2C . SUNDAY, MAY 18, 2014 THE OKLAHOMAN | NEWSOK.COMBUSINESS

BUSINESS PEOPLE

Dr. Reji Pappy, cardiologist, will begin seeing pa-tients on the first and third Thursday of eachmonth at St. Anthony Healthplex South, 13500 STulsa Drive. Pappy is ABIM Board Certified in in-ternal medicine, cardiovascular diseases, nuclearcardiology and interventional cardiology.

The First State Bank promotesRaju Kaul to commercial lender.Kaul, senior vice president, hasbeen with the bank since 2009and will manage the commerciallending department at the Mid-west City branch at 2600 SDouglas Blvd. Previously, Kaulworked in the bank’s cash man-agement department. Prior tocoming to The First State Bank, Kaul worked atArvest Bank in itstreasury services department.

Arvest Bank promotes KeithKersten to the position of com-munity bank president – Ed-mond for the Arvest Bank Groupin central Oklahoma. Kersten hasbeen with Arvest for the past 15years. Kersten will office fromthe Arvest Bank – Edmondbranch at 1501 W Edmond Rd.

Dr. Robert Ryan has joined Va-riety Care as physician and di-rector of Women's Health. Varie-ty Care also adds Sarah Eggers,APRN, as pediatric nurse practi-tioner; Constance Rudkin,APRN, as family medicine nursepractitioner; and Natalie Friendas certified nutritionist.

Mary Blankenship Pointer joinsRepublic Bank & Trust as seniorvice president and corporaterelationship manager. Her pri-mary responsibilities will beassisting Republic’s south Okla-homa City bank clients and thecommunity.

Willow Creek Golf & Country Club has hiredJohn Glover as director of tennis and head clubprofessional. Glover served as head teaching pro-fessional at Quail Creek Country Club for morethan 19 years.

Leo J. Port-man and RexE. Herren joinGableGot-wals as OfCounsel at-torneys inthe Oklaho-ma City of-fice. Portmanwill work in several areas of practice including titleexamination, oil and gas law and estate planning.Previously, he was a sole practitioner at Portman& Associates. Herren has more than 40 years ofexperience in the areas of title examination, oil andgas, real estate law, Indian law and probate law. Hehas worked with both the Five Civilized Tribes ineastern Oklahoma and the General AllotmentIndians in western Oklahoma.

Steve Ross has joined SummitESP as vice president - financeand will be located in the Tulsaheadquarters. Ross has 25 yearsof experience as a chief financialofficer with various internationalservice and manufacturing com-panies, most recently with GEOil & Gas ESP.

Integral Dynamics, an OklahomaCity-based oil and gas automa-tion company, has named SteveDavis as chief operating officer.His responsibilities will includefinancial management, HR,recruiting and daily operations.Steve was previously with Ac-cord Human Resources as asenior business developmentconsultant.

The Bankers Bank haspromoted Joanie Pickensto international servicesofficer, and Dawn LaBrueto senior vice president ofspecial projects. Pickenshas been with the bank for16 years and managesinternational transactions.LaBrue has been with thebank for 14 years and manages day to day buildingoperations.

AWARDSJohn Buckley, principal architectof ARC Architecture LLC, wasnamed Architect of the Year atthe American SubcontractorsAssociation of Oklahoma Denimand Diamonds Awards Gala.ARC Architecture is an architec-tural firm focused on Oklahomaschools.

BUSINESS ALMANAC

MEETINGSWednesday

• Engineering Club of Oklahoma City presentsChris Ramseyer, associated professor and directorat Fears Structural Engineering Laboratory, dis-cussing “Structural Engineering Lessons,” noon atGattitown, 5833 Northwest Expressway. Contact:Nancy Cain, 525-5101.

The Digital MarketingServices department atThe Oklahoma PublishingCompany has hired RuthBurr Reedy to lead itssearch engine optimiza-tion team.

