George O'Brien, Author at BusinessWest

Education Special Coverage

A Calling to Serve

George Timmons

George Timmons recalled a conversation he had a with a friend — a college president and mentor — several years back. He had a simple question for him.

“I asked him, ‘doc, how to you know when you’re ready?” he recalled, meaning, in this case, ready to become a college president himself.

The answer wasn’t quite what he expected.

“He said, ‘George, you’ll know when you know you’re ready,’” he said. “And I used to say, ‘what do you mean?’”

Timmons said he would eventually come to understand what his friend meant — that there would come a time, after years of preparation, earning needed degrees, and working in different jobs that would provide learning experiences and the ability to hone leadership skills … when he would know that he was ready.

He said he reached that time a few years ago and soon began to at least consider jobs that carried that designation. But — and this is a big but — he stressed that he wasn’t chasing a title.

“When I looked at the student profile, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my roots, my humble beginnings, and where I came from; I’m a first-generation college graduate.”

“It was really about chasing the right opportunity that allowed me to demonstrate the skills and talents that I have that aligned with the needs of the organization and where I thought I could really add value,” he said. “For me, it’s really important that I’m at an institution where I can bring value and that I connect with, and be able to take it to a new level of excellence.”

And that’s what he saw when Holyoke Community College (HCC) began its search for someone to succeed Christina Royal last fall.

Specifically, it was the presidential profile, and especially its student profile, one that showcased a diverse population featuring a large percentage of first-generation college students, that caught his attention.

“When I looked at the student profile, I couldn’t help but be reminded of my roots, my humble beginnings, and where I came from; I’m a first-generation college graduate,” he told BusinessWest. “Also, with 48% students of color … that was very attractive to me, and would allow me to add value, particularly with an emphasis on equity and student success. I saw myself in that student profile.”

Fast-forward several months — we’ll go back and fill in all the details later — and Simmons is winding down his work at provost and senior vice president of Academic and Student Affairs at Columbia-Greene Community College in Hudson, N.Y., getting ready to start at HCC the middle of next month.

Upon arriving, he intends to embark on what he called a “soft launch of a listening tour,” one that will involve several constituencies, including students, faculty, staff, area elected officials, and members of the business community.

George Timmons says it’s important to hear from all constituencies — from students, faculty, and staff to local officials and business people — early in his tenure.

“I think it’s important to hear from the stakeholders who are present, as well as getting into the community, meeting members of the business community and key stakeholders, to hear what they have to say and understand their views on the college and where they see areas of opportunity. I think it’s important that I immerse myself in the community to understand and learn where there are challenges and opportunities, get to know people, and build relationships.”

Elaborating, Simmons said that, overall, he wants to build on all that Royal has been able to accomplish at HCC — everything from bold strides on diversity, equity, and inclusion to a food pantry and a student emergency fund — while putting his own stamp on the oldest community college in the state, one that recently celebrated its 75th anniversary.

For this issue and its focus on education, BusinessWest talked at length with Timmons about his new assignment, what brought him to the HCC campus, and what he hopes to achieve when he gets there.

Course of Action

Timmons told BusinessWest that, during one of his visits to the HCC campus for interviews, he was given a 90-minute driving tour of the city by perhaps the best-qualified person in the region to give one.

That would be Jeff Hayden, vice president of Business & Community Services at HCC and former director of Planning & Economic Development for the city.

“He’s a great tour guide,” Timmons said. “He’s a history guy, and I love history and people who like history — and there is a lot of it in Holyoke.”

The tour of the city pretty much confirmed what Timmons said he already knew — that this was a community, and a college, that he wanted to be part of, one that would provide that opportunity that he spoke of, and not merely a title.

His journey to the Paper City has been an intriguing one, and it began not far from here.

“She made me understand that, when you want to achieve a goal, it really doesn’t matter what others say or if other people will support you. Only one person gets to decide whether you will achieve that goal — and that’s you.”

Indeed, Timmons said he grew up in the Hartford area, and was essentially raised by his grandmother, who instilled in him a number of values, including the importance of education.
“She made me understand that, when you want to achieve a goal, it really doesn’t matter what others say or if other people will support you,” he recalled. “Only one person gets to decide whether you will achieve that goal — and that’s you.

“I made a commitment to myself at a very early age that no one was going to outwork me when it came to me achieving my goals,” he went on. “Those values shaped who I am today.”

Timmons has spent more than 25 years working in higher education in several different realms, from academic support services to online education; from working with adult learners to roles in both academic affairs and student affairs.

“I have a really broad breadth and depth in higher education that allows me to have a comprehensive view of a college,” he noted, adding that he believes his diverse résumé will serve him well as he takes the proverbial corner office at HCC, becoming just its fifth president in 75 years.

Timmons, who earned a bachelor’s degree in financial management at Norfolk State University in Virginia, a master’s degree in higher education at Old Dominion University in Virginia, and his Ph.D. in higher education administration at Bowling Green University in Ohio, started his career in academia in 1996 at Old Dominion as a site director at a satellite campus as part of a groundbreaking program called TELETECHNET. It provided the opportunity for students to earn bachelor’s and master’s degrees at remote locations through the use of satellites and televisions with two-way video connections, a precursor of sorts of the remote-learning programs that would dominate higher education during the pandemic.

Later, he served as assistant dean of Adult Learning at North Carolina Wesleyan College before being recruited to be the founding dean of Online Education and Learning Services at Excelsior College in New York.

He served in that role for several years before becoming provost for Online Education, Learning, and Academic Services, and also serving later as dean of the School of Liberal Arts.

During that time in his career, he was able to take part in a number of professional-development opportunities, including the Harvard MLE program, as well as the American Council of Education Fellowship Program and the Aspen Rising Presidential Fellowship, which is focused on preparing community-college presidents.

“I’ve really had the opportunity to learn and hone my skills,” he explained. “I think it’s important that you learn your craft — it’s a journey; you continue to work to get better and strive to be better. There’s always room for improvement, and so it’s really important that you stay current and abreast of the trends in higher education to be effective.”

After his lengthy tenue at Excelsior, he became vice president of Academic and Student Affairs at Columbia-Greene Community College, a role that carried many responsibilities, including student affairs, athletics, events planning, partnership development, and more.

It was at some point during his tenure at Columbia-Greene that he reached that point his friend and mentor alluded to: when he knew he was ready to become a college president. But as he mentioned earlier, it’s one thing to be ready, but finding the right opportunity is something else altogether.

“I’m very selective — I’m not chasing a title,” he told BusinessWest. “I say this humbly, but I could have been a president a few years ago if I was just chasing a title. It was really important for me to align myself with an institution that I could have longevity with, and I believe Holyoke Community College allows me the opportunity to plant roots in Western Mass. and work with the board of trustees, the faculty, students, staff, and administrators to carry out its mission.”

Grade Expectations

Which brings him back to that that profile of HCC and how it resonated with him, personally and professionally.

“I actually felt a call to serve — that’s when I knew. I felt I was ready based on what they were looking for and my background; I felt like that profile was calling me.”

And after several rounds of interviews, those conducting the search for a new president would ultimately decide to call him — literally.

And as he winds down at Columbia-Greene, he is looking ahead to July and using his time before the fall semester starts to learn more about the school, the city, the region, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.

There are plenty of both, but especially opportunities, he told BusinessWest, adding that, in this time of skyrocketing costs in higher education and ever-greater emphasis on value, community colleges are an attractive alternative — as a place to start, and often as a place to finish.

“Community colleges are, to me, a great pathway to a better life,” he said. “And when you consider that almost half of all students who are in higher education are enrolled in a community college, I don’t think that’s by accident, because there’s fair criticism about the cost of higher education and how prohibitive it is for some members of community to go to college. The community-college mission of access is one that I cannot underscore enough.

“Community college is a great way to get a quality, affordable education to advance one’s social mobility, and with minimal debt,” he went on. “It gives people a great foundation that prepares them to transition to a four-year institution or to go into the workforce and earn a livable, sustainable wage. That’s why community colleges are near and dear to my heart; thay are an important pathway to the middle class.”

Getting back to that aforementioned listening tour, Timmons said listening is a huge part of what could be called his management style. Other parts include transparency, being collaborative, fostering excellence, and more.

“As a contemporary leader in higher education, you should have a broad and comprehensive leadership style grounded in transformational, collaborative, and servant leadership,” he explained. “And by that, I mean encouraging people, inspiring them, knowing how to listen, building community, leveraging mutual respect for one another … these are all vital aspects of the leadership needed to advance an institution’s success.”

Elaborating, he stressed the importance of knowing how to transform “in a way that is acceptable, but that also challenges the culture to stretch and grow.

“And to do that, you have to be able to listen, respect your colleagues, understand why things were done the way they were, and, without judgment, maybe ask the question, ‘how can we be better?’” he went on. “As people, we can always be better, and as institutions, we can always be better. So what does that look like?

“You also have to stay current with what’s happening in our space,” he continued. “You have to continually ask, ‘are we remaining competitive, and are we meeting the needs of our students and the community?’”

When asked how someone masters that art of listening, he said simply, and with a laugh, “the key is not to talk.”

Instead, “you listen by seeking input and asking questions and giving people a platform to at least share their opinions, their thoughts, and their expertise,” he went on. “One of things I want to do coming in is listen to key stakeholders and say, ‘historically, what have you liked most about the institution, where do you see areas of opportunity, and if you could make a change, what would it be?’ And then you start to look at themes, see what themes emerge, and use that to guide your next steps.”

There will be a number of next steps for Timmons, who at first didn’t really grasp that he would know when he was ready to be a college president.

Eventually he would understand what his mentor was saying, and he did know when was ready — not for a job or a title, but for a real opportunity to make a difference.

And that’s what he intends to do at HCC.

Ryan McCollum

Owner, RMC Strategies

Ryan McCollum has grown not only his business but his civic impact since being honored by 40 Under Forty in 2012 (below).

Ryan McCollum 2012

When he became a member of the 40 Under Forty class of 2012, Ryan McCollum had already established an impressive track record of entrepreneurship, community involvement, and simply being an advocate for, and supporter of, the Western Mass. region and its business community.

Indeed, at that time, he had established RMC Strategies, a full-service consulting and government-relations firm, as a force in the region. Meanwhile, he was involved in civic work — and helping to promote and strengthen the 413 — on many levels, from his work to help launch the Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield to his service on the board of Best Buddies.

To say that, over the past 11 years, he has only built on this deep and impressive résumé would be a huge understatement.

As an entrepreneur, he has established two new ventures — Shoe Leather, a text-messaging marketing company, and Goldilox, an online payment platform for candidates and nonprofits — and he is also part-owner of a cannabis dispensary set to open this fall in Monson, part of the growing portfolio of Holyoke-based DAZE, one of his clients at RMC.

Speaking of RMC, McCollum continues to grow that venture and take it in different directions. Indeed, while he still handles political campaigns — he served as consultant to Joshua Garcia in his successful bid to become the first Latino Mayor of Holyoke in 2021, for example — he continues to build his client list and, recently, his portfolio of work as a lobbyist. When he spoke with BusinessWest, McCollum was driving to Boston to lobby for the Coalition for an Equitable Economy. He’s also done some lobbying for a company looking to enable small businesses — bars, restaurants, and private clubs — to be a part of the burgeoning sports-betting scene across the state.

But it’s his ongoing efforts to expand his volunteer work within the community that is perhaps most impressive.

Indeed, the current list of agencies and causes he’s involved with includes Suit Up Springfield and Square One, which he serves as a board member; Roca, which he serves as an advisory board member; the Springfield Museums, where he has been a member of the marketing and communications committee; the Children’s Museum in Holyoke, for which he was a celebrity dancer for its Fancy Steps fundraiser this year; and many others. He’s even involved in work to help bring others into the game of golf, a sport he discovered years ago and is now somewhat passionate about.

“If ever Ryan leaves a board, he immediately joins two more,” wrote Timothy Allen, principal at Birchland Park Middle School in East Longmeadow and a 40 Under Forty winner himself (class of 2013), who nominated McCollum for the AAA. “Despite the success of his personal business, it is still the community side of his work that drives his daily motivation.”

Increasingly, this work in the community has involved efforts to combat racism and level the playing field for all residents of the 413 — and beyond.

McCollum is now a board member for the Healing Racism Institute of Pioneer Valley as well as the National Conference for Community and Justice, and he recently became a member of the Longmeadow Coalition for Racial Justice Task Force. And then, there’s the recently formed nonprofit he founded (with 15 friends and colleagues, many of them involved in education) called 16 Lyrics.

“We fight to conquer and dismantle systemic racism through education, community outreach, and intensive support of those in the same battles.”

“We fight to conquer and dismantle systemic racism through education, community outreach, and intensive support of those in the same battles,” he said of the agency’s mission statement. “Our first initiative has been to provide kids with books that have diverse characters, diverse authors, diverse storylines — and we do that all over the country; we’ve given out books that we’ve purchased from Black-owned bookstores to places in New Jersey, Chicago, and, of course, Massachusetts. It’s been fun, and I think we’re already making a difference.”

While his work in the community and as a business owner and lobbyist are all impressive, perhaps McCollum’s most important work, Allen said, is as a connector — connecting residents, political candidates and office holders, and organizations with resources and opportunities for growth and advancement.

“He is the person to call to connect people and form other lasting bonds, which further creates great energy and outcomes here in Western Mass.,” Allen wrote. “Instead of sitting on each board he is asked to sit on, he’s working on setting up a talent bank of young and diverse leaders to sit on boards and fill other roles he’s often asked himself to take on.

“While clearly becoming an even more of a behind-the-scenes and sometimes out-front leader in the community, it’s Ryan’s ability to push for others that sets him apart,” Allen continued. “He consistently extends opportunities to those who may not have the connections or relationships to be thought of, but have the talent and love of the community to serve as well as anyone.”

When he became a 40 Under Forty honoree in 2012, McCollum summed up his work — and his overall mindset — this way: “I want to leave the world a better place than I found it … this is the driving force behind everything I do.”

That is still the force that drives him, and 11 years later, there is much more to talk about when it comes to ‘everything I do.’

And that’s why he is one of the finalists for the Alumni Achievement Award in 2023.

—George O’Brien

Orlando Ramos

State Representative, 9th District

Orlando Ramos’ 40 Under Forty photo in 2012 (below) emphasized he’s a fighter in more ways than one — and that hasn’t changed.

For his studio photograph when he became a member of the 40 Under Forty class of 2014, Orlando Ramos chose to put on his blue boxing gloves and robe — he trained under legend Duke Belton and fought for several years — with a dress shirt and tie underneath.

The juxtaposition of those clothing items was well-thought-out, and quite poignant.

Indeed, at that time, when Ramos was 31 and serving as a Springfield city councilor (Ward 8) and district director for state Sen. James Welch, he was essentially sending a message — that he was still fighting … just not in the ring. Instead, he was fighting for Springfield, the city where he grew up (the Pine Point neighborhood, to be more specific), and its residents.

That fight took him to the presidency of the City Council, a role he carried out for two years, 2017 and 2018.

Today, the fight continues, but in a different setting. Sort of. Instead of City Hall in Springfield, Ramos’ professional mailing address is now the State House in Boston, where he serves as representative for the 9th District, which represents Pine Point and other neighborhoods in the northern part of the city.

But Ramos is looking to come back to City Hall, in this case the corner office. Indeed, he is a candidate for mayor in what promises to be a heated fight (there’s that word again) that will play out over the several months. We’ll get back to that in a minute.

First, there’s Ramos’s ongoing fight for the city and how it has evolved over the past several years, a progression, and an escalation, if one chooses to call it that, which impressed the panel of judges weighing nominations for the Alumni Achievement Award and made him a finalist for that coveted award.

His story of service to the community starts more than 15 years ago, when Ramos, who began his professional career as a carpenter and later was appointed union steward of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters Local 108, was offered an internship in the governor’s Western Mass. office, whetting his appetite for public service.

He was later offered a full-time position as Welch’s district director, and successfully ran for City Council in 2013.

Ramos said he chose to take his work to fight for Springfield to the State House to essentially broaden his impact.

“I saw an opportunity to bring more resources back to the community,” he told BusinessWest, adding that he was first elected during the COVID pandemic, a time that “highlighted so many inequalities and so many needs in Springfield.”

He added that “we needed a leader with experience to navigate the Legislature, and that’s why I decided to run.”

He said his freshman term was a productive one, with three bills that he authored passing the House. Elaborating, he said the sports-betting bill that eventually passed was the version that included diversity, equity, and inclusion language that he wrote. Another bill he steered through concerned biomass plants and essentially removed state subsidies for such facilities, a measure he believes was the “final dagger” for a controversial biomass plant proposed for Springfield.

“I love my job as a state representative, but I feel there is a need in the city, and I feel that I am the right person for the job.”

The third bill concerned regulation of facial-surveillance technology. It passed both the House and Senate, but was vetoed by then-Gov. Charlie Baker. He is hopeful that it will pass this year.

As for his decision to run for mayor, Ramos said he believes it’s time for a change in Springfield, and a time to seize more opportunities, especially within the broad realm of economic development.

“I see that there is a need in the city for a new vision,” he told BusinessWest. “I love my job as a state representative, but I feel there is a need in the city, and I feel that I am the right person for the job. We’ve had a lot of missed opportunities, and I feel that people are ready for a new mayor.”

He said he was the first person on the ballot and has hit the ground running when it comes to his campaign. “I’ve been knocking on doors ever since. And I’m going to continue knocking on doors until election day.”

