Events manager | Michael Aube, president and CEO, Eastern Maine Development Corp., Bangor

Michael Aube, who shepherded a game-changing $65 million arena project in Bangor, showed signs of economic-development finesse early in life.

At about the age of 10, Aube, in an entrepreneurial Tom Sawyer-esque fashion, convinced neighborhood friends in Saco to rake his family’s lawn, a chore his father had given him one Saturday. Aube, as project manager, paid his friends but managed to recoup some of his costs by selling the workers Kool Aid to quench their thirst.

"&l ...