Celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit that is such a big part of the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University is the idea behind the Entrepreneur of the Year Awards, presented annually by the Donald McNeely Center for Entrepreneurship.
The CSB and SJU awards “recognize the achievements of a Johnnie and a Bennie who best exemplify the ideals of entrepreneurship by starting and successfully managing one or more businesses in a way that demonstrates notable entrepreneurial characteristics and achievements while practicing Benedictine values in the workplace and in their lives.”
In addition, the CSB+SJU Social Entrepreneur of the Year award “recognizes the achievements and qualities of a Johnnie or Bennie who best exemplifies the ideals of social entrepreneurship by starting and successfully managing one or more ventures that enrich humanity or address a social issue in a way that demonstrates notable entrepreneurial characteristics and achievements while practicing Benedictine values in the workplace and in their lives.”
The awards have even presented annually since 2011.
- This year’s SJU Entrepreneur of the Year is Brian Roers ’01, the owner and co-founder of Roers Companies, which was founded in 2012 and has grown its portfolio to include over $4 billion in development in 14 states, as well as being recognized as a top 25 developer and builder by the National Multifamily Housing Council.
- This year’s CSB Entrepreneur of the Year is Heidi Hovland ’88, a leader in the communications field who has been a trusted advisor to well-respected companies like Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Celebrity Cruise Lines, IHOP and Chobani. After decades of agency leadership, she founded her own – Altitude Co – a year ago.
- This year’s CSB and SJU Social Entrepreneur of the Year is Fr. Mike Schmitz ’97, the director of Youth and Young Adult Ministry for the Diocese of Duluth, as well as the chaplain for the Newman Center at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He is also host of the popular podcasts, “Bible in a Year” and “The Catechism in a Year.”
This year’s winners will be honored in a ceremony scheduled to run from 5 to 8 p.m. on Nov. 3 at the Metropolitan Ballroom and Clubroom in Golden Valley. Those interested in attending can register here.
The cost ranges from $35 to $50.
Here is a closer look at this year’s winners:
Brian Roers
Given his eventual career choices, it’s perhaps not surprising to hear how Brian Roers narrowed his college choice down to Saint John’s.
“My final choice was between Southwest (Minnesota) State and Saint John’s,” the Marshall High School graduate said. “In seventh grade, I wrote an essay for the Knights of Columbus that earned me a leadership camp scholarship and I went up (to SJU). In retrospect, that was the day I probably decided I was going to Saint John’s. I fell in love with the place.
“But Southwest State was in my hometown. So I sat down and made a spreadsheet looking at the pros and cons of each place. In the end, the bottom line favored Saint John’s.”
Roers – whose parents Joe and Betty ran a small business in the agriculture sector, as well as a lawn care company – said he’s always loved working with numbers.
“But it was in high school when I really got into it,” he said. “I had an accounting class my junior year and I liked how those numbers had a reason. I took classes my junior and senior year and I aced them both.”
That academic success continued at Saint John’s where he was a double major in management and accounting. He then became a certified public accountant (CPA) in 2002. He worked at KPMG and Wilkerson & Associates for several years before co-founding his own firm – Anderson & Roers, CPAs – in 2005.
He’d spend the next eight years there, but he and his siblings (older brother Kent, younger brother Neil, a 2002 SJU graduate, and younger sister Jody, a 2006 graduate of CSB) also developed a side business buying foreclosed houses, rehabbing them and putting them back on the market.
“I was working 40-to-60 hours a week at my day job and spending 40 hours a week doing that,” he said. “My siblings and I would get to a house on Friday afternoon, and it wasn’t uncommon for us to work until 2 or 3 in the morning. We’d spend our whole weekends doing that.
“I’m someone who can’t sit still. The way I was raised is that if there is an opportunity to pursue, don’t sit on the couch thinking about it. Go out there and get it done.”
That spirit led Kent and Brian to found Roers Companies in 2012, and the company has grown into a national leader in multifamily real estate investment, development, construction and property management.
“It’s been a good fit because Kent is so good on the relationship and people side of things and I love the financial end,” Roers said. “We work well together.
“People and numbers. That’s why we’re in real estate.”
Roers said the lessons he learned during his time at SJU helped fuel his professional success.
