Meet the previous five classes of Difference Makers
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Difference Makers
Highlights from this year’s event
More than 350 people turned out at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House in Holyoke for a celebration of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2013. The photos on the next several pages capture the essence of a special night, which featured entertainment from the Children’s Chorus of Springfield and the Taylor Street Jazz Band, fine food, and memorable comments from this year’s winners, who all conveyed the passion that has made them true Difference Makers. This year’s class, chosen by the editor and publishers of the magazine from dozens of nominations, reflects the many ways in which individuals and groups can make a difference in the community. State Troopers Michael Cutone and Thomas Sarrouf, along with John Barbieri, deputy chief of the Springfield Police Department, were chosen for their work to orchestrate the C3 Policing program in Springfield’s North End. John Downing, president of Soldier On, was selected for the many ways that organization improves quality of life for veterans. Bruce Landon, president and general manager of Springfield Falcons, was chosen for his efforts to keep professional hockey in Springfield over the past 35 years. The Sisters of Providence were chosen for their 140 years of service to the community, especially in the broad realms of healthcare, education, and social service. And Jim Vinick, senior vice president of Investments for Moors & Cabot Inc., was chosen for his work with many area nonprofits, especially the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Jimmy Fund.
Sponsored By:
Baystate Medical Practices • First American Insurance • Health New England • Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C. • Northwestern Mutual • Royal LLP • Sarat Ford Lincoln • 6 Pt. Creative Works
For reprints contact: Denise Smith Photography / www.denisesmithphotography.com / [email protected]
Photos From the 2013 Difference Makers Gala
President and General Manager of the Springfield Falcons
Bruce Landon
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
It was a few days before the National Hockey League was to begin its abbreviated and condensed season — salvaged by a new collective bargaining agreement reached in early January — and Bruce Landon was talking about the many ways the division-leading Springfield Falcons, the organization he’s been involved with for more than 40 years, would be impacted by those developments.
“We’ve lost six players,” said the team’s president, general manager, and minority owner, referring to the roster members who have been called up to the American Hockey League affiliate’s parent club, the Columbus Blue Jackets, since the labor impasse was resolved. “Every team has lost three to nine; whether we get one, two, or three back remains to be seen.
“They’re going to play 48 games in 99 days, so there are going to be a lot of injuries,” he continued. “So depth is going to be the key to success for teams in this league [the AHL]. It will be important for us to stay healthy here.”
Actually, the team already has a lot of depth, he went on, noting that it was built with the NHL’s labor situation in mind. In fact, the Falcons are carrying between 28 and 30 players, when they normally have 22 or 23 on the roster.
“And when you carry extra guys, it’s always expensive,” said Landon, who would quickly move on to other headaches, including everything from attendance still described by the word ‘flat’ to weather forecasts — not actual weather itself — that are often enough to keep people from driving to the MassMutual Center for a game.
But dealing with such challenges is obviously a labor of love for Landon, and this passion for hockey in Springfield is the sole reason why he’s still dealing with such issues as buying more tape and booking more hotel rooms because he has to keep more players on his roster.
Indeed, on three separate occasions, Landon has put together ownership groups that have allowed the city to keep an AHL affiliate, something it’s been able to do since 1936. And the most recent rescue was also the most harrowing.
It was the 11th hour, and the clock was getting ready to strike midnight. After negotiating with 28 potential ownership groups from Chicago, Washington, and even Russia, an exhausted Landon, whose wife, Marcia, was starting to worry about his health, was running out of options and nearly running out of hope that he could keep the team in Springfield.
That’s because the ownership group in place at that time was almost out of patience and applying some pressure to sell — even it meant to a group that would take the team to another city, like Des Moines, Iowa, which was coming ever more prominently into view as the likely landing spot.
But then, Landon had one more conversation with Charlie Pompea, a Florida-based businessman who had kicked the tires on the Falcons but was hesitant about pulling the trigger. It was after hearing Landon deliver an impassioned speech after the golf tournament they had just played in together — one in which he talked about the importance of preserving the team’s mailing address at Falcons Way in Springfield — that they initiated the talks that got a deal done.
Landon acknowledged that, while his business card says president and general manager, his unofficial job description for much of his tenure has been to keep a team in Springfield. And the main reason, he went on, is because, while Springfield has historically been good for hockey, the community should know and understand that hockey is very good for the city.
“Springfield should be proud to have a team in the American Hockey League,” he said, prefacing his remark by saying that he makes it quite often. “There are only 30 teams, and 30 cities across North America and Canada, and we’re one of them.”
For his untiring work to enable the city to say it is still one of those 30, Landon has been named a member of the Difference Makers Class of 2013.
Several Big Saves
As he talked with BusinessWest, Landon referenced an e-mail he had just received from Chris Olsen, one of the hundreds of interns he’s worked with over the years.
Olsen is currently vice president of Football Administration for the Houston Texans, who were still battling for an NFL championship until the New England Patriots beat them on Jan. 13.
“He wrote to basically say that he was following us and he was happy with our success, and he wanted to thank me for giving a young man an opportunity to get into the business,” said Landon. “Those things are so rewarding, and we’ve seen so many of them over the years.
“I love it when we see people come here and either work for us, or go on to bigger and better things, because that’s what we’re all about,” he went on. “We’re not just a development team for players … we’re also a development business for a lot of aspiring sports professionals as well.”
Helping individuals contemplating careers in everything from broadcasting to marketing to merchandising by giving them real-world experience is just one of the many ways in the which the Falcons have made an impact on this region, said Landon, listing others ranging from direct economic impact to providing wholesome family entertainment.
“We’re more than just a professional hockey team providing great sports entertainment for families,” he explained. “We are, and should be looked at as, a catalyst for downtown; on a good year, we can draw 180,000 people into the city, and the economic spinoff from that is in the millions of dollars.
“We create jobs for people at the MassMutual Center — we have 38 guaranteed dates there,” he continued. “Our players live here and spend money here, we employ people ourselves, we help the parking garage … our franchise is very important to the city in many different ways.”
Landon has been making such comments since Jimmy Carter was in the White House, making him perhaps the most enduring and significant sports figure in the city’s history.
And by now, most people in Greater Springfield know at least the basics of the Bruce Landon story — how the Kingston, Ontario native was drafted by the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and came to the Springfield franchise (then also named the Kings) in 1969, and how he injured his shoulder in the later stages of the Calder Cup championship season of 1970-71, paving the way for future Hall of Famer Billy Smith.
They probably also know that he later went on to play for the New England Whalers in the World Hockey Assoc. (which eventually merged with the NHL in 1979) before returning to Springfield and the AHL in the late ’70s. And they likely know that, while playing for the team, he was also doing some front-office work, something that became a full-time endeavor when he blew out his knee at age 28 in 1977, forcing him to retire.
They might also know that he’s held just about every title one can have with a pro sports franchise, from player to broadcaster; from director of marketing and public relations to general manager and part owner, and that he has plaques in his den, including the James C. Hendry Award, presented annually to the AHL’s outstanding executive, which he earned in 1989.
Less well-known, perhaps, are Landon’s successful efforts behind the scenes to assemble ownership groups. He first did it in 1994 after the then-Springfield Indians (the name the team had for decades in a nod to the famous motorcycles made in the city) were sold to out-of-town interests and moved to Worcester. Partnering with Wayne LaChance, Landon started a new franchise and named it the Falcons after the birds that had famously begun to nest in downtown Springfield office towers.
And he did it in 2002, when he expanded the ownership base to provide more stability for the franchise. He managed to pull together a group of local business people to commit to the team and then stay with it through a succession of parent clubs and seasons that ended with the club at or near the bottom of the standings.
Eventually, the ownership group tired of the team’s lackluster financial performance and initiated the process of exiting the AHL. And it was this latest effort to secure ownership that would keep the team in Springfield that is considered the biggest save of Landon’s career — and the most difficult.
Goal-oriented Individual
“Selling the team at that time was a real challenge,” he recalled, “because no one wanted to keep the team in Springfield — they all wanted to move it. They were looking at other cities and other venues that were available … it’s a great league, and people want to be part of it.
“Had Charlie not stepped up and brought the franchise, there was a significant offer from a group that wanted to move it to Des Moines,” he continued, adding that he’s never made that information public before. “That [Falcons] ownership group had said, ‘there’s not much more we can do — we don’t want to lose money anymore.’ They were getting to the point where they wanted to sell, and if we couldn’t find a local buyer, then they’d take the best offer they could, even if that meant the team would be moved. A message was being sent, and Charlie saved the day.”
But, to borrow a term from his sport, Landon obviously earned a huge assist.
Returning to that golf tournament at which the two played together, Landon said his remarks at dinner obviously struck a chord with Pompea.
“He said, ‘you’re really serious about this, aren’t you?’” Landon recalled, adding that his lengthy answer to that query obviously convinced him he was. “We talked some more, and a few weeks later, we had a deal.”
Looking ahead, something Landon is far more comfortable doing than looking back, especially at his own exploits, he said that, despite the team’s recent success and position at the top of the Northeast Division, well ahead of the Bridgeport Sound Tigers and Hartford Whale, there are still many question marks about the future.
“There are no more rabbits left in the hat,” Landon said candidly when referring to the team’s status, using those words to convey his belief that there will be no more 11th-hour rescues for this franchise if the current ownership situation deteriorates.
“We have our lease through next year, and we have our affiliation agreement through next year,” he noted. “But, as Charlie and I talk about, this is a business, not a hobby, and we have to assess how we’re doing from a business standpoint; are we seeing some light at the end of the tunnel, and are we making progress?
“He wants to see this work,” Landon went on, referring to Pompea. “But he is a businessman, as I am. Overall, we’re cautiously optimistic that we’re going to get this thing headed in the right direction.”
He said the team is well-positioned in many respects. It has a solid partnership with the Columbus franchise, a favorable lease arrangement with the MassMutual Center, travel expenses far lower than most other AHL franchises because of its central location, and a lean operation. The keys moving forward are improving attendance, obviously, but also growing revenues across the board.
And this can only be accomplished, he went on, by gaining a full buy-in from the residents of not only Springfield but the entire region.
“I hope that fans understand that they have to engage and embrace this team so it stays here for many more years to come,” he said in summation. “I’ll eventually be leaving this position, and I just hope that the fans — and not just the fans, but the community — realize how lucky they are to have a team of this caliber, and never take it for granted.”
A Game Changer
On several occasions during his recent talk with BusinessWest, Landon heaped praise on Pompea, crediting him with the fact that Springfield currently has a team stirring dreams of another Calder Cup banner hanging from the rafters at the MassMutual Center.
“If it wasn’t for Charlie, this team would have been gone,” he said. “He’s the one who saved hockey here.”
That’s one man’s opinion. Most, however, would say that Landon himself is the individual worthy of that sentiment, earned through more than four decades of dedication to the Kings, Indians, Falcons — and the Greater Springfield area.
For that, he’s truly a Difference Maker.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Managing Director of Investments for Moors & Cabot Inc.
Jim Vinick
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
As he talked about one of his latest — and most intriguing — endeavors, Jim Vinick’s passion, perseverance, and dedication to those causes that are special to him came across quickly and clearly.
And so did his no-nonsense approach to getting things done.
This particular project involves a statue he’s commissioned that will honor the late Einer Gustafson — the individual identified fairly late in his life as the young boy who became the ‘Jimmy’ in the Jimmy Fund — and the man who treated him, Dr. Sidney Farber, founder of the Children’s Cancer Research Foundation (eventually renamed the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute) and the father of modern chemotherapy.
The initiative is the latest manifestation of a 35-year commitment Vinick has made to the Jimmy Fund, service that escalated, and took on a far more personal character, after his son, Jeffrey, was treated at Dana-Farber but eventually lost his battle against rare form of testicular cancer in 1982, and his daughter, Beth, became a cancer survivor.
Originally, the plan was to have the statue also include Red Sox slugger Ted Williams, long known for his devotion to the Jimmy Fund. But Vinick knows his Jimmy Fund history. So he also knows that, when the then-12-year-old Gustafson was selected to speak on Ralph Edwards’ national radio program Truth or Consequences from his hospital bed in 1948, he was surrounded by members of the Boston Braves, the National League franchise that actually started the Jimmy Fund (the Red Sox picked up the mantle after the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953).
Thus, Vinick decided to remove Williams from his plans, even though he was his close friend for many years and actually still owns the rights to produce his life’s story on screen (more on that later).
But there’s much more to this saga.
Originally, officials wanted the statue placed in what Vinick considered to be a remote corner of a huge facility cluttered with more than 19,000 pieces of art. “I said to them, ‘if we’re going to hide this, I’m not going to do it — not for this price [$150,000],” he told BusinessWest, adding that he then secured a far more prominent location where the statue would be virtually impossible to miss. Meanwhile, Farber’s son wanted some specific wording on the accompanying plaque.
“He wanted it certain ways, and I wanted it certain ways, and finally, I got it may way — and it was going to be my way or the highway,” said Vinick. “I told them, ‘this is my project, and I’m not doing this for Dr. Farber, I’m doing it for the original Jimmy.’ Dr.’s Farber’s obviously a massive part of it, but this all germinated with Jimmy.”
“My Way” is the title to a song made famous by Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, among others, but those two words constitute Vinick’s MO as well.
His way has been to be an ardent, nearly life-long supporter of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, a commitment described by the Hall’s president, John Doleva, this way: “he is unequivocally one of the most passionate and involved board members in the history of Basketball Hall of Fame, and can be seen supporting our important events across the U.S., sharing the pride of the birthplace of basketball.”
His way has been to get deeply involved with the Western Mass. Jimmy Fund Council and stay involved for more than 35 years. His passion has been the Jeffrey Vinick Jimmy Fund Golf Tournament, which has raised more than $9 million in the 34 years it has existed.
His way has been to lend his time, energy, and imagination to groups ranging from the Jewish Community Center to the Willie Ross School for the Deaf; from Temple Beth El to the Springfield Armor basketball team (he’s a partner in that venture).
And his way has been to right some things that he sees as wrong — like the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute not having a memorial to either Farber or the young man who inspired a charitable institution that has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to find cures for a killer.
Because he’s always done things his way, and because that approach has greatly impacted so many lives, Jim Vinick has been chosen as a Difference Maker for 2013.
Star Power
The walls and shelves in Vinick’s office on the 15th floor of One Financial Plaza in Springfield are crowded with photographs, news clippings, and other assorted memorabilia that do a decent job of summing up his life, career, and philanthropic exploits.
The collection includes everything from photos of family members, including his son Jeff, to news reports involving Friendly’s — he controlled a large amount of stock in the Wilbraham-based corporation and was often quoted in recent years on the many developments that have shaped the company — to a snapshot from his early days doing The Vinick Report, the region’s first business-news segment, on Channel 40.
And then, there’s a photo that captures the moment in February 1986 when Ted Williams signed the contract giving Vinick exclusive rights to his life’s story.
“The check was for $125,000 — that was a down payment — and that was the biggest check he’d ever seen in his life,” Vinick recalled, adding that the Splendid Splinter, as he was called, never surpassed $100,000 as a ballplayer, and that figure represented the annual amount paid to him by Sears Roebuck for 20 years to be one of its top pitchmen.
“Ted was under the gun — in 1980, he dropped Sears Roebuck,” Vinick recalled. At the time, the two were close friends who had worked together on many Jimmy Fund initiatives, including the annual Western Mass. sports banquet, at which Williams spoke on several occasions.
Vinick has never been able to get the Williams project off the ground, although it’s not from lack of effort, and he says he’s not through trying. He had a screenwriter interested, fielded inquiries from several actors looking to play the part (including Treat Williams and David Hasselhoff), shopped the project at various Hollywood studios, and spent a lot of money trying to pull a script together. But the pieces never fell into place.
However, frustration with the Williams project has been one of the very few real setbacks for Vinick, who has historically seen his persistence and passion take him — and the organizations he’s supported — to where he wants to go.
Perhaps the best example of this is the Jimmy Fund, which he has served for more than 35 years as a member of the Western Mass. Council, work that could best be described as a mix of personal tragedy, triumph over extreme adversity, and true inspiration.
Most in the region know the story of how Vinick’s son Jeffrey succumbed to cancer after a long fight, and they probably know also how his daughter, Beth, won her battle against the disease, but not before her mother (Vinick’s wife, Harriet) took her own life just days after Beth’s cancer was diagnosed.
“Those are my daughter’s twins there,” said Vinick, pointing at a photo on his wall, adding that his work with the Jimmy Fund takes many forms. The golf tournament is the most visible, but there are many other fund-raising events, including the recent Chef’s Night at Chez Josef.
“For the past several years, the Western Mass. Jimmy Fund Council has raised over $1 million,” he said, “and my family’s been an integral part of that.”
And for his efforts on behalf of the Jimmy Fund, Vinick has receieved one of the highest awards bestowed by the organization, the Bob Cheyne Lifetime Achievement Award.
Far from satisfied, he’s pushing ahead with the statue of ‘Jimmy’ and Dr. Farber. He’s commissioned Brian Hanlon, who he met through the Hall of Fame (he’s the shrine’s official sculptor), who will add this project to a portfolio that includes a statue of Shaquille O’Neal on the LSU campus, one of Bob Cousy at Holy Cross, and planned works on Chuck Bednarik and Yogi Berra.
Court of Opinion
Beyond the Jimmy Fund, Vinick is best noted for his work with the Basketball Hall of Fame, an institution he’s been involved with for about as long as he can remember. Actually, it started with his father. He ran a dry-cleaning business and eventually became involved in the building of the first Hall of Fame on the campus of Springfield College, a project that started in 1959, but was often delayed by funding problems and wasn’t completed until 1968.
Jim Vinick was intricately involved in both the building of the second Hall (the first on Springfield’s riverfront), which opened in 1983, and the current structure, which opened nearly a decade ago.
“I guess that’s my legacy to the city of Springfield,” he said of the current Hall complex. “Obviously, we’ve had a tremendous amount of help everywhere, and I’m just a cog in the wheel … but I’m devoted to it, and I’ve been involved since day one.”
One of his signature projects was the creation of the Jeffrey Vinick Memorial Locker Room in the first Hall on the riverfront.
“He was always in the locker room, so I thought this was the most appropriate way to honor him,” Vinick said of his son, who starred in three sports at Longmeadow High School.
Over the years, Vinick has held a number of positions and titles with the Hall, including board member, governor, treasurer, member of the Audit & Finance Committee, and chairman of the Endowment Fund. For his efforts, he was recognized with the Chairman’s Cup Award in 2010.
Doleva told BusinessWest that it’s not only what Vinick has accomplished, but also how, that stands out.
“He’s a very intense individual, let me put it that way,” he explained. “When I first met him, I kind of felt that he was a little over the top. But you have to take time to understand what Jim is all about, especially when he’s passionate about an organization you’re involved with.
“And it does take time to completely understand where he’s coming from,” he continued. “But there is no one more impassioned, more connected to this organization, than he is.
“We have events all over the country, and very few of my Board of Governors members, who live throughout the country, attend them,” Doleva went on. “Jim’s at almost every one of them, and he’s a local governor. He’ll go to the Final Four, he’ll go to a statue unveiling, he’ll be at various basketball tournaments around the country staged to support the Hall of Fame. And he doesn’t just go to be there and enjoy a good basketball game and a few social events; he’s there, and the switch never goes off — he’s talking about Springfield and the Hall of Fame and the birthplace of basketball. He just never stops.”
This ‘never stops’ quality equates to always looking for new and different ways to give back to the community — such as with another of his more recent endeavors, restoration of Robert Lewis Reid’s historic mural, titled “The Light of Education,” which hung in the auditorium of his alma mater, Classical High School, for more than 70 years.
When the school was converted into condominiums in the late ’80s, the mural was removed and subsequently damaged, said Vinick, adding that he and other members of the class of 1958 are working in conjunction with the Springfield Council for Cultural and Community Affairs to restore the piece and then hang it in the Springfield Library.
“We’re up to about $109,000, and we’re still collecting money,” he said, adding that the efforts recently received a boost in the form of a $23,000 check from Audrey Geisel, widow of Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss). “This is a piece of Springfield’s history, and it should be there for citizens and visitors to enjoy.”
