LouLife

Denise Ivey
The power of newspapers became crystal-clear to Denise Ivey when she was serving as publisher of the Pensacola News Journal in Pensacola, Fla., during Hurricane Ivan in 2004. The city’s sewer plant failed and dumped 30 million gallons of raw sewage in and around the Journal’s building. Parts of the roof came off. About 30 percent of the newspaper’s staff lost their homes during the powerful storm, and Ivey lived at the paper for a month while power was being restored at her residence.

Ivey’s dedicated staff posted news on the paper’s website as they found it. The paper put almost 2,000 photos online, renting any available helicopter it could find to get the best views of the devastation. The website received some 90 million page views during the two weeks following Ivan, and the delivery of the newspaper’s print version to Pensacola residents became a much-heralded event every day for weeks following the storm. “There was no TV,” recalls Ivey, 56. “There was no radio. When those carriers brought those newspapers, it was the most important thing in the world to those people.”

Pensacola was Ivey’s third publishing job. Her fourth is publisher of the Courier-Journal and president of the mid-South division for the Gannett chain, in which she presides over nine other newspapers in addition to the C-J. Her tasks at the Louisville daily are to boost ad revenue and to connect with readers in new ways.

Ivey is encouraging the paper’s staff to fully embrace the Web, having them post news as they find it rather than holding it for print-edition deadlines. She’s also introducing a new tool that will allow anyone to put information on the paper’s Internet site, which will include press releases and neighborhood events. She’s dividing the localized Neighborhoods sections into smaller geographical segments, and doing something similar on the website. That allows advertisers to target specific neighborhoods more effectively, both through newspaper and Web advertising.

Ivey says she wants to sp/files/storyimages/2007 getting more involved in Louisville. Divorced, with an adult son, she knows the struggles of young mothers, especially single moms, and would like to assist with causes relating to them as well as preparing children to enter school. She also has a special interest in Habitat for Humanity, having seen Pensacola rebuild following Ivan. “I’ve watched people become homeless and lose everything,” Ivey says. “Habitat is exceptionally important in Pensacola.”

Robyn Davis Sekula

The Rev. Kathy Ogletree Goodwin

“Blessed to be a blessing” is the Rev. Kathy Ogletree Goodwin’s mantra. Goodwin, 48, credits blessings in her own life as the reason she helps others. Community awards in her office at Coke Memorial United Methodist Church, where she is pastor, testify to her involvement, but she refuses the credit. “I’m used as an instrument for God,” she says.

Goodwin oversees programs through her church: Hope House, a community outreach center, and Hope Community Development, which provides tutoring for children in the poverty-plagued Smoketown neighborhood. Community involvement, she says, “ultimately changes the world one little Johnny or Susie at a time. We’re planting seeds so the next child does not become the next statistic.”

The urge to help others came naturally to Goodwin. She serves on several interfaith and charitable boards and founded KOG Ministry, which was established for women who seek ministerial or church leadership roles. This native of central Georgia long has spoken on behalf of other African-Americans whenever she witnessed injustice. “Life isn’t always fair,” she says, “but I stand up for the least fortunate.”

After college, Goodwin was headed to law school, but “God had other plans for my life,” she says. This year, she expects to finish her doctorate of ministry from Ashland Theological Seminary. Her dissertation, “Blessed to be a Blessing,” proposes an “empowerment center” that will use scripture to inspire women to pursue ministerial roles.
Tamera Huber

Laura Lee Brown

For Laura Lee Brown, there is beauty everywhere — some created by nature and some by men and women. Observing it and making it part of everyday life has shaped much of her recent career as a developer and land preservationist.

Brown, 65, is the co-owner of 21C Museum Hotel and Proof On Main, the new hotel and restaurant featuring contemporary art in downtown Louisville that have been receiving rave reviews from national travel writers. She’s also one of four developers of Museum Plaza, which likely will also keep Louisville in the national spotlight. That project is a 61-story skyscraper that will incorporate loft apartments, condominiums, a hotel, offices and an art museum, plus some retail and restaurant components — essentially a city center along the riverfront. That project is expected to be complete in 2010.

Brown says she’d like to next take the 21C model to Austin, Texas, and has already been looking at property there. The 21C and Museum Plaza projects accomplish a major objective of Brown’s: to incorporate art into everyday life. “It’s that combination of art, which people think of as something you look at when you have extra time, and making it part of the business day,” Brown says. “People can walk in off the street on their lunch break, get what they need and walk away.”

