BusinessWest Introduces ‘HCN Monthly Feature’

By BusinessWest Staff March 31, 2023

Daily News

SPRINGFIELD — These are exciting, challenging, and ever-changing times for healthcare and the businesses and individuals providing it. To better inform and educate its readers about the many issues, trends, and developments in the healthcare sector, BusinessWest and businesswest.com will be introducing a new, monthly segment that will present content from its sister publication, the Healthcare News (HCN), and healthcarenews.com.

This new resource will be called “HCN Monthly Feature,” bringing news and information on the many health, wellness, and fitness issues and developments of today, from both regional and national sources. Each HCN Monthly Feature will have specific themes and points of emphasis — everything from health and fitness (this month’s feature; see businesswest.com) to behavioral health; from cancer care to a salute to the region’s nurses — and it will be made available online at both businesswest.com and healthcarenews.com, as well as via daily e-newsletters BusinessWest Daily News and HCN News & Notes, making it readily available to subscribers and consumers in the Western Mass. region and beyond.

For subscriptions, additional information, and to send us your news and story ideas, please visit BusinessWest at www.businesswest.com and HCN at www.healthcarenews.com.

Editorial

By Editorial March 29, 2023

Opinion

East-west Rail a Worthwhile Goal

“This is an easy fix. Please fix it. Make it easy for us. Make it easy for me to get to work.”

Those were the words of Gina Nortonsmith, who lives in Northampton but works in Boston, as reported by the Berkshire Eagle.

The occasion was a pair of hearings on east-west passenger rail service in Massachusetts, the latest in a series of meetings being held by the Western Massachusetts Passenger Rail Commission.

Nortonsmith’s sentiments are no doubt shared by many in Western Mass. who work in the eastern part of the state, or travel there often for other reasons, from medical appointments to ballgames and concerts.

What many state officials and lawmakers no doubt take issue with is the word ‘easy,’ at least when it comes to bringing such rail service into existence. Because it certainly won’t be easy — or inexpensive.

But our feeling has long been that the price tag — an initial outlay of $2.4 billion to $4.6 billion, according to MassDOT, plus ongoing maintenance costs — is worth it.

The reasons are myriad. In an age of remote and hybrid work models — which don’t seem to be going away — rail service could be a boon for those who need to work in or near Boston but want the lower cost of living and what they see as a higher quality of life in the Valley or the Berkshires. Conversely, it would open up job opportunities out east for those already living here.

“Key passenger rail stops along the east-west passenger line would provide a catalyst for economic growth throughout the area,” Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno said in written testimony at the Springfield hearing. “The iron is hot, and now is the time to strike. This project would open up myriad positive possibilities, including opportunities for economic development, jobs, and housing.”

Enhanced rail could also bring more tourism dollars to Western Mass. — which is rich in cultural and recreational destinations — by making it easier for Eastern Mass. denizens to spend some time here.

The service would likely connect Pittsfield to Boston via a high-speed train with proposed stops in Chester, Springfield, Palmer, and Worcester. From an environmental perspective, fewer cars on the Mass Pike and other roads means fewer emissions, and that’s a plus for the health of the entire corridor.

While talk of east-west service had been frustratingly fruitless for rail advocates in recent years, their dream got some concrete encouragement last summer when an $11.4 billion infrastructure bond bill backed by former Gov. Charlie Baker authorized $275 million toward expansion of passenger rail and created the Western Massachusetts Passenger Rail Commission to gather information about the feasibility of such a project.

U.S. Rep. Richard Neal and many influential local lawmakers have been stalwart supporters of such a plan. And in her FY 2024 state budget, Gov. Maura Healey proposed directing $12.5 toward the project, including the hiring of a project director, design of a station in Palmer, and track improvements in Pittsfield — all of which points to continued support from the governor’s office to make east-west rail a reality.

The plan still has many hurdles to clear; it’s far from a done deal, and may never happen — because, as we noted, it’s not easy.

But the payoff would go far beyond making commuters’ lives a little easier. From the perspectives of economic growth, tourism dollars, and even climate and health, we hope this theoretical train keeps chugging toward an actual, feasible plan.

BusinessTalk with Steve and Jean Graham

By BusinessWest Staff March 27, 2023

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 155: March 27, 2023

George Interviews Steve Graham

Steve and Jean Graham have been named Difference Makers by BusinessWest for 2023 for many reasons, from their work within the community to their success in business. It’s a compelling and inspiring story that involves everything from ice cream to wrestling, and one can learn more about as BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien talks with Steve Graham on the next installment of BusinessTalk. It’s must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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BusinessTalk with Susan Kasa, president of Boulevard Machine

By BusinessWest Staff January 16, 2023

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 145: January 16, 2023

George Interviews Susan Kasa, president of Boulevard Machine in Westfield

Susan Kasa, president of Boulevard Machine in Westfield, is the guest on the next installment of BusinessTalk, and she does a great job of drilling down and assessing the state of the manufacturing sector in Western Mass. and ongoing efforts to ensure that there are talented workers in the pipeline for years — and decades — to come. It’s all must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local 413 and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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Economy Shows Progress, but Workforce Remains a Challenge

By George O'Brien January 5, 2023

Economic Outlook

Reasons for Optimism — and Concern

[email protected]

Chris Geehern says there’s been a slight but significant uptick in the Business Confidence Index issued each month by Associated Industries of Massachusetts (AIM).

That increase is one of the many reasons why he and others are … wait for it … cautiously optimistic as the calendar turns to 2023. That phrase has been put to heavy use in recent years and recent months, especially with so much uncertainty regarding the economy due to forces ranging from COVID to inflation to an ongoing workforce crisis.

“If the workforce grows 1.5% and the number of jobs grows by 21% or 22%, as they’re projecting, we have a problem — a big problem.”

Chris Geehern

But as the state and region put 2022 in the rear view and focus on a year with even more uncertainty, there are some reasons for optimism, said Geehern, executive vice president of AIM, and that is reflected in the numbers he’s seeing.

“Our members seem pretty confident about the prospects for their own companies,” he said. “And they are reasonably confident about the state and national economies. There are certainly lingering concerns about interest rates and about whether there will be a soft landing or not. But, by and large, we’re finding that Massachusetts companies are resilient, and they seem to be navigating this kind of economic cycle pretty well right now.”

Elaborating, he said unemployment remains comparatively low, and the state’s economy grew in the third quarter, albeit slowly, after two quarters of negative growth — another positive sign. “So, by and large, employers don’t seem to be deeply concerned by the short-term economic cycle.”

Bob Nakosteen, a semi-retired Economics professor at UMass Amherst, agreed. He told BusinessWest that, in addition to growing optimism, inflation is starting to cool, a sign that the Fed’s decision to aggressively raise interest rates may — that’s may — be working. It could also be a harbinger of lower rate hikes in the future, which would certainly help business owners and consumers alike.

“And I think inflation is already a lot lower than is being reported,” said Nakosteen. “The month-to-month figures are pretty low … I think inflation is going to drop, maybe not dramatically, but considerably in the next few reporting periods.”

Elaborating, he said ‘dramatically’ would be a drop to the 2% target set by the Fed (at its height, inflation was closer to 8%), while ‘considerably’ would be to the 3% to 4% range, which is what he expects.

“And if that’s the case, then the Fed is going to ease off on interest rates,” he said, adding that such actions should bolster the stock market and the economy as a whole as the dramatic increases in the cost of borrowing start to ease.

Meanwhile, there are other signs that the picture is improving and the odds for recession in 2023 are moving lower, said Nakosteen, adding that the labor market remains quite strong, and the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s projections for GDP in the fourth quarter are for 3.2% growth — this on top of what has been a strong Christmas season for retailers.

“The signals just aren’t there for a serious recession — or even for a recession at all.”

Bob Nakosteen

“I think that economic growth is going to slow down, and if we do get into a recession, it will be a mild one,” he said, adding quickly that his track record with projections is decent but not spectacular. “What continues to amaze me is the strength of the labor market; unemployment is still at or just over 3% both nationally and in this state, and in Western Mass. as well. “The signals just aren’t there for a serious recession — or even for a recession at all.”

But while there is cause for some optimism, there are many concerns as well, especially when it comes to the workforce.

Indeed, in 2022, it became obvious to most in business that the problems seen in 2021 when it came to companies being able to fill positions with qualified help were certainly not temporary in nature. They persisted into 2022, and in some cases were exacerbated.

Now, there is what Geehern, summing up the thoughts of AIM’s members, called “deep concern” about what has become a workforce crisis in this state.

“‘I can’t find the people I need to make my business grow’ has become part of the vernacular in this state,” he said, noting that, as part of the Business Confidence Index survey, AIM asks an open-ended question, along the lines of ‘what are you worried about?’

And, increasingly, owners of businesses large and small are worried about workforce.

“I would say that 75% to 80% of the responses to that question every month have to do with talent acquisition, talent retention, and the availability of workers,” he said. “And the concern is that this isn’t the function of an economic cycle; it’s really a deep, structural inflection point for the Massachusetts economy.”

As he explained why, Geehern cited some rather alarming statistics from the Massachusetts Department of Economic Research, which projects that the number of jobs in Massachusetts will grow by 22% between now and 2030. Meanwhile, projections from various economists indicate that the state’s workforce will grow 1.5% by 2030.

“If the workforce grows 1.5% and the number of jobs grows by 21% or 22%, as they’re projecting, we have a problem — a big problem,” Geehern said. “This was going on anyway — it’s partially a function of demographics — but it’s been exacerbated by the newfound independence that remote work has given to employees.”

Given this unsettling math, Geerhern said there are things the state and individual employers must do to make themselves more attractive — not just to businesses, but to workers on all levels.

“Traditionally, we’ve focused on what creates the environment where businesses can start and grow in Massachusetts, and we’re still committed to that,” he said. “But at the same time, we also recognize that you have to create a quality of life that makes people — workers — want to live here in Massachusetts. And that means looking at the cost of living.

“Massachusetts ranks number one in terms of childcare costs, we have the second-highest housing costs, and the fourth-worst traffic congestion — I don’t know how they measure that, but they do,” he went on. “What we’re looking at is a significant outmigration of people from Massachusetts to other areas of the country; a Massachusetts Taxpayers Association report showed that, over the past three decades, there’s been an outmigration of 750,000 people from Massachusetts, and that trend has actually accelerated post-pandemic.”

In some cases, people are leaving the state for lower-cost areas, but keeping their jobs here, a byproduct of the remote-work phenomenon. Moving forward, Geehern said in conclusion, the state has to make itself an attractive place to do business and to live and work — because failure to do so will worsen an already-difficult situation and made it even harder for business owners to sleep at night.

Roundtable Panelists Note Opportunities, Challenges for Year Ahead

By BusinessWest Staff January 5, 2023

Economic Outlook

Talking the Talk

As part of its annual Economic Outlook, BusinessWest put together a roundtable of area business leaders to discuss the issues facing the region and its business community and the outlook for the year ahead. The panel represents several sectors of the economy, and both small and large businesses. It includes: Harry Dumay, president of Elms College in Chicopee; John Falcone, director of Merchandising for Rocky’s Ace Hardware; Spiros Hatiras, president and CEO of Holyoke Medical Center; Susan Kasa, president of Boulevard Machine in Westfield; Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle, an attorney with the Royal Law Firm and co-owner of Brew Practitioners; and Tom Senecal, president and CEO of PeoplesBank. They were candid and, overall, cautiously optimistic in their answers to a series of questions about the economy and what comes next.

Watch the video of the roundtable here:

BusinessWest: What is your outlook for 2023?

Kasa: “We’re excited for 2023; we’ve really seen an uptick in military and defense work, so we’re really excited about where our year is going to go.”

Senecal: “Increased business confidence is the biggest thing, I think, with all the negative press we hear on the economy. Increased confidence is big, and in my industry, and with the people we do business with, lower interest rates will have a significant, positive impact on our environment.”

