The Trickle-down Effect

Rebeca Merigian, here with her son, Andrew Takorian, expects Park Cleaners’ contract with MGM to perhaps double the company’s current volume of business.

Rebeca Merigian says the slip was found, and promptly given to her, many years ago by a long-time customer, a description she quickly categorized as an obvious understatement.

Indeed, the date at the top is 1940, and thus this item, now displayed under glass, is a time capsule as much as it is a pick-up slip for a two-piece suit.

Start with the phone number at the top; there are just five digits because that’s all that were needed back then (ask your mother; actually, make that your grandmother). The name of the company was Park Cleaners & Dyers Inc. (the ‘& Dyers’ was dropped a long time ago because those services were discontinued). The address is Kensington Avenue in Springfield (the company moved to Allen Street in 1955). Even the slogan is different; back then it was ‘Dry cleaning as it should be done.’ Now, it’s ‘Family-owned and operated since 1935. We appreciate your business.’

Yes, much has changed since Edward Takorian, an Armenian who somehow escaped the genocide of 1915 and came to this country soon thereafter, went into business for himself.

There have been many ups and downs, said Merigian, Takorian’s great-granddaughter, who started working in the business on Saturdays when she was 9 and bought it from her mother three years ago. She noted that the company was started at the height of the Great Depression and has endured many other downturns over the next eight decades, and also the early death of her father. Not so long ago, there were more than 20 people working here; now there are four, including Merigian’s son and nephew.

But that number will be rising soon, thanks to what would have to be one of the biggest developments since that suit was picked up a year before the U.S. entered World War II — a contract with MGM Springfield, the $960 million resort casino that will open in about four months.

Park Cleaners has been awarded a contract to clean the uniforms for all 3,000 employees at the casino, and for the dry-cleaning of hotel guests and the MGM Springfield management team as well. Merigian couldn’t put a dollar figure on the contract, but she could certainly put it into perspective.

“I’m hoping that this will double our business,” she told BusinessWest, adding that the contract could give her the means to perhaps double the current workforce and pay the kind of benefits that are currently beyond the company’s reach. “My goal from this is to be able to provide health insurance for my employees who have been with through a lot of the challenges; I want to give back to them and provide more benefits and incentives so we can grow.”

Several other area businesses now have contracts with MGM or are in the process of finalizing one. Most will not be as life-changing as the one received by Park Cleaners, but they are all significant in some way.

Nick Noblit says the contract with MGM gives Yankee Mattress a new top line for its deep list of clients.

Take Agawam-based Yankee Mattress, for example. The company was originally asked to supply mattresses for all the rooms in MGM’s Springfield hotel, an order that Nick Noblit, the company’s general manager, admitted was too big to handle at this time. But the company will make California kings for the larger, high-roller suites, an assignment that will give the company additional business and some hopefully effective marketing material.

Meanwhile, Holyoke-based Kittredge Equipment Co. has secured one of the bigger contracts — this one to provide kitchen appliances and supplies to the many businesses that will do business at the casino.

There have been other contracts signed, and there will be many more agreements inked in the weeks to come as the countdown to the grand opening continues, said Courtney Wenleder, vice president and chief financial officer for MGM Springfield. She told BusinessWest that, as part of its host-community agreement, the company is required to apportion a percentage of its receivables to local companies.

But the company is striving to do more than just meet that obligation, she said, adding that MGM is looking to take the company’s philosophy regarding diversity and apply it to its vendor list. And this translates into extending opportunities to women (Kittredge is also woman-owned), minorities, and small businesses in general.

“MGM has a commitment to diversity and partnering with local vendors,” she explained. “It’s all about building the community together; there’s a symbiotic relationship — if the community does well, we do well, and vice versa.”

For this issue, BusinessWest looks at how the trickle-down effect from MGM Springfield, which began with local contractors taking part in the construction of the complex, is gathering momentum in the form of contracts to supply everything from knives and forks to marketing services. And while doing that, we’ll also shine a spotlight on some intriguing local businesses that have, by and large, flown under the radar.

The Rest of the Story

Wenleder told BusinessWest that many factors go into MGM’s decisions about which vendors to do business with and what might give a certain enterprise an edge over whatever competition emerges.