Art of the Deal
Work on the Jimmy statue had been delayed somewhat — Vinick said it took several months to get permission to use the 1948 Boston Braves uniform given to Gustafson by the team’s manager, Jimmy Southworth, in the statue’s design — but everything now appears on track for a spring unveiling.
There have been several challenges to overcome and many logistical hurdles to clear, but they are now all in the past tense.
That’s because Vinick is doing things his way, and also because, as Doleva said, the switch never goes off when it comes to something he’s passionate about.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Organizers of Springfield’s C3 Policing Program
Michael Cutone, left, and John Barbieri. (Note: Tom Sarrouf was on assignment with his SF units and not available to be photographed.)
Michael Cutone was asked how he could tell if the C3P, or Counter Criminal Continuum Policing program, in Springfield’s North End was succeeding with its various goals in the manner that organizers anticipated when they commenced the initiative roughly three years ago.
The Massachusetts State trooper and master sergeant in the U.S. Army Special Forces (the Green Berets) paused for a second and nodded his head a few times, as if to indicate that he gets that question often, and that he had an answer.
Actually, he had several.
For starters, he told BusinessWest, there is statistical evidence showing often-dramatic reductions in what would be considered gang-related crime in the Brightwood neighborhood since this program, based on tactics used by the Special Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, went into effect. Comparing 2010 statistics with those from 2009, before the initiative started, there was a 76% decrease in larceny, a 66% drop in weapons violations, a 55% reduction in burglary, and a 47% decline in motor-vehicle thefts.
But there is also anecdotal evidence concerning what is being called a counterinsurgency, or COIN, program, he said, listing everything from reports of gang members throwing their cell phones into the nearby Connecticut River because they believe the police must have them bugged — so accurate is their information about gang activities past and planned — to other reports of gang operatives offering to pay neighborhood residents for information on what those leading the C3P operation are up to.
Meanwhile, there’s the rising number of communities and police departments looking to emulate this model — officials have come from as far away as the Netherlands to observe the concept and talk with its organizers — and the growing volume of press it’s generating; the New York Times and Boston Globe have done stories, and 60 Minutes will present a report on the program later this winter.
Still, with all that, Cutone prefers to sum things up with what he calls the “non-traditional answer,” a summation of what residents and neighborhood activists are saying about C3P at what amounts to the heart of the program, regular Thursday community meetings designed to share information and ideas and continuously strengthen the relationship between the police and area residents. Or what they aren’t saying, as the case may be.
“No one’s saying, ‘you guys suck, and we don’t want you here anymore — this is a all a bunch a crap,’” he explained with a laugh, noting that such sentiments work as effectively (for him, anyway) as the crime stats, media attention, and cell phones in the river.
Collectively, they tell him that the COIN operation is meeting its overriding goal — to make things very uncomfortable for the gangs that once ruled these streets through intimidation, so much so that they’ll want to get out of the various businesses they’re in, especially selling drugs. And this happened because the program has succeeded in getting residents involved in making their streets safer, where once they were “inured, apathetic, and afraid.”
Those are three words that John Barbieri, deputy chief of police in Springfield, used early and often as he talked with BusinessWest about C3P. He is the official within the department with whom Cutone and Tom Sarrouf, a fellow state trooper and team commander of Cutone’s Special Forces (SF) unit, worked most closely to get this program implemented.
“The problem with the communities we’re talking about is that there’s very little involvement with the police,” he said, adding that the gangs in the North End had thrived in part due to what amounted to passive support from the community. “And there are myriad reasons for this, but a lot of this boils down to them not being stakeholders — these people are, for the most part, very poor, and they’d become inured to gang violence, violence in general, and drug dealing.”
In very simple terms, the C3P program has succeeded in making people claim a stake, he went on, and by doing so, they are considerably weakening that base of passive support.
Sarrouf agreed. “The residents there are now engaged in their community, where before they were not, plain and simple,” he said, referring to the most tangible and far-reaching benefit derived from what has become known in SF circles as the “Avghani Model,” named after the small town in Northern Iraq where these tactics were employed successfully to gain the trust and support of the local population and make them a resource in the fight against the enemy.
For their success to date and the promise of much more, Cutone, Barbieri, Sarrouf, and all those people in the community who work with them are truly Difference Makers.
Joining the Force
As he talked about how the COIN program works, Cutone offered a few analogies to help get his points across.
The first is what he calls the “seagulls and the Labrador retriever on the beach” scenario. Elaborating, he said that, while the dog will scare the birds away, they will merely hover or fly off, eventually to return; their lifestyle is interrupted, but not changed. The same is true, he said, with a typical police crackdown, or increased police presence, in an area like Springfield’s North End.
Another analogy involves a water balloon. When one pushes a finger into a full water balloon, it compresses that area, he said, noting that, when the finger is removed, the balloon returns to its original shape. What C3P is designed to do is apply several pressure points and not relieve that pressure, thus permanently altering the shape of balloon, or, in this case, a neighborhood. And a third analogy references a farmer battling weeds; unless one gets to the root of the problem and removes the weeds, they will keep coming back.
Using such effective visuals, Cutone, Sarrouf, and Barbieri explained how a COIN operation, and this one in particular, goes well beyond most traditional police tactics and the community-policing concept as a whole to involve a neighborhood in efforts to reduce crime.
And such extreme tactics are necessary, said Cutone, because gangs, like insurgents in foreign countries, are clever opponents not usually thwarted by what would be considered conventional approaches.
“Gang members and drug dealers are very savvy; they exploit the fact that people don’t want to engage with the police,” he explained. “They exploit that passive support. Just like insurgents, they move into areas where people are not going to report on them. Terrorist training camps don’t set up shop in Longmeadow or Belmont, Mass. They set up in Yemen, Afghanistan … failed states. Well, gang members and drug dealers will move into a failed neighborhood for the same reasons.”
‘Failed’ would be one effective way to describe Brightwood in the early fall of 2009, said Barbieri, adding that it was, at that time, the scene of heightened gang violence and activity, punctuated by several murders, including one “finished off” near the entrance to the trauma unit at nearby Baystate Medical Center.
In response to the surge, Springfield police countered with heightened patrols and a spate of arrests. “We were carrying assault rifles because they were carrying assault rifles,” he recalled, adding that, while police were diligent in their work, the results were basically similar to that of the retriever on the beach.
It was about this time that Cutone — who had attempted to initiate a counter-insurgency program in Brightwood based on tactics used by the SF, but seen it back-burnered — made another push. And the reason was obvious to those fighting crime in that neighborhood at that time, he said.
“It was clear that, just as we couldn’t kill our way out of insurgency in Iraq, we weren’t going to arrest our way out of this gang and drug problem,” he said.
Instead, the answer lay with intelligence, said Barbieri, returning to his thoughts about making residents stakeholders.
“It’s the community involvement that separates these neighborhoods from the suburbs and even the more affluent areas of Springfield, such as 16 Acres and Forest Park,” he explained when talking about the attitude that existed in Brightwood three years ago. “If there’s a crime in those neighborhoods, people become involved. If there’s drug dealing, they don’t tolerate it. When they call the police, they demand results — they go out and take pictures of the people involved; they take down license plates.
“In Brightwood, we were working like animals, but it all boils down to intelligence, and no one was telling us what was going on,” Barbieri continued. “No matter how long I work your neighborhood, no matter how much patrolling I do down there, I don’t know your neighborhood like you do — you know who’s dealing drugs and who’s hanging out in front of your house all day. It’s a community that keeps a community safe.
“Trooper Cutone comes up to me at a meeting and says, ‘I just got back from Iraq; there’s a counterinsurgency model to target gangs where we get the community involved and committed, and we try to change the conditions and build capacity in the neighborhoods,’” he went on. “I was the right target audience, and this was the right target location.”
For Your Information
Cutone recalls that the COIN initiative got its unofficial start with what he described as “dismounted patrols,” where he would get out of his cruiser and walk into shops and engage the owners and employees.
“That’s something we would do in Army SF when we were deployed in remote areas — we would live amongst the villagers and get to know them,” he explained. “Using that principle that I was taught, I would walk into a lot of these Hispanic shops, using my limited supply of Spanish to simply say ‘hello.’ These folks would look at me like a hog staring at a wristwatch, saying, ‘why is this trooper in my shop having coffee and asking me how I’m doing?’ So I got the cold shoulder in a lot of places.”
Changing attitudes and generating the steady flow of information, or intelligence, that the program needs to succeed took the better part of year, said those we spoke with, adding that the process of building trust and a working relationship with the neighborhood’s residents was difficult, and it is in many ways ongoing.
There are many moving parts within the program, but its heart and soul is the regular Thursday community meetings, staged at a few different locations, such as the apartment complex at 101 Lowell St.
At these sessions, updates are given, information is shared, and ideas are launched, such as the so-called ‘walking school bus’ concept — teachers chaperoning groups of students as they walk to school in the morning — which was offered by an employee of the Baystate Brightwood Health Center.
Overall, trust is built and momentum is generated through these meetings and other initiatives, such as regular Saturday neighborhood walk-throughs during which police officers will knock on doors and engage residents, other types of outreach efforts, classes on how to report crimes and spot gang activity, and ‘text-a-tip,’ which enables residents to forward information anonymously, said Cutone and Barbieri, adding that the results have been dramatic when it comes to the residents of the neighborhood taking that stake they once resisted and becoming an invaluable resource.
“We gave them our work numbers, our work cell numbers, our e-mail addresses, we gave them classes in how gangs recruit youths and how to identify if your child is in a gang — those types of things,” said Cutone. “And what happened, little by little, is that, between the Thursday meetings, the walk-throughs on Saturdays, and these classes, the amount of criminal information started increasing exponentially.”
And this volume represents a radical departure from what the police are accustomed to, and normally forced to subsist on.
“Typically, narcotics units and gang units get their information from criminal elements — I arrest a bad guy, he’s looking at X number of charges and X number of years, so all of a sudden, he wants to cooperate with the police, so he gives me another bad guy,” Cutone explained. “That’s a good technique, and we still use that technique; the problem with it, though, is that you’re minimizing your information flow, because 95% or more of the people in a community are law-abiding citizens. If you’re only dealing with the criminal element, you’ve eliminated 95% of your information flow.
“So now I have all this intelligence coming into my work computer — I’ve had guns and drugs located because informants would send material to my work cell phone and we’d be able to make arrests and recover stolen weapons,” he continued. “None of that would have happened if we hadn’t built this rapport with the local population.”
This steady flow of information has changed life for gang members to the extent that there are reports that some are buying new cell phones every month because they believe the police are somehow tapping the lines, said Barbieri, adding that there have been other reports of residents trying to chase away undercover police officers working the neighborhood, believing they’re there to buy drugs.
As for the neighborhood as a whole, there has been palpable change, said Sarrouf.
“When you ask people what’s different about living there now as opposed to before the program started, they’ll tell you very candidly that it’s safer, they feel more engaged in their own community, and they feel more empowered to be able to participate in the direction their community takes with respect to the issues that they had prior to this.
“Before, the North End was just truly chaotic; that’s the only way to describe it,” he went on. “Is there still crime there today? Of course, but it is at a much more manageable level, where there’s trust built between the community, city government, and law enforcement where they can respond more accurately, in a more timely fashion, and with a better approach.”
State Rep. Cheryl Coakley-Rivera, who represents that neighborhood, used different words to say essentially the same thing.
“There’s a renewed sense of hope — that’s the word I keep coming back to,” she explained. “But there’s also a sense of action and responsibility. If I’m a resident and I go to one opf these meetings, I come away thinking, ‘what can I do? — I have a team behind me now. What is my responsibility when it comes to working with that team?’ Is it just to fix my fence or clean up my yard, or is it call text-a-tip because I saw a guy put a gun in his trunk?’ There is a new sense of responsibility.”
To a Different Beat
Despite the gains in Brightwood, Sarrouf said, there is still much work to be done in this neighborhood.
“We’re not trying to fool anyone and present this as any kind of quick fix,” he explained. “Right up front, we said that this is a very long-term project, one that will take years to accomplish all its goals. Are we there yet? No, but we’re seeing incremental dividends with respect to the fact that the community is getting better over time.
“And what we’re not seeing is a fallback to what it was — which is a very good thing,” he continued.
In other words, there is more than sufficient evidence — both hard and anectodal — to suggest that this program is working, and that those who have put it in a position to succeed are worthy of being called Difference Makers.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
President of Soldier On
John Dowling
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
John Downing has file folders full of statistics at his disposal as he talks about the many programs being carried out by Soldier On and the philosophy that powers the organization — from the percentage of veterans it serves who have mental-health issues (78%) to the average hourly wage being earned by the many formerly homeless veterans now working for the agency ($10.89).
But perhaps the most powerful — and poignant — numbers are these:
There are more than 265 ‘residents’ of the homeless veterans shelter and transitional facility in Leeds, where the organization is based, and only about 25 of them went ‘home’ — whatever and wherever that is — for the holidays last December.
“The rest of them were already home,” said Downing, the long-time president of the organization, founded in 1994, who understands fully what those numbers mean and what they tell him his responsibility, and that of his staff, must be to those the agency serves. Basically, to redefine ‘home.’
“These people have lost everything, and so they identify now with the community they’re growing and serving in,” said Downing, who told BusinessWest that, when he took over at the struggling organization, housed at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Leeds, in 2001 at the behest of its board, he did so with the single goal of creating the “Holiday Inn of shelters.”
He did that in what seemed like a few months — although it actually took the better part of a year to complete a full turnaround, thanks to some dramatic changes in the basic approach taken. And looking back over what’s happened since, success with that goal might be considered perhaps his most modest accomplishment.
Indeed, Downing has been able to blueprint and implement a number of innovative programs and services, all designed with the Soldier On slogan — ‘changing the end of the story’ — firmly in mind.
The most intriguing, and celebrated, of these to date is an initiative that provides veterans with the opportunity to transition from homelessness to home ownership through a unique program that enables them to purchase an equity stake in their homes. The Gordon H. Mansfield Community in Pittsfield, where more than 40 veterans now own their own condos, has become a model being emulated around the country, and Soldier On is planning several similar projects in this area, in communities ranging from Northampton to Agawam.
But there is much more to the Soldier On story, including a unique and comprehensive veterans-outreach program that includes case-management and referral services and temporary financial assistance involving everything from daily living activities to transportation to child care.
There’s also a full roster of employment services — a key component in any individual’s struggle for financial independence — that include interview skills, money management, résumé building, training and education, and transportation. And there’s also something called the Veterans Justice Partnership, created with the purpose of developing service and treatment options and, where appropriate, alternatives to incarceration.
Meanwhile, Soldier On recently received a $100,000 grant from the Newman’s Own Foundation to develop a wellness center to support its growing women’s program, said Downing, adding that the money will be used to help fund a multi-faceted treatment plan aimed at “getting them back in the center of their lives.”
And while compassion is the primary driver of these programs, there is a practical side as well: some of those aforementioned statistics show that, while the VA is projected to spend $400,000 to $500,000 on a 54-year-old veteran over the rest of his or her life, in the Soldier On model, that cost drops to $150,000.
Overall, it’s not just what Solider On does that’s so impressive and makes this organization and its leader a Difference Maker, but also how. Its model is founded on the quality of social interaction amongst veterans, and it brings services to them instead of the other way around, while giving them the means to succeed rather than criticizing them when they don’t.
“Our job is to serve veterans where they are, and our job is to take responsibility for their failure,” Downing explained. “You don’t serve people by blaming them, shaming them, and making them afraid.”
For this special section profiling our Difference Makers, we talked at length with Downing about how this approach came about and why it has become so successful in positively impacting quality of life for veterans.
Vetting Process
During the course of his lengthy interview with BusinessWest for this story, Downing interrupted the proceedings on several occasions to bring various members of his staff into the discussion.
There was Maggie Porter, director of Communications; Michael Hagmaier, senior vice president; Dominick Sondrini, director of Outreach and Employment Training and coordinator of the Veterans Justice Partnership; John Crane, director of Case Management; and Katie Doherty, Women’s Partnership consultant, among others.
He wanted to introduce them and have them explain what they do and how, but he also wanted to display the great deal of pride he has in the team he’s assembled, the work it’s doing, and the intriguing approach it’s taking, which he explained in direct, colorful language.
“Everyone who comes to us is broken,” he explained. “And because of their brokenness, we all get to make a wonderful living serving them and figuring out strategies to bring their lives back to meaningful ways for them — not defining what we think is meaningful, but letting them define it for themselves.”
And as he elaborated, he ventured back to the weeks and months after he came to the then-7-year-old Soldier On, the latest in a series of assignments within the broad realm of social service and, especially, reintegration and after-care services.
He found an organization, started by some homeless veterans and employees of the VA hospital, that was functioning at about 40% capacity, had been poorly managed, and was essentially ready to be shut down by the VA.
His work to create that Holiday Inn he spoke of started with cleaning the buildings, replacing dilapidated furniture, and making sure the residents had decent meals and clothing.
And then, the real work started. By that, he meant changing and improving the way veterans were administered services and altering the basic approach taken by the staff. It was no small change.
“Most of us, as Communist-trained social workers, spend most of our adult lives learning how to tell people what to do,” he noted. “We tell people how to get into recovery, what steps they have to take, and what kind of financial planning they need to do. And we know how to tell them how to change their decision making.
“And I just thought that was a very offensive process to me as an adult,” he continued. “If you want to see my oppositional behavior rise up, just tell me what to do — and I’ll show you just what I’m not going to do. And I realized we spent a lot of time doing things that way, so I tried to figure out how to bring about change, because everyone in the recovery business, everyone working with homeless people, have all these rules and regulations that they like to enforce.
“So I decided to run the place with no rules — if you drank, you could stay, and if you missed your appointments, you could stay here, and that was quite different from what everyone else does in this world,” he went on, adding that another radical idea came to him — having the staff essentially take responsibility for the failures of those they’re serving.
This approach essentially changed the conversation, he said, from asking why they did certain things to asking what the staff could do to help them make better choices. That’s a fundamental change in philosophy that has had tremendous results.
“What we saw when we did that was that our number of intakes went from 1,025 for the 265 beds down to to 401,” he noted, adding that another major change was to either bring services to where those needing them lived — or bring them to the services.
Downing said that there are some things that he and his staff have come to understand over the years, and these have become the cornerstones to their model for delivering services:
• Veterans who have been homeless succeed in overcoming addiction, as well as physical and psychological challenges, when they are part of a community of veterans who serve and support each other;
• They typically fare better when they live in a community in which they are surrounded by the various services they need; and
• They require not only counseling and treatment, but education, employment training, and individual case-management services, all on an ongoing basis.
And when an agency can succeed in doing all that, many things are possible in that broad realm of helping veterans define — and achieve — things that are meaningful to them.
Room for Improvement
Nowhere is this more evident than with the program to transition homeless veterans into what amounts to home ownership.
And for the inspiration to take Solider On into this realm — what certainly amounted to uncharted territory and a tangled web of bureaucracy and funding programs — he returned to 2005 and a speech delivered by Army Maj. Ed Kennedy from the Joints Chiefs staff as the project in Pittsfield was being announced.
“As Kennedy finished his talk, he looked out on everyone and said, ‘I’m Major Ed Kennedy, I’m 31 years old, I’m in the Army, and I’m a dad to two children,’” Downing recalled. “And then he said to everyone, ‘I’m going back to Iraq, and I will die for you.’
“When he said that, in my head I was thinking, ‘every veteran in my care said, ‘I will die for you,’ and all 25 million Americans who were veterans said, ‘I will die for you,’ and I never heard it. And I thought to myself, ‘the people who said they would die for me … it’s OK for them to live in transitional housing with used clothing, be treated like second-class citizens, and be grateful for this, because I’ve never been grateful for their commitment.’
“And in that moment,” he went on, “I said, ‘the game is over for building shelters; I’m going to build beautiful housing for these people to own.’ That became the mission.”
The rest, as they might say, is history in the making.
And it’s been an intriguing, often difficult ride — Downing knew next to nothing about housing at that time, and had to endure a challenging learning curve involving something called limited-equity co-op apartments.
He saw a few models, mostly faith-based, in Minnesota and New York City, and took these concepts to a property he acquired in Pittsfield. The working model calls for individuals to buy an equity share in a complex (there are 39 units in Pittsfield, and thus 39 shares), and that share entitles the individual to rent an apartment. Soldier On provides Internet, cable, and 20 meals a month in a dining facility on the campus to help enable veterans to live in the complex on their limited incomes.
