Lee E. Mikles

Lee E. Mikles was born in 1955 to a young, unwed mother in Heber Springs, Arkansas. With no spouse and only an eighth-grade education, she felt unable to provide for her infant and put him up for adoption. Mikles was a ward of the state of Arkansas until age three, when a couple from California adopted him.

His adoptive father was an architect and engineer, who had a promising business. However, when Mikles was eight, the business failed, and his father never recovered financially or emotionally. To support the family, his adoptive mother worked as a secretary and taught piano and voice lessons in their home.

Mikles's father increasingly abused alcohol and took out his frustrations on his wife and son. Consequently, Mikles sought ways to stay away from home as much as possible. At age 10, he started teaching himself to play golf, steadily progressing throughout his high school years. Colleges tried to recruit him, and in 1973, he accepted a full college scholarship to play golf at Arizona State University. During his college career, he won many awards. In his senior year, he was named a First Team All-American, played on the U.S. Walker Cup team, and won the California Amateur Championship. Before launching his career in finance, Mikles played golf for three years on the PGA tour.

From 1981 to 1989, Mikles was a first vice president with Drexel Burnham Lambert, Inc. While there, he formed KCM Equities and became a co-general partner of several joint ventures with the parent company, DBL Group, Inc. Mikles was instrumental in the creation, financing, and management of those limited partnerships.

After a brief stint at Bateman Eichler Hill Richards, Inc., he co-founded the Mikles-Miller Group, an affiliate of Shearson Lehman Brothers. In 1992, he was a founding partner of Mikles/Miller Management, Inc., a registered investment advisor, and Mikles/Miller Securities LLC, a broker-dealer firm. Mikles/Miller Management, Inc. was the managing general partner of the Kodiak family of funds that managed institutional capital worldwide. In 2005, he co-founded and became president and CEO of FutureFuel Corp., a chemical and biodiesel company with headquarters in Clayton, Missouri. FutureFuel is one of the leading U.S. producers of biofuels.

Committed to helping others, Mikles and his wife, Lori, established the Make It Possible Foundation in 2001. Similar to the Horatio Alger Association, the Mikles's foundation supports college scholarships for students who have faced adversity. "A great deal of effort and funding are readily available to outstanding students," Mikles says, "but too little is afforded those with hardships that don't allow for the student's efforts, desires and potential to be reflected on a simple report card." Over the past six years, the Make It Possible Foundation has assisted dozens of students in their pursuit of higher education. Additionally, the Mikles family has provided generous support for Habitat for Humanity and Autism Speaks; it has also established scholarships at Bishop Garcia Diego High School and endowed the Mikles Gallery at Laguna Blanca School, both located in Santa Barbara, California.

"The American dream is alive and well," says Mikles. "The opportunity to excel is restricted only by your own imagination and desire to succeed. It is not important where you are, only the direction in which you are headed."