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MAKING HEADLINES
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The St.
Louis region and its companies often make national news. This column
highlights some of the most recent headline grabbers.
Animal Planet Follows Wolves From Sanctuary to Wild
Cable television’s award-winning Animal Planet featured the
successful work of the Wild Canid Survival and Research Center,
known in the St. Louis area as the Wolf Sanctuary in Eureka, Mo.
The segment entitled “Wolf: Return to the Wild,” aired in most viewing
areas the first Saturday in May.
Focus of the program was the recovery and reintroduction of the
Mexican gray wolf to Arizona and New Mexico over the last few years.
The story follows the successes of St. Louis wolves, which lead
all of the current wild packs.
Wolves from the Wild Canid Center traveled to one of the other two
facilities to adjust to the climate and then were released into
the Blue Range Wolf Recovery Area, which includes the Apache-Sitgreaves
National Forest of Arizona and the Gila National Forest of New Mexico
The show featured two well-known wolves from Wild Canid, “Franciso”
and “Sheila,” the parents and grandparents of all of the Mexican
gray wolves who now roam free. Animal Planet showed the last footage
of “Sheila” who died last year at the advanced age of 16. Francisco
still resides at the Wild Canid Center.
The Wild Canid Center, founded by Marlin and Carol Perkins, is celebrating
its 30th anniversary this year. It has housed endangered wolves
and was the first place to successfully breed the Mexican gray wolf
in captivity in 1981. Known as the birthplace of more pups than
any other federal cooperator in the U.S., the Wild Canid Center
also housed the most breeding pairs and is home to more Mexican
grays than any other captive breeding or zoological facility in
the country.
Forbes Features Merisant’s Arnold Donald
Merisant Chairman and CEO, Arnold Donald, was featured in the July
16 edition of Forbes magazine. Despite intense competition
in the sugar substitute business, Forbes notes Merisant’s
Equal product has increased its market share, and Merisant is on
track to book 10 percent earnings growth this year.
Forbes notes that while Merisant’s competitor Johnson & Johnson
is focusing on a youthful market, Merisant “is going after an older
group that’s often neglected: aging boomers with weight or health
problems like diabetics who need a sugar substitute for more than
sweetening tea.” Thus Merisant is targeting publications like Diabetes
Digest, Voice of the Diabetic and the mature versions
of TV Guide and Reader’s Digest.
Black Enterprise Features World Wide Technology as Nation’s Top
African-American Owned Company
World Wide Technology Chairman and CEO, and RCGA Board Executive
Committee member David Steward’s company has been named by Black
Enterprise magazine for the second straight year as the nation’s
largest African-American-owned company. Steward was featured on
the cover of the June issue of Black Enterprise (a photo
taken by his son, David Steward, Jr.). WWT, a distributor of technology
products and services, generated $802 million in revenue in 2000,
up from $413 million in 1999, a 94.2 percent increase.
During Small Business Week in May, Steward was also inducted into
the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Hall of Fame.
Another St. Louis-based company making the Black Enterprise
list of 100 largest businesses owned by African-Americans is Millennium
Digital Media, headed by President and CEO Kelvin Westbrook. Millennium
registered at #27. |
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