They range from quality of service and customer satisfaction, obviously, to whether, as noted, the business is minority- or women-owned. But there are some intangibles, and sometimes a little luck, that comes into play.

To get that point across, she relayed the story about how MGM Springfield now rents several apartments downtown, and they’re used, among other things, to house company executives visiting Springfield for extended stays.

Kittredge Equipment Co. owner Wendy Webber, left, with sales representative Amanda Desautels. The company will supply MGM Springfield with everything from appliances to glassware.

MGM CEO William Hornbuckle is one of these executives, and on one of his stays, he slept so soundly and comfortably that he took note of the label on his mattress (Yankee), later commented to those at MGM Springfield’s headquarters about his experience, and essentially initiated steps that would eventually lead to the company getting a contract.

“Bill commented about what a great night’s sleep he had on that mattress, and that pretty much secured their position,” Wenleder recalled with a laugh, adding that it wasn’t all that simple, but that bit of serendipity certainly got the ball rolling.

And the mattress contract serves as a good example of how MGM is trying to do business locally when it can and when it’s appropriate, said MGM Springfield General Manager Alex Dixon.

He noted, as Wenleder did, that there are times when MGM will simply add the Springfield casino to some existing contracts it has in place to provide certain products and services to the company’s existing properties.

Playing cards and dice would be good examples of this, he said, adding that MGM already has manufacturers providing those products. And, for the most part, there is no local company that makes such items.

But even with those products, there may be some opportunities for local businesses, he went on, noting, for example, that most playing cards are destroyed soon after they’re used, and MGM Springfield will use a local company to handle that work.

“We want to recognize what’s available in the local market and then tailor our supply chain to match what is happening in the local community,” he said while describing the company’s broad mindset when it comes to vendors.

Overall, MGM has a process in place when it comes to vendors, said Dixon, adding that the company actively solicits information from companies interested in doing business with it. The owners and managers of such ventures are invited to attend outreach events (they’re posted on the MGM Springfield website, for example), and through such events, companies become part of a database the company refers to when it needs specific products or services.

“Whenever there’s a business need, we want to find out if there are vendors, preferably local, who can help us to fulfill those needs — that’s step one,” he explained. “But informally, being members of the community, you really develop relationships.

“It’s no longer ‘hey there’s this great local brewer,’” he went on, while explaining how these relationships are created. “Now it’s ‘that’s Ray Berry from White Lion; maybe there’s an opportunity there.’”

In other words, familiarity breeds opportunity, and examples abound of how companies ranging from local caterers and computer hardware providers have come onto MGM Springfield’s radar screen — and are now doing business with the company.

The contract with Yankee Mattress is a good example of this phenomenon at work, said Dixon, confirming that the company was first presented with a proposal to furnish every room in its hotel now taking shape on Main Street.

But Noblet said such a large order would have necessitated additional hiring and other steps the company wasn’t ready to take.

But the contract to supply mattresses for the larger suites is a welcome addition and positive development for the Agawam-based company, which has been gaining traction in recent years as word-of-mouth referrals about its products proliferate.

This is another family business, started by Nick’s father, Joe, who is still active in the venture. The elder Noblit worked for a major mattress manufacturer for several years before deciding he could make a better product, and at a lower price, himself. And he did.

Yankee was launched in 1999, and it has grown and evolved other the years, said Noblit, adding that it started with a storefront and adjacent assembly area in Agawam, and now has four stores in the region.

Those outlets carry a host of lines with those huge tags that are supposedly illegal to rip off, including the top-of-line Black Collection, with models including the York, Fairhaven, Merrimac, and Nantucket.

There is a strong residential component to the customer base, obviously, said Noblit, but also many commercial clients as well, including several area B&Bs, hotels, and inns, as well as some healthcare providers, a few private schools, and a host of area fire departments.

“We custom-build those to be stronger than average — because there are some big firefighters out there and it’s important for them to have something durable,” he explained, adding that word of mouth has been the best marketing tool when it comes to adding new lines to the customer list on the company’s website.

If one were to peruse that list, the name now at the very top is MGM Resorts International, an indication of how important this contract is, not size-wise, but from a marketing and branding standpoint.

“Most hotels have a contract with a major manufacturer, and across the board, they do business with this manufacturer, and they make all of their beds,” he explained. “So for MGM to consider someone outside these big manufacturers that are nationwide, that’s significant.”