“Bringing Ruth Burr Ree-dy on board is a huge win forOPUBCO Digital MarketingServices,” said David Chris-topher, senior inboundmarketing manager. “She’sone of the most highly re-garded search engine opti-mization experts in thecountry and speaks at con-ferences around the world.Ruth is the perfect additionto our organization and tothe Oklahoma digital mar-keting community, a realheavy-hitter, and we’re all

thrilled to be workingalongside her.”

Burr Reedy, the compa-ny’s new SEO manager,has eight years of SEO anddigital marketing experi-ence working for industrygiants such as MOZ, for-merly known as SEOmoz,in Seattle. She has spokenat industry events all overthe world including Pub-con and the SMX confer-ence series. Burr Reedyworked most recently asan independent SEO andonline marketing consult-ant and speaker.

“I’m so excited to bejoining the amazingOPUBCO team,” Burr Ree-dy said. “I’ve been a fan oftheir work from afar sincebefore I moved to Oklaho-ma, and I’m really happy

that the timing worked outon both ends for me tocome aboard.”

Burr Reedy said ad-vanced SEO has become abusiness strategy thatcannot be ignored.

“I love doing SEO be-cause it can make such ahuge difference for a busi-ness, whether it’s a smalllocal business or a huge

national brand,” she said.“I love talking to peopleabout all of the differentways they can use digitalmarketing to help theirbusinesses. There are a lotof spammers and shadySEO practices out there,but I think that real SEO,done well, can make theInternet a better place.”

Burr Reedy also will ap-pear at this year’s Con-fluence Digital CreativityConference on Sept. 6 atthe Lyric Theater in Okla-homa City’s Plaza District.

Digital Marketing Ser-vices is the fastest growingdivision of OPUBCO,which publishes The Okla-homan and NewsOK.comand is Oklahoma’s largestSEO and digital marketingservice provider.

OPUBCO Digital Marketing hires SEO expertFROM STAFF REPORTS

Ruth Burr Reedy

When his two daughterswere very young, DaveKeglovits, a commercial li-tigator with Tulsa-basedGableGotwals, helped ar-gue a 1999 case in whichBill Koch of the family-owned Koch Industriessued his brothers over theway oil was being mea-sured.

Keglovits’ then 5-year-old wanted constant up-dates on what becameknown in their house as“the oil-stealing case.” Ev-ery night when he arrivedhome, the two would re-view the basic, non-confi-dential aspects of the trial.

Fifteen years later,Keglovits said he still en-joys his work and the nowmore sophisticated dis-cussions it sparks with histeenage daughters. Alongwith commercial litiga-tion, including represent-ing Oklahoma Natural Gasin rate-setting cases beforethe Oklahoma Corpora-tion Commission, Keglo-vits serves as chairmanand chief executive forGableGotwals.

Founded after WWII,the firm employs 146, in-cluding 80 lawyers — 55 inTulsa and 25 in OklahomaCity.

From its Oklahoma Cityoffices at LeadershipSquare, Keglovits sat downwith The Oklahoman totalk about his life and ca-reer. This is an edited tran-script:

Q: Tell us about yourroots.

A: I grew up in Arling-ton, Texas, where my par-ents still live. My mothertaught reading to seventhgraders and my father,who’s an accountant bytraining, functioned as atreasurer for Bell Helicop-ter. I have a younger broth-er and sister, and had anolder sister who died at 5or 6 of a rare respiratorydisease when I was 3. TheBell Helicopter plant shutdown for two weeks everysummer, and my parentswere good about taking uson family vacations. Wesaw the Grand Canyon oneyear and Grand Teton Na-tional Park twice.

Q: When did you firstconsider becoming alawyer?

A: As a kid, I’d watch“Perry Mason.” I wasdrawn in by the fun of tak-ing the pieces of evidence,putting it together as apuzzle and convincingsomeone you’re right. Inseventh grade, I took de-bate and extemporaneousspeech. I had a greatteacher — Mr. Bledsoe —

who encouraged me tostick with it, which I didthroughout high school,along with playing soccer.