Areliz Barboza, coordinator of the nonprofit agency known as Listening with Love, who nominated Ramos for the AAA honor, summed up Ramos’s work, and his passion for Springfield and its residents, this way:

“I believe he is an ambassador for our community. He is not only an elected official, but he is also a mentor to our young people,” she wrote. “He has the heart to serve our seniors. He has devoted himself to be the change within his family and in our community. Even with his busy schedule, he still manages to always make time to go above and beyond for our community. I believe his integrity and passion to serve our community speaks volumes and brings inspiration that creates the change we need in Springfield.”

Those sentiments explain why he has been elected city councilor and state representative, why he became a 40 Under Forty honoree in 2014, and now, why is a finalist for the Alumni Achievement Award.

—George O’Brien

Amy Royal

Founder and CEO, the Royal Law Firm

Amy Royal had only recently launched her law firm in 2009 (the photo highlights an early client), and now the firm has a physical presence in four states.

Amy Royal is in pretty much the same place she was last year at this time … well, at least when it comes to BusinessWest’s Alumni Achievement Award competition.

Indeed, her scores from a different panel of judges have again made her a finalist for the coveted honor, which is why she is now clearing her schedule for the third Thursday in June to enable her to be at the Log Cabin to see if it is her name being announced as the AAA winner for 2023.

But in many other respects, Royal is in a different place — literally and figuratively.

She is now living in Eastern New York, where she is hard at work opening the newest office for the law firm she started in 2008 (and which earned her 40 Under Forty honors the following year), now known as the Royal Law Firm. That new office is in Albany, the state’s capital, giving the firm a presence now in the Empire State and most of New England.

“I’ve been working really hard to expand our footprint here,” she said from New York, “and obviously continue to build in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire…”

As for the Massachusetts office, it is located in the historic Alexander House, just a few hundred feet down Elliot Street in Springfield from the federal courthouse. For Royal, acquisition and subsequent renovation of the stately mansion has become a passion, one we’ll get back to later.

For now, know that this new home for the Springfield office, and Royal’s affection for it, is enough to prompt her to commute from just outside Albany to Springfield several days a week; travel time is about an hour, she said, just a little longer than it took her to get to Springfield from from her former residence in Deerfield.

Getting back to that notion of Royal being back where she was this same time last year, she is — and then again, she isn’t.

Which helps explain why she is again a finalist for the AAA award.

Indeed, many of the same accomplishments that impressed the judges in 2022 impressed them again this year. These include her ongoing work to grow the firm, take it to new markets, and add to an already-impressive client list that includes Google, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Macy’s, Panasonic of North America, and KeyBank.

“For our clients that are national and international corporations, having a presence in the state of New York is huge to them. It’s an important piece to our continued growth; we had most of the New England states covered, and this was the next logical step.”

The latest expansion effort, as noted, is in Eastern New York, a new office that Royal believes will open some doors for the firm, which once focused exclusively on representing employers in labor and employment-law matters, but in recent years has pushed into other areas of the law, especially the broad realm of commercial litigation.

“For our clients that are national and international corporations, having a presence in the state of New York is huge to them,” she explained. “It’s an important piece to our continued growth; we had most of the New England states covered, and this was the next logical step.”

Royal said she is closing on some real estate for the New York office while also recruiting lawyers to staff it, work that has become increasingly challenging given the ongoing workforce crisis that has touched seemingly every sector of the economy, including the legal community.

Beyond the law firm, Royal has always been entrepreneurial, and that trend continues as well. In New York, she and a partner are closing on an ambitious project that will bring an indoor sports facility and childcare center together in one complex.

Meanwhile, what has also impressed the judges, last year and again this year, is her work in the community, which includes a long track record of service to the Center for Human Development, which recently marked its 50th anniversary; she is currently board president. She is also heavily involved with the Springfield Ballers, a nonprofit that provides opportunities for young people to take part in sports and which won its own honor from BusinessWest this year — the Difference Makers award. Royal is an active board member with the agency, and in the past has served as a coach.

But since being named a finalist last year, Royal has continued to build on this track record of involvement — in Western Mass., and now in New York as well. Locally, she has played a lead role in the creation of another nonprofit agency focused on young people and sports. It’s called Northeast Revolt, and it will feature multiple basketball teams that will involve young people, girls and boys, in grades 3 through high school, in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New York.

As for the Alexander House, the Royal Law Firm has settled in there, but renovation work continues, she said, adding that the work has become a labor of love.

Interior renovations are essentially complete, she said, adding that work there has included rewiring; installing central air; remodeling of bathrooms, the kitchen, and office spaces; and much more.

Now, the focus shifts to the exterior and work on the historic pillars, painting the building, and restoration of the fence surrounding the property.

“We’re giving a facelift to the entire building,” Royal said, adding that the work on Elliott Street mirrors what she is doing with the law firm — and youth sports, for that matter — in many respects; she’s setting the stage for decades of growth and continued success.

And that’s why, at least when it comes to the Alumni Achievement Award, she is in the same, good place she was last year.

—George O’Brien

Michelle Theroux

Restaurants Special Coverage

Executive Director, Berkshire Hills Music Academy

Michelle Theroux was one of the inaugural 40 Under Forty honorees in 2007 (below), and has made some significant impacts since.

Michelle Theroux was a member of BusinessWest’s first class of 40 Under Forty honorees. That was back in 2007, for those who don’t know the history of this program.

At that time, she was executive director of Child and Family Services of Pioneer Valley, and as she talked with BusinessWest on that occasion, she noted that her background in dance — she began studying tap, jazz, and ballet at age 5; added dance instruction when she was just 16; and later toured nationally in a jazz-based children’s show — helped her generate the skills, including discipline, drive, and “balance,” needed to effectively lead a nonprofit.

In her 40 Under Forty picture, her ballet shoes are prominently displayed. In her profile piece, she noted, “now, dance is sort of my balancing piece. It evens out stress. Still, in my life, sleep is optional.”

Sixteen years later, as she was being interviewed as a finalist for the Alumni Achievement Award — the first time she has achieved that honor — the shoes were not visible, but the arts are still a big part of her life, personally and professionally. And between her day job, the arts, and her considerable work within the community, sleep … well, that remains optional.

Indeed, she still dances and teaches dance, and that day job, one she has held for the past decade, is executive director of the Berkshire Hills Music Academy. The South Hadley-based facility is a unique, college-like program for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, such as autism and Down syndrome, who are looking to expand their social, vocational, and music skills in a music-infused environment.

“Our uniqueness comes from how we integrate music, dance, and other art forms into our programs so that individuals who are musically talented or art-minded can use that to scaffold to other skills, creating better opportunities for independence and developing their life skills such as money management, cooking, and more,” she explained.

Students at the school are provided with opportunities to perform locally, individually, and as part of groups, Theroux noted, and in settings ranging from local schools to Fenway Park, where students have sung the national anthem.

“It gives individuals who otherwise would not have had that opportunity the chance for their ability to be heard, not necessarily their disability,” she went on. “When you hear one of our performers playing, you hear their music; you don’t see their disability — and that’s the mission behind all that we have done.”

Theroux’s role there brings her passion for managing nonprofits and her passion for the arts together in a role she finds both challenging and, in many ways, invigorating.

“This place really blended my nonprofit-management skillset with my dance background,” she said, adding that, during her tenure, she has been able to put the agency on firmer financial ground while expanding its footprint and growing its client base.

“When you hear one of our performers playing, you hear their music; you don’t see their disability — and that’s the mission behind all that we have done.”

As she leads the organization, Theroux continues to lean on those skills she honed through dance — and an impressive track record of managing nonprofits; after spearheading a merger between Child & Family Services and the Center for Human Development, she remained with CHD, serving as vice president of its clinical division.

At Berkshire Hills, she has acted as a change agent for the nonprofit, stabilizing all facets of the operation, creating an operational budget surplus, doubling the operating budget over a two-year period, expanding contracts with the Department of Developmental Services, and exceeding set goals for a capital campaign.

While building on her impressive résumé of work leading nonprofits, Theroux has also built upon a strong track record of service to the community. Most notably, she currently chairs the board of trustees for Mercy Medical Center, and is also a regional board member for Trinity Health Of New England.

But her involvement in the community takes many forms, especially in South Hadley, where she lives and works. She has been a board member for the South Hadley/Granby Chamber of Commerce for nearly a decade now, and served as president of the board from 2018 to 2022. Within the community, she is a member of the Master Plan Implementation Committee and the Redevelopment Authority, and is also a town meeting member.

Other work within the region includes a decade of service to MicroTek Inc., a Chicopee-based manufacturer of custom cable and wire configurations that maintains a focus on employing people with disabilities and supporting these individuals. Theroux has served on its board of directors since 2014, currently as its vice president. Previously, she has been involved with the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts and the Human Service Forum.

At Mercy, Theroux has led the board during a time of extreme challenge — the pandemic tested the hospital and its staff in every way imaginable.

“It was awe-striking in a lot of ways,” she said, “starting with your admiration for the healthcare workers and the day-to-day challenges that they were facing, on all levels — those on the front lines, the administrators trying to make sure everyone was safe, everyone throughout the entire system.
“And then, you’re dealing with the reality of a pandemic and patients who were fighting in the ICUs and the COVID units,” she went on. “You were seeing both, while trying to manage and make sure that you could get as many resources into place as possible to support both ends of that paradigm.”

Her work to help lead the Mercy system through those dark and challenging times is just one example of how Theroux has continued to grow as a manager and a leader since she was first named a 40 Under Forty honoree, and why she is a finalist for the AAA Award.

—George O’Brien

For Bill Fletcher, Barbecue Is Community — and a Livelihood

By George O'Brien May 26, 2023

Restaurants

Smoke Show

Bill Fletcher shows off a few dozen full racks of ribs that are still a few hours from being ready for prime time.
Staff Photo

Unlike many people in the restaurant industry, Bill Fletcher did not grow up in the business. And it was never really his dream to put his name over the door to an eatery.

Indeed, Fletcher ventured instead into the advertising industry, becoming co-owner of a firm, to be called Domani Studios, that eventually grew to 50 employees with offices in Brooklyn and Chicago.

“That was a great time … we did award-winning stuff, all digital-marketing stuff that was new to everyone at the time,” he recalled, noting that this was the start of this century. “All the major advertisers were still trying to figure out how to build a website, and Facebook was just coming into being.”

But while he was helping clients tell their stories, his — career-wise and otherwise — was starting to change, and in a big way.

“On the side, I just started really getting into barbecue,” he told BusinessWest, adding that this interest started small, on the weekends in the backyard, where he would cook for friends and neighbors. Eventually, though, it took him to competitions, mostly in the Northeast, where he would pit his ribs, chicken, pork, and brisket against friendly rivals from across the country.

“I was just obsessed with all that; I would do all this test cooking and travel around the Northeast competing,” he said, referring to the various competitions sanctioned by the Kansas City Barbecue Society. “They were all-weekend-long things, and they were a party.”

He fared well against those rivals, winning enough prize money — and accolades — to convince him to bid farewell to advertising, sell his share of the company, and use the proceeds to open Fletcher’s Brooklyn BBQ in its namesake borough of New York City.

Skipping ahead a few chapters in this intriguing story — we’ll go back and fill in the gaps later — he has opened Fletcher’s BBQ Shop & Steakhouse at the site of the former Rinaldi’s in Longmeadow. It was an almost-two-year journey from conceptualization of this enterprise to the first day of operation on April 30, and it was a difficult process, he told BusinessWest.

“We were selling out early of a lot of stuff, which is a unique and tricky thing with barbecue, because it takes forever to cook it, so whatever I had is all I had — you can’t make more.”

But just a few weeks in, he’s already seeing the fruits of his considerable labor.

The new restaurant drew large crowds opening weekend, which became a learning experience on many levels when it came to what people liked — and what he needs to cook more of moving forward.

“We’re still learning the cadence — what sells,” he explained. “We were selling out early of a lot of stuff, which is a unique and tricky thing with barbecue, because it takes forever to cook it, so whatever I had is all I had — you can’t make more.”

Bill Fletcher adds some wood to one of the barbecue pits at his new restaurant in Longmeadow, one of his many responsibilities as pitmaster.

Overall, Fletcher is off to a solid start, but, limited by staffing issues, as most all restaurants are, he is easing his way into the local restaurant, and not by choice.

Indeed, his original plan was to be open for lunch and dinner seven days a week. For now, it’s just dinner, Thursday through Monday — Mondays, because few of the area’s restaurants are open that day.

“That’s OK … it’s nice to start off slow,” he said. “We can make sure we’re doing everything right.”

For this issue and its annual Restaurant Guide, BusinessWest talked with Fletcher about the road to his new venture on Longmeadow Street and where he believes that road will take him.

Taking it Slow

As he talked with BusinessWest about his venture at one of the front tables in the bar area of the restaurant, Fletcher took a quick break to tend to the fires in the two barbecue pits in the kitchen.

As he opened the bottom door to one of them to add more wood (sugar maple and red oak), he said simply, “I’m the pitmaster — this is my job.”

“I realized that I was spending all my time thinking about barbecue and not being a good president and leader of my crew in advertising. So I spoke to my partner and said it was time for me to get out; I decided I wanted to make this my career.”

Actually, it’s just one of many, he said, as he showed off five dozen full racks of ribs that had been slow cooking for several hours and still had a few more to go before they were ready for prime time.

Fletcher said his days at the restaurant start at 5 a.m. and generally run late into the evening. During that time, he and his team are preparing and then cooking meat, getting appetizers and sides ready for the coming night, and, overall, preparing to welcome guests to what it is in many ways something new and different for the region.

This is the life Fletcher has chosen. Actually, as noted earlier, it chose him as his passion for barbecue moved from the backyard to those competitions across the Northeast to the restaurant he opened in Brooklyn.

It was while taking part in those competitions that Fletcher said he learned that barbecue wasn’t just a hobby, and it wasn’t just a business in waiting. It was, and is, as he put it, “community.”

“You go to these different competitions, and you see some new faces, but a lot of old faces,” he explained. “It’s probably anywhere between 30 and 100 teams competing, and you stay up all night. It takes forever to cook barbecue, so everyone is up all night, sleeping in shifts. It was hard work, but we had a lot of fun and collected a lot of memories.”

Bill Fletcher says it took nearly two years of feasibility studies and buildout, but his new restaurant is now a reality.
Staff Photo

Making a long story somewhat shorter, Fletcher said he started spending more and more of his time at these competitions, to the detriment of his ad agency.

“I realized that I was spending all my time thinking about barbecue and not being a good president and leader of my crew in advertising,” he explained. “So I spoke to my partner and said it was time for me to get out; I decided I wanted to make this my career.”

He took the proceeds of his buyout and opened Fletcher’s Brooklyn BBQ in the Gowanus neighborhood of the borough in 2012.

Actually, he was part of a wave of barbecue to hit Brooklyn — three new restaurants opening at roughly the same time — a movement that put his restaurant in the food section of the New York Times within weeks of opening.

“We all opened up within a month of each other,” he recalled. “Pete Wells, the New York Times restaurant critic, wrote a piece about us, saying ‘big league barbecue hits New York City,’ and reviewed us all. That was exciting, to be in the New York Times restaurant review in your first month of being open. That was unexpected, and he had some kind things to say about us; that was fun.

“And we won all kinds of awards there — it was a really great run. I was there for a decade … so many great people and great food,” he went on, adding that one key to the restaurant’s success was its operating model, whereby it served as a hub (he called it the ‘hive’), supplying barbecue to other pop-up or market locations.

“We would cook everything in one central location and then send it out to a number of satellites,” he explained, adding that the model worked well, especially in that metropolitan area. “You’re not building five restaurants; you essentially have a commissary, and you’re just sending food out. It was a great model for us.”

Meaty Issues

Eventually, though, Fletcher closed the location. First, he decided he had enough of Gotham and moved upstate. He kept the restaurant going, managing from afar. He then “started dating,” as he put it, and upon “not finding anyone in Upstate New York to my liking,” expanded the search to 100 miles (far for a dating app), which included Longmeadow, where he found what — and who — he was looking for.

“I met my future wife through Tinder,” he explained, gesturing with his hand to indicate that she lived just a few minutes from where he was sitting. When the relationship reached a degree of seriousness, he started looking at where he could open a restaurant in the area.

And after some hard searching and then some “feasibility studies,” as he called them, he eventually settled on the location of the old Rinaldi’s.

“When I walked in here, this place was completely gutted,” he said, adding that a restaurant was planning to move into the site, but those aspirations were derailed by COVID. “I’m completely independent — I don’t have any backing, so I was really concerned about the dollars going into it and whether I could actually pull it off.”

Eventually, the numbers worked, even if the project went 25% over budget, by his estimate, and the restaurant opened more than two years after the first negotiations on a lease began.

Before the opening, Fletcher handled a few pop-up events, including the town’s annual Fall Festival, that provided a taste of what he was getting into — literally and figuratively — as well as some encouraging signs.

“The community was so supportive,” he recalled. “I was selling out in two hours, when it’s supposed to last six. Those events were really encouraging, and I was super excited to be part of all that.”

As noted earlier, Fletcher said he’s still learning what people like most — the ‘cadence,’ as he called it. There’s a note on the restaurant’s website that states hours and then a notation: “please come early, we sell out daily.”

“Trying to figure out what the demand is going to be is part of the trick,” he explained. “And that will take us a little bit of time to figure it all out.”

The menu includes the staples of barbecue — beef brisket, pork (pulled pork and hot links), spare ribs, and chicken, as well as platters with two or three different meats — but also steaks (New York strip, ribeye, and filet mignon) and other choices such as catfish and grits, barbecue ramen, Cajun pasta, pulled pork sandwich, and brisket cheesesteak. Bar snacks and starters include barbecue wings, barbecue nachos, barbecue fries (the menu describes them as a “cult favorite”), hot links with pimento cheese, and spicy shrimp hush puppies.

