BIG THINKERS

ARTS

Dr. Henry Panion III, 50
Producer, Composer, Educator

Henry Panion has conducted and arranged for Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin and the Boston Pops. But the UAB professor of music, recently named as the City of Birmingham’s Cultural Ambassador, is looking for the world stars of tomorrow in the choir lofts of Birmingham churches. Panion’s Gospel Goes Classical project brought some of the nation’s best gospel singers to Birmingham’s Alys Stephens Center to perform with a full orchestra and a choir of local talent.

The album topped Billboard’s Gospel and Classical Crossover charts simultaneously. Panion’s big idea is to expand on that success by establishing a music industry in Birmingham that draws from the local talent found in Birmingham’s gospel choirs and allows them to grow at home. “When you speak about the opportunity to develop an industry, you have two things you can do. One, you can grow it from the bottom up, like Motown; or you can identify the industry where a lot of people are involved and do things to make the industry come to you.”

RELIGION

Joel Brooks, 36
Pastor, Redeemer Community Church

Joel Brooks’ church is not a building. In fact, it doesn’t even have a building. Each Sunday, members of the Redeemer Community Church meet in rented space in a Crestwood community center. But much of the work of the church happens through home groups and community groups scattered across the city. “When you are not so fi xated on a physical space or facility, you can invite people to meet the church. Church is not a building, it is a group of people and it’s hard to pin us down.” The approach also allows the church to dedicate resources to cultural renewal in areas like Woodlawn, where Redeemer Community Church supports Cornerstone Schools of Alabama and the YWCA’s new Interfaith Hospitality House for homeless families.

EDUCATION

Alex Steinmiller, 66
President, Holy Family Cristo Rey School

For the better part of four decades, Alex Steinmiller worked with kids—kids in gangs, kids in failing schools. Two years ago, after Ensley’s historic Holy Family Catholic School all but collapsed, the Chicago-born priest shepherded the school into the Cristo Rey Network.

The reborn Holy Family Cristo Rey Catholic High School now boasts a 100-percent graduation rate for the past two years and 100-percent college enrollment. Steinmiller credits the school’s Corporate Internship Program, through which students work one day a week in the offi ce of a corporate partner. Their pay, or stipend, is used to cover tuition costs. “I see students who come to us with very limited horizons. The cycle of poverty eats up the value of long term planning and perseverance,” says Steinmiller. “Because of that entry-level corporate job once a week, our youngsters are more motivated and apply themselves in academics.”

SCIENCE

Doug Watson, Ph.D., 55
Biologist

What does a man from Utah know about shellfi sh? UAB biologist Doug Watson not only knows what makes crabs tick, he’s fi gured out what makes them molt. The specialist in endocrinology has identifi ed the hormone that prevents molting in blue crabs. He is now developing a blocker for that hormone that, if successful, would allow crabbers along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts to expand the $50- million seasonal soft shell crab business into a year-round industry.

“It’s basically right now a ‘mom and pop’ industry. It would certainly change the lives of those who are currently involved in [soft shell crabbing].”

FOOD

Chip Brantley, 36
Author and Founder, cookthink.com

Chip Brantley is a student of the process of thought. The trait is refl ected in the name of his online resource for everyday meals, cookthink.com. Brantley and his business partner, fellow Birmingham native Brys Stephens, tried to reproduce the process of thinking through what to have for dinner: What mood am I in? What ingredients do I have on hand? How much time do I have? Inspired by the online personalized internet radio site Pandora, cookthink.com uses those factors to suggest what’s for dinner. Brantley is also the author of The Perfect Fruit, a non-fi ction book about the pluot, a plumapricot hybrid. He does not limit his thinking to food, however.

Brantley is working with friend Clay Byars to create a writing center for kids in downtown Woodlawn that will entice them to become excited about writing.

PHILANTHROPY

Kate Nielsen, 55
President, Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham

The days of the Community Chest are gone. No longer are philanthropists content with entrusting community foundations with their earnings, to be divided among deserving charities. As part of the 50th anniversary celebration of the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, Kate Nielsen is tasking her organization with carving out a new role for itself: the role of catalyst for projects that will transform the region. As a fi rst shot at this new tact, Nielsen spearheaded a joint fundraising campaign for the Three Parks Initiative in support of Railroad Reservation Park, Red Mountain Park and Ruff ner Mountain Nature Center.

While the foundation will continue to respond to the needs of the non-profi t community through grants, it will also serve to identify big ideas, putting in the fi rst dollars and convening other corporate and foundation funders to support the projects. “Success breeds success. When this community can see visible progress like our parks, it creates an appetite and a confi dence to do more.”