Buying Power

But if MGM Springfield found Yankee Mattress thanks to Bill Horbuckle’s good night’s sleep, most of the other vendors have had to find the casino giant.

And ‘find’ means going through a process of introducing one’s company to MGM Springfield through one of a number of vendor meet-and-greets, for lack of a better term, that the company has staged, including one at last fall’s Western Mass. Business and Innovation Expo, staged by BusinessWest.

Courtney Wenleder says there’s a symbiotic relationship between MGM and local vendors; when they do well, the casino operator does well, and vice versa.

Through these outreach sessions, MGM is making it much easier for companies to find it, said Wenleder, adding that MGM Springfield has a three-person purchasing team (a manager and two assistants), and one of their primary responsibilities is to go out into the community and find local vendors.

“Even though we’ve been doing a lot of communication with people when it comes to local purchasing requirements, some people aren’t hearing that message,” she explained. “We have people on the ground physically reaching out to these vendors.”

Merigian said she started attending such outreach sessions not long after MGM was granted the Western Mass. license in 2014, recognizing the casino as a rare business opportunity.

“I had my sights on it from the beginning,” she told BusinessWest. You never know how it’s going to work out with companies renting their own uniforms or owning them, but either way, I knew I would like to be part of it.”

So much so that she took steps to become a certified woman-owned business, understanding from those very first meetings that MGM had a strong interest in doing business with businesses led by women and minorities.

There would be more meetings to come over the next few years, she went on, adding that these sessions were beneficial on many levels.

“It really gets you tuned into your business,” she said, using that phrase to indicate everything from capabilities to long-term goals to what it will take to reach them. “It was an educational experience on many levels.”

The volume of work is large — most all of the 3,000 employees will wear some kind of uniform, and this contract covers all that and more — and thus MGM will likely be the largest customer in Park’s long history, said Merigian, although Park did have a contract with MassMutual for a quarter-century and still has one with the Defense Department (Westover Air Reserve Base).

“We don’t have specific numbers, but know it will be high volume,” she said of the business to start coming her way in a matter of weeks as employees are added to the payroll in waves. “But we’re ready for it, and we can feel the excitement.”

Indeed, after her father’s death, the company had to withdraw from the MassMutual contract, and it downsized considerably, said Merigian, adding quickly, however, that “we’re ready to go; we’re ready to get back to work.”

At Kittredge, meanwhile, the MGM contract is another important step forward for that company, said Amanda Desautels, an outside sales representative now working with MGM to outfit the restaurants that will be doing business at the casino.

“This is a significant contract for us,” she said, noting that Kittredge will be supplying MGM with everything from appliances to bar equipment; glassware to silverware, and adding it to a client list that includes UMass Amherst, the Max restaurant group, and Mount Holyoke College, among many others.

The company, rapidly approaching its centennial (it was launched in 1921), started as a supplier of typewriters and cash registers and has evolved into a $50 million equipment and supply giant that now employs more than 70 people locally.

At its warehouse and retail facility in the Agawam Regional Industrial Park, one can find everything from industrial refrigerators, freezers, and stoves to dishes and glassware to individual carving knives. Desautels joked that the company provides everything that goes on the table, around it (furniture), and even under it. “If you have a wobbly table, we have table levelers.”

It also has certification as a woman-owned business (Wendy Webber succeeds her late husband, Neil, as owner and operator), a designation that has opened many doors for the company and no doubt played a role in securing the contract with MGM.

“Being a woman-owned business has created many opportunities for Kittredge, and MGM is obviously one of those,” said Desautels, noting that the addition of MGM to the client roster is significant in many respects. “It’s exciting to be doing business with a company like MGM that shares the same values we do, such as diversity and the importance of their employees.”

Pressing Engagement

As she posed for a few photos for BusinessWest, Merigian gathered her son, Andrew Takorian, and insisted that he be part of the picture.

Figuratively speaking, he has been for some time now, working at this establishment — like his mother, grandfather, and great-grandfather before him — while still in grade school.

He represents the fifth generation to carry a business card that says ‘Park Cleaners’ — or Park Cleaners & Dyers, as the case may be. The company has gone through a lot of change and evolution after the past eight and half decades, and many important developments.