As much as she’s been involved in bringing style to city life, Brown has rural roots too. She lives on Woodland Farm in Oldham County, where she owns Kentucky Bison Co. with husband Steve Wilson, who is also involved in the downtown projects. In addition, the couple helped found Oldham Ahead, a land-conservancy group. They have three grown children, all involved in teaching or making plans to enter that field.

Brown, a great-granddaughter of Brown-Forman founder George Garvin Brown, says she was inspired to get involved in land-conservancy issues from her own childhood in Prospect, when she began to observe dramatic changes in that community. She also is making some amends. “When my mother died in 1983, we sold the farm to a developer in 1985, and that’s been a terrible regret ever since,” Brown says. “I was able to buy back about 40 of the bottom acres and give them back to the county as the Garvin Brown Preserve. They were going to turn the bottom land into a marina, and I couldn’t imagine it.”

Her downtown projects, she says, serve at least in part to encourage more compact city living. “I will do everything I can to help people be comfortable downtown so that we can try to prevent sprawl as much as possible,” Brown says.
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Laura Hansen Dean

Laura Hansen Dean volunteered for the first time as an 11-year-old grade-schooler. Now she’s invited to the table on most occasions when planners discuss Southern Indiana community projects. As president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Southern Indiana, Dean, 55, uses her unflappability and pragmatism to benefit Clark, Floyd and Harrison counties. Her organization funds charitable and community causes through grants and donor gifts.

The foundation’s accomplishments under Dean’s first three years of guidance include a $3 million Lily Endowment grant (for Clark and Floyd county’s early childhood literacy programs); the Jeffersonville Carnegie Library renovation; and numerous other programs that help adults and youth. Initiatives for 2007 include attracting better jobs to the region, growing businesses, providing educational opportunities and preparing for new development associated with the Ohio River bridges project. Dean will hire a multi-cultural outreach specialist, adding to the foundation’s commitment to a growing, diverse population. She feels a responsibility to train her young staff as “the next generation of leaders.”

Tom Lindley, national editor for CNHI News Service, chairs the library foundation and worked with Dean on the Carnegie project. He says, “Laura has the combination of brains and vision. Can you imagine what the list of accomplishments will look like in 10 years?”
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Sena Jeter Naslund

Abundance is the title of the justly acclaimed new novel based on Marie Antoinette’s life by Kentucky’s poet laureate, Sena Jeter Naslund, but it might also describe the current state of Naslund’s literary endeavors. She has a lot of pens in the fire. The 64-year-old author is the first-ever writer-in-residence at the University of Louisville; the program director of a Spalding University brief-residency master’s in fine arts curriculum she helped develop; editor of the The Louisville Review, a literary journal she has spearheaded for all of its 30 years; and founder of Fleur-de-Lis Press, launched a decade ago with the mission of publishing local writers.

With the success in critical and commercial circles of her 1999 breakthrough novel, Ahab’s Wife, and the bounces provided by Four Spirits in 2003 and now Abundance, Naslund could simplify her life, devoting it solely to her own letters rather than teaching her craft and publishing lesser-known wordsmiths. But she remains committed to the Louisville literary scene and her roots with small publishers. Why take on all the tasks? “I do it because I feel it needs to be done — and I need to do it,” Naslund says. “I guess I enjoy it; I love to see things get accomplished.”

The Spalding MFA program is launching in a new direction this year — “moving the laboratory beyond Louisville,” according to Naslund — by offering its 2007 summer semester brief residency in Paris. Previously, students attended five brief residencies in Louisville and then returned to writing on their own in pursuit of their degrees; now they’ll have the option of London, Barcelona and other cities during future summers. The added summer semester will also make it possible for schoolteachers to enroll in the program, which attracted nearly 150 students from Kentucky and other states for its most recent class.

Naslund excels at researching historical periods and imagining the inner minds of protagonists set in the past (Abundance is written in the voice of the misunderstood queen of France), yet she also drew on her own experiences in racially charged Birmingham, Ala., for Four Spirits. She’s not sure if her next book will look to the past, the present or the future, but, as always, the goal will be Dickensian — to touch the popular mind with a page-turner that is also a serious work of fiction. “I’m a literary writer who wants to be accessible to all types of readers,” Naslund says.
Bruce Allar

Donna King Perry

Her legal studies best prepared Donna King Perry for her specialty in labor and employment law. Another experience readied her at least as much for her current position as managing partner at Woodward Hobson & Fulton: teaching school. An elementary school teacher from 1981-86, Perry, 47, learned how to juggle tasks and find creative, individual solutions to people problems — skills that have served her well during three years in charge of operations at the 60-lawyer firm. After her school experience, she says, “there are very few things I consider a crisis. I have a much better handle on that; you need a sense of humor to survive.”