Cannon-Eckerle: “We’re excited about some of the fallout that we got legally from COVID; it has started to settle down a little bit — we’re starting to see those issues become isolated, and opportunities for us to create some guidance and counsel about preventive measures. On the employment side, instead of seeing people float from job to job, I think we’re going to see a little more staying power.”

Susan Kasa says the war in Ukraine, while bringing hardship to many, has helped the fortunes of her company, Boulevard Machine, which specializes in work for the defense, military, and aviation industries.

Falcone: “We really track consumer sentiment, and what we’re expecting is a really soft Q1, but then when Q2, Q3, and Q4 hit, we’re expecting that consumer sentiment will increase slightly, and that we’re going to have some sort of recovery come the back half of the year.”

Hatiras: “With ARPA funds drying up, we’re going to have pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. So our emphasis is on closing the staffing gap. If we can do that, and not bleed money on the expense side, I think we’ll be OK; I think we’re poised to have a good year, as long as we’re able to attract nurses here.”

BusinessWest: What are the major challenges facing businesses in the year ahead?

Kasa: “For us, it’s the same old, same old — trying to get people into manufacturing. We’ve dealt with the generation gap for years, and are getting more involved with the vocational schools and getting parents to understand that manufacturing is a viable option for young people. It’s not just manufacturing; they can be their own entrepreneur in plumbing or electrical, whatever it might be. Also, holding onto folks; ever since COVID came through, it just seems harder and harder to find people who want to work, and want to work the extra hours that we’re giving them. Workforce is key for us — building on the workforce.”

Hatiras: “In healthcare, there is a great deal of concern, and the most concerning part is the continuing shortage of personnel, which has created this market for temporary staffing at rates that are truly outrageous. To put things in perspective, we have about 20 nurses on temporary staff that we get through agencies. Those 20 nurses, on an annual basis, cost us $5 million; each nurse costs us $250,000, because the rates are exorbitant — the nurses get a lot of money, but there’s also a middleman that makes untold amounts of money from this crisis.

“As a nation, the federal government is doing a lot of things — they did some things with railroad workers, they’re helping Ukraine, they’re talking about a lot of things. They should have stepped in and regulated this and said, ‘the pandemic created a tremendous amount of shortage; we cannot allow private companies to go out and profit from that shortage of staffing and bring hospitals to their knees.’ With all this, it’s going to be very difficult for hospitals to cope, and that’s why all our strategy centers around finding a way to attract nurses here.”

Falcone: “Number one would be interest rates; we keep seeing interest rates increase, and not increasing at a rate that we would expect compared to supply chain. The supply chain is still not fully intact, so we’re still struggling to find those products that we want to make strategic investments in. Also, the job market is going to be difficult for us, primarily on the service, retail, restaurant industry. We very much struggle with our workforce.”

Tom Senecal notes that the Fed’s actions to boost interest rates have not yielded much improvement on the inflation front, something to watch in 2023.

Senecal: “I would agree with Susan on the labor force. We’re all in different industries, but we’re seeing the same challenges, whether it’s manufacturing, skilled labor, retail labor, banking and financial services … COVID killed the participation rate of how people want to work or, quite frankly, don’t want to work. It seems like it’s across all industries — the participation is so low, and people just don’t want to work. That’s a huge challenge for next year.

“Another one is inflationary pressures; the Fed has raised rates at unheard-of levels, and it’s having very little impact, which is kind of scary. The last increase wasn’t as high as the others, but it’s still unprecedented. They used to be a quarter-point; three or four 75-basis-point raises is a shock to the system, and it’s not having the immediate impact you might think it would have. That’s going to be a challenge for a lot of business, as well as for us in the banking industry.”

Dumay: “In higher education, there are many challenges related to enrollment and finances; we’ve been talking for a while about what is known as the ‘demographic cliff,’ which is the fact that there are fewer high-school graduates, fewer 18-year-olds that are ready to enroll in college, and this has been exacerbated during the COVID years. This is creating enrollment challenges for all higher-ed institutions. On the finance side, everyone here has mentioned the challenge of inflation, as well as the tight workforce. Higher education is also challenged by the fact that some of the stimulus funding that has helped during COVID is no longer available. All of these are going to create challenges for the higher-ed sector in general, and Elms College in particular. But they also present opportunities.

BusinessWest: What are the forces that will determine what will happen with the local and national economies in 2023 and what we’re all talking about a year from now?

Kasa: “For us, what’s happening in the world politically and the war in Ukraine; we’re really seeing an increase in military spending and orders for the military and defense. That’s going to be very helpful for us, and I do see that continuing. There’s a tremendous amount of talk about upgrades to engines, the F-35 … and being in the aerospace alley and having so many of these large OEMs right in the corridor, in the Hartford area, is beneficial for us. I do foresee things continuing to move up and onward for us.”

Cannon-Eckerle: “One of the things bubbling up in the legal sphere is something they call ‘litigation investment,’ which is essentially large companies investing in litigation against larger corporations that normally they wouldn’t be able to afford. It’s like a venture-capital-like investment, and we’re starting to see large companies spread their wings. I think that might have an effect on litigation down the line.”

Harry Dumay says COVID provided many important lessons that are serving Elms College well as it moves on from the pandemic.

Dumay: “I think some of those challenges that I spoke about that are related to enrollment will lead to some of the forces and trends that will shape things in 2023. I expect institutions to tailor their pricing and courses accordingly; there is a trend in higher education to look for shorter types of certificates to help max the credentialing needs of the workforce. I expect we’ll see that. But also, the workforce issues are providing a lot of opportunities for institutions to partner with businesses to address some of these workforce issues, and I expect that we’ll see more collaborations and partnerships between higher-ed institutions and businesses to address some of these workforce challenges.”

Senecal: “I see two things. One is supply chain; I think the pressure seems to be coming off, and if that trend continues, that will have a really positive effect on the economy. Two, I think higher energy prices are not going to go away. With the war in Ukraine and Russian energy and what is being supplied to Europe and all … many people don’t think it impacts us. I think it will have a huge impact going into 2023. When you look at the supply of energy in Europe, they have enough to get through the winter to sustain themselves. What they don’t have is the ability to replenish those supplies by next winter, and I think Russia knows this, and I think their strategy is to put a huge amount of pressure on to get to next year, because when you get to next winter, there’s not going to be any energy-supply reserves, and that’s going to have a huge impact worldwide on energy supplies, and that trickles throughout the economy.”

Falcone: I very much agree with Tom. The overall political and economic environment created by that war has affected our business dramatically, whether it’s fuel costs, energy costs that directly impact the supply chain and lead to inflation, or interest rates, because the overall cost of carrying our inventory is higher, and the cost of the product we’re procuring is higher. So with that, our overall cost of business has increased.”

John Falcone says supply-chain issues have improved in recent months, one of many reasons for optimism heading into 2023.

Kasa: “I agree with John. In manufacturing, our supply chain has really been impacted by this war; we’re not able to get material as we did some time ago, and those costs continue to rise. Being in manufacturing, we’re held to long-term agreements, master agreements, and it just continually squeezes the small guy.”

BusinessWest: How has your business or institution coped with the recent workforce challenges? Do you have a success formula?

Senecal: “Before COVID hit, we would never let an employee work from home; from a security perspective, from a collaborative perspective, it just wouldn’t work. Two weeks into the pandemic, we had 80% of workforce working from home without a hitch. I still think the collaboration, or culture, side of it has to occur within the office, but we’ve pivoted from that perspective, and we’re pushing the ability to work from home a whole lot more.

“To tackle the workforce issue and spread our wings and look beyond Western Mass., we are advertising positions as ‘80% work from home,’ something you would have never thought of or heard of in years past. We have an employee now who works 100% out of Chicago. As a local community bank, we would have never considered that. It’s increased our ability to attract talent, and we’ve found some success, but I know it’s still going to be a challenge moving forward.”

Kasa: “We’re looking for exposure, and being in our bright new building certainly helps. So does using social media to attract young machinists; we’re using Instagram and Facebook … it really does work with the young people that follow you. And being a family-owned business also resonates with many people; there have been so many capital acquisitions in recent times in this area.

“We spend a lot of time talking to parents about manufacturing and the opportunities that are available to young people. Manufacturing is coming back, and now parents are realizing that not everyone is meant for a college degree, and they don’t have to spend $100,000 or $200,000 on education; they are coming into machining and electrical and plumbing. The parents are really starting to see us as a viable option.”

Dumay: “We’re paying a lot of attention to employee morale and employee satisfaction, and being flexible where we can. Part of the promise of Elms College as a small, liberal-arts institution is that students will be in contact with people and one another, so having a presence on campus is important. But we’re trying to work creatively to include flexibility for employees in terms of where they can work and the time they can work, to the extent that this can be done.”

Hatiras: “We’re doing OK because we had to respond to what was going on in the market by creating even more attractive reasons for coming here — we raised our rates, we’re enhancing benefits, and at the same time, we’re looking at economic assistance for the lower-earning employees. Where it’s more difficult is with the professionals, because the dollars are significantly more, so competing just on price is difficult. The key for success — what keeps people here and makes them come here — is the culture of the place, so we put a tremendous amount of effort in the 10 years I’ve been here on creating a good culture. Now, it’s become a differentiator, and we’re pushing it even more. We’re an employer that listens to employees, responds to their needs, and cares. That’s what people want.”

Spiros Hatiras says the “truly outrageous” cost of agency nurses is one of the many stern challenges facing all hospitals today.

Falcone: “We put a big focus on our company culture. Right in our strategic plan, it says ‘invest in people, personally grow, and have fun.’ There’s no doubt about it … the people we have are our biggest asset, so what we want to do is make sure that we’re taking care of them. In this ever-competitive job market, it’s really easy to jump jobs for an extra dollar or two an hour, but for us, we really want to focus on employee engagement and employee satisfaction.”

BusinessWest: Provide us with at least one, and maybe a few, reasons for optimism regarding the year ahead.

Falcone: “The supply chain is becoming more intact. Two years ago, our fill rates as a company were about 60%; December marked the first time our fill rates recently broke the 80% mark. They’re still not back to 2019 levels of roughly 90%, but it’s slowly getting better, and I think the numbers will continue to increase. For the consumer, it’s the availability of product at a reasonable price. Also, we’re starting to see a little bit of deflation … I think we’re still going to have inflation, but it is going to level off.”

Kasa: “The war, which is terrible for the world, and the politics going on are only going to make more work for us because we’re military and defense-heavy. Meanwhile, space is another huge one for us, because it’s been years since the U.S. has gone to space. And with all the competition going on for space travel now between Blue Origin, SpaceX, and others … it’s a a market the U.S. hasn’t been involved in for years, and it bodes well for us.”

Tanzania Cannon-Eckerle says many converging forces will bring change to the employment-law scene in 2023.

Cannon-Eckerle: “Now that COVID is a little bit behind us … we have some clarity. I think there was a period of time when employers, employees, people who don’t work, everyone in this world went through a period of time when they just didn’t know what the future would hold. Now, people can start making decisions and moving forward, in whatever direction that might be. Also, green technology. I think that technology is getting a huge boost, even moreso than it had before, and I think we’re going to start making some big strides in green technology, and I’m really excited about that.”

Hatiras: One of the good things for Holyoke, and this is one of the reasons I’m optimistic about our path here, is that we have this new waiver in Massachusetts, a five-year waiver with Medicare, which puts a lot of emphasis on safety-net hospitals. So, despite the many challenges I mentioned — and we’re going to have to meet those challenges — I think we’re going to be in a very good position to continue to provide the services we do now, and even better; it’s a good deal for Massachusetts and safety-net hospitals.”

Dumay: “We had a Christmas party at the college recently, and everyone was shaking hands — no one was fist-pumping, no one was six feet apart. It’s easy to forget where we were a year ago. I’m encouraged when I look at what happened during the past semester, when students were happy to be with one another; this is the generation where students finished their high school on Zoom and already had some difficulty with social skills. This ability to come back together … people are appreciating that.