Q: And college?A: I studied accounting

at Notre Dame. It was theonly school I applied to;I’m not sure what mybackup plan was. We werea Catholic family: my momis Irish and my dad’sgrandfather emigratedfrom Croatia. When I wasgrowing up, we’d gatheraround the radio to listento Notre Dame games. Mymother had a brother whowent there, and today ourwhole family travels toNotre Dame once a year towatch a football game to-gether. My freshman year,Gerry Faust was just start-ing his first year as footballcoach and, to build a fanbase, came around to thedorms and had pizza withall of us students. Thatfirst game, we beat LSUand were No. 1 for oneweek, which was great,until Faust went on to have

the one of the worst re-cords among Notre Damecoaches. I loved NotreDame, where studentscame from all over thecountry and world. Ilearned about their com-munities, which broad-ened me as a person. Iplayed intramural soccerand flag football and, mysenior year, worked as abartender in the SeniorAlumni Club. After gradu-ation, I balked at goingstraight to law school andinstead joined a big eightaccounting firm in Hous-ton, where I worked twoyears and saved money be-fore going on to UT (Uni-versity of Texas) in Austin.UT was ranked among thetop 15 law schools in thecountry and very afforda-ble for state residents likeme.

Q: When you joined Ga-bleGotwals fresh out oflaw school, did you aspireto be chief executive ofthe firm?

A: No. But I became

president in 2005 whenour then president, JohnBarker, was asked to be-come general counsel forONEOK, and we neededsomeone to take over hisjob. People liked the factthat I was a CPA before lawschool, so I’d helped watchthe books and with receiv-ables. I stepped into theCEO role three years ago,which is more strategic.We carefully watch the ec-onomic drivers of our stateand plan to meet relevantneeds, such as bringing onDrew Edmondson, formerstate attorney general anddistrict attorney, to handleIndian law issues. We’redemonstrating to out-of-state companies withmulti-state operationsthat we can do qualitywork, and at a better price,than firms based in Dallas,Houston, Chicago or else-where. We’re already rep-resenting Occidental(which acquired Tulsa-based Cities Service) andONEOK in other states.

Q: Your firm rankedamong the top five inmedium-size businessesin The Oklahoman’s TopWorkplaces rankings lastfall. Why do you thinkthat was?

A: We try very hard tobalance being a businessand being a family. Wehave a very competitivechili cook-off every year, akaraoke contest (No, Idon’t compete) and an an-nual retreat for our law-yers; every other year it’s inBig Cedar. Our employeesgo together to Drillersgames, the Bedlam OU-OSU basketball game andentered four relay teams inlast month’s OklahomaCity Memorial Marathon. Iknow it sounds trite, butwe think of ourselves as ateam.

EXECUTIVE Q&A WITH DAVID E. “DAVE” KEGLOVITS

GableGotwals chief is a fanof Notre Dame and the law

David Keglovits, chief executive of GableGotwals, waves to a colleague who walkspast the conference room in their downtown Oklahoma City offices.

PHOTO BY JIM BECKEL, THE OKLAHOMAN

PERSONALLY SPEAKING

• Position: GableGotwals law firm, chairman andchief executive• Birth date: Aug. 5, 1963• Hometown: Tulsa• Education: University of Texas, juris doctor;University of Notre Dame, bachelor’s in accounting• Family: Wife, Jennifer “Jenny” Allen Keglovits, aSand Springs native and medical malpractice de-fense attorney (they met their second year atUT); daughters, Sarah, 19, a freshman at StanfordUniversity; and Kelly, 15, a sophomore at HollandHall School• Civic contributions: He serves on the boards ofthe Tulsa Area United Way and the Tulsa Sym-phony Orchestra, and on the board of advisers forthe Tulsa Metro Chamber of Commerce• Pastimes: Golfing, snow skiing, reading (He justfinished “Lawrence in Arabia” by Scott Anderson,which Sarah recommended) and watching Netflixmovies (Last watched was “Roman Holiday,” cho-sen by Kelly)

BUSINESS WRITER

PaulaBurkespburkes@opubco.com

Kaul

Kersten

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Ryan

HerrenPortman

Davis

Ross

Pickens and LaBrue

Buckley