PUBLIC OFFICE

Tony Petelos, 56
Mayor, City of Hoover

The goal was not to save the earth. The goal was to save Hoover’s sewers from grease clogs. Two and a half years ago, Mayor Tony Petelos directed city workers to begin collecting used cooking oil from residents at Hoover’s fi re stations. The city now processes the oil for use in a fl eet of biodiesel vehicles. The haul so far has been a costeffective 35,000 gallons at less than a dollar a gallon. More than a hundred cities have visited to learn from the fi rst-of-its-kind program. The Environmental Protection Agency is using it as a model. Next on the horizon, a pilot program for turning the city’s wood waste into ethanol at a west Alabama plant. At full production, the city will be selfsuffi cient, able to provide enough waste to produce more ethanol than it can use. “When you can take a waste product like wood and create fuel for it for a lot less than what it takes to use crude oil, it’s a much cleaner fuel [and] it’s a ‘win, win’ all the way around.”

A BIG IDEA IN BANKING

Sometimes the best ideas come through collaboration. Recently a group of young professionals participating in Project Corporate Leadership identified a program designed to make banking services available to the “unbanked.”

Last month, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reported nearly a third of Alabamians have little or no access to banking. According to a Pew Research Study, 48,000 of them live in the Birmingham metropolitan area.

The unbanked are frequent victims of theft and robbery and spend hundreds of dollars a year on fees at check cashing services, payday loan operations and pawn shops. The trend prompted the group to devise Bank on Birmingham, a concept modeled after a successful program in San Francisco. The group has joined with the Federal Reserve to convene area bank executives and sell them on the concept. All banks would offer the same low or no cost accounts, no minimum balances, accept Mexican and Guatemalan identifi cation cards, and allow customers to open accounts despite past checking account mishandling. The products would be marketed collectively using the program’s free marketing materials.

“Is it going to make the banks a bunch of extra money? Probably not. But it is just a consistent way to reach out to everyone in a community,” says Brannon Dawkins, Project Corporate Leadership participant and director of communications for the Birmingham Business Alliance.

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Forrest Fulton, 33
Architect, Forrest Fulton Architecture

What do you do with the empty big box stores that litter aging suburbs? Auburn- and Harvard-trained architect Forrest Fulton has an award-winning plan for reversing the function of taking abandoned groceries—taking them from food retailer to food producer. The Birmingham designer won third place in the Reburbia competition, a design contest from Dwell magazine and inhabit.com dedicated to re-envisioning the suburbs. “Suburbia is this consumption engine.

It is made to consume things instead of producing. So I wanted to return the suburbs to a sustainable economic engine.” Fulton’s plan imagines suburbanites harvesting their own veggies from a parking lot turned urban farm. Step inside the reworked interior and they will fi nd a high-end organic grocery and restaurant under a new green roof. Next step: Building a profi table business model for the concept.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Brian Cauble, 31
iPhone App Developer

Brian Cauble’s iPhone is only occasionally used for mere telephony. Thanks to apps he and his Appsolute Genius partner have developed, it’s an alarm clock that plays songs from his iTunes library, a digital photo frame synced to his Facebook photo albums and a pocket guide to the nearest McAlister’s Deli.

One year ago, Cauble sensed the potential of the smart phone development market would outpace the traditional software fi eld. His company, Appsolute Genius, remains the only fi rm in Birmingham doing smartphone development full-time. “Is it hot right now, and will that cool down? Probably. Is it possible someone can come around and compete with the iPhone? Sure.

But mobile is not going away.

Once you have a mobile that can do what the iPhone does, you can’t go back to a regular phone.”

REGIONAL COOPERATION

JAY GRINNEY, 58
President and CFO, HealthSouth Corporation

Jay Grinney knows how to right a sinking ship. The career hospital executive was brought in to pull the scandal-ridden HealthSouth from the brink of collapse. Now he is off ering up a bold, if controversial, solution to the problems that plague the City of Birmingham and Jeff erson County: Merger. Grinney points to cities with consolidated governments—Charlotte, N.C., Nashville, Tenn., and Jacksonville, Fla.—as examples to be followed.

“For our region to grow and prosper, for economic development to bring employment and growth opportunities to people in this area, we need to acknowledge that city and county destinies are inextricably linked.”

Grinney’s plan calls for the two governments to be brought together and led by a professional county manager. The stability, he argues, would attract new businesses, jobs and growth.