Joseph Bednar, Author at BusinessWest

Healthcare News Special Coverage

Breaking Down Barriers

Gándara’s Family Resource Centers each provide a number of services for families in one location.

There’s no doubt, Lois Nesci said, that the COVID years triggered or exacerbated a lot of mental-health issues, which makes the multifaceted of Gándara Center more important than ever.

At the same time, the pandemic’s impact on mental health also got more people talking than ever before — and that’s good for everyone.

“The need has increased, absolutely,” said Nesci, Gándara’s CEO. “But at the same time, as we continue to break the stigma around mental health, people become more and more willing to discuss some of their struggles or ask for help. We as a society have been educating people: what are the signs people exhibit if they’re not doing well, if they’re depressed, anxious, or struggling with substance abuse?”

To help those who fall into those categories, as well as many others, Gándara’s services fall into five buckets:

• Behavioral health, which encompasses a broad array of clinical and substance-use services for adults, families, children, and adolescents, including individual and group psychotherapy, diagnostic assessments, and treatment;

• Youth, young-adult, and family services, including children’s behavioral health, foster care, and youth and young-adult residential homes;

• Substance use and recovery, with services include recovery coaching, peer recovery centers, and long-term residential treatment for men, women, and young adults with substance-use disorder and co-occurring mental-health disorders;

• Community and prevention, including health-education programs and initiatives that provide resources and information addressing numerous public-health areas while representing the multicultural needs of the region; and

• Intellectual and developmental disability services, which promote the health and well-being of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and those with behavioral health and/or substance-use disorders.

Gándara’s mental-health services — its most robust collection of offerings — focus on a few key areas: outpatient behavioral-health clinics, children’s behavioral health, substance-use and recovery services, and adult community clinical services.

“As we continue to break the stigma around mental health, people become more and more willing to discuss some of their struggles or ask for help.”

“Gándara has always had a mission to help people at the grassroots level,” Nesci said. “We’re in communities where people live. We’re accessible and very visible. We provide the linguistic ability to meet people where they’re at, and the staff reflects the population we serve.”

As a multi-service organization with a geographic footprint statewide, Gándara targets many of its programs at specific populations, such as recovery programs for Hispanic individuals and a residential group home for LGBTQ+ youth, Nesci noted. “Gándara has always responded to individual needs in the community.”

Five Decades of Growth

According to its website, Gándara Center was founded in Springfield in 1977 to advocate and provide for equal, culturally competent behavioral-health services for the Hispanic community.

The 1970s saw a large wave of Hispanic migration to the Greater Springfield area, and the portion of newcomers who had mental-health and substance-use issues had limited access to services that could help them.

Lois Nesci says mental-health needs have increased, but so have the conversations around them.

Fortunately, in 1977 — and later, as a part of President Carter’s Mental Health Systems Act of 1980 — funding was made available to communities across the U.S. to address the mental-health needs of individuals suffering from serious mental illness, including the elderly as well as racial and ethnic minority communities.

The city of Springfield submitted a citywide application that included needs in both the Hispanic and African-American communities. This funding strengthened the city’s mental-health services and aided the Gándara Center, whch was named after Dr. José Gándara Cartagena, a prominent physician and public servant from Puerto Rico who dedicated his life to providing services for those who could not afford medical care. He also advocated for urban renewal, especially the construction of much-needed new public housing.

Gándara Center was first housed in a storefront on Main Street in Springfield and then on the Mercy Hospital campus on Carew Street. In 1982, when the center opened an outpatient clinic on Main Street, it was the only agency in the area specifically providing culturally sensitive care to the Hispanic community.

In the early years, Gándara’s first executive director, Dr. Philip Guzman, laid the foundation for what the agency would later become. In 1982, Dr. Henry East-Trou joined the team as a supervisor for the agency’s psychiatric day treatment program. At the time, Gándara had just one Springfield location and approximately 50 staff to house all of residential, outpatient, and substance-use programs. Over the years, the agency secured numerous contacts and grants, expanded services, created additional programs, and increased staff size.

In 1989, when East-Trou began shepherding Gándara Center through an unprecedented era of growth as executive director, the agency employed 100 people and served approximately 2,000 individuals.

“We’re in communities where people live. We’re accessible and very visible. We provide the linguistic ability to meet people where they’re at, and the staff reflects the population we serve.”

After 30 years of service, East-Trou retired in May 2019. Throughout his tenure, he further expanded the agency and its services, which by that time offered behavioral-health, substance-use, prevention, and educational services to more than 40 communities throughout the Commonwealth, employed more than 900 staff, and served nearly 13,000 adults, children, and families from all backgrounds.

Gándara’s foster care program has been placing youth in temporary, safe, therapeutic home environments for more than 30 years.

In 2020, Nesci joined the agency and assumed the role of CEO, bringing experience working with individuals from all races and ethnic backgrounds. In her time at the agency, she has led several relocation projects, program expansions, and agency-wide accreditation from the Council on Accreditation.

Today, around 1,100 Gándara employees serve more than 17,000 clients at more than 100 locations.

“We have a full complement of behavioral-health services delivered in community-based clinic settings, as well as our home behavioral-health services for youth and families,” Nesci said. “We’ve expanded and grown our in-home services to include hospital diversion for youth. In addition to that, we also provide services for people who are struggling with substance abuse. We have six recovery centers statewide, and then we are also providing recovery coaching to individuals in the community who are in recovery.

“I’ve been here almost four and a half years,” she added, “and during that time, I’ve seen our services grow in a lot of areas, particularly in the area of substance-abuse services, our youth services, and our behavioral-health services to children and adults.”

The organization’s footprint has also grown, expanding into the Berkshires, Fitchburg, Falmouth, and Worcester, to name a few more recent locations.

Starting the Conversation

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, but Nesci wants critical conversations to happen year-round.

“There was a time when mental health was something that was never discussed,” she said. “People didn’t understand it; therefore, they feared it. Subsequently, they made judgments about it.”

Participants in Gándara’s PhotoVoice educational campaign

The Problem Gambling Prevention: Youth and Caregivers Photovoice 2.0 program provides youth with leadership skills and knowledge to become change agents in their community, committed to raising awareness and prevention of underage gambling.

Though stigma still exists, she added, plenty of progress has been made to break down those barriers, and Gándara’s focus on cultural competency is part of that.

“When we started talking about mental health being just as important as physical health, it began to change the rhetoric around providing safe spaces for individuals to be able to get services.

“It’s very important to have a space that’s judgment-free,” Nesci continued. “When an agency like us meets people where they are in the community, as recovery coaches or with behavioral-health therapy in their homes, speaking the language of individuals, understanding cultural backgrounds, people feel welcome. They don’t feel judged. They feel like someone understands them.”

And that builds trust and relationships, which she calls the greatest catalyst for people to make needed improvements in their lives — which has, after all, been Gándara Center’s mission for almost 50 years.

40 Years of Technology

Welcome to an Exciting, Uncertain New World

On Jan. 22, 1984, a good deal of the U.S. watched — for the only time, because it never aired again — a commercial that was, in many ways, more interesting than the beatdown the Los Angeles Raiders were putting on the Washington Redskins in Super Bowl XVIII.

Directed by Ridley Scott, the spot, titled “1984,” used dystopian imagery to introduce Apple’s Macintosh personal computer, which would hit stores two days later, with the promise of allowing the average person access to the kind of computing power formerly reserved for big corporations.

The world would never be the same. The home computer was already a thing — it was, in fact, Time magazine’s ‘Machine of the Year’ in 1982 — but the Macintosh introduced a wave of innovation and ease of use that eventually made computers ubiquitous in both homes and businesses — for better (productivity) and, arguably, worse (a pervasive blurring between work and home life).

The latter, of course, became possible with the rise of the internet, email, and, later, social media.

“The internet has completely changed how we work, how we communicate, how we conduct business, how we learn, how we consume entertainment, and a million other aspects of our daily lives that have become so normal, we have forgotten that, 30 years ago, they didn’t exist,” said Delcie Bean, CEO of Hadley-based Paragus Strategic I.T., adding that technology is still changing things, in ways that feel unstoppable.

“If we step back and truly think about just how much changed as a result of the internet and we look at how quickly it happened,” he went on, “AI is going to have a much bigger impact in a much shorter amount of time.”

And that will require the kind of nimbleness and ability to pivot that Sean Hogan has demonstrated through his entire career, since launching Hogan Associates (later Hogan Communications and now Hogan Technology, based in Easthampton), with an initial focus on cabling and infrastructure.

“We saw the ethernet becoming a thing, and everyone needed wiring; there was no networking back then,” he told BusinessWest. “For six or seven years, we did strictly cabling. We ran it up and down the East Coast; we had a ton of work.”

After surviving the recession of 1989-90, Hogan began to see telecommunications as a huge opportunity, and that became his first major pivot.

“Back then, very few companies had voicemail. People hate it nowadays, but they wanted it then. So we started selling phone systems that could integrate with computers and voicemail. We did very well selling phone systems, started getting attention from bigger companies, and ended up selling the Toshiba name. That brand gave us recognition. As a company, we built a great base of clients; we were thinking phones would never go away.”

Delcie Bean

“If we step back and truly think about just how much changed as a result of the internet and we look at how quickly it happened. AI is going to have a much bigger impact in a much shorter amount of time.”

About 16 years ago, Hogan began to move toward its current IT management model — which, these days, focuses on managed security as much as anything else, to respond to ever-growing cyberthreats. “The help desk is still critical, but if you’re not secure, that’s the biggest problem.”

And in the next few decades, companies like Hogan’s will have to keep adapting, because opportunities, challenges, and threats in the IT world certainly will.

“We’ve been able to keep educating ourselves enough to know that we have to be willing to change and accept change as an opportunity,” he said. “We totally believe that’s our culture here. We change when we have something new to learn. We consider ourselves security fiduciaries for clients. We protect our clients to the best of our ability; that’s our number-one job these days.

“Thirty years ago, we’d say we’d provide a solid ethernet foundation and a good network infrastructure,” Hogan added. “We’re still able to do that. But if you’ve got a bad network cable, that’s one thing; if you’ve got CryptoLocker or some other ransomware, that’s a huge threat to your business.”

Breaking the Mold

Joel Mollison, president of Northeast IT in West Springfield, shares a similar story of adaptation and evolution.

“When we started 21 years ago, the market was referred to as ‘break and fix’: if something breaks, we fix it,” he said, adding that he might do some network troubleshooting or provide very basic antivirus solutions, but in general, the work was sporadic.

Sean Hogan

“We change when we have something new to learn. We consider ourselves security fiduciaries for clients. We protect our clients to the best of our ability; that’s our number-one job these days.”

Around 15 years ago, Northeast switched to the model of a managed service provider, providing ongoing services under contracts, doing more diligence for each client. “We created the ability to form long-term relationships with clients, understanding their networks and providing them with hardware and other services, and also networking equipment.”

The Great Recession impacted the IT world, and many businesses were just trying to stay afloat and weren’t necessarily investing in their systems, Mollison recalled, but as brighter economic times re-emerged, managed services and IT tools had become more sophisticated, with more integration across platforms, automated monitoring services, and more complex cybersecurity tools, and businesses of all kinds were increasingly recognizing the need for them.

“Things have escalated in terms of the veracity and tools used by the threat actors; they have better tools and techniques,” he explained, noting that businesses need to combat online threats not just by installing protective technology, but by training employees to recognize increasingly sophisticated phishing schemes, which promise to become more realistic and targeted in the AI era.

“A lot of this has been driven by insurance — cyberliability policies dictating that businesses must have certain elements,” Mollison noted. “We get handed policy affidavits to review what’s installed. But it’s a good conversation piece, a chance to talk about where they’re at and where they can make some progress.”

Bean, who launched a solo business fixing home computers in 2002 and now boasts a growing team of 65 employees, made his own important pivot around 2011, choosing to focus only on commercial clients at a time when residential work still represented 60% of his revenue.

It has proved to a successful decision, as more businesses have realized they need a partner like Paragus (or Hogan, Northeast, or other regional IT players) at a time when, as noted earlier, networks and cybersecurity are becoming more complicated.

“Even the large Fortune 100 companies rely on consultants and experts and advisors because this field is just so broad, and it’s touching businesses in so many ways,” Bean said. “It takes a team of experts with a lot of different experience. Even we are constantly leaning on experts and outside advisors and doing research because it is just such a broad field, and it’s changing so quickly.”

Joel Mollison

“Things have escalated in terms of the veracity and tools used by the threat actors; they have better tools and techniques.”

Mollison said there’s a reason his firm has become more security-centric than ever. “We’ve had customers come to us who have experienced a breach, dealt with ransomware, lost hundreds and hundreds of hours while the whole rebuilding process took place. They couldn’t produce anything, there were legal fees, information was compromised. A lot of those factors are at play.”

Indeed, 20 years ago, smaller businesses didn’t have much to worry about when it came to aggressive cyberattacks, but experts agree that everyone is a target now.

“The thing that’s going to cause some chaos for everyone is the introduction of AI,” Mollison said, citing Microsoft Copilot — an AI-powered tool that automates features for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams — as one example of opportunity married with concern.

“If you’re allowing a system to comb through documents, you know there might be some bad intentions,” he told BusinessWest. “In the wrong hands, somebody could gather a lot of information that could be detrimental to your organization or turn into a security vulnerability, with espionage potential. We’re going to see a lot more AI-generated attacks in the future.”

And AI isn’t going anywhere, Bean said — with all its benefits and potential worries.