“Another reason for optimism is that we learned a lot of lessons during COVID. We endured considerable hardships, but we also learned some valuable lessons as well. In higher education, for example, we learned about online learning and providing students with maximum flexibility. This is something we were forced into by COVID, but now, those lessons are settling down and providing both flexibility and efficiency in terms of teaching and learning. From a human-relations perspective, we’ve learned some lessons that are becoming part of our operations, and for the better.”

BusinessTalk with Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor

By BusinessWest Staff December 26, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 142: December 26, 2022

George Interviews Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor

Holyoke, the Paper City, is in the midst of a renaissance of sorts, a dramatic comeback fueled by entrepreneurship, technology, the arts, cannabis, and much more. On the next installment of BusinessTalk, Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor, talks with BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien about the progress made and the work still be done in his community. It’s all must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local 413 and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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Year in Review

By George O'Brien December 23, 2022

Features Special Coverage

Here Are the Stories That Impacted Western Mass. in 2022

By George O’Brien and Joseph Bednar

Cannabis Sector Continues to Grow

How many dispensaries is too many? Cities like Northampton, Holyoke, and Easthampton that have embraced the cannabis industry are demonstrating that many such businesses can thrive together, while generating healthy tax revenues for the municipality itself. However, the recent closure of the Source — the state’s first adult-use dispensary to close since shops began opening in 2018 — poses new questions on the competition front.

There’s no doubt cannabis has been a success in Massachusetts, with recreational sales approaching $4 billion since legalization. But one big question is what form the industry will eventually take — with some predicting eventual consolidation by bigger entities alongside a robust population of boutique sellers — and how the state will continue to protect opportunities for smaller players, especially minorities.

The latter prospect was strengthened by a law passed in August aimed at giving minority cannabis entrepreneurs easier access into the industry, and also paving the way for municipalities to allow marijuana cafés. The bill also better regulates host community agreements, creates a state-run loan fund for minority entrepreneurs, lowers taxes for marijuana businesses, and makes it easier to expunge records for old marijuana offenses.

In short, this story is still evolving in intriguing ways.

Companies Grapple with Workforce Challenges

The pandemic temporarily dislodged millions of people from their jobs, and when companies started rehiring again, they found it was much more difficult to recruit and retain employees, particularly in lower-paying industries like hospitality, but it was a trend that stretched across all fields, from healthcare to construction to … well, you name it.

At issue has been three intersecting trends: the Great Resignation of older workers, many of whom moved up their retirement timeline in the wake of the pandemic’s economic upheaval; a movement among Gen-Zers and younger Millennials, particularly in service industries, to re-evaluate their worth and push for higher wages and more flexibility; and ‘quiet quitting,’ defined as doing the bare minimum to fulfill one’s job, which, of course, cuts into a company’s productivity.

There are no easy answers to combat these trends, and companies struggling with workforce shortages must grapple with what they mean in the longer term. Workers no doubt have leverage right now like they haven’t had in recent memory, and they’re wielding it, to significant — and, in many cases, still-undetermined — effect.

An architect’s rendering of a renovated Victory Theatre

Victory Theatre Project Gains Momentum

Holyoke officials and groups involved with the arts have been engaged in efforts to try to revitalize the historic Victory Theatre for more than 40 years now. And while this initiative still has a ways to go before it can cross the goal line, some significant progress was seen this past year.

It came in several forms, but especially the earmarking of ARPA funding to renovate the theater, which opened in the 1920s and last showed a movie in 1979. The ARPA funding is expected to help close the gap between the funds that have been raised for the initiative and the total needed — roughly $60 million.

Momentum can also be seen in a firm commitment on the part of Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Hispanic mayor, who sees the project as an important catalyst for bringing new businesses to downtown Holyoke and another key ingredient in the larger formula for revitalizing the Paper City.

The Marriott Flag Returns to Downtown Springfield

It took more than three years, and there were a number of challenges to overcome along the way, but the Marriott flag is now flying again over the hotel in the Tower Square complex. The massive renovation — or “re-imagining” — of the space, as it’s been called, earned Tower Square owners Dinesh Patel and Vid Mitta BusinessWest’s Top Entrepreneur honor for 2022.

But the undertaking has done more than that. It has helped transform the property into one of the best hotels west of Boston, and it has become a stunning addition to a Tower Square complex that has been reinvented as well, with intriguing additions ranging from the Boys & Girls Club of Greater Springfield to White Lion Brewery to a scaled-down version of a Big Y supermarket soon to emerge in space formerly occupied by CVS.

The new Marriott staged a truly grand opening in November, an event that was a big day not just for Patel and Mitta, but for the entire city.

Remote Work Is Here to Stay

This past year was one in which the region’s business community was to return to normal in most all respects after two painful years of COVID. But there was one realm where it didn’t — and that was by choice.

Indeed, remote work continued to be part of the landscape in 2022, but this time there was an air of permanence to the concept, not merely a temporary response to COVID. In interviews for stories written over the course of the year, owners of businesses large and small said remote work and hybrid work schedules have become the new norm. They have become a benefit of sorts for valued workers and have become an effective means for attracting and recruiting talent, as well as for as widening the net for job applicants well beyond the 413 area.

The full impact of remote work on the commercial real-estate market and small businesses that rely on workers being in their offices — restaurants and bars, for example — has yet to be fully and accurately measured, but it appears that this fundamental change in how people work is here to stay.

East-west Rail Chugs Forward

East-west rail service between Pittsfield and Boston is still far from reality, and plenty can still happen to derail the decades-long dream of so many legislators, businesses, municipalities, and other rail advocates. But 2022 marked the strongest progress toward that goal yet, with $275 million allocated toward the project in August as part of the state’s $11 billion infrastructure bill — a good start, but only a start.

A high-speed rail connection between the Hub and Western Mass. is about more than convenience; it’s about expanded opportunity — both for workers who can earn Boston wages while enjoying a decidedly non-Boston cost of living, and also for employers who can cast a wider net for talent — not to mention easier access to recreational and regional resources, as well as reduced traffic and emissions.

“We have the money, the support, and I have secured the commitment from both the outgoing Baker-Polito administration and the incoming Healey-Driscoll administration to keep this train literally and metaphorically moving forward,” U.S. Rep. Richard Neal said earlier this month. “This is an opportunity that will not avail itself again, and now is the time to move on an east-west rail project that will be transformative for all of Massachusetts.”

The T-Birds came up a few wins shy of an AHL championship, but their playoff run was a huge win for the team and the region.

Springfield Thunderbirds Reach AHL Finals

The Springfield Thunderbirds eventually wound up a few wins shy of a Calder Cup this past spring. But their dramatic run to the finals was a huge win for the team, the city, and the region.

Indeed, the race for the cup captured the attention of the entire area, with fans old and new turning out at the MassMutual Center, tuning in on social media, and talking about the team at the water cooler — or the weekly Zoom meeting.

The team, which eventually lost in the finals to the Chicago Wolves, created a great deal of momentum with its playoff run, as well as a surge in season-ticket sales. While not all deep playoff runs are financial success stories, this was one, said the team’s president, Nate Costa. It was also validation for him and for the ownership group that stepped up and brought hockey back to Springfield when the Falcons departed for Arizona.

There’s now an Eastern Conference Championship banner hanging in the MassMutual Center, and even more of a connection between the region and its pro hockey team.

Holyoke St. Patrick’s Day Parade Returns

After a long, as in very long, two-year absence, the Holyoke St. Patrick’s Day Parade and road race returned in full force in March. The twin events have always been part of the fabric of the region and a huge contributor to the Greater Holyoke economy, and that became clear in interviews with parade organizers, city officials, and individual business owners in the weeks leading up to the parade for a story in BusinessWest that carried the headline: “The Return of a Tradition: For Holyoke, the Parade Brings Business — and a Sense of Normalcy.”

Business owners told BusinessWest that the parade and race account for large amounts of annual revenues, and that losing the events for two years due to COVID was devastating. But beyond business and vibrancy, something else went missing for those two years. Marc Joyce, president of the parade for the past three years, put it all in perspective.

“It’s in the mindset and emotions of people who have grown up here,” he said. “It’s a homecoming; people come back to the city, and you see people you haven’t seen since perhaps last year. It’s a wonderful, family-oriented event.”

The LEDC has a unique model featuring coaches on matters ranging from accounting to mental health.

Latino EDC Opens Its Doors

The Latino Economic Development Corp. opened its doors to considerable fanfare in September, and with good reason. The agency, called the Latino EDC, or LEDC, has a broad mission and a unique business model, one aimed at helping businesses, especially Latino-owned businesses, open their doors and keep them open.

The LEDC, located on Fort Street in Springfield, is a place where more than two dozen coaches, experts in many aspects of business, will make themselves available to business owners and share what they know. Executive Director Andrew Meledez says the agency will focus on what he calls the three ‘Cs’ of helping business owners get where they want to go — coaching, capital, and connections. Overall, its goal is to turn employees into employers, and the agency is already capturing the attention of economic-development leaders in this region — and well beyond.

New College Presidents Take the Reins

College and university presidents are in many ways key regional voices, shaping public perspectives on issues through programs and initiatives they spearhead. And in 2022, that exclusive pool of influencers saw some significant ripples.

In April, Hubert Benitez, vice president for Strategic Initiatives and Academic Innovation and acting chief Inclusion officer at Rockhurst University, took the reins at American International College, replacing Vince Maniaci, who had been president there for 17 years.

Then Michelle Schutt, previously vice president of Community and Learner Services at the College of Southern Idaho, began her tenure as president of Greenfield Community College in July, replacing Richard Hopper, who had been interim president since the summer of 2021.

Also in July, Smith College announced that Sarah Willie-LeBreton, provost and dean of faculty at Swarthmore College, will replace Kathleen McCartney, who has served as president since 2013, starting in July 2023.

Finally, in June, UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy announced he will retire in June 2023 after serving in that role since 2012, and the following month, Christina Royal, president of Holyoke Community College since 2017, announced she will retire in July 2023; searches are on to replace both.

An architect’s rendering of the new parking-garage facility at the MassMutual Center.

Civic Center Parking Garage Comes Down — Finally

After years of talking about and working with state leaders to assemble the financing to build a replacement, the city tore down the crumbling Civic Center Parking Garage this fall. As the demolition crews began their work, workers in downtown office buildings paused to watch.

It wasn’t a landmark that was coming down, but rather a decaying structure that had become a symbol of all that Springfield was trying to put behind it — the hard economic times, aging infrastructure, and a downtown of another era.

While the long-awaited demise of the parking garage was news, the more exciting news is what’s going up in its place — a new, state-of-the-art, environmentally friendly, 1,000-space facility, and activation of abutting property, acquired by the city, that will enable Springfield to create an atmosphere that officials say will be similar to the scene at Fenway Park on game nights.

The transformation of the old Court Square Hotel is a long time coming.

Court Square Transformation Project Proceeds

When Dave Fontaine Jr. talks about work to renovate the former Court Square Hotel into market-rate apartments being a “generational project,’” he means it. Indeed, when he talked with BusinessWest about the initiative this past summer, he said he believes his father and grandfather were both involved in bids on projects to transform the property going back more than 30 years.

It’s taken decades of effort, but the transformation of the property is now well under way. The project is expected to not only bring new life to that historic property — in the form of 71 units of housing as well as retail on the ground floor — but also create more vibrancy in the city’s downtown and possibly be a catalyst for new hospitality and service-sector businesses.

The Court Square project is a true public-partnership, with funding support from several parties, including Winn Development, Opal Development, the state, the city, and MGM Springfield. And it will make sure that an important part of the city’s past is now a vital cog in its future.

