James Mason

When I took this job back in 1994, I assumed in-plants were pretty much the same as commercial printers, but with different clients. I'd been covering the latter while at Printing Impressions magazine, so I imagined my job wouldn't change much; I'd interview in-plants, write a few stories and then mostly forget about those in-plants afterwards. But that's not exactly how it went. Fairly early in the game I realized that in-plants were not like commercial printers. They were friendlier, more tight-knit—almost like a family. What's more, after a while they accepted me into that family. This changed my whole outlook.

James Mason visited the Federal Reserve Bank on a school trip. He's been at the bank ever since. by Mike Llewellyn During his senior year of high school, James Mason's class toured the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank. When the trip concluded at the bank's in-plant, the guide asked if anyone in the group thought they might like to work with that equipment. Mason was the only one in the group with a raised hand. "I graduated on a Thursday," he says. "On Friday they offered me a job." Today, Mason is the award-winning operational supervisor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Print