“That place had a big impact on my life,” he said. “I still have the Benedictine values on a plaque in my office. But more than that, I formed relationships there that continue to this day. I just got back from our 27th annual hunting trip up north with my college roommates. Our families still get together all the time.
“I don’t know of many other colleges that foster that sense of community.”
Heidi Hovland
Heidi Hovland entered CSB thinking she’d go into nursing. But it didn’t take the Minneapolis Washburn High School graduate long to change those plans.
“My mom was a nurse, but I remember sitting in my first chemistry class (at CSB) and wondering what I was doing there,” she recalled. “So I quickly gravitated to the liberal arts route.”
Hovland wound up majoring in English and minoring in communications – eventually finding herself drawn toward public relations, a career choice that led to her throwing caution to the wind and relocating to New York City after graduation.
“I’d reached a point where I needed to start somewhere in my job search and I started setting up informational interviews with PR agencies,” she said. “Kids today talk about how tough the job market is now. But it was no cakewalk in 1988 and ’89 either. There were no jobs in Minneapolis. I reached out to Chicago, but nothing came about there either.
“On a whim, I sent my resume to a small agency in New York I picked out of a directory and it turned out that was the first interview I was offered. They offered me a job, but in the meantime, I’d lined up other interviews in New York and landed a job at Ketchum, a much bigger agency located on Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets.
“That was in the days before Times Square had been cleaned up. So it was a pretty colorful walk to work from the subway every morning,” she continued.
“I told myself from the beginning I could always go home if it didn’t work out. My fantasy backup was moving to Duluth and marrying the town veterinarian.”
Instead, Hovland rose through the ranks quickly – spending decades in key leadership roles at major agencies like FleishmanHillard, DeVries Global and Edelman.
Then, in 2024, she decided it was time to branch out on her own, starting Altitude Co – a smaller, collaborative organization built around clients and their needs.
“It actually happened in a couple of phases,” she said. “I was doing consulting on my own for a few years, and I reached a point where I needed to either start an agency or commit to being a solo practitioner. I was offered another agency job and took it, but in the end, I decided the universe was telling me it was time to start my own agency.
“So, a year-and-a-half later, I did.”
And she could not be happier with the results.
“I grew up in the agency world, but the more senior you get, the further away you get from the things that made you excited to go to work every day to begin with,” she said. “I love working closely with clients and being part of a small team. I like the flexibility of setting my own schedule. But the biggest thing is having an agency that reflects my values and who I am. I get to decide the kind of people and companies I’m working with.”
She too credits her experience at CSB with providing a foundation for professional success.
“A liberal arts degree is a ticket to such a wide range of jobs,” she said. “I don’t look at majors like English, history and economics as anti-career. They’re majors that allow you time during college to explore things that influence and excite you. Once you have that background, a career will follow.”
Fr. Mike Schmitz
After graduating from Brainerd High School and Saint John’s University, Fr. Mike Schmitz was part of a group of Johnnies and Bennies doing missionary work in Belize. That work inspired him to enter the seminary.
After being ordained in the Diocese of Duluth in 2003, he went on to work with youth and young adults in the diocese and as the chaplain of the Newman Center at UMD. He began working with Ascension, a publisher of Catholic books, in 2015. That work expanded into podcasts a few years later and today he has a wide global audience.
“Bible in a Year,” a podcast in which Schmitz guided listeners through the Bible over the course of 365 episodes, took over the No. 1 position among all podcasts on the U.S. Apple Charts soon after its debut in January 2021. According to Ascension, the podcast totaled 170 million downloads in 2021, averaging 470,000 per day.
“Broad reach is probably the best way to describe it, and that’s something I never would have expected,” Schmitz said in 2024. “But it’s great. I couldn’t be happier about it. I knew this was something I needed, and I figured it was something that might help other people. But I didn’t realize exactly how many.
“There was a precedent for this. I’d seen audio books and other things like that which used the format of reading the Bible in a year, so I knew it existed. I’d even tried some of them before and failed. But it stuck in my mind that this was a great way to divide it up.”
Schmitz has also offered weekly homilies on iTunes, Hallow and bulldogCatholic.org while appearing in other programs for youth and young adults.