As for those steaks, Fletcher says they’re unlike anything he believes is offered in the region.

“We’re cold-smoking them 10 to 15 minutes,” he explained. “So they come out raw — they’re just taking in some of our smoke flavor. And then, we’re searing them to order. It is a really complex flavor; it’s really unique. It might not be everyone’s liking, it’s a little smoky, but I think it’s outstanding.

“We’re a little weird,” he went on. “It’s kind of a fancy place — marble tabletops and brass everything — but you can get some sticky ribs and nachos next to a filet mignon and a glass of champagne.”

Looking ahead, Fletcher said he will continue the process of easing his way toward that schedule he originally put on the drawing board.

That means eventually adding lunch, maybe another night or two of dinner, takeout, and catering. He said he will not take the Fletcher’s act to the Big E this year, but will explore making that part of the equation moving forward.

For now, he’s settling in while also keeping the fires stoked — he’s going through two cords of wood a month.

As he noted, barbecue isn’t just food, it’s community, and that’s what he’s bringing to Longmeadow — and the region.

JA Commences Work on Career, Leadership & Innovation Center

By George O'Brien May 26, 2023

Nonprofit Management

Things Are CLICing

Jennifer Connelly shows off the wall in the wall that is the symbolic start of work to create JA’s new Career, Leadership & Innovation Center.

It was officially called a groundbreaking, but Jennifer Connelly says it was more of a “wallbreaking.”

Indeed, Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno, representatives of the many sponsors involved with the project, and other VIPs took turns swinging a large sledgehammer at a wall just off the entrance to the Tower Square offices of Junior Achievement (JA) of Western Massachusetts.

The hole they left behind is still there more than a month later, a poignant symbol of the work — at least the physical construction work — soon to commence on what is being called the Career, Leadership & Innovation Center, or CLIC, a facility that will focus on those first three words with a number of intriguing programs.

Indeed, the center will help students identify career options and make smart decisions regarding post-secondary education; expand their thinking and skill development, thus better preparing them to be future leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators; and provide them with the skills and knowledge that will allow them to make informed and effective decisions with their financial resources.

“For the past 10 to 15 years, the board has talked about having a center where people could come and learn about careers.”

JA is creating the center in collaboration with MassHire Hampden County, the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council, other agencies, and several area employers, said Connelly, and is designed to address a gap when it comes to educating young people about careers and the paths to them.

“We found that there’s a piece missing in the pipeline when it comes to inspiring young people to have careers here in the region,” said Connelly, adding that the center will enable students to learn about and then explore options in fields they may not have been thinking about. In that respect, it will help open doors for young people while also helping to put workers in the pipeline for businesses across every sector of the economy, from healthcare to manufacturing.

In a way, this is a groundbreaking (there’s that word again) new initiative for JA of Western Massachusetts, said Connelly, and in another way … it isn’t. Indeed, while the CLIC is new, it’s also a throwback of sorts to what JA was decades ago — a place where young people could come to learn about business, actually make and then sell products, and gain financial literacy.

An architect’s rendering of the new Career, Leadership & Innovation Center.

“This is what JA used to be — and that’s what I like best about the center; this will be a place that students can come to,” she said, adding that, while JA of Western Massachusetts has been going into area schools for decades now, it hasn’t had a site that young people can come to since the ’80s.

Work on the CLIC is set to commence in the coming weeks, and the facility is scheduled to open in mid-September. Over the first nine months or so of operations, more than 750 junior-high and high-school students (up to 25 at a time) are expected to visit the center, spend the better part of a day there, and gain new insight into careers, how to attain them, and much more.

The project has drawn a number of supporters, including the city of Springfield, Beveridge Family Foundation, Balise Auto Group, M&T Bank, Country Bank, PeoplesBank, TD Bank, and Savage Arms, who have helped meet the $400,000 cost of the project.

A capital campaign will be staged over the next several months to raise the balance of what’s needed for the initiative, Connelly said, adding that the agency is hoping to gain the support of more area businesses, and is scheduling site visits for those interested in learning more about its mission and how it will be carried out.

Learning While Doing

Connelly told BusinessWest that the CLIC was conceptualized in the fall of 2021 amid what she considered an obvious need for a facility that would not merely take JA back to its roots in many respects, but also help to better prepare young people for life, careers, and the many challenges involving both.

And the need has been there for some time, she went on.

“For the past 10 to 15 years, the board has talked about having a center where people could come and learn about careers,” she said, adding that the idea came off the drawing board and into reality with the help of those aforementioned sponsors and a desire for JA to play a pivotal role in helping to solve the workforce needs of employers while also putting young people on a path to not just jobs, but careers.

Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno takes a swing at the wall that will be coming down to make way for the new center.

As plans for the CLIC began to materialize, she said, a search commenced for a space. Many options were considered, but eventually those at JA concluded they had everything they needed — space-wise, at least — in its suite of offices on the mezzanine level at Tower Square.

The 3,045-square-foot facility will be reconfigured and furnished for the new center, she noted, adding that the CLIC will include a number of components, including:

• A learning lab that will provide student groups with what Connelly called a “starting point for their career exploration journey.” It will also be a space to promote JA’s financial-literacy curriculum;

• A collaboration hub, which will provide groups with a space for interactive work, problem solving, and critical and creative thinking. The space will include modular seating, whiteboards, breakout laptops and tablets, and a leadership library; and

• A manufacturing lab, a makerspace that will provide young adults with the tools and programs to explore and accelerate a career in the manufacturing industry. The CLIC steering committee is currently working with local manufacturers to determine the best resources for the space, Connelly said, adding that equipment may eventually include 3D printers, a flow forge, a Cricut suite, hand tools, soldering kits, and STEM kits.

Overall, the CLIC will provide experiential learning opportunities for middle- and high-school students, said Connelly, adding that, by engaging students in hands-on experiences and reflection, “they are better able to connect theories and knowledge learned in the classroom to real work situations.”

And such connections are needed at a time when many young people need exposure to careers and the paths to them, she noted, adding that, for middle-school students, visits to the CLIC may help them with the all-important decision of deciding which high school to attend.

As she talked about a visit to the CLIC, Connelly said it will be preceded by completion of JA Inspire Virtual, a career-exploration program designed to highlight careers and educational opportunities in the region. At the center, students will participate in a seminar led by guest speakers from local businesses, and then rotate through the modular-based learning experiences at the learning lab, collaboration zone, and manufacturing space — followed by a working lunch with financial-literacy activities.

The center will also be open after school for students interested in pursuing entrepreneurial interests by operating their own student company. And in the evening, the center will be available to community organizations and local employers as a hub for learning and collaboration.

Bottom Line

Turning back the clock maybe 50 years or so, Connelly noted that what is now JA of Western Massachusetts was an agency, but also a place where young people from schools across the area could come and, through its ‘company’ program, form a business, make a product, and sell it.

Through the CLIC, JA will be able to provide that kind of experience again, she said, adding that, while the center is a blast from the past in some respects, it is really all about the future — as in the future of thousands of area young people and the area businesses that will, hopefully, employ them.

— George O’Brien

Millennium Press Owners Named Small Business Persons of the Year

By George O'Brien May 25, 2023

Features Special Coverage

News That’s Fit to Print

Jim and Kelly Sullivan
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher

At first, Jim and Kelly Sullivan thought the email was junk or a hoax.

“It was an invitation to us from the president to go to the White House to sit in the Rose Garden with him and the vice president for a remarks ceremony,” Kelly recalled, adding that the missive was followed shortly afterward by an email from the Small Business Administration (SBA), essentially letting them know that the email from the White House was real, and they should reply — soon.

They did, and when they gathered in the Rose Garden with the other 49 Small Business Persons of the Year for each state, as recognized by the SBA, they managed to get within a few feet of the president, but didn’t fight the crowd to get any closer.

This gathering, which came during National Small Business Week, has been part of a nearly month-long whirlwind for the Sullivans, owners of Millennium Press in Agawam, the Small Business Persons of the Year from Massachusetts.

There was an awards ceremony in Washington that came just after the White House visit, and, earlier this month, another small-business awards ceremony in Massachusetts, at which they were recognized for their accomplishments in business — and for their perseverance through a series of challenges over the past 34 years.

There was an appearance on a Bloomberg podcast — “I was terrifed; I’m a printer, and they’re firing questions at you left and right,” Jim said — and, just a week ago, U.S. Rep. Richard Neal, who directed the Sullivans to SBA funding, and other officials toured Millennium’s facilities to get a look at its cutting-edge technology and talk with its team of 18 employees.

“Never in a million years did I ever think we would ever win anything like this — I’m still in awe that we did get it.”

As they spoke with BusinessWest at their shop in Agawam, the Sullivans talked a little about their awards, meaning the physical awards (they each got one) they received from the SBA. They are glass, large, quite heavy … and, for now and probably for a long while, “safe at home, under lock and key,” as Jim put it.

“You don’t want to ever break something like this,” he said. “Never in a million years did I ever think we would ever win anything like this — I’m still in awe that we did get it.”

But mostly they talked about what’s behind the award and the wording on it, and how they were chosen over the 700,000 other small businesses in Massachusetts to receive it. Specifically, it would be more than 30 years of hard work, sacrifice, making those large investments in technology, coping with and overcoming adversity — from several downturns in the economy to the Great Recession to the pandemic — and, in short, doing what they had to do to keep the doors open and the dream alive.

“I feel that we did a lot of good things with these SBA programs,” said Jim, adding that, personally, the couple did everything they were asked to do to qualify for such programs, including reducing their income and even buying a smaller home.

Jim and Kelly Sullivan, center, with the team at
Millennium Press.
Photo by Paul Schnaittacher

SBA District Director Robert Nelson said essentially the same thing as he remarked on the Sullivans and their achievements.

“The Millennium Press story demonstrates how small businesses can persevere when faced with extraordinary challenges,” he said. “The Sullivans didn’t give up on their dreams and kept working toward sustainability with support from public/private resources, including the SBA and its lender network that help stand by your side through the toughest challenges.”

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with the Sullivans about the SBA award, what it means to them, and why it embodies their approach to doing business and managing a workforce.

Don’t Stop the Presses

To say the Sullivans started small with their venture would be a huge understatement.

Indeed, they launched their business in a garage — and it wasn’t even their own garage.

“Our house didn’t have one, so we used Kelly’s brother’s garage,” said Jim, a printer by trade who was working at a shop in Holyoke at the time, but started printing short runs of specialty forms for different customers at night and on weekends, a part-time job that quickly became full-time.

Indeed, the Sullivans, who quickly became partners in the venture, said they recognized a growing need for printed forms that could be produced inexpensively and quickly. With an Apple computer, a two-color press, and a collator that would put the forms together — Kelly would handle the desktop publishing, and Jim ran the printing press — they started adding customers and achieving a foothold in the competitive printing business.

Over the course of the next 30 years, they would continue to grow the company, establishing a full-service, one-stop printing and mailing business operating out of a 20,000-square-foot building in the Agawam Industrial Park that they would eventually purchase and expand.

From the beginning, Jim recalled, they understood the importance of investing in new equipment and staying on the cutting edge of improving technology, knowing that doing so would open new doors for them.

Small Business Persons of the Year for Massachusetts in 2023

Jim and Kelly Sullivan pose with an award they recently received at the recent SCORE Boston awards breakfast, where they were recognized as Small Business Persons of the Year for Massachusetts in 2023.

This was especially true with the installation, in 2007, of an automated, six-color Heidelberg press, the XL 75, a more than $2 million investment that included not only the press, but also Heidelberg software to automate all the company’s processes, from estimating to shipping.

This was the first such installation in the U.S., he told BusinessWest, and it came on top of a $1 million expansion of the building and a number of existing equipment loans.

The acquisition of the XL 75, and those other investments, were a well-thought-out business strategy, and the equipment was expected to enable Millennium to take a major step forward, he went on. However, the timing was unfortunate, to say the least.

Indeed, just a year later, the words ‘Great Recession’ were working their way into the local lexicon. The Dow was cratering, the economy was in freefall, and businesses large and small were hunkering down and simply trying to survive the onslaught. And, by and large, no one was printing anything.

“In 2008, we saw sales drop. People weren’t purchasing as much printing — annual reports, mailings … they just weren’t doing the volume of printing they were in the past. Yet, our expenses were at their highest point.

“In 2008, that was the first year we didn’t turn a profit,” he went on. “And the banks … they want to know who you are at that point.”

Elaborating, he said the couple had a great 19-year relationship with a bank (he chose not to name it) that was sold to a larger bank, an entity that saw Millennium’s declining debt-to-income ratio and essentially said, “you’re not for us.”

The Big Picture

The Sullivans said they knew they needed to create a plan to slash debt, both business and personal. They altered their lifestyle and borrowed a significant portion of their retirement money to retain employees and pay down debt to keep the business open. They also sought help from the SBA, working with the agency’s lending team to refinance their building and business debt and essentially save the business.

And for the next decade, until 2020, the company continued to be profitable, pay down debt, and even build a reserve fund, said Kelly, adding that, by the end of 2019, they approached a traditional bank about a loan to pay off all their existing SBA debt.

“Our numbers were good enough, our equity was good enough, our debt was right where it needed to be, and they approved us in March of 2020,” said Jim, adding emphasis when noting the month and year, and for obvious reasons. That was the start of the pandemic.

“The bank came back and said, ‘we’re going to have to put your financing plan on hold,’” he went on, adding that the company saw more than half of its customers shut down, a staggering loss that forced Millennium to lay off 75% of its workforce, although the Sullivans continued to pay for their health insurance after they were laid off.

Even with a skeleton crew — the Sullivans and a few others — the company was chewing up its reserve fund at a rate that was not sustainable, Kelly said, adding that PPP loans and EIDLs (Economic Injury Disaster Loans) from the SBA not only helped Millennium, but also enabled other businesses to regain their financial footing and buy services — like printing.

“Those two products from the SBA helped jump-start the economy,” she said, adding that, by the fall of that year, Millennium was able to bring back all of its employees. The winter of 2022 brought another slowdown and more “scary” times, she added, but a second round of PPP enabled the company to retain its workforce and make it through the whitewater.

The company was also able to take advantage of an SBA debt-relief program for its outstanding loans from the agency, Jim said, noting that the SBA made payments on those loans during the pandemic — payments that did not have to be repaid.

“In 2008, we saw sales drop. People weren’t purchasing as much printing — annual reports, mailings … they just weren’t doing the volume of printing they were in the past.”

All this support had the company back to “almost normal” by the end of 2021, he went on, adding that he and Kelly again approached the bank that had approved their financing plan but put it on hold because of the pandemic — and this time it was approved, just before interest rates started climbing at a precipitous rate.

Milennium’s involvement in many SBA programs had the effect of “putting us on the agency’s map,” said Kelly, referring to recognition programs such as Small Business Person of the Year.

But what won the Sullivans this honor, in her opinion — and Jim’s — has been its willingness to invest in cutting-edge technology, its commitment to supporting its employees through the many difficult times, and to do everything they had to do keep the company on the track they set in on back in 1989, even through extreme hardship.

“To do the amount of work we do, we would probably need more than 30 employees — if we didn’t invest in the technologies we have,” Jim said. “And we have technologies that no one in this area has, especially at the small scale that we are; we’re Heidelberg’s most advanced print shop with fewer than 20 employees in the United States.”

Bottom Line

Jim and Kelly’s email now comes with a signature, courtesy of the SBA, identifying the sender as a 2023 Small Business Person of the Year State Winner.

Behind those words, printed on a gold banner above storefronts depicting small businesses, is a compelling story, one that involves sacrifice, perseverance, determination, and, as Nelson noted, a firm commitment not to let go of a dream.

All that has earned the Sullivans those large, glass awards they are keeping safe at home. But it has earned them much more than that — the ability to keep writing new chapters to a remarkable and inspirational success story.

Andrew Brow Is Living the Dream — One Sticky Rib at a Time

By George O'Brien May 25, 2023

A Lot on His Plate

Andrew Brow outside Jackalope in downtown Springfield.

On his long and winding road to being a serial restaurateur, Andrew Brow says he’s had many inspirations, role models, teachers, and even an “idol.”

The latter would be Claudio Guerra, the now-legendary restauranteur — think Spoleto, Mama Iguana’s, the Del Raye, Paradise City Tavern, and many others — who gave Brow, like so many others, much more than a job.

“What I got from Claudio is what I wanted — I wanted to be a restaurant owner,” he explained. “It just seemed like this glamourous, fun, wonderful thing — not always, but Claudio made it something to aspire to.”

But there were others who had an impact as well, including Bill Collins, who also worked for Guerra and later hired Brow to be his executive chef at the restaurant he opened in East Longmeadow, Center Square Grill. Then there was Therri Moitui, the owner and chef of a French restaurant on Cape Fear River in North Carolina, where Brow worked for a time after leaving his native Western Mass. to find, well … something else.

“I thought I was God’s gift to the kitchen at this point, when I was 24 years old,” Brow recalled. “And, sometimes gently, sometimes not so gently, he let me know that I was not God’s gift to the kitchen and that I still had a lot to learn. And he proceeded to teach me.”

Today, Brow — owner of HighBrow, a wood-fired pizza restaurant in Northampton, and Jackalope, which just celebrated one year of bringing ‘creative American’ food to downtown Springfield — is still absorbing lessons from others, but he’s also the one passing on knowledge, experience, and keen insight to those who work for him.

His most important bit of advice, if that’s what it is: “if you stop learning, you’re no good.”

This is an operating style that has dominated his career and his time as a restaurant owner, which has been marked by overcoming adversity — as in extreme adversity in the form of the pandemic — and seizing opportunity.

As for the pandemic, it nearly cost him his dream just a few months after he opened HighBrow, but he persevered, knowing that one doesn’t get many opportunities like this one, and it might be his only opportunity.

