Day: September 13, 2019

GREENFIELD — Greenfield Community College (GCC) recently welcomed Joanne Marqusee, president and CEO of Cooley Dickinson Health Care (CDHC), to its board of trustees. One of 11 trustees, she was officially appointed by Gov. Charlie Baker on Aug. 30 and will replace former trustee Elizabeth Sillin.

Marqusee has been a respected healthcare leader for over three decades. Before coming to Cooley in 2014, she served as chief operating officer and executive vice president of Hallmark Health, after having spent 15 years at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston as senior vice president. With a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University, her career began in government, where she served in agencies including the New York City Health and Hospitals Corp. and the New York State Department of Health.

Well-known for its nursing and allied-health programs, “GCC is really important for the success and sustainability of healthcare. The population of adults 65 and older is expected to grow by nearly 15% in the next decade, and there is a growing need for enough staff and providers to carry us into the future,” Marqusee said, adding that she aims to strengthen the relationship between healthcare and academia.

“We are delighted to have Joanne appointed to our board,” said GCC President Yves Salomon-Fernandez. “Healthcare is so important to our region. We thank Governor Baker for keeping our board diverse and representative of the employers in the region.”

Added trustee Robert Cohn, “Joanne Marqusee is a perfect match for our diverse board of skillsets. As CEO of CDHC, she has proven skills in finance, strategic planning, and collaborating with all employees to ensure the best outcomes for all. These are the exact skills that work well for GCC. We are thrilled with her appointment.”

Marqusee said the college’s motto, “You Belong Here,” reflects her own long-held passion for diversity, equity, and inclusion. “I have tried to do a lot of work throughout my career on making sure people feel like they belong. My passion as a leader is in creating a culture of teamwork.”

WARE — Each year, the Boston Business Journal celebrates Massachusetts corporations and nonprofits for their contributions in giving back to communities in Massachusetts. During this year’s celebration held on Sept. 5, Country Bank was recognized as one of the Top Charitable Contributors in 2019 and received a Corporate Citizenship Award.

A total of 105 companies were recognized during the evening; Country Bank ranked 62nd with total donations of $1 million to various nonprofits within the region.

Country Bank employs 235 staff members within Hampden, Hampshire, and Worcester counties. In 2018, staff members actively promoted the bank’s mission of giving back to the communities they serve by volunteering more than 1,100 hours in community service.

HOLYOKE — Holyoke Community College (HCC) theater alumni, together with students from the HCC Theater Department, will gather for the fourth year in a row to produce an evening of one-act plays written in just 24 hours.

The fourth annual HCC 24-hour theater festival, renamed the HCC Phillips Festival last year in memory of the late HCC drama teacher Leslie Phillips, who inspired the festival’s creation, will be presented on Saturday, Sept. 28 at 7:30 p.m. in the Leslie Phillips Theater in HCC’s Fine & Performing Arts Building. Participants will first gather on Friday, Sept. 27 in the theater to begin planning and writing the plays to be performed the following night.

Like the previous three festivals, the fourth is a benefit show, and all proceeds will go toward the Leslie Phillips Fund for Theater Arts and Education at Holyoke Community College.

This event was first organized in 2016 by HCC alumni working with Pat Sandoval, HCC Theater professor, as a tribute to Phillips, founder of the HCC drama program, who died in 1988. Phillips played a pivotal role in the formation of HCC’s Theater department and lent her creative talent and intense focus to inspiring students to explore and discover their passion for the performing arts.

Tickets for the show are $15 for general admission and $10 for students, seniors, HCC faculty, and staff. Advance tickets are being sold online at brownpapertickets.com. Search for ‘Phillips Festival.’

Anyone who would like to participate in this year’s festival can contact the HCC Alumni Players at [email protected] or on the HCC Alumni Players Facebook page.

AMHERST — Ernest Pharmaceuticals, a startup venture based at UMass Amherst’s Institute of Applied Life Sciences (IALS), is one of four companies to win $2,500 from the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center (MTTC) in a business-pitch poster competition in Boston. This recognizes the groundbreaking young biotech firm as it brings its research on programmed bacteria that deliver anti-cancer treatment to tumors from lab to market.

Ernest Pharmaceuticals CEO and bioengineer Nele Van Dessel presented the poster at MTTC’s 12th annual Massachusetts Life Sciences Innovation Day; the company was one among 30 vying for four prizes. She said she and co-founder Neil Forbes, a professor of Chemical Engineering at UMass Amherst, believe the company’s association with IALS has been a crucial factor in its steady success.

“We showed up three years ago at IALS with good science but no business plan,” Van Dessel said, adding that the IALS venture mentoring team “showed us how to start speaking to business to identify our market.” The biotech entrepreneurs also learned how to identify the most effective cancer target type, how to apply for grants, and how to help their treatment reach patients sooner. “Basically, we went from speaking to scientists to pitching to investors.”

Furthermore, IALS’ strategic planning, technology transfer, and other business services, such as developing conflict-of-interest, research, and compliance guidelines have been essential for the development of Ernest Pharmaceuticals. “On the science side, we were good,” Van Dessel said. “We just needed help on the business side, and IALS came through. Where there’s a need they can help you with, they will. We’re very grateful.”

Van Dessel, who earned a Ph.D. in bioengineering at home in Belgium, came to UMass Amherst looking specifically for Forbes after she read all his published papers on what she calls his unconventional but effective use of Salmonella bacteria to deliver cancer-busting compounds to kill metastatic breast cancer tumors from inside. Forbes named the company after his grandfather Ernest, who died of prostate cancer.

Since co-founding Ernest Pharmaceuticals with Forbes, Van Dessel has talked with a large number of oncologists to learn where the greatest need is in cancer treatment today, in particular which metastatic diseases are the hardest to treat. In this way, she and Forbes identified an urgent need for new tools to treat metastatic liver, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers. “So we broadened our approach and went after federal funding to specifically address those,” Van Dessel said.

Also benefiting from the UMass Amherst – IALS Business Innovation Fellows program, Ernest and three other campus startups received Small Business Innovation Research phase I grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health in 2018, bringing them into this year with significant funding, Van Dessel noted. “So now we are looking to raise $1 million to focus on bacterial strain development, for a safe and effective bacteria to deliver to target tumors.”

Peter Reinhart, IALS director, noted that “I am delighted that Ernest Pharmaceuticals, an innovative startup advancing their novel oncology drug-delivery platform with technology licensed from UMass Amherst, won the poster competition in a strong collection of emerging companies.”

Hosted at the UMass President’s Office, MTTC enables public and private research universities and medical centers in Massachusetts to lead the nation in translating basic research to the market, creating jobs and spurring economic development.