Navigating Challenges in Auto Sales

This past year was another wild ride, if that’s the right term, for the region’s auto dealers. Indeed, the trends that emerged in 2020 and 2021 — from historically low levels of inventory to sky-high prices and low inventory of used cars — continued in 2022.

Matters improved to some degree for area dealers, but there were still many challenges to face — and still a number of used cars taking up space on the showroom floors.

But perhaps the biggest news in 2002 involved electric vehicles, with many dealers reporting huge increases in the sales of such models. There are several reasons why, but simple math is perhaps the biggest, with drivers of electric vehicles — after the initial investment, anyway — spending far less to get from here to there than those with gas-powered cars, trucks, and SUVs.

That trend is expected to continue into next year, say area dealers, as more makers introduce electric-vehicle lines.

Live Music Scene Expands

When the Drake opened in downtown Amherst in April, it became the town’s first-ever dedicated music venue, hosting everything from jazz and rock to funk and world music. And it opened at a time when demand for live music in the region is on the rise, and an increasing number of spaces are meeting the need.

With Eric Suher’s Iron Horse Music Hall, Pearl Street Nightclub, and Mountain Park shuttered to concerts these days and the Calvin Theatre hosting a bare trickle of tribute bands, others have picked up the slack.

They include not just the Drake, but Race Street Live, which hosts national touring acts in the Gateway City Arts complex in Holyoke; Hawks & Reed Performing Arts Center in downtown Greenfield, which schedules a robust slate of events across four spaces; MASS MoCA, which hosts concerts inside the museum and festivals outside it; Bombyx Center for Arts & Equity in Florence, which opened in October 2021 in a converted 1861 church; and many more.

It’s clear that people are enjoying live music again, and a new generation of venues — and some venerable ones as well — are stepping up to meet that need.

Moving On from COVID

President Biden declared COVID over in September. With a winter setting in in which doctors are warning of a ‘tripledemic’ of flu, RSV, and COVID, that’s … well, not quite the truth, not with about 350 people still dying from COVID each day in the U.S., about 85% of them unvaccinated.

What is true is that, even as some people are still overcoming COVID, just about everyone is over it — and especially over the disruptions the pandemic caused to the global economy.

Still, moving on is easier said than done, as is shifting back to something resembling business as usual pre-2020. Construction firms still face challenges with scheduling and cost, knowing that the supply chain can be wildly inconsistent. Families still struggle with inflation, and are getting hit hard by the tonic being poured on it: higher interest rates for loans. As noted earlier, real-estate owners wonder whether a slowed market will remain so as tenants decide they need less space for a workforce that has gone largely remote and may remain so.

In short, moving on from COVID is a slow process, and its effects will continue to reverberate, no matter how much anyone — even the president — wishes it would just go away.

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

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Building Permits

By BusinessWest Staff December 21, 2022

Building Permits

The following building permits were issued during the months of November and December 2022. (Filings are limited due to closures or reduced staffing hours at municipal offices due to COVID-19 restrictions).

CHICOPEE

Building Assoc. Inc.
41 Robbins Road
$50,000 — Machine demolition of former American Legion Post 275 structure

Stephen Constant
1400 Memorial Dr.
$5,500 — Fire-alarm installation

PeoplesBank
1936 Memorial Dr.
$37,500 — Replace/repair concrete island and drive pad under drive-thru canopy, install steel bollards to protect ITM machines, replace one free-standing ITM

HADLEY

Joel Greenbaum
240 River Dr.
N/A — Install power-limited fire warning system

LEE

Lathrop Community Inc.
680 Bridge St.
$6,000 — Replacement windows

South Lee Assoc. LLC
501 Pleasant St.
$125,777 — Install steel pallet racking

Sunwood Development Corp.
33 Chapel St.
$31,200 — Demolish and rebuild garage

NORTHAMPTON

City of Northampton
196 Cooke Ave.
$64,000 — Demolish Moose lodge

Steibel Properties Inc.
37 Indian Hill
$4,000 — Insulation/weatherization

PITTSFIELD

Centro Bradley Berkshire Crossing LLC
555 Hubbard Ave., #41
$4,000 — Interior non-structural demolition

David Coco
28 Clinton Ave.
$7,446 — Fire alarm

Cynthia Smith Corbett
33 Churchill Crest
$7,000 — Replacement windows

JDLS Properties LLC
440 South St.
$4,998 — Insulate basement

Q Mad LLC
370 Pecks Road
$2,500 — Roof repairs

TJLR Onota LLC
118 Lincoln St.
$4,100 — Replace vinyl siding damaged by fire

Winadu Real Estate Co. LLC
710 Churchill St., Building 1
$25,000 — Install foundation

SPRINGFIELD

East Springfield Industrial Buildings Co.
225 Carando Dr.
$44,000 — Install eye-wash station, cabinets with two sinks, and fume hood in science lab room at Veritas Charter School

Michael Vinick
311 Page Blvd.
$1,000,000 — Alter interior space for Botanica Farms cannabis dispensary

BusinessTalk with Mike Fenton, Springfield city councilor and chairman of the city’s Casino Oversight Committee

By BusinessWest Staff December 19, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 141: December 19, 2022

George Interviews Mike Fenton, Springfield city councilor and chairman of the city’s Casino Oversight Committee

BusinessWest editor George O’Brien has a lively discussion with Mike Fenton, Springfield city councilor and chairman of the city’s Casino Oversight Committee. The two talk about recently voiced concerns about MGM Springfield not delivering what was promised when it was granted a gaming license, and what actions are expected from the parent company in the weeks and months ahead to improve the picture on Main Street. It’s all must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local 413 and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

Sponsored by:

Also Available On

BusinessTalk with Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee

By BusinessWest Staff December 12, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 140: December 12, 2022

George Interviews Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee

Meg Sanders, CEO of Canna Provisions in Holyoke and Lee, is the guest on the latest installment of BusinessTalk, and she gives an candid, eye-opening appraisal of the state of the cannabis business in Western Mass. and where this intriguing industry can, and probably will, go moving forward. In her talk with BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien, she touches on everything from competition to profit margins to “women selling weed.” It’s all must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local 413 and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

Sponsored by:

Also Available On

Incorporations

By BusinessWest Staff December 7, 2022

Incorporations

The following business incorporations were recorded in Hampden, Hampshire and Franklin counties and are the latest available. They are listed by community.

AGAWAM

Ganpati Bapa Inc., 36 Yarmouth Dr., Agawam MA, 01001. Rishabh D. Rabari, 48 Yorktown Ct., Chicopee, MA 01020. Package store.

AMHERST

Zerka Foundation Inc., 24 Greenleaves Dr. No. 429, Amherst, MA 01002. Edward Schreiber, same. Social justice consulting services.

BROOKFIELD

Chaffee Tree & Construction Inc., 9 Lake Road, Brookfield, MA 01506. Richard Chaffee III, same. Construction services.

CHICOPEE

Iglesia Del Senor La Coraza De Justicia, 730 Chicopee St., Chicopee, MA 01013. Pedro J. Santana, 64 Westford Ave., Springfield, MA 01109. A church exercising all the rights and privileges given to religious organizations by the Constitution of the United States.

The Casiano Transportation Group Inc., 69 Quartas St., Chicopee, MA 01013. Silvia Lugo, 69 Quartas, Chicopee, MA 01013.Transportation services.

GREENFIELD

Madeline R Maxam Enterprises Inc., 64 Newton St., Greenfield, MA 01301. Madeline R Maxam, 19 Green River Road, Greenfield, MA 01301. Beauty salon.

HOLYOKE

S.E.R. Distribution Inc., 64 Hitchcock St., Holyoke, MA 01040. Sarah E. Rohan, same. Product sales and distribution.

LUDLOW

Chef-Aholics Inc., 28 Joy St., Ludlow, MA 01056. Keith Killian, 33 Gralia Dr., Springfield, MA 01128. Non-profit organization designed to provide a forum for hospitality industry professionals who have addiction/substance abuse/mental health issues.

PALMER

TWJ Trucking Inc., 1706 Park St., Palmer, MA 01069. Timothy Jacobs, same. Trucking business primarily devoted to snow removal.

PITTSFIELD

Findem Inc., 82 Wendell Ave., Suite 100, Pittsfield, MA 01201. Hariharan Govindarajan, 6650 Rivers Ave., Suite 100, Charleston, SC 00000. People intelligence staffing and talent agency.

Vitalaxis Inc., 82 Wendell Ave., Suite 100, Pittsfield, MA 01201. Sathish Kothandaram, 8000 Virginia Manor Road, Suite 170, Beltsville, MD 20705. Medical cloud and billing services.

SPINGFIELD

Next Tech Solutions Inc., 172 Birchland Ave., Springfield, MA 01119. Odaliz Breton MA, same. Technology specialist, network, telecommunication services.

Esfoma Supportive Services Inc., 1030 Worthington St., Kibbe House, Springfield, MA 01109. Richard Ross, 107 Daviston St., Springfield, MA 01108. The organization will work to provide supportive services to provide mental health, physical health and economic support to individuals, families, and primary communities.

Jea Inc., 747 Carew St., Springfield, MA 01104. Zachary A. Mouneimneh, same. Package store.

Saint Anthony Maronite Catholic Church of Springfield Inc., 375 Island Pond Road, Springfield, MA 01118. Bishop Gregory J. Mansour, 109 Remsen St., Brooklyn, NY 11201. Church.

WARE

Auto Direct Inc., 388 Palmer Rd., Ware, MA 01082. Daniel A Hevey Jr., same. Auto sales.

WEST SPRINGFIELD

447 Sumner Inc., 61 Appaloosa Lane, West Springfield, MA 01089. Hasmukh Gogri, same. Package Store.

Ray’s Liquidations Inc., 33 Kelso Ave., West Springfield, MA 01089. Ramon J. Sanchez III, same. E-commerce sales.

WESTFIELD

Facing Rock Machine Co., 109 Apremont Way, Westfield, MA 01085. Gerald Vanpelt, 9 Norman Avenue Granby, MA 01033. Manufacturing company.

Bankruptcies

By BusinessWest Staff December 7, 2022

Bankruptcies

The following bankruptcy petitions were recently filed in U.S. Bankruptcy Court. Readers should confirm all information with the court.

The Borelli Advantage
Borelli, George J.
a/k/a Borelli, Joe
HJL Style Cottage LLC
Borelli, Holly Hitchcock
a/k/a Hitchcock, Holly
100 Nelson St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Chapter: 7
Date: 09/29/2022

Daniel, Lonell
162 Jasper St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Chapter: 13
Date: 09/29/2022

Desmarais, Gary N.
Desmarais, Nancy E.
819 McKinstry Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Date: 09/30/2022

Diciocco, Gaetano T.
a/k/a Diciocco, Gaetano A.
PO Box 783
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Date: 09/28/2022

Parker, Jacob D.
473 College Highway
Southwick, MA 01077
Chapter: 7
Date: 09/30/2022

Reddick, Lukisha
239 Senator St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Chapter: 13
Date: 09/28/2022

Spring, Heather Lee
19 Bill St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Chapter: 7
Date: 09/29/2022

Stewart, Chad M.
238 Maple St., Apt. B-6
Agawam, MA 01001
Chapter: 7
Date: 09/28/2022

Suares, Jolene M.
a/k/a Cundiff, Jolene
19 Clinton St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Chapter: 13
Date: 10/04/2022

Real Estate Transactions

By BusinessWest Staff December 7, 2022

Real Estate

The following real estate transactions (latest available) were compiled by Banker & Tradesman and are published as they were received. Only transactions exceeding $115,000 are listed. Buyer and seller fields contain only the first name listed on the deed.