At Jackalope, Andrew Brow says the focus is on ‘creative American’ and presenting food that is different and unique.
Staff Photo

“It was an interesting time,” he said with a large dose of understatement in his voice. “The first thing is, you feed into that fear — this is my first restaurant, this is basically my one shot; if I fail here, there probably wouldn’t be a second chance. I didn’t come from money, and without money, you can’t really do much. This was my one shot at making it out of being someone else’s chef and being my own guy.”

As it turns out, and largely because of that perseverance, HighBrow wasn’t his only shot. He seized another opportunity with the opening of Jackalope just over a year ago at the site of the former Adolfo’s on Worthington Street. At first, he didn’t want any part of downtown Springfield, thinking the city and its restaurant section had seen its day.

But a visit to the soft opening of Dewey’s nightclub, next door to Adolfo’s and owned by a friend, Kenny Lumpkin, changed his mind.

“I went back the next day because I had enjoyed myself that night, and I was standing on the patio and thinking, ‘maybe I could do something over there,’” he said, adding that this ‘something’ is Jackalope, which he described as a place where could “create and plate whimsical, fun, different things.”

That list includes everything from grilled pizza to mac & cheese to prosciutto-wrapped rabbit saddle. And on the appetizer side, there are his now-famous ‘sticky ribs,’ braised baby-back pork ribs cooked in a host of secret ingredients and juices and then made crispy.

‘Sticky ribs’ are becoming part of the local culinary lexicon — his restaurants go through more than 1,000 pounds of ribs per week — and Brow, one of BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty honorees for 2023, is one of the rising stars in the region’s galaxy of restaurateurs.

His is an intriguing story of someone who forged a dream when he was just in high school and then, thanks to hard work and lessons from those mentors and idols, made it happen.

A Different Breed

The jackalope, by most accounts, anyway, is a mythical creature, a jackrabbit with antelope horns — hence the name — said to be ferocious and quite deadly. Stories about them have appeared in many cultures worldwide.

By now, Brow has become an expert on the subject.

“A Jackalope drinks bourbon and beer and eats bologna — and they get enraged,” he explained. “And they would go and attack hunters, who would wear stovepipes on their legs so they wouldn’t get ripped up.”

But he admits that, in this case, the chosen name for his restaurant (after he put aside plans to resurrect the name Caffeine’s) was more a nickname for an old friend who “would drink beer and act crazy in the woods,” than anything else.

“I was having coffee with my wife one day, and she said, ‘when’s the Jackalope moving back up?’” he recalled, adding that the name resonated, and he eventually chose it. Today, there are stuffed jackalopes on his walls, and the logo is on everything from the door to the menu to T-shirts.

Andrew Brow recalls thinking downtown Springfield had seen its day, but a few visits to the area convinced him he wanted to be part of the scene there.

The road to opening Jackalope, his second restaurant, has been a long and winding one, with, as noted earlier, countless lessons and influences on his life and career along the way.

Our story begins in Northampton, where Brow grew up in the “projects,” as he put it. Anxious to climb out, he sought work as soon as he could. That was age 15, when, with the proper paperwork, he could work at a Dunkin’ Donuts.

This was a location that was still making its own donuts, rather than having them shipped in from a commissary, so Brow was able to get real experience making things in the kitchen. His work at Dunkin’ came during his freshman year at Smith Vocational in Northampton, and it inspired him to enter the culinary-arts program there, which fueled more interest in cooking as a career.

His first job in a restaurant, at age 16, was as a dishwasher at La Cazuela, owned by Barry and Rosemary Schmidt, who became his first real mentors and role models.

“They were two of the coolest restaurant owners I ever met,” he recalled. “They were kind of like ’60s hippie people, and for them, everything was from scratch and quality. They would fly down to New Mexico and Mexico, and they would meet chili farmers and buy wholesale dried chilis from these farmers; that showed me the passion behind actually loving what you do. It was very inspirational.”

From the dishes, Brow moved up to the pots and pans, which means he also got to prep some of the rice and beans, shred the cheese, and fry the tortilla chips. “It was grunt work, but I thought that was the coolest thing ever, and a few months later, I was a line cook.”

SEE: Restaurants in Western Mass.

From there, he did a stint at the landmark Joe’s Pizza as a pizza cook, and then a job at the recently opened Spoleto Express, one of several restaurants owned by Guerra, as a sauté cook. There, he met Collins, and the two quickly bonded.

“We became like brothers,” Brow said, noting that he worked for the Spoleto Restaurant Group for close to a decade, helping to open several new restaurants along the way. “I was like the young, rising chef in the organization; I lived the restaurant business.”

He took that passion with him to North Carolina as he sought to get away and do something different somewhere else. “I grew up, I’d spent all my time here, I didn’t go to college … I got out of a long-term relationship, and I was like, ‘why am I still where I was born?’ I wanted to go see something different and new.”

Food for Thought

Brow stayed in North Carolina for two years, learning butchery, charcuterie, French techniques, French sauces, and much more, before returning to Western Mass. to tend to his ailing grandmother.

He first took a job at Springfield Smoked Fish Company, and soon took on some part-time work at the recently opened Center Square Grill. Eventually, he became executive chef there and stayed in that position for four years before he fulfilled that lifelong dream to own a restaurant, buying a wood-fired pizza restaurant from Guerra and renaming it HighBrow.

Pizza wasn’t exactly his passion, he admitted, but this was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up. And, as things turned out, it was a godsend because, as noted earlier, Brow became a restaurant owner just a few months before the pandemic reached Western Mass.

Pizza was a model that lent itself to delivery and pickup more easily than other types of restaurants, he explained, adding that he was able to pivot in many different ways, including by partnering with other businesses to bring meals to frontline workers, including those at hospitals and the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke.

“I started off with just myself — I laid everyone off,” he recalled. “I told them to be on standby until we knew what the world was going to look like. Later, it was me and one of my cooks, Carlos. We would come in every day, and we’d go to Restaurant Depot every morning. We would have a limited menu; he would cook pizzas, and I would cook sauté and salads and appetizers. Eventually, I slowly introduced more staff as we were getting busier and I could justify putting more people back on payroll.”

Brow said he wasn’t exactly looking to open a second restaurant when Lumpkin implored him to take a hard look at the Adolfo’s site, but eventually he warmed to the idea of being part of the scene — and part of a comeback — in the central business district.

Over the course of his first year, there has been some change — and pivoting — there as well, he said, adding that he started off focusing primarily on fine dining, but has shifted and evolved, as he put it, and is now offering “more approachable things — but done with the detail we would use if we were plating a filet Oscar or something with delicate construction.”

For instance, with the mac & cheese, he offers a unique pasta with a cheese sauce made with many different types of cheeses, topped with crushed Goldfish crackers instead of the usual breadcrumbs.

“I try to be unique — I don’t like to do anything the same as anybody else around me is doing,” he explained. “I try to be different.”

And, like the name over the door, he is.

Unlike the jackalope — or Claudia Guerra, for that matter — Brow is not the stuff of legend. Yet. But he is getting there — one sticky rib at a time.

Proposals Sought for Large Parcel Within Uniroyal Property

By George O'Brien May 25, 2023

Commercial Real Estate Special Coverage

The Last Big Piece of the Puzzle

Since he’s only 37, Lee Pouliot has only known the buildings on the Uniroyal site as empty shells. With the request for proposals, that may finally change.

Lee Pouliot says he’s always had what he calls a bit of a fascination with what is known simply as the Uniroyal property in Chicopee — although there is nothing simple about it.

He grew up the city, but, because he’s only 37 (and a BusinessWest 40 Under Forty winner in 2020), all he’s known of the buildings — most of them, anyway — is as empty shells, the subjects of stories that almost every long-time resident of this community tells about working at the tire-manufacturing complex, or being related to someone who did.

While he was earning a master’s degree in landscape architecture at Cornell more than a dozen years ago, Pouliot took this fascination to a higher level, engaging himself and a few of his classmates in a final project — one that would create a development plan for the complex of buildings for the Uniroyal and adjacent Facemate properties, located in the center of the city.

Later, as an intern in the Chicopee’s Community Development office and then as a staffer in that office, he worked with city leaders to move a project to redevelop that complex, through a series of critical next steps.

“The reality is that there are a number of developers who have considerable experience with mill conversions. And so, in some ways, the city is trying to target developers who have this kind of experience, in the hope that we can see something creative done with those buildings that keeps them standing.”

And now, as city planner, a position he’s held since 2015, Pouliot is playing a lead role in writing what is essentially the final chapter in a long, complicated story that has, in some ways, been more than 40 years in the making.

This chapter involves a 9.58-acre parcel at the Uniroyal site, one of two yet to be developed, the other a 10-acre parcel being eyed by the city for recreational uses. A request for proposals was recently issued for the first of those parcels, which includes four buildings, including one that served as an administration building.

Those requests are due back on July 21, and Pouliot, like everyone else in the city, is anxious to see what the development community has in mind for this parcel, which is being marketed as RiverMills at Chicopee Falls, and especially the four remaining buildings on it, which the city opted not to demolish, in part because of their structural soundness.

This drone shot shows demolition of one of the former Uniroyal buildings. A request for proposals has been issued for the still-standing structures at the top of this image.

“The reality is that there are a number of developers who have considerable experience with mill conversions,” he explained. “And so, in some ways, the city is trying to target developers who have this kind of experience, in the hope that we can see something creative done with those buildings that keeps them standing.”

The bid package issued by the city touts this as “one of the largest contiguous areas of former industrial properties poised for redevelopment in Western Massachusetts.”

Further, the big package notes, “unlike other comparable sites, most of the costly and lengthy procedures required to prepare for redevelopment have been completed, reducing the risk and uncertainty typically associated with brownfield redevelopment.”

It is hoped that these amenities, if they can be called that, will trigger the imaginations of developers and yield some intriguing proposals, said Pouliot, adding that there are many possible uses for the buildings and the property. Housing is still a priority for the city and region, and the buildings, with some work, will lend themselves to that purpose. But there are other potential uses as well, he said, including retail, hospitality, and service businesses.

For this issue and its focus on commercial real estate, BusinessWest talked with Pouliot about the long journey that Chicopee has taken to reach this critical juncture with the Uniroyal property, and what might happen next.

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

When asked what it was like, personally and professionally, to see the project reach this important milestone, Pouliot exhaled, glanced toward the ceiling, and then shook his head a few times.

“Housing is still a priority. I think anyone looking at the state of housing in the Commonwealth, or this country, would be foolish not to consider housing a likely piece of redevelopment here.”

The body language spoke volumes about the length and complexity of this project, which has been ongoing — in some respects, anyway — longer than he’s been alive and has involved several different mayors, planners, and Community Development directors.

“In some ways, it feels odd that we’re nearing the end because so much of our time has been focused on getting to this point,” he said. “But it’s also significant — this has been no small feat for a community of Chicopee’s size; this is a huge milestone for the city.”

Recapping the Uniroyal story quickly, Pouliot said it starts back in the late 1800s, when that the land was first used for manufacturing. From 1896 to 1898, the property was owned by Spaulding and Pepper Co., which manufactured bicycle tires. Fisk Rubber Co., which later changed its name to United States Rubber Co. and then to Uniroyal, manufactured bicycle, automobile, and truck tires and adhesives at the site from 1898 to 1981.

This photograph, taken some time in the 1930s, shows a shift change at the Uniroyal plant, which employed more than 3,000 people in its heyday.

Uniroyal closed its plant in 1980 and sold the property — which stretched over 65 acres and included 23 buildings — to Facemate Corp., located adjacent to Uniroyal, in 1981.

Fast-forwarding, he said the city spent years working to acquire both the Uniroyal and Facemate property (Facemate went bankrupt in 2003), and did so in 2009, soon embarking on a massive cleanup that would cost more than $40 million and involve federal, state, and local money, while also planning work for development.

Eventually, individual parcels on the site were developed; the initial redevelopment project involved construction of the RiverMills Senior Center. Later, a private developer built River Mills Assisted Living at Chicopee Falls on a three-acre parcel. A third, four-acre parcel has been optioned to Brisa Development LLC of New York, which plans to build a mixed-use development that includes a 107-unit apartment building, an indoor sports complex, and a brewery and restaurant.

The 9.58-acre parcel that is the subject of the request for proposals is essentially the last big piece of the puzzle, said Pouliot, adding that it’s dominated by the four remaining Uniroyal buildings.

One is the administration building, or Building 26. The city has an agreement with the Massachusetts Historical Commission to try to see that structure redeveloped, he explained, adding that it is eligible for listing on the National Historic Register.

There is also a smaller building, what Pouliot called a retail shop for Fisk Rubber Co., where it sold and even installed tires, as well as two large manufacturing buildings, numbered 27 and 42, that are considered to be in “structurally decent condition,” he said.

“Instead of incurring the cost of demolition, which would have been a few million dollars more than what we were paying for cleanup, we decided to preserve them and see if there was appetite within the development community to do something with them,” he explained, adding that, if there is no appetite for taking them on, the city will look at what developers are proposing and decide the best course from there.

“We’re not going to predicate a decision on just whether or not all the buildings can be reused,” he said. “Certainly it is the city’s intention to sell the land and see something happen; this is just one of the criteria we’re looking at to see what the development community can respond with.

“There are a number of developers who would prefer raw land, but the reality with this site is that it’s not raw land,” he went on. “You could consider this an industrial archaeological site; there are going to be limitations on development regardless of whether the buildings are standing or not.”

Elaborating, Pouliot said he’s learned much about the property — and tire manufacturing — over the years, including the fact that, at some point between the two world wars (exactly when he’s not sure), the U.S. government began to oversee rubber production to make sure there would be enough tires for the war effort.

This government involvement helps explain why many of the buildings at the Uniroyal site, including Buildings 27 and 42, were built to withstand aerial bombing, he went on, adding that the structures are still sound a century or more after they were built, in some cases, which may become a factor in whether those in the development community want to try to do something with them. “Their structural capacity is incredible.”

Returning to the matter of what the city would like to see by way of development, Pouliot said priorities were spelled out in the River Mills Vision Plan, the development plan created for both the Uniroyal and Facemate properties combined.

“We were looking for redevelopment that reconnected these properties to the Chicopee Falls neighborhood and supported the neighborhood with appropriate-scale development,” he said of the overarching objective, adding that there hasn’t been any connection, other than history, for many years.

This aerial shot from 2008 shows the Uniroyal complex before the start of demolition of many of the buildings at that site.

This effort would ideally be a mixed-use project that can connect people with the river, he went on, adding that housing was, and still is, a need within the city.

“Housing is still a priority,” he said. “I think anyone looking at the state of housing in the Commonwealth, or this country, would be foolish not to consider housing a likely piece of redevelopment here.”

When asked for a timeline for the project, Pouliot said the city will likely take six to eight months to review the submitted proposals before eventually choosing a preferred developer. That developer will then need time to secure the various forms of financing that will be needed, he said, adding that it will likely be two to four years before work actually commences.

View to the Future

Returning to that project that he and a few of his classmates took on at Cornell, Pouliot said that, while creating that development plan — one that in many ways mirrored the one crafted by the city — he and the others involved worked to get a “feel for the community’s relationship with this property, its context within the city, and what they wanted to see.

“And one of the big takeaways, even for me, having grown up in this city, was just how many families had someone who worked at this property throughout history,” he went on. “So many people could tie themselves back to a sports league or working there, or the shift changes — we heard so many stories about how loud and noisy Chicopee Falls was when that plant was operating, and the volume of people.”

For the better part of 40 years now, most all talk concerning Uniroyal has been in the past tense. But if the request for proposals yields the imaginative concepts that city officials are hoping for, that will soon change — and people will start talking about what’s happening there now, not what happened a half-century or more ago.

As Pouliot noted, it’s odd in some ways to be at this point in the process. But it’s also quite rewarding. There’s plenty of work left to do, but a milestone has been reached.

LiftTruck Marks 35 Years of Handling Change, Opportunity

By George O'Brien May 12, 2023

Features

Material Growth

As LiftTruck celebrates 35 years, Kara Sotolotto says, its focus is on continuing to grow its many business operations and building on an already-solid foundation.

Kara Sotolotto says she essentially grew up in her family’s business, LiftTruck Parts & Service Inc. in West Springfield.

She remembers doing a little bit of everything for this company — founded by her father, Mario C. Sotolotto, which specializes in forklift and lift-truck sales, maintenance, parts, rentals, and more — but especially the vast amounts of paperwork that have long since been replaced by computer files. This included handling work orders, parts inventory (something that is still done by hand), calling customers, and much more. It seemed there was something new every day, and, collectively, those various assignments have prepared her for her current and somewhat new role, as the company’s vice president, a title she shares with her brother, Mario A. Sotolotto.

She was still waiting for her new business cards when she talked with BusinessWest, but she has already eased into the role, which will see her work with other family members (and there are many of them) and other employees to chart a course for future growth for this venture, which this year celebrates 35 years in business.

It is marking this milestone in a mostly quiet fashion — but also with charitable donations each quarter, including one recently to Baystate Children’s Hospital — and by essentially doing what it has been doing from the start, Kara Sotolotto said — taking care of the many different needs of its clients, mostly manufacturers and distributors located across the Bay State, but also in Connecticut and Rhode Island.

Over the years, the company has expanded well beyond its West Springfield roots, opening an office in Brockton to better serve customers in the eastern part of the state, including Cape Cod and the islands, as well as Rhode Island. Looking forward, she said the company is looking at possible additional expansion in the Worcester area, with a location to house what she called a ‘green division,’ dedicated to sales and service of battery-powered BYD material-handling equipment (more on that later).