Perry is the only female managing partner of a mid- to large-size Louisville law firm and devotes approximately 40 percent of her time to CEO-type duties there, with the rest going to her work for labor and employment clients. Her second two-year term ends in December and she says she would be open to a few more years at the helm. In 2007, the firm may expand its employment practice and attempt to bring in an expert on environmental law. “Right now we’re very successful and humming at all levels,” says Perry.

The Louisa, Ky., native and 1989 University of Louisville law school graduate is married to Mitch Perry, a newly elected Jefferson Circuit Court judge. Seeing her husband’s campaign for votes in the fall election alerted Perry to two things: She would rather be behind the scenes than run for office herself; and this area lacks females in elected positions. She’s hooked up with similar-minded women to change that. “My new mission is to make sure we have more women running for office in Jefferson County,” says Perry.
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Mary Moseley

A few years ago, Mary Moseley’s to-do list may have been the most daunting in the local hotel industry. Now her list of accomplishments is growing measurably and that original list is getting shorter. Moseley, 58, is president of the Al J. Schneider Cos., which owns the Galt House Hotel and other properties in Louisville. Moseley’s father, the legendary developer and hotelier Al Schneider, who died in 2001, appointed her the president of the company shortly before his passing.

His properties were in need of some sprucing up, by all accounts, and that’s exactly what Moseley set out to do. She spearheaded a $60 million renovation of the Galt House Hotel. Other properties have received a similar overhaul, including renovations at the Executive West and Waterfront Plaza Tower Three, an office tower built by her father but never finished on the interior. “I can’t tell you how many times during the day when I say I wish I had five minutes with him,” Moseley says of her father. “I would have so many questions.”

Even with such a busy schedule, she’s serving on a variety of boards, including Greater Louisville Inc., the Louisville and Jefferson County Convention and Visitors Bureau, Downtown Development Corp., YPAL Advisory Board and Leadership Center, and Home of the Innocents.
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Dr. Suzanne Ildstad

Many a surgeon has said that eliminating the need for immunosuppressive drugs after unmatched-transplant surgery is “the Holy Grail of transplantation,” and the person hottest on the grail’s trail is surgeon and researcher Dr. Suzanne Ildstad, 54, founding director of the Institute for Cellular Therapeutics at the University of Louisville. Since 1998, when Ildstad moved the ICT and its whole staff from Philadelphia to Louisville, the institute has secured $43.5 million in National Institutes of Health and other research grants and is in line for $10.4 million more.

Ildstad, who’s the first woman ever to receive a Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumnus award and is Louisville’s lone elected member of the prestigious Institute of Medicine, is well-known worldwide for discovering “facilitating” cells in bone marrow that — transplanted from an unmatched organ or tissue donor to a patient — can, in her words, “cause the patient’s immune system to behave” and not attack the graft site. Already, during Phase 1 clinical trials, the marrow-processing procedure has shown positive results in heart and kidney transplants and in quelling sickle cell disease, and the FDA has approved three new trials associated with such autoimmune diseases as muscular sclerosis, diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

Besides her work on a dozen national research and surgical committees, Ildstad serves on the boards of the local chapter of the Multiple Sclerosis Society, the Kentucky Life Sciences Organization, the Health Enterprises Network and the Louisville Science Center, and is an editorial-board member of four national medical publications.
Jack Welch

Thelma Ferguson

During the first 18 months of Thelma Ferguson’s tenure as president of Chase Kentucky, she’s learned two things: how to delegate and to be passionate about what you do. “If you aren’t passionate about your job, whatever it is, you can’t do it well, and you can’t really lead others and convince them they need to do it well either,” Ferguson says of heading a regional operation of Chase that makes it one of the largest banks in Louisville. “Working for a company like JP Morgan Chase is a fairly exciting thing. It’s a global organization, but we have the opportunity to tie in to local communities.”

Tied-in is a great way to describe Ferguson, 48. Married with one daughter, she has managed to find the time to serve on Greater Louisville Inc.’s executive committee, the University of Louisville College of Business board of trustees, and the boards of Fund for the Arts, Women4Women, Leadership Louisville Center and Kentucky Country Day School. The bank also lends support to Junior Achievement of Kentuckiana, the Louisville Orchestra and the National Center for Family Literacy, among other efforts.