“It’s a model that really works — it ends homelessness for veterans, and it ends long-term care for veterans in the Veterans Administration system,” he said, adding that the win-win-win nature of the concept (there are also real-estate taxes to be gained by the community in question) is generating considerable interest in new projects.
There are 44 units planned for the VA complex in Leeds ($6.2 million has been secured from the VA to build it), another project is planned for the former police-training facility in Agawam, and more plans are coming to the drawing board across the country.
And while housing is certainly a huge part of the equation, there are many other ways in which Soldier On is helping to change the end of the story.
Another is through direct employment — there are now just over 100 people on the Soldier On payroll, and 74 of them are formerly homeless veterans — and helping enable clients to enter and succeed in the job market. Through the Homeless Veterans Reintegration (HVRP) program, funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, the agency provides veterans with the tools and support necessary for employment, said Downing, adding that this includes maintaining relationships between veterans and area employers.
There is also a greater emphasis on outreach, he continued, as well as on the recently instituted Veterans Justice Partnership, an alternative-sentencing program, involving the four western counties, for veterans who wind up in the court system.
In a nutshell, the program was created to provide veterans with access to information, resources, and programs to help them make positive transitions and lead productive lives.
“We’re in all four western-county jails every week with our staff, meeting with the veterans in jail, running groups, and helping them do their exit planning,” said Downing. “It’s another example of how go where the veterans are, we serve them, and, in this case, we try to prevent them from winding up there.
“The earlier you can intervene, the more effective you can be, and the costs go down,” he continued, adding that this sentiment applies not only to the justice partnership, but also to every Soldier On endeavor, and it goes a long way toward explaining the organization’s track record for success.
Fighting the Good Fight
When it was explained to those veterans who would soon be living in the Gordon H. Mansfield Community in Pittsfield that they would become taxpayers, Downing recalled, some responded with tears.
“They would say to me, ‘Jack, I never thought I could do this again — and I’m so grateful that I can do it,’” he told BusinessWest.
For making it possible for such individuals to give back to the community in such a different and rewarding way, and for truly changing the end of the story in so many positive ways, Downing and the entire staff at Solider On are more than worthy of the title Difference Maker.
George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]
Sr. Mary Caritas, SP, left, and Sr. Kathleen Popko, SP.
Sr. Kathleen Popko, SP likes to say that the 700-odd Sisters of Providence, present and past, “share some DNA” with Sr. Mary Providence Horan, the first mother general of the congregation.
And by that, she meant that those who worked beside her or followed in her footsteps have possessed both her many character traits and her broad operating philosophy.
As for the former, these include vision, compassion, determination, a large dose of innovation, and a very strong sense of mission.
“Mother Mary of Providence has always been an inspiration to me,” said Popko, president of the Sisters of Providence. “She had a lot of foresight and was very innovative; she established 20 works of charity within the first 15 years of her becoming head of the congregation. She crossed boundaries — she worked with the Jewish community and the Protestant community to help establish the board at Mercy Hospital, And she was willing to collaborate and ask for help from others to support the work she was doing, whether it was in Worcester or Pittsfield. And she had a great love of learning; those are qualities we like to think we possess today.”
As for the latter, well, that’s perhaps best summed up in a quote often attributed to her: “never rest on what has been accomplished, but continue reaching on to what needs to be done.”
Suffice it to say, the sisters have never done any such resting. Instead, they have, over the decades, responded to changing societal needs with the same zeal and desire that were firmly in evidence when two members of the Sisters of Charity of the House of Providence from Kingston, Ontario, Canada, came to Holyoke on a so-called begging tour in 1873 and were invited to establish a mission there to help the waves of immigrants struggling to carve out a living.
They eventually did, creating a legacy of providence that is captured in the statue of Mother Mary near the entrance to Providence Place in Holyoke, with a commanding view of the valley below. She is depicted holding hands with two young children — a boy carrying a schoolbook and a girl with a broken arm — artistic touches designed to spotlight the two basic tenets of the sisters’ work over the past 14 decades: education and healthcare.
Those two foundations remain, especially healthcare, through work carried out within the broad Sisters of Providence Health System. But the modern work of the Sisters of Providence is quite diverse, said Sr. Mary Caritas, vice president of the congregation, who listed everything from programs to provide healthcare to the region’s homeless population to groundbreaking initiatives in the broad realm of senior living, such as the ‘small house’ concept created at Mary’s Meadow.
“The one constant is need,” she said. “When the sisters came in 1873, it was in response to a need — they saw a need, and they responded. We’re doing things differently in this day and age, but we continue to have that same spirit.
“But they also recognize the need to change as society does — we’ve never been afraid to let go and move on from something because society has changed,” she went on, citing, as just a few examples, the transition of Providence Hospital from acute care to behavioral health; the repositioning of the former Farren Hospital in Montague into the Farren Care Center, a provider of services to people with severe behavioral disorders; and new uses for the facilities at Brightside for Families and Children.
The past several months have been a time of celebration for the Sisters of Providence — specifically, the marking of two important anniversaries.
Last year marked the 120th anniversary of the Sisters of Providence’s 1892 foundation as an independent congregation in the Springfield diocese. And this year marks the 140th anniversary of the arrival of the Sisters of Providence’s foremothers — today’s Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent De Paul in Kingston, Ontario — in Holyoke.
There have been a host of events to mark both occasions, from the planting and blessing of ‘anniversary trees’ to an anniversary procession and prayer; from an “open weekend of gratitude” to a dinner at Mercy Medical Center.
And because of that long history of caring being celebrated, there will be at least one more event to attend — BusinessWest’s Difference Makers Gala on March 21, when the sisters will be introduced as members of the Class of 2013.
For this special section profiling this year’s winners, we spoke at length with Popko and Caritas about how society may have changed over the past 140 years, but the devotion of the Sisters of Providence to their mission of meeting the needs of the most challenged segments of the population certainly hasn’t.
Past Is Prologue
Before talking about Western Mass. in 2013, Popko and Caritas wanted to talk first about Holyoke in 1873. Doing so, they said, would at least start to put the work of the Sisters of Providence in perspective, and also help explain that shared DNA.
Holyoke was the first planned industrial city in the country, they explained, and in the early 1870s, it was the place where some mill owners found fortune and many immigrants found opportunity for employment. But most found only hardship in the form of difficult, often dangerous work; crowded, inadequate housing (tenements built near the mills); and systems of education and healthcare that were nonexistent or extremely lacking.
It was into this environment that Srs. Mary de Chantal McCauley and Mary Elizabeth Stafford ventured on their begging tour in early 1873. They found the climate difficult for philanthropy — the country was in recession, and many of Holyoke’s mills had closed, while others were struggling — but ripe for charity, and for mostly the same reasons.
Fr. Patrick Harkins, pastor of St. Jerome’s Church in Holyoke, proposed that the congregation establish a mission in his parish for sick people and orphaned children, and one was created later that year, with four pioneer sisters from Kingston moving into a house belonging to St. Jerome’s but located across the Connecticut River in South Hadley Falls. The first orphan was admitted one week after their arrival, and the first patient was admitted for hospital care on Dec. 2, the recorded date of the beginning of the House of Providence, the first Catholic hospital in Western Mass.
Two years later, land was acquired for a new House of Providence on Dwight Street, while that same year, six sisters from Kingston, including Mother Mary of Providence, were assigned to teach at St. Jerome’s Institute, a school for boys in Holyoke.
In 1880, 53 acres of property in Holyoke, known as Ingleside, were purchased, and ground was broken for Mount St. Vincent, a home for orphaned girls. Sixteen years later, property on Carew Street in Springfield was acquired and deeded to the congregation for the House of Mercy, which later became Mercy Hospital and is now known as Mercy Medical Center.
In 1890, Bethlehem House, a home for infants and toddlers, opened at Brightside in Holyoke, Farren Memorial Hospital was dedicated, and schools of nursing were opened at Providence Hospital, Mercy Hospital, and St. Vincent Hospital in Worcester, establishing a pattern of caring and growth that continued unfettered for decades.
“When the sisters came here, they were not here a week, and they had an ophan at the door, and then the alms person in the city decided to send some more,” Popko explained. “It wasn’t long before the need was manifested, and they responded, whether it was with orphaned children or with healing the sick, oftentimes in their homes, or it was with making burial plots because there was no one to do that.
“And I think that’s why the Sisters of Providence ministries have been so diverse, from the beginning,” she continued. “It wasn’t simply that we started a healing ministry and were in hospitals, although that evolved most significantly. We were also involved in caring for the elderly or the orphaned or abandoned children, or in burying the dead, or doing home care. We were trying to be the providence of God in the lives of others, and in doing that, we reached out into healing ministries.”
Today, the area facilities operated by the Sisters of Providence include Providence Hospital, Mount Saint Vincent Care Center, Beaven Kelly Home, Providence Place retirement community, and Mary’s Meadow long-term nursing care and rehabilitation center, all in Holyoke; Mercy Medical Center and St. Luke’s Home in Springfield; Saint Luke’s Hospital in Pittsfield; Saint Vincent Hospital in Worcester; Farren Care Center; Genesis Spiritual Life Center in Westfield; and the many agencies of Brightside for Families & Children. There are also operations far outside this region, ranging from a home-health agency, hospital, and retirement village in North Carolina to a health clinic and multiple social-service agencies in an impoverished section of Santiago, Chile.
The specific missions and constituencies served vary with each ministry, said Popko, but there is a common denominator — bringing care to those who need it, and to those who may have no other alternative.
Innovative Spirit
The stories of many of these various ministries, as well as the people who inspired and created them, are told in a recently released book titled 140 Years of Providential Caring — The Sisters of Providence of Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Authored by Suzanne Strempek Shea, Tom Shea, and Michele Barker, it chronicles how many programs and facilities were developed, and is told largely through the eyes and thoughts of the individuals who paved those roads. There’s a chapter, for example, on Sr. Julie Crane and her work to create Health for the Care of the Homeless, another on Sr. Caroline Smith and her efforts to create the Sisters of Providence Methadone Maintenance Program, and still another on Sr. Elizabeth Oleksak and her work at Genesis Spiritual Life Center.
These chapters serve as both historical record and source of inspiration, said Popko.
“The individual stories demonstrate how that original spirit has been the driving force for us for 140 years, and how it’s certainly taken different shapes and forms and responded to the different calls of providence in each of our lifetimes,” she explained. “It’s certainly been an amazing journey, and for us to look back on it all in 2012 and 2013 and to read some of our archival material and relive some of the extreme dedication and willingness to reach out in multiple ways, is certainly inspiring.”
And moving forward, the unofficial assignment for the Sisters of Providence is to write more chapters for the next book, said Popko and Caritas. This means finding new ways to carry out the original mission, while also strengthening the infrastructure and operating philosophy that will ensure that this work is carried out in the decades to come, long after the last of the current sisters, already dwindling in number, are gone.
This is part of the legacy of never resting on one’s laurels that continues today, said Caritas, adding that there are several examples of how it manifests itself.
One involves a portion of the former Brightside property, used for residential treatment programs that were discontinued in 2010.
“I’m sure Mother Mary would have been thinking, as we have been for the past three years, about what to do with that property,” Caritas told BusinessWest, adding that plans are emerging to relocate the Sisters of Providence home-care and hospice programs in the main administration building at Brightside, while the ground floor will be used for something called PACE, or the Program for All-inclusive Care for the Elderly.
Elaborating, Popko said the initiative is a capitated-insurance program that provides essentially whatever care is needed to enable an older individual to remain in his or her own home. “They come to the site three or four times a week,” she explained, “and they might get all kinds of care, be it socialization, they might get a bath, there will be a clinic there so we can look at their healthcare needs and medication. They will be assessed, and care will be coordinated. It’s all designed to prevent those higher-cost institutionalizations by treating them effectively in the short run.”
In other words, it’s another imaginative approach to meeting recognized needs in the community, said Caritas, adding that there are other possible reuses of the Brightside facilities coming into focus, including low-income elderly housing, a geriatric-assessment center, and other coordinated facilities.
“It will be a full-service site,” she noted, “one that will provide all-inclusive care for those who participate.”
Securing funding for the project is ongoing, and it will be a challenge, said Popko, adding that there is no firm timetable in place for this strategic initiative. But the manner in which it is coming together speaks to the legacy of the Sisters of Providence and that notion of never resting on laurels.
“It references a vision of the future, a responsiveness to the needs of the times, and a creative reuse of existing resources — a replanting of the seeds, if you will, that were put down 140 years ago,” she said. “That’s what we’ve been doing throughout our history.”
Mission: In Progress
Returning to her thoughts on Mother Mary of Providence one more time, Popko said that she’d been doing some reading about her lately, and learned that her skills extended into architecture and building practices.
“I just read a quote recently … she said, ‘the next hospital we build is not going to be the conversion of some big house so we can fit in beds,’” Popko recalled. “She said, ‘we’re going to build a modern facility designed for the care of people.’
“Meanwhile, she designed Mount St. Vincent herself,” she went on. “She saw the first plans and went to the bishop and said, ‘these plans are totally inadequate.’ So they made her a committee of one; they tore up the plans, let her design her own building, and pretty much built off what she drew up.”
The current sisters are not architects in the same literal sense, but they are designers and builders in a figurative manner — blueprinting new ways to expand the mission launched 140 years ago.
And in that respect, the DNA is the certainly the same. The 700 Sisters of Providence through history have always been Difference Makers.
Chairman/CEO and President/COO, Big Y Foods Inc.
Charlie, left, and Donald D’Amour.
Photo courtesy of Big Y Foods
It’s called the Y-AIM Program.
The A stands for ‘achieve academically.’ The I, ‘inspire to attend college,’ and the M, ‘move toward personal, family, and community advancement.’
The Y? Well, that’s there for two of the main drivers in this ambitious initiative, the YMCA of Greater Springfield and the 75-year-old local grocery chain Big Y, which provided financial and logistical support to help get it off the ground, and remains a strong supporter.
In a nutshell, the program, which started with Springfield Sci-Tech High School and has recently been expanded to two more schools, places youth advocates in those facilities to help young people stay connected, engaged, motivated, and productive. And the first-year results were stunning.
In a school system where the dropout rate is just under 50%, 38 of the 39 seniors who participated in the initiative’s pilot program graduated, 36 applied to college, and all of them were accepted; two more entered the military.
“And these were at-risk kids,” said Charlie D’Amour, president and COO of Big Y. “This was not a selected pool of kids who would do well anywhere; they were clearly at risk of dropping out and not finishing high school.”
Participation in the Y-AIM program is just one of myriad reasons why D’Amour and his cousin Donald (chairman and CEO), the sons of Big Y founders Gerry and Paul D’Amour, respectively, have been chosen as Difference Makers for 2012. The two have long records of success in business, community service, and philanthropy, and perhaps the best thing they’ve done is involve other executives at Big Y, rank-and-file employees, and customers in many of the initiatives, a point they reiterated many times.
Here is just a partial list of those reasons:
• Company growth. Under their joint leadership, which unofficially began in the late ’80s (the transfer of power was a fluid process), Donald and Charlie D’Amour have more than doubled the size of the family business, with total sales now above $1.5 billion, and a projected annual economic impact (payroll and spending at local businesses) of $375 million.
• Employment in Big Y food and liquor stores in Massachusetts and Connecticut, which now totals more than 10,000. Meanwhile, over the years, the company has provided several thousand people with their first job, a fact the two cousins say they are seemingly reminded of every day.
• Community service to area organizations and institutions. While there are many lines on both résumés, Donald is perhaps best known for his work with the Springfield Library & Museums. In fact, one of the facilities is now known as the Michele & Donald D’Amour Fine Arts Museum in recognition of their many contributions of time, money, and inspiration. Charlie, meanwhile, is most known for his long service to Baystate Health; he’s been on the board of directors for many years, and was president in 2009 when the critical decision was made to move forward with the $296 million Hospital of the Future project, despite the fact that the economy was in free fall.
• Many contributions in the broad realm of education, from Y-AIM to a scholarship program that has awarded more than $3 million to date, to the Homework Helpline, a one-on-one homework-assistance service for students in kindergarten through grade 12.
• Donations of food by the Big Y corporation to area food pantries that average an estimated $5 million annually.
• Contributions in health care, perhaps the most notable being a financial donation that put the D’Amour name over Baystate Health’s cancer center.
• Fund-raising efforts staged at Big Y stores to benefit the victims of disasters ranging from the tornado in Springfield to the earthquake in Haiti, to the tsunami in Japan.
• An annual giving campaign involving employees which now raises in excess of $350,000, with all proceeds spent locally.
• The BEST (Big Y Employees Sharing Time) program, through which employees of specific stores donate time to the host community for initiatives ranging from park cleanup to service at a local shelter.
On the occasion of their being selected as Difference Makers for 2012, BusinessWest conducted a lengthy phone interview with the two cousins (Donald now winters in Florida), which was laced with good-natured barbs between the two, who grew up delivering watermelons together for the business their fathers were then taking to the next level.
Consider this exchange:
While noting that his time spent on endeavors within the community has escalated over the years, Charlie said, “people say I’m pretty good at what I do here at Big Y; they joke that maybe I should try doing it full-time.” To which Don remarked, “they’re not joking.”
But the two were much more serious when talking about that lengthy list of reasons why they’ll be honored at the Log Cabin on March 22. Indeed, when asked about the motivations for their work with area institutions and within the broad realm of philanthropy, Charlie said, “we look for things that can have an impact.”
“We’re focused on health, education, and hunger, because we’re in the food business,” he continued. “We look for programs that are going to be meaningful in the community and that will have direct impact.”
Don concurred, noting that, in many respects, he and Charlie are continuing and escalating a tradition of giving back started by their fathers.
“They set the tone for us,” Donald said of his father and uncle. “They were always doing things in the community — and they were very busy, too; they worked around the clock. I’m not saying that we don’t work hard, but Gerry would work at home on Sundays doing the ads, and those two were always on the phone talking to one another.
“They didn’t have a lot of leisure time,” he continued. “But they somehow found the time to get involved in the community. They sat on local community boards, be it chambers of commerce, hospitals, or colleges, and were always in a philanthropic mode. They set a very good precedent for us.”
Don noted that his paternal grandmother was a schoolteacher, and she impressed upon his father and uncle the importance of education, a philanthropic attitude that has manifested itself in many ways, from donations of time and money by the first generation to Western New England University, where the library now bears the names of Big Y’s founders, to the Homework Helpline.
The Y-AIM program is the latest example of this focus on education, and the results speak for themselves, said Charlie.
“There is so much being thrown at the Springfield schools to try to move that needle and improve graduation rates and improve college matriculation rates,” he said. “And they’re nowhere near as successful in terms of getting results as this one, and I think it’s because of its comprehensive nature with youth advocates in the schools working directly with these young people.”
There is a work component to the program, said Don, noting that many participants land jobs with Big Y, and for most of them, it’s their first work experience. Providing such opportunities is a responsibility all those at the company take very seriously, he noted.
Charlie agreed. “We have to teach these young people how to dress, work with the public, read a schedule, and what to do with a paycheck,” he explained. “It’s very gratifying to see that sense of empowerment that these kids feel when they earn their first paycheck and it’s their money.”
For providing a path to those first paychecks — and for the many other reasons listed (and not listed) above, Donald and Charlie D’Amour, and all those in the Big Y family involved in their efforts, are truly Difference Makers.
— George O’Brien
President, Holyoke Community College
WilliamMessner
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
As he talked about Holyoke Community College, what has transpired since he arrived there in 2004, and what he envisions moving forward, Bill Messner dropped the name Ruben Sepulveda early and quite often.
And with good reason.
Sepulveda is now in what amounts to his junior year at Amherst College, studying Psychology. This is worlds — and even dreams — removed from the existence he knew after dropping out of high school in New York and spending considerable time homeless or living in the boiler room of the pool hall where he used to hustle to put a few dollars in his pocket.
His fortunes changed in a huge way not long after relocating to Holyoke and, more specifically, a chance encounter with HCC Adult Learning Center (ALC) Director Aliza Ansell in the gas station across the street from CareerPoint, where the ALC program was then housed. Fast-forwarding a little, Ansell convinced Sepulveda to take a college placement test. He scored well and eventually enrolled in HCC, majoring in Psychology. His bigger goal was to transfer to a four-year institution, and after a tutoring session with a student at Amherst College, he knew that’s where he wanted to land; he even carried a business card with the school’s name and logo on it in his wallet, looking at it often to inspire him.
