Induction Year: 2024

Rob Burton

  • November 21st, 2024

From an early age, Rob Burton’s father instilled in him a strong work ethic and a sense of pride in a job well done. “My father taught me to work, and that work is a noble thing, and an important part of life, and something you should enjoy,” he said. One of the first hands-on lessons in hard, honest work came at the age of 13, when Burton joined his father, then president of Hoar Construction, to work on a job site for the first time. He spent the summer cutting sod, while watching, learning, and gaining an appreciation for building that would drive him forever.

Starting at that early age, Burton worked for many years to learn all aspects of the business. From general labor to carpentry, and later in estimating, accounting, and project management, he learned all aspects of the complex building process. After graduating from Auburn University with a degree in building science, he held positions of increasing responsibility in the company until he was named president in 1996 and CEO in 2001. He never forgot the importance of the hands-on work that his father expected.

Under Burton’s leadership, Hoar diversified, opening offices in Houston, Orlando, Nashville, Austin, Washington, D.C., Atlanta, North Texas, and Chattanooga, and establishing a top-50- ranked national program management company, Hoar Program Management. Hoar Program Management has been a trusted partner to The University of Alabama for 20 years, helping to manage more than $2 billion in capital building projects to facilitate the university’s rapid growth.

Hoar also expanded beyond geographic regions, increasingly taking on larger and more complex projects, growing beyond the firm’s beginnings in retail to build in healthcare, entertainment, higher education, multifamily, mixed-use, hospitality, industrial, government, and more, all while significantly increasing revenues. In fact, in Burton’s first decade of leadership, he doubled the company’s revenue. Burton received the Associated Builders and Contractors of Alabama Cornerstone Award in 2011. In 2021, Hoar launched RPI Rentals, with offices in Alabama and Texas, to offer equipment rentals, materials, and supplies delivery to projects of all sizes.

With Burton at the helm, Hoar has powered many notable projects in Alabama, including hospitals like Children’s of Alabama and the expansion and transformation of Alabama’s top higher learning institutions like The University of Alabama, Auburn University, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Hoar has helped preserve Alabama’s history through work on the Robert S. Vance Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse as well as the Historic Federal Reserve Building. The company has helped bring jobs to citizens of Alabama by partnering with Mercedes, Gestamp, Buffalo Rock, and Airbus. Additionally, the company is consistently listed in the top 200 on the Top 400 General Contractors rankings by Engineering News-Record. In 2017, the firm was named Company of the Year by Construction Dive magazine.

Fueled by a deep conviction that all this success in the industry is ultimately driven by people, Burton’s leadership has also emphasized the support and development of employees. Accordingly, Hoar Construction, Hoar Project Management, and RPI Rentals have all been repeatedly certified as a great place to work by various publications.

A passionate supporter of Birmingham and the greater community, Burton has served on boards of various organizations, including the Birmingham Business Alliance, the Birmingham Zoo, Lakeshore Foundation, Protective Life, and American Contractors Insurance Group, among others. He is currently chairman of the board at The Hope Institute, which helps schools cultivate the character of students. Burton also founded the Hoar Community Foundation in 2004, a fund that has donated millions to charities that further the firm’s core values in areas where employees live and work, all guided by Hoar employee requests and involvement.

Burton and his wife, Nancy, live in Birmingham, Alabama and have four children and nine grandchildren.

Raymond J. Harbert

  • November 20th, 2024

Raymond Harbert’s lifelong entrepreneurial pursuits began early, at age 15, when he founded Penbryn Hill Catering. Undeterred by his initial lack of a driver’s license, Harbert enlisted other drivers to travel to and from client houses, deliver food, and park guest automobiles at events. This tendency to energetically pursue opportunities, learning as he went, continued throughout his life. For instance, when he initially entered Auburn University as an engineering major, he did not plan to switch to business, pursuing interests in real estate and finance and eventually earning a bachelor’s in industrial management. And when he took his first job after graduation as a computer programmer, he did not anticipate that a few short years later, in 1990, at the tender age of 31, he would be promoted to president and CEO of Harbert Corporation, a multi-billion-dollar diversified conglomerate.