FRANKLIN COUNTY

ASHFIELD

447-A Watson Spruce Corner Road
Ashfield, MA 01330
Amount: $700,000
Buyer: Annelise J. Matias
Seller: John E. Madocks
Date: 11/02/22

BERNARDSTON

47 Gill Road
Bernardston, MA 01337
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: David E. Shippa
Seller: Powers, Sharon C., (Estate)
Date: 11/02/22

COLRAIN

161 Barber Hill Road
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $1,110,000
Buyer: David M. Owczarek
Seller: A. Hale Johnson RET
Date: 11/07/22

161 Franklin Hill Road
Colrain, MA 01340
Amount: $1,110,000
Buyer: David M. Owczarek
Seller: A. Hale Johnson RET
Date: 11/07/22

ERVING

4 Warner St.
Erving, MA 01344
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Valerie A. Duvall
Seller: Carmine A. Deprete
Date: 11/09/22

GILL

294 French King Hwy.
Gill, MA 01354
Amount: $410,000
Buyer: Kyle A. Demers
Seller: Paul D. Vassar
Date: 11/02/22

GREENFIELD

686 Bernardston Road
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: Harry J. Larocque
Seller: Carpenter, Sheila M., (Estate)
Date: 11/04/22

56-58 Devens St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $286,000
Buyer: Muhammad Hamayun
Seller: Tony W. Young
Date: 11/03/22

81 Devens St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $242,500
Buyer: Brandy L. Black
Seller: Rebecca G. Devino-Shaw
Date: 11/03/22

22 Lunt Dr.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $284,000
Buyer: Roland J. Clack
Seller: Deborah S. Chown
Date: 11/03/22

61 Silver St.
Greenfield, MA 01301
Amount: $307,000
Buyer: Maureen Beeltje
Seller: Meghan S. Carroll
Date: 11/03/22

LEVERETT

218 North Leverett Road
Leverett, MA 01054
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Jennifer E. Jackowitz
Seller: Alexander Wise
Date: 11/02/22

MONTAGUE

114 Millers Falls Road
Montague, MA 01376
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Jasmine T. Ward
Seller: Larry J. Couch
Date: 11/03/22

NEW SALEM

206 West St.
New Salem, MA 01355
Amount: $575,000
Buyer: Robert L. Koonz
Seller: Robert A. Bergantino
Date: 11/02/22

NORTHFIELD

294 Birnam Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $313,000
Buyer: Debra Ryder
Seller: Emily J. Koester
Date: 11/04/22

54 East St.
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $170,000
Buyer: Michael Mitchell
Seller: Michele Wood
Date: 11/07/22

12 Fisher Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $520,000
Buyer: John P. Frangie
Seller: Valerie A. Duvall
Date: 11/08/22

201 Winchester Road
Northfield, MA 01360
Amount: $525,000
Buyer: Christopher Hinkle
Seller: Jane M. Kunhardt
Date: 11/01/22

ORANGE

27 Kelton St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Terrence Marks
Seller: Stanley Smith
Date: 11/08/22

57 Pleasant St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Michael B. Guilmette
Seller: Brown Stucco RT
Date: 11/07/22

11 Prospect St.
Orange, MA 01364
Amount: $286,000
Buyer: ECP Holdings LLC
Seller: Brown FT
Date: 11/10/22

SHUTESBURY

45 Shore Dr.
Shutesbury, MA 01072
Amount: $395,500
Buyer: Samuel Brody
Seller: Robert J. Lombard
Date: 11/10/22

SUNDERLAND

41 Amherst Road
Sunderland, MA 01375
Amount: $1,000,000
Buyer: MFBH LLC
Seller: Barbara A. Skibiski
Date: 11/01/22

WARWICK

909 Wendell Road
Warwick, MA 01378
Amount: $1,600,000
Buyer: Getaway Wagon Wheel LLC
Seller: Kimberly A. Smith
Date: 11/02/22

HAMPDEN COUNTY

AGAWAM

10 2 If By St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Timothy Aldinger
Seller: Thomas E. Boisjolie
Date: 11/10/22

24 Campbell Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Campbell Drive LLC
Seller: Adrienne N. Lachappelle
Date: 11/09/22

134 Channell Dr.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Luis A. Rojas
Seller: Veteran Stan LLC
Date: 11/01/22

20 Denise Lane
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Charles Scheehser
Seller: Kevin M. Wyman
Date: 11/10/22

11 Grant St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Michael Mull
Seller: Donna V. Modzelewski
Date: 11/04/22

692 North West St.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $307,000
Buyer: Thomas J. Girroir
Seller: Mary C. Lamson
Date: 11/02/22

77 Nicole Ter.
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $425,000
Buyer: William M. Anjos
Seller: Viktoriya Gladysh
Date: 11/04/22

112 Nicole Ter.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $610,000
Buyer: Adrienne N. Lachappelle
Seller: Hillside Development Corp.
Date: 11/04/22

20 Ottawa St.
Agawam, MA 01001
Amount: $151,000
Buyer: Campagnari Construction LLC
Seller: Town Of Agawam
Date: 11/07/22

114 Tobacco Farm Road
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $527,000
Buyer: Jeffrey R. Rovatti
Seller: Jeffrey N. Heinze
Date: 11/04/22

154 Tobacco Farm Road
Agawam, MA 01030
Amount: $505,000
Buyer: Kevin M. Wyman
Seller: Louis M. Garvin
Date: 11/10/22

BRIMFIELD

16 North Main St.
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $270,000
Buyer: Todd Hamelin
Seller: Ronald Nolette
Date: 11/07/22

59 Sutcliffe Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Sam Zhao
Seller: Christopher J. Hufault
Date: 11/07/22

36 Warren Road
Brimfield, MA 01010
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: William E. Morgan
Seller: 36 Warren Road RT
Date: 11/09/22

CHICOPEE

16 Alvord Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $550,000
Buyer: Sattva LLC
Seller: Robert Couture
Date: 11/10/22

159 Broadway St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Milestone Funeral Services
Seller: Carriage Funeral Holdings Inc.
Date: 11/09/22

9 Canal St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $155,000
Buyer: You & Me Investment LLC
Seller: 9 Canal LLC
Date: 11/07/22

11 Christopher St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $385,000
Buyer: Kasey Bunnell
Seller: Zaki-Jabbar Robinson
Date: 11/02/22

180 Crestwood St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $151,000
Buyer: Malia Homebuyers LLC
Seller: Anita Gondek
Date: 11/09/22

50 Edbert St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $345,000
Buyer: Sushilaben H. Patel
Seller: Dorothy Jacques
Date: 11/02/22

76 Edward St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Shannon L. Murdza
Seller: Richard L. Robitaille IRT
Date: 11/07/22

358 Grattan St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $261,000
Buyer: Hannah Cameron
Seller: David Roman
Date: 11/10/22

187 Hampden St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $168,000
Buyer: 3 Lions LLC
Seller: Allison M. Griffin
Date: 11/01/22

30 Hawthorn St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $370,000
Buyer: Jarelis E. Rodriguez
Seller: Real Estate Investments of New England LLC
Date: 11/03/22

48 Jones Ferry Road
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Enid V. Coleman
Seller: William H. Boucher
Date: 11/04/22

97 Lord Ter.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $525,000
Buyer: Tahir Habib
Seller: Debra A. Placzek
Date: 11/08/22

125 Marten St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Bay Flow LLC
Seller: Keene, Gordon E., (Estate)
Date: 11/08/22

147 Montgomery St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Jakob P. Talbot
Seller: Patricia A. Galletta
Date: 11/10/22

85 Park St.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Melha Temple Holding Corp.
Seller: William J. Stetson
Date: 11/09/22

41 Southwick St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Mitchell R. Nadeau
Seller: Jason W. Furr
Date: 11/07/22

65 Stebbins St.
Chicopee, MA 01020
Amount: $258,990
Buyer: M. Vallellanes-Laureano
Seller: Pauline T. Bourque
Date: 11/04/22

89 Wilson Ave.
Chicopee, MA 01013
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Catheryn L. McDermott
Seller: Pah Properties LLC
Date: 11/01/22

EAST LONGMEADOW

57 Euclid Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $382,500
Buyer: Kevin K. Pelissier
Seller: Michael S. Kisiel
Date: 11/10/22

8 Hampden Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $295,000
Buyer: Umut Ozkan
Seller: Courtlandt L. Kites
Date: 11/10/22

94 Lasalle St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Christian M. Bermudez
Seller: Paul W. Harrington
Date: 11/08/22

316 Maple St.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $470,000
Buyer: Blue Ridge Wilder LLC
Seller: Gina L. O’Connor
Date: 11/03/22

137 Mapleshade Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $123,255
Buyer: Amenadiel RT
Seller: Francine M. Ryan
Date: 11/02/22

16 Senator Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $480,000
Buyer: Michael R. Greene
Seller: Anthony C. Chapdelaine
Date: 11/02/22

20 Somers Road
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $405,000
Buyer: Hayley Talbot
Seller: Patti Damaddio 2019 RET
Date: 11/01/22

66 Tanglewood Dr.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $515,000
Buyer: Michael S. Kisiel
Seller: Brian Popovich
Date: 11/03/22

28 Terry Lane
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $560,000
Buyer: Matthew Johan
Seller: Michael A. Scibelli RET
Date: 11/10/22

65 Westernview Circle
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $267,000
Buyer: William Raleigh
Seller: Dolores M. Grant
Date: 11/07/22

3 Worthy Ave.
East Longmeadow, MA 01028
Amount: $480,000
Buyer: Anthony Amaral
Seller: Jeffrey Kuselias
Date: 11/03/22

HOLLAND

12 Forest Court
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: Leontino Piecuch
Seller: Andrew Y. Tanaka-Reader
Date: 11/03/22

9 Park Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $375,000
Buyer: Elizabeth A. Howell
Seller: Chad E. Carter
Date: 11/01/22

8 Sandy Beach Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $148,000
Buyer: John Gousy
Seller: 8 Sandy Beach Road RT
Date: 11/01/22

89 Union Road
Holland, MA 01521
Amount: $405,000
Buyer: Brandon Wettlaufer
Seller: Lunshou Wang
Date: 11/09/22

HOLYOKE

89 Bowers St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,332,861
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Inatl Immobiliare LLC
Date: 11/02/22

76-78 Chapin St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,036,670
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Chapin Laurel LLC
Date: 11/02/22

12 Clinton Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $272,000
Buyer: Felix O. Colon
Seller: John J. Mastorakis
Date: 11/02/22

30 Franks Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Sammy A. Matos-Medina
Seller: Christopher Larose
Date: 11/10/22

106-110 Hampshire St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,555,005
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: Hampshire Walnut LLC
Date: 11/02/22

679-681 High St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $518,336
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: Chapin Laurel LLC
Date: 11/02/22

797-801 High St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $2,073,340
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Jackson High LLC
Date: 11/02/22

801-805 High St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $2,073,340
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Jackson High LLC
Date: 11/02/22

705 Homestead Ave.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $299,900
Buyer: David J. Duran
Seller: Diaz Properties LLC
Date: 11/02/22

84 Howard St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $249,900
Buyer: Mitchell J. Tilghman
Seller: Burns, Juliette Rita, (Estate)
Date: 11/09/22

93 Jackson St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $2,073,340
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Jackson High LLC
Date: 11/02/22

3 Laurel St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,036,670
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Chapin Laurel LLC
Date: 11/02/22

24 Linden St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: William S. Andrews
Seller: Joseph H. Moriarty
Date: 11/10/22

93-95 Lyman St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,332,861
Buyer: Double K. Realty LLC
Seller: Inatl Immobiliare LLC
Date: 11/02/22

385-R Main St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,400,000
Buyer: Gap Apt. Holyoke LLC
Seller: JJS Capital Investments LLC
Date: 11/04/22

393-399 Main St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,400,000
Buyer: Gap Apt. Holyoke LLC
Seller: JJS Capital Investments LLC
Date: 11/04/22

7 Memorial Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $293,000
Buyer: Jabet Lopez
Seller: Sammy A. Matos-Medina
Date: 11/10/22

