University of Missouri–St. Louis alum and Missouri Botanical Garden President Lúcia Lohmann (center) speaks as part of a panel with Steve O’Loughlin, John Kemper, Alaina Macia and Yemi Akande Bartsch during the “Start with Leadership: Leading for Growth and Innovation” conference hosted by FOCUS St. Louis and UMSL last Thursday at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center. (Photos by Derik Holtmann)

University of Missouri–St. Louis Chancellor Kristin Sobolik was in her office last August when she received a message that Yemi Akande-Bartsch, the president and CEO of FOCUS St. Louis, wanted to chat.

“When Yemi wants to chat, you definitely pick up the phone,” Sobolik said as she spoke from the stage last Thursday in the Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall at the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center.

Akande-Bartsch wound up paying Sobolik a visit in Woods Hall a short time later, and they began hatching plans to jointly hold a regional leadership conference focused on innovation and growth for the future of St. Louis.

The vision they started laying out last summer came to reality Thursday when more than 200 professionals from around the area descended on the Touhill for “Start with Leadership: Leading for Growth and Innovation,” a half-day event featuring leaders from across St. Louis discussing strategies for building their organizations, strengthening their teams and ensuring they’re positioned to drive positive change and lasting impact both locally and globally.

Sessions were held both in the Anheuser-Busch Performance Hall and the E. Desmond and Mary Ann Lee Theater, and the conference preceded Thursday evening’s 28th annual What’s Right with the Region Awards presentations, also at the Touhill.

Chancellor Kristin Sobolik welcomes attendees to the Blanche M. Touhill Performing Arts Center for the “Start with Leadership: Leading for Growth and Innovation” Conference last Thursday while flanked by FOCUS St. Louis CEO and President Yemi Akande-Bartsch.

UMSL alumni and faculty and staff members were well represented among the panelists throughout the afternoon, starting with the opening session, “Leading for Impact: Innovation, Growth and Community Leadership.” Alums Lúcia Lohmann, the new president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Steve O’Loughlin, the president and chief operating officer of Lodging Hospitality Management, took part in that discussion, moderated by Akande-Bartsch.

They talked about the importance of collaboration.

“One of those lessons in life is you might not have the playbook, you might not know the next step, but you reach out to your peers,” said Alaina Macia, president and CEO of MTM, who was also part of that panel. “You reach out to people who’ve done it before. St. Louis is such a great community. You can reach out to business partners and be able to ask them a question, and that’s how you learn. That’s how you go to the next step.”

College of Business Administration Dean Shu Schiller moderated another panel, on “Leadership with Integrity: Ethical and Responsible Action.” It featured alumni Orv Kimbrough, the chairman and CEO of Midwest BankCentre; Marcela Manjarrez, the CEO of M Strategic Communications and the retired executive vice president and chief communications officer of Centene Corporation; Sandra Van Trease, the CEO of SVT Strategic Advisors and a retired group president at BJC HealthCare; and Joe Stieven, the president, chairman and CEO of Stieven Capital Advisors.

The four of them, along with retired Ameren CEO and Chairman Warner Baxter, had taken part in a series of alumni conversations about ethics at UMSL over the past three years, and Thursday’s discussion reinforced how foundational it is to success.

“Everybody’s accountable to somebody,” Kimbrough said. “When you have an environment that suggests that not everybody’s accountable, it erodes trust. And when you erode trust, that’s the very foundation of business, and that’s the very foundation of our way of life.”

Reggie Hill, UMSL’s vice chancellor for strategic enrollment and career advancement, moderated a panel on “Innovating Leadership: Practice for a Changing World.” The discussion featured Associate Teaching Professor Jill Bernard Bracy, the director of UMSL’s Supply Chain Risk and Resilience Research Institute; Scott Morris, the executive director of UMSL’s Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center; and Morris’ fellow DBA alum Mike Seals, a retired chief digital officer and senior vice president of strategy at Hussmann; along with Kendra Mack, who has overseen global employee experience at World Wide Technology.

Dean Shu Schiller joins UMSL alums Orv Kimbrough, Marcela Manjarrez, Joe Stieven and Sandra Van Trease for a discussion about the importance of ethics during the “Start with Leadership: Leading for Growth and Innovation” Conference.

They talked about how they can prepare students to contribute to the workforce on day one as they launch their careers.

“It’s important to bridge the gap between industry and curriculum, between industry and research and between research and curriculum,” Bracy said. “All three components, they have to work together. I think the heart of it is really working with our industry partners to make sure that the research that we’re doing is applied. We’re using real world data to tackle emerging challenges that industries have, and industry is helping us to identify what those challenges are. We’re then going and taking the same mindset into the classroom and encouraging the students to not only use their domain knowledge to better understand the current challenges but really to identify the potential emerging challenges. That identification comes back to mindfulness and critical thinking.”

There were also panels on “Growing Together: Regional Leadership Through Collaboration and Collective Vision” and “Innovation and Growth: Emerging Industries Driving Regional Prosperity.”

Sobolik joined UMSL alum Ken Cella, a principal and the head of external affairs at Edward Jones, on the day’s final panel along with James S. McDonnell Foundation President Jason Purnell and BJC HealthCare CEO Richard Liekweg. They discussed “The Growth Mindset in Action: Leadership, Innovation and Regional Progress.”

“If we really look at the truth about our region, the future of St. Louis is yet to be written,” Akande-Bartsch said in her closing remarks. “We get to shape it, and if today is any indication, I’m more hopeful than ever before that we are in good hands with the folks that have shown up today. As I was reflecting on my notes, I was thinking about great lessons that I’ve learned today, and I just want to do a real quick recap: Listen deeply, stay curious, you have to know yourself, authenticity is important, we need to lead through change effectively, today’s leaders must be resilient and agile.”

FOCUS St. Louis presented its What’s Right with the Region Awards later Thursday. Among the honorees in the Emerging Initiatives category was Save Lives Now!, which is leading a focused effort to reduce violent street crime across the St. Louis region by 20% over the next three years. UMSL criminologists Chris Sullivan and Lee Slocum are contributing their expertise in research and data collection toward the initiative.

For information on other honorees, visit: https://focus-stl.org/focus-events/whats-right-with-the-region/.