Overall, though, the business plan calls for shifting more of the day-to-day responsibilities of managing the company to the second generation, Sotolotto explained, as well as simply building on the solid foundation created over the past 35 years, one that has enabled the company to thrive in a sector with many competitors.

Indeed, when asked how LiftTruck manages to stand out in such a crowded field, she said simply, “our service and our mechanics; these are mechanics that everyone likes and trusts, and they really know their stuff.

“He started from the ground up with a few mechanics, who are actually still with us today, and one person in the office.”

“Also, our lines,” she went on, adding that, while many competitors will sell one or a few brands, LiftTruck handles many labels and many options when it comes to how machines are powered — from propane to electric.

It is this ability to provide clients with choices, but also reliable, quality service, that has both enabled the company to thrive for the past 35 years and positioned it for continued success for the next 35.

Getting a Lift

As she offered BusinessWest a tour of the LiftTruck facilities and posed for a few pictures, Sotolotto pointed to a Clark forklift — vintage 1948, by her estimate — that was at the shop for some maintenance. It’s not really used anymore, and she believes it is one of the items on display at a small museum at Barnes Airport in Westfield.

While it is not in active service, the company services many pieces of equipment dating back to the ’60s and even the ’50s that still are, she said, adding that fork trucks, depending on how much they are used, can run for decades, and most clients are determined to get their money’s worth out of their machines.

But there are challenges to servicing such long-lasting pieces of equipment.

“These forklifts were built like tanks because they were used in the military,” she explained, referring to the older Clark machines. “The trouble is, it comes to a point where you can’t find parts for them; there are times when we can have people fabricate the parts for them, but once you get to certain big parts, like cylinders, you have to give in.”

Helping companies keep their machines running as long and as efficiently as possible has become one of the many trademarks of this company, which was started by the elder Mario Sotolotto in 1987.

As Kara explained, her father worked for Northeast Clarklift, joining his father-in-law there, and starting in the parts department and moving up the ladder. He eventually decided to take all that he had learned and start his own venture, one that would focus on all aspects of this competitive business — including sales of new and used machines, service, parts, forklift training, rentals, and more.

“He started from the ground up with a few mechanics, who are actually still with us today, and one person in the office,” she said, adding that the company has enjoyed steady, consistent growth over the years.

This is a family business, she added with conviction in her voice, noting that there are many members of her family who are involved, including her father, the company’s president, who, she said, “likes to keep involved in all aspects of the business,” as well as his uncle, Sales Manager Anthony Sotolotto.

There’s also her brother, Mario, who works mostly out the Brockton facility, and focuses on the sales and everyday operations sides of the business, while Kara is focused more on the back end of the operation — accounting, receiving equipment, managing the West Springfield facility, and talking with the press.

As noted, this is a multi-faceted business, with several components and revenue streams.

On the sales side, the company handles a number of manufacturers, including Clark, Komatsu, Doosan, Heli, and the most recent addition, BYD, which offers machines that run on iron phosphate batteries, Kara said, noting that buyers have a number of options these days in terms of both brands and how machines are powered.

Indeed, while gas-, propane-, and diesel-powered vehicles are still popular, this sector, like the automotive industry, is moving aggressively toward more electric vehicles.

“A lot of people are switching over to electric forklifts,” she explained. “It’s more economical for them, and it’s better for the environment; they’re becoming more and more popular.”

Looking ahead, Sotolotto said the company is strongly considering creation of that aforementioned ‘green division,’ one that will focus on the BYD line and likely be based in the central part of the state so it can effectively serve all corners of the Commonwealth.

“Having a facility to at least store all of our electric lifts and maybe have a few mechanics operate out of there would be great,” she told BusinessWest. “This is definitely something we’ve been talking about and moving toward; it’s a logical next step.”

The sales side of the business has been steady, she added, and it received a somewhat unexpected boost during COVID, when rentals were harder to come by (just as rental cars were) and many customers decided to buy instead — if they could find machines to buy.

And overall sales remain steady as customers seek to replace machines that hit a certain number of hours.

Meanwhile, the machine-rental side of the business remains solid as well, she said, noting that businesses will rent equipment for a day, a few weeks, a quarter, or for much longer stretches depending on need. To mark its 35th anniversary, the company is donating 10% of its rental revenue to various charities, including Baystate Children’s Hospital, each quarter.

The service side of the operation is another key contributor to the company’s overall success, Sotolotto said, noting that clients need their machines to operate successfully, and LiftTruck’s ability to provide reliable service has been another of its hallmarks.

Lock and Load

These various parts contribute to the whole, she said, adding that LiftTruck has much to celebrate as it marks its milestone anniversary this year.

Mostly, it is celebrating what has become a family, or a bigger family, to be more precise, one that includes several people related to one another, but also others who have been part of this operation for years — in many cases, 35 years.

Together, they have made this venture an uplifting success story — in every sense of that phrase.

Meyers Brothers Kalicka Celebrates 75 Years of Change — and What Hasn’t Changed

By George O'Brien May 11, 2023

Banking and Financial Services Special Coverage

Marking a Milestone

The five partners at Meyers Brothers Kalicka: from left, Jim Krupienski, Kristi Reale, Howard Cheney, Rudy D’Agostino, and Kristina Drzal Houghton.

It’s called the ‘Founders Room.’

This is a small conference room at Holyoke-based Meyers Brothers Kalicka featuring a table that can comfortably seat six or seven people, which makes it a popular spot for smaller meetings and an attractive alternative to the cavernous main conference room, which can host more than 40.

There are a few other gathering spots at this accounting firm, but this one is unique because it pays homage to those who were there at the beginning — and in the decades that followed — for both Meyers Brothers and Joseph Kalicka and Co., two accounting firms that started the same year, 1948, and came together in a consequential merger in 2004 that created the firm known to most by the letters MBK.

The Founders Room takes on a little more importance this year as the firm celebrates a milestone — its 75th anniversary. As it does so, it looks back at the important work of the three Meyers brothers who went into business together — Ben, Raymond, and Maurice (there’s a photo of them on the wall in the Founders Room) — and Joseph Kalicka, founder of the firm that took his name (there’s a photo of him with former Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis).

But the present and the future are the dominant topics of conversation on this occasion, and there was much to discuss as we gathered thoughts from the five partners now setting a course for the firm — Howard Cheney, Rudy D’Agostino, Kristina Drzal Houghton, James Krupienski, and Kristi Reale — as well as David Kalicka, partner emeritus.

Collectively, they said the tenets put in place by the founders of both firms in 1948 — everything from a laser focus on customer service to a tradition of innovation and an emphasis on anticipating what the future might bring (and being ready for it) — are still serving MBK well as it copes with an onslaught of change coming from every direction.

“I’ve always felt that the strength of our firm is the people here. It’s a collaborative effort. People work really well together; we’ve got a lot of smart people who work hard. From the top down and the bottom up, everybody works as a team.”

This change involves everything from technology and how it is used to better serve both the company and its clients to creating a workplace that recognizes emerging needs and enables several generations of employees to work effectively — work that was in some ways impacted by, and accelerated by, the pandemic and the many ways in which it impacted the workplace.

For this issue and its focus on banking and financial services, BusinessWest talked with MBK’s partners about the past 75 years, but mostly about what will come next — for both the firm and the industry.

Addition by … Addition

It was in early 2003 that talks began about merging Meyers Brothers and Joseph Kalicka and Co., two firms that were in ‘friendly competition’ — a phrase heard early and often — for more than a half-century and had a lot of things in common.

Looking back on those days, Drzal Houghton, who joined Meyers Brothers in 1995, said that, while the firms were operating in many of the same spaces, or sectors of the business community, they had different niches. Also, Meyers Brothers had a benefits-consulting business as well as a wealth-management business. So a merger made sense on many levels.

“Both firms had a lot of clients in the medical field, but Meyers Brothers had a lot of clients in the nonprofit industry, so there was a lot of summer work,” she explained. “Whereas, Joseph Kalicka and Co. didn’t have as much summer work, so that was a good fit. Meanwhile, Joseph Kalicka and Co. had a lot of work in the construction and real-estate industries, so it was just clear that we would be stronger together.”

Kalicka agreed. “We decided that it had been 50 years since we’ve been competing against each other and we’d both do better if we merged,” he explained. “It’s worked great; it’s helped us to survive different challenges. We’ve been around for a long time and have been approached by several bigger firms to merge and have turned them down.”

D’Agostino, who joined the Kalicka firm in 1995, noted that there were several young partners with that firm at the time, a core of leadership that appealed to those at Meyers Brothers and made a merger even more attractive.

“The opportunity to make the firm stronger, work on some bigger accounts, and have a good nucleus of young partners — those were all driving forces in the merger,” he noted. “And the culture was very similar.”

The firm that emerged from that merger is now the largest accounting firm based in Western Mass., with more than 60 employees. And that size brings with it several advantages, said the partners, including the ability to attract young talent, a challenge that has only grown in size and scope in recent years as competition for talent grows and the need for young leaders to replace retiring Baby Boomers increases.

MBK serves individuals, privately held businesses, family and independent businesses, and not-for-profit organizations in Western Mass. and well beyond. Services include taxation, accounting, auditing, and business-advisory work. The client list is deep and diverse, and it reflects the many business sectors served and the niches the company has developed. That client list includes Peter Pan Bus Lines, the Springfield Thunderbirds, the construction firm Fontaine Bros., the nonprofit agencies Square One and Mental Health Assoc., and small to mid-sized businesses such as New England Dermatology and Tyler Equipment Corp.

Partners Kristi Reale and Jim Krupienski, seen here in MBK’s Founders Room, say the firm has priorities for the future, but especially the need to develop the next generation of leadership.

As they talked about what makes MBK different, and successful, the partners used different words and phrases, but essentially said it comes to down to people — those at all levels of the organization.

“I’ve always felt that the strength of our firm is the people here,” Cheney said. “It’s a collaborative effort. People work really well together; we’ve got a lot of smart people who work hard. From the top down and the bottom up, everybody works as a team.”

Drzal Houghton agreed. “We believe here that it’s family first,” she said. “Our clients think of us as family, and I think it’s just that whole feeling … the clients feel it, the employees feel it. And it really makes us different — we care about every member of our team and every client, like family.”

As they look ahead, the partners again spoke with one voice as they talked about the priorities moving forward and what will be needed for this firm to thrive for another 75 years.

Remaining an independent firm at a time when mergers remain the order of the day and the partners field calls from private-equity firms about acquisition on a regular basis is an important goal — and also a major challenge, said those we spoke with.

“We’d like to remain independent; it’s a tough fight to stay independent, but it’s worth it because it benefits the clients,” D’Agostino said. “We make the decisions here, the philosophy that the client comes first — we can keep that. We all have to follow the same regulations, but we like to make sure we are doing things responsibly and really know our clients.”

Drzal Houghton agreed. “We definitely want to stay independent,” she said. “In the industry, there have been a lot of mergers; a lot of private equity is trying to buy firms, but we have worked very hard to be independent, and we want to give that opportunity to our rising stars.”

Crunching the Numbers

MBK’s partners told BusinessWest that, years ago, the firm’s leadership team would conduct an annual two-day retreat to discuss matters and set in place a strategic plan for the future.

Now, they stage four- to five-hour strategy sessions every six to seven weeks. The shorter, more frequent sessions are ultimately more productive — people are tired and less effective at the end of the second day of a retreat, they noted — and follow-up and accountability are more manageable. Meanwhile, change is coming at such a constant and profound rate that more frequent strategy meetings with shorter agendas are certainly necessary.

“We’re maintaining the momentum and holding ourselves more accountable,” said Krupienski, adding that items for discussion include everything from staffing to succession planning; from IT conversions to client services and client development.

Staffing is certainly a common agenda item, and there are layers to this issue, said those we spoke with, adding that these include everything from attracting and retaining talent to creating policies for remote work.

“We definitely want to stay independent. In the industry, there have been a lot of mergers; a lot of private equity is trying to buy firms, but we have worked very hard to be independent, and we want to give that opportunity to our rising stars.”

“A major issue with all businesses, and especially accounting firms, over the past few years has been staffing — staff costs, recruiting staff, and maintaining staff have all been significant concerns within this industry,” said D’Agostino, adding that there are some issues unique to the accounting sector, such as the compression of work during tax season and a reluctance on the part of many younger workers to “want to work the kinds of hours the previous generations have.”

“So we need to adapt to that,” he said, adding quickly that this is one of the many reasons why firms need to embrace technology — especially the technology that can handle some of the more mundane accounting tasks and thus enable professionals in the industry to focus more on consulting and advising clients.

“A lot of the bigger firms are embracing artificial intelligence,” said Reale. “We’re not there yet, but we should look at it and determine if there is anything that AI can help us with.”

Elaborating, she said that, while there is concern in some sectors about AI and its potential for eliminating jobs by doing work that humans can do (see related story on page 32), forward-looking accounting firms need to focus on its potential to create efficiencies and free up professionals to serve clients in different ways.

“AI is not going to be able to have meaningful discussions with a client and help grow its business,” she explained, adding that, increasingly, clients are looking for such consulting services — everything from contracts to mergers and acquisitions — from their accounting firm.

To provide these services effectively, firms need a pipeline of talent, said the partners we spoke with, adding that maintaining such a pipeline has become more difficult in recent years, and for a number of reasons, some of them amplified by the pandemic.

Indeed, Krupienski noted that, years ago, local and regional firms might have had a leg up when it came to the graduates of local colleges and their accounting programs, but now, those same individuals are fielding offers from firms on the other side of the country offering remote work opportunities at wages higher than those traditionally offered in Western Mass.

And that’s one of many challenges this firm and others in the region face as they try to recruit and maintain talent, said D’Agostino, adding that the firm generally likes to hire people with three to five years of experience, but there are simply fewer people with that background available to hire in this market.

Thus, the firm is hiring more individuals out of college, training them, and hoping to hang on to them when they have that three to five years of experience.

Then and Now

As they talked about what’s changed in the industry and for this firm, and what hasn’t, the partners we spoke with started with the later.

And Krupienski offered the obligatory “death and taxes.”

That was his way of saying that many of the services — basic and complex — have remained the same over the past 75 years. How they are provided, and sometimes when … well, that’s a different story.

This firm has been essentially paperless for years, said Reale, noting also that the phone has been replaced by email, which has, to a large degree, been replaced by the text, which can come at all hours of the day or night. And, for the most part, it needs to be answered soon after it’s received.

The midnight or 5 a.m. text comprises just one of the many changes that have taken place within the industry, said the partners, adding that many significant changes have also come in the workplace.

Elaborating, they said the younger generations now dominating workplaces like MBK have different needs and priorities than those that preceded them, and firms that want to be successful must acknowledge this and respond accordingly.

And flexible schedules are just part of the equation, said D’Agostino, adding that these generations place a premium on work-life balance and how to achieve that balance.

As an example, he recalled a few younger team members departing at 5:15 p.m. during the height of tax season to go to spinning class, something those in his generation wouldn’t think about doing.

But beyond a need to go to the gym when they need to go the gym, these generations want different things from their work, and they want them more quickly than previous generations, he went on.

“They want diversity in their work situation,” D’Agostino said. “They don’t want to just do a tax return; they want to do consulting work, they want to do something above and beyond that, they want to do things that are interesting to them, and they want challenges.

“In order for this firm to continue to survive, we have to be flexible and accommodate the next generation,” he went on. “That’s what every firm is dealing with; I’m resistant to change, but things have to change, because this is the next generation of leadership here, and this is how they operate.”

Meanwhile, another change that has taken place at MBK is a greater focus on giving back to the community and getting involved with its many nonprofits and causes, said Reale, who couldn’t speak to how things were 75 years ago, but can point to a dramatic change over the 23 years she has been with the firm.

“Twenty years ago, we would do one or two charity days,” she recalled. “And now, every other Friday, there’s a specific dress-down for charity, and some of our team members pick a special organization each month, and we do something for the community each month, whether it’s a service, or stuff the bus, or bringing in toys for the holidays, or providing needed items for the homeless … as a firm, we’re much more involved.”

As an example, she cited work involving an employee who was born in Ukraine and whose family was still in that country when the war with Russia started.

“When that war began, they needed certain things,” she recalled, adding that a local church put out a call for items, and the firm answered that call. Indeed, clothing and other items were donated by employees and clients alike over several days during tax season.

“You couldn’t walk in our lobby; they took three truckloads of items to that church,” she went on. “And that really hit home because it affected one of our team members.”

This heightened involvement in the community is important to the younger team members at MBK, said D’Agostino, and it’s one of the many cultural traits that will aid efforts to recruit and retain talent.

“They want to feel that the firm is behind certain community activities and certain charities because that’s important to them beyond the work environment,” he said. “Usually, it’s one of the staff people that takes the lead on these initiatives, and they really do enjoy it.”

Bottom Line

The photos along the walls in the Founders Room generally speak to another time. Indeed, most of those in the pictures have passed away, and the black-and-white images are stark reminders of just how much technology has advanced and the world has changed.

Still, the partners we spoke with said that, when it comes to the business of accounting and auditing, what truly matters most hasn’t changed since 1948, and it won’t change. This would be the matter of working closely with clients to handle their needs and help them set a course for success. And the ability to do this, as stated earlier, comes down to having people who care.

This has always been the main ingredient in the success formula, and as MBK looks forward to the next 75 years, it isn’t about to change that recipe.

Hayley Procon Takes the Route of a True Entrepreneur

By George O'Brien May 11, 2023

Special Coverage Women in Businesss

From the Grounds Up

Hayley Procon

Hayley Procon entered college with the goal of one day getting into broadcast journalism.

In fact, her ambition was to be the “next Erin Andrews,” as she put it, referencing the well-known sideline reporter for FOX on its NFL broadcasts.