Perhaps none were as big as the contract inked with MGM Springfield, which comes at a critical time and represents a huge opportunity for growth and security.

It’s just one example of the trickle-down effect that is now underway, and already changing the local business landscape in profound ways.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Changing Expectations

Mikki Lessard, left, and Nancy Feth say they’ve created a ‘retail-tainment district,’ one that is bringing people from across the region to downtown Springfield.

Like most people who grew up in and around Springfield in the ’60s and ’70s, Mikki Lessard has fond memories of getting on a bus and spending an entire Saturday afternoon downtown.

She said most of those visits would start, and a good number would also end, at Johnson’s Bookstore, but there were plenty of other stops as well.

“We would go to Johnson’s, and Steiger’s, and many other stores. There was always something happening; it was positive, and it was fun,” said Lessard, adding that, while she acknowledges that things won’t ever be exactly like that again given changes in how and where many people shop, it can be, well, something like that again.

And she and business partner Nancy Feth are a huge part of that ‘something.’

They are the founders of an intriguing enterprise called Simply Grace, which now operates a growing portfolio of businesses operating under the name the Shops at Marketplace in downtown Springfield — almost exactly where Johnson’s Bookstore was operating until it closed 20 years ago.

There are shops, but this is also a gathering place for events ranging from Thunderbird Thursdays to a farmer’s market to a Dress for Success graduation ceremony.

The two partners have a name for what they’ve created — a ‘retail-tainment district,’ blending both retail and entertainment. They didn’t invent the phrase — it’s been in use for a while and is often summoned when the discussion turns to what traditional shopping malls must become if they want to survive — but they believe they have the first in downtown Springfield, arriving ahead of MGM Springfield.

It all started with the Simply Grace Serendipity Boutique, and ‘the Shops’ has grown to include a yoga studio, a restaurant, a new store that just opened its doors, and another now being built out.

As they tell the story — and they love to tell the story, often finishing one another’s sentences and providing complementary commentary as they do so — these entrepreneurs note that they came to downtown Springfield as one of what was supposed to be several small retailers that agreed to set up shop as part of the initial Springfield Holiday Market in 2015, a strategic initiative designed to put some underutilized space in the Marketplace complex to work in a way that would bring people downtown and generate some momentum as well as foot traffic.

As things turned out, there were only a few pop-up shops, as they were called, on that location, but they did well collectively, and the public responded to this bid to bring some retail back to Main Street.

When the holidays were over, Glenn Edwards, owner of the property, asked Feth and Lessard if they would like to stay on for a while. They said yes, but without giving any real indication of a what ‘a while’ might or should become.

“We said, ‘we’ll stay for a few more months; we’ll stay ’til Valentine’s Day,’” said Feth, before Lessard picked up for her.

“And then, we asked to stay ’til Mother’s Day,” she explained. “And then we decided we wanted to stay for the year.”

But with some conditions, specifically that they could take space one of the retailers was vacating for yoga classes in an effort to attract more people and different constituencies to the downtown.

And, overall, the two entrepreneurs have been continuing that pattern, or mindset, ever since, adding new components to Simply Grace; bringing more events, vitality, and energy to the Marketplace area; and also, for those efforts, earning an award from the Small Business Administration to coincide with Small Business Week (April 29 to May 5).

Indeed, Feth and Lessard will be at the Sheraton Needham Hotel on May 4 to accept the Microenterprise of the Year Award, one of the few enterprises from Western Mass. to win such an honor in recent years.

But before, and after, all their focus will be on Springfield, the Marketplace, and new developments for Simply Grace.

These include a recent addition called Brick & Mortar, what Lessard calls a “mercantile, apothecary, and more,” which actually has some exposed brick for effect. There’s also Alchemy, a manicure and pedicure salon now being built out; Dharma, the yoga studio; and the boutique that got things rolling.

Those four businesses, along with Nosh, an eatery across the way from the boutique, now comprise a critical mass of small, diverse shops that the two partners believe will bring more foot traffic and momentum to an area that was once the pulse of downtown Springfield a generation ago — and can, they believe, take that role again.

“Do we have mall traffic? Heck no,” said Lessard. “But it’s working. It’s always about creating curiosity and then converting that into customers, and that’s what we’re doing.”

