Agriculture
James Tiede of American Falls has been elected to serve as vice president of the Grower and Public Relations Committee of the National Potato Council.
Tiede is the owner of James Tiede Farms, a 103-year-old family farm. He has been involved with the NPC for more than 15 years as a board member and Potato Expo Steering Committee member. Tiede has served on the Potato Growers of Idaho’s Executive Committee, as the chairman and executive committee member of the U.S. Potato Board, and as a member of the Southern Idaho Potato Cooperative. He also serves as current chairman of the Idaho Potato Commission.
Also elected to serve on NPC’s board of directors were R.J. Andrus, Idahoan Foods LLC, Idaho Falls; Clen Atchley, Ashton Hi-Tech Seed, Ashton; Todd Gerratt, Ida-Gold Farms, Burley; Dean Gibson, Magic Valley Produce Inc., Paul; Jeff Harper, Flying H Farms, Mountain Home; Klaren Koompin, Koompin Farms, American Falls; Steve Theobold, R&G Potato Co. Inc., American Falls; Kim Wahlen, Kim Wahlen Farms, Aberdeen; and Shane Webster, T.R. Webster & Son Inc., Rexburg.
NPC’s leaders are U.S. potato growers nominated by their state organizations and elected by their peers.
Banking
LaMont Keen has assumed his role as a board member of Cascade Bancorp. He was elected in October.
Keen is president and chief executive officer of Idacorp, a holding company of Idaho Power Co. He has served on the board of directors of Idacorp and Idaho Power since July 2004. He also serves on the boards of the Edison Electric Institute, Western Energy Institute, the Idaho Association of Commerce and Industry, St. Luke’s Hospital System Treasure Valley and the Arid Club in Boise.
Keen holds a BBA in accounting from the College of Idaho and completed the Harvard Graduate School of Business Advanced Management Program.
Engineering
Cristina Brischler has joined Strata, a professional services corporation, as the Boise Environmental Department manager.
Brischler will lead Strata’s staff of environmental scientists at its Boise location. Strata is an engineering firm that for 35 years has provided geotechnical engineering, environmental sciences, construction materials testing, and construction inspection services for clients throughout the Intermountain Northwest.
As a master of science graduate of Arizona State University, Brischler brings 15 years of experience in environmental management, emergency management and environmental science. She is skilled in project management for multiple environmental applications.
Brischler is charged with overseeing Boise’s environmental business development and operations and providing client service to Strata’s clients.
Media
Ken Hunter has been named vice president and station manager of Idaho Independent television station KTRV, Channel 12, in Nampa.
Hunter formerly held the position of director of sales at KTRV and has worked at the station for 14 years. He is succeeding former president and general manager Ricky Joseph, who has accepted a position as general manager of WAND Television in Decatur, Ill., also a subsidiary of Block Communications Inc.
Government
Carlos Hernandez, Donna Fletcher and Katie Eiden have been named managers at three of the Idaho Department of Labor’s local offices.
Hernandez, a veteran of 20 years with the department, is the new manager of the Wood River office in Bellevue. Hernandez has worked in five of Labor’s 25 local offices and has held management positions for the past 10 years, most recently leading the department’s statewide Employment Services Work Team.
Fletcher, who has also worked for the department for two decades, has taken over the Mini-Cassia office in Burley. Fletcher has been an office supervisor for the past 13 years and has experience working with local businesses and community service providers. Before joining the department, she worked in retail management for 10 years.
Eiden, the new manager in the Mountain Home office, has been office supervisor for the past two years. Eiden also worked in the Meridian office in employment services and unemployment insurance the two years before moving to Mountain Home. Before joining the department, she held various management jobs in the private sector.
Health care
Physician assistants Colin Soares and Jenna Maffey have joined Primary Health Medical Group in the urgent care practice. Each will work in one of the group’s nine urgent care clinics in the Treasure Valley.
Soares is a graduate of Boise State University and Idaho State University and comes from Mountain States Medical Group in Boise, where he provided primary care and urgent care.
Maffey is a graduate of Greenville College in Illinois and Arcadia University in Pennsylvania. She has been treating emergency patients in Washington for the past few years.