“I realized I had to see the dream to make it a reality,” he told a writer for an HCC publication not long after becoming the first HCC student to transfer to Amherst in decades.
Sepulveda’s compelling journey goes a long way toward explaining why Messner, HCC’s third president, has been named a Difference Maker for 2012. It doesn’t tell the whole story, but it hits on the overriding theme of Messner’s tenure — creating opportunities, or what he calls “pathways.”
And that work started virtually the day he arrived on the Homestead Avenue campus. Actually, it goes back further, to one of his interviews for the job, when he asked, in essence, why did a community-college campus in a city that was 41% Latino have a mere 14% of its students from that demographic?
After taking over, he went about leading efforts to do something about those numbers. Indeed, Messner has made increasing enrollment and strengthening college relationships with the Latino community one of his top priorities. During his tenure, the number of Latino students has increased 67%, and they now make up 20% of the student body, a number that is continually rising.
Such improvement stemmed from a recognized need to change the direction the school had taken for what was then more than a half-century, he said, adding that general agreement on what needed to be done made it that much easier to move forward as a campus.
“The world had changed over the course of the 50 years of the school’s history, and I think many individuals agreed that the next step in the institution’s evolution was that we had to make it more accessible to the changing population of Western Mass.,” he explained. “We had to open the doors, get off campus, and become more involved in the community than we had heretofore.”
Achieving progress in this evolutionary process is one of many accomplishments Messner can cite since his arrival, and they all contribute to his designation as a Difference Maker. Others, which in some way contribute to the big picture, include:
• The opening of the Kittredge Center for Business & Workforce Development and the emergence of that facility as one of the region’s key resources for workforce training, professional development, and personal growth, through a number of innovative programs.
• Success in the long and challenging fight to create the Picknelly Adult & Family Education Center in the old downtown fire station in Holyoke. The PAFEC is a collaboration between HCC and its partners in the Juntos Collaborative, and it provides GED preparation and testing, adult basic education, workforce-development classes, English for speakers of other languages (ESOL), tutoring, mentoring, career counseling, and other services.
• Training and Workforce Options (TWO), a unique collaboration between HCC and Springfield Technical Community College established to support the workforce-training needs of the region’s businesses and nonprofits.
• Planned expansion of the campus through the pending acquisition of the former Grynn & Barrett photo studio and converting it into a health sciences building.
• Expansion of what are known as Holyoke Community College School District Partnerships. Over the past several years, HCC has significantly grown its partnerships with area school systems in ongoing efforts to meet community needs and make the college more accessible. In particular, the college has worked closely with both Holyoke and Springfield to help them deal with the challenges of enhancing student success. Overall, HCC has two dozen public-school outreach initiatives throughout the Pioneer Valley, such as the Gateway to College program, which brings at-risk high-school students to the campus from Agawam, Holyoke, Longmeadow, Ludlow, Palmer, and Springfield.
Through these efforts and others, Messner has advanced his primary mission of creating those pathways he described, while also putting greater emphasis on the middle word in the college’s name — ‘community’ — through programs, policies, and, in Messner’s own case, leading by doing.
Indeed, he has become involved with a number of organizations and initiatives, including Wistariahurst, the United Way of Pioneer Valley, the Economic Development Council of Western Mass., the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission, the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce, Holyoke Medical Center, the Holyoke Innovation District Task Force, and others.
“I’ve spent a good deal of my time off campus involved in a variety of community endeavors, as one way of demonstrating what this institution should be all about,” he said. “Another way of doing that, beyond the president getting off campus, is the institution getting off campus. The transportation center is perhaps the most visible example of that, but so is the Ludlow Adult Learning Center, which serves a large immigrant population there. And the Kittredge Center, even though it’s on campus, is another example.
“It’s another visible manifestation of the fact that we’re here to serve the community, not just in the traditional sense that we have for 50-some-odd years,” he continued, “but in an array of ways, such as seminars, workshops, meetings, and more.”
Looking back on these efforts — and ahead to what must come next — Messner came back to those two words access and pathways, and again summoned the name Ruben Sepulveda. He’s only one of many who have been impacted by the school’s heightened focus on access and community, but he exemplifies many campus-wide strategic initiatives.
These include everything from strengthening ties to the Five Colleges, including Amherst — Messner went so far as to say that one of his unofficial goals is to change that phrase to ‘Six Colleges,’ with HCC joining the club — to bringing the demographic mix of the college more in line with the communities it serves.
And as he goes about that work, he can find some affirmation in some words Sepulveda penned in an essay at HCC years ago:
“Contrary to what most people think about underprivileged people — those with substandard education, those who are part of the cycle of mediocrity, those people we see on the bus, or dragging baby carriages with babies in tow, or just released from prison — they are not empty inside,” he wrote. “They are not content with the lives they have. They want more; they dream of more.”
For helping to carve the pathways to more, Bill Messner is truly a Difference Maker.
— George O’Brien
Officers, the Springfield Corps of the Salvation Army
Majors Tom and Linda-Jo Perks
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
Tom and Linda-Jo Perks were hardly novices when it came to disaster response last June 1, when tornadoes plowed through several communities in Western Mass.
Indeed, Tom, commanding officer of the Salvation Army’s Springfield Corps, was in Lower Manhattan only a few days after 9/11, working to provide relief to the survivors of the terrorist attacks. And his wife, Linda-Jo Perks, co-commanding officer, was in Biloxi, Miss. just after Hurricane Katrina barreled through in 2005, doing similar work.
But both told BusinessWest that there was a dissimilar feel to the relief efforts in Springfield after the twister changed thousands of lives in a matter of seconds that fateful Wednesday afternoon, a phenomenon Linda-Jo summed up quickly and effectively when she said, “it’s different when it’s your disaster.
“We were used to people telling us what to do, and we’d respond,” she continued. “But when it’s your disaster, you’re in charge, and the next morning, we just knew that the people who were isolated needed food and care — and we moved.”
Elaborating, Tom said there was a far-greater personal connection to the human side of the devastation, because responders knew some of the people who were impacted, as well as that much greater sense of ownership of the relief efforts. This sensation would, unfortunately, be repeated a few months later when a hurricane swept across Western Mass., and again in October, when a freak snowstorm cut off power to hundreds of thousands of people.
Effective disaster response in a tumultuous 2011 is only one of many reasons why the Perkses, or “the majors,” as some call them, have become part of the latest class of Difference Makers. Most all others involve issues and problems that are with the region on a constant basis — and for which the Perkses and the team they direct have crafted results-driven responses that have stood the test of time.
There are seasonal programs such as Coats for Kids, Toys for Joy, and a summer literacy program, as well as ongoing initiatives including a family reading program, tutoring services involving students from Springfield College and area high schools, teen violence and gang-prevention efforts, food pantries, and clothing assistance.
And then, there’s a groundbreaking endeavor called Bridging the Gap.
Now 15 years old, BTG, as it’s called, was created to help teenage first-time offenders become one-time offenders and get their lives back on the right path.
It does so through a 12-week program (classes are conducted three days a week for three hours a day) focusing on life skills ranging from communication to money management; from building self-esteem to goal setting.
Those who successfully complete the program and do not commit another crime within a year of that accomplishment have their criminal records expunged, “which can have a serious impact if you’re talking about college or getting a job when you’re 15,” said Tom, noting that BTG has enjoyed an 89% success rate. It has won a prestigious honor — the National Justice Department Outstanding Youth Program of the Year Award — and is now a model for many other organizations serving young people, with an average of eight to 10 groups coming to Springfield each year to see how it works.
BTG is an example, said Tom, of how the Salvation Army earns attention and headlines for its response to tornadoes and hurricanes, but the bulk of its work is “with people who come through the door each day with their own disaster.”
Reflecting on their quarter-century of service to the Salvation Army, the Perkses noted that they took different paths to the organization. Linda-Jo said her parents were Salvation Army officers, and she essentially grew up with the institution knowing she would one day be a part of it.
Tom, meanwhile, said his route to the Springfield Corps’ Pearl Street facility was more a matter of circumstance than destiny. He was 4 years old when, to try to get along with a gang of boys in his Warren, Ohio neighborhood, he let the air out of the tires of dozens of cars before he was eventually caught in the act. He remembers the police officer who escorted him home telling his mother, “you better do something with him, or he’s going to be mine.”
“She heard that the Salvation Army was a church and that it had a boys program, and we started attending, so I grew up in the Salvation Army,” said Perks, adding that, despite this, he still wandered down the wrong path. He had become involved in drugs and alcohol and was a young man without much direction or purpose in his life when another incident provided him with both. Not long after graduating from high school, he and a good friend were in a serious automobile accident. Perks was left with a fat lip, while his friend, the driver (and the straightest-laced guy in the world), was left in a coma.
“I said, ‘this is not fair; I should be the one who’s hurt really bad, not him,’” Perks recalled. “God said it wasn’t the first time it was someone else when it should have been me, and that I needed to decide what to do with the rest of my life. I considered the Salvation Army, and when other doors closed and that one opened, I walked through it.”
The Perkses met on the first day they were in seminary, and have been together virtually every day since that moment. Their pending 25th wedding anniversary and 25th anniversary of graduating from the seminary were only a few days apart.
They started their careers with the Salvation Army in the Worcester corps, and made subsequent stops in Greenfield and Pittsfield before coming to Springfield, the third-largest corps in the state.
When asked what constitutes a typical day for them, they said there is no such thing, which is what they like most about their work.
“There’s never what I would call a normal day,” said Linda-Jo. “Each day is different; you could be counseling a runaway, giving a bus ticket to a transient, helping someone whose loved one has died and needs to get to the funeral, performing a marriage, helping a child to read … you never know what you’re going to see when you come in the door.”
This was especially true in 2011, when one weather-related disaster followed another, with many families impacted by two or even three of them.
The Perkses were at their home in Agawam when the tornado carved its path through Western Mass. It missed them, but they knew from watching on television that it didn’t miss many sections of Springfield. They couldn’t get into Springfield right away, but immediately started mobilizing the organization’s resources, staff, and volunteers for a multifaceted response.
It involved everything from bringing food directly to families in the impacted areas to getting necessities to families displaced by the disaster and living temporarily in the MassMutual Center, to coordinating collections of items ranging from bottled water to diapers.
But beyond supplies, staff and volunteers from the Salvation Army also delivered counseling, support, and, quite often, a literal shoulder to cry on.
“People were trying to clean up, and they were crying,” said Linda-Jo. “It was sad, it was hard, it was moving. People just appreciated the fact that we thought about them, and it was really neighbor helping neighbor; it was people from Cape Cod sending tractor-trailer loads of supplies to the area and a Christian school taking a trip here and saying, ‘can we help you?’”
Tom has similar memories, and summed them up by saying that perhaps the most precious commodity the Salvation Army brought to victims was hope, and that’s something that’s supplied to all those who come through the door — literally or figuratively — with their own disaster.
For providing that hope, in whatever form it takes, the majors, and all those who work with them, are certainly Difference Makers.
— George O’Brien
Executive Vice President, Peter Pan Bus Lines
Bob Schwarz
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
The walls and credenza in Bob Schwarz’s office are cluttered with mementos and awards from a more-than-40-year career in business and community service — and together, they tell a compelling story.
While many of the items are individual in nature, most involve the company, Peter Pan Bus Lines, for which he has worked for more than 25 years. And that’s appropriate, because most times it’s hard to separate one from the other. And more than a few items involve occupants of the White House, or occupants in the making.
First, there’s the picture from Bill Clinton’s first inaugural parade. It shows, crossing in front of the reviewing stand, the Peter Pan bus that Clinton and key members of his election team took on the first 1,000 miles of his post-convention campaign in 1992. Schwarz was one of the company’s employees who made the trip down. Meanwhile, there are a few framed, handwritten notes to Schwarz from George H.W. Bush, dating to his days as ambassador to the United Nations in the early ’70s, when the two had become acquainted. He signed them using the nickname many knew him by: ‘Augy.’
But perhaps his most treasured item is the national Community Champion Award that he received from the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness in 2008, for which he made another trip to Washington. And there’s a story behind this one that he likes to tell.
“I didn’t take a bus this time, and I should have,” he recalled. “My wife didn’t want me to wear my suit down, so I packed it. And of course, the airline lost my luggage — and really didn’t seem too interested in finding it. The experience gave me the opportunity to know a little about what it feels like to be in a city with nothing but the shirt on your back.”
Schwarz was eventually hooked up with a clean shirt, tie, and jacket, and received his award from then-‘homeless czar’ Philip Mangano, who praised him for his efforts as part of a nationwide program to end homelessness. Locally, Schwarz told BusinessWest, that effort was not about placing people in shelters, but instead in finding them permanent housing.
“It’s been proven that putting people in shelters does not really put a stop to their being homeless,” he explained. “It’s just a stopgap; we need more permanent solutions.”
Schwarz’s work to stem the tide of homelessness constitutes one of several reasons why he was chosen as a Difference Maker for 2012. Others include his work with the United Way, the Eastern States Exposition, the New Leadership Charter School and its library, which he helped create, and especially as chair of the Literacy Works Cabinet of the Regional Employment Board.
And as he talked about these various initiatives and his involvement with them, Schwarz said he’s been helped tremendously over the years by the very positive influence of role models in the broad realm of community service. Exposure to them came through his work with the Greater Springfield Chamber of Commerce, which he served in several capacities, from manager of Government Affairs to president.
“I was this young kid managing a chamber, and I had this incredible opportunity to work with and learn from so many great business leaders,” he said. “People like James Martin at MassMutual, Wilson Brinnell at Third National Bank, Bill Janes at S.I.S., and then later Bill Clark at MassMutual, Paul Doherty [a Springfield attorney], and David Starr [publisher of the Republican]; these individuals began to instill in me a philosophy about corporate social responsibility and the responsibility of the business community to give back.”
Perhaps the most influential of these role models, however, was the man he would later go to work for, Peter Picknelly, president of Peter Pan, who was chairman of the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau when Schwarz started with the chamber and was later its volunteer president.
“There was no one more generous in giving to his city than Peter Picknelly,” Schwarz told BusinessWest. “Peter really believed in Springfield, and also in the responsibility to become active in community organizations; it was a way of life at Peter Pan.
“Peter told me that, if I ever decided to get a legitimate job, I should give him a call,” Schwarz continued with a laugh, noting that, a few years after that initial proposition/challenge, he took up Picknelly on his offer, joining the company in 1986.
Since then, he has become involved in a number of the transportation and real-estate-related ventures initiated by Peter Pan and its subsidiaries. This includes everything from the bus line’s decision in the late ’80s to take on archrival Greyhound by expanding its reach along the East Coast (there’s a framed Boston Globe business page story on this move hanging in his office) to the current efforts to revitalize the property in Springfield’s Court Square.
But amid his exploits in business, he has always devoted considerable time and energy to community service. And while this commitment to giving back has manifested itself in many ways, the two most notable have been his efforts to promote adult literacy and the fight against homelessness — and both were in many ways inspired by Picknelly.
Recalling his work with literacy efforts, Schwarz said they really started when Bill Ward, whom he hired to manage what was known many years ago as the Private Industry Council, asked him to serve on the board of what’s now called the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County. “And when you become a member of Bill’s board, you don’t just become a member; he gives you an assignment.”
And Schwarz’s was (and is) adult basic education (ABE) and English as a second language, two causes that became the focus of a project in Holyoke originally conceived by Peter Picknelly — transforming the old main fire station into a combination transportation hub and ABE center.
“It became a passion for me, and a natural when Peter Sr. decided to build the transportation center,” Schwarz recalled. “He saw this as an opportunity to do something very unique and very different, and do something that hadn’t been done before in this country, which was Peter’s style, and something that would make a real contribution.”
Meanwhile, Schwarz said his work with the homeless was in many ways inspired by views of a tent city on the route taken by the funeral procession following Picknelly’s death in 2004 — and commentary offered by Picknelly’s son, Peter.
“He said, ‘this is not the Springfield my father loved and worked all his life to build; we simply can’t have homelessness,’” Schwarz recalled, noting that he was later approached to join (and become the first chair of) then-Mayor Charles Ryan’s program to eliminate homelessness in the city, called the Housing First Initiative.
“I’ve had the chance to participate in a lot of volunteer efforts over the years, but this was one of the most challenging and interesting assignments I’d ever taken on,” Schwarz told BusinessWest. “It was a very interesting time when street and individual homelessness was on the rise, and the ULI report came out and said, ‘the city of Springfield will never reach its revitalization potential unless the issue of homelessness is dealt with.’”
Only a few years into the 10-year initiative, homelessness had been reduced by 39%, said Schwarz, adding that one of the keys to achieving such results was the creation of the Homeless Resource Center on Worthington Street, a feat he called one of the most rewarding of his life because of the economic and logistical challenges to overcome.
“The economy was lousy; this was a time when individuals were losing their jobs and businesses were cutting back,” he said. “To think that you could raise $1 million in private capital to put toward a homeless resource center is pretty remarkable. The people in Las Vegas wouldn’t have given us high odds of success, but we did it, because it was the right time and the right thing to do.”
Because of his hard work in such endeavors and track record for gaining results, Schwarz will have to make room for another item on his credenza — the plaque recognizing him as a Difference Maker for 2012.
— George O’Brien
Represented by Carla Oleska and Shonda Pettiford
Carla Oleska, right, and Shonda Pettiford.
Photo by Denise Smith Photography
Carla Oleska calls it “a full briefcase of skills.”
That’s the term she used to describe what participants in the Leadership Institute for Political and Public Impact (LIPPI) come away with beyond the certificate they’re given upon completion of the program.
Elaborating, she said LIPPI, created in 2010 by the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts, is a year-long program focused on providing participants ages 18 to 60 with the knowledge, skills, courage, and, perhaps most importantly, the confidence necessary to become civic leaders in their communities, impact policy on the local, state, and national levels, and seek and hold on to elected positions.
And the LIPPI program is perhaps the most visible example of how the Women’s Fund, which Oleska has served as CEO since 2006, has adjusted and modernized its mission in recent years to reflect changing times.
“In the beginning, we used to speak about addressing the needs of women and girls,” she explained, noting that, at the time (the mid-’90s), such needs included programs involving economic self-sufficiency, housing, domestic abuse, sexual abuse, education, and much more. “Today, when we look at this time period, what we say is that this fund builds better communities for everyone in Western Mass. by investing in the lives of women and girls. And there’s a real distinction there.
“When you look around today, our social needs are gargantuan,” she continued. “One of the most underutilized resources is the unique talents of women — underutilized because they are not sitting around the decision-making tables; they are not framing the conversations and addressing the problems and issues in our country. So today, we’re investing in their talents because we believe that the more women we begin including in those discussions around the table, the more women we put in leadership positions, the better off our communities will be.”
This important change in language and focus, as well as manifestations of it, such as LIPPI, are just some of many reasons why the Women’s Fund has been chosen as one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2012.
Another is the nearly $2 million in grants the fund has awarded since 1998 to groups ranging from the Hampden County Correctional Institute to the Global Women’s History Collaborative; from the Railroad Street Youth Project in Great Barrington to Girls Inc. in Holyoke.
But perhaps the biggest reason is the fund’s ability to adapt and evolve to remain relevant and impactful in a constantly changing society. Current Women’s Fund board President Shonda Pettiford calls this “being nimble and responsive,” and she considers it perhaps the fund’s most important character trait.
“Times are changing for women in our communities,” she told BusinessWest, “and we’re responding in part to their needs, but also to their aspirations and supporting those, and I can see us becoming more involved in work similar to LIPPI, where we’re focused on building leadership skills and ability.”
Tracing the history of the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts, Oleska said it originates with the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995.
More than 60 women from this region were at that conference, highlighted by a speech from Hilary Clinton, who said, “women’s rights are human rights,” noted Oleska, adding that the contingent, while on a bus ride back from touring the Great Wall and inspired by what they heard, discussed options for ways to bring the energy from the conference back to Western Mass.
Their answer was to create a Women’s Fund, a component of the Women’s Funding Network, which now boasts more than 160 members, or funds, worldwide. The local fund is now one of three in the Bay State, with the others serving the Boston area and the southeastern region of the Commonwealth.