From a young age, Harbert had shown interest in investments and finance. He eagerly followed his father’s (John Harbert, the founder of Harbert Construction Company) investment stories at the dinner table, and once found, as a teenager, his father’s copy of Joseph Wechsberg’s The Merchant Bankers, which led to a fascination with 19th century merchant banks and trading houses: Rothschild, Warburg, Baring, Schroeder, and J.P. Morgan & Company. So after the sale, in 1993, of Harbert Construction Company, the original company started by his father 50 years before, Harbert launched Harbert Management Corporation, the first multi-alternative asset investment management firm in Alabama. The new company would manage all Harbert Corporation’s assets for a percentage fee, and Harbert Corporation, in turn, would provide a $3 million line of credit, secured by any eventual inheritance the younger Harbert might receive.

Naysayers warned that nothing like this had been yet attempted in Alabama, and indeed, that neither Harbert nor his small team had ever managed or worked for an investment firm. Harbert, however, who started as a caterer and then worked as a computer programmer, did not see why he could not be a successful investor, and was willing to bet his inheritance on it. After all, he believed in curiosity, and letting it drive lifelong learning. And possibly more importantly, he believed in persistence, often quoting the Benjamin Franklin proverb that “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” As his business partner Charles D. Miller put it, Harbert “had the courage to make tough decisions and chart a new course which ultimately led to the formation of Harbert Management Corporation.” In the end, despite some difficult years, including the successful weathering of 2008’s Great Recession, Harbert and Ben Franklin proved the naysayers wrong: Today, Harbert Management Corporation oversees ten different investment strategies from eight U.S. and four European offices with over $8 billion of assets under management.

Harbert serves on the boards and executive committees of the Robert Meyer Foundation, Children’s of Alabama, and Birmingham Business Alliance, and is chairman of the Newcomen Society of Alabama. He is also a trustee emeritus of Auburn University, where the college of business is named for him following a transformative gift in 2013. He previously served on the board of the Alabama Trust Fund and is a past member of Leadership Alabama. In 2006, Harbert was awarded the regional Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award for Financial Services, and he was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 2015. Friends describe Harbert as both a fierce negotiator in the boardroom and a committed mentor outside of it, encouraging interns, new employees, and children of friends to “find their passion” as he found his.

Raymond and Kathryn Harbert are active philanthropists, having made significant gifts both in time and capital to numerous organizations including Auburn University, Red Mountain Theatre, Children’s of Alabama, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and United Way of Central Alabama, where they were awarded the United Way Tocqueville Society Award in 2018.

The Harberts have three children and nine grandchildren and live in Birmingham, Alabama.

Thomas A. Harris

  • November 20th, 2024

Thomas Harris is a retired investment banker and entrepreneur who has founded several successful ventures. After graduating from Auburn University in 1971 with a business degree, Harris worked for First Alabama Bancshares, now Regions, as head of national accounts and business development.

In 1987 he became founder and president of Merchant Capital, a leading investment banking firm based in Montgomery, with offices throughout the Southeast. The firm has managed thousands of bond issues financing governmental entities, education, infrastructure, and economic development projects supporting and enhancing growth throughout Alabama. Under Harris’ leadership, Merchant Capital was named the number one investment bank in Alabama by issue volume for over 20 straight years by Thomson Reuters. Merchant Capital was acquired by Stifel Nicolaus Financial Corporation in 2014, and since then, Stifel has become the number one ranked investment banker of municipal bonds in the U.S. for the last 10 years.

In 2021, Harris founded Birmingham Recovery Center and Longleaf Wellness and Recovery Centers, which provides treatment for substance use and mental health disorders with four facilities across Alabama. “We want to make high-quality mental health and substance use treatment options more accessible for the people of Alabama because one death caused by alcohol or drug addiction is one too many,” Harris said in a 2023 interview. In 2023 he partnered in launching YHN Media Group, LLC, which owns several Alabama-based media outlets, including 256 Today News, Yellowhammer News, Soul Grown, and YHN Radio Network.

A native Alabamian who grew up in the Black Belt region, so named for its rich, dark soil, Harris remembers quail hunting as a boy, when the birds were everywhere. “You didn’t need a dog,” he told Buckmasters in a 2022 video interview. “You just needed to start walking.” When cattle farming began to drive out indigenous wildlife, it awakened a conservationist impulse in Harris. He saw the potential to reclaim some of the Black Belt land, starting with Gusto, his own 1800-acre preserve in Lowndes County. “You can turn a cattle property into a wildlife preserve,” he said. “It just takes some time.” Harris used best practices to remove invasive grasses like bermuda, fescue, and bahia, releasing the warm-season native grasses, and in turn, restoring the grasslands to its natural beauty.