“I hate really dire predictions like, ‘if you don’t do this, you’re going to be out of business,’ but in this case, I think it’s right,” he said, adding that AI could be as transformative as the internet started to become 30 years ago. “And I’d like you to name how many businesses you know that don’t use the internet in any way, shape, or form. I would imagine it’s going to be zero.”

Therefore, “if you’re not having those conversations yet, asking those questions, talking to partners, going to webinars, getting informed and educated, I think you’re starting to fall behind,” Bean added. “There’s still plenty of time, but there won’t be for that much longer. I think now is the time for CEOs and C-level staff to really get engaged, to ask questions, to get educated, and to start to figure out where this fits into their business’s strategy and life cycle before they get left behind.”

Future Shock

Hogan has long recognized the growing importance of cybersecurity and its continuing evolution.

“Fifteen years ago, small companies weren’t a target. You had viruses isolated to desktops, but now, everyone’s a target,” he said — and AI will only complicate matters. “You see the bad actors out there that use AI to do deepfakes, do all sorts of bad things. We’re already seeing AI with voice recognition, duplicating voices on the phone. I fear for seniors out there. I’m afraid that’s going to be an issue.”

But AI poses great opportunity as well, Bean said, especially with the emergence of predictive AI.

“It’s going to be based on your specific niche industry, where it’s going to be able to run models and simulations and solve problems within your business or give you hypothetical outcomes to new products or things that you’re thinking of developing,” he explained. “We haven’t quite seen that hit the masses yet, but it’s coming in the next 18 months. And that’s what we need to be prepared for.”

Bean cited Moore’s law, a long-standing observation in the IT world that the number of possible transistors in a computer chip doubles every two years or so.

“This is going to be exponentially faster,” he said. “We are going to see that apply to innovation, where what used to take a decade has already been cut in half a handful of times, and now happens in 12 to 18 months. Soon, that will become six months, and then three months, and then we are going to reach a point where things are changing so quickly that, for a while, it is going to be very difficult to manage until we find some kind of equilibrium and things stabilize — or we find a new normal.”

This brave new world will be a far cry from what we were seeing in 1984 (to cite the titles of two classic dystopian works), but businesses that specialize in IT will have to do what they’ve always done: keep pivoting, keep learning, keep adapting … and keep their client businesses from being overwhelmed by the next big thing.

40 Years of Nonprofits

Increasingly, They Operate as an Ecosystem

The Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts has been funding the work of charities and nonprofits across the region since 1991. And its overriding mission hasn’t changed.

What has changed, at least recently, is how CFWM accomplishes that mission — specifically, moving away from specifically targeted grants into a more trust-based model. Instead of seeking to put some dollars toward a specific goal, the foundation gives to organizations in a way that puts them at the center of it and allows them to dictate how they want to spend their money.

“It’s a recognition that funders don’t necessarily know what’s best for nonprofits,” said Megan Burke, the organization’s president and CEO. “It’s the people on the front lines who are dealing with constant change in the community who know the best places to use those funds.”

The Community Foundation was moving in that direction before the pandemic, but COVID, and the urgent needs it exposed, really accelerated the process, she explained.

“If we know you have a strong mission, a strong organization, we’ll put the money in your hands and say, ‘use it well.’ We’ll ask afterward how that went, but in the moment, you know what you need to achieve and how to get there.”

Meanwhile, the mission of Square One, which began life in 1883 as Springfield Day Nursery, has in many ways remained consistent for more than 140 years.

“We’re still doing the same type of work, although the world has changed enormously,” president and CEO Dawn DiStefano said. “Children still require care for their parents to go to work. And we’re a company that cares for children and instills confidence in our community that we are a safe, healthy, and high-quality place for young children to learn and be cared for.”

At the same time, she added, much has changed.

“Probably around the time BusinessWest started,” DiStefano said, “we realized something that today is quite obvious — that you can do a lot of work with children all day, but if you’re not in partnership with families and caretakers, you can hinder permanent growth and change. After all, learning happens 24/7.”

Specifically, Square One — it took that name in 2008 to reflect its role as more than just a day nursery, but as a key foundational element in the lives of preschoolers — has made a point over the past few decades to communicate more thoroughly with parents at the start and end of each day about the child’s lessons, experiences, and mood. That way, parents can continue the conversations at home — and, in many cases, start their own, which builds trust between the parents and Square One’s providers.

The organization has gone beyond that level of communication as well, opening a Family Support Services division about 15 years ago, which includes a home visitation program for parents who request it, including specific programs for young, first-time parents and parents in recovery.

Megan Burke

“If we know you have a strong mission, a strong organization, we’ll put the money in your hands and say, ‘use it well.’ We’ll ask afterward how that went, but in the moment, you know what you need to achieve and how to get there.”

“We see ourselves as partners with families,” DiStefano said. “If we can bring out the best in the child and families, they become productive members of our community, and we all benefit from that. We all do better when folks are able to engage in our world.”

Megan Moynihan, CEO of the United Way of Pioneer Valley, said her organization’s goal since its founding 103 years ago as Springfield Community Chest has been to meet the greatest needs of the region, from early education to food insecurity to financial literacy.

“Post-COVID, we did a community assessment to really understand where the needs in the community are, if they had changed or not,” she said, noting that the greatest needs right now run the gamut from basic services, like food, to financial wellness, housing access, and mental-health support.

It meets those needs through its community service centers, where people can access emergency food supplies but also mental-health resources, including a suicide-prevention hotline. There’s also a financial-wellness program called Thrive, a partnership with Holyoke Community College on career training — in fields like culinary arts and medical assisting — and a host of other outreaches.

“Understanding the pulse of the community is the number-one issue that needs to be addressed,” Moynihan said. “It can be mental health tomorrow, but in 10 years, it might solar power and how to transition to that. We know what today’s needs are, but we have to be responsive to those needs, and when community needs change, we have to change, too.”

Come Together

One thing the United Way has done well over time, Moynihan noted, is connecting many resources in the community.

“If someone comes in and they are are housing-insecure, we’ll call one of the outreach workers at Health Care for the Homeless and see what kind of services are out there for them,” she said as one example. “We’ve always been a connector in the community, finding where the needs are and connecting individuals to the services they need. We can’t do the work alone.”

Megan Moynihan

“We’ve always been a connector in the community, finding where the needs are and connecting individuals to the services they need. We can’t do the work alone.”

It’s a philosophy many nonprofits were already moving toward even before COVID — and the way it isolated people and organizations — really laid bare the need to connect and work together as a nonprofit ecosystem.

For example, Burke said, someone might seek job training, but they might also face other barriers to employment, from unreliable transportation to unaddressed health issues, and nonprofits can refer clients to each other to address multiple needs at once.

“A healthy nonprofit ecosystem, made up of nonprofits of all different sizes, is the best way to meet folks’ needs. No single nonprofit can do everything; there are so many different needs,” she told BusinessWest. “So coordination and collaboration with each other is really important.”

DiStefano used the example of connecting a parent of a child at Square One with Way Finders if they’re in need of housing support.

“We serve 1,200 families a year. Most are working one or two jobs, working eight to 12 hours a day, maybe even riding the bus, going to appointments,” she said. “I’m not in the housing business, but I’m not going to say to families, ‘I can’t talk to you about housing.’ That’s a big part of our evolution.

“Society 140 years ago was harsher in its opinion that your family was your business; it really wasn’t the business of social-service agencies or the government to help your family. But as a society, we noted over time that you can ignore problems, but that only costs more money down the line,” DiStefano went on. “The more you can invest in the child, especially between age zero and three, when the brain is doing the most developing, the better off they’ll be. Why not sink every resource we have into making sure the child has the healthiest opportunities in those years?”

The Center for EcoTechnology, which predates BusinessWest by eight years, has certainly been a connector of resources, in its case programs focused on energy efficiency, sustainability, and the environment.

In the years leading up to CET’s founding in 1976, the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the establishment of Earth Day saw Americans more focused on environmental concerns, and CET began its work largely in the realm of energy efficiency and home-energy audits. Today, the initial vision is largely intact, but the work has expanded into commercial waste, decarbonization, and recycled building materials.

Dawn DiStefano

“As a society, we noted over time that you can ignore problems, but that only costs more money down the line.”

“We’re still doing energy conservation and energy efficiency. In some ways, we’ve remained true to our origins,” said Ashley Muspratt, the nonprofit’s president and CEO. “But we’ve modernized some of the language and approaches to evolve with the times — for example, shifting the conversation to electrification, which is no longer about just saving energy, but shifting away from fossil fuels to electricity and renewable sources of electricity.”

CET got involved in waste reduction in the 1980s, and that remains a core area of its work today. In addition, it’s more focused now on the question of environmental justice, aiming to ensure that no communities or customer segments are left behind or harmed by the transition to a lower-carbon or no-carbon economy.

“We offer our services in dozens of languages and have made an effort to recruit multilingual staff. We also work with a translation company, so we can provide real-time interpretation on the phone or in the field,” Muspratt added. “We want to make sure we have a staff that reflects and looks like and understands the different communities that we’re trying to serve.”

That hits home for Burke, who noted that the Community Foundation adopted a new strategy a few years ago around diversity and increasing opportunity and equity in the community. To her, that means nonprofits should have staff members that share the lived experiences of clients — not just ethnic background, but, to cite one example, serving people in Franklin County who are living with limited means trying to address all the challenges rural families have.

“Having people on their staff and on their board who may have lived those experiences allows them to develop programs to be more successful,” she noted. “We’ve stressed the importance of organizations really thinking about what perspectives they need on their staff and board.

“And it’s not just so they can feel good or have a great photo that shows diversity; it’s to be more successful in delivering the services they were founded to provide,” Burke went on. “Nonprofits recognize there really is value in incorporating a lot of different perspectives in the work they do.”

Thoughtful Evolution

While focusing their work in a more connected way and dealing with, in many cases, greater levels of need, some the region’s most venerable nonprofits have expanded in other ways.

Square One, for instance, has grown its family childcare program, where children are cared for and learn in home settings instead of one of the organization’s centers.

“I predict, in the next 10 years, we’ll see an explosion of interest in family childcare,” DiStefano said. “Some people, post-COVID, found comfort working from home. It’s a great business opportunity; they can make money, and Square One can help coordinate these services, so we’re supporting businesses.”

At CET, Muspratt said the organization has launched a strategic plan to grow its impact by five times by 2030, because, she noted, that’s what the climate needs, and there is plenty of money at the state and federal level to do the work, as well as private funders.

“More and more philanthropic donors want to support climate work, so that pace of growth is possible,” she said. “This region has always had an environmental bent.”

The organization has grown by 20% each of the past two years, with a staff of 100 that could double if the 2030 goals are hit, she added. “We became a more remote organization during the pandemic, and that has helped us cast a wider net. It’s good to have been able to expand our pool of candidates outside the Western Mass. region, though the majority of our staff are still based in Massachusetts.”

Nonprofits also thrive off volunteers; the United Way’s Volunteer Connect program has been successful at, well, connecting area agencies that need help with people who have time and talent to offer. It’s just one more way, Moynihan said, that nonprofits are operating in tandem.

“Everyone is working hard and chasing the same dollars,” she added, “but if we do it together, do it as a community, the outcome is always better.”

40 Years of Higher Education

Colleges Adapt to Non-traditional Realities

At the recent ceremony that officially installed him as chancellor of UMass Amherst, Javier Reyes noted that attitudes about higher education are changing, while rapid advancements in technology, with artificial intelligence at the center, are forcing colleges and universities to find new ways to meet their obligations.

“How does higher education respond to these challenges?” he asked. “How do we meet the needs of today’s students — students who are increasingly mobile and more agile? How do we meet the needs of a changing society? How do we remain nimble and adapt so that our students are prepared to be active and engaged members of their communities today, tomorrow, and for decades to come?”

That’s a lot to unpack, but UMass will focus on six key areas, Reyes explained: education, research and creative activity, translation and knowledge transfer, engagement, inclusivity and wellness, and financial and operational viability.

Then, importantly, he added, “it is important to stress that these are not six independent areas. Rather, they are six interconnected areas that must work in synergy with each other to achieve our goals.”

It’s a theme of connectivity that … well, connects Reyes’ thoughts with the conversations BusinessWest had with three other area higher-education leaders as they considered how academia has changed over the years — and where it’s going next.

“There’s been an evolution in higher education,” Elms College President Harry Dumay said. “About a decade ago, we knew there was a demographic cliff coming up for traditional undergraduate students. So everyone was thinking about the non-traditional population. And Elms had a strategy of partnering with community colleges to create degree-completion programs, which was very successful in growing enrollment in college through non-traditional students.”

John Cook, president of Springfield Technical Community College (STCC), said the role of his institution has become more prominent with last year’s launch of MassReconnect, which makes community college in Massachusetts free for adults over age 25 — another example of how colleges are prioritizing non-traditional students.

“We’ve become even more essential,” Cook said. “The fundamentals of what community colleges offer are even more important, if that’s possible, than they were 40 years ago. Access, opportunity, equity — all the things we talk about in the public sector — are really part of our DNA. And it’s invigorating to be a part of this, especially with MassReconnect, with a different kind of spotlight shining on us that further underpins this value that our name represents.”

Whether attending college right out of high school or returning as part of that older, non-traditional, often career-changing crowd, today’s students are increasingly facing an economy in flux, so they need, more than anything, to learn how to learn, Bay Path University President Sandra Doran said.

“Today’s graduates will have, on average, seven careers — not seven jobs, but seven careers,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s why we’re really committed to the concept of lifelong learning.”

