QUIET POV
Some of the most powerful people around are those you haven’t heard much about, but they’re often the people who keep things moving and growing—and as a result, are shaping Kansas City. Here are 10 people of note who are exerting a quiet kind of power.
By Ian Ritter, David Hodes, Hampton Stevens and Dawnya Bartsch
Tam Singer
CEO, Great Plains SPCA
Singer and other animal-welfare advocates created the Spay/Neuter Collaborative of Kansas City last year and have “fixed” 1,000 animals free of charge.
Not all chief executives are tall white guys. Head of SPCA Tam Singer’s five-foot stature is fitting, though, because she is tasked with raising money and advocating for literal underdogs.
The U.K. native has been chief executive of the Merriam-based nonprofit animal shelter since 2018. The facility contracts with Overland Park, Leawood, Lenexa, Prairie Village, Shawnee, Bonner Springs, Lake Quivira, the Johnson County Parks Department and the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department, meaning the no-kill shelter seems to always be full. But thanks to the tireless fundraising efforts of Singer and her staff, resources at SPCA, which receives about 5,000 animals annually, keep meeting the challenges.
“We found a vet!” Singer proudly says when talking about the year’s accomplishments. Shelter-doctor vacancies aren’t easy to fill in a tough labor market, where salaries for the job top $100,000, up from $75,000 when Singer began her tenure.
Constant dog arrivals at the shelter are now a reality, including traditionally fancier breeds, like poodles, due to a combination of pandemic-era overbreeding and the rising pet costs that confront many lower-income pet owners, she says. Singer and other area animal-welfare leaders created the Spay/Neuter Collaborative of Kansas City last year and have “fixed” 1,000 animals free of charge around the metro. – Ian Ritter
Buddy Lahl
CEO, Missouri Restaurant Association
Buddy Lahl is on the move. Again. And this time, he’s embracing not just kitchen and general restaurant duties, but also legislative powers to help the cause of all state restaurants.
Lahl was the director of dining operations at Kingswood Senior Living in south Kansas City for over nine years, from 2014 to 2023. In 2023, he took on a new role as the CEO of the Missouri Restaurant Association, representing 12,000 Missouri restaurants.
Lahl got his start in the restaurant business in Quincy, Illinois, working in his family’s restaurant, Doc’s Flame, in the 1970s.
After working in local restaurants while finishing his education, Lahl moved on to Myron Green, first as a kitchen manager, then regional director. He oversaw 60 restaurants for 22 years in the role.
The MRA is a powerful organization. It provides a voice for the state’s restaurant and hospitality businesses as well as a variety of services in what Lahl calls the three main components of the industry: education, hospitality and government affairs. The MRA has had a number of legislative victories, including introducing legislation ending the sales tax on tips.
According to an article about him in the Quincy newspaper the Herald-Whig, Lahl is fascinated with the legislative process and will join in lobbying efforts at the state and federal level on issues important to the state’s restaurants, from minimum wage to menu labeling requirements. – David Hodes
Amber Arnett-Bequeaith
President, West Bottoms Business District
Vice-President, Full Moon Productions
Amber Arnett-Bequeaith has been in the haunted house business for a long time. As a child, she slept in a coffin as one of the players for her families’ commercial haunted house. It’s an unusual multi-generational family business, for sure. It’s also one that brought Arnett-Bequeith’s clan to Kansas City’s historic West Bottoms in the early 1980s as they were looking to grow.
Once there, Arnett-Bequeith and her family, who own around a dozen West Bottoms buildings, set about revitalizing the neighborhood in earnest. Through the creation of a business district and other entities, Arnett-Bequeaith and her squad of business owners and West Bottoms advocates have ushered in a new era for the industrial district that now claims antique stores, cafes, restaurants and entertainment venues as businesses.
The group started with simple things, such as putting out open dumpsters for everyone to use for free rather than locking them up. A program to kill the weeds on city property was created, as well as a program to mitigate graffiti. The graffiti abatement program includes not only painting over it but also using cameras to try and identify those who do it and then prosecuting. In the early days of the graffiti program, a KU professor was one of the graffiti vandals caught, Arnett-Bequeaith says.
“People need to feel safe,” she says. These programs help with that.
The former home of Kansas City’s stockyards, this unique and historic district is really coming into its own. The programs and advocacy helped Arnett-Bequeaith start First Fridays (really weekends), where these local businesses throw open their doors, creating a party-like atmosphere; the popular street festival Boulevardia; and, of course, the seasonal Halloween haunts.
The West Bottoms is about to experience an influx of development, with New York-based developer SomeraRoad planning to renovate many of the West Bottoms buildings—several of which Arnett-Bequeaith and her family sold to SomeraRoad as part of a larger vision for the district.