From the start, the mission has been to “advance social-change philanthropy to create economic and social equality for women and girls in Western Mass. through grant-making and strategic initiatives,” said Oleska, adding that the fund deviated from the practice of building up its endowment before supporting any initiatives.
“As soon as the money they were raising started earning interest, that first board was determined to get money right out into the communities of the four western counties,” she recalled, adding that the fund topped $1 million in grants after only a decade in existence, and is just one round of awards away from the $2 million threshold.
Oleska, who was an early grantee (her organization, Step Forward, an academic-advancement program for girls, was awarded funds in 1998), said the organization is funded primarily by individual donations, the smallest of which has been $3 in change, a bequest she cites often as symbolic of the way the fund can take seemingly small gifts and aggregate them into something significant.
“When you take that $3 in change and you connect it with $3,000, the impact of that combined funding presents all kinds of opportunities for our grantee organizations,” she explained, adding that a $10 donation made directly to an organization usually won’t have the same impact as $10 given to the Women’s Fund, which then becomes part of a larger donation to that same organization.
But beyond the monetary donation, the grantee also receives a series of professional-development workshops, with the intent of helping them strategically achieve their mission, she continued — to help those organizations work smarter, not harder.
And this is one of the many ways in which the Women’s Fund goes well beyond merely writing checks, said Pettiford, and into the broad realm of creating connections.
“The Women’s Fund, for me, is very personal — there are many personal relationships formed because of it,” she explained. “The funds we allocate help programs run, and run more effectively.
“But we also form relationships with some of these organizations, and they get to understand the fund as well,” she continued. “Through the fund, they get opportunities to connect with others who are doing similar work. Meanwhile, those of us involved with the fund as volunteers and as staff also get to connect with all these people in different parts of Western Mass. who support the same concepts and ideas and have the same values.”
Which brings her back to that word investments and, more specifically, to the LIPPI program, which, in a nutshell, helps women overcome a tendency to underestimate their abilities.
It does so through monthly, full-day sessions (staged on Saturdays for convenience) that are designed to build both skills and confidence while exposing women of all ages to successful role models. These sessions focus on subjects ranging from public speaking to effective board participation, from how to speak with elected officials to citizen activism.
The results from the first year are impressive. Five of the participants have run for office or are doing so; one woman was elected to the board of her housing development, the first tenant to do so; one woman was accepted into the Yale Women’s Campaign School; and another worked on the campaign of Holyoke’s new mayor, Alex Morse.
Looking forward, Oleska has set the ambitious goal of reaching the $3 million mark in grants by the fund’s 15th birthday, and to continue to expand the organization’s reach into every corner of the four-county area. But the most compelling goal is simply to continue efforts to be nimble, another word she used repeatedly, and continue to make investments that are paying dividends, as reflected in this comment from a LIPPI graduate:
“Participation in the LIPPI cohort has essentially provided affirmation, inspiration, and permission to continue to follow my life’s work, to develop my voice, and work collectively with the women in Berkshire County and beyond.”
That’s what comes with a full briefcase of skills. For providing that — and doing much more for women, girls, and communities — the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts is truly a Difference Maker.
— George O’Brien
BusinessWest’s Program Spotlights the Many Ways People Can Make an Impact
More than 350 people turned out at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House on March 24 for a lavish ceremony to honor the Difference Makers for 2011. Attendees, including area business and civic leaders, as well as friends, family, and colleagues of the five honorees, were treated to fine food, entertainment, thoughts from event sponsors, introductions of the winners, remarks from each recipient, and an update on the ongoing initiative known as Project Literacy.
Following an hour of networking, members of the Maurice A. Donahue School in Hoyoke kicked off the formal program with several patriotic songs. The evening’s events were punctuated with words of praise for the Difference Makers and inspirational thoughts from them about ways others can and must give back to the community. “It was an incredible night,” said Kate Campiti, associate publisher and advertising manager of BusinessWest. “Our honorees showed the many ways in which one can make a difference here in Western Mass., and provided inspiration for everyone to find their own ways to make an impact on the community.”
•••••••• Click here to view images of the March 24 celebration ••••••••
Celebrate This Year’s Difference Makers on March 24
Kate Campiti, BusinessWest’s associate publisher and advertising director, says that, when the magazine created the Difference Makers recognition program more than two years ago, it did so knowing that there were many ways in which recipients could live up to that title.
And never has that been more evident than with the class of 2011, recently chosen by the magazine after receiving dozens of worthy nominations. Indeed, this year’s cast consists of:
• Pioneer Valley Planning Commission Executive Director Tim Brennan, who has kept one eye on the present and the other on the future — sometimes decades into the future — as he goes about helping to create a better quality of life for area residents and enabling this region to effectively compete in an increasingly global economy. He has many legacies, including the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority, a cleaner Connecticut River, several bike trails, and the Plan for Progress — with more on the horizon;
• The founder of Rays of Hope, Lucia (Lucy) Giuggio Carvalho. A breast-cancer survivor, she took inspiration, and some practical lessons in how to wage an effective event, from an AIDS walk in Boston led by, among others, her nephew, and created a walk that today draws more than 18,000 participants annually. In 17 years, Rays of Hope has raised more than $8 million for breast-cancer services and research, while also creating a strong show of unity in the ongoing fight against this killer;
• Don Kozera, president of Human Resources Unlimited, who, over the course of three decades of leadership, has enabled the organization to expand and evolve while remaining true to its original mission: helping individuals with mental and physical disabilities find employment and thus become productive members of society. Kozera has steered the agency though a number of fiscal and bureaucratic challenges while keeping it on course with its all-important goals;
• Robert Perry, a quasi-retired accountant who has, over the course of his career, devoted generous amounts of time, energy, imagination, and dedication to a number of nonprofit organizations, especially Habitat for Humanity. While lending his financial acumen and strong leadership and organizational skills to that agency as president and treasurer, he and his wife, Bobbi, also provided a large dose of inspiration when they committed to donating and raising $35,000 each toward the construction of a Habitat home, the building of which coincided with their 35th wedding anniversary; and
• Holyoke’s police chief, Anthony Scott, who says that his decade-long mission in that job — one that most would say he’s accomplished — has been to “increase the overhead” on criminals in that city, thus driving them out of business, or at least to another community. While doing so, he’s kept the heat on judges and probation officers to keep criminals in jail and off the streets.
“This year’s class of Difference Makers clearly show that there are, indeed, many ways to make a difference in our community,” said Campiti, noting that the award was created to highlight this fact and hopefully inspire others to find new and different ways to continue this legacy.
The class of 2011 will be honored at a gala slated for March 24 at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House in Holyoke, beginning with a networking hour starting at 5 p.m. The event will feature entertainment, butlered hors d’ouevres, lavish food stations, introductions of the Difference Makers, and remarks from the members of this year’s class.
Tickets are $50 per person, with tables of 10 available. For more information or to order tickets, call (413) 781-8600, ext. 10, or visit www.businesswest.com.
Executive Director, Pioneer Valley Planning Commission
Tim Brennan
Tim Brennan was talking about the specific skills one must possess to be a successful planner, especially a long-range planner, which is his unofficial job title.
And he focused on two traits — patience and tenacity — noting that one must have them in abundance in this arena, because some — actually, it’s more like most — initiatives don’t take a few months or years to become reality; they take a few decades, at least.
“If you get disappointed easily, and you don’t have the grit to keep coming back over and over again and make the plans work that you think should work, then you’ve picked the wrong job,” he told BusinessWest, laughing as he did so. “And it happens; some people just don’t have that demeanor for this.”
As an example of patience and tenacity, he cited work to create bike paths in the region, an initiative that dates back to when he started working for what was then known as the Lower Pioneer Valley Regional Planning Commission (LPVRPC), as the transportation planner, in 1973.
“There were none at that time, but the temperature started to change and the federal government became interested in things other than autos and transit,” he explained. “We started working on what was then the Five College Bikeway, which was a conceptual idea. Once the media-release value was gone, everyone abandoned it; but we stayed with it, and 20-something years later, I’m at the ribbon-cutting for the trail. I’m not the planner in the Transportation Department, I’m the director, and I’ve got two young daughters who are going to be able to use the Norwottuck trail.
“That’s a long time to wait for some satisfaction,” he continued, putting extra emphasis on that word ‘long.’ “But now we have these bikeway projects springing up across the area, and I think they’re really attraction amenities; they add a lot of value to communities, and when we get them to hook up with one another, they’re great assets.”
There are several other examples from Brennan’s tenure with what is now simply the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission. They include everything from Connecticut River clean-up efforts to initiatives to bring more and better rail service to the area; from work to maximize the CSX complex in West Springfield as a regional economic-development asset to efforts to promote greater regionalization in this region and also neighboring Northern Conn.
For achieving progress in these areas and, overall, for giving that grit he described earlier, Brennan has been named one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2011. Some of the work he’s led is easy to see, such as those bike trails, a cleaner Connecticut River, and a reconstructed Coolidge Bridge. But some of it is outwardly less visible, yet equally important, such as the creation in 1994 of the Plan for Progress — a blueprint for helping the Valley remain competitive in an increasingly global economy — and its many updates since.
Brennan has seemingly always been a little ahead of his time, dating to when he did his thesis at UMass Amherst on issues concerning the collection and management of solid waste, and, specifically, the need for greater recycling. “That was kind of a radical idea at the time,” he said.
While at UMass, he took part in an internship with the city of Northampton, “which at that time was as downtrodden as any city you could imagine,” and worked on solid waste and, eventually, planning issues for then-Mayor Sean Dunphey. He was part of efforts to create a new master plan and revamped zoning laws, and was there to see the very beginnings of that city’s renaissance.
After graduating from UMass, Brennan commenced a search for employment in the region and found an opportunity at the LPVRPC as transportation planner. While in that position, he led the formation of the Pioneer Valley Transit Authority (PVTA), one of many regional transit systems created by the state Legislature.
In 1980, when the directorship of the LPVRPC came open, Brennan applied, but did not get the nod. But when the individual who was chosen ultimately decided not to relocate from Illinois, another search was commenced, and this time Brennan triumphed.
When asked what’s kept him in this job for more than 30 years, working for and alongside countless mayors, selectmen, and planning and development leaders, Brennan said it’s the diversity of the work and the satisfaction that comes with overcoming the many challenges it takes to bring projects that are decades in the making to fruition.
He also likes the balance between working in both the present and future tenses.
“I tell people, and I really believe this, that one of the interesting things about planners is that you have to be bipolar in terms of your time zone,” he explained. “And I don’t know if you can quantify it, but both switches are always on because, if you can’t demonstrate that you’re relevant to the present, all your conjecture about the future gets completely tuned out.”
So when asked what the Greater Springfield area might look like in 30 years, the man who always has one eye focused at least that far down the road said there will be some recognizable changes.
“What’s going to shape the region is energy and climate change,” Brennan said. “Suddenly, it’s politically unpopular to talk about climate change, but the scientists are screaming that it’s real and we have to do something about it. A few weeks ago, the state set greenhouse-gas emission-reduction goals for 2020 and 2050. I don’t think I’ll be around in 2050, but it’s my job to start, with my colleagues, to take this seriously and try to get us ready.
“So what I see is that we won’t be on fossil fuels anymore; we’ll be running off different kinds of fuels, and we’ll need a more-compact land-use pattern — we can’t keep spreading out like we have been,” he continued. “We’ll be going back to the future in a way, where some of the places that we depopulated get repopulated, including many of the urban areas, the downtowns.”
Meanwhile, the Valley will have to focus its energies on successfully existing in one of what are projected to be a dozen or so ‘super regions,’ the one in question stretching from Philadelphia to Boston.
“We have to be connected to the Northeast mega-region, or we’re toast,” Brennan told BusinessWest. “There was a guy here 10 years ago who has a national reputation, who said that if we didn’t have firm plans and follow through on them, much of New England, including this region, could end up as a cul-de-sac, and that really stuck in my mind.
“I think the Valley has all the right building blocks to be one of those regions that can sustain itself going into all these major changes,” he continued. “That’s why we’re working on rail, that’s why we’re working on the broadband, that’s why we will be working on food security; these are all designed to put the infrastructure in place for the region to be vibrant and attractive.”
Getting to that place won’t be easy, but Brennan has the requisite personality traits — patience, tenacity, and that all-important grit — to get the job done.
— George O’Brien
Founder, Rays of Hope
Lucy Giuggio Carvalho
Lucy Giuggio Carvalho calls them her “million-dollar sunglasses.”
She found them in a bargain bin at T.J. Maxx in the summer of 2009, and knew at first sight that she had something special.
“I think I paid $2 for them; they’re pink, they’re sparkly, they’re different,” said Carvalho, who gave them their name because she thought that, by wearing them, she could help will the fund-raising walk known as Rays of Hope — which she founded after becoming a breast-cancer survivor in 1994 — over the $1 million mark for that year’s walk.
Thus far, the shades haven’t lived up to their name — the tallies for the past few walks have come tantalizing close to what is, for now, anyway, the magic number, but haven’t crossed that threshold. But Carvalho isn’t ready to give up on her latest good-luck charm.
“They’ll be back for a third year,” she said with a large dose of conviction, adding quickly that her choice of eyewear is just one of myriad decisions to make when it comes to her Rays of Hope ensemble (everything goes with pink sneakers, apparently). Indeed, over the years she has collected vast amounts of keepsakes and gifts from event organizers and fellow walkers — survivor pins and badges, scarves, T-shirts, and assorted chochkies, as she calls them. “I couldn’t wear it all,” she joked. “If I did, it would weigh me down so much I couldn’t walk.”
There are far more scientific ways of measuring just how far Rays of Hope has come in 17 years than Carvalho’s inventory of options when it comes to accessorizing for the annual walk — such as the total raised to date, more than $8 million. But there are perhaps none that are more poignant.
They show how the event has evolved into more than a fund-raiser — although it is that, first and foremost. It has become, said Carvalho, a very powerful show of strength, and unity, in a fight that’s far from over — a sobering fact that draws more individuals and teams to the starting line every year.
For creating and nurturing this show of unity, Carvalho, a former oncology nurse and currently director of case management for Jewish Geriatric Services, has been named one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2011. She said that, if she had her way, she would bring the tens of thousands of walkers and event organizers to the podium with her, because it is their collective efforts that have made the event, through the dollars it raises, a difference maker in the lives of breast-cancer victims, and a role player in the ongoing efforts to find a cure.
When asked how Rays of Hope came to be, Carvalho didn’t start with her own well-documented battle with breast cancer, which began when she discovered a lump during a self-exam. Instead, she focused on her nephew’s involvement, and also her own, in an AIDS walk in Boston several years earlier, and the very important lessons she took from it.
“I come from a family that gets involved,” she said while explaining how and why she became a participant. “And it’s from that walk that I gained a lot of the vision that I wanted to see happen here. That’s where I learned so much about how important it is, and how much you can do, if you can get a group of people who are dedicated to a cause and try to make a difference.
“They raised a lot of money, and they made it fun,” she continued. “They made it fun, exciting, and educational. While you were walking, you talked with people and learned about the disease; all that made it such a fulfilling experience that you wanted to do it again, and we did.”
To make a long and inspiring story short, Calvalho and other Rays of Hope organizers have managed to do the same with their event.
Indeed, with memories of that AIDS walk still fresh in her mind and an American Cancer Society breast-cancer walk that netted $400,000 in the pouring rain further inspiring her, Carvalho, while still recovering from her own lengthy battle with the disease, set out to create her own event.
She recruited organizers, secured a media sponsor (Channel 40), and gained commitments for startup funds. Still, many people involved with her wanted her to wait a year to get on even more solid ground. She listened to that advice, but pressed ahead with her plans for that year, and is glad she did.
“I believe to this day that, if I waited a year, it wouldn’t have happened,” she explained. “It had to happen, and it had to happen that year. I had the energy, I had the passion, I had the motivation, I had the group … the stars were aligned, and it was meant to be.”
Today, funds from Rays of Hope go in several directions. Some are put toward ongoing research, including work at the Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute in Springfield. Funds also go toward a wide range of services, including what are known as ‘complementary services’ for those battling the disease. These include yoga, Reiki, and something known as Art from the Heart.
Carvalho is traditionally assigned the task of reviewing requests in this complementary-services category, which she says has perhaps the most compelling direct impact on breast-cancer patients.
“It’s probably the most unscientific aspect of all this, but the piece that really helps people,” she explained. “It’s promoting wellness, and a way of helping people through the process.”
Over the years, Carvalho has turned over most all of the operational aspects of the walk to partner Baystate Health, employees there, and a massive team of volunteers. She describes the broad planning and execution process as a “well-oiled machine” with which she is still quite active.
She has what she considers a lifetime seat on the committee that receives and considers funding requests and ultimately rewards proceeds, and played a role in a five-year strategic plan for the walk undertaken in 2004. “Obviously, we’re overdue for another one.”
As for walk day itself, she said she has a badge (somewhat lost amid everything else she wears) that identifies her as the founder. “It gets me a parking space close to the start line,” she joked, adding that she is largely anonymous for the event itself, walking with a team from JGS and family members, and getting to meet as many new people as time and circumstances allow.
Carvalho told BusinessWest that fund-raising veterans have marveled at the longevity of Rays of Hope. “They say an event like this one usually runs its course in 10 years, and then you have to find something else. This one, though, shows no signs of slowing down; I don’t see it ending unless we find a cure for breast cancer.”
The one constant, she said, is change — in everything from the size and composition of the crowd of participants, to new wrinkles (a run and a walk in Greenfield were added for 2010), to the programs funded by the proceeds.
One thing that won’t change for 2011 is that pair of million-dollar sunglasses.
Carvalho isn’t sure what else she’ll be wearing — again, there are a lot of decisions to make — but weather permitting (and perhaps even if it doesn’t), the shades will return.
And Carvalho believes this year they will live up to their name.
— George O’Brien
President, Human Resources Unlimited
Don Kozera
Don Kozera says he applies a number of lessons from his time in teaching to his day-to-day work as president of Human Resources Unlimited (HRU).
And one of the most important dates back to his first full day at Green Mountain Union High School in Chester, Vt., and what happened after.
“The administration thought it would be an excellent idea to have the students choose their homeroom teacher,” he recalled for BusinessWest in a voice conveying no small dose of cynicism, “because if they choose their homeroom teacher they’ll be more bonded to that individual, and the teacher will become their advisor … that was the theory, anyway.
“I was a young guy right out of school, 22 years old. I coached soccer, and some of the kids thought I was a cool guy who could relate to people,” he continued. “Anyway, I had no idea what I was doing, really, but I had 300 names on my door when I arrived that first day. And then, there was this extremely experienced, but tough, science teacher across the hall from me, and she had two.”
The moral to this story? “The concept was a great one, but the execution of it just created all kinds of problems,” he explained. “That woman … she hated me for the rest of my time there, and she made my life a living hell.
“Often in management, there is great intent on the part of people like those administrators at Green Mountain Union,” he went on. “But when you put it into action, the unintended consequences of that decision were worse than having left things the way they were. By choosing their homeroom teacher, the students did bond better with the teacher — that part was true, but what they failed to realize was that they destroyed the collaboration between teachers, the sharing of information; everybody then became an island.
“That piece is something I carry with me all the time,” he continued, “and the way you apply it is that you don’t think you know the answer, and you don’t do things in isolation.”
Kozera has let that experience and many others help guide him as he’s steered HRU to continued growth and success as an organization devoted to helping mentally and physically disabled individuals find work — and, in the process, gain confidence, self-esteem, and all the other rewards that come with meaningful employment, and become productive members of society.
Since arriving in 1980 as fiscal director of what was known then as the Carval Workshop, Kozera has led the agency, which currently operates on an annual budget of $7.5 million and assists more than 1,500 people a year, on a course of expansion and evolution to where it now includes a number of working parts, including:
• A component known as Workforce Alternatives, which helps transition individuals from public assistance to the workplace through job-readiness skills, placement assistance, and ongoing support;
• Pyramid, a ‘day habilitation’ program that provides a caring environment in which individuals with developmental disabilities can enhance their physical, mental, and social competencies;
• ETS (Employment Training Support) Career Services, which provides individuals who are disabled or have developmental or other disabilities with opportunities to increase their vocational skills and find meaningful work that ranges from light assembly to sorting greeting cards bound for the Final Markdown;
• Custom Packaging, HRU’s commercial division that provides a wide range of customers with services that include light assembly, heat-sealing, shrink-wrapping, folding, collating, and mailing; and
• Four clubhouses — Lighthouse, Star Light, Forum House, and Trade Winds — that help transition members, who join on a volunteer basis, to meaningful employment.
