Mount Joy dairy farmer Luke Brubaker might not have a grand plan for rescuing America from its dependence on foreign oil, but he does exemplify the forward-looking businesspeople who are adopting the innovations that may make that possible.
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Brubaker's efforts were recognized Wednesday at the Lancaster County Convention Center, where he received the Lancaster Chamber of Commerce & Industry's annual Exemplar Award.
Also receiving awards were Michael Biggerstaff, CEO of Nxtbook Media, named Small Business Person of the Year, and Aimee Urban, general manager of Way Services, who received the Athena Award.
Most of the evening's energy, however, focused on keynote speaker T. Boone Pickens, the Texas billionaire whose much-publicized plan for energy independence envisions natural gas replacing diesel as the primary fuel for trucks and heavy equipment.
That shift could buy the country enough time to perfect renewable sources of energy, such as wind and solar power, Pickens said.
"Keep expanding the renewables, keep stretching the natural gas, and we can get 20, 30 years out of it and still get plenty for your homes and whatever else we need," Pickens told about 2,500 people at the dinner.
Brubaker Farms, with its manure digester that makes enough electricity to power up to 200 homes, and its plans for a solar generator to power another 150, is part of that expanding effort in renewable energy.
"Times are changing," Brubaker said during a phone interview before the dinner. "You just have to keep thinking of newer ways and the best ways of doing things."
He calls the manure digester another profit center for Brubaker Farms, with its 750-cow dairy herd and 48,000 broiler chickens, which he runs with his sons, Mike and Tony.
"That's up and running, and really working well," Brubaker said. "That's a very good support in these times of low milk prices."
The digester produces methane gas to fuel an electrical generator.
"We're making more electricity than we use," he said. "We're selling it into the grid as green energy."
The digester also separates the manure into liquids and solids, killing all the pathogens and most of the odor in the process, and converting the nutrients into a form more readily usable by plants.
The family owns more than 1,000 acres of cropland, Brubaker said, and uses the liquids to fertilize fields and the solids as bedding material, selling the surplus to other farmers.
"We can't hardly make enough of it," he said.
Brubaker disclaims sole credit for the effort, saying it wouldn't have been possible without the support of county commissioners and conservation district, and the state Department of Agriculture.
In addition to the digester, he added, Brubaker Farms has just signed a contract and is moving forward with plans to put solar panels on the south-facing roof of its new heifer barn.
When the sun shines, those panels will be capable of producing enough electricity to power another 100 to 150 homes, Brubaker said.
The digital frontierNxtbook Media — whose CEO, Michael Biggerstaff, won the small-business award — is also working on the cutting edge of its field, helping to conserve energy and resources by publishing magazines, catalogs and guidebooks in digital rather than printed form.
The firm, which employs more than 50 people, was ranked last year as No. 1 among the Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania and 303rd in the nation on Inc. 500's list of the fastest-growing companies in America.
"It's important to our clients that we be creative and at the forefront of what we do," Biggerstaff said in an interview before the dinner. "When you have creative people, they need to be given the space to be creative."
That creativity extends to the firm's management of its employees.
Its human resources manager, for instance, has the title "queen of fairness," and Biggerstaff himself is "chief inspiration officer."
He said that means he tries to make sure he's dialed into what the company is doing, but that he doesn't sit back and determine where it should be heading. That's a collaborative effort.
It's an open office where everyone, including the chief inspiration officer, works in a cubicle.
"Nobody has any doors or way to shut other people out," he said. "I try really hard to be open and honest [with everyone] and not hold things back."
Despite its rapid growth — adding 20 employees last year and another seven so far this year — the firm hasn't been immune to the effects of the recession.
"Our pricing is based on how many pages we do," Biggerstaff said. "We've seen a dip in all the magazines we handle ... 20 percent less for some magazines. That's obviously affected us."
Yet, Biggerstaff is bullish on the prospects for digital publishing. Production costs are about 10 percent of what it costs to produce printed materials, he said, and the industry's future is being driven by the same technological developments that have produced such wireless reading devices as the Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader.
"Seven to eight years from now, it'll be really common that people will not be carrying a bunch of books or a bunch of papers," he said. Instead, they will carry some sort of digital display made of flexible Mylar.
"We want to be there as an interface provider, be there with the software" when that happens, he said.
The role modelAimee Urban, who received the chamber's Athena Award for inspiring women to achieve their full potential, credits her own career travails with giving her the ability to help others.
When Urban tells young mothers struggling to finish school that they can succeed, she knows what she's talking about. A mother at 18, she was once in their shoes.
Now, 20 years later as general manager of Way Services, she oversees a group of diverse companies — Way Delivery Services, a time-critical courier service for anything from a single envelope to full tractor-trailer loads; Way Service Center, a vehicle maintenance and repair shop that specializes in business fleets; and Adecco Employment Services offices in Lancaster, Reading, York and Hanover.
In addition to those responsibilities, she is a member of the Lancaster County Workforce Investment Board, co-chairwoman of the chamber's Women in Business program and a volunteer in many other community organizations. In 2007, she was named one of Pennsylvania's Best 50 Women in Business.
"Being on boards is the easy stuff," Urban said during a phone interview last week.
"I speak at a lot of high schools and transitional housing shelters," counseling young women about how to prepare for job interviews and chart their own successful careers, she said.
"It's really teaching them that they can't sit around waiting for someone to hand them something," she said. "They've really got to want to go out and get it."
During the school year, she also works with a group of 10 young mothers trying to finish high school at Phoenix Academy.
"The mentoring is the favorite thing that I do," she said. "I think they know that I understand what they're going through."
One of the things Urban tries to stress when counseling young women is the importance of education, yet until recently, she herself had never finished high school.
Starting in 2007, she fixed that by attending classes two nights a week at Phoenix Academy, graduating last year with a high school diploma from the School District of Lancaster.
"I thought it is better to put up or shut up, so I showed them I could do it," she said.
Urban said her story, Breaking the Cycle, has been included in "Chicken Soup for the Soul: Tough Times, Tough People," the latest installment in the popular book series, published in May.
She said she also draws on those experiences in guiding her own employees.
"I think that my history has really helped me change the face of staffing" at Adecco, she said.
"I want us to be one of those stepping stones for other people to get to where they need to be," she said. "We want them to become more than they ever thought they could be."
John E. Way Jr., owner of Way Services, praises Urban.
"She's been such a natural leader," he said. "She's doing a real good job."
Where does Urban find the time to juggle everything she does?
"When you absolutely love what you do, it doesn't seem like work," she said. "I still go home and make dinner every night. I still find time to make it all work."
Dennis Larison is editor of the business section and can be reached by telephone at 291-8753 or by e-mail at dlarison@lnpnews.com.
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