Newsmakers: March 21-27, 2022

Accounting
KPM CPAs & Advisors added Marketing Director Megan Artz. She has six years of accounting marketing experience and oversees the firm’s marketing, advertising and communication strategy and execution. Artz holds a bachelor’s in marketing from Southwest Baptist University.

Banking & Finance
Old Missouri Bank added Ryan Bowling as vice president and director of marketing and Taylor McCain as a junior graphic designer on the marketing team. Bowling has 18 years of marketing and communications experience, including eight years in banking at Guaranty Bank. He holds a bachelor’s in journalism and writing from Drury University and is a Certified Financial Marketing Professional through the American Bankers Association. McCain has a decade of graphic design experience for print and web, and holds a bachelor’s in graphic design from The Art Institute of California-San Diego.

Branson Bank promoted Katie Hodges to chief operations officer, with responsibilities also over the compliance, accounting/finance and customer service departments. She has 19 years of banking experience in Taney County and joined Branson Bank in 2017 as vice president of commercial lending. Hodges, a certified public accountant, holds a bachelor’s in accounting and psychology from College of the Ozarks.

Education
Lisa Street, Evangel University assistant professor of social work and coordinator of field education, received the 2021 Field Educator Prize for Excellence in Field Education Scholarship for a submitted article titled, “Field Instructors as Professional Gatekeepers: A Qualitative Study of Gatekeeping Influences.” She joined Evangel in 2015 after serving as a clinical assistant professor of social work and a program coordinator at Missouri State University. 

Gordon Pace, an Evangel education professor, received the annual EU Babcock Innovation Award for connecting with six local public school districts to secure educational partnerships with the university. Pace created a flexible degree program where school districts select teachers to participate and identify courses from EU’s graduate education course catalog that best meet their needs, and the educators receive a tuition discount and earn a graduate degree from Evangel.

Health Care
Christina Dempsey, a former faculty member at MSU, received the Press Ganey’s inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award at its 2022 National Client Conference in Orlando. She also spent a decade of her career at Press Ganey, serving as chief nursing officer and, most recently, as CNO emeritus to pioneer the concept of Compassionate Connected Care and educating organizations on the connection between patient outcomes and nurse engagement.

Law
Johnson, Vorhees & Martucci LLC promoted Josh Decker to partner. With 12 years of experience, his practice focuses on plaintiff’s personal injury work. He joined the firm in 2018 and holds a Juris Doctor from University of Missouri-Kansas City.

Nonprofit
The Arc of the Ozarks promoted Dr. Kayette Glass to vice president of clinical services and John Everest to senior vice president of finance. A licensed clinical psychologist, Glass has worked in the mental health field since 1998 and at Arc of the Ozarks since 2005. Everest, a certified public accountant and chartered global management accountant, has served as the agency’s vice president of finance since 2015.