For these efforts, as well as his recent and ongoing efforts to successfully combat what he called “mission drift,” Kozera has been named one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2011. More specifically, Kozera is being recognized for his work in leading the organization through times of change and extreme challenge.
This leadership comes in a number of forms — from successfully managing day-to-day operations to conducting long-term strategic planning, to maintaining the critical balance that is part and parcel to both of those assignments. And, overall, and to borrow Kozera’s own words, “making sure that the guiding principles of the organization are not simply words on a wall.”
When asked for his job description and the approach that he takes to everything on that list, Kozera thought for a minute and said that, at the end of the day, it is essentially to set goals for the agency and give his staff the tools and the direction to meet them.
And these goals must be realistic, he continued.
“That’s because, when people are constantly working on unrealistic goals, they become deflated, and then it becomes OK never to achieve — they just work hard, but they don’t achieve,” he explained. “You must have action phases that are really defined, timelines that are really defined, and goals that are aggressive but ultimately achievable.
“My job is to really define reality and to make sure everyone knows what that reality is and to pull people toward that vision and ensure that we stay in balance,” he continued. “Staying in balance is how you manage change.”
Kozera said that, whenever he’s looking or acting like the bureaucracy or regulatory aspects of his work are dragging him down, they’ll find some way to get him out to one of HRU’s various programs.
“They’ll call one of the managers to invite me to the program for some purpose,” he explained, “and then I’m fine. That’s when I’m reminded of exactly what I’m doing; by far the most rewarding thing for me is seeing the outcome of those programs.”
Which brings him back to that mission drift he mentioned and the need to be vigilant about allowing it to happen.
“Especially in bad times, it’s easy to get mission drift and essentially chase money, and we have not done that,” he explained. “Sometimes you’ll see agencies like ours, specializing in employment services, see a residential contract come out and say, ‘let’s do some residential work.’ Is that really their expertise? And is there a need for that? Often, they’re just trying to make their organization survive.
“We’ve remained very true to our mission, even in the tough times, and there have been none tougher than what we’re seeing now,” he continued. “We have a niche mission — our major focus is employment services; they are the tool to empowerment for us. In these times, everyone’s grabbing, and it’s not just on human services — you’re seeing painters looking at paving; people are just trying to stay in the game. We’re very conscious of mission drift and are committed to not letting that happen.”
As he goes about meeting that overriding goal, Kozera will keep in mind the lessons he’s learned over the past 30 years, and some that go back further, to those lists of names on the teachers’ doors at Green Mountain Union High School.
In short, he won’t just think he knows the answer, and won’t do anything in isolation.
— George O’Brien
Retired Partner/Consultant, Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C.
Robert Perry
Robert Perry admits that he’s not much of a handyman.
So he makes no apologies for the fact that, over the course of more than a decade’s work with Greater Springfield Habitat for Humanity, he’s probably spent three or four days “working,” at least by his estimation.
And while others would disagree with that math — they say Perry enjoys getting his hands dirty and is always ready, willing, and able to pitch in — they usually don’t quibble with his numbers, or his leadership, for that matter.
That’s because Perry’s contributions usually haven’t been with a hammer, shovel, or level, but rather with a telephone, gavel, and calculator. A quasi-retired CPA — ‘retired partner/consultant’ with Meyers Brothers Kalicka, P.C. in Holyoke, to be more exact — Perry spent an unheard-of seven years as president of the organization’s board (“I wasn’t smart enough to find a replacement”) while also serving as treasurer.
He said that, instead of framing, tiling, or putting up sheetrock, his main contributions to Habitat’s mission have come in the form of leadership, organization, fund-raising, finding and cultivating sponsors, and keeping track of the financial details.
Those who have worked with him over the years would say that he and his wife (Bob and Bobbi to those who know them) have provided something else — hefty amounts of inspiration. A large dose of it came in late 2008 when, in conjunction with their 35th wedding anniversary, they donated and raised $35,000 each toward the construction of a Habitat home in Monson.
Perry said there was a was good deal of serendipity, or symmetry, to that project — it was the 35th house built by the Greater Springfield Habitat group, and it was dedicated on Valentine’s Day in 2010. And, overall, it was an appropriate way for he and his wife to give back and celebrate all they’ve been able to enjoy together. “We’ve had a lot of good things happen in our lives.”
Meanwhile, the overall experience with Habitat has been perhaps the best example of how, through more than 30 years of work within the community — here and elsewhere — he’s sought out opportunities where the results are visible and significant. It was this way with his work at Big Brothers Big Sisters in Framingham much earlier in his professional career, and also with his recent efforts mentoring students at Putnam Vocational-Technical High School in Springfield.
“The connection I made between being a big brother and being in Habitat is being able to see the results of your efforts every day,” he explained. “When I was working as a big brother with a kid, you could see his progress — you could see his self-esteem growing, you could see him learning things that you were imparting. In Habitat, when we raised some money or when we found a family, you could see the change immediately — you could see the cause and effect of your relationship.
“That’s the essence of Habitat for me,” he continued. “We all know we’re doing good when we donate to cancer or when we take part in the breast-cancer walk, or take part in Rotary, but it’s a little more difficult to connect the dots. And that’s one of the big benefits of work with Habitat; you truly get to see that every day.”
Recapping his professional career and work in the community, Perry said they’ve dovetailed nicely. He told BusinessWest that he was always drawn to accounting work, and, after graduating from Northeastern, he went to work for Alexander Grant in Boston. After a stint as a CFO for a textile manufacturer in the late ’70s, he went to Greenberg Rosenblatt in Worcester, and later, when that firm bought an accounting practice in Springfield, he was transferred here to run that operation. After a few years as a self-employed consultant, he went to work for Meyers Brothers, which merged with the Kalicka firm in 2003.
Today, Perry is what one colleague, also semi-retired, calls a “partner emeritus.” He says he spends about 500 hours a year as a consultant — 250 during the three crunch months of tax season, and the balance spread out over the remainder of the year. The rest of his time is devoted to a few passions, but especially golf and community service.
He and Bobbi are members at Wilbraham Country Club (he’s a 16 handicapper and she’s a 20), and they play together frequently. As for the community-service piece, it’s been a career-long constant, inspired in part by Bobbi’s work with deaf children and their families.
Perry spent several years as a member of the Exchange Club that serves Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, and Wilbraham, but found he wanted to be more on what he called the “front lines” of community work. He looked for ways to address this desire, and found one when friend York Mayo, then-volunteer president of Habitat for Humanity, recruited him to look at the group’s finances.
Little did he know that he would soon work his way up to president and spend seven years in that seat, helping the organization “get to the next level” organizationally, as he put it, while also building three or four houses a year.
As for the house he and Bobbi helped sponsor for their 35th anniversary, Perry said, “sometimes, things just come together in a natural sort of way. “This was the 35th house. We saw it coming, looked at it, saw an opportunity to give back, and worked with some church groups to make it happen.”
He’s been making things happen with other organizations as well, especially the Greater Springfield YMCA, which he’s served on the corporate and finance boards, as chair of the audit board, and as co-chair of the Scantic golf tournament. He also involved with Springfield School Volunteers, and is currently in his second year of mentoring students at Putnam.
“I have a sophomore student who’s on point,” he said. “He’s a little shy; I think he’s looking for some self-confidence, and he’s looking for someone outside his family to be a role model. It’s a mini-version of Big Brothers Big Sisters, and I find it very rewarding.”
Mayo, summing up Perry’s contributions to Habitat and other groups, had this to say: “Bob has compassion for others. He converts his beliefs into action through hard work and relentless dedication. When he makes the decision to support an organization, he is the first to roll up his sleeves and get involved. He is persistent and never gives up.
“He is a critical thinker, learns quickly, and is a great listener,” Mayo continued. “His contribution to Habitat for Humanity is immeasurable. But Habitat is not the only recipient of Bob’s many talents. A partial list includes ReStore Home Improvement, the Red Cross, the YMCA, the Roger L. Putnam Technical Fund, and the Millbrook Scholars Fund for homeless high-school students.”
As for what he considers a lack of handyman skills, “I think it’s funny that I would get involved in a volunteer construction organization,” Perry joked, adding quickly that he believes he’s more than made up for that deficiency with organizational and leadership abilities.
And no one would argue with that point.
— George O’Brien
Police Chief, City of Holyoke
Anthony Scott
Anthony Scott was talking about his penchant for garnering media attention.
He insists that he’s not a publicity hound, and that newspaper headlines and broadcast sound bites “have just happened” — everywhere he’s gone, including Holyoke.
But Scott, the city’s police chief since 2001, freely admits that he tries to align himself with the press — “I meet the media on their grounds” — and use its reach to get his various messages across. “You can’t sit down and talk to 40,000 people,” he said, noting the approximate population of the Paper City, “but you can use the media to reach them.”
As for what he does with the press and how he does it, he summons a few quotes from an old Cajun friend, passed along when Scott was a young officer with the New Orleans Police Department.
“He told me to never get into a pissing contest with someone who buys their ink by the barrel, their paper by the ton, or their videotape by the mile,” Scott told BusinessWest, acknowledging that this is time-honored advice uttered by many. “He also said that, if you can’t say something kind, nice, or good, tell the truth.”
And through a 44-year career in law enforcement, that’s exactly what Scott has been doing — telling the truth. Sometimes, actually, much of the time, it comes with a little sarcasm, and more often than not it hurts those to whom he’s referring. But this certainly has never stopped the truly outspoken Scott, who will be retiring in April, from speaking his mind.
Consider these comments concerning various topics and constituencies:
On the Holyoke City Council, with which he has butted heads seemingly since the day he arrived: “It’s funny … but when an individual gets 400 or maybe 1,000 votes, they suddenly think they know more about your job than you do. I’ve only been doing this for 40-something years. I’m not trying to be a smart aleck, but I think I know a little more about law enforcement than the average politician.”
On his seemingly incessant criticism of judges for what he considers light sentences and releasing criminals on their own recognizance, and whether this campaign has made an impact: “The judiciary won’t admit it, but it has. We can see that judges are getting a little stiffer on the sentencing and bails are increasing. I’ve been a royal pain in their tuckus; they don’t like me, and personally, I don’t care. I’m here to look out for the citizens of Holyoke, and I’m going to do that until the day I walk out of this office.”
And how about this letter, which Scott wrote to the state parole board when informed that one Angel Santiago, found guilty of breaking and entering and assault on a police officer, was scheduled for a parole hearing just six days into a 60-day sentence? “Inmate Santiago hasn’t had sufficient time to adjust to the luxuries in his present surroundings within the House of Corrections before you are in a rush to push him out the door and back into the civilized community to which he has shown nothing but contempt. Once again I ask that you excuse my sense of right and wrong, but scheduling a parole hearing does not appear to be in the best interest of public safety, nor does it send a message that one must pay for the crimes they commit. Inmate Santiago is a thief, and at the young age of 21, inmate Santiago has been arraigned 11 times in the Holyoke and Springfield district courts. To even consider this rascal for parole is an insult to me, the arresting officers, and the citizens of Holyoke.”
Scott told BusinessWest that he considers such letter-writing, such telling it like it is, to be an important part of his job. He describes all of these various efforts as part of his work to be a voice for victims — and he says there are not enough of them.
“You have a lot of people out there who are very vocal about the rights of criminals, and how fairly criminals should be treated when they go to court,” he said. “There are a lot of voices out there. But not a lot of voices saying, ‘how about the victims of crime?’”
For standing up for victims and, more importantly, for making Holyoke an inhospitable place for criminals and would-be criminals, Chief Scott has made another headline, this time as one of BusinessWest’s Difference Makers for 2011.
And the chief found a little irony in the fact that he was being honored by a business publication, because he has a degree in business, and, more to the point, he approaches crime like a business.
Well, to be more specific, he says he wants to make it so criminals won’t want to do business in his city.
“If a business is operating within a city and that city continues to raise its taxes and raise its fees, and the business overhead gets to be expensive for them, they’ll relocate,” he explained. “They’ll go to another city where the taxes are lower and the fees are low enough so they can operate and make a profit.
“I look at that the same way I do at criminals,” he continued. “I try to make the overhead as high as possible; I try to wreck their drug business, I try to get fees and fines increased … and those individuals from the dark side, the attorneys, help me out a lot. They charge a great deal of money for their services. So the criminal has to pay higher attorney fees, higher fines, they lose their drugs — so they are going to seek out a city that’s not driving up the overhead. I get calls from correctional officers working in Massachusetts and Connecticut who tell me that the criminal element is telling other criminals, ‘don’t go to Holyoke — that chief is crazy.’”
Dark side?
Lawyers probably like Scott because his war on crime has created more business for them, but if they don’t, it really doesn’t matter to him. As he said, he’s told the City Council on many occasions, “I don’t do touchy-feely. My job is to remove the criminal element from the street and make the community safe.”
Scott will reach mandatory retirement age (65) in a few months, and is stepping down in April. He said his plan for life after police work — and it seems well-thought-out — is to do consulting work with police departments, handle background checks on candidates for executive positions, and similar investigatory work. He said he won’t miss the judges — and took one more shot on his way out the door, saying he’ll be extra careful in retirement “because, if I get arrested for a parking ticket, I’m going to jail” — or the city councilors. He will miss the people of Holyoke, though.
“They welcomed me into their community and made me feel at home,” he said, adding that he’s not quite sure what retirement will bring for him.
Probably more of what he’s been doing all along: telling the truth.
— George O’Brien
John Davis, senior trustee of the Davis Foundation, and Mary Walachy, executive director
John Davis, senior trustee of the Davis Foundation, and Mary Walachy, executive director.
Mary Walachy called it “extemporaneous philanthropy.”
That was the phrase she chose to describe Irene E. Davis’s approach to giving back to the community — at the least the model she used for most of her life.
An orphan for much of her childhood, Irene — who married George A. Davis, first a salesman for American Saw & Mfg. and then owner of that company — was, later in her life, very generous when it came to donating money to groups that would help those less-fortunate, especially children, said Walachy, executive director of the foundation that bears the Davis name. However, there was little, if any, structure or organization to her giving, she continued, noting that donations were often in cash and given at the spur of the moment.
To illustrate the way in which Irene was “personally philanthropic,” Walachy relayed a story from around 1970 that she’d heard many times, knew she couldn’t retell as well as Davis family members, but tried anyway.
It seems that Irene Davis had become impressed with the work of Downey Side (the adoption agency that was started in Springfield and now has offices across the country), and stopped by the offices of its founder, Father Paul Engel, to find out more. After listening to him for some time, she got out her checkbook and wrote him a check — for $30,000.
“But he didn’t even look at it to see how much it was for,” Walachy explained, noting that Engel was being polite, but also didn’t know Davis and wasn’t at all sure of who was dealing with. “He just put in his desk drawer. When he took it out later, he was shocked; he thought, ‘this is a crazy lady,’ or ‘she doesn’t know what she’s doing … this is going to bounce.’ He didn’t even take it to the bank.
“The next morning, she calls him, and he thinks, ‘here it comes,’” Walachy continued. “She said, ‘this is Irene Davis. I gave you a check yesterday — how much was it for?’ When he told her the amount was $30,000, she said, ‘I’m sorry, I meant to make it $50,000; I’ll be down later with the other 20.’ He said he never had a day like that in his career and that this was such a poignant moment in his life.”
It wasn’t long after this episode, according to family lore, that Irene Davis’s son, Jim, recommended that she form a foundation to bring some order to her philanthropy, to keep records of which groups were sent money and to perhaps monitor whether money was spent in the manner intended, said Walachy. At first, she refused, thinking such a step was mostly about taxes and gaining deductions, which she wasn’t interested in. But when Jim told her it was a way for her to keep on giving to the community long after she passed on, she eventually agreed.
And so the Irene E. and George A. Davis Foundation was born, with an initial $350, and for 40 years, its giving has been anything but extemporaneous — although it can act swiftly and with great flexibility, said Walachy, adding, quickly and repeatedly, that this institution exists to do much more than simply award grants, or give.
Instead, she told BusinessWest, the foundation also initiates, convenes, unifies, collaborates, finds facts, analyzes, tests, evaluates, advocates, and more. And what it’s really doing through the sum of all this is “causing change,” she continued, especially in the broad realm of early-childhood education and development.
“The majority of our time and attention is absolutely local,” she explained, “and with a significant lens in education and particularly the passion around ensuring that children, especially those in the urban core who are disadvantaged, reach their full academic potential in order to be successful in both school and in life.
This focus on education, young people, and causing change, as she put it, is part of what Walachy called a “maturation” of the Davis Foundation — something that has dominated her time with the organization, which started in 1996, and which is still very much ongoing. And it’s part of her efforts to adopt best practices involving many of the leading foundations in the country, and also be far more proactive than reactive when it comes to philanthropy.
“As we’ve grown and matured over the years, we have realized that, in order to be impactful, we need to be somewhat more strategic,” she continued, noting efforts such as the foundation’s Cherish Every Child program and its Reading Successfully by the Fourth Grade program. “And that strategy is largely in the broad rubric on education and investments in young children, because we firmly believe that investing early is where we get the greatest return.”
However, the foundation understands that resources are limited in Western Mass., and that there are simply not as many charitable foundations here as there are in Boston, she went on, adding that funds are also awarded to groups that assist the elderly, the mentally challenged, and many other constituencies.
When asked to list just some of the groups to which the foundation has awarded grants over the years, Walachy thought for a minute, shook her head, and then said, “just about every nonprofit group in this area.”
But, again, she said that giving money is only a part of the equation. In recent years, a perhaps-bigger part is that ability to convene, which is part of the maturation process, and something made possible because the Davis Foundation supports so many nonprofit groups.
“In order for us to advance and move some of the social-change issues that we care about, we need to lend our name, we need to lend our voice, we need to use our convening power, and we have to use our credibility,” she told BusinessWest. “That is more powerful, in my estimation, and we’ve come to see that come true as we’ve stepped out in a leadership role around change issues.”
Walachy noted that, while one can see the Davis name on a few plaques or walls across the region — the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Baystate Children’s Hospital is one example — this family isn’t big on having things named after it.
“People will say, ‘if you give us $1 million, we’ll put your name on the building,’” she said. “That’s not an incentive for us.”
Rather, the real incentive comes in getting a chance to be impactful, to cause change, which is how it chooses to serve the region and carry on the work of Irene and George Davis.
The family’s methods of philanthropy have changed considerably since Irene’s cash gifts and random check-writing. But the impact is still the same. The foundation is still making for the best days in many nonprofit administrators’ careers, and creating innumerable poignant moments in their lives.
—George O’Brien
President and CEO of the Center for Human Development
Jim Goodwin says that too many people, especially some in the business community, look upon human services work as a “drain.”
As he uttered that word, he paused for a second, as if to convey that maybe it was too strong a term, but then forged ahead, convinced that it wasn’t.
“They understand that it’s a service, and they see some value in it,” he explained. “But they look at it as an expense, and not as a benefit, not as an investment. They’ll say, ‘I’m glad someone’s doing it, but I wish we didn’t have to pay for it.’ They don’t realize that, in many ways, this is something that benefits their employees, and, therefore, it benefits them as business owners.”
In many respects, Goodwin’s work as president and CEO of the Springfield-based Center for Human Development (CHD) boils down to changing those perceptions he described. And it is because of his success in convincing others that programs in areas ranging from disability resources to the mentoring of young people; from homelessness prevention to post-incarceration services, are, in fact, investments in the community, Goodwin — and, ostensibly, the 1,300-member team he manages — is a member of the Difference Makers Class of 2010.
And Goodwin, who has been with CHD for 30 years, or almost from its beginnings in 1972, repeatedly stressed this element of teamwork as he talked about his organization’s work with children, adults, the elderly, the mentally retarded, the mentally ill, and the chemically addicted — or what he called “probably the most downtrodden people out there.”
