Above & Beyond: Where Excellence Meets Elevation

Send us Fan Mail Pam Johnson had the option to take over an established insurance agency in Scottsdale. She turned it down, opened her own from zero in Gilbert, and knocked on an estimated 10,000 doors to find her first clients. Pam began her State Farm career in 1993 as a fire underwriter in Colorado, after a triple major at the University of Texas and an actuarial career that never got past the first exam. She moved to Arizona, spent time supporting agents in the field, and on September 1, ...

Send us Fan Mail In October 2019, Robin and Kristy Belley published their first issue of Gilbert City Lifestyle Magazine. Four months later, the world shut down. Plenty of people told them a print magazine would never make it. Seven years later, they're still telling Gilbert's best stories every month. Kristy spent years in sales and marketing with The Arizona Republic and Dex. Robin has spent three decades as a data engineer, from Y2K remediation in Arkansas to General Motors' innovation cen...

Send us Fan Mail Brands like Netflix, HBO and Peacock spend millions building sets for live events, and then leave the most important part to chance: the people. Terence Leclere is an immersive actor, TEDx speaker and founder of Metaforyou, the experiential consultancy behind guest interactions at activations including the Saturday Night Live 50th anniversary experience and Peacock and Blumhouse's Overnightmare at The Stanley Hotel. He arrived in New York from France at nine years old, a "lit...

Send us Fan Mail 36 postal addresses. Three continents. One Army scholarship lost in a single week. Elaine Kessler is the Director of Foundation and Community Impact at the Gilbert Chamber of Commerce, president of Gilbert Sister Cities, a Flinn-Brown Fellow and Gilbert's 2019 Businesswoman of the Year. She is also a photographer, educator and speaker whose message is simple: the tension you avoid is often where the growth is. In this episode, Elaine shares how a childhood between...

Send us Fan Mail Fired on a phone call in a parking lot, Charles Shepherd went home to a rented room and decided to sell everything he owned and bet on himself. Three years later, his company, Alpha Appliance Repair, holds an A+ with the Better Business Bureau and has won Best of the Desert Community Choice Awards in both the East and West Valley three years running. The last time it won, it beat the company that let him go. Getting there took 20 years of detours: he left high school as a sop...