This year’s Boulder County Business Hall of Fame inductees are Clair Beckmann; Dr. Tom Cech; Ann Cooper; Philip DiStefano; Andrew Quillen, Kurt Quillen and Daniel Vonalt; and Carol and Harvey Yoakum.

The Class of 2024 will be honored Wednesday at the Jewish Community Center, 6007 Oleg Ave. in Boulder. Here’s a look at this year’s class.

Clair Beckmann

Clair Beckmann began her commercial-banking career in 1975 as a credit manager — an unusual role for a woman at that time — at First National Bank in Boulder. In less than a decade, she was promoted to vice president responsible for commercial and construction lending, and made early loans to local business success stories such as Peppercorn and Kinko’s.

In 1984, Beckmann was named president and CEO of Affiliated First National Bank of Louisville. Over the next seven years, Beckmann led the bank through re-capitalization and successfully established it as one of the most-profitable in Colorado, while also providing banking services to many of the businesses along Main Street in Louisville.

Before her retirement in 2006, Beckmann served as regional president for JPMorgan Chase, with responsibility for the Boulder County market for many years. Donatella Scanniello succeeded Beckmann in that role, and told BizWest’s predecessor, the Boulder County Business Report, that, “in my experience, I don’t see a gender difference in career progression. It’s really about who is most capable in a role, who works best with customers and who delivers results.

“As far as women leaders, we’ve been fortunate at JP Morgan Chase to follow Clair’s local lead,” Scanniello said.

Beckmann remains an active volunteer and member of the community.

Dr. Tom Cech

Dr. Tom Cech, founding director of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder, Cech began teaching in CU Boulder’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 1978, and 11 years later won the Nobel Prize in chemistry, an honor he shared with Sidney Altman.

The two men discovered that RNA (ribonucleic acid) in living cells is not only a molecule of heredity but also can function as a biocatalyst. The discovery concerns fundamental aspects of the molecular basis of life, and, according to the Nobel Foundation’s 1989 press release, “many chapters in our textbooks have to be revised.”

He taught freshman chemistry to more than 2,000 students over the years, and founded one of the first RNA biotech companies, Ribozyme Pharmaceuticals Inc., in Boulder.

In 2000, he moved to Washington, D.C., as president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, then returned to Boulder in 2009. His awards include the National Medal of Science in 1995 and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine.

Cech stepped down from his position as executive director of CU’s BioFrontiers Institute in 2020 to concentrate on his own research. Cech received his doctorate in 1970 from the University of California at Berkeley, and completed postdoctoral work at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Ann Cooper

Ann Cooper, a real-estate broker for more than a quarter century, is intensely active in the nonprofit community.

Cooper, a broker with Re/Max of Boulder for 27 years, has sold more than $100 million in real estate, ranging from properties valued at $100,000 to $6.5 million, giving her a deep knowledge of growth and development in Boulder County. She has served on the Boulder Chamber’s board of directors and its community affairs council as well as the boards of Impact on Education and Boulder Housing Partners.

“I’ve probably been on every board in Boulder,” she said. Cooper attended colleges in Wisconsin and Illinois, and she came to Boulder from Georgia in 1987.

“I was originally in hospital administration,” she said, “but a really good friend told me, ‘You love houses and you love people. You should be a Realtor.’ I told her, ‘I don’t know anything about selling houses,’ and she said, ‘It’s not really sales, it’s service.’ She was right, and I’ve been a Realtor ever since.”

Cooper blends her work in residential real estate with her life’s mission of helping others. Throughout her career, she has assisted nonprofits in the sale of gifted real estate without compensation and mentored young people from all backgrounds who have an interest in real estate.

A tireless advocate for social justice, Cooper has served on many volunteer boards and received a number of awards. She spearheaded an effort to create a fund at the Community Foundation Serving Boulder County for the benefit of women of color.

Philip DiStefano

He may have retired after 15 years as chancellor of the University of Colorado Boulder, but Philip DiStefano isn’t slowing down — and isn’t done serving CU. He’s now back among the faculty at the School of Education, where he first began his career at CU Boulder 50 years ago as an assistant professor of curriculum and instruction. And beginning this fall, he’ll also serve as senior executive director at the Center for Leadership and the Quigg and Virginia S. Newton Endowed Chair in Leadership. He’ll also help his replacement, Justin Schwartz, transition into the chancellor position.