The only downside to all this is that the space once devoted to the holiday pop-up markets is now gone, absorbed by what could be called permanent fixtures, said the partners, adding that, in most all ways, this constitutes a very good problem to have.

For this issue, BusinessWest talked with Feth and Lessard about their venture and how in some ways it constitutes turning back the clock, but in most others, it’s symbolic of the downtown’s future.

What’s in Store

‘Walk. Pause. Browse. Shop. Experience.’

Those are the words the two partners have placed before ‘the Shops at Marketplace’ in their branding of the facility. And both collectively and individuality, those terms speak to what this venture is all about — as well as to some of the elements that have largely been missing from downtown since those days when Lessard and countless others would get on a bus and take it to Main Street.

The partners at Simply Grace say they carry brands with unique stories that resonate with their customers.

There was far less walking, pausing, browsing, and shopping going on, and therefore there was less to experience.

Feth and Lessard weren’t exactly out to change that equation when they were first invited to bring a taste of the Simply Grace Serendipity Boutique, a shop they opened in Monson, to downtown Springfield for the holidays. But that’s what has happened.

It’s been an intriguing journey, a learning experience on many levels, said the partners, adding that they are still writing new chapters to this story.

That first Holiday Market was so successful that the BID asked the new partners to manage and staff that project moving forward, said Feth, adding that they did so, providing an opportunity for a number of new businesses to become part of the experience and gain some critical visibility. And through that work, the partners came to understand the many layers of significance to their efforts. Indeed, this wasn’t simply retail, it was economic development.

“A lot of what we do is build community and work on economic development,” Feth explained. “These are the value adds we feel we bring to Springfield in addition to our own businesses.”

Lessard agreed, and referred to Simply Grace’s broad efforts as “collaborating and incubating.”

As for their own businesses, the partners say they are doing well and succeeding in their primary mission. That would be to bring people, but especially women, downtown. Or back downtown, as is often the case.

They’re getting that done by providing reasons to do so, said Lessard, adding that these vary and include yoga, the shops — which sell products made by vendors with unique, community-minded stories — and events.

Elaborating, Lessard said the partners will utilize their indoor spaces and walkways during winter and schedule a variety of gatherings for women, and when the weather gets warmer, they will fully “activate” the indoor and outdoor space, using it to host everything from flea markets to White Lion Wednesdays; from farmers markets to live music.

In fact, the space has become a popular venue for fundraising for groups that include Rays of Hope, Unify Against Bullying, Dress for Success, and many more.

“We just want to have this lively, quintessential, unexpected experience in downtown Springfield,” Lessard explained, adding that the key word there, and perhaps unfortunately, is ‘unexpected.’

Indeed, Feth said that many of those who come to the Shops at the Marketplace will offer commentary that makes this point.

“We’ll often hear people say, ‘I don’t feel like I’m in Springfield,’” said Feth. “Or ‘I feel like I’m in New York or San Francisco.’”

Which Lessard followed with, ‘and we gladly say, ‘you’re in this wonderful city called Springfield.’”

The unofficial mission moving forward, for the partners at Simply Grace and the city as a whole, is to generate fewer of these comments and to make a fulfilling trip downtown something that’s expected, not unexpected.

And the partners believe they and the city are moving closer to that goal through their lively mix of retail, events, things to do, and things to experience.

And the retail is a big part of it, said Feth, adding that, contrary to what is becoming popular opinion, traditional retail is not dead, and not everyone wants to buy everything on Amazon and have it shipped to their home.

“What we’re finding is that customers are actually hungry for experiences where they can see the product, talk to people, feel seen and acknowledged, and have a real experience instead of just a virtual experience,” she explained, before Lessard picked up on that ‘feel seen’ comment and ran with it because of its significance.

“We have women who come in here that pause, then browse, then shop, just to be seen,” she told BusinessWest. “They feel like they’re in this hustle and bustle of life and no one’s acknowledging them. So they come in, they share stories, we give them hugs; we actually care about them as people.

“We get a lot of pushback from people from who say, ‘you should be in East Longmeadow’ or ‘you should be in Hampden or somewhere other than downtown Springfield,’” she went on. “But we’re exactly where we’re supposed to be, because the women we’re connecting to that work or live or play downtown are very stressed out, and when they come to our store, it’s a breath of fresh air, an unexpected experience.”

