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The background information for each member of the Board of Directors is laid out in the following paragraphs.

Mr. Backer is a 1953 graduate of Stanford University located in Palo Alto, California. From October, 1953 through December, 1955 he served in the U.S. Marine Corps as an Air Intelligence Officer. Mr. Backer was employed as Sales Manager for the Lusk Corporation, headquartered in Kokomo, Indiana, in connection with a 360 unit Residential Community Development in Tucson, Arizona. From September, 1957 through June, 1959, he studied to earn a Masters Degree in Business Administration from Stanford University. Mr. Backer progressed from Management Trainee to Assistant Buyer and Assistant Store Manager for I. Magnin & Company in San Francisco and Fresno, California, for the period from September, 1959 to April, 1964.

Aetna Life Insurance Company employed Mr. Backer as a Sales Agent for individual and group life insurance, health insurance, and pension products in Omaha, Nebraska, from May, 1964 to December, 1982. In addition to these responsibilities, he formed JAT Corporation in June, 1972 to operate a Sizzler Family Restaurant franchise in St. Joseph, Missouri. Mr. Backer is President and Treasurer of that enterprise.

Mr. Backer served as a director of Bridges Investment Fund, Inc. from 1979 to 2004. As a founding director, Mr. Backer has served continuously on the Board of Directors of Provident Trust Company since September, 1990.

Mr. Bridges II graduated from the College of Business Administration of the University of Nebraska, Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Science Degree in June, 1954. As an undergraduate he earned a number of honors, including a Phi Beta Kappa key. Mr. Bridges attended the Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration (HBS) from September, 1954 to June, 1956, and he received a Masters Degree in Business Administration. Mr. Bridges II was appointed to the HBS faculty as a Research Assistant for George P. Baker, the James J. Hill Professor of Transportation in June, 1956. Later in his career, Mr. Baker became Dean of the Harvard Business School, and he completed his corporate governance career as the Sole Trustee in Bankruptcy for the Penn Central Railroad.

In August, 1957, Mr. Bridges II embarked on a new research career in the President's office of the Western Pacific Railroad in San Francisco, California. He conducted long-range planning studies to determine volumes of products to be hauled for the automobile, construction, trucks on trailers, paper, and petroleum industries. Mr. Bridges II participated in cost finding, operating modalities, pricing of service, return on capital investment, and related studies as part of the forecasting process to determine realistic conclusions.

Mr. Bridges II joined his father, Marvin, in the investment counsel business in September, 1959. A Chartered Financial Analyst designation was achieved in 1967. Mr. Bridges II continues to be active in this profession. As business opportunities for diversification have developed from time to time, Mr. Bridges II has been responsible for founding and leading five other businesses described elsewhere in this About Us section of our website.

Mr. Bridges II has served or continues to be on the following not-for-profit boards of directors: the College, the Foundation, the Hospital, and the Physicians Clinic entities of the Nebraska Methodist Health System, holding the chair position for several years in most of those affiliated institutions; Historic Deerfield in Massachusetts; the Omaha Zoological Society; and the University of Nebraska Foundation’s Executive and Finance Committees. He has served as a director for more than ten years on the following corporations: N. P. Dodge Company (real estate), First Westside Bank, Airlite Plastics Co., and The Store Kraft Manufacturing Company of Beatrice, Nebraska.

Mr. Bridges III majored in Economics and Government at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. Following graduation in June, 1980, he enrolled at the University of Nebraska College of Law in the fall of that year. Mr. Bridges III graduated with a Juris Doctor degree in May, 1983. He passed the State of Nebraska Bar Examination in August, 1983. Mr. Bridges III continues his membership in the Nebraska Bar. However, he does not utilize his legal background in that profession except in relation to estate and trust matters. A Chartered Financial Analyst designation was achieved in 1987.

All of the full-time business experience of Mr. Bridges III has been assimilated with Bridges Investment Counsel, Inc. He has pursued security research and its related investment management demands for excellence with a deep passion since 1983. He committed himself as an investment and portfolio manager to develop competitive total investment returns for the institutional clients in the 1986-1987 time frame. Charitable institutions, pension and profit sharing/401(k) plans, and other institutional portfolios have grown under his management during the next decade and one-half. Mr. Bridges III's investment record particularly from 1997 to 1999 was so outstanding that Business Week, Louis Rukeyser, and Morningstar published articles about his management. He was interviewed from time to time by business hosts on CNBC.

Mr. Bridges III is Executive Vice President of Bridges Investment Counsel, Inc., President of Bridges Investment Fund, Inc., President of Bridges Investment Management, Inc., and Senior Vice President and Trust Officer for Provident Trust Company. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of our employee-owned Bridges Investor Services, Inc. Despite these extensive responsibilities, Mr. Bridges III has accepted volunteer responsibilities for Center For Human Nutrition, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, Junior Achievement, the Nebraska Humane Society, the St. Augustine Indian Mission, and the Westside School District 66 Foundation.

Mr. Bridges enrolled as a Business Administration major at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, North Carolina, in August, 1984. Robert was elected president of his fraternity in his senior year, and he was appointed by the University Administration to the position of President of the Student Alumni Council for special events held during the Fall 1987 to Spring 1988 school year. Following graduation with a Bachelor of Science Degree in May, 1988, Mr. Bridges served First Home Federal of Greensboro, N.C. as a consumer loan officer and Assistant Branch Manager.

