Brandt Certified at Merchants & Planters (Movers & Shakers)

Josh Brandt, assistant vice president and trust operations officer with the trust department at Merchants & Planters Bank of Newport, has received the Certified Trust & Fiduciary Advisor professional certification from the American Bankers Association.

Brandt joined Merchants & Planters in 2011.

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David L. Goebel and Rosemary Turner have been named independent directors on the board of directors of Murphy USA Inc. of El Dorado.

Goebel is nonexecutive chairman of the board of Jack in the Box Inc., a partner and faculty member of The ExCo Group LLC and a former president and CEO of Applebee’s International Inc. He was on the board of directors of QuickChek Corp. before its January acquisition by Murphy USA.

Turner is chair of the San Francisco Federal Reserve board of directors, where she has served as a member since 2016. Turner held a variety of leadership positions over 40 years at UPS, including as president of the Nebraska/North and South Dakota, Southern California, Chesapeake and Northern California regions. She also serves on the boards of TFI International and The Bouqs Co.

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Betsy Blankenship has joined The Duley Group of Bentonville as director of sales.

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Luca Sechi, Kurt Silverman, Virgil Prewitt, Chad Brown, Joe Hill and Forrest Short have joined investment firm Circumference Group of Little Rock.

Silverman, Sechi and Prewitt have been hired to newly created positions.

Sechi is chief strategy officer. He previously spent almost 10 years at Endurance International Group, where he held senior roles in strategic partnerships, product development and corporate strategy.

Silverman is chief technology officer. He previously held senior positions at Endurance, Limelight Networks, Convergys and other companies.

Prewitt is principal architect. He was previously principal architect at Limelight Networks and enterprise cloud architect for Oracle Corp.

Brown rejoins Circumference as vice president, private investments. He was previously director of strategic finance at Constant Contact/Endurance.

Hill also rejoins Circumference as vice president, private investments. He previously worked at Endurance and in the leveraged finance group of Bank of America and the investment banking division of Stephens Inc.

Short is an associate, focusing on private company investing. He previously was an associate at Harbert Management Corp. and an investment banking analyst at Stephens Inc.

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See more of this week’s Movers & Shakers, and submit your own announcement at ArkansasBusiness.com/Movers.