“I loved baseball, and I still love baseball; I just wanted to be on the sideline for the Red Sox,” she told BusinessWest, adding that it wasn’t long after arriving at Suffolk University in Boston that she realized that this wasn’t a realistic, or even desirable, goal.

And upon transferring to Springfield College, she would set a new goal — to be her own boss.

“I definitely didn’t want to work for someone else,” she explained, with a note of extreme confidence in her voice. “I didn’t want to put in the work and put in the effort and see someone else basically reap the benefits; I don’t want to work hard for someone else’s success.”

She kept pursuing that goal and made it reality in what would be called a joint venture with her mother, Kristen Procon. Together, they acquired an established business, Common Grounds, a coffee shop on busy Boston Road in Wilbraham, while she was still in college — a venture for which she would win the Spirit Award from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation.

“I definitely didn’t want to work for someone else. I didn’t want to put in the work and put in the effort and see someone else basically reap the benefits; I don’t want to work hard for someone else’s success.”

Together, the partners made a few subtle changes, building on an existing foundation, and have built on that success story. While doing so, though, they have taken things to a different level, becoming serial entrepreneurs with the opening of Aura Day Spa in Ludlow, a new venture they have taken from the ground up — as opposed to the grounds up with the coffee shop.

As she talked about these ventures, Procon used many of the words and phrases summoned by others profiled over the years in BusinessWest’s Women in Business sections. She said her work has been fun and rewarding, but also challenging and, at times, a little frightening.

In the end, though, she has no second thoughts about the entrepreneurial path she has chosen because she’s ultimately doing what she set out to do back in college — put her name over the door, figuratively if not literally, and sign the front of the paycheck, not the back.

“I really enjoy it,” she said of the entrepreneur’s life. “There are some days when I wish I did the 9-to-5 and went to work for someone else, but I don’t think I would have been happy in the long run.”

Bean Entrepreneurial

Procon told BusinessWest that she’d been coming to Common Grounds, a popular spot in the back of a large office and retail plaza on Boston Road, when she was in high school.

The business came onto the market in September 2020 — yes, the height of the pandemic — and, despite the many challenges facing all businesses at that time, but especially those in the broad hospitality sector, Hayley and her mother decided to take the plunge.

Haley Procon and her business partner and mother, Kristen Procon, have become true serial entrepreneurs, starting with Common Grounds and then opening Aura Day Spa.

“It was COVID, and everything was still pretty weird,” she recalled, using that word to sum up a time when many consumers were still hunkering down, college students like herself (she was just starting her senior year) were mostly taking courses remotely, and those in hospitality were managing day to day. “We found out it was for sale, we walked in, we sat down with the owner, and we bought it a month later.”

As noted earlier, the two partners took the existing, and fairly successful, business and made some minor but important tweaks, including adjustments to the menu, changing some furniture, extending the hours of operation, and, perhaps most importantly, opening on Sundays.

“Sunday is a good coffee day, a good breakfast day,” Procon said. “But overall, this place has been running great, and we wanted to keep the same vibe; we have a lot of great regulars, and we have great work-of-mouth.”

She said the business draws heavily from the plaza it’s located in, as well as the massive Post Office Park, home to a YMCA and dozens of businesses large and small, just down the street.

While she’s managing her own business, this is certainly not what she was thinking about when she was in college and planning and plotting to work for herself one day — and soon.

“I never thought I’d own a coffee shop … I’ve never worked with coffee before, and I figured, ‘how hard can it be?’” Procon asked rhetorically, before answering the question by saying that every business, even an existing one with a core of loyal customers, comes with a complete set of challenges.

“I just loved the idea of having a spa and building from scratch. My hobby is building; I like taking things from the ground up and just expanding from there. Seeing it from start to finish is something I really wanted to do.”

She said the partners split up the duties of running the business, with her mother handling most of the accounting and bookkeeping responsibilities while she tackles marketing, social media, and many of the day-to-day operations.

It’s a juggling act that was taken to a much higher plane when the two decided to double down, if you will, and take entrepreneurial plunge, this time with a new business, a spa they opened in Ludlow last September called Aura Day Spa.

Unlike Common Grounds, this was something that she aspired to do and has been thinking about for some time now.

“A spa has always been a dream of mine,” she said. “And when we realized how well we did with this place [Common Grounds] and how well we worked together, we kind of looked at each other and said, ‘let’s try to open a spa.’

“Neither one of us is in the cosmetology industry; we don’t do any of the services,” she went on. “But I just loved the idea of having a spa and building from scratch. My hobby is building; I like taking things from the ground up and just expanding from there. Seeing it from start to finish is something I really wanted to do.”

Having a dream and making it a reality are two different things, she acknowledged, adding that she did extensive research into everything from where her spa concept might work (Ludlow was quickly identified as a community in need of such a facility) to what types of services should be offered.

“I was all over the internet looking at spas; I went around here looking at spas, and just pieced together how ours would run,” she told BusinessWest. “We have no experience in the industry, but we did our homework, and here we are.”

That due diligence led to a former dance studio on Holyoke Street that the partners gutted and converted to a facility offering everything from facials to massage; body contouring to a sauna.

The venture is off to a solid start that Procon credits to hiring the right people to provide those services, some aggressive efforts to get the word out about the facility, and continued work researching the industry with an eye toward best practices and the best avenues for achieving results.

“I’m always looking at other places — East Coast, West Coast, just seeing what other places are doing and how to stay up to date in the industry and what we can add,” she said. “I just like to stay on top of all that and find new ways to bring people and add more services.”

Procon dares to ponder where this venture might go next and perhaps the possibility of opening several Aura spas. For now, though, she and her mother have their hands more than full managing these two businesses, as well as the ups and downs and emotional swings that are part of parcel to being business owners.

“It’s a grind,” she said, borrowing another term, sort of, from her coffee-shop business. “I love the idea of being a business owner, and everything falls on you at that point; I just knew that this is exactly what I wanted.

“I realize that the more I put into it, the more I’ll get out of it,” she went on. “I’m excited to get to that point — I know it will take a few years, but we’ll get there.”

Skin in the Game

When asked about the path she’s chosen and what she likes about being an entrepreneur, Procon said this life offers her everything she wanted and expected. Well, sort of.

“I like the freedom that it offers,” she explained. “I have very little right now — I’m tied to both of these places for quite a long time, but just being able to show people what we did and what we started and what our goals are, it’s really rewarding, knowing that I’m in here most mornings at 5:30 and then go over to the spa. Some people call me crazy, but it’s very rewarding.”

It is certainly that, and the woman who wanted to be the next Erin Andrews found something much better.

UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy Looks Back on His Accomplished Tenure

Features Special Coverage

Moving Beyond a ‘Safety School’

As the longest-serving chancellor in recent history at UMass Amherst, Kumble Subbaswamy has posed for more than a few photos during his tenure.

Kumble Subbaswamy recalls that, when he arrived at the UMass Amherst campus a dozen years ago, his first priority was to bring some needed stability to a school that had seen a number of leadership changes over the previous decade.

After that, he said, his main goals were to bring the school to a higher level in terms of national rankings, prestige, and reputation — locally, nationally, and internationally.

As he prepares to step aside in a few months and move on to next challenges and opportunities in his career, Subbaswamy, the longest-serving chancellor in the modern era at the school, talked with BusinessWest about how he believes those broad goals have been accomplished — and the manner in which they’ve been accomplished.

In a wide-ranging interview, he talked about everything from the school’s climb in the rankings, and what it means, to the challenges facing UMass and all colleges and universities today and tomorrow, to the pandemic — what it was like to lead the school through that tumultuous time, and how that period changed higher education.

He said he has a rather unique way of measuring how he fared with all that and his legacy, if you will, on the campus — the number of students, and others, who want to stop and take a selfie with him.

It’s an official measuring stick, to be sure, but one that indicates just how far this campus has come during his tenure, and how his leadership helped generate and sustain the very palpable sense of momentum at the school.

BusinessWest: Turn the clock back 12 years, if you will, and talk about the goals you set and how you fared with achieving those goals.

Subbaswamy: “One of the first goals was simply to create some stability. There had been a lot of turnover in a short period of time; there was instability, insecurity, and a lot of drama coming out of Whitmore [the school’s administration building]. So there was a strong desire to stabilize that situation so the campus could then go about its business of achieving its mission of teaching, research, and outreach. And there was no guarantee this would happen — it’s a complex job where you have multiple audiences. You have the system office; you have to keep them happy. You have to keep the campus happy, you have to keep the unions happy, you have to keep the local legislative group happy, and so on. So none of that was a given.

“But when we were able to focus on improving the campus … one important focus that became self-evident as I was looking at the data was that, while we claimed to be the best public university in New England, the data didn’t really show that, especially student-success data. We were much further behind UConn, for example.

“That was the beginning of what I’ll call installing a planning culture — always being data-driven and doing plan assessment and improvement on a continuous basis. That was not necessarily the culture on the campus, at least not in a systematic way. So when I look back and identify one important thing that helped turn the campus around, I would say it was creating a culture of strategic planning, being data-driven, and always thinking about improving those aspects in which we could be doing better or where we’re not doing as well as our competition.”

During Kumble Subbaswamy’s tenure, the UMass Amherst campus became much more of a destination for top students.

BusinessWest: What was the biggest step forward taken by the university during your tenure?

Subbaswamy: “Improvement in graduation rates would be one example, but there are other measures, such as people doing internships, job placement, and more, and all this showed up in U.S. News & World Report rankings, because there is strong weight given to graduation rates, and without being overly selective, when you achieve high graduation rates, you get lots of points.

“It’s not that we’re pursuing rankings, but those metrics that we care about, and achieving progress with them, really does help. And when we went from number 52 in national public university rankings to number 26 — we’re hovering right around 25 or 26 — that made people take notice of Massachusetts.

“That rise in the rankings gave everyone associated with the university a point of pride; alumni started taking notice, parents and prospective students started taking notice, guidance counselors started taking notice. It started a positive cycle where more and more highly qualified students started applying, our classes got better, and our results got even better.”

BusinessWest: Talk more about how that rise in the rankings was achieved.

Subbaswamy: “Back in 2013, based on what was going on, as well as part of our requirement for re-accreditation, we developed a strategic plan; we declared that our goal was to make UMass Amherst a destination of choice. We had been thought of as a safety school in previous decades, and we were essentially saying, ‘no, that’s not who we are — we’re the flagship of the Massachusetts system, we’re the flagship of the Commonwealth.’ In fact, that became our tagline.

“This was a strategic plan that sought ways to make improvements across the board, with a particular emphasis on undergraduate education, where we really did need to catch up with some of the neighboring states. It then became a rallying cry for the entire campus; every department, every college focused on what they needed to be doing better in order to retain our students, make sure they graduate on time, placement, bringing in more internships and other experiences that help students get jobs, improving student experiences, and improving student outcomes. And that culture is now part and parcel to who we are at UMass.”

Seen here with former Gov. Charlie Baker, Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy says managing the school through COVID was an intense challenge marked by decisions involving “life and death.”

BusinessWest: What has this experience of leading UMass at this critical time in its history been like for you, personally and professionally?

Subbaswamy: “It’s been exhilarating. It’s been the pinnacle of my career in terms of the personal satisfaction I’ve had in being able to rally the campus — all sectors of the campus — to a single goal of being better, serving our students better, serving the Commonwealth better.

“We’re trying to make people feel like they belong. In fact, belonging is a major theme in our equity and diversity efforts — we want people to feel that they belong here, and if they don’t, then we want to know why and see how we can improve that. It’s been very rewarding to see the campus feel like an entity with a purpose and with a vision.”

“That rise in the rankings gave everyone associated with the university a point of pride; alumni started taking notice, parents and prospective students started taking notice, guidance counselors started taking notice.”

BusinessWest: Is there an area where there is some significant work still to do on the Amherst campus?

Subbaswamy: “One issue that has come up recently, and one that has been partly exacerbated by the pandemic as well, has been housing in general. Housing, in Amherst and the surrounding communities where our students, faculty, and staff live, is becoming considerably more expensive and harder to find, especially in the past few years. We’re faced with not just a shortage of housing, but a shortage of affordable housing, because that’s a significant component of the cost of education for anyone who comes to Amherst.

“Some serious joint planning with the surrounding communities is needed to try to address the need for more affordable housing so that this university doesn’t become a university that can only serve the affluent.”

BusinessWest: We’re seeing some demographic shifts, especially with regard to the numbers of high-school graduates, as well as other trends involving enrollment. What do these mean for the university, and higher education in general?

Subbaswamy: “There has been a lot written about the fact that the number of 18-year-olds, across the country, but in the New England area especially, will drop significantly starting in 2025 for 10 years. But we’re already seeing a lot of changes taking place here. There are some smaller colleges that are really financially stressed, to the point where they may close or merge — we’ve seen both closures and mergers recently. We’ve also seen regional universities, and some of the state colleges, see some decline in enrollment, and we’ve seen community colleges see a similar decline in enrollment.

“What we’ve seen is that more and more students are beginning to apply to the large flagships, and so, nationwide, schools like UMass and others in our class have seen higher numbers of applications, and so we haven’t seen that pinch of demographic decline. I think that’s because of that shift in thinking; some people who used to apply to small colleges are now asking, ‘will that school be there in four years?’ and thinking they’re better off applying to the state university, especially one that’s robust in terms of enrollment and support from the state. There’s definitely some of that going on.

“Also, there was a time when state boundaries mattered, but now they don’t for education. The University of Pittsburgh and the University of Alabama actively recruit in Massachusetts, and we actively recruit in Texas and places like that. It’s a national — in fact, international — marketplace, so quality matters; education matters. So to keep focusing on those things is very important.”

BusinessWest: Beyond these demographic changes, what are the other significant challenges facing higher education today?

Subbaswamy: “Affordability is certainly a challenge … even when it comes to public options. For in-state residents, we’re now $31,000 to $32,000 a year, and for a middle-class family, this is a really big hit. So we have to ask, ‘is this model sustainable, and if it is not, how do we bring it under control?’

“What role does online education play in this? Does residency become more a luxury? Do we reduce it so there’s two years online and two years residency? There are many large questions to be answered, and I think this is going to become more and more of an issue moving forward.

“And this is for all public universities in all segments; this is not a UMass Amherst problem, and it’s not a UMass system problem. Affordability looms large for higher education in general, and what that implies for society.”

BusinessWest: Your tenure obviously included the pandemic years, a difficult and intense time for all those in higher education. What was it like to lead the school through that crisis?

Subbaswamy: “Toward the latter half of March 2020, we were just breaking for spring break, and just before then, we got the news that the virus was spreading, so we should shut down and send people home. We thought we were sending people home for one extra week; little did we know that was going to be a more-than-two-year deal before we returned to normalcy, whatever that means.

“Like everyone else in the country, we had the enormous task of adjusting to remote learning and remote work in a matter of two weeks … and, along the way, there were decisions for which there was no rulebook; in fact, whatever rules or guidelines were there were changing on a daily basis.

“There were decisions we had to make — like, in the middle of the semester, do we send everyone home? Or at the beginning of the semester, do we bring everyone back, or only a small percentage of the students? If so, how many, and who? And the town was worried: ‘you’re going to bring back 10,000 students? You’re going to bring back 30,000 students? Do you know what that’s going to do to our community?’ At that time, the business community was really struggling and wanted to see the students come back.

“The uncertainties and the competing factors that had to be considered, and the speed with which decisions had to be made, was nothing like what we were ever used to or learned or how any management book would tell you how to do it. We had to make decisions on a rapid basis with a lot of uncertainty, and it was unusual in that you could say that, literally, lives were at stake.

“You were making life-and-death decisions; I don’t ever want to go through that again, and I’m thankful that we got it right, and there weren’t any campus-related COVID deaths that I’m aware of.”

UMass Amherst made dramatic leaps in the national rankings during Subbaswamy’s tenure.

BusinessWest: Talk some more about some of the hard decisions that had to be made and what it was like for you, as chancellor, to be the one ultimately making them. What was it like day-to-day and week-to week?

Subbaswamy: “By not bringing the students back in the fall of 2020, were ended up having to furlough, for a long period of time, more than 800 employees. That hurts — these are members of our community, and we did our best to make sure that they kept their health insurance and so forth. But nonetheless, lives were disrupted because of that.

“These were difficult and consequential decisions that affected people’s lives and livelihoods, and I don’t wish this upon my successor. It was tense; from morning till evening, you were getting constant reports about what’s going on, how many people were in isolation, how many people are in quarantine, what’s going on in the town. — you were getting daily reports on cases, hospitalizations, if there were any, and much more. And in the middle of all that, we were having internal discussions about how to manage the budget because, between the two fiscal years, we had a $200 million revenue loss. How do you recover from that?

“It was a situation where we couldn’t govern by consensus, even within the leadership team, because there were members who felt very strongly, in one direction or the other, that they were right. But two factions can’t both be right, and I had to make decisions based on my best judgment rather than arriving at a consensus, which is what we usually do. It was very tense, and you just hoped that you made the right decision.”

BusinessWest: What did you learn about yourself as a manager and a leader through that time?

Subbaswamy: “I couldn’t show my own frustrations and my own self-doubt in terms of whether I’m making the right call. You have to provide confidence to everyone that we know what we’re doing. As a leader, you always have to put on a strong front, show composure, and show resolve, and that takes its toll, especially when you go back home and start reflecting on the decisions you’ve made.

“By listening and using what experience has taught you over the years, you tend to make the right calls. It was a very stressful time. That’s why you’re seeing a lot of people, even younger people, leave jobs, leave presidencies, because those were very stressful times. No one was happy, everyone wanted something different, and they took out their frustrations on the university.”

BusinessWest: How did higher education change because of the pandemic, and what has changed forever?

