Latest news with #Rolph
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
Vice chairman of Kansas Board of Regents to resign post with two years left on term
Jon Rolph, center, a Wichita member of the Kansas Board of Regents, plans to resign from the higher education panel with two years remaining on his second four-year term. (Tim Carpenter/Kansas Reflector) TOPEKA — The vice chairman of the Kansas Board of Regents intends to resign from the state higher education board rather than complete the final two years of his second term. Jon Rolph, president and CEO of a Wichita restaurant company, was appointed to the Board of Regents in 2019 by Gov. Laura Kelly. He is expected to depart by June 30. The governor would appoint a replacement, subject to confirmation by the Kansas Senate, to finish a term ending in June 2027. The nine-person Board of Regents has jurisdiction over public universities, community colleges and technical colleges in Kansas. 'Jon is an enthusiastic supporter of higher education who has prioritized the needs of Kansans and our state during his time on the board,' said Carl Ice, chairman of the Board of Regents. Ice said Rolph 'helped our system implement and move forward many key strategic initiatives. He has been an outstanding colleague.' In 2021, Rolph endorsed a board policy that made it easier for campus administrators of the six state universities to suspend, dismiss or terminate employees, including tenured faculty members, without formally declaring a financial emergency. The policy was implemented in 2022 by Emporia State University to justify dismissal of 30 faculty. It triggered a state and federal court battle that continued into 2025. In 2023, Rolph revealed that he had surgery to remove a tumor in his abdomen and was undergoing treatment for cancer. Rolph was serving as chairman of the Board of Regents when the board voted in 2024 to change its diversity and multiculturalism policy under pressure from members of the Kansas Legislature. The revised policy declared state universities in Kansas couldn't require faculty to pledge 'allegiance to, support for or opposition to diversity, equity or inclusion' or DEI. 'This is, again, our good-faith effort in trying to listen to the Legislature,' Rolph said at the time. Rolph's company, Thrive Restaurant Group, operates or owns more than 170 restaurants. It is the second-largest Applebee's franchisee with restaurants in 15 states. He was a student body president at Baylor University.
BBC News
21-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
WW2: Horley woman writes memoirs of grandparents' enduring love
A woman has published a memoir featuring heartfelt letters between her grandparents, written in World War Two, which showed the enduring love between two people during one of history's darkest Mr Snippet is about a newly-married couple, John and Rita Reed, and how their lives, home and family were transformed by the trials of the author Roseanna Rolph, who lives in Horley, told the BBC the memoir was a "window into a world that no longer exists" and "one which we can only imagine"."The letters contain a kaleidoscope of emotions. They show the juxtaposition between someone serving in the military and someone living a civilian life," she said. Ms Rolph said while she was looking after her mother, she was given an "ordinary cardboard box" which contained letters written to her her mother passed away, she was clearing her study when she found letters written to her grandmother inside an old and battered hat box. The author said it took her more than a year just to transcribe her grandparents' letters to each other. Ms Rolph said: "Sharing and learning about Second World War stories is my passion. The level of detail about life during the war in the letters is extraordinary."She explained the book was entitled Dear Mr Snippet because it was her grandfather's Rolph said he had written "snippets of information" about the war, army exercises and the Dunkirk and Normandy campaigns, which lead his wife to call him Mr grandmother wrote about family life, the Blitz, what was happening around London and rationing. During those relentless and harrowing times, Ms Rolph said every decision the couple had made had a "life or death consequence"."They maintained each other's morale with a lot of banter and funny stories," she said. "They were newly married and were quite cheeky."Ms Rolph said the impact of war on children was also a focal point in the memoir, with the couple's two young children struggling with absent parents and separation, housing difficulties, ill-health and constant of the letters will be on display at the London Postal Museum from 29 April.
The Independent
09-04-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Web3's missing link: how Monavate bridges digital innovation with financial reality
Monavate is a Business Reporter client For all the hype surrounding Web3's promise of decentralised, borderless transactions, there's an inconvenient truth: it still needs traditional financial infrastructure to function. Monavate CEO Michael Rolph isn't just aware of this paradox – he's built a profitable business around solving it. 'Web3 is the future of fintech. But it's not Web3 without fintech, and Monavate puts the fintech in Web3,' says Rolph, articulating the challenge facing the entire digital asset industry. While most fintech startups chase venture capital and burn through cash reserves, Monavate has taken a different approach. The company has quietly built a comprehensive platform that bridges legacy banking, modern fintech and Web3's innovations – all while maintaining that rarest of achievements in the space: profitability. 'Most fintechs either have no business model or a terrible one,' says Rolph. 'They raise money, burn it faster than they can raise the next round and assume they have product-market fit because they talk about it enough. That's not how we operate.' Monavate co-founder and President Scott Lucas, who spent two decades witnessing the inefficiencies of business-to-business payments firsthand, explains the fundamental problem. 'Payments should be simple, fast, and efficient,' he says. 'Instead, we have legacy banking systems that introduce unnecessary friction, slow transfers and increase the risk of fraud.' Monavate's solution? Radical simplification. The company has consolidated what traditionally required six or seven different services onto a single platform: MonavateOne. As a principal member of Visa, Mastercard and Discover, Monavate has positioned itself at the core of the global payments infrastructure. This infrastructure-first approach has led to several industry innovations. 'We made the first-ever in-cloud payment where our customers are in the cloud, we're in the cloud and Mastercard were in the cloud,' Lucas explains. 'We launched MetaMask on Baanx, enabling end-to-end spending in decentralised worlds on the blockchain, and became the first on Visa and Mastercard to facilitate stablecoin settlement.' The impact on businesses has been tangible. 'We've simplified the transactions and the reconciliation, so you no longer need huge backroom teams of people to be able to reconcile this information through the data that we capture,' explains Lucas. By consolidating multiple services onto one platform, Monavate eliminates the manual workarounds traditionally required when businesses work with six or seven different suppliers. The result is faster settlements, better fraud protection and a dramatic reduction in operational complexity. After four years of what Rolph describes as 'maniacal focus', the results speak for themselves. Revenue is doubling year over year, and the company has expanded from its UK origins into Europe, with partners lined up to support in the US for imminent launch and licences pending in Latin America. Plans for Asia, Australasia and the Middle East are on the horizon. 'For the past four years, we've been focused on building reality,' says Rolph. 'Not talking about vision – delivering it. That's why our revenue is doubling year on year. And if we did nothing beyond what we've already built, we know it'll double again.' In an industry where many players promise to revolutionise finance through blockchain technology alone, Monavate's approach stands out. Web3's success depends not on replacing traditional financial infrastructure but on building the bridges that connect old and new. And as Web3 continues to evolve, those bridges aren't just useful, they're essential.