Arnett-Bequeaith, her family and the West Bottoms Business District are actively working with SomeraRoad to help the area grow while maintaining the neighborhood’s character. – dawnya bartsch
Missouri took notice of Kansas City’s transit hub work along the river and last year dedicated $30 million to its future growth, a feather in Grenville’s cap. “It’ll be a poster child for changing the way we move freight.”
Richard Grenville
Vice President of Multimodal Logistics, Port KC
Richard Grenville admits that much of what he’s working on at Port KC is part of a “multi-generational project” that will take years after his retirement to see through. The Port’s longtime vice president of multimodal logistics, who has about 50 years of experience in nautical concerns, has spent more than a decade trying to transform Kansas City and other ports along the Missouri River into a bona fide trade corridor with barge traffic.
Grenville, who is originally from London, where he went to nautical college after naval training, spearheaded the significant planning and implementation of the Missouri River Terminal project—415 acres along the southeast corner of where the state-named waterway intersects with the north-flowing Blue River. The vision that Grenville, who is transitioning into an advisory role with the Port, and others have is an intermodal facility providing a hub for commerce shipped via three transportation modes: river, rail and highway. Selling truck-reliant businesses on water transport is tough, but Grenville is adept at showing how working barge traffic into the supply chain can save future transportation and energy costs. The State of Missouri took notice of MRT’s potential and last year dedicated $30 million to its future growth, a feather in Grenville’s cap. “It’ll be a poster child for changing the way we move freight,” Grenville says.
Grenville’s KC Port work is a major component in revitalizing the city’s waterfront and making it financially viable for the city. – I.r.
“There’s $400 million worth of investment out there that I’ve got to make sure is playing on a safe, quality baseball field.”
Trevor Vance
Head Groundskeeper, Kansas City Royals
Ah, baseball. The crack of a bat, the roar of the crowd, the hum of a riding mower.
Fact is, you can’t have the first two without the last. That’s where Trevor Vance comes in. Inducted into the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame in 2022, Vance is the senior director of grounds and landscaping for the Kansas City Royals. In short, he’s the field general, and has been working in the field, literally, since the World Series year of 1985.
Vance learned from the master, the great George Toma.
“George taught us a lot of good stuff,” Vance says. “He ran by the mantra, ‘And then some.’ You do the job and then some.”
Kansas City, he says, is not an easy place to be a groundskeeper. “We can get as cold as Minnesota. We can get as hot as Texas. We have four seasons, and you never know when they’re going to show up.”
Obviously, the field has to be beautiful, but player safety tops Vance’s list. One slip, after all, could cost a team their season and a lot of money.
“The Royals have a $100 million payroll, and the Yankees have a $300 million payroll,” he says, noting the Royals’ last battle of the season. “So there’s $400 million worth of investment out there that I’ve got to make sure is playing on a safe, quality baseball field.”
Like any good leader, Vance is quick to credit his team. “I have a crew that’s been with me, some of them 25 to 30 years. We’re a family. As long as I design the right play and they execute it, we all win.”
Those winners include the fans of KC. We get to enjoy the prettiest field in sports. – hampton stevens
Steve Tulipana
Co-owner, RecordBar
The visual arts are how we decorate space, but music is how we decorate time. In Kansas City, Steve Tulipana has been decorating time for two decades. Tulipana is co-owner, talent buyer and music curator for a trio of the city’s best venues: MiniBar, Lemonade Park and the flagship, RecordBar, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary in 2025.
A Liberty High School and UMKC grad, Tulipana started as a touring musician with bands like Season to Risk and Roman Numerals. He still performs, but his greatest contribution to KC’s cultural life is unquestionably the incredibly long and diverse roster of talent he’s helped bring to town. It’s literally thousands of acts, many long before they were famous, including The National, St. Vincent, The Afghan Whigs, Mumford and Sons, Gary Numan, Black Flag, Billie Eilish and Lizzo.
Maybe just as important, Tulipana helped create welcoming, creative environments in those venues.
“We’ve always tried hard to have local support on these things, to have the local artists open for some of these touring bands,” Tulipana says. “One of the things that I’m proud of is that I will take risks, and I will lose money on artists that I think Kansas City needs to see because they’re either iconic or challenging and important to what music should be. It is art, you know, and that’s something that we always cared about, and I’m proud of that.” – h.s.
TYLER ENDERS
Co-founder, Made in KC
Tyler Enders is in the good-vibes business. He can make you feel like you’re the only person on the planet, even when you’re in a crowded room, then seconds later casually grab a mic and take control of an exu – berant crowd with his chilled-out demeanor. And not just any room, but a room composed of the biggest names in KC business.