Together, members of this team carry out programs that fall into several categories, including:
• Children & Families, which includes such initiatives as Big Brothers Big Sisters, CASA (court-appointed special advocates), an emergency adolescent shelter, foster care, and many others;
• Community Resources and Services, including a disability-resource program, an HIV/AIDS law consortium, and occupational-therapy initiatives;
• Homelessness Prevention, which encompasses a number of programs;
• Mental Health and Addiction Services, which includes child and adolescent mental-health services, outpatient and behavioral-health services, therapy and counseling, and many other programs; and
• Social Enterprises, which are entrepreneurial programs, such as A New Leaf flower shop and Riverbend Furniture, that offer real jobs to people with mental illness, developmental disabilities, or histories of trauma, abuse, or addiction that often keep them from working in traditional settings.
Summing up all of this work within CHD, the largest nonprofit, multi-program human services agency in New England, in a few moments or a few sentences is quite difficult, so Goodwin talked generally about the sum of the dozens of specific programs within the organization.
He said that, collectively, they help to make people with various physical and mental disabilities productive members of society, and not drains, as they are often perceived. “When you help people to the point where they’re employable, where they can work and get things done, and where they no longer look upon themselves as a burden, everyone’s a winner.”
This is accomplished — again, in broad terms — by creating what Goodwin described as “hybrid services” a term he would use repeatedly as he talked with BusinessWest, because it is the cornerstone of CDH’s basic operating philosophy.
And by hybrid, he means a combination of clinical and social services.
“Today, a successful human-services agency has to be able to operate a continuum that deals with the social issues that people are confronted with, along with the medical issues,” he explained. “If you’re providing counseling, psychiatry, and nursing services to people who don’t have a roof over their heads and don’t have enough to eat, you’re not going to get anywhere.”
Goodwin, who brings to his work master’s degrees in both psychology and business — a mix he says has proven quite effective — has a number of accomplishments attached to his name and title of CEO at CHD:
• Fiscally, he’s maintained and improved the financial health of the organization over the past several years, leading the agency to 21% growth and a total surplus of $540,000;
• He’s overseen the development of a sophisticated database that measures treatment and programmatic outcomes and that serves as a reporting tool to funding sources and stakeholders;
• He’s developed an electronic quality-assurance system that allows programs and corporate administrative services to provide performance feedback to each other on a monthly basis;
• He developed supported-housing models in the early 1980s that were duplicated nationally and led to major expansion and distinction for CHD; and
• Overall, he’s developed an extensive system of creative client businesses that produce high-quality products, teach vocational skills, and provide jobs to hundreds of clients in a rehabilitative atmosphere.
But he told BusinessWest that what he considers his greatest accomplishments are building CHD into one of the region’s largest, and best, employers — one with a 95% retention rate among management-position holders, a remarkable number in the human-services industry — and ongoing work to take that word ‘drain’ out of the lexicon when it comes to work his team does.
And the workplace element is vitally important to the equation, he explained, returning, again, to that notion of teamwork.
“You need a highly motivated workforce,” he explained. “You must create a situation where people are excited about the work, and where they understand how it fits in with improving the society that they live in and the city where they live.”
As an example of the work CHD does, how it does it, and why this work is so challenging — and frustrating from a funding perspective — Goodwin pointed to an initiative called PACT, or the Program for Assertive Community Treatment. Unfortunately, this is a program for which the state recently cut funding.
“That’s a program that basically serves people in Springfield and Holyoke who are severely mentally ill and have had tremendous difficulties,” he said. “They’ve been hospitalized many times, incarcerated, that sort of thing, and have been a real strain on the community.
“This program was set up with a team of workers, including a psychiatrist, nursing staff, a vocational specialist, a housing specialist, peer specialists … and these people take the service into the community,” he continued. “They have kept these people functional and outside the institutions — the hospitals and the jails — at an incredible rate. To keep someone in this program for 365 days a year costs $15,000; without it, these people would have four or five major hospitalizations a year, at a cost of $600 to $800 a day. Anyone can do the math, and that’s how it works with all of our programs.”
Recognizing the need to become visible within the community and to allow people to more easily answer the question ‘what does CHD do?’ the agency recently hired a marketing firm to create a new profile-raising brand. It includes the tag line, ‘CHD — good people, good work.’
That’s another way of saying that that this organization — and its long-time CEO — are true Difference Makers.
—George O’Brien
Diffrence Makers
Their contributions to the community vary, from work to transform elder care to donations of time, energy, and imagination to a host of nonprofit agencies; from philanthropy that far exceeds grant awards to work to improve the lives of some of the most downtrodden constituencies in our society; from multi-faceted efforts to spur economic development in the region to simply inspiring others to find ways to make an impact. They are the Difference Makers Class of 2010. Their stories are powerful and compelling.
Ellen Freyman
Shareholder with Shatz, Schwartz and Fentin, P.C.
Ellen Freyman was talking about her family’s work mentoring and tutoring members of a Somali family now residing in Springfield through the help of Jewish Family Services. She spoke proudly of the time and effort that she, her husband, Richard, and sons Neal and Stephen were putting into this initiative, and said she firmly believed they were improving the quality of life for this family of five.
But she also conveyed a strong sense of frustration and concern that speaks loudly about how she approaches her voluminous work within the community and explains why she’s a member of the Difference Makers Class of 2010.
The Somalis, who were raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, speak in a patchwork of languages and dialects, and have serious trouble reading and writing in any language, including what amounts to their own, said Freyman. “This makes it even more difficult for people to try and teach English to these kids, because they don’t know what word to use to correlate to what they know,” Freyman explained. “If you say ‘tape recorder,’ they don’t know which word to pull out of what language to say ‘tape recorder’ in Somali, or Kenyan, or whatever.”
Freyman first met with Springfield teachers and principals, and later with Superintendent Alan Ingram, to discuss the problems facing not only ‘her’ Somali family, but others, as well as young people speaking other languages who are seemingly thrust into classes in the city’s high schools where other students are reading Hamlet and Of Mice and Men. As a result, a task force has been created to assess the problem and recommend possible solutions.
But that group’s work probably won’t happen soon enough to help of the oldest of the children in the family the Freymans are working with. He’s now 19 (at least that’s the best guess), and he will need literacy skills if he is to get a job.
Unfortunately, the waiting lists for adult-literacy programs in the area are so long that some people don’t even bother trying to apply. So Freyman, in addition to her one hour a week of mentoring and involvement with that aforementioned task force, is working to find a solution to the literacy-class problem.
“I’m trying to bring a coalition of people together to work on this, to bring some attention to the problem of adult literacy and to get more classes,” she said, acknowledging that there won’t be any easy answers to this one. “We have resources in the community; people just have to be creative. Things don’t always fit in a box — sometimes you have to figure out how to work outside the box.”
Being creative and thinking outside the box is how Freyman, a principal with the Springfield-based law firm Shatz Schwartz and Fentin, P.C., goes about her work with a long list of organizations, ranging from the Dunbar Community Center to the Community Music School; from the Springfield Jewish Federation to the Springfield Technical Community College Foundation.
Her bio on the law firm’s Web site lists more than a dozen nonprofits and initiatives to which Freyman has lent her name and time. But that’s just part of the story. The energy, imagination, and outside-the-box thinking that she takes to not only these assignments, but projects she’s initiated, are other big parts.
For example, there’s her work to create a group called On Board Inc., which works with area boards to help them achieve not only diversity, but also cultural sensitivity.
It all started in the early ’90s, or not long after Freyman began her work within the Greater Springfield community with such groups as Jewish Family Services, the Springfield Library & Museums, StageWest, and others.
“I was able to get on a lot of nonprofit boards, but I came to realize that, with the chambers and business boards and economic councils, many of them weren’t open to women,” she explained. “And it wasn’t because they were keeping women out, it was because they didn’t know women who were qualified to be on these boards.”
So she collaborated with a few other women to create a name bank of sorts with such qualified women, and then approached banks, hospitals, and other organizations to use that resource when filling seats.
“We met with various board representatives and nominating committees, and said, ‘we know you want your board to be more diversified, but you just don’t know how to do it, and you don’t know who’s out there.’ We met with college presidents, hospital CEOs, and banks, and within a year we had great success; we had a lot of women on these boards.
“And very soon after we started, it was our mission to get not just women on these boards, but all non-represented groups,” she continued. “I saw that it wasn’t just women that were absent, but also people of color; boards didn’t look like our community, and they needed to.”
The work with On Board Inc. exemplifies the approach Freyman says she takes with her work in the community — to look beyond her own basic assignment (attending a meeting or two a month) and to look for ways to, well, make a real difference.
Returning to her work with the Somalis, for example, she said she’s working together with others to create a soccer team that will compete against other clubs in the region; she’s agreed to be its manager. With an assist from Go FIT founder (and 2009 Difference Maker) Susan Jaye-Kaplan, with whom she runs most mornings, Freyman was able to secure 36 new pairs of cleats from Boston-based Good Sports Inc. She’s also received donations of soccer balls, but she’s looking for help with arranging contests and getting the Somalis to games and practices, either through rides or donations of bicycles.
In other words, she’s looking for more people willing to think — and work — outside the box.
That’s part of being a Difference Maker. —George O’Brien
Carol Katz
Chief Executive Officer of Loomis Communities
Upon hearing that more than a few of the many people who nominated her for the Difference Makers Class of 2010 wrote that she “transformed care for older adults,” Carol Katz chuckled before saying that she found such language flattering, if also a little excessive.
“I would hardly call myself transformational, but that is a term that’s used in our industry in some ways,” said Katz, CEO of the South Hadley-based Loomis Communities, before quickly acknowledging that she obviously played a lead role in that organization’s drive to stay atop — and well above — the curve when it comes to adopting the more-patient-centered model of care now being embraced across the country (more on that shortly).
“And besides,” she continued while explaining this concept and why and how it was incorporated at Loomis, “I certainly didn’t do it all by myself. It’s been a total team effort.”
Elaborating on the patient-centered model, Katz said that, as the name suggests, it puts the patient at the center of care initiatives. As logical as that sounds, she told BusinessWest, until about a decade ago, the staff at long-term-care facilities such as nursing homes was in the center, in the so-called ‘patient-care’ model.
“Traditionally, care has been provided in a very institutional way, and nursing homes in particular, like hospitals, are staff-driven, with things done for the convenience of the institution and as far from home life as it can possibly be,” she explained. “There’s been a movement afoot for some years now, in nursing homes but also other facilities, to really change the culture to what they call person-centered care.
“It’s not enough just to make it more home-like,” she continued. “It’s placing the patient at the center of the care, not the staff. Instead of bringing in extra people on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and that’s when everyone gets their showers, you ask the patient, ‘do you like to take a shower or a bath, and would you like it in the morning or the evening? It’s not what’s convenient for the staff; it’s what the patient wants.”
As a result of the teamwork Katz mentioned, Loomis Communities became one of the first institutions of its kind to receive state grants to implement this new way of providing care, and Loomis House was just the second nursing home in North America to receive person-centered-care accreditation.
But these transformational efforts comprise just one of the realms for which Katz has been called a Difference Maker. Others include her work to expand the Loomis Communities, her service to innumerable nonprofits in the area, and her ongoing efforts to create a culture of giving back at all of the Loomis facilities.
When she arrived in 1989 after stints with skilled-nursing facilities in Wisconsin and Agawam, Loomis had one facility — Loomis House in Holyoke — with a second, Loomis Village, under construction.
Recognizing the need to continually expand to better meet its mission, but also understanding that new construction wasn’t (and still isn’t) needed because of demand levels, Loomis has grown through acquisition.
The first such move was Applewood in Amherst, and the second was Reed’s Landing in Springfield, the bankrupt facility that was acquired late last summer. There, Katz has led a change in the fee model that has put that facility within reach of far more area residents.
While expanding Loomis Communities and changing its model of care, Katz has also volunteered her time, energy, and expertise to organizations ranging from the Holyoke Chamber of Commerce to PeoplesBank; from Westfield State College to her synagogue; from the United Way to the Holyoke Rotary Club.
She says she finds nonprofit governance to be “fascinating,” and, over the years, became very interested in the subject of nonprofit management, while becoming what she called a “board junkie.” However, she says she limits her work, and the number of ‘yeses’ given those who ask her to serve, to areas that have relevance to her professionally or personally, “or something I think I can help make a difference.”
And she has made giving back to the community part of the culture of life at all of the Loomis communities. Indeed, residents have contributed to a number of causes and charitable events. For example, they have sold decorative Valentine’s Day cookies to benefit the American Heart Assoc.; sold daffodils and participated in the Relay for Life for the American Cancer Society; walked, raised money, and sold more than 183 dozen blueberry muffins to benefit the Alzheimer’s Assoc. Memory Walk; staged blood drives for Cooley Dickinson Hospital, Mercy Medical Center, and the American Red Cross; sold Brightside Angels at the Holyoke Mall; and wrapped gifts for the hospice program of the Holyoke Visiting Nurse Assoc.
“Our five-year strategic plan has five focus areas, and the first one is community integration, and that means both having events on our campuses that bring the public in and engaging our residents in the broader community,” she said, noting that many residents in each Loomis facility are from the community in question. “Just because you move from an address in South Hadley to Loomis Village doesn’t mean you stop being a citizen of South Hadley.
“We’re involved — and one of the reasons I’ve gotten involved with so many civic organizations over the years is because it’s the right thing to do; it’s the way I was brought up,” she continued. “We rely on the community to give us residents and give us services, and we owe back to the community.”
The sum of all this work across several different fronts prompted the many who nominated Katz — a group that included some who work with her at Loomis, a few of the organization’s board members, others who serve with her on boards and commissions, and some who simply admire her work — to stretch their vocabularies and find phrases such as these:
- “She has the uncanny ability to recognize the most important issues and figure out logical and effective ways to deal with them.”
- “She does not just volunteer; she always seems to rise to leadership positions that place enormous demands on her time.”
- “There are those who lead because they can; Carol Katz leads because she must.”
- Carol is known across Massachusetts and the entire industry for her tenacity, leadership, and progressive ideas, and I am certain that we have seen only a glimpse of her vision.”
- “With Carol’s wise direction, Loomis’ promotion of well-being of its residents has been matched by its contribution to the economy of the region.”
- “She inspires me.”
That last writer probably spoke for everyone who has worked with Katz in any of the many settings in which she has made a difference. —George O’Brien
UMass Amherst and Chancellor
Robert Holub
Robert Holub says that, as what’s known as a land-grant institution — one of several dozen colleges and universities created on federally owned land — UMass Amherst has certain responsibilities to meet with regard to this region and its residents.
Originally, they centered on the teaching of agriculture, science, and engineering, Holub, who became chancellor of the university in the summer of 2008, explained, adding that, over the past century and a half or so, these duties have evolved and now extend beyond the realm of pure academia and into the broad area of economic development.
In recent years, and particularly since he arrived, the university has been increasingly focused on going beyond what’s been legislated, he continued, and more toward what might be expected (and more) from a school that has 25,000 students and is one of the leading research institutions in the state.
“We consider ourselves a citizen of Western Mass., and with that, we have special obligations to this region, and we’ve been trying to act on those responsibilities,” he continued, adding that such efforts involve the entire region, but especially the city of Springfield, the unofficial capital of Western Mass. and a municipality that, like many former manufacturing centers, is trying to reinvent itself.
Efforts to assist Springfield and the region come in a number of forms, and together — coupled with the hope and expectation for more in the future — they have placed the university in the Difference Makers Class of 2010. These initiatives include:
* The Pioneer Valley Life Sciences Institute, or PVLSI, a collaborative effort with Baystate Health to fuel growth in a fledgling biosciences sector;
* A recently announced project to move the university’s Design Center into one of the buildings in Springfield’s Court Square, a relocation expected to help create more vibrancy in the city’s central business district, help existing service businesses, and spur new ones;
* A planned high-performance computing center in Holyoke, a much-heralded undertaking involving a partnership that includes several other colleges and universities, including MIT and Boston University, as well as private industry. The UMass system as a whole is a lead partner in the project, said Holub, but many of those laying the groundwork for the center are based on the Amherst campus;
* The Precision Manufacturing Regional Alliance Project being undertaken with the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County and the local chapter of the National Tooling and Machining Assoc. to transfer technology from two departments at the university (Polymer Science and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering) to area precision manufacturers; and
* Work with the Springfield school system to attract talented students to UMass Amherst with the hope that they will stay in the region and contribute to its growth and prosperity.
“Instead of giving them fish, we want to give them the fishing pole,” Holub said of the initiative involving Springfield schools, one based on a pilot program now being developed with the city of Chelsea. “We would like to be able to attract the best and brightest students from Springfield to come to UMass Amherst, get an education here, and then go back to their community and assist with development.
“We are, primarily, an educational institution; that’s what we do best,” he continued. “And we think that establishing a greater pipeline with the city of Springfield will enable us to help that community more than any one single program.”
Since his arrival, a few months after Domenic Sarno was elected mayor in Springfield, there has been more communication between the university and the city, or what Holub called a true dialogue. And from those discussions came the agreement to create a presence in downtown and, specifically, Court Square.
“The mayor has engaged us in conversations since I arrived here about the revitalization of Court Square, and we see that as something that’s necessary for the city,” he said. “And we’ve tried to fit in any way we can given the budget constraints we’re facing.”
The school is already looking at ways to expand and enhance its presence within the city, he added, noting that administrators are looking to possibly move some backroom operations from Amherst and Hadley — where office lease rates are comparatively higher than in most area communities — to Springfield in moves that would help the city while also saving the university some money.
The importance of efforts to assist Springfield has been underscored by Holub’s move to appoint to John Mullin, dean of UMass Amherst’s graduate school and a regional planner, as ‘point person’ for the broad initiative. His role will be to keep the lines of communication open, make needed connections within the city, and continue the current dialogue.
“He knows what needs to be done in terms of urban development,” said Holub, adding that Mullin now dedicates a certain amount of time to the Springfield partnership, and his work has helped to move specific projects, ones that provide win-win scenarios, from the drawing board to reality.
“We’re not a granting agency — we don’t have $2 million that we can just give to Springfield,” he explained. “We have to look for areas in which there’s mutual benefit, and we’ve been able to find quite a few of those.”
And while Holub is encouraged, and excited, about current efforts taking place in the realm of economic development, region-wide and especially in Springfield, he fully expects the university to expand and diversify such initiatives when the economy improves sufficiently for it to do so.
“If we didn’t have this severe economic downturn, I certainly believe that we could be doing more than we are,” he explained. “But we are doing things, and they reflect those responsibilities we feel we have to this region.
“The proof of the pudding is in the eating, as they say,” he continued, “and we’ve tried to do things that are going to bring palpable results for the western part of the state and make some modest investments where we can to back up the talk.
“And those investments are often less in terms of actual dollars — although, with something like PVLSI, it does take an actual cut out of our budget,” he continued, “and more in terms of people and ideas, and with our own ability to lobby industries and individual companies to come here, and assist with those efforts.”
Those are the things that might be expected from such a prominent citizen of Western Massachusetts.
—George O’Brien
Founder of GoFIT and Co-founder of Linked to Libraries
Susan Jaye Kaplan, right, with Janet Crimmins, with whom she partnered to create Linked to Libraries.
Susan Jaye-Kaplan had been on a first-name basis with Reebok Founder and CEO Paul Fireman, but she had to introduce herself to his successor, Uli Becker.
At least she thought she did.
Kaplan called Becker a few months ago (and several months after Adidas acquired Reebok, prompting changes at the top) because she needed a donation — a big donation — of sneakers for the nonprofit group she founded in 2005 called GoFIT. When she got him on the phone, she started telling him about herself and GoFIT, but quickly stopped. “I told him that, if he needed to, he could go into the files and look me up,” she told BusinessWest, adding that she was informed that such research wasn’t necessary; at that company and many others, the name, the organization, and the mission are well-known.
“I told him I needed 1,000 pairs of running shoes, and gave him specific sizes,” said Kaplan. “All he said was ‘when?’ I told him a week. He said, ‘you’ll have them.’ Not bad for someone he’d never spoken to before.”
Indeed, but then again, few people have ever really said ‘no’ to Kaplan. That’s because, when she calls or writes requesting something, there is good reason and a good cause — or causes — to which she has devoted time, energy, money, and imagination.
All of this, plus a unique ability to inspire others to find and carry out ways to give back to the community, makes her a Difference Maker.
