Beyond the Comfort Zone - Vistage Member Excellence Awards

Beyond the

Comfort Zone

EPIQ SOLUTIONS

John Orlando, CEO & Co-Founder

Leadership Award

The certainty to push beyond the standard to successful innovation and growth.

Anthony Brown

CEO

OrthoIllinois

Rockford, IL

CE 434, Chair: John Page

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“As a CEO, you’re directly responsible for very little, but you’re accountable for everything.”

Helping patients get back to having active lives. That simple yet powerful mission guides every action Anthony Brown takes at OrthoIllinois, where his physician-led team provides high-quality orthopedic care at roughly half the cost of hospital-based treatment. Since becoming CEO in 2021, Anthony has led the transformation of a regional physician group into one of the largest independent orthopedic platforms in the Midwest. Under his leadership, the organization grew revenue 24%, from $205M to $254M in a single year, while

Becki Cloyed

President & Managing Partner

JJT Transportation & Logistics

Omaha, NE

CE 4507, Chair: Jesse DePriest

Vistage member since 2015

Lifetime Achievement Award

“Figure out a way to say yes.”

Becki Cloyed has worked nearly every role in the trucking business and built a family-run transportation company from that firsthand knowledge. In a male-dominated industry where relationships and trust drive every deal, she earned her credibility by playing the game before leading it. As President and Managing Partner of JJT Transportation & Logistics, she grew the business from three employees to 42 across three locations, reaching over $50M in annual revenue and competing with national carriers across van, reefer, flatbed,

Bethany Reese

CEO

TechHuman

San Antonio, TX

CE 8589, Chair: Jason Straughan

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“The definition of a great leader is being vulnerable enough to share what's happening and then showing how you respond to it.”

Bethany Reese joined TechHuman focused on sales and now leads the technology consulting and augmentation company as CEO. In her first 18 months at the helm, she has grown revenue more than 200%, backed by a guarantee that clients will reach an offer within TechHuman’s first three candidates. That commitment to quality helped the company earn a 2025 C-Suite Award and a 2026 Best Places to Work honor from the San Antonio Business Journal, which also named Bethany a 2026

Beth Hahn

President & CEO

Berkshire Systems Group, Inc.

Reading, PA

CE 3765, Chair: Laurie Peer

Vistage member since 2015

Lifetime Achievement Award

“The most valuable thing I’ve learned is that you have to stay vulnerable and open—to new ideas, to being wrong, and to never stop learning.”

Beth Hahn considers herself both a first-generation and second-generation leader, having founded a residential alarm company right out of college, and later stepping in to guide her father’s fire alarm and security business into its next chapter. After launching and growing Secure-A-Home for more than two decades, she stepped in as President of Berkshire Systems Group, Inc., where she led the organization through culture shifts, COVID shutdowns and transformative growth. Since taking the helm in 2016, Beth has grown revenue

Bill Thrasher

COO

AV-Tech Media Solutions

Roswell, GA

CE 8780, Chair: Joe DeLapp

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“Success is realizing how blessed you are and how you now have a responsibility to bless others.”

Bill Thrasher spent his early years chasing his goal of becoming a career military officer, serving as cadet commander of his high school’s ROTC program and enlisting in the Marine Corps upon graduation. After meeting his wife, he shifted course and entered the audiovisual industry, following in the footsteps of his audio engineer father. Working in nearly every role in the industry, Bill eventually became COO of AV-Tech Media Solutions, where he’s spent almost 20 years and served as an

Dan Rye

CTO & Partner

Tensure

Mason, OH

CE 8934, Chair: Peg Moertl

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“At Tensure, our goal is to help our team ‘win at life’.”

Along with his partners, Dan Rye started Tensure, a tech consulting business, with a vision to build a company he would’ve been excited to work for in his 20s. Over time, that vision has grown into a global operation spanning the U.S., India, and Mexico, increasing headcount from 100 to 150 employees. Throughout this growth, Dan has prioritized nurturing a people-first culture built on transparency, while also narrowing the company’s focus to platform engineering within financial services and fintech to

What I like about Vistage, and specifically our group, is the structure and level of commitment. When people are there, you truly get to know your peers at a deeper level. Learning from other people’s experiences and building those kinds of skills is super valuable.

Jacob Grady

CEO & Founder, Surface Experts

Spokane, WA

Impact Award

Isaac Alexander

President & Owner

Quo Vadis IT

Matthews, NC

CE 5915, Chair: Marty Stowe

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“I want to surround myself with really smart people and let them tell me what to do.”