Bottom Line

There’s that word again — unexpected. Soon, perhaps, it can be retired, and downtown Springfield will move closer to the one Lessard remembers from her youth, a time, she recalled, when there was always something positive and fun happening.

The partners at Simply Grace are doing their part to bring those phrases back into use. They’ll soon have an award from the Small Business Administration to show for their efforts, but they’ve already received something perhaps even more significant to them.

That would be all those comments from people who say they don’t believe they’re in downtown Springfield. Such comments tell them they’re doing the right thing and in the right place.

And to think they were only going to stay a month.

Good thing they didn’t.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]

Addressing a ‘New Norm’

Amy Cuddy addresses the audience of more than 1,400 people at Bay Path University’s Women’s Leadership Conference.

“We’re starting to see civility as a luxury.” That was how social psychologist, author, and educator Amy Cuddy described a changed landscape that has perpetuated a culture of adult bullying, not just on social media but offline as well. As she talked about this subject at Bay Path University’s recent Women’s Leadership Conference, she was speaking from experience — she has been savaged on social media as her research on the broad subject of ‘power posing’ has come into question and doubt. But she said she now has plenty of company, and the trend is disturbing on many levels.

At the point in her talk when the subject turned to the now-famous “Fearless Girl” statue on Wall Street, Amy Cuddy’s voice started to crack slightly.

It wouldn’t be the last time, either, but we’ll get back to that later.

The images of the statue — and there were many in Cuddy’s presentation that kicked off Bay Path University’s annual Women’s Leadership Conference on April 6 — were poignant on many levels. On the surface, they brought a new dimension to Cuddy’s comments — not to mention her substantial volume of research — on the subject of body language (non-verbal communication) and, more specifically, the effects of ‘power posing.’

Indeed, Cuddy became famous in her field, social psychology, for a 2010 study that found that such posing — raising one’s arms above one’s head as a triumphant athlete might, or assuming the ‘Wonder Woman hands on hip look,’ for example — not only elicited feelings of power from those who did so, but they also raised testosterone levels and lowered stress levels as well.

As she placed images of women and especially young girls replicating the “Fearless Girl” stance on the massive screens in the exhibition hall at the MassMutual Center, Cuddy talked about how striking that defiant, ‘staring-down-the-charging-bull’ pose and others designed to convey confidence but not arrogance, can change the course of everything from an upcoming job interview to a career to a life.

But Cuddy has given that talk countless times before. It’s the one where she suggests that going into a bathroom stall prior to an interview or important meeting and power posing might better prepare the individual for what will come next — a talk that has elicited cheers as well as tears.

On this stage and on this morning, however, Cuddy would delve into some new material. And she admitted afterward that it took 18 months, by her estimates, to work up the courage to do so.

“I’ve been avoiding talking about it publicly because when you call out your bullies you’re likely to experience backlash, because they hate that,” said Cuddy as she referenced what has happened to her over the past several years as the results of that 2010 study came under withering public scrutiny and she suffered often very personal attacks on social media. “I’m still terrified.”

Cuddy told her audience that what’s transpired is not a case of a researcher and rising star within the field of social psychology having skin too thin to handle what has become a changed landscape when it comes to challenges to research and published papers. And it’s not an effort to deflect attention away from mounting evidence that there are no hormonal effects from power posing.

Instead, it’s adult bullying in its purest form and an example of what’s going on in many fields and society in general. And those sentiments are backed up by these comments given by one of Cuddy’s peers to the New York Times for a piece published last fall titled “When the Revolution Came for Amy Cuddy.”

“Amy has been the target of mockery and meanness on Facebook, on Twitter, and blog posts,” Jay Van Bavel, a social psychologist from New York University told the Times. “I feel like, wow, I have never seen that in science … I’ve never seen public humiliation like that.”

The low point, Cuddy said, came when a blogger whom she described as her “main bully” goaded her collaborator on the 2010 study into publicly distancing herself from their work.

“That’s one of the most effective bully moves — to get the people closest to you to turn on you — and that’s when I felt hopeless,” she told BusinessWest after her talk, adding that she no longer has such feelings and is in a better place overall because of a solid support network but also a deep belief in her work and her message.

