motorsports company.
“I did event planning for some Missouri State courses and became passionate about it. It left such a strong impression that I knew I wanted to do it for a living.”
She started sending résumés to every track, team and organization, including NASCAR. “I just wanted to get my foot in the door. No job was too small.”
International Speedway Corporation called her about a job in corporate hospitality. “I did a phone interview, and a week later they said they wanted me to move to Daytona Beach, so I packed up and moved down the next week.”
She’s been in Florida ever since.
In 2008, she ran into someone who knew about a job with NASCAR. After a very competitive interview process, she joined a team of 13 people who manage NASCAR corporate events.
Schaefer and her team oversee many components of banquets and media conferences: audio/visual needs, signs, graphics, stage choreography, script writing — anything creative or technical needed to create a great event.
She interacts with NASCAR drivers, as well as celebrity hosts, musical guests and presenters. “We have rehearsals for nearly every show we do with those who will cross the stage. Sometimes it’s for an awards show, other times it’s a press conference or an industry summit. Every single thing that happens at our events, there’s a plan for it.”
The team is responsible for 200+ events each year, including some that take place at a track. She travels a great deal, hopping from Las Vegas to Atlanta, Chicago to New York City.
“One of my favorite events is our biggest off-track event of the year: the NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Awards at Wynn Las Vegas, where we crown our NASCAR Sprint Cup Series Champion. It’s amazing to see it all come together after working on it for nearly an entire year.”
She also loves going to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Maryland. Drivers tour the hospital to sign autographs and meet the troops there.
By the time you read this, Schaefer will have moved to Charlotte, North Carolina, to work in the NASCAR office there.
No matter where she lives, she stays tight with her Missouri State friends — including her sister, alumna Carrie Seiler.
“I met one of my best friends in the world at MSU, and we still talk pretty much every day. I am proud of my education there. My professors really instilled the knowledge and drive it takes to create flawless results and have my work in the public eye — that resonates with what I do today. Going to Missouri State is one of the best decisions I made.”
I whip people into shape, “Biggest Loser” style
Marie Pearl
- MSU degrees:
- Bachelor’s in accounting, 2007
- Master of Accountancy, 2008
- Career:
- Senior staff accountant at Ozarks Technical Community College
- Fitness instructor at CoxHealth
Marie Pearl was looking for a second chance in 2013 when she went to Oklahoma for the season 15 casting call of the reality show “The Biggest Loser.”
“I had just turned 30 and was really unhappy with my weight and where I was with my personal health and fitness,” Pearl said. “I felt like I had been so successful in many other aspects of my life. I had my education, a great job and friends and family, but I was miserable.”
Pearl never thought they’d pick her, a small town girl from Missouri, out of more than 200,000 applicants. But they did, and the now-111-pound lighter Pearl says she’s not the same person she was before going on the show. She was eliminated in the 13th week, just two weeks before the finale.
“More than the physical aspect I got out of it, I got so much mentally — confidence-wise, strength-wise. Those things are priceless.”
Now, more than a year after coming home from the Biggest Loser ranch, Pearl makes fitness a part of her everyday life. She became certified to teach spin classes, which she does at several of CoxHealth’s fitness centers. Pearl also teaches a healthy eating class for CoxHealth, plays softball, goes to Zumba classes and travels as a motivational speaker.
Pearl also still works as an accountant, using her training from MSU. “One of my favorite memories was working in the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance clinic. I got to help people with their tax returns, and I learned a lot about accounting that way.”
She also keeps up with MSU athletics: “I’m a huge Bears basketball fan.”
Pearl, ever the accountant, sums up her views on health in financial terms.
“People always tell you it’s never too soon to start saving money for retirement, but why is it never too soon to start taking care of your body so you can be there for that retirement? People don’t understand that you have to invest in yourself. Don’t wait until you’re 60 and all those years have passed you by, and now you’re spending all that money on health care.” — Kelsie Nalley, student writer in marketing and communications
I play professional basketball in France
Kyle Weems
- MSU degrees:
- Bachelor’s in hospitality and restaurant administration and minor in business, 2012
- Career:
- Professional basketball player for Jeunesse Sportive des Fontenelles de Nanterre (known as JSF Nanterre)
A French basketball news site called BeBasket tweeted in late September: “C’est Kyle Weems qui s’adjuge le trophee de MVP du Match des Champions 2014!”
Even if you don’t speak French, you see what you need to know: Kyle Weems. Trophy. MVP. Would you expect anything else from one of the best players in recent Missouri State history?
Weems has been on European teams since 2012, starting with the Telekom Baskets Bonn, then the Medi Bayreuth, both in Germany.
He’s played in countries including Belgium, Georgia and Israel.
In 2014, he signed with JSF Nanterre and moved to France with his wife, former Lady Bear Jacque (Griggs) Weems, ’12.
“We live 10 to 15 minutes outside Paris, so getting to experience the European life together is great.” The newlyweds have been to Amsterdam, Berlin, Munich and other cultural centers. But for the most part, Weems’ focus is on the game. He’s in the gym about five hours a day.
“I really love basketball, and my wife does, too, so that makes it that much better. I have been around it my whole life. My dad played, my grandpa played, my uncle played at Stanford and went to the Final Four. I grew up in it.”
While he is practicing, Jacque takes online courses to finish a Missouri State MBA. Together, they cook healthy food and practice conversational French.
The Weemses plan to stay in Europe a while: “I would like to do this for as long as I can stay in shape. If I can play to age 30, 33, 35 — as long as God keeps blessing me with health — I would continue to play on European teams. The time to do this is now, while we’re young.”
Weems, an only child, misses family in his home state of Kansas, but his parents have been able to visit. He also thinks about friends in Springfield — which he and Jacque call their “second home.”
The two came back to Kansas City last June for their wedding, and many former Missouri State coaches and teammates were among the guests. “There are people there who are pretty much like family to me.”
But for now, he is amazed that his team bus can travel past the Eiffel Tower like it’s no big deal.
“I sit back every now and again and realize this is a life a lot of people dream of. I am extremely blessed, and I never take a day for granted.”
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