In 2009, to further conservation and drive revenue in the economically depressed Black Belt region, Harris founded and now serves as president of Alabama Black Belt Adventures, a state-funded nonprofit organization committed to promoting outdoor recreation and tourism opportunities in the 23 counties of the Alabama Black Belt region. He was recently named to the national board of directors of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever, and in 2019, was named Alabama Wildlife Governor’s Conservationist of the Year. Harris serves on numerous boards, including the Alabama Wildlife Federation, the Alabama Forest Land Trust, and Junior Achievement of Alabama. He is also the founding sponsor of the Wetumpka Wildlife Art Festival.

Harris and his wife, Cindy, reside in Lowndes County and have four children and seven grandchildren.

Dr. Marnix E. Heersink

  • November 20th, 2024

Marnix Heersink is an eye surgeon by training, but an entrepreneur at heart. It started early. After moving with his family from his native Netherlands to Canada, at the age of 10 he worked a paper route, earning around five dollars a week delivering the local paper The Hamilton Spectator. Later, in medical school, he found time to purchase, then renovate a house, rent it, and finally sell it at a profit. Throughout his life, Heersink has balanced this competitive, entrepreneurial drive with a desire to improve the lives of people.

Heersink played basketball for his high school and played center for the University of Western Ontario. He was invited to play for Canada in the 1972 Olympics and was inducted into the University of Western Ontario Sports Hall of Fame as well as the Burlington Sports Hall of Fame. “He was the best to ever play at Western,” said friend Col. Dr. Ron Foxcroft, longtime international referee and the inventor of the famous Fox Whistle. “He could have played in the NBA.”

But Heersink already had his sights set on medicine. When he was a boy of about sixteen, Heersink remembers his father sitting down with him to discover a career path. At that time, the young Heersink was unsure what he wanted to do, but soon, it became clear to his father that Heersink wanted a career focused on helping people. He credits that realization as the beginning of his interest in medicine.

After earning his bachelor’s (magna cum laude) and medical degrees at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and following a surgical internship in Montreal, Heersink completed an ophthalmology residency and an anterior segment surgery fellowship, both in Philadelphia, where he met his wife, Mary. In 1978, the Heersinks moved to Dothan, Alabama. “We had in our possession a used car, some clothes, and a lot of love and hope. And great educations,” he said in an interview.

Early on, Heersink remembers taking a risk and buying a 10,000 square foot office building in Dothan for his practice. Overwhelmed by the purchase, he suggested to his wife that they should live in the building and have his office downstairs. That idea was a non-starter. But from those humble beginnings, he would go on to cofound Eye Center South — which in the decades since has grown to 12 locations across Alabama, Georgia and Florida — and then open Health Center South, a 140,000-square-foot, state-ofthe-art medical tower complex for doctors of all specialties in Dothan. Heersink is also an owner or agent of many other companies, including real estate holdings and manufacturing entities in the United States and abroad.

He has taught and lectured internationally, participated in research studies, and is a fellow and member of multiple professional organizations including the American Academy of Ophthalmology, International College of Surgeons, American College of Surgeons, American Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgery and The Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons. Heersink is certified by the American Board of Ophthalmology and the American Board of Eye Surgery.

Committed philanthropists, the Heersinks have funded numerous scholarships and fellowships at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Troy Business School, and Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia. They established the Wiregrass Pathway to Optometry scholarship. Heersink also founded the Eye Education Foundation, an educational nonprofit for eye care professionals, in 1984. Finally, Heersink has served or serves on numerous nonprofit boards. His commitment to philanthropic gift giving stems from and is inspired by a Native American saying: “We have all been warmed by fires that we did not light.”

Recently, the family made transformative gifts to two universities: the University of Alabama at Birmingham, which named its medical school the Marnix E. Heersink School of Medicine, and McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, which resulted in the creation of the Marnix E. Heersink School of Biomedical Innovation and Entrepreneurship. By supporting the two young universities, Heersink hopes to encourage entrepreneurial innovation and collaboration across national borders.

He holds an honorary doctorate from McMaster University.

Heersink and Mary live in Dothan, Alabama, and have six children and 11 grandchildren.