“I talk often about believing in yourself and buying your own story — and I do,” she said. “I fully, 100% believe in my message, and that kept me afloat.”

And this brings us back to “Fearless Girl,” which is power posing personified. Only Cuddy calls it the “Brave Girl, because no one is fearless.”

And bravery is certainly one of the traits she said will be needed to stem a tide of uncivility and bullying on the Internet and in society in general, and change what has become in many ways a new norm — subject matter that constitutes the main thrust of Cuddy’s latest book, Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts due out in 2020.

“Bravery is not glorious,” she said when asked how society might change the norm. “The first step is recognizing that bravery is not just running into a burning building to save lives; bravery often involves standing up to people in these social situations and putting your own relationships at risk.”

For this issue, BusinessWest took in Cuddy’s presentation and then talked with her about adult bullying and how the current landscape might be changed.

Bully Pulpit

It wasn’t long after the 2010 study on power posing was published that Cuddy started achieving something approaching rock-star status in the field of social psychology, which doesn’t have many of those.

The study was published in the prestigious journal Psychological Science and covered by a host of national news outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Guardian, Wired, Fast Company, and others.

In 2012, she gave a TED talk, “Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are,” that has been viewed more than 40 million times and is the second-most-viewed TED talk of all time. She was awarded a faculty position at Harvard, and there were countless appearances on television and lucrative speaking appearances around the globe. Her first book, Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges, became a New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Publisher’s Weekly, and Globe and Mail bestseller.

And then?

Let’s just say that Cuddy became — and probably because of all that fame and everything that came with it — perhaps the most visible target within what’s been called a methodological-reform movement and replication crisis that has shaken up the field as it has raised questions about the reliability of vast amounts of research within the broad realm of social psychology.

Amy Cuddy, center, with Bay Path University President Carol Leary, left, and Bay Path student Kaitlyn Leibowitz, Cuddy’s assistant for the day.

To make a rather long story somewhat short, the 2010 study on power posing came under intense scrutiny, and its results, specifically those related to hormonal, or ‘downsteam’ effects — evidence that such posing increased testosterone levels and reduced cortisol levels (which are associated with stress) — could not be replicated in many cases.

Cuddy eventually became a punching bag for a number of influential bloggers, including Andrew Gelman, a professor of Statistics and Political Science at Columbia. While Cuddy certainly wasn’t the only researcher to come under scrutiny, she became almost an obsession for him.

Gelman would eventually post a challenge to Dana Carney, Cuddy’s collaborator in the 2010 study, asking her, “when people screw up or cheat in their research, what do their collaborators say?”

Carney would respond, a day or so later, with a post to her website that said, among other things, “I do not believe that power-pose effects are real” and “I discourage others from studying power poses.”

This was that low point Cuddy described earlier, but overall, she endured more than two years of unrelenting scrutiny and criticism that significantly impacted her health — her weight dropped to 100 pounds at one point — and prompted her at times to stop taking phone calls and move almost completely offline.

Things became so bad that Cuddy, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident the summer after her sophomore year in college and wasn’t able to return to school until four years after that mishap, told the audience of more than 1,400 people that she would rather go through that experience again than be subjected to what she went through between 2015 and 2017, and is still experiencing today on some levels.

As she stood on that stage at the MassMutual Center, Cuddy made it clear that she stands by her work on the subject of power posing and reiterated that she doesn’t have any real problem with people questioning or trying to replicate her research.

But she does have a problem with bullying, which is the only way she can describe what she’s been subjected to. And she has taken her own experiences and extrapolated them out over society in general. This new course of study, if you will, led to the book Bullies, Bystanders, and Bravehearts, three constituencies she described in great detail for her audience as part of a call to arms of sorts on the subject of adult bullying.

Taking a Stand

As she talked about her experiences and adult bullying in general, and became emotional at times as she did so, Cuddy, who never identified anyone by name, put up on screen the one- sentence reply that the blogger Gelman gave the New York Times reporter who wrote the aforementioned piece on Cuddy when she asked if Gelman would consider meeting with Cuddy to hash out their differences: “I don’t like interpersonal conflict.”

And she left it there for a while to let it sink in as she intimated that such sentiments are just one of many factors contributing to an environment that is fast becoming untenable and is ruining lives.