With the merger of Bank One and Chase complete, Ferguson’s 2007 goal is to grow the bank’s business and to lead a further charge into her home state of Tennessee. Ferguson says the job suits her. “I cannot say enough good things,” Ferguson says. “Not only would you hear that from me; I think you would find that from anyone on my employee base or my team. It’s great to work for a company with such strong morale.”
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Sue Stout Tamme

Sue Stout Tamme leads by example. “I don’t ask anyone to do something that I haven’t done or wouldn’t be willing to do,” she says. Tamme, 55, began her career as a nurse. Twenty-two years later, she is president of Baptist Hospital East and vice president of Baptist Healthcare System. She’s headed Baptist East since 1995.

Days are long — typically 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.— but Tamme is driven by a “passion” for her work and a commitment to employees. Rarely sitting in her office, she prefers walking the hospital and meeting with staff, patients and their families. “I’m Type A, definitely,” she says. “I multi-task, but that’s what it takes to get the job done.”

Michael T. Rust, president of the Kentucky Hospital Association, says, “Sue is one of the most caring people I’ve ever met and is a visionary. She looks at all angles and positions before she responds. She’s a good consensus builder.” Tamme serves on several community boards and has received numerous awards from organizations for her leadership. In 2006, Baptist Hospital East received a Best Places to Work in Kentucky award for the second straight year and the National Research Corporation’s Consumer Choice Award.

Under Tamme’s leadership, construction on a new five-story Baptist East addition, a $130 million center with private beds and health-care treatment facilities, was started last summer, with the facility scheduled for completion in 2008. This spring, Baptist will break ground on an Eastpoint medical facility offering, among other programs, outpatient surgery, urgent care, physical therapy and diagnostic imaging. “We’ve used nearly every blade of grass available,” Tamme says of the hospital’s campus in DuPont area.
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Christy Brown

The driving force behind Christy Brown is a desire to effect positive change. “I have a passion and believe in living out values, and it has nothing to do with gaining power,” says the 60-year-old owner of Louisville Stoneware. Brown purchased the Brent Street operation in 1997 and sees herself more as a steward than an owner of the business, which traces its roots back to 1905. During the mid-20th century, as Louisville Pottery, it was the largest stoneware firm in the South. “It is so important to preserve local institutions,” she says. “They give us a sense of pride and define who we are.”

Brown is also co-founder of the Center for Interfaith Relations (until last year known as the Cathedral Heritage Foundation), which was established in 1985 to raise funds for the restoration of the Cathedral of the Assumption and has grown to include nationally recognized programs such as the Festival of Faiths. This year the festival focused on death and dying through the eyes of faith, and Brown made a point to include a discussion on a topic she is extremely concerned about — mountaintop removal. “You cannot compreh/files/storyimages/the devastation until you see it with your own eyes,” she says. Conservation — “stopping the murder of God’s earth,” as Brown puts it — is a big priority for her.

Another of her commitments is to Religions for Peace, the world’s largest interfaith organization, which she says is dedicated to stopping war, ending poverty and protecting the earth. “I believe in humankind,” Brown says. “It is a lack of a can-do attitude we must rid ourselves of. We can change things and make a difference.” Melissa Duley

Alice Houston

For Alice Houston, the key to power is organization — even at unexpected moments. On a trip to Denver last fall sponsored by Greater Louisville Inc., the local chamber of commerce, Houston used the three-hour plane ride to Christmas shop. She pulled out her laptop, opened a spread sheet and culled through a stack of catalogs, plotting what to buy everyone on her Christmas gift list. “When many different roles are important to you — whether it’s being a parent and a wife and a community leader and a business owner — you have to be pretty organized in order to juggle all of the balls or be able to wear all of the hats,” she says.

Houston, 60, is president and CEO of Houston-Johnson Inc., a logistics and warehousing firm with 80 employees in Louisville. Along with her husband Wade, a former basketball coach at the universities of Louisville and Tennessee, she launched the company in 1987 and became its top officer in 2005. Houston is also the 2007 chairman of the GLI board of directors.

Houston’s list of volunteer activities shows her commitment to Louisville. She is currently serving on the Louisville Arena Authority, the organization tasked with making Louisville’s long-held dreams of a new indoor facility a reality. “I think it’s going to be one of many wonderful projects that will go on in the next decade that will add to economic vibrancy of the community,” she says.