St. Luke’s Health System announced that HealthGrades, an independent health care ratings organization, has named St. Luke’s Boise Meridian Medical Centers a Distinguished Hospital for Clinical Excellence. This rating places St. Luke’s Boise Meridian Medical Centers among the top 5 percent of hospitals nationwide for clinical performance.
HealthGrades’ Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence study identifies those hospitals with the best overall clinical performance across 26 medical diagnoses and procedures the organization rates.
St. Luke’s also received the Vascular Surgery Excellence Award for the fourth year in a row, the Cardiac Surgery Excellence Award for the third year in a row, and the Joint Replacement Excellence Award for the second year in row. St. Luke’s Boise/Meridian also was recognized as the No. 1 hospital in Idaho for critical care, vascular surgery, orthopedic serves, joint replacement and pulmonary services.
HealthGrades’ analysis is based on 40 million Medicare discharges for the years 2008, 2009 and 2010.
Law
Boise attorney Debora K. Kristensen has been appointed to the Ninth Circuit Advisory Board, a group of prominent attorneys that advises on the effective administration of the federal courts in the Western states.
Kristensen, a partner at Givens Pursley LLP, is a general business litigator in state and federal courts who emphasizes employment and media law. She previously served for six years as an Idaho Lawyer Representative to the Ninth Circuit Judicial Conference.
The board acts as an adviser to the chief judge and the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit, which sets policy for federal courts in Idaho, eight other Western states and two Pacific Island jurisdictions. More recently, the board has sought to educate lawmakers about the judicial vacancy crisis in the courts.
Appointments to the board are made by its chairman, Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
An Idaho Lawyer Representative from 2005 to 2011, Kristensen served as chair of the circuitwide Lawyer Representatives Coordinating Committee and has organized and participated in numerous educational programs for the federal bar and bench. She is a past president of the Idaho State Bar and a member and/or officer of the Idaho chapter of the Federal Bar Association, the American Inns of Court, the Idaho State Broadcasters Association, the Idaho Press Club, the American Bar Association Forum on Communications Law, and the Media Law Resource Center.
She is a founding member of the Idaho Supreme Court’s statewide Media and Courts Committee and its Media-Courts Conflicts Resolution panel.
Kristensen received the 2005 Kate Feltham Award from Idaho Women Lawyers Inc., and was honored in 2011 with the Justice Byron S. Johnson Distinguished Service Award and the Federal Bar Association Exemplary Service Award.
A San Francisco native, Kristensen received her B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1987 and her J.D. from Santa Clara University Law School in 1990.
Slade D. Sokol has joined the Boise law firm of Farley Oberrecht West Harwood & Burke, P.A. as an associate attorney.
Sokol received his undergraduate degree in political science from Boise State University in 2003 before going to law school at the Michigan State University College of Law, where he graduated in the top 10 percent of his class in 2011. Sokol is licensed to practice law in all Idaho courts, including the U.S. District Court for the District of Idaho.
Real estate
Bryant Forrester of Homeland Realty has earned the Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist designation, identifying him as a Realtor with the skills and knowledge to remodel or modify a home to meet the unique needs of the older population, disabled owners or their visitors.
The National Association of Home Builders, in partnership with the AARP and NAHB Research Center, created the CAPS program, which includes training and education on the technical, business management and customer service skills essential to compete in the fastest-growing segment of the residential remodeling industry — home modifications for aging-in-place.
Kathleen Reed has returned to the Coldwell Banker Tomlinson Group, and Janie Hall has joined the company’s Nampa office.
Reed has returned after a brief absence. She has 14 years of experience in real estate and related fields including title and escrow, affordable housing and finance. Reed has earned the GRI and ePRO designations and specializes in residential resale, short sales, foreclosures, residential income properties, new construction and land.
Hall has lived in the Treasure Valley for 40 years and has been a Realtor since 1989. Her focus is in residential real estate, including first-time homebuyers, move-up buyers, short sales and residential resale listings.
Technology
Idaho State University and Verizon Wireless have announced a three-year partnership to introduce UHopeLine, an expansion of the company’s HopeLine wireless phone recycling program.
As part of the program, Verizon will present ISU with a $25,000 grant, and five permanent cellphone collection bins will be placed across the three campuses in Pocatello, Idaho Falls and Meridian.
The grant will benefit the Janet C. Anderson Gender Resource Center by creating awareness and education for the university’s student population about domestic and dating violence.