Subbaswamy: ‘Fundamentally, online education came to be accepted as a result of the pandemic. Until then, there was sort of a significant prejudice that online wasn’t good enough. Residential universities thought of it as second-class education. But once everyone was forced to go online, you saw two things: you can’t suddenly say, ‘we’re giving you a second-class education and charging you first-class rates,’ so people started taking notice of the fact that you can, and must, do just as well. And secondly, everyone was really surprised by how much technology had improved in recent times — and even in real time.

“Zoom became the coin of the realm, and its improvements became accelerated because they had the investment money to do so. In classes and in business, everyone started being connected online in very effective ways. The advantages of remote work, the efficacy and the ability to conduct business, including learning and teaching online, has fundamentally changed to the point where you’re seeing what we call UMass Flex — where flexible work is the way of the future. We will get to a state where UMass Amherst can be experienced almost just as well, in ways that matter, from wherever you are.”

BusinessWest: Finally, do you have any advice for your successor?

Subbaswamy: “I would first advise him to learn the local culture and work within those cultural norms in order to bring about change. You can’t bring about change unless you’re willing to understand and work inside that culture.

“Ours is a very consultative and participatory campus, where students have their say, and our faculty and staff have their say, both through normal governance but also unions. So someone who builds trust and is accessible and available, and works through our established procedures and consultative process, will succeed.”

For Those Caring for Those with Dementia, Education, Understanding Are Keys

Healthcare News Special Coverage

Living in Their World

Beth Cardillo calls them ‘fiblets.’

These are things that are said to someone with dementia that … well, do not represent the whole truth, or even a portion of it, at least to the person making that statement.

But to that person suffering from Alzheimer’s or one of the many other forms of dementia, it is the truth as they see it in their world. “It’s not a lie,” she said of these fiblets. “It’s an OK thing to tell people with memory issues.”

She offered up an example.

“Let’s say someone’s husband has been dead for 20 years; she might say, ‘I’m not going out shopping, I’m waiting for my husband to get home,’” noted Cardillo. “A fiblet would be … ‘oh, he just called; his tooth is hurting him and he’s going to see a dentist. Why don’t you and I go out for a ride and go to the grocery store?’”

“You’re going to tell someone that their husband died over and over again, every day?” she went on, asking that question rhetorically before answering it poignantly. “I mean, why would I want to do that? It’s cruel.”

Indeed, and fiblets are a good example of how those caring for and simply around individuals with dementia regularly should try to live in their world, rather than constantly try to pull them into the ‘real’ world. It’s also an example of the kind of work that Cardillo has made into a career, or at the least the latter stages of one.

Beth Cardillo

Her latest move comes as a part-time social worker for a unique program called Baystate House Calls. As that name suggests, it’s a program operated by Baystate Health that involves healthcare professionals making house calls to older adults. It includes a physician, nurse practitioner, nurse, social worker, and community health worker, team members who will visit individuals in their home to assess their needs and provide recommendations.

The initiative concentrates on what administrators call the 4Ms — ‘mobility,’ ‘what matters,’ ‘medication,’ and ‘mind.’

It focuses not only on those in need of help and services, but caregivers as well, said Cardillo, adding that her work, and that of her colleagues, takes them to every corner of Springfield. And while she is helping seniors and caregivers with a wide variety of issues from substance abuse to falls to depression, much of her work involves those with memory issues.

And, increasingly, it involves what is known as habilitation therapy (HT), a holistic approach to dementia care that focuses on the abilities that the person still has, rather than what they have lost, and can reduce difficult symptoms.

“It focuses on everything positive — it focuses on people’s strengths, not their weaknesses,” she said of HT, adding that it brings caregivers and patients closer together as they work on daily tasks, makes those suffering from dementia feel respected and valued, reduces stress among caregivers, and creates positive emotional experiences that bring comfort and happiness.

“The reality therapy is for us to learn to live in their reality, not for them to live in our reality of our world. That’s probably the biggest lesson there is.”

Cardillo was recognized by BusinessWest and its sister publication, HCN, with a Healthcare Heroes Award in 2021 in the category of Community Health for her work during her years as executive director at Armbrook Village in Westfield to create ‘dementia-friendly’ communities and help others better understand — and communicate with — those suffering from memory loss.

For this HCN Monthly Feature and its focus on Memory Care, we talked with her at length about the importance of understanding what is reality that for those with dementia — and enabling them to thrive, as much as possible, in that reality.

Reality Check

Cardillo told BusinessWest that, years ago, she and others involved with providing memory-care services would offer to those with dementia what was called, by some at least, ‘reality therapy.’

“We would say, ‘no, no, no, you’re wrong — today’s Thursday, or today’s this, and tomorrow is that,’ she said, correcting wrong statements and answers to questions whenever the need arose. “But what we’ve learned is that it doesn’t matter. The reality therapy is for us to learn to live in their reality, not for them to live in our reality of our world. That’s probably the biggest lesson there is.”

Helping others live in the reality of those with dementia is a big part of the work Cardillo has been involved with over the years, especially at Armbrook, but also now as a social worker. She said that to make this leap — and it is a leap for most — it begins with education and an understanding of the disease and how it impacts people.

It robs them of short-term memory and the ability to do certain things — from driving to cooking to reading. But it doesn’t, or shouldn’t, take from them the things that are important to them, and have been important throughout their lives, be it what they did for a living, or travel, music, pets, or a love of the movies.

Cardillo recalled the case of a long-retired college professor who had (and still has) a passion for the New York Times and carries it with her daily.

“Some days, it’s upside-down,” said Cardillo. “But it doesn’t matter; that was her identity. Those are they types of things you don’t want to change; you don’t want to correct people.”

Overall, she said it’s important to treat those with dementia with respect and to not embarrass them with ‘reality’ questions or constant corrections concerning what day it is and what members of the family are no longer alive.

“It doesn’t matter if they say it’s Tuesday and it’s really Sunday. It just doesn’t matter. So, we don’t want to correct people. Does it matter if Mr. Smith thinks it’s a different day? Is that going to change the world? No. If he thinks it’s Christmas tomorrow, that’s OK. Why take that joy away?”

“Just because you have Alzheimer’s doesn’t mean you’re stupid,” she explained. “It doesn’t mean you can’t read people’s emotions. “I know people who will say to family members, ‘what’s my name? What’s my name?’ Why are you saying that to them? It embarrasses them. They know you have a connection. Is it because you think that if they know your name, they’re having a good day and that makes you feel good?

“Because it doesn’t matter if they know your name,” she went on. “It doesn’t matter if they say it’s Tuesday and it’s really Sunday. It just doesn’t matter. So, we don’t want to correct people. Does it matter if Mr. Smith thinks it’s a different day? Is that going to change the world? No. If he thinks it’s Christmas tomorrow, that’s OK. Why take that joy away?”

She recalled the case of a woman who told her that she was pregnant at 66. Instead of correcting her, Cardillo said she simply told her, ‘if that’s true, you’re going to make history.’

“You laugh about it with her, because she tells me these wacky stories,” she went on. “Her parents have been dead, but she’ll say, ‘oh, my mother wants you to come over for dinner.’ “I’ll say, ‘oh, how is your mother? I like your mother; tell her I said hello.’

“Her husband, on the other hand, keeps saying, ‘your mother is dead!’” she continued. “We need to stop that because it doesn’t matter. She doesn’t remember and she doesn’t care, and in in her head, her mother is alive. That’s fine. Who does it hurt?”

Overall, she said it’s important to try to communicate with a positive spin, rather than a negative one.

Indeed, instead of telling someone with dementia that they are not supposed to be going outside, when they suggest that they want to do so, one should instead stay positive and suggest that this person can sit outside when the weather is better.

As she talked about those suffering from dementia and how those caring for them should approach daily conversation and activities, Cardillo said it is important to keep them engaged and to focus “on what they can do, not what they can’t do.”

This brings her back to the concept of habilitation therapy, which, she believes, has benefits, and many of them, for those living with memory loss, their caregivers, family, and friends.

“It’s important to keep people meaningfully busy and not just silly busy,” she told BusinessWest, adding there is a big difference between the two.

Elaborating, she said that television is not a good option.

“We don’t want to put people in front of a TV all day, because it’s … not good,” she said. “It doesn’t make them happy campers. It doesn’t mean that TV is bad, just not as a babysitter all day.”

Instead, such individuals should be involved in activities that speak to who they are, who they were professionally, and what interests them.

“It’s really important to know what people did in their work,” she explained, “because they still retain some of those skills, and it’s still a part of who they are as an identity. For those who were teachers, give them papers to correct; you come up with things that they can do.

“I had someone whose father was a retired electrician,” she went on. “He had a manual of electrical … something; it was bigger than the New York City phonebook. He looked through those pages every day. I don’t know if he knew what was in it — I sure didn’t — but that gave him comfort.”

And some form of comfort is what those caring for people with dementia should be trying to provide each day, she said, adding that this can be done through HT, emphasizing the positive, and, yes, focusing on what those with dementia can do, not what they can’t.

Bottom Line

Summing up what she tells those caring for people with dementia, Cardillo said it is simply that reality is in the eyes — and mind — of the beholder.

And if we really want to help those with this disease, we have to at least try to live in their world, rather than make them live in ours. It’s not an easy assignment, especially when one is asked the same questions over and over, day after day, but it’s the key to those on both sides of the equation being able to thrive.

Andrew Brow

Owner and Chef, HighBrow Inc.: Age 37

When asked what he likes about the restaurant business, Andrew Brow gave a quick, resounding answer: ‘everything.’

“I love the hustle and bustle; I love creating beautiful food; I love building relationships with farmers, butchers, and seafood people, and finding cool things I’ve never worked with before,” he explained. “And I like to learn and bring new ideas to reality.”

Brow is doing a lot of all this as …. the term would be ‘serial restaurateur.’ He owns, operates, and cooks at HighBrow Wood Fired Kitchen and Bar in Northampton, as well as Jackalope Restaurant and the Kitchen by HighBrow at White Lion Brewing Co., both in Springfield. And soon, there will be another location at White Lion’s new brewery in Amherst.

This is the growing enterprise that Brow has created and now nurtures. His is an inspiring story of determination and entrepreneurship that begins “in the projects in Northampton,” as he put it, where he grew up with his mother, a single parent, and became determined to find work so he could buy better clothes.

He found it at Dunkin’ Donuts when he was only 15. Meanwhile, after a tour of Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, he became intrigued by its culinary-arts program, took that course of study, and, upon graduation, started working at restaurants within the Spoleto Group.

Eventually, he wanted to have his own eatery, and in the fall of 2019, he opened HighBrow in Northampton — just four months before the start of the pandemic, which forced all restaurants to close for some time, then reopen for takeout and delivery, and, essentially, reinvent themselves.

“It was quite frightening,” he recalled. “I was at a point where I was going to board up the windows and lock all the liquor away — there was a lot of fear.”

But he persevered, and has not only added more restaurants, but become heavily involved in the community, serving as an advisor to both the Smith and Holyoke Community College culinary-arts programs, while also supporting nonprofits such as Ronald McDonald House, the Treehouse Foundation and its Stir Up the Love fundraising event, and many others.

As he talked about those perilous early days, Brow used words and phrases that capture his intensity, drive to succeed, and considerable entrepreneurial spirit.

“I finally got the opportunity to open my business and work for myself, and I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to lose it.’ I put my head down, and I just started busting my butt.”

—George O’Brien

Arlen Carballo

Executive Director of Finance, MGM Springfield; Age 37

Arlen Carballo’s career in the casino industry provides ample proof that, once someone enters this field, there is no telling where the business may take them.

Indeed, Carballo, who was born and raised in Costa Rica and came to this country with her mother when she was in high school, graduated from the MGM Resorts Management Associate Program in 2008 and, since then, has taken on a variety of roles at several different MGM resorts.

“It’s a very large company, and we have almost every job title under the sun,” she told BusinessWest. “There are a lot of opportunities … you just have to take them.”

And she has.

She started at the Bellagio in Las Vegas as a housekeeping supervisor before shifting her focus to the finance side of the equation. At Mandalay Bay, also in Las Vegas, she served as executive housekeeper, responsible for more than 800 employees and 4,000 rooms. During her time there, she also played a key role in rebranding the hotel to ‘Delano,’ a project that included the remodeling of 1,000 rooms and successful training of the entire housekeeping staff.

Later, she was part of the opening team for MGM National Harbor in Maryland, a $1.68 billion resort and casino located just outside Washington, D.C. Serving as manager of Financial Planning and Analysis, she managed the pre-opening budget, including payroll schedules. During her time there, she also established the analytical reporting framework for the property, which has become one of the most profitable regional casinos in the country.

Carballo has been part of the MGM Springfield team since the property opened in 2018, serving as the resort’s first director of Financial Planning.

This is a broad role, in which she serves as a key business partner to all operations and strategic functions, while directly overseeing casino accounting, financial planning and analysis, cage and count operations, warehouse, and purchasing.

She said the casino has faced a number of challenges since opening, especially COVID, but she believes it is “hitting its stride — we’re heading the right direction.”

During her time in Springfield, she has made her mark in several ways. Professionally, she was a recipient of the HACR Young Hispanic Corporate Achievers Award, a program that spotlights young Hispanic professionals in corporate America. Meanwhile, in the community, she is a mentor with Dress for Success and serves on the board of trustees for American International College, becoming the first Latina to join the board.

—George O’Brien

Dave Fontaine Jr.

CEO, Fontaine Bros. Inc.; President and CEO, F2 Ventures LLC: Age 34

Dave Fontaine Jr. said it was probably only minutes after the sign went up on the door at the White Hut in West Springfield announcing that it was closed that he was on the phone to Andy Yee, saying something had to be done.

Yee, the leader of the Bean Restaurant Group, who passed away in 2021, told Fontaine that he was essentially already on it. The two would join a host of other partners in saving what Fontaine called an “institution — a place none of us wanted to see closed.”

This involvement with the White Hut is just one line on Fontaine’s ultra-impressive résumé, one that includes several accomplishments with the family business, the construction firm Fontaine Bros. Inc.; with F2 Ventures LLC, through which he invests in and advises existing and early-stage companies across various industries; and within the community.

Let’s start with Fontaine Bros. There, Fontaine has orchestrated spectacular growth, taking the fourth-generation company from $65 million when he joined in 2011 to more than $280 million today. This has been accomplished through new business divisions, including a construction-management unit; expansion into new regions, such as Worcester; and a slew of new projects — from the Court Square project in Springfield to a new, $260 million high school in Worcester (the largest project in the company’s history) to the new DeBerry-Swan elementary-school project in Springfield.

As for F2 Ventures, Fontaine is involved a number of startup and developing businesses, ranging from Trade Hounds, a social-media platform focused on the hiring process for construction tradespeople, to Otto Technoloigies, a ladder-safety company using AI and machine-learning technologies to predict and prevent ladder accidents, to SkillSignal, a construction technology platform that makes safety, compliance, and risk control simple by digitizing worker certificates, safety orientations, and more.

Meanwhile, within the community, Fontaine was instrumental in the creation of the Fontaine Community Foundation, which supports worthy causes across the region and across the state. The foundation has a unique, employee-directed component to encourage philanthropy and community involvement among employees.

Fontaine and his, wife, Sara, are active supporters of many worthy causes, including Link to Libraries, efforts to combat diabetes (one of their daughters was recently diagnosed with the disease), a school game day, by which thousands of children get to attend a Springfield Thunderbirds game, and much more.

Summing it all up, he said matter-of-factly, “I’m an entrepreneur who ended up in a great family business.”

—George O’Brien

Heather Gawron

Director of Development, Springfield Symphony Orchestra: Age 39

Heather Gawron is nearly 15 years removed from her days as an elementary-school teacher, and there have been many career stops in many places — from Paris to American International College — since then.

But she still takes lessons from those teaching days, and from her degree in education, and applies them to all facets of her life.

“I think it shapes so much of what I do now organizationally, experience-wise, and knowing how to communicate with all different types of people,” she said of her work today, which takes place on both sides of Main Street in downtown Springfield.

On one side is the Springfield Symphony Orchestra (SSO), which she serves as director of Development. On the other side is SkinCatering Inc., a salon and spa she serves as ‘chief impact officer.’ Last year, she led its efforts to create and launch a new brand of all-natural skin-care products called Weekend Beauty.

Her life and current work is captured neatly in all that she brought to her 40 Under Forty photo shoot, including her two daughters, Maxie and Charlie, a banner for the symphony, some art work depicting Weekend Beauty, a photo of the Eiffel Tower to represent her time in Paris — what she calls her “happy place” — and a picture of her family, including the family dog.

Gawron joined the SSO roughly a year ago, and her responsibilities there are in development, fundraising, marketing, and public relations, work that has been made much more challenging by the ongoing labor dispute with the symphony’s musicians.

“This year, we’ve spent a lot of time trying to reach new audiences, and showing that we’re here and that we’re committed to being an amazing cultural experience in the community, and bringing in a diverse selection of conductors in the hope that this helps us engage with the community and keep what is a pretty cool thing to have in our size city,” she said. “There are many cities larger than ours that don’t have a symphony orchestra.”

At SkinCatering, she handles marketing and branding for the new skin-care brand, which is packaged for travel, she noted. “These skin-care kits have everything you need to keep your routine consistent on the road, whether you’re traveling for business, at the gym every day, or you just want a simple way to spoil yourself at home.”

Meanwhile, Gawron is active in the community, supporting organizations such as Square One and Habitat for Humanity, demonstrating that her passions extend well beyond both sides of Main Street.

—George O’Brien

Dr. Seth Gemme

Vice Chair of Clinical Operations for Emergency Medicine,
Baystate Medical Center: Age 37

Dr. Seth Gemme

It wasn’t until late in his undergraduate studies at Westfield State University that Dr. Seth Gemme even thought about having those two letters appear before his name.