Elaborating, Doran said, “in the past, you’d go to school for four years, then start your career. But that’s not always how higher education works. You might be taking college courses as a high-school student, or between ages of 17 and 24, or, sometimes, when you’re 50 years old. You might be in the workforce and, at the same time, taking college courses. This continuum of being able to learn any time you need to learn — and have the courses and programs available to do that — is really important to your future. And being adept at online learning is absolutely critical.”

Sandra Doran

“Today’s graduates will have, on average, seven careers — not seven jobs, but seven careers. That’s why we’re really committed to the concept of lifelong learning.”

In such a different environment from 40 years ago, she added, colleges and universities need to provide pathways, credentials, certificates, and degrees that are adaptable to people at all stages of life, not just those in that 17-24 age range.

“What we used to refer to as a student conjured up notions of sitting at a desk, taking notes, listening to a professor. But that’s not the only way education is delivered anymore,” Doran added. “People can learn forever.”

Into the Real World

Students are also training for a work world that’s fiercely competing for top talent — meaning not just graduates with skills, but those able to keep learning on the fly. With that in mind, Elms College recently crafted a strategic plan that emphasizes the core value of a liberal-arts education, experiential learning in the real world while still in college, and innovation.

“The employers of today are really desperate for students who are real-world ready; you don’t have to teach them how to behave in the workforce,” Dumay said. “At the same time, they can think on their feet. They have that critical thinking. A liberal-arts undergraduate education prepares students to think on their feet, articulate their thoughts, work in groups, all the soft skills that employers are looking for.”

At the same time, he said, the Elms has brought flexibility to the forefront, offering non-traditional students everything from remote options to short-term certificates and stackable credentials that will get them into careers, with growth potential, more quickly than in a full, four-year program.

Harry Dumay

“A liberal-arts undergraduate education prepares students to think on their feet, articulate their thoughts, work in groups, all the soft skills that employers are looking for.”

The presidents we spoke with also emphasized the importance of offering programs relevant to growth industries, like STCC’s future involvement in the Richard E. Neal Cybersecurity Center of Excellence being built at Union Station in Springfield, or its continued leadership in health sciences (at a time when healthcare deals with persistent staffing shortages), and HVAC and energy systems (as green energy continues its ascent).

“These are really, really helpful programs to have when we map out what the needs are in the workforce,” Cook said, noting that STCC’s School of Health will be renovated in a major capital project.

Doran takes a similar approach. “Bay Path has always been workforce-driven. That, again, relates back to lifelong learning — always being responsive to the marketplace, to employers. We started in 1897 as a business institute, as a reaction to what was needed in the workplace. That commitment to providing employers with a talented, long pipeline of potential employees really is a commitment to our region, and our lifelong learners.”

She, like Dumay, stressed the importance of flexible programs adaptable to the needs of non-traditional learners.

“It’s not one size fits all. Personalized education is a continuing trend,” Doran said. “We know how important it is for students to feel their college experience is valuable and works for them.”

Reyes said UMass intends to strengthen its role as a public research university in the coming years.

Javier Reyes

“We must continue to embrace our role as the primary developer of talent in the Commonwealth while ensuring that all of our students — regardless of their discipline — have the core skills, soft skills, and critical-thinking skills that will allow them to thrive in a rapidly changing economy and a rapidly changing world.”

“Fulfilling our role as a premier land-grant public research university will require us to continue to grow our research infrastructure while also expanding opportunities for students across all disciplines and at all levels to engage with research and hands-on learning opportunities,” he said, noting that, in FY 2023, UMass faculty received 1,164 research awards totaling nearly $240 million. “This is tremendous and speaks to the confidence in the research that is happening at UMass Amherst and the impact that our faculty have on the common good.”

In the current academic year alone, he noted, the campus became home to the National Science Foundation’s Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Academic Center for Reliability and Resilience of Offshore Wind, while UMass Amherst became one of just 18 institutions to receive the National Science Foundation’s inaugural Accelerate Research Translation Award, aimed at translating the research conducted in campus laboratories into tangible solutions to real-world problems.

“We must continue to embrace our role as the primary developer of talent in the Commonwealth while ensuring that all of our students — regardless of their discipline — have the core skills, soft skills, and critical-thinking skills that will allow them to thrive in a rapidly changing economy and a rapidly changing world, so that they can succeed and grow in the fields that they choose to be a part of.”

Better Days

Going back to MassReconnect for a moment, Cook noted that community-college enrollment had been on a downward trend in the Northeast for a while, but for both the fall and spring of the 2023-24 academic year, STCC saw a double-digit increase in enrollment, and he expects that pace to continue.

John Cook

“We’re not all the way back to pre-pandemic, but we have changed the trend, and we hope to continue to build on that.”

“We’re not all the way back to pre-pandemic, but we have changed the trend, and we hope to continue to build on that,” he said.

“We’ve been through COVID, which were pretty tough years,” Cook added. “When you combine the momentum of a major capital project and MassReconnect and our equity outlook and the fact that we’re the most affordable college in Springfield … these are wonderful fundamentals. It’s a great place to be.”

40 Years of Healthcare

Hospitals Grapple with Some Significant Trends

Twenty years ago, in the issue commemorating BusinessWest’s 20th anniversary, area hospital leaders talked about what had changed the most over two decades, and they all mentioned the same thing: a shortening of hospital stays, with procedures that once required a several-night stayover now requiring only one — or none at all.

Today’s hospital leaders are still talking about it — because the trend has only accelerated.

“The time people spend inside the hospital for various procedures has been shortened significantly,” Holyoke Medical Center Spiros Hatiras said. “When I started in healthcare 30 years ago, someone would come in for a gallbladder surgery and spend four days in the hospital. Now it’s the same day, come in and leave.

“The same with other procedures,” he went on. “People even get knee replacements and leave the same day. For bariatric surgery, they just stay one night. They used to spend more time in the hospital, so that definitely has changed.”

Dr. Mark Keroack, president of Baystate Health, noted that, around the time BusinessWest ran that story, he started seeing an accelerating shift to more procedures done in the outpatient arena — which has impacted revenues across virtually all hospitals.

“We have 1,000 hospital beds, but 60% of our revenue comes from the ambulatory side. And even in my career, things that used to land you in the hospital for a week don’t anymore. Now you’re out in a day. That is an incredible advance because of microsurgery and advanced techniques.”

The other dramatic shift regionally — and nationally — has been a trend toward consolidation. Over the past four decades, Baystate Health, and its flagship hospital, Baystate Medical Center, have brought formerly independent hospitals in Greenfield, Palmer, and Westfield under its umbrella, while Mercy Medical Center was acquired by Trinity Health, and Cooley Dickinson Hospital is now part of the Mass General Brigham family.

“Healthcare has been evolving, and how hospitals are reimbursed has become extraordinarily challenging. There’s been a shift from inpatient care to outpatient care, which is beneficial for the community, but challenging to maintain revenues to support hospitals, which communities rely on for services,” said Dr. Robert Roose, president of both Mercy and Johnson Memorial Hospital in Enfield, Conn., both part of the Trinity family.

“And as those trends continue to shift and reimbursement rates for services decrease, that has reinforced the value of being part of a large system that has scale, that can leverage strengths across the service area.”

Cooley Dickinson Health Care President Dr. Lynnette Watkins said Cooley becoming part of Mass General Brigham just over a decade ago has been a benefit in many ways, and a model for what’s happening with formerly independent hospitals across the country.

Dr. Mark Keroack

“We have 1,000 hospital beds, but 60% of our revenue comes from the ambulatory side. And even in my career, things that used to land you in the hospital for a week don’t anymore. Now you’re out in a day.”

“So you still have that community impact, but you’re also backed by a larger network,” she told BusinessWest, citing, as one example, a current, $26 million capital project that will add about 7,700 square feet to the Emergency Department, increasing its footprint by about 40%. “We would not be able to undertake a renovation like this without the support of Mass General Brigham and its ability to engage and identify contractors and work through supply-chain issues and, candidly, to finance a project as large as this.

“Also, in order to be able to recruit and retain talent, particularly in primary care, we have to be competitive in the market,” Watkins continued. “And a lot of our colleagues come to Cooley Dickinson for that great community feel and care, but also are attracted by competitive compensation and the fact that we’re part of Mass General Brigham.”

Baystate’s own growth story began almost 50 years ago with the merger of three facilities into what is now known as Baystate Medical Center — and it has grown significantly since, with the expansion of Baystate Children’s Hospital, a massive addition known as the Hospital of the Future in 2012, and other projects.

But Baystate Health also encompasses Baystate Franklin Medical Center in Greenfield, Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield, and Baystate Wing Hospital in Palmer, along with a host of physician practices and a cluster of specialty services in Springfield’s North End, most notably the D’Amour Center for Cancer Care, which opened in 2004.

“People don’t have to leave the area to get their care, and to get advanced medical care — level-1 trauma, neonatal ICU, specialty cancer care, specialty pediatric care, all those things that built up over the years,” said Keroack, who will retire from a more than four-decade career in healthcare this year. “Baystate has grown to the point where we’re doing roughly 65% of the medical care in Western Mass.”

Dr. Lynnette Watkins

“During COVID, we lost hospital personnel because they got sick or their families got sick or burnout occurred and individuals decided to take time off. We also had trainees in the pipeline that, for a couple of years, did not have the ability to learn at the bedside.”

At the same time, he added, a number of small hospitals closed or were repurposed over the years, from Ludlow Hospital to Farren Memorial Hospital in Turners Falls to Mary Lane Hospital in Ware, partly because of that shift to outpatient care and the ability of the region’s larger hospitals to diversify what they offer. “It’s hard for a small community hospital to make it.”

Getting Back to Work

That said, all hospitals these days, of all sizes, are struggling with workforce shortages across the spectrum, from nurses to many specialists.

Keroack said Baystate employs around 13,500 people and, before the pandemic, typically averaged 600 to 700 open positions at any given time. That number shot up to 2,100 during the Omicron phase of COVID — a time known in healthcare as the Great Resignation.

“No one wanted to work in healthcare. It was scary and difficult,” he recalled. “But we’ve done an awful lot to be better employers — we’ve done a lot with workplace safety, flex schedules, employee wellness, and novel approaches to new pipelines with our education and training partners.”

With almost 1,500 openings currently, “we’re about halfway back to where we used to be,” he added. “There’s still some work to do, but we’re making good progress and heading in the right direction.”

Watkins agreed that COVID took a toll on the workforce at Cooley Dickinson.

“We’ve had shortages before, particularly in nursing, but in the technical fields as well — radiology technologists, pharmacy techs, laboratory techs — but during COVID, we lost hospital personnel because they got sick or their families got sick or burnout occurred and individuals decided to take time off.

Spiros Hatiras

“Even though you have interoperability, the systems are not talking to each other. It’s a mess, if you ask me, where you could have made a really big breakthrough in medical records.”

“We also had trainees in the pipeline that, for a couple of years, did not have the ability to learn at the bedside,” she added. “And learning on the screen or in a sim lab is not the same as learning at the bedside. So these graduates are taking longer to complete their training, and taking longer to onboard and orient. That means more folks, particularly those that enjoy teaching and mentoring, are really required in order to bring this new cohort along.”

That has ramped up partnerships with UMass Amherst, Bay Path University, Springfield Technical Community College, and others on targeted programs to get more talent into the pipeline, from certified nurse aides to lab techs and surgical techs.

“One of the silver linings is that it has really forced us to be creative and collaborative,” Watkins said. “We even have high-school and college students as a part of our volunteer programs here at the hospital, so that young people can get exposed to what it means to be in a hospital, and what sorts of positions there are. Doctors and nurses are important, but there are other ways that you can work in the hospital and have a great experience.”

Roose said healthcare leaders have come to understand the importance of caregivers’ concerns at a time when the industry in general is at “an inflection point” when it comes to how hospitals operate.

“We need to double down and maximize our efforts to support caregivers through systems that keep people well and transform the systems that keep people well and transform our services in ways that meet the evolving needs not only of the patients we serve, but the colleagues that are part of our mission and drive service.”

Holyoke Medical Center has taken big steps to address those concerns as well, Hatiras said, including with compensation, but the system has still struggled, emerging from the pandemic, with employee expectations when it comes to long hours, weekends, and on-call hours — and a desire for more of their work to be remote, which isn’t always possible.

That said, artificial intelligence could begin to have a broader role, not in replacing providers, but making their jobs a little easier.

“You can have a natural conversation with the patient about their condition; the doctor can tell you what your blood pressure is, the patient can say what their symptoms are, and you can have AI listening in and creating an actual note for the chart instead of someone having to transcribe it or dictate it or type it,” Hatiras said, adding that AI can process copious amounts of information and … not make a diagnosis, exactly, but augment the doctor’s own decision making.

“It could be helpful as an overlay with all the patients that come and go — ‘hey, doctor, can you check this patient based on the data input? He may need attention; he may have sepsis; he may have an infection.’ It can be a tool to assist.”

Evolution Continues

Speaking of technology, Hatiras noted that one of the most monumental changes in healthcare in recent decades is the electronic medical record.

“I would say there are benefits and drawbacks. One benefit is that you can access certain information from anywhere. In the old days, you had paper charts, and if a doctor was on call and needed to look at somebody’s chart, he couldn’t. Now you can look at it — X-rays, lab results, all sorts of things. And there’s certainly more data being captured this way.”

The main downside is what Hatiras characterizes as a big missed opportunity, and that’s the failure of the U.S. government, early on, to establish a bid process and choose the best electronic medical record system and make it the national standard.

