People on the Move

Florence Bank promoted Candace Pereira to the role of vice president, commercial lender. Since 2018, she has worked at Florence Bank as assistant vice president, commercial portfolio manager in the Commercial Lending department. In her new role, she will concentrate on commercial and industrial lending, as well as lending to women-owned businesses. Pereira holds an associate degree in finance from Springfield Technical Community College and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst. She is currently pursuing an MBA from Isenberg as well. She began her career in banking in 2003 and has held various roles at mutually held and stockholder-owned banks in Western Mass., in both residential and commercial lending. Recently named an ambassador for the Springfield Regional Chamber, Pereira is also a member of the BusinessWest 40 Under Forty class of 2017, and she attended the Springfield Leadership Institute. She has served on various local boards over the last several years and has also volunteered as an athletic coach in East Longmeadow, where her daughter is a student.

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Dennis Gober, a longtime executive in hospital management, has been named chief operating officer of MiraVista Behavioral Health Center. Gober served previously as CEO in Oklahoma of Cedar Ridge Behavioral Hospital, whose campus in Oklahoma City provides inpatient psychiatric and residential services to children and adolescents, and its Bethany campus, which serves the mental-health needs of adults. Cedar Ridge is part of Universal Health Services, one of the largest providers of hospital and healthcare services in the country. Gober, who holds a master’s degree in community counseling, has held several other senior-level positions, CEO for Acadia Healthcare’s Rolling Hills Hospital in Ada, Okla., which provides mental-health and substance-use services for adolescents, adults, and seniors, and division director of community-based youth services for the state of Oklahoma. As a licensed behavioral practioner, Gober also served as the Director of the Community Works’ Norman Academy Day Treatment Program leading treatment teams, and providing individual, group, and family therapy. He received a master of education degree in community counseling and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Central Oklahoma.

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BFAIR announced it has promoted Leanne Martin to assistant director of Day Habilitation. Martin began working for BFAIR in 2014 as a direct-care professional at the agency’s Day Habilitation program located in North Adams. In 2020, she was promoted to case manager for the Community Based Day Services (CBDS) program and later to the Day Habilitation program in the same role. In her new role, Martin is responsible for the everyday operation of the Day Habilitation program, which is designed to support members and their unique needs to increase independence and socialization, helping them participate as active and fully integrated members of their community.