1244 Northampton St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $286,000
Buyer: Jennifer Ayala
Seller: Kokoleka RT
Date: 11/04/22

1691 Northampton St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $342,500
Buyer: Simone A. Cristofori
Seller: Gallagher Cap Group LLC
Date: 11/01/22

1691 Northampton St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Gallagher Cap Group LLC
Seller: Rosemary O’Connell-Doyle
Date: 11/03/22

18 O’Connell Road
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Nicole E. Bondellio
Seller: James J. Kennedy
Date: 11/10/22

130 Sheehan Dr.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $247,000
Buyer: Benjamin Frutkin
Seller: Christine A. Jackman
Date: 11/04/22

21 Taylor St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $311,425
Buyer: Miguel Cuevas
Seller: Marissa M. Montemagni
Date: 11/10/22

30 Vadnais St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $340,000
Buyer: Emma Rodrigue
Seller: Fabienne D. Boisson
Date: 11/10/22

289 Walnut St.
Holyoke, MA 01040
Amount: $1,555,005
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I. LLC
Seller: Hampshire Walnut LLC
Date: 11/02/22

LONGMEADOW

47 Barclay St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $420,000
Buyer: Mark R. Mondani
Seller: Kylee C. Granfield
Date: 11/10/22

19 Eton Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $560,000
Buyer: Maria C. Dipentima
Seller: David T. Florian
Date: 11/01/22

39 Harwich Road
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $510,000
Buyer: Nicholas Sulham
Seller: Laurie B. Ernst
Date: 11/08/22

79 Leetewood Dr.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: Zachary S. Schwartz
Seller: Loos FT
Date: 11/08/22

168 Longmeadow St.
Longmeadow, MA 01106
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: Sheila E. Moriarty
Seller: Brian M. Douthwright
Date: 11/04/22

LUDLOW

151 Carmelinas Circle
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Scott Pio
Seller: John M. Chelo
Date: 11/02/22

151 Carmelinas Circle
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $280,001
Buyer: SM Carmelina Real Estate LLC
Seller: Scott Pio
Date: 11/03/22

39 Cypress St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Willie McGee
Seller: Andrew Collette
Date: 11/08/22

483-485 Holyoke St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $2,990,000
Buyer: Procon Group LLC
Seller: Black Diamond Development LLC
Date: 11/01/22

95 Prospect St.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $320,000
Buyer: East Ludlow Propereties LLC
Seller: Steve J. McDaniel
Date: 11/09/22

44 Ridgeview Circle
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Haylea M. Hubacz
Seller: Antonio S. Brighenti
Date: 11/07/22

38 Stivens Ter.
Ludlow, MA 01056
Amount: $217,000
Buyer: Revampit LLC
Seller: David J. Ziemian
Date: 11/03/22

MONSON

Boston Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $320,000
Buyer: Felix L. Santana
Seller: Laura Allard
Date: 11/08/22

24 Hampden Ave.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Rachel Theriault
Seller: Daniel J. Haynes
Date: 11/07/22

5 Silver St.
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $320,000
Buyer: Felix L. Santana
Seller: Laura Allard
Date: 11/08/22

129 Stafford Road
Monson, MA 01057
Amount: $239,900
Buyer: Jesus F. Hernandez
Seller: 119 Broadway Newburgh Inc.
Date: 11/01/22

PALMER

26 Old Farm Road
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $412,000
Buyer: Anna Azizian
Seller: James J. Guilbault
Date: 11/01/22

1061 Park St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: Karl E. Sweikhart
Date: 11/03/22

405 Shearer St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: Greg Ambrose
Seller: Sakowski, John S., (Estate)
Date: 11/10/22

407 Shearer St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: Greg Ambrose
Seller: Sakowski, John S., (Estate)
Date: 11/10/22

19 Sibley St.
Palmer, MA 01080
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Kristen A. Coia
Seller: Dorothy M. Raymond
Date: 11/10/22

992 Ware St.
Palmer, MA 01069
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Nicholas Rogerson
Seller: SZF Properties LLC
Date: 11/04/22

SOUTHWICK

44 Birchwood Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $182,500
Buyer: Michael Werman
Seller: Ligenza, June E., (Estate)
Date: 11/10/22

35-R Hillside Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $285,000
Buyer: Oleg Kulyak
Seller: VIP Homes & Assocs. LLC
Date: 11/07/22

83 Mort Vining Road
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Erin Vermette
Seller: Yvon J. Vermette
Date: 11/10/22

114 South Loomis St.
Southwick, MA 01077
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Nicholas Anthony
Seller: Steven Tencati
Date: 11/10/22

SPRINGFIELD

226 Allen St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Marian S. Nunez-Martinez
Seller: MS Homes LLC
Date: 11/10/22

306 Arnold Ave.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $349,500
Buyer: Alexier Collazo
Seller: Maritza Rivera
Date: 11/07/22

21 Ashley St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Luz E. Melendez
Seller: Blossom A. Williams
Date: 11/08/22

93 Beaumont St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $221,000
Buyer: Riley Vanhuynh
Seller: Mary M. Hubbard
Date: 11/02/22

54 Bolton St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $279,500
Buyer: Anthony J. Monteiro
Seller: Thomas A. Mitchell
Date: 11/02/22

156 Buckingham St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $253,800
Buyer: Salomi Stewart
Seller: Todd W. Crosset
Date: 11/02/22

17 Calhoun St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $575,000
Buyer: 17 Calhoun Street LLC
Seller: Villar Real Estate Inc.
Date: 11/01/22

37 Campechi St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $223,000
Buyer: Tessa Colon
Seller: Paul F. Styckiewickz
Date: 11/01/22

459-461 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Jose M. Mercedes
Seller: Jose R. Vasquez
Date: 11/08/22

1037 Carew St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $215,000
Buyer: Marisol V. Rivera
Seller: Jose Perez
Date: 11/10/22

20 Clifton Ave.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Sandra M. Lemus-Ochoa
Seller: Springfield Ventures RT
Date: 11/08/22

37 Craig St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $317,000
Buyer: Elizabeth A. Lane
Seller: Freeman, Sandra Ona, (Estate)
Date: 11/10/22

13 Delano Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $320,000
Buyer: Wilfred J. Pelletier
Seller: Joshua E. Negron
Date: 11/04/22

625 Dickinson St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $115,000
Buyer: Yeslin Gonzalez
Seller: Gina M. Varandas
Date: 11/02/22

76 Fair Oak Road
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Jose L. Cruz
Seller: Mark P. Racine
Date: 11/02/22

87 Feltham Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Anastasia Bedinelli
Seller: Mark A. Noto
Date: 11/07/22

183 Florida St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Crystal White
Seller: Tristan Tash
Date: 11/01/22

385-387 Franklin St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Home City Development Inc.
Seller: Martin Vasquez
Date: 11/07/22

21 Fullerton St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: Gabriella Trzepla
Seller: Basile Realty LLC
Date: 11/02/22

63 Garvey Dr.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Keshia Maxwell
Seller: Wilfred J. Pelletier
Date: 11/04/22

70 Gary Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $251,000
Buyer: Monica J. Rahall
Seller: Przemyslaw Stelmach
Date: 11/10/22

11 Gates Ave.
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: Joel A. Fuller
Seller: Joann C. Pare
Date: 11/03/22

127 Governor St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Loyda Resto
Seller: Steven Nguyen
Date: 11/04/22

56 Granby St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $243,000
Buyer: Jason Marshall
Seller: Annette L. Flynt
Date: 11/02/22

25 Greene Place
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Maryellen Culver
Seller: JJJ17 LLC
Date: 11/08/22

50 Hermitage Dr.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $271,000
Buyer: Robin Bishop
Seller: Gladys Rivera
Date: 11/02/22

26 Hilltop St.
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Alvinelis C. Velazquez
Seller: Marian Cocchi
Date: 11/04/22

410 Holcomb Road
Springfield, MA 01118
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Nicole J. Stewart
Seller: Jablonski, Coleen M., (Estate)
Date: 11/09/22

120 Hood St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $355,000
Buyer: Yesenia I. Valentin
Seller: Kenny E. Manguinuri-Cuevas
Date: 11/04/22

43 Ingersoll Grove
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $204,000
Buyer: Matthew J. Beisler
Seller: Mutwakil Khalid
Date: 11/01/22

45 Juniper Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Carey S. Noonan
Seller: Kenneth P. Blanchard
Date: 11/04/22

12 Ladd St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $240,000
Buyer: Maurice Mattis
Seller: DFG Property Group LLC
Date: 11/09/22

35 Laurence St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Heather Arthur
Seller: Hector Rivera
Date: 11/10/22

95-97 Lebanon St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Daniel G. Gonzalez
Seller: Jose R. Ortiz
Date: 11/10/22

35 Ledyard St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Kenneth Tanon
Seller: Ruben Vazquez
Date: 11/04/22

75 Leitch St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $162,000
Buyer: Matthew C. Hegarty
Seller: Vincent M. Walsh
Date: 11/03/22

52-56 Loring St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Handyflippers Inc.
Seller: Victor L. Martinez
Date: 11/10/22

200 Main St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $259,000
Buyer: Milestone Funeral Services
Seller: Carriage Funeral Holdings Inc.
Date: 11/09/22

1550 Main St.
Springfield, MA 01103
Amount: $6,000,000
Buyer: Mittas Holdings LLC
Seller: Mass. Development Finance Agency
Date: 11/02/22

2684-2690 Main St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $3,712,603
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: Main Sheldon LLC
Date: 11/02/22

2702-2708 Main St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $3,712,603
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: Main Sheldon LLC
Date: 11/02/22

2882-2896 Main St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $1,500,000
Buyer: 2882 Main Street LLC
Seller: Villar Real Estate Inc.
Date: 11/01/22

28-30 Malden St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Ricangelo Faour
Seller: Luis M. Terrero-Calderon
Date: 11/08/22

137 Massachusetts Ave.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $190,000
Buyer: Elite Properites LLC
Seller: Cuffie, Gladys R., (Estate)
Date: 11/10/22

139 Maybrook Road
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $161,000
Buyer: Wilmington Savings
Seller: Nicholas J. Korniores
Date: 11/07/22

32 Maynard St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $181,000
Buyer: Delise Davis
Seller: Gloria Harrison
Date: 11/01/22

216 Middlesex St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $245,000
Buyer: Louis Dejesus
Seller: Chan Lin
Date: 11/10/22

65 Midway St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Nicholas V. Gay
Seller: Luz Feliciano
Date: 11/02/22

14 Naismith Place
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Maritza Rivera
Seller: Humberto Melero
Date: 11/08/22

100-102 Newfield Road
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $344,500
Buyer: Daniel Dones
Seller: Natanael Crespo
Date: 11/10/22

20 Northumberland St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $179,900
Buyer: Leonardo T. Otalvaro
Seller: Jillian E. McLeod
Date: 11/10/22

84 Northway Dr.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $307,000
Buyer: Ermelinda Cardona
Seller: Kaitlyn McLaughlin
Date: 11/10/22

75 Orleans St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $2,397,189
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: IMS Realty Corp.
Date: 11/02/22

1190 Parker St.
Springfield, MA 01129
Amount: $920,000
Buyer: H&I Demir Realty LLC
Seller: Norman, A. Thomas TR
Date: 11/02/22

23 Parkwood St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Mishel Ahualt
Seller: Round 2 LLC
Date: 11/10/22

66 Pheland St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $219,000
Buyer: Agustin C. Rodriguez
Seller: Joseph P. Demars
Date: 11/03/22

65 Pinta Circle
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $296,000
Buyer: Ellison Reyes
Seller: Tadeuz J. Chrostowski
Date: 11/10/22

69 Redlands St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Equity T. Co
Seller: Jose R. Bonilla
Date: 11/04/22

119 Revere St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Tanisha Salmon
Seller: Bianca F. Maynard-Williams
Date: 11/09/22