In 2022, as the mortgage industry struggled, Isaac Alexander left the industry and began searching for a more stable business to buy. When his father-in-law offered the opportunity to purchase his managed service provider, Quo Vadis IT, in Charlotte, Isaac took the leap despite having no prior business or IT experience. He acquired the company in 2023 after three years of flat revenue growth and low profit margins, then set out to rebuild it by staying curious and prioritizing customer

Jacob Grady

CEO & Founder

Surface Experts

Spokane, WA

CE 4974, Chair: Linda Remsberg

Vistage member since 2023

Impact Award

“You need a gracious pursuit of excellence—without grace, people won’t take risks, and without excellence, you drift into mediocrity.”

Jacob Grady’s leadership journey begins in Bogotá, riding around the city on a motorcycle with a toolbox strapped to the back, doing small repairs to help fund a home for girls at risk of trafficking. That experience led him to open a small repair business in Portland in 2009—one he eventually sold and used as the foundation for what is now Surface Experts, a franchise specializing in spot repair of damaged hard surfaces. Today, Jacob supports more than 115 franchisees

Jeremy Moore

President & CEO

cLevelResource

San Diego, CA

CE 3494, Chair: Alan Sorkin

Vistage member since 2014

Lifetime Achievement Award

“Create a culture that starts with a genuine care for people.”

Jeremy Moore has built his career guiding businesses through pivotal turning points, including selling three companies, serving twice as CFO, and once as CEO. From 2016 to 2019, he co-led a $35M acquisition at MagnaFlow that grew the company to nearly $200M, then grew EV by $80M as president of Jon Renau after stepping into the role just before the pandemic. Most recently, he rebuilt SCRAM Companies after it had gone seven years without a CEO and delivered its most

Joe Lenart

Founding Partner

Kennedy Lenart IP

San Diego, CA

CE 8706, Chair: Jim Ristuccia

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“A business is the vehicle through which the owner achieves the life they want.”

An attorney by trade, Joe Lenart had to learn an entirely new skill set to become the visionary his growing firm needed after becoming the founding partner of Kennedy Lenart IP, an intellectual property law firm in San Diego. Over the past two years, he’s made strategic decisions to help him work on the business rather than in it, including promoting a COO to run daily operations, hiring a fractional finance team, and restructuring the ownership group to align around

John Lande

CEO

National Works

Austin, TX

CE 8915, Chair: Barbara Breier

Vistage member since 2023

Impact Award

“Things are never as bad as they feel when you’re going through a challenge. Conversely, things are never as good as they may feel when it feels like you’re untouchable.”

After launching a successful early career in finance, John Lande couldn’t shake the dream of building something of his own. That aspiration led him to find National Works, Inc., where he became a minority partner in 2013 with a plan to purchase the company over time. When the founder passed unexpectedly in 2023, John guided the business through the transition to sole ownership, grounding his team in honesty, empathy, and stability. Today, the specialty sewer services company is thriving, with

John Orfield

Partner

BOKA Powell LLC

Dallas, TX

CE 4695, Chair: Dennis Howard

Vistage member since 2016

Leadership Award

“Listen intently, design creatively, celebrate life.”

For three decades, John Orfield has shaped not only the skylines of cities but the culture of BOKA Powell. A nationally recognized architect, John is known for leading with empathy, candor, and vision. When faced with the retirement of a senior partner and the challenges of modernizing a legacy business, John embraced transformation by revamping operations, technology, and culture while preserving the heart of the company. Today, as he prepares to transition ownership to the next generation, he reflects on

As the business scaled, my leadership style that worked early on was very execution-heavy. That wasn’t what I needed to continue to grow. The mentorship in Vistage and my desire to stay coachable helped to take me from where I was in leadership to where I am today.

Raechel Peters

President, BenefitsMe

Wichita, KS

Impact Award

John Orlando

CEO & Co-Founder

EPIQ Solutions

Schaumburg, IL

CE 306, Chair: Aimee Daniels

Vistage member since 2017

Leadership Award

“Make sure your time is being spent where it has the most impact.”

An engineer turned CEO, John Orlando has spent more than 16 years building EPIQ Solutions from a three-person startup into a thriving, product-driven engineering company serving defense and security markets. After co-founding and bootstrapping the business in 2009, he spent the company’s first five years building a services-led engineering firm before leading a pivotal shift to products — enduring several lean years until the product focus thesis proved viable, building long-term leverage. In 2022, he guided the company through a

Loren Dotts

President

DMS Facility Services

South Pasadena, CA

CE 5225, Chair: Bonita Garcia

Vistage member since 2019

Leadership Award

“Successful leadership is about taking responsibility and continuing to grow alongside the business.”