It’s fitting that the co-founder of Made in KC has become a big business name by being one of the city’s biggest cheerleaders. His various business ventures have grown from a pop-up selling locally made prod – ucts to the operator of retail spaces and cafes around the metro. His shops urge visitors to relax, linger and have a locally roasted coffee or beer while they decide which “Heart KC” shirt—or something else made by a local artisan—to purchase.
Enders and his partners also own and operate retail venues that double as community meeting spaces, including Fairway’s longtime Rainy Day Books and two Front Range Coffeehouse & Provisions cafes in Fair – way and Brookside that have a ski-lodge atmosphere. The Made in KC empire is continuing to grow with other businesses as well, such as Leawood’s Outta the Blue cafe and Ludo’s bar, where patrons come to play shuffleboard.
Regardless of the enterprise, they all have one thing in common: they push civic pride. This theme and Enders’ enthusiastic nature has earned the KU School of Business graduate spots on the KCMO City Plan Com – mission, Visit KC and the Plaza District Council. – I.R
REV. DUKE TUFTY
Senior Minister and CEO, Unity Temple
“I’m not political at all. I’d rather stay in the back, just get things done. I can get things done easier if I’m not looked at as a power person.”
The story of Duke Tufty’s life would make a compelling movie about struggles with temptations. It comes with a happy ending.
Tufty was a successful car salesman at his dad’s place in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, in 1973, when he was just 24. Maybe too successful.
He moved to Kansas City in 1978 to work at another car dealership. He sank into a cocaine-fueled lifestyle. He overdosed. His car sales work collapsed.
He questioned his life and his spirituality and thought there was a better way. He found a 12-step recovery program at Unity Temple and began to put his life back together. He was ordained a minister at Unity in 1989 and, in January 1991, became a senior minister and CEO at the church. “Dealing with drug addicts, I can see myself in them,” he says.
Tufty offers comfort, mostly to homeless people needing food and shelter but also to recovering alco – holics. But it’s not just them. He also serves prominent Kansas Citians seeking spiritual enlightenment. “Yes, that happens quite often,” he says.
Some of that counseling leads to other things, like the time he worked with a wealthy Kansas Citian who left Unity a $1.5 million donation upon his death because of Tufty’s gentle counsel. “I’m not political at all,” Tufty says. “I’d rather stay in the back, just get things done. I can get things done easier if I’m not looked at as a power person.” – D.H
CHRISTOPHER WARREN
Vice President of Curatorial Affairs and Chief Curator, WWI Museum
A building apart from the main gallery space is being created to highlight the memorial’s last 100 years and will open in 2026, just in time to celebrate the memorial’s centennial.
If you want to understand how seriously the leadership of KCMO’s National WWI Museum and Memorial takes its collection, give Christopher Warren’s resume a peek. Arlington National Cemetery, the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution are a few of the organizations where he held leadership roles before becoming vice president of curatorial affairs and chief curator at the WWI Museum two years ago.
Shortly after he took on the role, the museum’s administration announced major multi-year upgrades to its main gallery. Now, Warren and others are focused on those renovations, which are to be finished by Memo – rial Day 2025. The renovations will culminate in a wartime football (soccer) exhibit to coincide with the 2026 FIFA World Cup games played at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium the following year.
The international sports event couldn’t come to KC at a better time, as 2026 is also the WWI Museum’s centennial. Warren is curating a separate building from the main gallery on the memorial’s grounds that focuses on the last 100 years at the 47-acre site and its 217-foot limestone tower, a KC landmark. Meanwhile, the museum grounds are a planned focal point for ancillary World Cup events, much like they are for Super Bowl parades, giving Warren a stage bound to make other curators jealous. “I’m really excited about the next two years here,” Warren says. – I.R
DOUG LUTHER
Executive Director, Homes Associations of Kansas City
If you want to organize your fellow homeowners to address an issue, your go-to to get it done is the Homes Association. For example, residents of The Renaissance Place Homes Association in northeast Kansas City met recently to discuss the bill about freezing property taxes for seniors.
Taking part in that discussion was Doug Luther, the executive director of the Homes Associations of Kansas City. Luther wears many hats in his role, such as advising on senate bills and other laws, issuing credit cards to new board members or advocating for better trash service.
Luther, who has been in his current role since 1971, has been around the block in community service, as the saying goes.
He was the assistant city administrator for the city of Prairie Village for over 12 years, from 1995 to 2007, which gave him direct access to the mayor and other members of the city’s management staff.
The HAKC, formed in 1944, is an alliance of 73 home – owners associations that includes homeowners on both sides of the state line in Kansas City.
Luther is in an increasingly powerful position. Accord – ing to an article in the Los Angeles Times , homeowners associations are evolving into quasi-governmental bodies with the authority to decide such matters as what color to paint your house. On its website, the HAKC wrote that some people call homes associations the most rep – resentative and responsive form of democracy found in America today . – D.H