Bridges Investment Counsel, Inc. hired Mr. Bridges in June, 1990 to lead the Firm’s accounting department of five employees, some of whom were known to him from summer employment during the 1985-1987 period. He used his college training to redefine job positions and cross-train persons through periodic job rotations. Mr. Bridges also worked in the standardization of forms and work processes. His offsite storage of file records and properties regime installed in 1987 is still in use. Mr. Bridges conceived and executed the conversion of our IBM System 36/AS400 custom program for portfolio accounting into a Microsoft Windows based Advent Axys standardized software system in the 1994-1996 time frame. Mr. Bridges is one of two employees who mastered the M&I Data Services trust software in 1992 and became a key operator of Provident's services in the early years of our history.

Mr. Bridges resigned his position with Bridges Investment Counsel, Inc. to accept an offer as Assistant Compliance Officer at Sterling Capital Management, Inc., an investment management firm located in Charlotte, North Carolina. He has progressed to lead another customer accounting software conversion to Advent Axys, served a year as a contact person to high net worth individual investors and as a security analyst for the past six years. Bob was voted employee of the year at Sterling by the non-management personnel in 1998.

Mr. Estabrook holds a Bachelor of Science Degree from Omaha University, also known in recent years as the University of Nebraska at Omaha, that was conferred in 1951. Mr. Estabrook served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946, and early in his life he worked at a number of part-time jobs for various companies as a warehouseman, a boilermaker, a window designer for a department store (Marshall Fields & Co. in Chicago), and an elevator operator at Nebraska Methodist Hospital in Omaha. In 1951, his employment at Nebraska Methodist Hospital began on a full-time basis, and he advanced from Assistant to the Administrator to the Administrator position and ultimately to the Presidency of the Nebraska Methodist Health System. Mr. Estabrook retired in 1992.

During his 41 year career at Methodist, Mr. Estabrook led the institution through a series of first-time events in our region: the relocation of the main facility to move closer to an expanding patient population was a strategic achievement. In particular, the design for the delivery of patient care on the floors and the intensive care/coronary care units was sufficiently unique that representatives from around the U.S. and some foreign countries would regularly tour the new facility. The original hospital building was retained and used for rehabilitation services and a new program to treat chemical dependency problems.

Mr. Estabrook started or was personally involved with leading area-wide cost saving initiatives in the 1970's with the formation of Shared Service Systems for various hospitals and nursing homes in portions of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Kansas, and Missouri. He instituted a small hospital management program to enable institutions to continue their services in the local communities. Mr. Estabrook found ways to collaborate and coordinate with other health care institutions long before such practices became a necessity in the last two decades.

Mr. Estabrook sought out others by forming study groups with his regional and national peers. He was honored by being asked to invest in HRDI, a for-profit company located in Pensacola, Florida, where 30 hospital administrators from around the nation would assess the efficacy for manufacturers of proposed new medical treatment equipment.

Mr. Uhing is a 1958 graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha with a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Administration. In 1958, he was hired by Arthur Andersen & Co., and he became a Certified Public Accountant in the same year. Between 1958 and 1969, Mr. Uhing conducted or performed for that firm's clients audit assignments, special studies, purchase investigations, accounting systems design, financial modeling, budgeting, tax consulting, and income tax return preparation.

During 1969, Mr. Uhing was made a Partner of Arthur Andersen & Co. He served in that capacity for 19 years in both Des Moines, Iowa, and Omaha. Mr. Uhing's principal responsibility was to manage and develop the professional practice of that firm. This endeavor involved service to clients in a variety of businesses including financial, manufacturing, retailing, distribution, and agricultural production. The training of personnel was also a part of Mr. Uhing’s responsibilities. His primary area of expertise included auditing, mergers and acquisitions, and general business counsel.

In accordance with standard policy, Mr. Uhing retired from Arthur Andersen & Co. in 1988 to serve as a Business Consultant for a select group of clients. He has been active for the Omaha Archdiocesan Finance and Investment Committee, the Omaha Symphony Association, and other community and church-based charitable services.

Mr. Winstrom earned a Bachelor of Science Degree from Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa in 1953. He has been employed by Pennfield Oil Company of Omaha, Nebraska, since 1953. Mr. Winstrom's career began as a salesman distributing gasoline, diesel fuel, and other petroleum products to bulk plants in rural Iowa and Nebraska communities. He developed the vision that the agricultural markets he visited could benefit from a new supplier of veterinarian medicines. As sales volumes expanded from this initiative, Mr. Winstrom founded Vitamin PreMixers of Omaha, Inc. to manufacture various product lines to serve his customers and other buyers. This highly successful business was eventually sold to a large U.S. pharmaceutical company.

Pennfield shifted its main business away from distribution of petroleum products and towards research to development of fine chemicals; several important drugs and coating materials were patented. Mr. Winstrom began travels to Europe and Asia to locate reliable suppliers of fine chemicals to broaden and expand Pennfield’s new product lines, and he became a highly knowledgeable individual for PTC's board of directors about international affairs.

Mr. Winstrom has served on an advisory board for Norwest Banks in the Omaha area, and he was a director of Bridges Investment Fund, Inc. from 1973 to 1983. His charitable interests include service for various corporations within the Nebraska Methodist Health System and the Salvation Army.

Board Composition and Contributions
The three non-employee founding directors of Provident Trust Company are individuals who became clients and supported Bridges Investment Counsel, Inc. during the early 1960's. They are persons who were involved with start-up businesses that became highly successful. Each one on the five and then seven men Board know one another well. These dynamics contributed to the adoption of policy judgments and operating policies recommended by management that enabled growth and stability to take place simultaneously.

Some of our directors will retire in a few years. Their replacements will be individuals of the same caliber. The expansion of the original board seats from five to seven was due in part to allow new directors to sit in on trust business and work with the more experienced members.