Loren Dotts started at DMS Facility Services as a window washer in 1993, spent a few years in the field, and returned to the company in 2006. Loren held nearly every position in the business before becoming majority owner in 2026, after holding less than 5% of the company in 2019. Today he leads the 57-year-old company providing janitorial services, building engineering, landscape services, window cleaning and metal maintenance across the western states, with offices throughout California and Arizona. He

Dr. Meridee Rilen

Founder

Affinity Psychological Services

Edina, MN

CE 4142, Chair: Mike Karlsrud

Vistage member since 2021

Leadership Award

“There is no right way to be a leader.”

Dr. Meridee Rilen founded Affinity Psychological Services in 2018 on the belief that clinician well-being and client access are not competing priorities. Since then, Affinity has grown from $318,000 in revenue to a projected $13.5M in 2026. In the last 12 months, Affinity’s 100+ licensed clinicians have served over 5,700 clients, providing more than 81,000 appointments across their nine locations. Central to that growth is Dr. Rilen’s “anti-burnout” model, which gives clinicians the autonomy and flexibility of private practice while

Raechel Peters

President

BenefitsMe

Wichita, KS

CE 13057, Chair: Cindy Hoover

Vistage member since 2025

Impact Award

“Don’t confuse constant motion with effective leadership.”

Raechel Peters joined BenefitsMe at a formative stage and helped build its foundation while evolving her leadership alongside the company’s rapid growth. Under her guidance, the company shifted from a solely direct-to-employer model to a partnership strategy, integrating with payroll providers to expand access to its financial wellness platform. That enhancement nearly doubled revenue from 2024 to 2025, grew eligible users from thousands to millions, and positioned the business to reach more than 611% growth in 2026. At the same

Rebecca Weber

CEO

The Weber Group

Bohemia, NY

CE 5442, Chair: Jeff Oak

Vistage member since 2021

Leadership Award

“Courage is not the absence of fear.”

Rebecca Weber grew up inside the family business, Hometown Insurance Agency, a business her parents built from nothing. “I had one of the greatest and most inspiring coaches that anyone could hope for — my father, Dan Weber,” she shared. Rebecca joined the insurance company in college and later built a Social Security and Medicare advisory division into a team of more than 50 licensed advisors. That instinct for building now spans the eight organizations of The Weber Group, including

Rob Hudiburg

President & CEO

Kellogg Garden Products

San Antonio, TX

CE 3728, Chair: Charles Marino

Vistage member since 2014

Lifetime Achievement Award

“Humility goes a long way.”

Rob Hudiburg spent much of his early life and career moving around the country before landing in Wisconsin, where he realized the company he was working for was no longer the right fit. Soon after, a former colleague connected him with Hap Kellogg, and 17 days later Rob returned to the West Coast to join Kellogg Garden Products as vice president of sales and marketing. Now President and CEO of the 101-year-old family business, Rob and his team have achieved

Vistage has made me a more intentional leader. It’s helped me draw more insight from my leadership team, which has resulted in better performance metrics instead of going by feeling. I’ve built recognition programs to elevate our people—and all of that is from Vistage, I’m proud to say.

Rebecca Weber

CEO, The Weber Group

Bohemia, NY

Leadership Award

Taylor Covey

Managing Principal

Gibson Insurance Agency, Inc.

Midvale, UT

CE 8595, Chair: Laura Langehaug

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“Don't be so fixated on the dollar amount [when it comes to transactions].”

While most leaders may encounter one major transaction in their career, Taylor Covey has navigated several in the span of a few years — and he’s still building. In 2021, he and two partners purchased a small family-owned insurance agency where he’d worked since 2016, restructured the model, and sold it in 2023 for mid-seven figures to Gibson, a commercial insurance and employee benefits firm that is 100% employee-owned. Two years later, he helped lead Gibson through a nine-figure transaction,

Walter (Mitch) Mitchell

CEO

Tai Software

Huntington Beach, CA

CE 441, Chair: Mark Murphy

Vistage member since 2024

Impact Award

“No matter how great your intentions are, if you can't communicate your perspective and align everyone in the same direction, you've lost the battle.”

In 2020, Walter (Mitch) Mitchell served as the CTO of a freight company when the pandemic brought the industry to a near standstill. Amid the disruption, a private equity firm saw an opportunity to spin off the technology division he was leading and asked him to take the helm of what became Tai Software. Six years later, Tai is a leading transportation management platform for freight brokers, having grown roughly tenfold while sustaining 30% year-over-year growth since 2024, without outside