“What has happened is we have a hodgepodge of a system,” he explained. “If you physically cover more than one hospital, it’s a bear; you’ve got to learn each other’s systems: how to input orders, how to check labs. It’s not easy. Secondly, you can’t train for it in medical school because what system are you going to train on? If we had a national system, we could be learning this from year one in medical school. And even though you have interoperability, the systems are not talking to each other. It’s a mess, if you ask me, where you could have made a really big breakthrough in medical records.”

Speaking of government, Keroack noted that the way healthcare is paid for has changed dramatically, especially over the two decades since Romneycare; today, 97% of Massachusetts residents carry health insurance.

And with more than 90% of Baystate patients cared for under a global budget — specifically, Medicare and Medicaid accountable-care organizations — “if we overspend or are inefficient, we have to eat the difference. It leads us to emphasize prevention, wellness, and coordination of care. It’s changed the way doctors think about keeping people healthy.”

Today, with an older population than the national average, 70% of Baystate’s payments come from Medicaid and Medicare and 30% from commercial managed care, while the average hospital in the U.S. is 40% government and 60% managed care.

“Over time, the country’s going to have to tackle the question of whether we move to some single-payer health approach,” Keroack added. “We’re not done as a nation dealing with the cost of healthcare. We have the highest cost of healthcare in the world and the most splintered, uncoordinated program of paying for it.”

Meanwhile, major projects continue locally in an effort to meet community needs, from Cooley Dickinson’s Emergency Department overhaul — the ER was built in the 1970s when ER visits were less than half what they are today — to Trinity Health’s Enfield Ambulatory Center, which will reflect that overall shift toward outpatient care.

“There will continue to be an emphasis on innovation, technology, and what will be known as precision medicine or personalized medicine as we move into the future,” Roose said, citing projects at Mercy from a new palliative-care center to an agreement with the US Oncology Network to improve services, technology, and access to clinical trials.

“The main emphasis will continue to be on compassionate care and creating experiences that are holistic and compassionate and help people along their healing journey.”

40 Years of Construction

Workforce Challenges Have Emerged over Time

When you’ve been building things for as long as Daniel O’Connell’s Sons (DOC) has, well … sometimes you enjoy the sequel.

Take, for example, the Montgomery-Russell bridge on I-90 over the Westfield River. DOC is currently renovating it, a $46.9 million project that includes deck rehabilitation, lighting and drainage improvements, and a major steel component replacement.

It’s a return of sorts for Holyoke-based DOC, which built that bridge nearly 70 years ago.

“When you have situations like that, it’s kind of cool,” said Joubin Hassanein, the company’s president. “You look back at photos of the people that were working on that original bridge, and to know that they’re kind of connected to you in some way is pretty awesome.”

With a 145-year history of major projects, from Springfield’s Memorial Bridge to Rowe’s Wharf in Boston and that city’s Leverett Circle Connector Bridge, the leaders at O’Connell’s can take a long view of what has changed in the construction industry, but Hassanein believes some of the bigger changes are still to come.

“Construction in general has been an industry that hasn’t seen a lot of change over the course of a long time — except for the period that we live in now,” he told BusinessWest, especially in the realm of technology. “We’re seeing a rapid adoption of technology into construction. We’re probably in the early stages of a very fast-changing scene within the construction industry. And I think it’s important for companies to be nimble enough to move with that change, and we’re heavily invested in that.”

DOC is equally invested in wastewater and drinking-water facilities, which now account for about 40% of its work, with the other 60% falling mostly into the education sector, but also healthcare, hospitality, senior living, and other areas. With two offices in Massachusetts and one each in Connecticut, New York, and Florida, it’s also looking to expand geographically.

David Fontaine Jr., CEO of Fontaine Bros., has also had a hand in plenty of large-scale public work, as well as helping to shape the landscape of downtown Springfield, from the MassMutual Center project 20 years ago to the recent conversion of the former Court Square Hotel into market-rate apartments.

“It’s great to see the momentum that’s generating for the area,” he said, adding that high schools and colleges have been another mainstay, with work at Deerfield Academy, Wilbraham Monson Academy, and a host of other schools, as well as healthcare projects for clients like Baystate Health and Mercy Medical Center. “We intentionally keep a mix of work in public and private sectors. The public sector is a little less sensitive to the ups and downs of interest rates.

“Almost 70% of our work is with repeat clients, so that’s important,” Fontaine added. “When there are fewer projects out there and they’re more difficult to get, we see fierce competition for every project we’re going after. But even with that fierce competition, we’ve won six of the last seven projects we competed for. We attribute a lot of that to those repeat relationships.”

When Joe Marois opened the South Hadley-based construction firm that bears his name in 1972, business was conducted differently, and he was discouraged to see some of that fall away.

Joubin Hassanein

“We’re probably in the early stages of a very fast-changing scene within the construction industry. And I think it’s important for companies to be nimble enough to move with that change.”

“It was a complete joy. A lot of the work we did initially was, believe it or not, on a handshake. We were doing colleges and private work, a lot of the mills, very little public work. But there was an abundance of work, and we had large crews, and it was a different time.”

Heightened competition in the private sector, however, eventually shifted the dynamic.

“As people started seeing what we were doing, they started migrating into our area to the point where the profits became problematic for us. So we migrated into the public sector. And that’s a lot more difficult — it’s permitting-intense, it’s paperwork … the process is very difficult. We’re dealing with engineers who have to deal themselves with peer review, which increases the requirements for the project substantially. We’ve had to use attorneys more in the last 20 years than in prior years just to make sure we cross our Ts and so forth.”

Ryan Pelletier, project manager for Houle Construction in Ludlow, said his firm has been focused for more than 30 years on the healthcare and hospital industry.

“That’s been our mainstay, our bread and butter. We do other things, all kinds of commercial work. But 90%, of what we do is healthcare by virtue of our repeat customers.”

His father, company President Tim Pelletier, arrived at Houle as an estimator back in 1989, working for company founder Ray Houle. At the time, the firm was building Friendly’s and Dunkin’ Donuts restaurants up and down the East Coast, as both were in serious growth mode.

Later, “Ray saw some opportunities in healthcare, and also, some of the guys were settling down with wives and kids, and fewer of them wanted to do the traveling,” Ryan said. “So the team leaned into the healthcare sector. They found some idiosyncrasies and peculiarities about the sector that makes it unappealing for some companies, but we found a niche there.”

David Fontaine Jr.

“When there are fewer projects out there and they’re more difficult to get, we see fierce competition for every project we’re going after.”

COVID was an interesting time, he added, as Houle built temporary structures at Baystate Medical Center and Cooley Dickinson Hospital to handle COVID overflow, among other projects, but infection-control measures at area hospitals didn’t make things easy. “We were really, really needed, but they also didn’t want us there.”

All these firms have traveled different paths and made unique impacts on the landscape — both literally and figuratively. But they’ve shared many challenges, too.

Priming the Pump

One substantial change across the industry has to do with workforce — in particular, the flow of young workers into the industry, which has slowed to a trickle, something every contractor we spoke with for this story recognized.

Many years ago, Marois said, each summer, “we’d have nine or 10 or more college students that would come here automatically, and we’d hire them all. They’d stay for the four-year college stint.”

Nowadays, even vocational-school graduates are slim pickings, he went on. “It doesn’t seem like a lot of people have ambitions to be in the trades anymore. Not a lot of people are showing up. We’re even advertising on television.”

Joe Marois

“It doesn’t seem like a lot of people have ambitions to be in the trades anymore. Not a lot of people are showing up.”

Pelletier agreed. “The economy has been shifting. Traditionally, you got apprenticeship work in the field. Today, a lot of young people are being pushed toward college, and none are excited to come out of school with an expensive degree to go into a career where they didn’t need a degree to begin with.”

He hopes some might be drawn by rising salaries, especially for in-demand trades like HVAC. “Demand is as high as ever, so beginning wages are increasing, and the costs to us are increasing.”

Indeed, Marois said someone still learning on the job can make $17 an hour, and they could be making $45 to $50 on a public-works project not too much later. “There’s some incentive there for young people, the fact that you can start at that level that quickly. But it doesn’t seem to be enticing for a lot of these young people.”

Hassanein said some of the technology being used in construction today may draw more individuals to consider a career.

“We have a lot of connected systems and data, and being able to make decisions and being guided by that data is becoming more and more prominent in our world, where it wasn’t before. So the people you want to bring in are people that can do that type of work and can process that information and translate it to the job.”

Pelletier added that “the obvious answer is to make it more appealing, pay more, and offer more benefits, but we can also get people from different sectors, like warehousing and retail. That’s something I like to do — find people in my daily commute, at Dunkin’ Donuts or Men’s Wearhouse, somebody who has a good personality and is always working hard; I encounter them daily. They may be at a job that’s just paying the bills, and if I have a need for an apprentice, I can put them on a career path.

“Our only option at this point is to be more proactive than looking for the kids who go from trade school right into the industry,” he added. “Those kids don’t exist in large numbers anymore. So we have to deal with that.”

Hassanein added that the workforce shortage across the industry was in evidence before COVID, but the pandemic exacerbated the situation.

“When we talk about the workforce, there’s certainly a focus on inclusion — a broad mix of people of color and women, people who represent the area that we’re building. We want to help them not only get into the trades, but be successful in the trades.”

“I think our industry lost quite a bit of people in the last downturn and never really recovered. So, as an industry, we’re challenged,” he said, adding that casting a net for a more diverse workforce, including more women, would help.

Fontaine agrees, noting that Liz Wambui, the firm’s director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Impact since 2021, has made some positive headway in workforce matters.

“It’s great to see the construction industry embrace diversity in the workplace,” he said. “When we talk about the workforce, there’s certainly a focus on inclusion — a broad mix of people of color and women, people who represent the area that we’re building. We want to help them not only get into the trades, but be successful in the trades.

“That’s where Liz goes above and beyond; she works with different partners on pathways into the industry, and once someone is in the industry, she partners with them to help them transition from project to project and make those first couple of years a success so they can have a long-term career.”

Considering the current challenges, Fontaine added, “a lot of Liz’s role is focused on the workforce generally. It’s a need we have across all the trades we work with, and we’ve done some innovative things, like partnering with unions, which are very forward-thinking and helpful in coming up with ways to attract people into the trades and keep them.”

Something to Build On

Some of the challenges of today’s construction industry are sector-specific, like the trend toward hospitals being acquired by national players, as in the case of Mercy Medical Center and Trinity Health.

“Where that becomes a challenge is the powers that be are located elsewhere, and decisions are being made halfway across the country for things that are local,” Pelletier said. “They don’t necessarily understand the complexities of the local market.”

Hassanein said it’s a good time to work in education because many colleges are prioritizing energy efficiency and carbon neutrality, and DOC is helping them achieve those goals over a number of years. “We’re at Mount Holyoke, Trinity, and Amherst right now, for example. Those are multi-year projects.”

Some of this work is still in its infancy, he added, but it’s expanding quickly. “It’s definitely a great place to be. Almost every academic institution has a goal established, with a deadline, and until now, they’ve been kind of waiting because the technologies have been changing at a rapid pace, so they didn’t want to invest a lot too early and realize that it’s outdated. But now, the clock is ticking, and they’re all in full motion.

“We’re always evolving, and you have to be a company that’s nimble enough to evolve with the environment that you have,” Hassanein went on. “The continuous-change element is a really key part of any company’s success going forward.”

Fontaine agrees that sustainability, green building, and new technology are exciting elements of construction today, but he added that another aspect of his firm’s success is not getting too busy when times are busy.

“A lot of people will chase whatever the new sector is, whatever they think the new geography is; they want to grow just to grow and do as much volume as possible. Our goal is always to do as good a job as we can on projects where we can be successful and execute.”

Despite the workforce challenges, he added, “I think the industry is in a good place. It’s been a positive profession for the last 20-something years that I’ve been in it.”

Report Calls for ‘Transformative Investments’ in Key Sectors in Western Mass.

Features Special Coverage

Seed Money

Rick Sullivan says the new report calls for admittedly significant financial investments — but that other regions have met such challenges with positive results.

The surprise was food science.

At least, that industry’s prominent place on a recent report outlining economic potential in Western Mass. was a mild surprise to some, Rick Sullivan said, but maybe it shouldn’t have been.

The report in question — commissioned and funded by the Western Massachusetts Economic Development Council (EDC) and produced by MassINC and Cambridge Econometrics — is called “Accelerating Inclusive Growth in the Pioneer Valley: A Prospectus for Transformative Investment.”

At its heart, it determines that the Pioneer Valley has considerable strength in certain industries and technologies poised to grow with the transition to a low-carbon future, specifically detailing competitive advantages — and, hence, major economic opportunity — in the realms of food science, advanced materials, and clean energy.

Sullivan, EDC president and CEO, noted that Big Y Executive Chairman Charlie D’Amour, who sat on the project’s advisory group, knows his way around matters of food science, food security, and food-delivery systems. “And I think he didn’t even have any idea about how deep the work being done at UMass was and their leadership position in this field, and how we could tie it all in together. I mean, UMass has the number-one food-science program in the country. Who knew?”

When the report was released last month, D’Amour noted that Western Mass. should capitalize on disruptive changes in the food industry. “From biotechnologies under development at UMass to innovative efforts to support local food entrepreneurs, the Pioneer Valley is situated to generate broadly shared wealth, positioning itself as a leading producer of sustainable food products.”