“Sticks and stones … we can survive that,” she told her audience. “Name calling in this domain, among adults — we can’t. It’s killing people; it’s leading to all kinds of problems.

“We’re starting to see civility as a luxury,” she went on. “And that means we’re in trouble. We’re seeing this in social media, but what’s happening is that this same social media behavior is being played out offline as well, because it’s become normalized to talk to each other with disgust and contempt and moral outrage.

“It’s so common that now we think that’s the norm,” she continued. “We think it’s OK to treat people that way. And by directing all of our anxieties about bullying to our kids, we avoid talking about the elephant in the room, which is bullying among adults. We are getting it wrong.”

In an interview after her presentation, Cuddy acknowledgd that adult bullying is certainly nothing new — “we’ve been shunning people for thousands of years” — but social media has changed the landscape and perpetuated the practice.

“Social media has given us the perception that bullying is normative,” she explained, “because everyone can see all these interactions, and because bullies are louder and more prolific than non-bullies. They are highly motivated by their sense of outrage and by their sense of resentment.”

Elaborating, she said that, while researchers have not yet been able to put a number to it, anecdotal evidence on moral-outrage triggers suggests that social media has brought out bullying in more people because of the way it makes such behavior appear normal and, in many respects, accepted.

“Our behavior is largely based on what we perceive other people to be doing — it’s based on social norms,” she told BusinessWest. “When you see the Internet littered with this kind of bullying trash, you begin to believe that this is normal behavior, and you start to behave in a way that’s similar.”

She’s not sure when it all started, but she said things turned sharply south just over a decade ago, and the first real wave came in the form of a tsunami crashing down on women in the IT field.

“And it was absolutely brutal,” she noted. “Women left the field because they were receiving death and rape threats all the time. It started there because tech people knew how to use the Internet, so they weaponized it pretty quickly, and I think they were very effective at doing that.

“If that had not happened, I’m not sure we’d be where we are,” she went on. “People started following that; it became a model of how you can bully someone into submission or exile, and it was nasty, and it was effective.”

How can society stop this trend of bullying people into submission?

Perhaps the most important step is for bystanders to become bravehearts and stand up to the bullies, she said, straining to hold back tears as she talked about how the social-psychology community, her peers, essentially stood and watched as she was pilloried on social media, mostly, if not entirely, out of fear that the same would happen to them.

“What hurt me the most was the inaction of bystanders,” she told her audience, stopping for a minute to gather herself. “This was a community I loved; I got e-mails all the time from people saying, ‘I’m really sorry about what’s happening to you — I wish I could do something, but I don’t want them to attack me.’

“Don’t ever say that to someone who’s being bullied,” she went on. “It’s not supportive, and it was horrifying and chilling to see people on the sidelines watching this happen and shutting up and doing nothing. I became the butt of jokes — there was an April Fools Day joke about me that circulated like crazy — and people were talking about me like I wasn’t human. It was vicious and relentless.”

Perhaps even more chilling is that this is happening to growing numbers of people, said Cuddy, adding that, as she researched the subject, she became increasingly alarmed at just how common it was.

Progress will come only when the bystanders find the courage to get off the sidelines, hold bullies accountable, and eventually change the norm.

Posing a Question

Cuddy has reached a point where she has altered her thinking on the hormonal effects of power posing. Those sentiments came after several studies failed to replicate the results of the 2010 study.

But she is still a firm believer in power posing and its ability to positively influence moods and emotions. That was obvious from her comments to those in attendance at the women’s conference.

Also obvious are her views on adult bullying, society’s new norm, and what it means moving forward.

She suspects that maybe the worst is over for her, although what has happened will leave a lasting mark. Meanwhile, she suspects that the bullies will simply move on to a new target, which is equally distressing.

As she wrapped up her talk at the women’s conference, she put on the screen that famous quote from the poet Maya Angelou: “Stand up straight and realize who you are, that you tower over your circumstances.”

She didn’t put it there as an endorsement for power posing. Instead, it was meant to encourage the bystanders, get them off the sidelines, and stare down the bullies.

And that’s another reason the “Fearless Girl” statue carries such importance and poignancy in this presentation.

George O’Brien can be reached at [email protected]