24-26 Rittenhouse Ter.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $230,000
Buyer: Jess J. Johnson
Seller: MPD RT
Date: 11/01/22

43 Sedgewick St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Elita J. Baker
Seller: Brittney M. Gonzalez
Date: 11/08/22

6 Sheldon St.
Springfield, MA 01107
Amount: $3,712,603
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: Main Sheldon LLC
Date: 11/02/22

47 Sierra Vista Road
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Michaelena Waite
Seller: Michael R. Sears
Date: 11/01/22

80 Slumber Lane
Springfield, MA 01128
Amount: $226,000
Buyer: Matthew A. Tresch
Seller: Craig A. Burger
Date: 11/10/22

140 Temby St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Robin Scott
Seller: MS Homes LLC
Date: 11/02/22

55 Thornfell St.
Springfield, MA 01104
Amount: $233,000
Buyer: Norberto Ramos
Seller: Jonathan W. Driscoll
Date: 11/07/22

343 Tiffany St.
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $131,000
Buyer: Kristen Dionne
Seller: James S. Gondek
Date: 11/04/22

528-532 Union St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $2,397,189
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: IMS Realty Corp.
Date: 11/02/22

529 Union St.
Springfield, MA 01109
Amount: $2,397,189
Buyer: Holyoke SF 2 I LLC
Seller: IMS Realty Corp.
Date: 11/02/22

21 Vann St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Cristian D. Rodriguez
Seller: Targaryen RT
Date: 11/09/22

201 Walnut St.
Springfield, MA 01105
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Martin Vasquez
Seller: Hedge Hog Industries Corp.
Date: 11/07/22

54 Washington Road
Springfield, MA 01108
Amount: $267,000
Buyer: Diversified Investments International LLC
Seller: Wells Fargo
Date: 11/09/22

45 Willow St.
Springfield, MA 01103
Amount: $42,600,000
Buyer: Stockbridge Ventures LLC
Seller: Stockbridge Court LLC
Date: 11/03/22

161 Wollaston St.
Springfield, MA 01119
Amount: $340,000
Buyer: Brittney Gonzalez
Seller: Confesora Mota
Date: 11/08/22

989 Worcester St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $235,000
Buyer: Riley Pontz
Seller: Shannon M. Burk
Date: 11/07/22

1402-1404 Worcester St.
Springfield, MA 01151
Amount: $285,000
Buyer: Jennifer Montalvo
Seller: Gregg Richers
Date: 11/04/22

WALES

50 Monson Road
Wales, MA 01081
Amount: $210,000
Buyer: Cioccolate RT
Seller: Abby L. Hermanson
Date: 11/03/22

92 Stafford Holland Road
Wales, MA 01081
Amount: $134,469
Buyer: FHLM
Seller: Nelson D. Rodriguez
Date: 11/04/22

WESTFIELD

2 Bristol St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $250,000
Buyer: Amanda Lowe
Seller: John D. Pumphrey
Date: 11/07/22

61 Broadway
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Cory M. Babinski
Seller: Carrie T. Florek
Date: 11/03/22

1 Dubois St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $294,000
Buyer: Rudolph Sacco
Seller: Ewald Wrobleski
Date: 11/03/22

24 Fowler St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $222,500
Buyer: Robert E. Roy
Seller: KJA Properties LLC
Date: 11/03/22

72 Franklin St.
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Min Realty LLC
Seller: Howard W. Kane
Date: 11/02/22

1065 Granville Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $224,300
Buyer: Richard A. Warren
Seller: William E. Warren
Date: 11/08/22

209 Lockhouse Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $420,000
Buyer: Morais Enterprises LLC
Seller: Amerigas Propane LP
Date: 11/04/22

Medieros Way
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $175,000
Buyer: Sovereign Builders Inc.
Seller: Summit Lock Road LLC
Date: 11/02/22

109 North Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $700,000
Buyer: Brian J. Hayes
Seller: Yevgeniy A. Yunikov
Date: 11/02/22

604 North Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $450,000
Buyer: 604 North Road Realty LLC
Seller: 604 North Road LLC
Date: 11/04/22

61 Plantation Circle
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Ronald R. Musterait
Seller: Stephen E. Schnopp
Date: 11/09/22

1144 Southampton Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $360,000
Buyer: 1144 Southampton Road Realty
Seller: 1144 Southampton Road LLC
Date: 11/04/22

1152 Southampton Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $435,000
Buyer: 1152 Southampton Road Realty
Seller: 1152 Southampton Road LLC
Date: 11/04/22

8 Winding Ridge Lane
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $630,000
Buyer: Greg A. Bevilacqua
Seller: William M. Anjos
Date: 11/04/22

14 Woodsong Road
Westfield, MA 01085
Amount: $484,000
Buyer: Kyle J. Beauregard
Seller: Anthony T. Nomakeo
Date: 11/08/22

WILBRAHAM

7 Belli Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $355,000
Buyer: Michael H. Thomas
Seller: Richard M. Ramos
Date: 11/10/22

13 Belli Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Jessica L. Nowak
Seller: Naomi S. Noyes
Date: 11/10/22

20 Blacksmith Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $405,000
Buyer: Andrew Martin
Seller: Ashley Pini
Date: 11/01/22

3281 Boston Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Felix L. Santana
Seller: Manomednet LLC
Date: 11/08/22

68 Crane Hill Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $465,000
Buyer: Brendon M. Couturier
Seller: Anthony J. Amaral
Date: 11/01/22

7 Inwood Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $500,000
Buyer: Erik K. Frazier
Seller: Mary K. Campbell
Date: 11/04/22

8 South Park Dr.
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $306,500
Buyer: Nicholas R. Cafaro
Seller: Jan F. Binda
Date: 11/09/22

508 Stony Hill Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $318,000
Buyer: Heather K. Wrisley
Seller: Kyle L. Page
Date: 11/02/22

796 Stony Hill Road
Wilbraham, MA 01095
Amount: $339,900
Buyer: Matthew J. O’Brien
Seller: Natalie A. Swiatlowski
Date: 11/08/22

WEST SPRINGFIELD

538 Amostown Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Linda Engel
Seller: William P. Garvey
Date: 11/04/22

1002 Amostown Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Kathryn Felsentreger
Seller: Kyle Felsentreger
Date: 11/09/22

53 Clyde Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Victor Sinigur
Seller: PAH Properties LLC
Date: 11/07/22

107 Galaska Dr.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $430,000
Buyer: Husam Noury
Seller: Simon J. Brighenti
Date: 11/10/22

92 Garden St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $265,000
Buyer: Seth N. Torres-Soto
Seller: Dora I. Chavez-Saravia
Date: 11/08/22

121 Garden St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $120,500
Buyer: Garden 121 RT
Seller: Edward E. Printz
Date: 11/02/22

36 Guy Place
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Mass Housing LLC
Seller: Tymofiy Andriychuk
Date: 11/01/22

106 Norman St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $220,000
Buyer: Aga Realty LLC
Seller: S&K Properties LLC
Date: 11/07/22

15 Pine St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $380,000
Buyer: Ahrayah M. Julian
Seller: Abdul M. Khadra
Date: 11/03/22

1211 Piper Road
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $317,500
Buyer: Connor Bryant
Seller: Jordan L. McConaha
Date: 11/10/22

431 Rogers Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $335,000
Buyer: Regina Burns
Seller: Desousa, Colleen M., (Estate)
Date: 11/09/22

31 Silver St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $300,000
Buyer: Alexander J. Ablianitis
Seller: Golden Gorillas LLC
Date: 11/10/22

74 Smyrna St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $275,000
Buyer: Christopher Whelihan
Seller: Marlene I. Lopez
Date: 11/10/22

71-75 Spring St.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Eduard Yanyuk
Seller: 71-75 Spring Street RT
Date: 11/10/22

203 Wolcott Ave.
West Springfield, MA 01089
Amount: $185,000
Buyer: West Co. Investments LLC
Seller: Walker, Ray Lester S., (Estate)
Date: 11/10/22

HAMPSHIRE COUNTY

AMHERST

82 Aubinwood Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $435,000
Buyer: Jenny E. Berggren
Seller: James, Robert J. Sr., (Estate)
Date: 11/07/22

1210 Bay Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: EV RT
Seller: Robert W. McAllister
Date: 11/01/22

237 Meadow St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $409,000
Buyer: Zachary Allred
Seller: Edward H. Axtell
Date: 11/01/22

27 Palley Village Place
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $610,000
Buyer: Jennifer Hines
Seller: Justin H. Smith
Date: 11/02/22

74 Potwine Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $490,000
Buyer: Nancy G. Reffsin
Seller: Robert C. Hawley
Date: 11/03/22

424 Potwine Lane
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $135,068
Buyer: Scott Tundermann
Seller: Bank Of America
Date: 11/01/22

71 Sand Hill Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $679,000
Buyer: Michael Messmer
Seller: Gilbert W. Lawall
Date: 11/10/22

1403 South East St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $435,000
Buyer: Hea Lee
Seller: Jon R. Whitney
Date: 11/10/22

36 Tanglewood Road
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $700,000
Buyer: Daniel Grindley
Seller: Shirley R. Vernick
Date: 11/10/22

245 West St.
Amherst, MA 01002
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Tauqeer Hassan
Seller: Good View LLC
Date: 11/10/22

BELCHERTOWN

171 Bardwell St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $499,900
Buyer: Andreea Rotaru
Seller: Andrey Korchevskiy
Date: 11/02/22

6 Ledgewood Dr.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $430,000
Buyer: Gregory Pion
Seller: Deborah L. Donovan
Date: 11/03/22

67 Magnolia Lane
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $130,000
Buyer: Evan Altman
Seller: Brent F. Walton
Date: 11/10/22

334 North Liberty St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $475,000
Buyer: Kimberly A. Anderson
Seller: Jason R. Ballou
Date: 11/07/22

26 Plaza Ave.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $527,000
Buyer: Zachary C. Almond
Seller: Josh E. Dufresne
Date: 11/10/22

57 Sabin St.
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Kelsey Bosselait
Seller: Matthew O’Brien
Date: 11/08/22

581 Warren Wright Road
Belchertown, MA 01007
Amount: $390,000
Buyer: Simon S. Byun
Seller: Robert P. Kunreuther
Date: 11/04/22

CUMMINGTON

6 Potash Hill Ext.
Cummington, MA 01026
Amount: $385,000
Buyer: Emily E. Michaelenko
Seller: Raymond L. Vandoloski
Date: 11/04/22

EASTHAMPTON

8 Arthur St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $299,500
Buyer: Lindsey A. Akers
Seller: James M. Duffy
Date: 11/08/22

49 Clapp St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $350,000
Buyer: Gunnar B. Jonsson
Seller: Warnock RT
Date: 11/03/22

14-16 Exeter St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Josue Colon
Seller: Michael J. Nartowicz
Date: 11/02/22

15 Kania St.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Cristina V. Mazzanti
Seller: S. P&Amy Jo Leblanc RET
Date: 11/09/22

10 Meadowbrook Dr.
Easthampton, MA 01027
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Jamie C. Paquette
Seller: David R. Kukucka
Date: 11/10/22

GRANBY

569 East State St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Benjamin J. Detour
Seller: Alfred L. Detour
Date: 11/08/22

61 North St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Malia Homebuyers LLC
Seller: Carrie L. Burke
Date: 11/07/22

4 West State St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $420,000
Buyer: Win Properties LLC
Seller: Ronald L. Harrop
Date: 11/10/22

6 West State St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $420,000
Buyer: Win Properties LLC
Seller: Ronald L. Harrop
Date: 11/10/22

8 West State St.
Granby, MA 01033
Amount: $420,000
Buyer: Win Properties LLC
Seller: Ronald L. Harrop
Date: 11/10/22

HADLEY

4 Adare Place
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $814,800
Buyer: Justin H. Smith
Seller: Rosemund LLC
Date: 11/04/22

231 Bay Road
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $760,000
Buyer: Claire A. Kelly
Seller: Linda Harris
Date: 11/04/22