The report makes a broad case for transformative investment, pointing out data showing that:

• The Pioneer Valley retains manufacturing strength, but lacks growing industry clusters;

• The Valley is underperforming relative to its potential to conduct research and development and commercialize new technology;

• GDP per capita in the Pioneer Valley is half that of Greater Boston and below the metro-area average for the U.S., heightening the need for new, high-growth clusters;

• Inflation-adjusted median household income in the Pioneer Valley grew by less than 5% over the past decade, compared to nearly 9% nationally and 12% for Massachusetts statewide; and

• High concentrations of poverty undermine the potential of the region’s future workforce.

The report also details success stories of transformative investment to the east and west, with high returns on investment: the Albany, N.Y. nanotech cluster, which drew on hundreds of millions in state funding and tax incentives; and the Worcester health research and biomanufacturing cluster, which is similar to the Albany model but achieved over a longer time period and with more modest state investment.

Javier Reyes

“As the Commonwealth’s land-grant university, our researchers make new discoveries and develop technologies that support local industry and prepare the workforce required for the Commonwealth to flourish in the decades ahead.”

“The Pioneer Valley certainly has the preconditions to compete globally in knowledge industries — it is home to the University of Massachusetts flagship campus at Amherst, along with 10 four-year colleges and three community colleges. Together, these institutions develop an enormous amount of talent, as well as a significant volume of basic and applied research,” the report notes, also highlighting the region’s abundant outdoor recreation opportunities, strong healthcare and hospital systems, an international airport, advanced manufacturers, and a rich food ecosystem, from farmers and specialty food producers to larger-scale food manufacturing.

Hence, the region is ripe for dramatic investment and growth in general, and in the three sectors the report focuses on — food science, advanced materials, and clean energy — specifically.

“With these indisputable economic assets, it is striking how little proactive economic-development investment the region has seen in the past several decades,” it continues. “Blinded by Boston’s enormous output, it is difficult for many to appreciate the true potential of the Pioneer Valley.”

UMass Amherst Chancellor Javier Reyes agrees. “UMass Amherst is committed to working closely with our partners in Western Massachusetts to play a central role in fostering economic development and growth for the benefit of our region,” he said. “As the Commonwealth’s land-grant university, our researchers make new discoveries and develop technologies that support local industry and prepare the workforce required for the Commonwealth to flourish in the decades ahead.”

But, as we will see, investment means money — lots of it.

Not a Small Ask

Specifically, the report calls for establishing what it calls a Fund for the Pioneer Valley — a dedicated pool of resources for transformative investment in advanced industries that positions the region for growth while supporting the state’s overall economic-development strategy as it relates to the clean-energy transition.

Charlie D’Amour

“From biotechnologies under development at UMass to innovative efforts to support local food entrepreneurs, the Pioneer Valley is situated to generate broadly shared wealth, positioning itself as a leading producer of sustainable food products.”

Based on similar efforts, the report calls for committing at least $50 million per year in state resources to targeted economic investments in the Pioneer Valley over a 10-year period: $400 million for a strategic portfolio of innovation investments, $90 million for site development, and $10 million for economic-development implementation capacity.

To help ensure that the fund makes worthy investments and that it fully leverages the state’s capital, the report continues, each allocation should leverage additional federal and private investment at a ratio of at least one-to-one, resulting in at least $1 billion in total investment in the Pioneer Valley economy over the next 10 years.

“I’ll be the first one to sit here and say that’s a big number,” Sullivan told BusinessWest, but the results of similar efforts in places like New York and Georgia have borne fruit, and investments in IT, life sciences, and even offshore wind in the eastern part of the Commonwealth haven’t generated much spillover for the Pioneer Valley economy — meaning this region needs its own targeted strategy.

“Is there a component where we will seek state investment? Yes. Will it involve federal investment? We hope so. But at the end of the day, if it’s going to truly be successful, there has to be the private investment on the other side,” Sullivan added, pointing to the example of Clean Crop Technologies, which BusinessWest profiled in its March 18 issue, and which hopes to revolutionize food safety and production in the green-tech sector.

“Other companies are, if not outright investing in Clean Crop, they’re working with or contracting with them. Those are dollars that are coming into the region from well outside the region, and from companies that have typically not played in this region,” Sullivan explained.
“So for this to be successful for the long term, there absolutely has to also be that private investment. This cannot just be a government initiative. It can start as a government initiative, but it clearly must have private investment.”

While the federal government has been discussing ways to transition to a low-carbon future — and, in so doing, spur new forms of economic activity in metropolitan areas across the U.S. — Gov. Maura Healey has called for the development of a clean-energy corridor across all of Massachusetts, and the investments suggested in the report could dovetail with that effort.

Jay Ash

“This research illuminates promising opportunities unique to the Pioneer Valley as we develop low-carbon technologies. We must work together to help the region tap these opportunities to generate strong and equitable growth.”

“This research illuminates promising opportunities unique to the Pioneer Valley as we develop low-carbon technologies,” said Jay Ash, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership. “We must work together to help the region tap these opportunities to generate strong and equitable growth.”

In the clean-energy realm, the report notes that the Valley has been a regional leader in clean energy, with ISO New England headquartered in Holyoke, extensive hydroelectric power (Holyoke Gas & Electric and FirstLight), early adoption of solar generation (conversion of the Mount Tom coal-fired power plant), and an effort to promote equitable business ownership and workforce training in the sector in partnership with the Emerald Cities Collaborative.

“Despite these advances, the region has struggled to define its economic role in the clean-energy transition,” it adds. “A robust strategy is critical because the clean-energy transition is the largest market opportunity by several orders of magnitude. Efforts to decarbonize the economy are drawing $2.8 trillion in investment globally each year, and estimates suggest spending must increase to $4.5 trillion annually to reach net zero by 2050. The Healey-Driscoll state economic-development plan seeks to position the entire Commonwealth to complete for this investment.”

Clean tech is a broad umbrella, Sullivan said, and includes the region’s broad research involving water — security, delivery systems, purification, and more — much of it from UMass, but also from a host of small companies.

“There’s a real opportunity to grow that. We’re looking at sectors that are only going to be more important in five and 10 years, not less,” he added. “The issues around water — water purity, water scarcity, water delivery — those aren’t going to go away. And they’re international problems. So that market is always going to be there. It’s an area that will grow.

“It’s the same thing with food,” he went on. “With climate change and global warming, the issue of how we raise, grow, deliver, and manufacture food isn’t going away. These are transformative in the sense that they’re sectors that are not totally built out — and they fit into the fabric of who we are as a community. They are environmentally based for the most part, particularly food science and clean tech. And they’re not going to go away.”

Drawing on Strengths

The report, which also drew financial support from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts, the Davis Foundation, MassDevelopment, and the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, is available online at www.westernmassedc.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/white-paper-FINAL.pdf, and includes exponentially more detail than this article can convey, including specific ventures (along with specific dollar figures) by which the sectors of food science, advanced-materials, and clean energy may be cultivated.

The vision is to create clusters that become nationally recognized, drawing more companies and more investment, and make Western Mass. a dynamic and attractive place to launch businesses of all kinds, raising all boats, so to speak.

That was the goal of the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), established in 1990. That nonprofit, public-private partnership was created to help industry, research universities, and state government agencies collaborate to build a technology-driven economy fueled by advanced research.

The state of Georgia provides the alliance with about $23 million annually to support its operations, from recruiting top research talent to building state-of-the-art labs. GRA also provides seed funding, legal assistance, and other services to support the researchers as they work to move their discoveries to the marketplace.

The result? Since its founding, GRA estimates it has produced a return on investment approaching $12 billion.

“We didn’t invent that model. That’s what’s happened in biotech, and that’s what’s happened in Upstate New York and in Georgia,” Sullivan said. “We’re looking to be the catalyst to get this thing to move, to show that it can work. Somebody has to tell the story of why this makes sense for Western Mass., and that’s an important part of this report. That, and we had to pick sectors that made sense.”

Ben Forman, MassINC research director and co-author of the study, is eager to see the state act with urgency.

“We have overlooked the Pioneer Valley for decades, jeopardizing its economic base,” he said. “It’s time to recognize and build on the region’s considerable economic assets.”

Bay Path Program Addresses Productive Aging

Business of Aging Special Coverage

Golden Opportunity

While the OT programs at Bay Path involve plenty of classroom time (as pictured here), students are doing innovative work in the community as well.
Photo by Leah Martin Photography

When Dr. Julie Watson arrived at Bay Path University, she recognized a rapidly growing population in need of occupational therapy: senior citizens.

So Watson — who directs Bay Path’s health science doctorate, master of public health, and post-professional occupational therapy doctorate programs — had an idea to enrich the post-professional OT doctorate program, which is for working occupational therapists seeking their clinical doctorate while they practice.

“Given my experience with older adults and caregivers, I saw a need to have something that focuses on the aging U.S. population. Almost a quarter of the population is going to be older than age 65 by 2030.”

So she developed a concentration for the OTD program called productive aging. “It focuses on the idea that older adults can remain active and productive even as they’re aging — that we can maximize the independence of older adults so they can stay in their homes and continue to engage in activities that are important to them, whether that’s working part-time or volunteering or spending time with their grandkids or even leisure activities like gardening.”

As noted, the track started as a concentration for the post-professional OTD program. “Then we launched a doctor of health science degree, and I wanted to incorporate the concentration into that as well. Then we had a re-evaluation of our master of public health program. And what’s more public health than a population-based approach for older adults?

“So it became an interdisciplinary concentration,” she explained, “where students from a variety of backgrounds can come together and take four courses that prepare them to address these needs of a lot of older adults in our communities.”

“It focuses on the idea that older adults can remain active and productive even as they’re aging — that we can maximize the independence of older adults so they can stay in their homes and continue to engage in activities that are important to them, whether that’s working part-time or volunteering or spending time with their grandkids or even leisure activities like gardening.”

Those four course descriptions go a long way toward explaining how the concentration puts the ideas behind productive aging to use in the community, to help older people maximize their independence and quality of life:

• “Aging in Place” examines supports to keep people in their homes, maintaining their independence in the community — and also barriers that prevent them from doing so.

• “Chronic Disease Management for Older Adults” acknowledges that older adults are faced with many chronic diseases, from congestive heart failure to cancer, and discusses strategies to help them with their chronic conditions, to improve their outcomes and their quality of life.

• “Specialized Assessment” takes a public-health approach to evaluating communities — and the services available in those communities — to make sure they’re meeting older adults’ needs when it comes to infrastructure and programs in place to support older adults.

• Finally, “Neuroscience of Aging and Impact on Mental Health” examines the neurological changes that can happen with older adults, including cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease.

“I love working with older adults so much. When I was a clinical OT, I enjoyed that specific aspect of my practice,” Watson said, noting that most Baby Boomers coming from hospital care or simply dealing with normal aging want to stay in their homes, which has led to a boom in home care.

Dr. Julie Watson

“It’s a win-win because students are getting the experience working with older adults, and the older adults are getting much-needed services that allow them to remain independent and have a higher quality of life.”

“I think we’re poised for a shift in how we meet the needs of older adults; we want to be educating the practitioners, the healthcare professionals, about these needs in advance.”

Changing Times

In a widely read article last fall, the the New York Times editorial board addressed these growing needs.

“Thanks to falling birth rates, longer life expectancy, and the graying of the Baby Boomer cohort, our society is being transformed,” the editorial board wrote. “This is a demographic change that will affect every part of society. Already, in about half the country, there are more people dying than being born, even as more Americans are living into their 80s, 90s, and beyond. In 2020, the share of people 65 or older reached 17%, according to the Census Bureau. By 2034, there will be more Americans past retirement age than there are children.”

The purpose of the article was partly to call attention to the economic impact of the shift. In Japan, for instance, declining births combined with a surging senior population has caused a wave of school closings, labor shortages, and a steep drop in revenue for retirement programs, causing Japanese people to increasingly work into their 60s and 70s. But the writers also noted opportunities when it comes to the business of aging.

“A cottage industry of products and services has emerged to help people adjust their homes and their lives for aging. A demographic shift this significant calls for a broad-based response, and the longer the challenges go unaddressed, the more formidable they become,” they wrote. “There are many pieces to this puzzle, including who will care for older people, where they will live, how our cities are designed, and how businesses will adapt.”

One barrier, of course, is funding, Watson noted.

“You’re dealing with federal, state, city, and county budgets, and this isn’t a high priority in a lot of places,” she told BusinessWest. “So, the ideas are well-received, and public-health and healthcare professionals know they’re needed, but — aside from councils on aging in all our local communities — there hasn’t been a huge shift in funding for the types of services that are needed. But we need to make these things happen, and it would be great if we could see federal, state, and local investment money into this sort of thing.”

The students at Bay Path are already applying their education to the community in ways that are mutually beneficial. The master of occupational therapy students work with faculty at Ruth’s House, an assisted-living community in Longmeadow, and also participate in a monthly stroke support group at the Enfield Senior Center.

Nora Moreno Cargie

“We are inclusive and center the work in community. These initiatives originated with older people, including people of color, people from the LGBTQ+ community, and others facing systemic barriers, demonstrating the power of proximity and the creativity of community.”

The OT department has also held an event that helps older drivers adjust their cars for optimum safety, and OTD students do projects educating healthcare practitioners and families about services available in the community for older adults.

“When we have the students out in the community with practitioners,” Watson said, “it’s a win-win because students are getting the experience working with older adults, and the older adults are getting much-needed services that allow them to remain independent and have a higher quality of life.”

Age-friendly Developments

Bay Path’s heightened attention on aging reflects a national demographic shift that began a couple decades ago and continues today: a U.S. population whose average age is on the rise.

