The Making of a Community - The Vail Way - Tapa blanda

How do you build a community from scratch? What kind of people undertake building a world class resort the scope of Vail, Colorado? What motivated them and what entrepreneurial principles did they call upon? Not until The Making of a Community has the history of how it evolved from a business and organizational perspective been written. With a subtitle of The Vail Way, it describes how it happened – in what way – did the Vail Valley become so popular. More importantly, it's a story of entrepreneurs who created something special out of nothing. It's the story of realizing a dream. The book explores the motivations that drove the founders and those who have followed. Who were the people – the leaders – who helped bring it to fruition? The Vail way is rooted in entrepreneurship. It's demonstrated regularly through the values, principles, and attitudes exhibited by entrepreneurs. Beyond vision, there's resilience, trust, focus, and teamwork. In the end, something extraordinary was built.

John Horan Kates has more than forty years of leadership experience in business and community organizations. He received an undergraduate degree in business from Wayne State University in Detroit in 1967 and subsequently became a Distinguished Naval Graduate of the U.S. Navy's Officer Candidate School. Following this training, he served aboard the USS Jennings County in Vietnam. After departing the Navy in 1972, he served as controller for the Kirkwood Resort in the California High Sierra. Several years later he came to Vail and served as vice president of marketing for Vail Resorts, founded the Vail Valley Foundation, helped build the Vilar Center for the Arts, and then helped start Vail Christian High School. In 1994, John was named Vail Valley Citizen of the Year. In 1997, he helped launch the Vail Leadership Institute where he served as president until 2013 and subsequently served as board chair. In 1998, he received a Master Coaching Certificate from the Hudson Institute of Santa Barbara. He is the author The Leader's Journal and several leadership essays and has published two leadership guidebooks. He has lived in the Vail Valley with his wife Pam since 1974. They have two children: a daughter, Brooke, who is a real estate broker in Cordillera, Colorado, and a son, Conor, who is a software engineer living in San Francisco.