A native of Steubenville, Ohio, DiStefano earned degrees from Ohio State and West Virginia universities, and he first served as a high school English teacher near his hometown before moving up the ranks at CU Boulder from educator to dean and provost, and finally to chancellor in 2009. DiStefano has held leadership roles in the Association of American Universities, the NCAA and the Pac-12 Athletic Conference, and he is a member of Boulder Community Health’s board of directors.

He has kept close ties to the business community, honored with the Franny Reich Lifetime Achievement Award by the Boulder Chamber at its 2023 Celebration of Leadership.

A strong advocate for strengthening ties among research universities, the private sector and the local, state and federal governments, DiStefano in 2015 worked with Zayo Group CEO Dan Caruso to fund a series of entrepreneurship seed grants ranging from $2,500 to $10,000 and more, and make them available to CU’s faculty and staff. He also has been a fierce advocate for democracy because, as he told Colorado Public Radio in an interview in May, it’s more than just educating students: “I also want them to graduate as good citizens.”

He and his wife, Yvonne, have three daughters and two grandchildren.

Andrew Quillen, Kurt Quillen, Daniel Vonalt

Andrew and Kurt Quillen and Daniel Vonalt are leaders of Longmont’s Main Street Mat Co.

Founded in 1895 as City Steam Laundry, the company became Model Laundry Co. after a merger in 1911.It was purchased in 1954 by Leonard Faucett, Daniel Vonalt’s father. Kurt Quillen’s father Ed was general manager. Kurt Quillen, the firm’s engineer, and Daniel Vonalt joined the company in 1968 and 1971, respectively.

Under Faucett’s leadership, the company first offered rental floor mats.

Daniel Vonalt, now the company’s president emeritus, purchased Model Laundry in 1980, then decided in 1998 to focus the business on floor-mat rental, and the company name was changed to Main Street Mat Co. Kurt Quillen’s son Andrew, who came to the firm in 2004 and is now its president, began purchasing the business in 2011.

For more than a century, Main Street Mat has been a leader in business innovations, including automated material handling systems, water reuse and wastewater treatment. In the 1990s, it installed a cogeneration system that produces all of its electricity and hot water, allowing Main Street Mat to get rid of its boiler and reduce its energy costs.

The company effectively produces three times the electricity that it uses and recently has been selling its excess energy to the city of Longmont. Its wastewater-discharge system persuaded the federal Environmental Protection Agency to deregulate the company. In 2008 it was certified Green by Partners for a Clean Environment (PACE).

Carol and Harvey Yoakum

Longtime Longmont business leaders Carol and Harvey Yoakum are among nine individuals to be inducted into the Boulder County Business Hall of Fame.

The award will be presented to Harvey Yoakum posthumously. He died in March 2023 at age 80.

Carol Yoakum continues the couple’s legacy of mentoring others to community service. She was one of the developers of Meadow Green Farm, a thoroughbred training center. The Yoakums developed Raspberry Hill Business Park, where Stevinson Lexus, Stapp Toyota and other businesses are located.

They were active in philanthropic endeavors in many states. Carol Yoakum was among the signers when the Longmont United Hospital Foundation was formed.

They also founded programs at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility in Kansas and carpeted the Spiritual Life Center there. In Pauls Valley, Oklahoma, the couple started a 32-bed drug and alcohol treatment facility which was later sold to the Chickasaw Nation and is now an adolescent treatment facility.

An Oklahoma native, Harvey Yoakum’s early work was in the beef industry, but three years after arriving in Longmont in 1972, he purchased Korte Tire from the retiring Fred Korte and opened Yoakum Tire & Oil Co. on Main Street.

He became the first president of the Twin Peaks Rotary Club, coached Little League baseball, and organized a group to build a baseball diamond behind Clover Basin Reservoir.

Harvey Yoakum and Carol Oswald Yoakum, his wife of 36 years, worked together to develop several commercial and residential projects in Oklahoma.

Wednesday’s induction ceremony runs from 4:30 to 7 p.m., at 6007 Oleg Ave. in Boulder. Tickets are available at www.halloffamebiz.com.

This article was first published by BizWest, an independent news organization, and is published under a license agreement. © 2024 BizWest Media LLC.