Change is in the air for the top echelon of Orange County’s business community.
That much is clear in this week’s OC 50, a special edition that serves as the Business Journal’s annual guide to the most influential individuals in business here.
The section, which starts on page 21, includes profiles on the key executives, entrepreneurs, financiers, academics and others who play key roles in shaping OC’s business landscape. The bulk of the news stories in the rest of this week’s paper also feature those leaders or their companies or institutions.
It’s the 20th edition of the OC 50, and plenty of faces that were included in our inaugural listing remain, including Irvine Company Chairman Donald Bren, homebuilder General William Lyon and Chapman University President James Doti, among others.
This year’s version also has the biggest year-to-year change in its roster of any edition since its start in 1993.
Several multiple entries of years past have been slimmed down to reflect changes in company operations in some cases, as well as a sharper focus in the Business Journal’s selection process, which includes numerous judgment calls and is subject to debate by our readers.
The political category is gone altogether this year, a decision based on several factors but chiefly reflective of a conscious effort to focus more on the business landscape in its own right.
9 New
There are 10 newcomers on this list, with a total of 54 including a few multiple entries.
First-time entries include a number of businesses and executives likely already familiar to our readers, such as:
• John Krafcik, chief executive of resurgent car maker Hyundai Motor America Inc., whose growing North American operations are based in Irvine.
• Hezy Shaked, co-founder and majority owner of Irvine-based action sports retailer Tilly’s Inc., which went public earlier this month.
• Scott Stowell, recently appointed chief executive at Irvine-based Standard Pacific Corp., the largest publicly traded homebuilder based here.
• Alain Monié, who earlier this year became chief executive of Santa Ana-based electronics distributor Ingram Micro Inc., OC’s largest company by revenue.
A pending change in the top spot at California State University, Fullerton— slated to take place in June—also brings a new entry with incoming president Mildred García.
Finance
We’ve also included two names well-known to businesses looking for funding: private equity executive Ed Carpenter of Carpenter & Co. in Irvine, and William Link, a Newport Beach-based managing director for Versant Ventures, a venture capital company in Menlo Park that’s behind many of the Orange County’s medical device companies.
We’ve added Julie Miller-Phipps, who heads up operations for Kaiser Permanente’s OC region, in the healthcare category. That’s a nod to the increasing importance of healthcare and hospitals on the region’s economy.
Another new entry is our least traditional, with the inclusion of an event rather than a person: the U.S. Open of Surfing, which is held annually in Huntington Beach.
The choice better notes the role of tourism in OC’s economy, which also is represented on the list by George Kalogridis, president of the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim
A total of 19 members of last year’s OC50—which actually had 63 members, including several multiple entries—aren’t in this edition.
Boeing
The move to cut back on multiple entries this year is intended to provide more clarity about the key decision makers at a number of companies, as well as their ties to Orange County. Executive shifts at other businesses also helped reduce the number of multiple entries.
The entry for Boeing Co. is an example. We’ve gone from a three-person listing to Alejandro (Alex) Lopez as the lone representative. Lopez is an Anaheim resident who serves as vice president for the Boeing Advanced Network & Space Systems and oversees operations in Anaheim and Huntington Beach.
We’ve also slimmed down the total for Newport Beach-based Irvine Company, which had a quartet of executives besides Bren listed last year. This year’s list includes only one: Dan Young, the former Santa Ana mayor who now heads up the region’s most active homebuilder and apartment developer.
The developer is one of two companies on this year’s OC50—along with Irvine-based Broadcom Corp.—with two separate entries.
We’ve given a stand-alone entry to Broadcom Chief Executive Scott McGregor, who has day-to-day responsibilities at the company. Cofounder and director Henry Samueli has a separate listing that reflects his roll at the company as well as his endeavors beyond the chipmaker, including ownership of the Anaheim Ducks hockey team.
Selections
OC50 members are screened in a variety of ways: company size, community involvement, political activity, and significance within their own industry.
Wealth carries its share of weight in the listing: eight of the top 10 wealthiest people in the county, and 11 of the top 20 as based on Business Journal estimates, are also on the OC50 list.
We’ve also broken up the individual entries into smaller biographical sections in this week’s issue, to make them easier to read.