Thomas H. Lowder

  • November 20th, 2024

In 1946, Thomas Lowder’s father was asked by the Alabama Farm Bureau to create an affordable fire insurance company for rural residents of the state. Edward Lowder launched Alabama Farm Bureau Insurance Company with just $10,000 and a secretary. You may now know the company as ALFA. As boys, Thomas and his brothers, James and Robert, watched their father create businesses from the ground up, with the insurance company as a foundation.

When teaching his sons about business, Edward often compared it to football. “He’d tell me that touchdowns are your long-term goal, but then, you have first downs to work toward in between, which are your short-term goals,” Thomas told Birmingham Business Journal. Edward also taught his sons to maintain strong ties with banks and lenders. But Thomas learned just as much on the job. The self-described “saleman of the family,” he recalled, in a Wall Street Journal article, “tagging along summers with an apartment agent who always carried two things in his pocket when showing units to a prospective tenant: a piece of chalk, to cover up any scratches in the paint, and a can of aerosol spray to freshen the air.”

These early experiences prepared Thomas Lowder for the leadership role that he would later assume. He is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Colonial Properties Trust, a New York Stock Exchange-listed, multi-family-focused real estate investment trust, with commercial assets in the Sunbelt region of the United States.

After graduating with honors from Auburn University with a Bachelor of Science degree, Lowder assumed the leadership role at Colonial Properties Trust in 1976. He took the business public in 1993. With Lowder as CEO, the company grew from $475 million in total market capitalization to $5.3 billion before he retired from active management in 2006 to care for his wife, Jarman, who was suffering from early onset Alzheimer’s.

Lowder returned as CEO in December 2008 to lead the company after the financial recession and Wall Street crisis. After 20 years as a public company, Colonial Properties merged with Mid-America Apartment Communities in 2013 and later Post Properties, Inc. to create one of the largest and most successful apartment real estate investment trusts on the NYSE with a market capitalization over $16 billion. Lowder continues to serve on the board of Mid-America Apartment Communities.

Active in his community and beyond, Lowder serves or has served as a member or chair of several boards, including Children’s Hospital of Alabama, the University of Alabama Health Services Foundation, the National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, Quarterbacking Children’s Health Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, the American Red Cross, and United Way of Central Alabama, among others. Lowder and his wife, Susan, whom he married in 2012, are active in philanthropic efforts to find a cure for Alzheimer’s, ALS, and other neurological diseases, which took the lives of each of their spouses.

Lowder holds an honorary doctorate of humanities from the University of Alabama at Birmingham and an honorary doctorate of law from Birmingham-Southern College.

He has three daughters and Susan has three sons. They live in Birmingham, Alabama.

Claude B. Nielsen

  • November 20th, 2024

Claude Nielsen is the former CEO and chairman of the board of Coca-Cola Bottling Company UNITED, Inc. After earning a bachelor’s degree in economics from Sewanee: The University of the South, an MBA from the University of Virginia, and a brief Birmingham banking career, Nielsen joined Coca-Cola UNITED in 1979. He held a variety of operational and managerial positions in the company until he was named CEO in 1991 and later chairman of the board of directors in 2003. Under Nielsen’s leadership, Coca-Cola UNITED more than tripled the size and scope of the company in terms of revenues, geography, number of associates, and facilities. Birmingham-based Coca-Cola UNITED is among the largest bottlers and distributors of Coca-Cola products in the U.S. With over $4 billion in annual revenues, it is also one of the largest privately held companies in Alabama. Nielsen retired as CEO in 2016 and as chairman in 2023.

Over the course of his career, Nielsen was often asked if he knew the secret Coca-Cola formula. “I can answer that question with a simple two letter word,” he said in an address to the Newcomen Society of Alabama in 2017. “No.”

But that’s not entirely true. According to a nomination letter by current Coca-Cola UNITED President and CEO Michael A. Suco, while Nielsen may not know the secret CocaCola formula, he knows Coca-Cola UNITED’s secret ingredients. “As one of the architects of the U.S. Coca-Cola system as it stands today,” Suco wrote of Nielsen, “his incredible system knowledge and commitment to our associates, consumers, customers and communities are foundational to our success. No one believes in and lives our purpose and values more than Claude. He has always valued our associates and our brands as the ‘secret ingredients’ to our success.”