That reality inspired a podcast launched by the Healey-Driscoll administration last fall called ReiMAgine Aging, which aims to tell the story of the age- and dementia-friendly movement taking place in Massachusetts.

The podcast highlights efforts to make Massachusetts a better place to grow older, including updating infrastructure, promoting volunteer and employment opportunities, expanding affordable supportive housing, increasing transportation options, supporting caregivers, and improving digital access.

“Equity, access, and justice are foundational to the age- and dementia-friendly movement,” Secretary of Elder Affairs Elizabeth Chen said when the podcast was unveiled. “We are grateful to the older adults, caregivers, communities, and organizations who shape and lead this work and who have helped us reframe aging to be an asset.”

The podcast, accessible at mahealthyagingcollaborative.org/reimagine-aging, highlights voices from statewide and community leaders, older adults, and nonprofits through six episodes: “Aging with Purpose and Meaning,” “Buildings That Bring People Together,” “Enhancing Digital Equity for All,” “Moving Forward,” “Savoring Food That Matters,” and “Shaping Compassionate Communities.”

The podcast was produced in partnership with the Massachusetts Healthy Aging Collaborative with funding from Point32Health Foundation.

“The country is looking to Massachusetts as a leader in the age-friendly movement,” said Nora Moreno Cargie, Point32Health Foundation president. “We are inclusive and center the work in community. These initiatives originated with older people, including people of color, people from the LGBTQ+ community, and others facing systemic barriers, demonstrating the power of proximity and the creativity of community.”

At Bay Path, Watson is gratified to see faculty and students to do their part in creating that paradigm.

“The productive-aging concentration is very unique in higher education, and the fact that we have students at different levels who have the opportunity to develop programs and interact with people in the community while they’re learning … it’s just a special thing.”

Jen Walts

Owner, Wind & Water Doula Care: Age 35

For a decade, Jen Walts was a high-school teacher. And she’s still an educator today — in a much different way.

“I experienced an empowering birth and realized one of the main reasons why that experience was so positive for me was that I was well-educated and had a support team that I could turn to for more wisdom and resources,” she recalled.

It was so empowering, in fact, that Walts decided she wanted to bring that experience to other women — and Wind & Water Doula Care was born.

“I knew I wanted to shift into the world of birthing, but with education at its core, empowering families to soak in as much knowledge as they can in such a transformative time.”

Offering holistic prenatal support to support families through labor, birth, and early postpartum, Walts believes in bodily autonomy and informed consent through the birth process, empowering families to identify core values that shape their birth preferences, including, in some cases, the affirming, relaxation-inducing method of breathing techniques known as hypnobirthing.

“It’s an intense understanding of the physiology of labor and birth, so they feel less anxious about the process,” she explained. “It’s not happening to them; instead, they can move through it with some valuable coping tools. I call it preparing your mind to trust your body.”

Walts has attended or supported more than 75 births and taught childbirth education to more than 100 families.

“Jen is an active listener to parents, and she offered us generous and detailed strategies from pain management to postpartum planning,” one client testified. Added another, “she exudes a reassuring and calm presence that felt so helpful throughout the shifting dynamics of birth.”

Walts said too many families fall victim to “information overload” from social media. “That can be helpful to some extent, but it can also be overwhelming and can really disconnect you from your intuition and what you want for your family. I’m working on the outside of any medical system; I want to get into what values they have, what values they want to show up in their birthing.”

Walts was recently appointed program co-coordinator for a grant-funded program that will increase access to doula care for families birthing at Seven Sisters Midwifery and Community Birth Center in Northampton, which could help fill a persistent need for doulas locally.

A big question for women, she said, is “how do I advocate for myself in a system that’s built for efficiency? We’re taking back autonomy and voice in the healthcare system.”

—Joseph Bednar

Jordana Starr

President, Western Mass Rabbit Rescue: Age 39

Four years ago, Jordana Starr found a rabbit. Then she decided to find some more.

“It started in 2020 when a friend of mine, a rabbit owner like me, saw a posting about a loose rabbit. So we decided to try to capture this domestic rabbit who couldn’t survive outdoors,” she recalled. “It was a success — we captured the rabbit, got him neutered, and found him a home.”

Soon after, they launched a Northampton-based nonprofit dedicated to doing that work on a larger scale, then procured space for a shelter after a large rescue of 45 rabbits. While Starr’s original partner eventually left the organization, she still leans on a group of committed volunteers who help with day-to-day operations, fostering rabbits, transportation, and more.

“There’s a nationwide crisis of people trying to surrender pets,” she said. “So we have to triage; we can’t take every pet, or we’d be handling thousands of pets. We can handle maybe 50 in the whole rescue at a time — maybe a dozen requests every week.”

For instance, “if someone is bored with their rabbit, but they’re safe, warm, and well-fed, we’ll probably turn those away. If a rabbit has been abandoned and neglected, or is very sick, we’re more likely to act in those scenarios. We get them spayed, neutered, and take care of all their medical needs — and some have high medical needs.”

The team will try to bond rabbits if someone wants more than one, and they make sure families spend time with the animals they’ll be adopting.

“When you first see them make that connection and bond — you see them falling in love — you know you’re completing a family in an important way. We know the work we’re doing is really paying off from the phone calls and letters from people thanking us. We’re not only making a difference for the rabbits, we’re making a difference for humans.”

It’s quite different work from Beerology, the home-brew shop Starr and her husband, Mike Schilling, have co-owned in Northampton since 2016. Meanwhile, in her spare time, Starr loves international travel, ballroom dancing, and performing in theater. In fact, she landed her first professional role last summer with Faultline Ensemble, playing a rookie EMT in a play called Counting Pebbles; the group is hoping to win a grant to tour the show in six cities.

“It’s about trauma and resiliency,” Starr said — both of which she’s had to navigate plenty for some furry friends looking for a better life.

—Joseph Bednar

Stephanie Slysz

Human Resources Manager, RepresentUs: Age 31

Stephanie Slysz has long been interested in politics. In college and early in her career, she interned in the Massachusetts governor’s office and the U.S. State Department, worked at a U.S. embassy, and volunteered on a mayoral campaign.

While working as an office assistant at WHMP, she learned about RepresentUs because its executive director at the time, Josh Silver, was a regular on the station’s Bill Newman Show.

“We were nerding out about ranked-choice voting one night,” she recalled. “They were hiring for his assistant, he recommended I apply, and the rest is history.”

Slysz sees her current role as “an opportunity to grow HR for an organization that I strongly believe in, and I very much appreciate supporting the folks doing the work on the ground.”

RepresentUs describes itself as America’s leading non-partisan anti-corruption organization, fighting to fix “our broken and ineffective government.” Among its current campaigns are efforts in numerous states to implement ranked-choice voting, fight campaign corruption, and defend democracy and voter access.

Similar to how same-sex marriage, cannabis legalization, and other ideas found traction on the state level first, she explained, “the idea is to create enough momentum in these cities and states so Congress has to act on it eventually.”

As opposed to working on the ground in campaigns, where it’s easy to get emotionally invested and burnt out, Slysz feels energized to support the priorities of RepresentUs on a broader scale.

“I will always need to dedicate my time to mission-based things, whether it’s where I work or volunteering in my community,” she said, before expressing enthusiasm about the RepresentUs mission. “If you can fix the problem of money in politics, if you can make government work for more than special interests, you can fix all these other things. That is the root problem.”

Speaking of community, Slysz also chairs the Hatfield Planning Board, through which she sits on a multi-town committee organized by the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission to address farmland-protection policies, represents the board on the Hatfield 2040 Comprehensive Plan Committee, and more.

“I am involved locally, and that is also not partisan; I feel like it’s the way you can have the most impact on your community,” she said. “Nationally, nothing is really moving, so taking it local is the way to go. A lot of young people don’t know about their small town and their local government, but it’s not a huge lift to sit on a board or committee, build your skills, and be more connected to your town.”

—Joseph Bednar

Tiffany Rufino

Youth Mental Health Coalition Manager, Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts: Age 39

Tiffany Rufino It’s called “I Am More Than My Mood.”

That public awareness campaign, seen on billboards, buses, and digital ads since its unveiling in early 2023, aims to destigmatize the subject of mental health and empower young people to talk about it — and, hopefully, take steps toward self-care.

It’s just one element of Tiffany Rufino’s impactful work as Youth Mental Health Coalition manager at the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts.

“The coalition is all about preventive methods for youth mental health, how we convene and bring together different professionals and residents across different sectors: behavioral-health professionals, private clinicians, and residents who are interested in youth mental health and want to impact change in their communities,” she explained.

Many ideas in the campaign came a youth advisory board called Beat the Odds, Forget the Statistics.

“They get together weekly and talk about topics around mental health and work to bring information to the community and build awareness,” Rufino explained. “They’re comfortable talking about mental health and encourage their peers to do the same.”

She’s learned that today’s teens are a little more open to talking about mental health than, say, their parents.

“It really becomes an opportunity to share some challenges they’re going through and recognize that other young people are experiencing the same,” she went on. “With the coalition, we’re focusing on parents and guardians, getting them up to speed on where their youth are and helping them realize that talking about stress doesn’t make you weak or inferior in any way; it’s just the reality of life.”

Rufino has worked in community and youth development for a long time, building relationships with local schools and colleges with Girl Scouts of Central and Western Massachusetts and addressing root causes of poor reading levels in schools with Parent Villages, to name two previous roles.

“I really have a passion for creating opportunities for young people, especially my community in Springfield, and making sure they have opportunities and pathways for success,” she said, adding that, through the coalition she has assembled at the Public Health Institute, she’s able to address issues ranging from stress, anxiety, and depression to the ways intergenerational trauma impacts parenting today.

“The youth are so critical because they can impact change now and in the future,” Rufino said. “It’s a really great feeling to be able to spearhead this work and see tangible results coming from young people, and even parents and guardians. It gives me goosebumps every time.”

—Joseph Bednar

Mischa Roy

Owner, Spill the Tea Sis: Age 38

Mischa Roy has long been connected with the arts in Western Mass.; two decades ago, at age 18, she was one of the youngest exhibitors at the Paradise City Arts Festival, among other high-profile events. She eventually opened retail spaces for her handmade wares and, in 2014, launched a wholesale brand called Spill the Tea Sis, selling to more than 6,000 stores across the country.

Roy moved to Florida for a while, but during the pandemic, she decided to come home and operate the wholesale business from Western Mass., but she was struck by the impact COVID was having on Northampton’s downtown.

“I was walking around Main Street and saying, ‘man, that little storefront could probably use some life,’” she recalled, so she opened a Spill the Tea Sis location there, selling unique home and gift items, in July 2022. Since then, the store has been named best gift shop by Valley Advocate readers two years running. “It’s kind of been a whirlwind of crazy growth since then. Now, it’s a million-dollar-a-year business, and we run events.”

Roy said all the candles, jewelry, and many other items sold at Spill the Tea Sis are made in-house, and she’s been able to support other local artisans as well. The store also features an active herb wall and its own tea line, and many of her offerings have a metaphysical bent.

“A lot of stores around here have similar products to each other. When somebody walks in our door, I want them to find the thing they can’t find anywhere else,” she said. “I want them to find something they love, that speaks to them.”

Last year, Roy launched a monthly block party from May to October, giving local vendors who may not have a brick-and-mortar presence, farmers, and other stores on Main Street the chance to set up tents and connect with visitors, and she’s looking forward to repeating the experience in 2024. She also brought a successful pop-up to the Big E in 2023 and plans to return this fall.

She has also spearheaded a slate of free artistic and cultural programming on Main Street and hosted events for community members to participate in, contributing to downtown vibrancy and drawing more visitors to town.

“People bring friends to town, and when they come here, they know they’re going to have an experience,” she said. “The reality is, people need more reasons to come back post-pandemic. I really enjoy making connections with our community and our customers.”

—Joseph Bednar

Jenna Rahkonen

President, Iron-Lift LLC: Age 39

Jenna Rahkonen said she developed a unique set of skills during her career in manufacturing and construction — and used them to launch a business last year.

Rewinding a couple decades, she joined her family’s business, Alden Manufacturing, right out of college and eventually became director of Operations there.

“I learned a lot being involved in projects from start to finish and being in the factory when things were made,” she recalled. “I fell in love with the job, which was shocking to everyone, including myself.”

After her family sold the business, Rahkonen moved into the construction world, working in the Finance department at Northern Construction in Palmer, and later helping her husband, Alex, start his own crane-rental company, Northern Crane LLC, in the same town. There, while maintaining her financial role at Northern, she aided in the completion of 10 wind-turbine projects across the U.S. But she craved the challenge of running a business of her own.

“That’s how Iron-Lift LLC was born,” she said, explaining that the steel-erection company, which specializes in bridge construction, operates two branches out of its Monson headquarters: one that works on the state level with the Department of Transportation, the Department of Fish and Game, and other agencies; and a federal branch that has secured significant contracts, including a major current project performing lock and dam repairs for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“It’s been interesting every single day, waking up and learning something new, overcoming a new challenge,” she said. “And I have an incredible team behind me.”

Active in the community, Rahkonen also volunteers with HomeFront Strong, a nonprofit organization that works to build resilience in veterans and military families. As the daughter of a Vietnam veteran and the granddaughter of a Korean War and World War II veteran, she wanted to give back to those who have served this county.

Specifically, she’s HomeFront Strong’s treasurer and auditor; coordinates the food-distribution program, which delivers boxes of food to homebound veterans in the Palmer and Ware area; and serves on the board of directors, where she’s involved in the annual golf-tournament fundraiser, the annual Veterans Day breakfast, and fundraising for Suicide Awareness Month every September.