In the case of GoFIT, the cause, as the name suggests, is fitness and introducing young people to that concept. The children are given sneakers, caps, T-shirts, and, more importantly, a game plan and some inspiration for getting into shape and staying in shape, through programs that convince participants that they have to walk before they can run — literally.
Thousands of area young people have taken part in GoFIT programs, which remain popular, despite the fact that many other organizations have borrowed from the concept, in what Kaplan considers the proverbial ‘greatest form of flattery.’
By early last year, the organization’s scope and reach had grown to such an extent that Kaplan considered it necessary to turn the reins over to an entity that had the resources and drive to handle the operation.
She and other board members found one in Square One, the Springfield-based but regional early-childhood education provider, which ‘acquired’ the GoFIT name and assets last year in what has been called a classic win-win scenario.
Kaplan remains active with GoFIT as board member, chief fund-raiser, and liaison to Reebok and other corporate supporters, as detailed earlier. But she apparently had some free time on her hands.
To fill it, she and a friend, Janet Crimmins, partnered to create another program that’s making a difference. It’s called Linked to Libraries, which collects new books and donates them to elementary schools across the region that are populated largely by the children of low-income families.
It all started when she read a story in the local paper about how Springfield’s White Street School in Springfield might have to close for — among other reasons — the fact that there weren’t enough books in the library. “I thought to myself, ‘I can fix this, in some small way,’” said Kaplan, adding that she E-mailed every member of a group she formed called the Good Reads Book Club (an organization for people too busy to join a traditional book club) and asked for donations of specific books — those recommended by Crimmins, a speech and language specialist for the city of Springfield.
“This is no exaggeration … in 11 days I had 51 hard-cover books sent to my house,” she said, adding that she and Crimmins, inspired by this success, expanded the mission. “I thought, this is a no-brainer. I can get people and corporations to donate books and help ease the problem — not solve it, just make it easier to solve.”
The program, which distributes 100 new books twice a month and will expand to three times a month this spring, has caught the attention — and won the support — of area businesses and institutions ranging from a karate school in Suffield, Conn. to Wilbraham Monson Academy; from Meyers Brothers Kalicka to Rediker Software; from Bank of Western Mass. to area high-school key clubs.
Which is good, because the demand for books is great.
“We’ve been inundated with requests from schools,” she explained, listing a number of area communities. “We’re spinning as fast as we can, but we’re not spinning fast enough; there are so many organizations and schools that need books.”
When asked what drives her in these various ventures, Kaplan returns to her youth. An orphan, she told BusinessWest that she knows what it’s like to be underprivileged; she was on her own and on the streets before graduating from high school.
She said her life was changed by a mentor named Lippman Hart Geronimus, a bacteriologist at Beth Israel Hospital who gave her a job, but also something ultimately far more valuable — a philosophy to live life by.
“He made me say the same thing every day — that I can do anything and be anything I want to be as long as I remain focused, hard-working, challenged, and honest.”
Those are the traits still propelling her today. And while Kaplan’s various endeavors have enriched the lives of thousands of young people, they’ve also enriched hers as well.
“I’m far from a millionaire, but I feel like I’ve hit the jackpot,” she told BusinessWest. “I have a good life, I’m in good health, and I have an opportunity to give back to the community.”
And while she doesn’t seek out attention or recognition for efforts, she’s reached a point where she’s become one of those individuals who really doesn’t need an introduction — not with Uli Becker, or with most of the business and civic leaders in Western Mass.v
— George O’Brien
President and CEO of Peoples Bank
Doug Bowen
Carol Katz says Doug Bowen possesses what she calls a strong moral compass.
By that, she meant that the president and CEO of PeoplesBank in Holyoke has a sound sense of direction when it comes to giving back to the community and the manner in which those contributions are carried out by the bank and by Bowen himself.
And, as president of the Holyoke-based Loomis Communities and one who is very active in that city, Katz should know.
Bowen has served on her board for years and was a corporator before that, and she now sits on the banks board. Meanwhile, theyve served together on the board of the Greater Holyoke Chamber of Commerce. Thus, Katz has seen the time, energy, and insight that Bowen brings to a host of nonprofits he serves personally Holyoke Community College and the Economic Development Council of Western Mass. are on that list, among others. And shes also seen first-hand the tone he sets at the bank one that takes a number of forms.
These range from a strong philanthropic platform the bank ranked 52nd among all state businesses in the Boston Business Journals list of largest charitable contributors to a strong leadership position when it comes to lending to green businesses and sustainable-energy-related ventures. And then, theres simply the direction hes providing the bank in terms of growth and profitability.
He has his priorities straight, said Katz, summing things up neatly and with conviction. He feels strongly about his responsibilities and the banks responsibilities to be a leader within the community and you dont always see that among business people and in the banking industry today.
Its been this way since Bowen joined PeoplesBank 33 years ago as a teller in its management-development program soon after graduating from college. He remembers working at the High Street main office, cashing checks for hundreds of uniform-clad factory workers and giving them back large sums of cash.
That was back in the days before direct deposit, ATMs, and debit cards, he said. People would just come and cash their checks.
Holyoke and the banking industry have changed considerably over the past three decades, as have the titles on Bowens business cards (I think Ive had every position in the place), but his moral compass hasnt. And that no doubt played a role in his ascension to president two and a half years ago, succeeding Joe Lobello.
Ive been very fortunate Ive had a number of careers, but all with the same organization, he said. Ive been on the finance side, the lending side, and the retail side. Thats kept it interesting and challenging.
Bowens community-focused business philosophy prevails at the bank, said Katz, as does a management style she says is grounded in the tenets detailed by Jim Collins in his popular business book Good to Great.
Hes the kind of leader who puts the organization first, said Katz. He builds consensus with his team; he respects his team, and the team respects him. He does whats right.
Recently, Bowen has steered the bank toward that leadership position with regard to green lending, for lack of a better term. There is even something called a green team.
Membership includes virtually every department in the bank, and, from a business perpesctive, efforts range from recently approved loans for small-scale wind-power projects (the bank has by far the largest wind-power portfolio in the region) to a partnership with the Holyoke Gas & Electric Department to develop and expand hydro-electric facilities, and lending to parties working to develop brownfield sites in the region. Internally, the team is working to reduce energy consumption, curb the use of paper, and take other steps that would fall under the category of going green.
Meanwhile, the tone hes set has enabled PeoplesBank to move steadily higher on the BBJs largest-charitable-contributors list. The institution donated $412,376 in 2007, just one slot below Friendly Ice Cream Corp. In 2008, the number was $700,000, which should move the bank way up on the chart because, while it gave more over the past 12 months, many other businesses scaled back in response to a worsening economy.
The bank views its contributions to the community as an expression of its core values, said Bowen. Its also part of a strategic business initiative we call community spirit. Over the past five years, weve given $3 million to charitable and civic organizations, and that doesnt include the $700,000 we gave last year.
Beyond the numbers, however, is a commitment to giving in ways that will make the most profound impact on overall quality of life in the Pioneer Valley.
The charitable giving by the bank is focused on putting dollars where they can help the most people and have the greatest impact on the community, he explained, citing recent donations (coinciding with expansion in the Springfield market) ranging from Rachels Table to the Springfield Falcons; from the Springfield Symphony to American International College.
My overall vision, or sense, is that a community bank has a responsibility to be a stable financial institution but also be a trusted neighbor. And as the largest community bank in the region, we take those responsibilities quite seriously.
The Loomis Communities has a nine-year term limit for board members, said Katz, and Bowen has just a few years left to serve.
Thus, there will be a big leadership void to fill for her organization, but she suspects that Bowen will no doubt fill the void in his schedule when it comes to giving back to the community.
Thats the direction his strong moral compass compels him to take.
George OBrien
Managing Director of the Springfield Office of the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network
Kate Kane
Kate Kane was talking about Worcester, and, more specifically, her efforts to help create an extension of the program Dress for Success, which provides a set of clothes to underprivileged women for a job interview or their first day on a new job, in that city.
It was a huge chore, said Kane, managing director of the Springfield office of the Northwestern Mutual Financial Network. She was born in the Worcester area and worked there for some time, and her father was a Worcester boy. But she still found herself treated like an outsider in this endeavor, which made it hard to get things done.
Its a very closed community people are very suspicious of those who did not grow up there, she said, proffering the theory that this attitude likely results from that citys historic competition with Boston. I was out there for five years trying to start this charity I was trying to give something away, and they made it so hard.
Its a very interesting experience trying to break through in that market, which is not at all like Springfield, she continued. Here, from the get-go, its been very easy to meet people, very easy to get involved; people welcome your help.
For persevering in Worcester (that Dress for Success facility is finally slated to open in a few months), and for taking full advantage of the opportunities shes been given to give back to the community in Western Mass., Kane has been named to the inaugural class of Difference Makers by BusinessWest. And its not just the long list of groups she serves from Dress for Success to the Sisters of Providence Health System; from the Womens Fund of Western Massachusetts to the Andrew M. Scibelli Enterprise Center at the Technology Park at STCC but also the attitude she brings toward that work that has brought her this distinction.
What Ive tried to do is have a consistent orientation to the things I do, she said. One of those things is a sense of economic justice and helping people who havent been given the tools to learn about money and finances, and really try to provide them access to those tools.
She says that people in her capacity and who possess her skills have a moral responsibility to find ways to utilize those skills to help those less fortunate. She told BusinessWest that she gives time, energy, and expertise but also receives back.
To me, its about the gift, she explained. Im giving the gift of my time, but in return for that Im getting the gift of all these lessons that I get to learn.
Kane was still planning to pursue a career in teaching when, soon after graduating from Vassar, she took a job in the Worcester office of Northwestern Mutual in 1986. But she adjusted her career plans in only a few short months.
She would still become a teacher, in a number of ways, but the setting and the actual work would be much different. Shes in the financial-services sector, not academia, and instead of English literature, shes teaching sales professionals how to reach their maximum potential. She does so by taking them out of their comfort zone and imploring them to continually seek new and greater and challenges.
This, in a nutshell, is what her predecessor in Springfield, Paul Steffan, did with her several years ago, when he coaxed her into trading her position as field director, in which she was quite comfortable, for the managing directors seat. In that capacity, she recruits, develops talent, mentors rising stars, and sets a tone for the office. She describes herself as an able listener and, ultimately, a doer.
And it is these talents that she brings to the many kinds of work she does within the Western Mass. community, and also Hartford and, most recently, Worcester, where she tapped into more than a decade of experience with Dress for Success, which is now a national and international phenomenon. She co-wrote the original business plan for the Western Mass. chapter of Dress for Success the first one in the Bay State which now outfits, or suits, nearly 500 women a year through a boutique located at the Mass. Career Development Institute in Springfield.
In recent years, shes broadened the scope of her work to include everything from mentoring young entrepreneurs as they work to reach that proverbial next level to serving at the board at the SPHS and helping steer that system through a time of extreme challenge and uncertainty for all health care providers, to taking a board seat with Friends for the Homeless and assisting that group to find long-term solutions to one of nations most perplexing societal issues.
Shes also served as president of the Womens Partnership, been part of the Affiliated Chambers of Commerce of Greater Springfield, and been a long-time board member and Governance Committee member with the Womens Fund, which administers a $3 million endowment and donates tens of thousands of dollars each year to area nonprofits.
These groups have different missions, but there are common threads that Kane says appeal to that sense of economic justice she described. Meanwhile, she says each assignment allows her to grow professionally and personally.
I try not to get stuck just doing the things Im good at, she said, referring specifically to her work with the Womens Fund. Im an action person, a do person lets just do it. So its been good for me to be on a committee thats all about process.
I try to find ways to have the community-service work to teach me things, she continued. Such work can not only provide life lessons, but also help you run your businesses better; theres a lot of things you can learn from the nonprofit environment and take back to your business.
Returning to the subject of Worcester and trying to do charitable work there, Kane said that if more people had that experience, they would have a greater appreciation for working in Springfield. Its like night and day.
Kane hasnt merely worked in both cities, shes broken through in both, and especially in the Pioneer Valley, wheres shes been a learner and a teacher.
George OBrien
Executive Director of the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County
Bill Ward
Woody Allen once joked, Im not afraid to die I just dont want to be there when it happens.
The quote has been borrowed and bastardized in countless ways over the years, mostly by people addressing the subjects of death and dying.
Bill Ward, executive director of the Regional Employment Board of Hampden County, has put it to a different use.
He summons it when he talks with people about confronting business and societal matters that maybe they dont want to confront, but must. It takes a definite lack of fear and generous amounts of determination to prevail in such situations, he said.
And those are the qualities that have guided Ward through a career in which he has been motivated largely by two other quotes, these from his mother well, sort of.
She was always saying that theres no justice in this world, said Ward, who told BusinessWest that this annoyed him because he was an idealist. She always said that justice isnt something thats there, that you participate in its something that you have to build.
She also said that I could be part of the solution or contribute to the problem, he continued. And if youre part of the solution, you must be engaged, and thats been a philosophy thats guided my life and my work.
Indeed, Ward has spent the bulk of his professional life engaged specifically, he has helped create and carry out solutions and also working to create some justice, or access, in the form of employment opportunities, especially for groups that have historically encountered hurdles and roadblocks in their attempts to secure meaningful employment. Those constituencies include the minority populations, those lacking basic skills, and the traditionally underemployed.
There are a lot of places where we have to create justice, he said, and I found mine in jobs.
As one example, he cited the Minority Employment Program, created in the mid-80s. That was the first big initiative we took, raising money from banks, foundations, and other sources; we placed 480 minorities into jobs.
This was followed some years later by a private-sector summer-jobs program that created opportunities for hundreds of young people across the region. Other success stories have included recent efforts to put more qualified machinists in the pipeline, and a merger of the REB and the Hampden County Employment and Training Consortium, which has streamlined workforce initiatives and saved more than $400,000 in administrative costs.
Not everything has gone smoothly, and some programs havent worked as well as their architects might have hoped, but that merely brings to mind another Woody Allen quote: If youre not failing now and again, its a sign youre not doing anything innovative.
There has been plenty of innovation in Wards work, especially with regard to the one-stop career centers FutureWorks and CareerPoint, established in 1996 and soon thereafter winning awards and attracting visitors from across the country trying to duplicate their success and uniqueness; they were the first competitively bid one-stops in the nation.
Over the first four years, people from more than 30 states came to see the design of these one-stops, he said. Why? Take the system that existed in the typical unemployment office it was dysfunctional and not business-friendly; our centers are private, not-profit operations that were designed to replace the government entity. Today, these two centers are still outpacing all other centers across the state in terms of service, etc., and its not by accident.
The latest example of innovation and solution-finding is a broad effort called Building a Better Workforce Closing the Skills Gap on the Road to Economic Resurgence. The REB is a lead player in the initiative, along with the George and Irene Davis Foundation; groups like the National Tooling and Machining Assoc.; institutions such as Square One, the Mass. Career Development Institute, and area community colleges; and a host of employers, including Baystate Health and Mercy Medical Center.
The first steps in the program were announced last year, and they were crafted to achieve some momentum with regard to the workforce plans four main strategic goals: establishing universal kindergarten, improving young education proficiency and career awareness, increasing adult literacy education services, and increasing technical training in high-growth/high-demand industry sectors.
As he talked about the REBs work and its successes, Ward never used the word I, always opting instead for we, because he noted that the progress made isnt the result of one person or one organization.
Its taken teamwork to achieve all that weve done over the years, he said, adding that hes been blessed to be able to work with talented individuals from grant writers to program administrators; from elected leaders to business executives who have not only served on his board but mentored him along the way. Ive been very fortunate to have great people to work with on these programs, all of which have been models that have implemented the concept of access and creating that sense of justice that would give a chance to people who might otherwise not have that chance.
In summary, Ward has never been afraid of trying to bring a little justice to the world, and hes always been there to make sure it happens.
Which means hes made a mockery of still another of Woody Allens quips: 70% of success in life is just showing up.
Ward has never just shown up. And for that, his mother would be proud.
George OBrien
The Young Professionals Society of Greater Springfield
Alyssa Carvalho described it as a good problem to have.
She was talking about April 14, and a scheduled CEO Luncheon to be hosted by MassMutual Chairman and CEO Stuart Reese. The Young Professionals Society of Greater Springfield (YPS) started the luncheon series last year as another way to carry out its broad mission to engage, involve, and educate its members.
The problem? Well, seats to the monthly luncheons are limited in number, said Carvalho, the groups current president and, during the day, membership manager for the Greater Springfield Conventon & Visitors Bureau. The typical count is 20 to 30, to ensure intimacy and the opportunity for one-on-one dioalogue, but Reese and MassMutual will likely find a way to accommodate many more than that. Still, not everyone will be able to go.
And everyone will want to go, she told BusinessWest, adding that she and other officers will have to contrive some method of determining which members will be able to circle that date on their calendars. As she said, thats a good problem to have, and its a scenario that shows just how far this organization has come in two years.
From quasi-humble beginnings, YPS has grown to more than 200 members, expanded and diversified its program offerings, and garnered enough respect to prompt Reese to donate a few hours of his precious time to impart some words of wisdom, as Carvalho called them, to this young, diverse audience.
We worked very hard to get him, and were thrilled that he would take the time to speak to our group and open it up to more people than we would normally have, she said. Our members are excited about the chance to be sitting in the same room with that caliber of speaker; the fact that hes willing to do so speaks to the importance of our work these are the emerging leaders in the community.
This higher profile has earned YPS a place in this first class of Difference Makers, along with some sky-high expectations for the future which Carvalho and other officers are determined to meet in what might be considered another good problem to have.
Weve done very well so far, she said, but we know we have to keep building, doing more in the community, and providing more value for our members.
YPS got its start in Springfield in late 2006, when a small group of younger professionals all graduates of the Leadership Institute, a partnership between the ACCGS and Western New England College to teach mid- and upper-level managers the skills needed to become effective leaders conceptualized a group that could handle a number of assignments. They would range from giving people something to do to providing programs on professional development; from helping to educate members on the issues of the day to providing some reasons for young professionals to stay in the Pioneer Valley and become valuable contributors to its progress and livelihood.
The overriding goal, said Carvalho, is to help members plant roots, and develop lasting connections to the region and its business community.
While the groups founders were ambitious and had lofty expectations, even they might be surprised by how quickly and profoundly the group has become a real force in the community. In addition to the 200 members, there are 900 subscribers, those who have a connection to the group and attend some of its events.
Since its start, the organization which takes a name similar to other groups in the region, including young-professional societies in Northampton, the Berkshires, and Hartford, but is different from these groups because it is independent has been consistently adding programs, forming collaborative partnerships with other groups, and, in general, making its presence and influence felt.
Its making a difference.
In addition to the CEO lunches, which have featured leaders and business owners ranging from ACCGS President Russell Denver to Springfield Falcons General Manager and co-owner Bruce Landon, the group has staged monthly networking events called Third Thursdays. It has become involved with the Division II college basketball tournament staged in Springfield each March, and last fall it partnered with Rock the Vote and other groups to encourage young people to register to vote and understand the issues involved with the presidential election.
YPS also conducted a number of events and programs to connect young people with the arts, promote mentoring, and facilitate efforts to give back to the community. It even created an award the Young Professionals Society of Greater Springfields Excellence in Leadership Award which is given to a graduate of the Leadership Institute who has distinguished him or herself through community involvement, civic leadership, and professional excellence. The first winner was Elizabeth Cordona, director of Gov. Patricks office in Springfield.
For 2009, the goal is simply to build on the momentum created over the past two years by continually looking for new ways to meet and expand the groups mission, as expressed in one of its slogans: live, work, play, and stay, said Carvalho, who told BusinessWest that her work as president has become what she called a second full-time job.
Im putting in maybe 30 or 40 hours a week toward this, she said, adding quickly that other officers are logging similar time handling YPS affairs. And I need to, because theres so much happening and so much to do.
Sounds like another one of those good problems to have.
George OBrien
They lead — and inspire
Cover
Their contributions vary, from helping to improve the quality and diversity of the regions workforce to providing books for local school libraries; from donating time, energy, and know-how to area nonprofit agencies to spearheading efforts to engage, involve, and educate the Valleys young professionals. The common denominator is that these individuals are all making a difference in Western Mass. Theyre not the only ones, certainly, but their stories reflect the work of countless others to make this a better region in which to live, work, and run a business.