Upon his nomination to the Birmingham Business Hall of Fame in 2022, Nielsen told The Over the Mountain Journal, “Any success I’ve enjoyed as a business leader must be shared with the thousands of associates within the Coca-Cola UNITED family who made leading this great enterprise a real privilege over the years.”

Today, Coca-Cola UNITED has more than 10,000 associates located in more than 50 facilities across six southeastern states (Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee). The company’s operations consist of state-of-the-art sales and distribution centers, along with eight manufacturing facilities serving more than 150,000 customers across their footprint. Historically significant franchises within the Coca-Cola UNITED family include Chattanooga, the world’s first Coca-Cola bottler; Atlanta, home of the worldwide Coca-Cola system; and Columbus, Georgia, development site of the original Coca-Cola formula.

Nielsen has served as a board member and chairman of the American Beverage Association, the Coca-Cola Scholars Foundation, and The Coca-Cola Bottlers’ Association. He has devoted time and energy supporting community causes like the United Way of Central Alabama, the Birmingham Airport Authority Board, and the American Cancer Society. He has also served on the Executive Committee of the Birmingham Business Alliance.

Nielsen was inducted into the Alabama Academy of Honor in 2016. In addition, he and his wife, Kate, were recognized by the Greater Alabama Council of the Boy Scouts of America in 2017 with the “Heart of an Eagle” award for their community service, and they were named Outstanding Civic Leaders by the Association of Fundraising Professionals in 2021.

The Nielsens have three children and nine grandchildren and reside in Birmingham.

Nick Saban

  • November 20th, 2024

Nick Saban is a sportscaster, sports analyst, entrepreneur, and retired college and professional football coach, best known for his coaching of the Crimson Tide football team at The University of Alabama (2007-2023). Saban’s coaching leadership, focusing on hard work and attention to detail, translates to the business world. Saban calls his unique set of principles The Process: a philosophy emphasizing consistency over outcomes. As head coach, Saban urged his players not to focus on long-term goals like championships, but instead to invest fully in the moment, in the work at hand, delivering repeatable excellence play-by-play, game-by-game. He ran a football program that routinely earns upwards of $100 million a year like a highly-effective CEO.

After playing defensive back at Kent State University, Saban graduated in 1973 with a bachelor’s in business, then in 1975, from the same university, with a master’s in sports administration. His coaching career began in graduate school as a graduate assistant to coach Don James. He went on to work as assistant coach to several college football programs from the mid-1970s to late-1980s, before starting his career as head coach at the University of Toledo in 1990. After one season with Toledo, Saban left to join the Cleveland Browns as defensive coordinator under Bill Belichick. He stayed until 1995, when he became head coach of Michigan State University, then LSU in 2000, and then the Miami Dolphins in 2005. Saban took on the head coach position at The University of Alabama in 2007, where he led the team to six national championships, and steered the Crimson Tide into ranking #1 in the AP Top 25, at some point in the season, from 2008 until 2022 — the longest in college football history.

Saban now works as an analyst for the nationally-televised ESPN College GameDay. He has also applied The Process to his own business concerns. He is co-owner of the Alamite Hotel in downtown Tuscaloosa and of Dream Motor Corp., which operates automotive dealerships in five U.S. states and has over 500 employees.

Along with his wife, Terry Saban, he cofounded Nick’s Kids Foundation, a charitable organization that has donated more than $14 million to support children, teacher and student causes throughout the state of Alabama and beyond and honored more than 650 teachers with the Nick’s Kids Teacher Excellence Award. Completed projects include career tech classrooms at the Tuscaloosa County Juvenile Detention Center, the Tuscaloosa Riverwalk Playground, building 21 Habitat for Humanity homes (18 National Championship Homes, two SEC Championship Homes, and the Sugar House), and the Alberta School of Performing Arts playground. Nick’s Kids is also a major donor to the Tuscaloosa All-Inclusive Playground, Boys & Girls Club of West Alabama, and Freedom Farm. The Sabans’ legacy project is the Saban Center, a project that will elevate education and combine STEM programs and the arts to provide a unique and interactive learning experience for children in West Alabama. Saban Center will be home to the state of Alabama STEM Hub, Ignite, and the Tuscaloosa Children’s Theatre.

Saban and Terry have two children and two grandchildren and live in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.

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