She’s also president of the Louisville chapter of The Links Inc., a networking and community service organization for African-American women. That organization’s key project in 2007, Houston says, is focused on the Parkhill Community Center, 1703 S. 13th St., taking an active role in the lives of people who att/files/storyimages/programs there and creating new opportunities for them. For GLI, Houston’s goal for 2007 is to make the organization more diverse. “I hope to be able to further embrace diversity in all of its components — age, race, sex, diversity of businesses — because we all bring different things that make this community vibrant,” she says.
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Christine Johnson

Throw the name of a community leader at Christine Johnson, president of the Leadership Louisville Center, and it’s highly likely she’ll know that person, and well. In her 15 years as head of the Leadership Louisville operations, she’s become acquainted with members of each annual class of “leaders” who come through the organization’s programs, as well as the community movers and shakers who have served on her board or supported the organization through grants and gifts.

Expanding on the signature Leadership Louisville program of community involvement indoctrination for professionals, Johnson, 55, has created new offerings — one as short as a half-day that introduces newcomers to the area, another an intense six-month program created just for young professionals, with several others in between. “We are a community leadership organization,” she says, “so we want to educate people about the community and community issues.

Johnson was born in Detroit but grew up mostly in Louisville and started out professional life as the first female sports reporter at the Courier-Journal. She soon transitioned into public relations, which she did for 13 years before going to work for Leadership Louisville. She serves on the boards of Louisville Collegiate School, Greater Louisville Inc., the Young Professional Association of Louisville and Actors Theatre.

In 2007, Johnson’s focus will be largely on the Bingham Fellows project, which is seeking ways to get the community involved in a $25 million G.E. Foundation grant for math and science instruction in the Jefferson County Public Schools. She also wants her organization to build a “Facebook”-style website that will allow Leadership Louisville alums to post information about their community interests in hopes of connecting them with key community needs.

Johnson says the job continues to suit her. “I’ve always said it was the best job in Louisville,” Johnson says. “It really is, in the sense that I could be talking to a CEO one day and in a distressed neighborhood the next day, talking to people who are on the front lines of teen violence. . . . It’s a high-energy job for sure. People see my quiet demeanor and don’t realize how fast my feet are going under the water.”
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Phoebe A. Wood

As a corporate nomad, Phoebe A. Wood, 53, knows the importance of making connections. Wood is executive vice president and chief financial officer of Brown-Forman Corp., but she makes time for community involvement and to help others integrate into the community. Wood held a reception for Courier-Journal president and publisher Denise Ivey when the latter moved to Louisville in 2006. And she hosted a potluck lunch for Louisville graduates of the “Seven Sisters” colleges in the Northeast. (Wood is a Smith College alum and sits on the college’s board of trustees.) “One of the things I like to do is gather people together,” she says. “I try to do that as much as I can.”

Wood has lived in Louisville for five years following stints in London, Anchorage (Alaska), Houston, Los Angeles and Dallas. In her five years with Brown-Forman, Wood has helped the company finance four major acquisitions. In the community, she serves on the boards of the Leadership Louisville Center, Gheens Foundation Inc. and Louisville Collegiate School Board of Trustees. Wood says she knows her limitations. “I have to acknowledge my role as a very senior executive at Brown-Forman and my role as a parent,” she says. “I don’t want to hurt my performance in either job.”
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Joni Jenkins

Joni Jenkins, Kentucky’s 44th District representative since 1995 and current state Democratic Party vice-chair and chair of the Jefferson County legislative delegation, takes her responsibilities with a dose of humor. “You can defuse tense situations with a smile and a humorous remark,” she says.

Jenkins’ ability to expedite compromise and consensus led the bipartisan 25-member Jefferson County delegation to elect Jenkins as its chair in 2002. Since then, she has worked to persuade state legislators that investing in Jefferson County is a way to invest in Kentucky. In 2007 Jenkins plans to focus on education issues, UPS expansion and finding funding for other worthy projects.

Politics is in Jenkins’ blood. Her father, James Jenkins, served as Shively’s mayor for a decade. Her own 12 years in county government’s human resources department also helped prepare her for state politics. She serves on several legislative committees in Frankfort and on boards in Louisville that include Metro United Way, the Domestic Violence Prevention Coordinating Council, and Families and Children First.

When the General Assembly isn’t in session, citizen-legislator Jenkins, 48, recruits disadvantaged students for a career program at Jefferson Community and Technical College. She also feels that, as a representative for southwest Jefferson County, she speaks for constituents who “haven’t traditionally had a voice.”

Mark Sauer, principal of Crums Lane Elementary School, where Jenkins volunteers as a reading tutor, describes her commitment. “She’s awesome — always upbeat, positive, and wants to make a positive impact in the lives of children,” Sauer says.
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