“It really puts a focus on family members of veterans as well, because they all go through similar things,” Rahkonen said. “We also do storytelling, where veterans and surviving family members tell their stories to volunteers during an interview. We’re trained in PTSD and mental health, and it’s therapeutic for them to tell their story.”

—Joseph Bednar

Yhidda Ocasio

Director of Youth, Violence Prevention, and Court Support Programs, YWCA of Western Massachusetts: Age 38

Yhidda Ocasio knows struggle. So she knows how to connect with those who are struggling.

She arrived in the U.S. as a young girl, after her family decided to escape the rampant crime and crushing poverty of Colombia to pursue the American dream. As a young teen, she sought employment at a McDonald’s because she could bring extra food home after her shifts, and her family didn’t have to go to bed hungry.

So, in her 17 years working at the YWCA of Western Massachusetts in Springfield, she’s been able to bring deep empathy to three roles — a young-parent support counselor and case manager, assistant program director of the domestic-violence shelter, and, currently, director of Youth, Violence Prevention, and Court Support Programs. She has also worked part-time as a Human Rights officer at the Department of Developmental Services (DDS).

“The YWCA has been a rewarding opportunity for me to give back to the community, and I’ve been able to apply the challenges I went through, not just in Colombia, but the barriers here as an immigrant,” Ocasio told BusinessWest. “My mom became a single mom several years after I arrived here, and she was working two to three jobs. Seeing my mom go through that struggle changed the outlook I had in regard to other women — single moms who were struggling.”

Over the years, Ocasio has earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in psychology from Westfield State University and Northcentral University, respectively, earning induction into the National Society of Leadership and Success at the latter — all this with English as her second language.

But that’s to be expected from someone who lives by the words in Matthew 19:26: “with God, all things are possible.” And she’s quick to express gratitude for everyone who has supported her along the way, from her mother and brother to her husband, Juan Ocasio; from the leaders at DDS to YWCA CEO Elizabeth Dineen “for her relentless mentorship.”

Ocasio has spoken at statewide trainings for nonprofits on topics like sexual assault, domestic violence, and healthy relationships, as well as addressing community events on immigration issues and refugee challenges. When she became a U.S. citizen in 2019, her colleagues threw her a huge party.

“It was a great day at the YWCA and a wonderful day to be an American,” Dineen said. “This is still the land of opportunity, and as a country, we are most fortunate to have humans like Yhidda Ocasio want to become a citizen.”

—Joseph Bednar

Paulette Piñero

CEO, Unstoppable Latina LLC: Age 37

Paulette Piñero remembers the hours before she slipped into a coma.

It was March 2020, and she was one of the very first COVID cases in Massachusetts. “My legs were purple; they thought they might have to cut them off. I lost 40% of my lung capacity by the end of the first week. A social worker brought me an iPad so I could say goodbye to my family.”

Two years before that, she’d started writing a business plan, one that would help clients with business strategy and creativity. “But I continued to second-guess myself: ‘this is not for me,’ or ‘maybe I’ll do it at some point when I retire.’ I just felt like the dream was out of reach.”

But in February 2020, a month before she fell ill, Piñero started working with a SCORE mentor and developed a real launch plan. And when she woke from her coma, she knew she didn’t want to waste any more time.

“I promised myself, if I left that hospital, I would never put my dreams on the back burner — and, miraculously, I left the hospital. I had physical therapy for more than two years, and I was diagnosed that summer with long COVID. But I still launched my business; it was the first thing I did when I got out of the hospital.”

Before creating Unstoppable Latina, Piñero spent her career — in both Puerto Rico and then Massachusetts — in the social-impact space, working on strategy, programming, and marketing programs for nonprofits and impactful companies.

Now, she empowers women entrepreneurs by cultivating their confidence and brand positioning to embrace personal narratives, address human needs creatively, and lead industries with inventive ventures.

“The way I measure impact is, do you feel like the CEO of your business? Do you have a strategy and the tools that will move you from a side hustle and overwhelmed to stepping up as the CEO of your business and making decisions? And then, can you disconnect and be present with your family?”

That last part is especially important, said Piñero, who is also the co-author of the 2021 book Extraordinary Latinas: Powerful Voices of Resilience, Courage & Empowerment.

“This experience has allowed me to see business success as something that serves both your clients and yourself. That, to me, is more successful than just the revenue. My business is not just for helping the local economy, but helping Latinas be confident in their business and be present for their families and community.”

—Joseph Bednar

Ally Montemagni

Social Media Manager, Baystate Health: Age 34

Ally Montemagni sees herself as both a storyteller and an educator — and believes both roles are critical.

“Storytelling is my favorite part of the job. It’s just an honor to share someone’s story in healthcare,” she said, noting that she oversees all things social media — from content creation and video monitoring to analytics and reporting — across the entire Baystate Health network, from hospitals to specialty centers to primary care. “Usually it’s some real challenge, and we can put words and visuals to a patient’s story and bring it to life. It’s uplifting and validating for both the community and our team members.”

As for education, “we have an important role in providing a trusted source of information,” she explained. “That spiked during COVID; just keeping up with all the changes was a wild ride. In an age when people can put out anything on social media, to put out information that’s reliable, trusted, and comes from our experts, that’s an important role, and it’s a great way to interact with our community.”

But Montemagni’s favorite part of her job is spending time with patients and families, making sure they’re comfortable sharing their lives, and then doing so with sensitivity, as she does during the annual WMAS Radiothon for Baystate Children’s Hospital.

“That’s my favorite two days — interacting with the families and making fun content for the purpose of raising money for children in our community. I’ve cried with people. It’s all about the interaction with people and being a voice for their stories.”

Outside of work, Montemagni is a board member of Jenna’s Blessing Bags, which, for the past six years in Western Mass. and Northern Conn., has partnered with churches, community organizations, homeless shelters, police departments, and others to provide backpacks filled with life essentials to the homeless.

The charity was actually launched in Pennsylvania by her cousin, Jenna Burleigh, who became a victim of homicide in 2017. When her family decided to continue the work in her name, Montemagni brought the project to this region.

She also started a website, blog, and Instagram page called High Tide Healing, where she relates her own struggles and healing methods for grief. In addition, she has provided free photography services for worthy causes — including, recently, Rick’s Place, which provides grief support for children, teens, and families.

“It’s very, very close to my heart,” Montemagni said of Jenna’s Blessing Bags. “It’s our way of giving, turning some of that grief into purpose for us.”

And that’s a story worth telling.

—Joseph Bednar

Chelsea McGrath

Director of Operations and Finance, Revitalize Community Development Corp.: Age 36

Chelsea McGrath knows what kind of impact home improvement can make.

“I never saw the impact until I started working here — how mold affects health, and how leaks, dirty carpets, dust, duct and vent cleaning, things that are really simple in nature can have such a big ripple effect. Poorly controlled asthma means kids are missing school and falling behind, which means the parents are missing work.

“So to come in and do a relatively simple intervention — pull up the carpet, get rid of the mold and leaks — now the kids can go to school, the parents can go to work … and it’s something that’s so easy to fix.”

That only begins to describe the broad community impact of Revitalize CDC. Meanwhile, the organization’s president and CEO, Colleen Shanley-Loveless, described McGrath’s impact since she came on board in 2021.

“Since joining us, Chelsea has hired staff, created new agency departments, and established policies and procedures to help us work more efficiently,” she noted. “Because of her commitment, dedication, and professionalism, Revitalize CDC has been able to add programs and hire and promote the right individuals.”

That includes increasing the budget from $1.3 million in 2021 to almost $5 million today, and purchasing a new facility to house the programs and growing staff. In 2020, Revitalize served 163 low-income families, impacting 657 people. In 2023, it served 650 families, impacting 2,521 individuals, Shanley-Loveless noted. “We couldn’t do what we do without her.”

Among the programs McGrath launched since her arrival is a nutrition program conducted, like the asthma program, in partnership with Baystate Health’s BeHealthy Partnership.

“We’re providing healthy food for people with diabetes or childhood obesity, and we’re able to educate people about proper food and make sure they have recipes and the supplies they need to cook food,” she said. “I’ve seen some dramatic changes — fewer trips to the emergency room, and some of the A1C scores have dropped.”

That’s real impact, and explains why McGrath tied for the highest judge scores among the 40 Under Forty class of 2024. So does her copious volunteer work with organizations like the WillPower Foundation, Rick’s Place, Yappy Tails dog rescue, and the Garden, a program at Cooley Dickinson Hospital for young people dealing with grief.

“If you’re in a position to help people, you have an obligation to do so,” McGrath said. “But I get so much out of it, too. It makes me happy. It makes me feel worthwhile. It’s not ‘why would I do that?’ but ‘why wouldn’t I?’”

—Joseph Bednar

Natalie Mercado

CEO, Sweetera & Co.: Age 37

Natalie Mercado always knew she wanted to work in the food space. After high school, she enrolled in New England Culinary Institute and earned an associate’s degree in culinary arts and restaurant management, then slowly rose up the ladder, eventually becoming a sous chef.

“My goal was always to open my own restaurant,” she recalled. “I did catering jobs on the side, but I never took the initiative to open up a business.”

In the meantime, she went to work for MassMutual as an underwriter consultant, a job she still has. But in 2021, she started pursuing her dream again, getting entrepreneurial help from EforAll Holyoke.

“I applied with the intention of starting a restaurant. This was all during COVID, and I was advised to rethink my business plan because so many storefronts were closing down.”

So, Mercado pivoted and launched a food trailer called Sweetera & Co., specializing in “milkshakes and over-the-top desserts.” She posts on her website and social media to let people know where the truck will be each week, and she also started catering. The enterprise was an immediate success, and still is three years later.

“I really didn’t expect it to take off the way that it did. It was a great surprise, honestly, because I had endured so many setbacks with building the trailer,” she said. “It was during COVID, so supplies were back-ordered, and trying to find reliable contractors was hard. So it took longer than anticipated. I had to get comfortable getting uncomfortable.”

But Mercado isn’t done challenging herself, with plans to launch a second trailer in Florida by next year and a storefront by 2026.

“Everyone’s like, ‘you’ve come so far, and you should be proud of yourself.’ And I am proud of myself, but I’m also hard on myself,” she told BusinessWest. “I know where I want to be, and I know I’m not there yet. But I need to give myself more credit than I do.”

She still enjoys her work at MassMutual, approving life-insurance applications and helping clients secure their future. But she sees a bigger future for herself in Sweetera & Co.

“I love the creativity,” she said. “The best part of it is seeing the customers’ reactions when they get their bubble waffle sundae or their milkshake — their eyes get really big like, ‘oh, wow.’ The feeling I get is incomparable. It really makes all the hard work and all the setbacks worth it.”

—Joseph Bednar

Tim McCarthy

Executive Director, Craig’s Doors: Age 35

When he was chosen as a member of the 40 Under Forty class of 2024, Tim McCarthy was hesitant to talk about himself, firmly believing this is a team honor. “This is such a remarkable team,” he said. “It’s truly the best team in the country doing this work.”

That work is serving unhoused residents in Western Mass. at three sites. During McCarthy’s time as director, he has expanded programming to add new shelter locations, increase bed availability, and expand case-management support to residents of the region.

Currently a graduate student in mental health counseling and a member of the BEAHR Lab at UMass Boston, he has also worked to make Craig’s Doors (which was established in 2011 and named in memory of Craig Lorraine, a veteran and well-known street musician in Northampton and Amherst) a trauma-informed operation that practices what McCarthy calls “radical compassion.” It’s also the only homeless shelter in the country that provides free transportation to guests, thanks to a state-funded partnership with the PVTA.

“I just fell in love with this work and this population, and I had a vision for how it could intersect more deeply with concepts surrounding mental health,” he explained, adding that he also employs a number of former clients. “We’ve got a lot of folks with lived experience who existed in the margins. I’m a firm believer in providing opportunities for folks; a lot of people have overwhelming competence that might not be reflected in their résumé, so we try to build internally.”

McCarthy not only wants to raise people out of homelessness, he wants to close opportunity gaps he feels are far too prevalent today. “The outcomes we’re striving for are not built into the nature or ethos of this country right now. But we bring a level of competition to compassion. We’re out here trying to be the best at this work; we’re always trying to be better than we were the day before.”

Recognizing that homelessness is “the most glaring manifestation of wealth inequality,” he noted, Craig’s Doors has closed the compensation gap on its team, where everyone, no matter their role, starts at $20 per hour or more.

“That has allowed us to retain an incredible team and develop our roster. It also helps us to attract top talent within the space,” McCarthy said.

“We’re really practicing what we preach about humility and self-reflection,” he added. “We’re bringing a competitive work ethic promoted by capitalist ideals, but instead of applying it to individual wealth, we’re applying it to our principles.”

—Joseph Bednar

Joshua Lively

President, Lively Builders Inc.: Age 38

Tired of working in the weatherization industry, Joshua Lively took the class and test to attain his construction supervisor’s license, but it got sent to the wrong state.

So … he waited.

In the meantime, “I was sick of my job, and my boss was sick of me,” he recalled. “One day, I got back from vacation and decided I’d had it, so I walked in and quit. When I got home, my construction supervisor’s license was in the mailbox, so that seemed like destiny.”

It was also a risk, with a 2-year-old daughter and his wife eight months pregnant with another child. But he immediately went to work framing and building with some friends in the Springfield area, learning from other carpenters and performing a range of different jobs, from installing above-ground pools to putting up walls for new house builds.

For the next two years, they got more and more calls — an experience Lively called “an eye-opening finishing school” and the final step to what came next: launching his own business, Lively Builders, in Montague.

