Real Estate Leader Receives Rashford-Lyon Award

Each year, Rockhurst University bestows the Rashford-Lyon Award for Leadership and Ethics to a member of the Rockhurst community who exemplifies the values of the award’s two namesakes, the late Tom Lyon and the Rev. Nick Rashford, S.J.

Driving forces behind the founding of the University’s school of management and executive fellows programs, Lyon and Fr. Rashford were known both for their capable leadership and for the care and compassion they displayed for colleagues, for students and for the community.

As part of the Rockhurst University Leadership Series event Tuesday night, the University honored Dave Harrison, ’81, founder and president of VanTrust Real Estate, with this year’s award. In more than 40 years in commercial real estate, Harrison company has left a recognizable mark on Kansas City and beyond. Following a decade as vice president and general manager of Opus Northwest, LLC’s Kansas City office, he established Caymus Real Estate in 2010. Subsequently, it evolved into VanTrust Real Estate two years later.

In Kansas City, some of VanTrust’s notable projects include the Hotel Sorella and the Polsinelli headquarters on the Country Club Plaza, the redevelopment of Prairie Village’s Meadowbrook Park and the Brookside 51 mixed use development near the University of Missouri Kansas City campus. Harrison said on Tuesday that so much of the way he runs his business is tied to the influence of the faculty he had at Rockhurst.

“I grew up around my mom’s Mother Cabrini friends and my dad's Knights of Columbus friends. I was educated by the Benedictine nuns, the Christian Brothers,” he said, “and then the Jesuits.”

Though the specific memories of Rockhurst aren’t as clear as they once were, Harrison said the Jesuit values that Rockhurst teaches continue to guide him. As a civic leader, Harrison uses those same values to help the community he calls home, serving as a member of the UMKC Board of Trustees, as chair of the real estate policy committee and an executive committee member of the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, as a board member and executive committee member for the Urban Neighborhood Initiative, as part of the advisory board for Saint Luke’s Health Systems Marion Bloch Neuroscience Institute, and as a member of the board of directors for the Real Estate Charitable Foundation.

They have also formed the bedrock for his company. He said VanTrust is, at its core, a family. And one where the most important value is doing what is right.

“Differentiating between right and wrong seems to be a failing principle,” he said. “Our society and our politics, some corporate leaders, all could use a giant dose of Rockhurst University right now.”

As the latest recipient of the Rashford-Lyon Award, Harrison joins a prestigious list of recipients that includes Tom Lyon, Ph.D.; Jane Chu, Ph.D., ’05 EMBA; Mayor Sly James, ’80; Patricia Cleary Miller, Ph.D.; Tom McCullough, ’64, and Tom McDonnell, ’66; Jean Dunn, Wendy Doyle, ’94, Lisa Ginter, ’87, Ama Karikari, M.D., ’07, Marny Sherman, ’75, and Bridgette Williams, ’16 EMBA; Joe Reardon, '90; and Madeline Romious, ’95 MBA.