In fact, his initial aspiration was to be a meteorologist — he had an internship with Adam Strzempko at WWLP while in high school. But he eventually became an EMT, which brought him into the ER at Baystate Noble, which eventually led to a job there, which eventually led him to develop a fondness for the ER and the desire to be a doctor in that setting … which led him to the University of Buffalo Medical School, where he graduated first in his class.

That led to a residency at Brown University, and — here we can fast-forward a little — eventually Gemme returned to this region and to Baystate Noble Hospital, and then chief of the ED at Baystate Wing Hospital, and now, vice chair of Clinical Operations in the ED at Baystate Medical Center.

It has a been a fast and quite impressive ascent for Gemme, whose job (more of a passion, really) involves a mix of clinical work and administrative duties. When he’s not tending to patients, he’s working to improve processes, reduce wait times, and improve capacity management.

Like most who choose the ER, he prefers to say it found him, and he notes that he likes everything about it, from the pace of the work to the fact that every day, every hour is different.

“I like helping people at their most vulnerable time, and hopefully being someone who can change a life,” he explained.

He described the pandemic years as difficult and exhausting, with a full range of emotions.

“Initially, we were heroes; it was the first time where people stopped yelling at us and brought us food,” he joked, adding that the COVID years provided learning experiences and opportunites to grow professionally on many levels.

While the ER is the focus of his workday, Gemme has many other priorities and pursuits, starting with his family — his wife Chelsie and daughters Harlow and Hanna. There’s also his music — he plays guitar and piano and sings, and appears both solo and in an indie folk trio, the Ship and the Shield. Meanwhile, he’s also one of the team physicians for the Springfield Thunderbirds and a board member for Hilltown Ambulance.

Needless to say, he’s instrumental to the health and wellness of people of this region — in every sense of that word.

—George O’Brien

Jordan Hart

Executive Director, Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce: Age 33

Jordan Hart

Jordan Hart was attending Holyoke Community College and waiting tables at the Yankee Pedlar in Holyoke in early 2013, not really knowing she wanted to do with her life.

She saw an ad for a part-time administrative assistant at the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, thought about applying, but didn’t, because she thought the job would interfere with her college schedule. But a chance conversation with the chamber’s director, Kathy Anderson, when she came to the Pedlar for lunch prompted her to change her mind.

And that decision changed the course of her career.

Indeed, a decade and a few different positions with the chamber later, Hart is now in Anderson’s former role. And she’s not just leading the chamber, but leading it through an aggressive and much-needed change of course.

Under her direction, the chamber has become more responsive and also more inclusive, a place for business owners of all backgrounds, languages, and experiences.

“I worked for a chamber for a long time, and over the years, I’d seen how businesses had continued to change, but chambers had not changed with business,” she explained. “We weren’t seeing a lot of young entrepreneurs, we were not getting a lot of new members, and we were seeing members drop out because they felt they were not getting value for their membership. And we also weren’t doing much to engage the Latino business community in Holyoke. So I became really motivated to make sure we were a hub for business support and a bridge between Holyoke and its business community.”

Among her many initiatives, Hart has made the chamber an active part of many events and activities, including Holyoke Pride, the Paper City Food Festival, and the Great Holyoke Brick Race. She has also undertaken a rebranding, giving the chamber a new, more modern logo.

Meanwhile, she has made the agency more responsive to the needs of solo-preneurs and startups, which are a huge part of the Holyoke economy, with one-on-one technical assistance available to members free of charge.

Over the years, Jordan herself has become a fixture in Holyoke, lending time and talent to such initiatives as the food festival, the MIFA Victory Theater Entrepreneurial Strike Team, the city’s 150th-anniversary celebration, and the Holyoke Transformative Development Initiative with MassDevelopment.

When not doing any of that, she may be found playing softball, rollerskating, or bartending at Brennan’s, the legendary bar in downtown Holyoke.

In short, Holyoke has become more than a focus; it’s become a passion.

—George O’Brien

Jessica Holloway

Chief Operations Officer, the Jamrog Group: Age 38

Growing up, Jessica Holloway wasn’t exactly sure what she wanted to do for a living.

While earning a degree in finance at the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst, she came to understand two things — she liked helping people, and she was good at math. And she desired a career that would marry those two attributes.

So, following an eye-opening internship at Northwestern Mutual that became a learning experience on many levels, she put herself on a path to a career in financial services … and her current role as chief operations officer for the Holyoke-based Jamrog Group. (Amy Jamrog is the founder and CEO of the company, and also Holloway’s mentor.)

While the business card says COO, Holloway says she’s primarily a financial planner, a role in which she can use her math skills (a little) and that ‘helping people’ trait to a much larger degree.

“What I really love about it is helping clients start to view money as a tool instead of a stressor,” she explained. “A lot of the work I do is helping clients get really tuned into what matters to them — who and what — and then aligning the money accordingly.”

As COO, she has a broad role, one that includes everything from building systems, processes, and workflows (work that has helped the company triple its revenue) to coaching and development of employees, to integrating health and wellness into the group’s culture, leading outside ‘walks and talks’ with staff, and even hosting Zoom Peloton rides with team members.

“As financial planners, we spend a lot of time at our computers, crunching numbers. So we started to integrate a lot more movement, just to encourage both ourselves but also our team members to get up and move during the day,” said Holloway, who, in her spare time, is a board member for the nonprofit Girls on the Run.

Jamrog, a 40 Under Forty honoree herself (in the inaugural class of 2007), nominated Holloway for the same honor.

“As my business partner over the past nine years, Jessica has shown extraordinary growth in her business acumen, leadership among our team, and financial planning expertise,” she said in that nomination. “She has done all this while raising three young boys, volunteering for her kids’ schools, volunteering for board work, and hosting an exchange student from Spain. She is generous, has unbelievable capacity to manage her home, work, and community, and is an overall rock star of a human being.”

—George O’Brien

Ashley LeBlanc

Nurse Practice Manager of Thoracic Surgery and Nursing Director of the Lung Cancer Screening Program, Mercy Medical Center: Age 38

Ashley LeBlanc says it’s “weird to be happy when you find cancer.”

But that’s certainly one of the emotions she experiences when a patient screened for lung cancer is given that heavy dose of bad news.

That’s because, quite often, that cancer is found early, in stage 1 or 2, when it is much more survivable than when found later. Indeed, lung cancer is the deadliest cancer, and finding it early is critical to winning one’s battle against it.

And LeBlanc certainly knows that. She has lost four relatives to lung cancer, several of whom would have qualified for screening had it been available at the time of their diagnosis.

“That’s why this work is so rewarding,” said LeBlanc, who earned associate degrees in both health sciences and criminal justice at Holyoke Community College, but eventually chose a career in healthcare; she has earned an associate degree in nursing from Springfield Technical Community College and a bachelor’s degree from Westfield State University, and is currently working on her master’s in executive nursing leadership at Chamberlain University.

“I’ve loved every second of it,” she said of her work in nursing, adding that she was eventually recruited by physicians in the Thoracic Surgery unit, where she now serves in her dual role. In addition to overseeing the department, she has been instrumental in creating a Lung Cancer Screening Program (LCSP) that has been designated a Screening Center of Excellence.

That program has screened more than 12,000 people since it was created in 2016, and identified cancer in more than 200 of them. In two-thirds of those cases, it was found in stage 1 or 2, which takes us back to where we started — that sensation of being happy to find cancer.

LeBlanc’s passion for lung-cancer treatment and screening is evidenced by her extensive work in the community. She has served as the nurse planner for the American Lung Association’s annual LUNG FORCE education events in Springfield and East Hartford, and spearheaded the creation of the first Springfield LUNG FORCE event after learning there were few lung-cancer continuing-education opportunities for local providers. Prior to the pandemic, she coordinated an annual fundraiser for Mercy’s LCSP to provide ‘scholarships’ for individuals who could not afford a screening.

“It’s so fulfilling to know that others may be spared the heartache of that loss through early detection and a wider variety of treatment options,” she said of her work. “It’s what keeps me going.”

—George O’Brien

Emily Leonczyk

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, the Markens Group Inc.: Age 36

Emily Leonczyk

Emily Leonczyk brought a lot of stuff to her Forty Under 40 photo shoot.

She said she needed it all because the various items convey what’s important to her and …well, what makes her tick. Together, they really help tell her story.

You can start almost anywhere, but let’s go with the coffee cup.

“Coffee is really important to me; I run on coffee,” she joked, referencing the mug, which says ‘Mama Bird’ on it, which is a good segue to another item she brought with her, a photo of her blended family, which includes her daughter, Sienna, life partner, Todd, and his two children.

Leonczyk said family is very important to her, and so is getting together with family, friends, colleagues, and neighbors, usually over food … which explains why she also brought to the photo shoot a block quote attributed to Emily Dickinson: “I Tasted Life.”

Then there’s the elephant, which needs some explaining.

“I started a marketing and business-development business called Off the Tusk,” she noted. “The elephant has become quite the symbol for me, and I’ve carried it through my life. It represents the fact that this gigantic animal is so caring and loving. In the wild, they express joy and live for family; it’s a symbol I tie and connect through all I do and everywhere I go.”

Then there’s the computer with the Markens Group logo on it, representing the current stage of her career. She serves as executive vice president and COO of the Springfield-based agency, where she has helped grow sales by 56% since she came on board in 2019.

She has also helped the firm secure its first international client, the International Molded Fiber Assoc., while also leading a team of 20 in its use of EOS (entrepreneurial operating system) to increase efficiency and clear higher bars when it comes to revenue and profit.

Not in the picture (at least not literally) is the nonprofit known as the Willpower Foundation, the namesake of William Michael Burke, who has born with a rare brain malformation. The agency, named one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers in 2018, provides grants to help families and children with special needs in the Western Mass. region. Leonczyk has been heavily involved with Willpower, serving as executive director and a board member since 2018.

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Leonczyk’s 40 Under Forty portrait certainly is.

—George O’Brien

Delmarina López

Attorney; CEO, Delmarina López Consulting; Chicopee City Councilor: Age 27

Delmarina López aspired to be a lawyer — and did, indeed, practice law for a while after earning her juris doctorate at Western New England University School of Law. But she soon found that her passions — and there are several of them — also lay elsewhere.

Starting with her commitment to public service. She has long been active in the city of Chicopee, where she grew up, and in politics in general, and in 2021, she took that involvement to a higher level and ran for the Ward 3 seat on the City Council. She prevailed in that race — becoming the first Afro-Latina elected to any office in Chicopee — and currently serves on several committees, everything from water resources to education to zoning, while also focusing on public safety and working diligently to improve transparency in city government.

“Transparency is lacking; a lot of decisions get made, and people don’t realize why they’re being made or how we got there,” she said, adding that she considers herself an advocate for her constituents, and therefore she often winds up on the opposite side of the majority on many issues.

Meanwhile, another of her passions is helping small-business owners, which is why she is chief consultant for Delmarina López Consulting, an agency she founded in 2021. This venture supports small to mid-sized businesses with all aspects of formation; organizational structure; compliance; operational structure and processes; human resource; diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts and strategies; branding; and more.

“I’m a firm believer that what you’re good at, you’re good at, and you bring onto your team what are not your strengths,” she said, adding that she helps business owners fill in those gaps.

She is also a board member of the YWCA of Western Massachusetts, a former member of the Center for Human Development’s human rights committee, and a member of the paralegal advisory committee at Bay Path University, where she earned a degree in criminal justice studies.

All this explains why López needed a box to carry everything she wanted to bring to her photo shoot. Indeed, she arrived with everything from a gavel to a photo of her grandmother, who inspired her in many ways, especially when it comes to civic engagement, and passed away recently; from a sign from her campaign to some books that mean something to her, and much more.

Those items speak volumes about someone who has always been committed to giving back and getting involved — not just with city government, but in her community.

—George O’Brien

Mike Marcotte

President, Marcotte Ford: Age 39

Mike Marcotte He calls it the ‘Marcotte Ford campus,’ and that name certainly works.

Indeed, where there was once a Marcotte Ford dealership on Main Street in Holyoke, started by his grandfather, Al, and expanded by his father, Bryan, there are now several businesses, including a new, larger dealership, complete with a popular café inside; a commercial truck center; and even a car wash.

Mike Marcotte, the third-generation president of this family business, has been instrumental in its expansion, and in many ways, he is continuing family traditions — of entrepreneurship, success in business, and getting involved in the community.

Like most in family-owned auto dealerships and groups, Marcotte said he “grew up in the business,” learning all aspects of it, from parts to service, as he was being groomed to take a leadership role. His favorite, though, was sales.

Al Marcotte

Bryan Marcotte

“It’s a joy, an experience — a ‘wow’ moment,” he said. “I enjoy seeing people be really happy as they drive away with their new or pre-owned vehicle.”

There have been many ‘wow’ moments for the dealership as well, including those new facilities mentioned above. The café inside the new dealership, called LugNutz, has become a popular eatery in the city, and it has hosted a number of community events for local organizations.

Marcotte is continuing this series of expansion efforts by winning designation as a Model E Certified Elite store, making the dealership one of the first Ford stores in the area to sell electric Ford vehicles. The company will also be investing $1 million in charging infrastructure.

Meanwhile, and as mentioned earlier, Marcotte is continuing and building upon not only a tradition of entrepreneurship, but a tradition of involvement in the community.

That includes everything everything from work at Chicopee Comprehensive High School, where Marcotte established a program where the company mentors, trains, and hires technicians who work at the school, to Holyoke Medical Center, where he serves as vice chair of the board; from the Holyoke Boys & Girls Club — another family tradition; the basketball courts there were recently named in honor of his father, who was on the board for many years — to support of Providence Ministries and especially Kate’s Kitchen, which provides more than 200 meals a day to those in need.

“The city has been so good to us, and we try to be good to the city and give back in every way we can,” he said. “And it’s not just me, but the whole staff.”

—George O’Brien

Nick Pandolfi

Owner, Pandolfi Landscape Construction: Age 37

By the summer of 2017, Nick Pandolfi was at a crossroads in his life and career.

He had a day job — working for the state as groundskeeper for the Massachusetts Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Agawam. But he had a side hustle, if you will, on nights and weekends, doing hardscape installation work such as patios, retaining walls, sidewalks, and more.

He was developing a solid reputation with the latter, and it was starting to take up more and more of his free time — to the point where, eventually, he had to decide between one or the other.

So he took the route of an entrepreneur and made Pandolfi Landscape Construction his sole focus — and his passion.

He started with a small crew, some old equipment, and determination to make sure his life decision was the right one.

“We just started getting out there, working hard … word of mouth traveled quickly,” Pandolfi recalled. “We found ourselves hiring more people very quickly and just growing from there.”

The company soon expanded its portfolio of work to a full range of backyard renovations, including firepits, outdoor kitchens, and plunge pools. And it was certainly helped by the pandemic, which canceled vacations and gave people the time, and inclination, to make investments in their homes and backyards.

“That whole outdoor living experience has really taken off,” he said, adding that, three years after the start of the pandemic, business continues to be robust, and these kinds of investments continue. “And seeing that look on people’s faces when a project is done, and making them happy at the end of the day — that’s very rewarding.”

When not working, Pandolfi is usually in his own backyard enjoying time with his family — his wife, Taryn, and children Brody, Luke, and Gwendolyn — and attending the many sporting events involving his children.

He’s also active in the community. He served for several years on the Planning Board in Agawam, and currently donates time, energy, and talent to New Day Church in Enfield, Conn., the West Springfield Police Club, and Shriners Children’s New England. He said giving back is important, and certainly did so when he learned that a local school’s playground toys had been vandalized. That same day, he ordered new equipment, then assembled and delivered it when it arrived.

He did that quietly, just as he’s grown his business into a thriving venture.

—George O’Brien

Amanda Pham

Executive Director, Springfield Redevelopment Authority: Age 36

Amanda Pham joined the Springfield Redevelopment Authority in 2010, at what would have to be called a watershed moment — for the city, the SRA, and her own career.

Indeed, the long-waited project to redevelop and re-imagine Springfield’s Union Station, built in 1929 but dormant and mostly vacant since the early ’80s, was entering a critical new stage. The pieces — most of them, anyway — were falling in place, and construction was set to commence.

Over the next several years, the clock was essentially turned back at the historic station, and it was returned to not only its former glory, but its former role — as a transportation hub and center of activity for the city.

And Pham, who has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting from Western New England University and American International College, respectively, played a critical role in this $94 million project, coordinating 13 federal, state, and local grants for the project, while also handling lease negotiations and creation of standard operating procedures.

“That was such a big part of my life at the SRA prior to my role as executive director,” said Pham, who has worked for the city of Springfield for 16 years, starting in the School Department and then the Community Development Department. “I got exposure to all the different levels of government; there was managing, tracking, and reporting — relationship building and connecting the dots. I got my first taste of Amtrak, MassDOT, and all those other agencies … it was a great learning experience, and it was great to be part of it.”

The work on the Union Station project not only provided invaluable experience, but it afforded Pham the confidence that ultimately led Mayor Domenic Sarno to appoint her executive director of the SRA in 2021.

She is the first woman to serve in that role, and presides over the agency at a critical time for it and the city, with the SRA taking on a number of important projects, including the redevelopment of several properties directly across Main Street from MGM Springfield, part of the Court Square Urban Renewal Plan, which covers most of the downtown.

Speaking about that project, and the state of the city overall, Pham said, “I felt such great energy before COVID, but then the pandemic pulled everything back. I’m looking to see much more activation. We have so much culture and so much pride in our city; we just need some resources to get back to where we were before COVID.”

—George O’Brien

Chelsea Russell