Can you kinda talk about the geographics of this group?

Yep.

Which we have, um, of our 40, 40 under 40s, uh, we have folks who are from 14 different states and DC and three countries.

And what I like to see, I, to your point, yeah, people who grew up here.

We've got lots of folks on the list who grew up in Chicago, went away maybe for college and came back, like brought their experiences elsewhere and came back maybe to be with family or because they found the ecosystem in Chicago was, uh, was gonna work for them to do the work that they need to do and make a, an impact and make change, you know, in their hometown.

We've got folks who never left.

Almost everybody on our list went to college, but we've got a guy, John Redmond, who didn't go to college, and that, rather than being like a, a deficit for him, he turned that into his asset and built a company with his name in construction, right, that employs people and generates revenue and, uh, makes an impact on his community without really ever having to go away.

What has been some of the trajectory of members of past classes of Crain's 40 Under 40?

Are they in kind of back end? Are they working in commercial or residential or where do you find those folks?

Again, it's really a range.

We've got some folks working for large developers, working on some of the biggest projects in the city right now, including some office to residential projects, which are pretty hot downtown.

We've also got a 40 who has been instrumental in turning around a big historic project on Chicago Avenue.

Mercedes Miley is one of our 40s.

She is a president of Farrer Associates, Architecture and Urban Design.

And she has been working on restoring the old Lawson House YMCA on Chicago Avenue, which is this gigantic art deco tower from the 30s.

What do you see innovation-wise from the 40s in those kind of pockets of industry?

Looking over the full list, what themes stand out to you in terms of what industries are represented or particular types of employee benefits, things like that?

That's an interesting question.

One thing we noticed when we went through and really counted up who was on our list, the most represented industry was construction.

And yeah, 15 companies on our list were construction companies.

Also interesting to me this year, 33 companies were new to the list.

Now, they might have been on in previous years, but they were not on in 2024.

So as far as we're concerned, they were new.

And what else stands out in that category?