Deanna Oppenheimer, Bruce Kennedy and Ivar Haglund Hall of Fame laureates for 2016

Deanna Oppenheimer, who built her reputation at Washington Mutual then became a key executive at Barclay's Bank, guiding its U.K. operations, is still active as founder of CameoWorks and a member of several international boards. Both Bruce Kennedy, who turned Alaska Airlines from a struggling small carrier to a national leader in its industry, and Ivar Haglund, who founded and guided the growth of Ivar's seafood restaurants, are both deceased.

 

All three will be honored April 21 at the annual Hall of Fame induction banquet at the Waterfront Marriott as the three will join 115 other icons of regional business as laureates selected since the Business Hall of Fame was created in 1987 by Junior Achievement and the Puget Sound Business Journal.

Oppenheimer joined Washington Mutual's marketing department in 1985 five years after her graduation from University of Puget Sound and, from the time Kerry Killinger became CEO in 1990 and over the next 15 years, she was a key executive helping guide major acquisition decisions and the dramatic expansion of WAMU.

But she was watching from afar as she saw the Seattle bank that she helped grow during her two decades there disappear in the 2008 financial meltdown while she was steering Barclay's, the respected old British bank, successfully through the global crisis.

She returned home to Seattle in 2011 after five years at Barclay's transforming the global retail and business-banking divisions of the staid 350-year-old institution and founded Cameoworks LLC, a global retail and financial-services advisory firm.

In October 2010 was voted American Banker magazine's Second Most Powerful Woman in Banking.

Bruce Kennedy, who served as Alaska's chairman and CEO between 1979 and 1991, a period of dramatic growth in revenue and route expansion that set the airline on the road to being the dominant force in the airline industry that it has become today.

Kennedy was an Anchorage businessman whose real estate firm bought an Alaska airlines that was near bankruptcy in 1972 and the firm steadied the carrier financially, setting the stage for Kennedy to assume the top post.

Over Kennedy's 12 years at the helm, Alaska's revenue grew more than six-fold to $1.1 billion by the time he retired to focus his attention on humanitarian work, traveling to China to teach English, sheltering refugees in his home and serving as chairman of Quest Aircraft, which made aircraft for dangerous and remote locations.

It was under his leadership that Alaska developed routes to Southern California, Russia and launched the Mexico connection that has become a vital segment of Alaska's business today and that Alaska acquired Horizon Air, a Northwest regional carrier that has grown to be the nation's eighth largest regional airline.

Kennedy died in 2007 when his small plane crashed on Wenatchee as he was en route to visit his grandchildren. He was 68.

Ivar Haglund was a Seattle folk singer and restaurateur who came to be referred to as "King," of Seattle's waterfront And the "flounder" of Ivar's. In 1938 he established Seattle's first aquarium on Pier 54 along with the fish and chips stand as he presided over a growing restaurant chain guiding a belief that quirky fun is important. That conviction included erecting underwater billboards, seeking a permit for a facility to grow marijuana for his special chowder.

In 1965 he launched the annual fireworks display over Elliott Ba every "Fourth of Jul-Ivar." By then he had become a legend as rdstaurateur, radio personalityhe began lofting fireworks over Elliott Bay every "Fourth of Jul-Ivar," he was a legend. He became a radio personality and  Puget Sound's principal champion of regional folk music.

Bob Donegan, whose 15 years at the helm of Ivar's have brought a doubling of revenue as Ivar's clebrated its 75th aniverary last August.

Donegan notes that Ivar set up one of the first pension and healthcare programs and that "Ivar hired people, kept them for decades and treated them well, setting the stage for the company's philosophy that employees come first."

This is the 29th anniversary of the launch of the Puget Sound Business Hall of Fame, although the local event was superseded in 1993 when the JA's National Business Hall of Fame was held in Seattle and Steve Jobs was among the newly inducted laureates on hand to accept his award.

David Moore, JA president for Washington, announced that Seattle Mariner President Kevin Mather would be the chair of the 2016 event.