“I started with a Dodge Dakota pickup truck and some cheap tools. Now I’ve got a 3,000-square-foot garage and multiple trailers and trucks. It’s grown tremendously over the past 12 years,” he told BusinessWest, adding that some of his work involves blighted properties and improvements to solve health and safety issues for homeowners. He’s also been named Franklin County’s favorite building and roofing contractor two years in a row in a Greenfield Recorder poll.

Lively volunteers his time to local government; he chairs the Montague Zoning Board, is a Montague Town Meeting member, and spent several years chairing the Montague Capital Improvements Committee.

“I like supporting the community in a nuts-and-bolts way — ‘oh, the DPW needs to repair this infrastructure.’ That’s unseen stuff that nobody wants to get into. Now I’m able to affect how the town is going to look in the future,” he explained. “I enjoy it, and I think it’s important to model this behavior for my kids and for other people in the community — to unite the rest of the silent majority who would otherwise keep quiet until someone steps up and does something.”

Lively also volunteers on the board of the Franklin County Youth Football League, even calling games in the announcer’s booth for the Franklin County Bulldogs. He also recently purchased a plane and sits on the Turners Falls Municipal Airport Commission — yet another sign that his career has, indeed, taken off.

—Joseph Bednar

Mariah Kurtz

Owner, Kurtz Consulting: Age 30

Mariah Kurtz understands the importance of municipal government, especially in a very small town — and especially at a time of great challenge.

Over the past five years, she found herself in both, first as assistant town planner, then town planner, in Erving, population 1,665.

“I really jumped into municipal government on the hard mode. I was still getting to know the town when COVID hit,” she recalled. “I had to pivot … I guess I learned flexibility.”

Her role in such a small community was expansive. “It turns out, in a rural town, it’s not just reading and approving permits all day; there just aren’t that many permits to approve. So you end up doing a lot of other things. Like, this culvert needs to be replaced. How does that work? Who do we work with? How do we pay for it? Or, we want to plan an event to get people to come to the park, so we work with the Recreation Department to do that.

“The work was really exciting to me, talking to residents and learning what their needs were and what their desires were for their small town to flourish,” she added. “That was magical.”

Growing up in a family construction business — Westfield-based Kurtz Inc. is a notable name in Western Mass. — taught her the complexities of building and development on a small scale, and majoring in sustainable community development at UMass Amherst gave her a broader, more holistic perspective. “Instead of, ‘where do we pour the concrete?’ it’s ‘why do we do that, and how do we take into account the landscape?’”

That perspective guided Kurtz in Erving, and even more so now, a few months after launching her own grant-writing and consulting business, based in Greenfield and serving small businesses, nonprofits, farmers, and, yes, small towns.

“This way, towns don’t have to employ a full-time grant writer or planner, with the salary and benefits that go with that,” she explained, adding, “I actually never wanted to work in municipal government. For a lot of my peers at UMass, that was the traditional track, being a town planner in a local municipality. But I didn’t see that for myself.”

She is gratified, however, at effecting positive change in the region.

“With some projects, you see progress right away. I’ve done some public art projects, and there it is — you see it. But other projects take 20 years to see the difference in the environment,” she explained. “I’m most excited about helping people make those projects happen — and make their dreams happen.”

—Joseph Bednar

Nicole Kerrigan

Vice President, V&F Auto Inc.: Age 34

Growing up in a family auto-repair and maintenance business, Nicole Kerrigan was certainly interested in making it her career, but she wanted to keep her options open.

She first majored in management at Western New England University, then switched to accounting, “mainly because, if I got into the business and it wasn’t what I thought it would be, I had a plan. Also, I’m very close to my family. If the business created a conflict, I didn’t want to sacrifice my family relationships.”

It turns out she needn’t have worried.

“As a third-generation leader of V&F Auto, she has brilliantly carried forward her family’s legacy while injecting a fresh and innovative approach into the business,” wrote Michael Bennett, executive coach with the Automotive Training Institute (ATI), one of myriad people who nominated Kerrigan for 40 Under Forty. “Under her leadership, V&F Auto has maintained its exemplary reputation and is experiencing substantial growth and evolution.”

Kerrigan calls ATI a vitally important factor in her growth and education, and today, she takes on numerous roles at V&F, from leading day-to-day operations overseeing the company’s social media and marketing; from communicating with customers to interviewing and hiring — and much more, including, yes, some accounting.

“I love creating relationships, overcoming challenges, and creating solutions, so my team can do their job better,” she said. “My role is to create opportunities for my team and give them the resources they need to grow and lead — to have a livelihood they are happy with and have a place they are proud to work for.”

Her colleagues say she’s acing that test. “Nicole has taken the reins in a field dominated by her male counterparts and propelled the business at V&F Auto Inc. to new heights,” Sales Manager James Dowd said.

Kerrigan is active in the West Springfield community, volunteering for a number of nonprofit and municipal organizations and events, even winning a leadership and team-development award from the Parks & Recreation department. And she’s especially proud of her role as a cheerleading coach for West Springfield High School for the past 15 years, first for the JV squad, then at the varsity level.

“I love the sport in general — it gives me great joy,” she said. “And I like the competitive aspect of cheerleading — not necessarily the sideline cheering, but being able to create routines and compete and watch the kids thrive each year, watch their skills get better and better and help them grow.”

—Joseph Bednar

Stephen Holstrom

Partner, Bulkley Richardson: Age 38

Stephen Holstrom While most lawyers say they’re in the business of helping others, some people may not put litigators in the ‘helpful’ category — at least, not at first thought.

But in representing doctors, small businesses, and others in various court actions, Stephen Holstrom said his life is, indeed, dedicated to helping people.

“Western Mass. is a small-business community, and I’m a litigator for small-business owners,” he explained. “When a business owner is involved in litigation, that impacts their whole life. When people go to court, it’s routine for me, but it’s not for them; it’s a very harrowing, stressful experience.”

As a general-practice litigator, Holstrom has handled complex tort actions, insurance cases, and complex class actions, as well as matters in connection with schools, the cannabis industry, and commercial litigation, including disputes between shareholders and land-use issues. Meanwhile, he represents hospitals, physicians, and other medical providers in medical-malpractice cases and other issues related to health law.

“I like having a varied practice,” he told BusinessWest. “That’s one of the reasons I came to Bulkley. There are needs all over the community, and I want to serve as many parts of the community as possible. That’s why I do general practice.”

And he’s doing it at a time when specialization is much more common in law firms.

“I’m a unicorn; it is fairly unique,” he said. “But you can’t reach every corner if you’re specializing in something. That’s why I’m proud to be a general litigator.”

Recognized by both Best Lawyers in America and Super Lawyers, Holstrom has also brought energy to his interests outside the firm, chairing Wilbraham’s By-Law Study Committee and serving as vice president of the board of directors of the Gray House in Springfield, which helps North End residents meet immediate and transitional needs like food, clothing, and educational services.

“The Gray House is a phenomenal organization,” he said. “It really helps people out of poverty, gives them the supports they need, and helps them get a leg up. It has a generational impact. I get a lot of satisfaction out of that.”

As he does on the job. “I like the thrill of litigation,” he said. “It’s a constantly moving challenge. Frankly, the day is usually a blur; there’s so much going on, and new challenges always pop up during the course of the day. If you talk honestly to litigators, a lot of them complain that it’s never-ending, but I think that’s reinforcing. That’s what we’re here to do — to deal with emerging issues.”

—Joseph Bednar

Scott Gomes-Ganhao

Vice President, Regional Manager, PeoplesBank: Age 35

Growing up, Scott Gomes-Ganhao wanted to be a pilot. But banking “kind of ran in the blood,” he said.

“My godmother was a banker for many, many years, so I had some kind of banking intuition. I worked part-time in banking all through college, so I fell into it and never left. Banking has that way of holding onto you.”

Not only has Gomes-Ganhao stuck with banking, he has excelled at PeoplesBank, consistently leading a top-ranked sales team and recently being promoted to his current position as vice president, regional manager.

That recognition “is a testament to Scott’s exceptional sales acumen,” said Lisa Wegiel, banking center assistant manager, in nominating him for the 40 Under Forty class of 2024. “His strategic approach and results-driven mindset have significantly contributed to the success of our banking operations.”

After an earlier promotion to assistant vice president, Gomes-Ganhao was selected to participate in the bank’s Leadership Challenge, demonstrating his leadership ability among his peers. He has also volunteered with an internal associate-engagement team, serving with other leaders on cross-functional strategic initiatives and being a mentor to junior associates, which has led to the advancement of several employees.

“It’s important for me to see people around me elevate with me,” he said. “I’ve been making sure the team is the main focus, that they also develop along the way. I enjoy the interactions with customers, helping them find solutions. But I also enjoy the development of the team and helping them reach their career goals.”

Gomes-Ganhao has excelled in other ways, taking leadership roles in and around his hometown of Ludlow, from serving as development chair of the Ludlow Boys & Girls Club (which honored him with its Darlene Rae Helping Hand Award in 2021) to serving as president of the high-profile Our Lady of Fatima Festa, a multi-million-dollar fair.

In fact, with almost 300 volunteer hours in the past year alone, Gomes-Ganhao has been recognized by PeoplesBank as Top Volunteer two years in a row — a remarkable achievement at an institution famously committed to employee volunteerism.

“I’m proud to be part of a bank that gives you so many opportunities,” he said. “One of the big factors when I moved to Peoples was making sure I was moving to an organization that embraced giving back. At PeoplesBank, we live and breathe that every day, not only financially, but by the hours that we contribute to the community.”

—Joseph Bednar

Chris Freeman

Executive Director, the Parlor Room Collective: Age 39

During his 12 years playing guitar and banjo in a band called Parsonsfield, Chris Freeman recalled the outfit playing the third-ever show at the Parlor Room in Northampton and putting out a few records on Signature Sounds, the label associated with that venue.

After the band dissolved in the COVID years, Freeman took a job with the Parlor Room, booking shows and gradually moving into a leadership role there, before evolving the operation into a nonprofit model called the Parlor Room Collective.

“It always had a mission-based vibe to it, so the transition to nonprofit was pretty easy,” he said. “It’s a really special place, and I was so excited to continue its legacy.”

He also had a vision concerning another music club just a few hundred feet away — the Iron Horse Music Hall — after that venerable room was shuttered during the pandemic. “I knew it should come back, and the energy was clearly there. I started talking to different people, and there was definitely a lot of support.”

So the Parlor Room Collective purchased the Iron Horse and has raised close to $500,000 to renovate it, maintaining its intimate feel but improving facets that definitely needed improving, like its famously inadequate green room and restrooms, while expanding into adjoining space for a dedicated bar and community events. While more than $250,000 remains to be raised, the venue will reopen on May 15 with a robust lineup of concerts to follow.

“The community has been rallying around us from the start. They care about live music,” Freeman said. “We still have hundreds of thousands of dollars to raise, to pay off all the construction bills. But now we’re going to have shows on sale, people buying tickets, and the bands are coming back.”

It’s all part of an effort to re-establish Northampton as a small town that has long punched above its weight class, as Freeman put it, when one compares its population to the caliber of acts that have played here — and soon will again.

“This place has always been, in some ways, rough around the edges, but it pulls you in and makes you feel at home, and it’s been built up by the arts,” he said. “I live here, and part of the reason Northampton has become a great food scene and a great downtown culture is the arts. I’ve made it my life’s mission to make sure that never goes away, and we can bring back the glory days of such a legendary venue.”

—Joseph Bednar

Dalila Cardona

Chief Operating Officer, YWCA of Western Massachusetts: Age 34

Dalila Cardona has seen a lot during her time at the YWCA.

She started there in 2018 as a child and family clinician, providing therapy to children who had either experienced or witnessed physical or sexual violence. The following year, as director of Parent and Youth Support Programs, she supervised a team of 20 employees and oversaw five community-based programs.

In late 2020, once she became a licensed clinical social worker, Cardona was promoted to clinical director. In that capacity, she worked closely with the former chief operating officer to ensure that every YWCA employee provides trauma-informed care to the Springfield-based nonprofit’s residential and community-based clients.

Her goal was to educate staff to help women and children — many of whom had experienced human trafficking, sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking — “transform from a victim to a survivor,” as YWCA CEO Elizabeth Dineen put it.

Since being promoted to COO a year ago, Cardona has worked closely with Dineen and the chief financial officer to oversee an almost $9 million operating budget, which supports, as noted, some truly critical services for women in need. In recognition of that work, she was named Employee of the Year for 2023.

It’s a far cry from her original career goal of being a probation officer, though both are impactful roles, in different ways.

“Criminal justice piqued my interest, but I decided I wanted to make a different kind of an impact,” she said. “There are bad days sometimes — dealing with a sexual assault, and seeing that it’s a kid, 10 years old … those are hard cases, but they really push us to keep serving them. It’s exhausting sometimes, but I get as much support as I need from Liz and my staff. It’s a really special place to work.”

Active in the community, Cardona is a board member with the World Affairs Council of Western Massachusetts, a Springfield Puerto Rican Parade committee member, and a public speaker around Western Mass. on issues such as trauma-informed care, human trafficking, sexual assault, domestic violence, and trauma-focused, cognitive behavioral care for women and children.

They’re important conversations to have, she said.

“I think people don’t like talking about trauma. It hits the heartstrings. But more people have experienced trauma than haven’t; everyone’s been through something,” she said. “Getting those stories out about the kids and families we serve within the community is another way we can make change.”

—Joseph Bednar

Kara Bombard