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V I E W P O I N T S W W W. M A I N E B I Z . B I Z 3 M A R C H 2 3 , 2 0 2 6 Congratulations 2026 Business Leaders! Your leadership continues to raise the bar. bernsteinshur.com Thank you for helping our Maine business community thrive with your hard work and dedication. From the Editor W e're happy to introduce the 2026 Business Leaders of the Year in this issue. is year's lineup has a combination of rela- tively unknown leaders, but also some people who have been known in the business commu- nity for years. In fact, one of the leaders named in these pages was featured in the very first issue of Mainebiz in 1994. We'll be hosting a reception for the honorees on Tuesday, April 14, at the Ocean Gateway in Portland. We hope you'll join us. Meantime, the profiles start on Page 12. And in other awards… Not to bring the focus back to Mainebiz, but I do want to call attention to some awards won by our editorial team and photographers. Mainebiz took home five awards in the 2025 New England Better Newspaper Competition, including first place honors for longtime contrib- uting photographer Tim Greenway. Winners were announced in early March at a Portsmouth, N.H., event hosted by the trade group. Greenway, a Portland-area freelance photogra- pher who has worked with Mainebiz for more than two decades, won first place in the niche publica- tions category for "Beyond Vacationland," a photo story about manufacturing in Maine published in the 2025 Mainebiz Fact Book. e cover features a selection of photos from the series. Contributing photographer Jim Neuger won second place in the same category for his oyster- themed "Slurpin' USA" photo cover story pub- lished in June 2025. "Portland at a crossroads," a cover story pub- lished in July 2025, was recognized with awards in two categories. Mainebiz Deputy Editor Renee Cordes won second-place honors in "Business/Economics Reporting — Specialty Publications" for the arti- cle, while Mainebiz Art Director Matt Selva won second place for "Best Front Page — Specialty Publications." Selva also earned second place in the combined category of "Overall Design and Presentation of a Print Newspaper," for the Dec. 16, 2024, edition of Mainebiz focused on manufacturing. Congrats to my colleagues and to our contributors. Peter Van Allen pvanallen@mainebiz.biz Featured @ Mainebiz.biz For a daily digest of Maine's top business news, sign up for the Mainebiz Daily Report at mainebiz.biz/enews Mainebiz offers the latest business news in the Daily Report and the Real Estate Insider newsletters. Here is the top content from Feb. 25 to March 13. 1. Boutique hotel set for May debut on Portland waterfront 2. MEREDA conference forecasters weigh headwinds, opportunities for Maine real estate in 2026 3. Brooklin Boat Yard awarded $1.5M MTI grant for new building 4. For Hebert Construction, restoration of Lewiston landmark was 'a labor of love' 5. New South Portland restaurant welcomes dogs (and humans) 6. Construction of 24-unit condo development underway in Kennebunk 7. A 200-unit luxury apartment complex is under construction in Westbrook 8. Tennessee firm proposes $180M plant in Sanford that would destroy 'forever chemicals' 9. Downeast seafood company advances plan to process Jonah crab 10. Sandy Pines Campground files for bankruptcy, stalling foreclosure auction P H O T O / C O U R T E S Y H E I D I K I R N 1 One of this year's honorees was featured in the very first issue of Mainebiz in 1994. A mix of known and less well-known leaders make their mark

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