5 Laurana Lane
Hadley, MA 01035
Amount: $530,000
Buyer: Emily Ike
Seller: Susan E. Garrett
Date: 11/07/22

HATFIELD

119 Depot Road
Hatfield, MA 01038
Amount: $400,000
Buyer: Katie L. Bodzinski
Seller: Shannon E. Whidden
Date: 11/10/22

159 West St.
Hatfield, MA 01088
Amount: $260,000
Buyer: Nathan Chavarie
Seller: James M. Motyka
Date: 11/04/22

HUNTINGTON

124 Norwich Lake
Huntington, MA 01050
Amount: $280,000
Buyer: Frank D. Delmonte
Seller: Patricia C. McLain
Date: 11/02/22

MIDDLEFIELD

131 River Road
Middlefield, MA 01050
Amount: $179,990
Buyer: Clinton J. Maxey
Seller: Eugene D. Honan
Date: 11/04/22

NORTHAMPTON

335 Brookside Circle
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $225,000
Buyer: Lawrence B. Laplante
Seller: Karen M. Laplante
Date: 11/09/22

583 Coles Meadow Road
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $803,000
Buyer: Michael E. Aleo
Seller: James Flynn
Date: 11/04/22

56 Crescent St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $1,540,000
Buyer: Peter B. Kassis
Seller: Renna Pye
Date: 11/04/22

301 Damon Road
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $200,000
Buyer: Ronald Gardner
Seller: Janet R. Krok LT
Date: 11/04/22

222 Elm St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $1,140,000
Buyer: Simon J. Salloom
Seller: Renee S. Wetstein
Date: 11/01/22

589 Florence Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $325,000
Buyer: Sam Pranger-Silvaine
Seller: Sullivan Real Estate LLC
Date: 11/10/22

9 Hayward Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $575,000
Buyer: Paul Weinberg
Seller: Brian Adams
Date: 11/10/22

195 Industrial Dr.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $4,259,315
Buyer: Isle Apartments LLC
Seller: Altera Northampton Investments
Date: 11/01/22

186 Jackson St.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $146,000
Buyer: Adia C. Johnston
Seller: P. R. & Mary H. Johnston TR
Date: 11/10/22

Lonsdale St. Lot 1
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Nu Way Homes Inc.
Seller: American Legion Post 28 Inc.
Date: 11/07/22

107 North Maple St.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $410,000
Buyer: Anthony B. Kitchen
Seller: Mark C. Devlin
Date: 11/01/22

9 Park St.
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $823,000
Buyer: Christopher L. Jetton
Seller: Lynn L. Wagman
Date: 11/10/22

23 Prospect Ave.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $750,000
Buyer: Fatimah Kabba
Seller: Peter B. Kassis
Date: 11/02/22

Riverside Dr., Lot 1
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $125,000
Buyer: Nu Way Homes Inc.
Seller: American Legion Post 28 Inc.
Date: 11/07/22

1040 Ryan Road
Northampton, MA 01062
Amount: $310,000
Buyer: Samuel I. Clark
Seller: Michael Klatsky
Date: 11/04/22

10 Sherman Ave.
Northampton, MA 01060
Amount: $729,900
Buyer: Stella Conyer
Seller: Nu Way Homes Inc.
Date: 11/10/22

PELHAM

6 Harkness Road
Pelham, MA 01002
Amount: $172,000
Buyer: David Rohde
Seller: James Fitzgibbon
Date: 11/01/22

SOUTH HADLEY

2 Birch Hill Road
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $495,000
Buyer: David Farnsworth
Seller: Priscilla White-Cole
Date: 11/09/22

2 Dove Hill
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $805,000
Buyer: N. Y. Chihombori-Quao
Seller: Alicia F. Magri
Date: 11/02/22

15 Lamb St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $330,000
Buyer: Chiara Leporati
Seller: French Property Management LLC
Date: 11/09/22

259 Lathrop St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $428,000
Buyer: Beth A. Markens
Seller: Michelle N. Theroux
Date: 11/10/22

2078 Memorial Dr.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $450,000
Buyer: LNT Properties LLC
Seller: Demers Family Realty LLC
Date: 11/09/22

3 Ralph Ave.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $199,900
Buyer: Anthony Traiforos
Seller: Kasey N. Bunnell
Date: 11/02/22

14 Taylor St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $291,300
Buyer: Christina Royal
Seller: Yury Viess
Date: 11/01/22

90 Woodbridge St.
South Hadley, MA 01075
Amount: $529,850
Buyer: Maggie Hwang
Seller: Timothy J. Luce
Date: 11/10/22

SOUTHAMPTON

85 Maple St.
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $150,000
Buyer: Peter B. Chlastawa
Seller: William J. York
Date: 11/01/22

3 Rattle Hill Road
Southampton, MA 01073
Amount: $205,000
Buyer: James C. Pascoe
Seller: Britt, Kenneth R., (Estate)
Date: 11/09/22

WARE

13 Cherry St.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $120,000
Buyer: Felix L. Santana
Seller: Manomednet LLC
Date: 11/08/22

1-3 Laurel Dr.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $315,000
Buyer: Adam J. Senuta
Seller: Midura FT
Date: 11/09/22

22 Pine St.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $128,500
Buyer: Nina Hristova
Seller: USA HUD
Date: 11/04/22

13 Williams St.
Ware, MA 01082
Amount: $182,000
Buyer: Erin Jorjakis
Seller: Miskiewicz, Helen J., (Estate)
Date: 11/01/22

WILLIAMSBURG

73 Old Goshen Road
Williamsburg, MA 01096
Amount: $475,000
Buyer: Abbott Gray RT
Seller: Misner, Margaret K. S., (Estate)
Date: 11/07/22

WORTHINGTON

Adams Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $600,000
Buyer: Kimberly A. TR
Seller: Paul A. Strasburg RET
Date: 11/07/22

Curtis Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $600,000
Buyer: Kimberly A. TR
Seller: Paul A. Strasburg RET
Date: 11/07/22

Patterson Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $600,000
Buyer: Kimberly A. TR
Seller: Paul A. Strasburg RET
Date: 11/07/22

175 Patterson Road
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $600,000
Buyer: Kimberly A. TR
Seller: Paul A. Strasburg RET
Date: 11/07/22

West St.
Worthington, MA 01098
Amount: $600,000
Buyer: Kimberly A. TR
Seller: Paul A. Strasburg RET
Date: 11/07/22

Building Permits

By BusinessWest Staff December 7, 2022

Building Permits

The following building permits were issued during the month of November 2022. (Filings are limited due to closures or reduced staffing hours at municipal offices due to COVID-19 restrictions).

CHICOPEE

U.S. Tsubaki Inc.
106 Lonczak Dr.
$3,000 — Pour concrete pad

HADLEY

Joseph Boisvert
8 Stockwell Road
N/A — Rebuild on existing foundation

LEE

South Lee Assoc. LLC
501 Pleasant St.
$134,550 — Modify sprinkler system to allow for rack storage

LENOX

Patrick Li
383 East St.
$3,828 — Fire-alarm system

Serge Paccaud
71 Church St.
$14,968 — Roofing

Willow Creek Corp.
51 Willow Creek Road
$454,000 — Addition and alterations to change use from single-family with garage to mixed-use with commercial garage

NORTHAMPTON

Cooley Dickinson Hospital Inc.
30 Locust St.
$45,165 — Illuminated wall sign

Dimension Realty LLC
395 Pleasant St.
$12,000 — Interior office renovations

Hampshire Educational Collaborative Inc.
97 Hawley St.
$32,752 — Accessory structure to be used as office space

Lathrop Community Inc.
680 Bridge St.
$14,000 — Enclose porch

The Nettler-Green Living Trust
20 Bridge Road, Unit 42
$8,638 — Roofing

Rankin Holdings LLC
115 Conz St.
$13,600 — Reface signs for Fairfield Inn

Smith College
138 Elm St.
$34,000 — Roofing

Smith College
25 Henshaw Ave.
$186,000 — Interior demolition of boiler house

St. John’s Episcopal Church
48 Elm St.
$4,872 — Replace four basement windows

PITTSFIELD

Berkshire Two LLC
40 Perrine Ave.
$85,000 — Roofing and siding

Casella Waste Management
500 Hubbard Ave.
$79,000 — Install retaining wall

Stephen Miller
79 East Housatonic St.
$54,055 — Roofing

Three Eleven Partners LLC
34 Depot St.
$16,457 — Miscellaneous membrane EPDM repairs

SPRINGFIELD

90 Tapley LLC
90 Tapley St.
$64,483 — Perform selective interior demolition for future buildout

Baystate Medical Center Inc.
759 Chestnut St.
$224,132 — Alter interior space, scope cleaning room for new equipment

Caring Health Center
473 Sumner Ave.
$1,273,073 — Remodel interior space for new tenant, remodel exterior facade

Zahoor Ul Haq
679 Main St.
$43,000 — Gas station remodel to include new utility room, storage room, and bathroom; erect fire-rated wall for new tenant space; install two doors and six windows

International Brotherhood of Electrical Local 7
95 Liberty St.
$17,957 — Enclose existing exterior stairway from basement

Mittas Hospitality LLC, DD Development LLC, Rudra Realty LLC
1500 Main St.
$86,800 — Alter interior tenant office space on ninth floor of Tower Square

Wason Avenue Partners II LLC
80 Wason Ave.
$440,000 — Shields MRI replacement on first floor

BusinessTalk with Bob Bolduc, founder of Pride Stations and Stores

By BusinessWest Staff November 28, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 138: November 28, 2022

George Interviews Bob Bolduc, founder of Pride Stations and Stores

It’s called the Hope for Youth & Families Foundation. That’s the next chapter in the life and career of entrepreneur and philanthropist Bob Bolduc, founder of Pride Stations and Stores. On the next installment of BusinessTalk, BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien talks with Bolduc about his new foundation and its broad goal of helping individuals and families achieve sustainability. It’s must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local 413 and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

Sponsored by:

Also Available On

BusinessTalk with Mark Paglia, COO of Mira Vista Behavioral Health Center

By BusinessWest Staff November 7, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 135: November 7, 2022

George Interviews Mark Paglia, COO of Mira Vista Behavioral Health Center

Mark Paglia, COO of Mira Vista Behavioral Health Center — and a Healthcare Hero for 2022 — is the guest on BusinessTalk this week, and there was a lot to discuss with BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien. Topics include the opening of Mira Vista in the middle of a pandemic, the behavioral health crisis that accompanied COVID, the ongoing, and now often overlooked, opioid addiction problem in this country, and much more. It’s all must listening, so tune in to BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

Sponsored by:

Also Available On

Announcing the 2022 Women of Impact

By BusinessWest Staff October 27, 2022

Cover Story Event Galleries Women of Impact 2022

View the Gallery from the Dec. 9 Event

[Show thumbnails]

Photos by Leah Martin Photography (order reprints here)

Watch the Video from the Dec. 9 Event

This Year’s Class to Be Celebrated on Dec. 8

BusinessWest has long recognized the contributions of women within the business community and created the Women of Impact awards four years ago to further honor women who have the authority and power to move the needle in their business, are respected for accomplishments within their industries, give back to the community, and are sought out as respected advisors and mentors within their field of influence.

See the 2022 Women of Impact Digital section HERE

The eight stories below demonstrate that idea many times over. They detail not only what these women do for a living, but what they’ve done with their lives — specifically, how they’ve become innovators in their fields, leaders within the community, and, most importantly, inspirations to all those around them. The class of 2022 features:

• Latoya Bosworth, program officer at Mass Humanities

• Sr. Mary Caritas of the Sisters of Providence

• Jodi Falk, executive director of Rachel’s Table

• Anika Lopes, Amherst town councilor and president of Ancestral Bridges

• Laurie Raymaakers, president of J.L. Raymaakers & Sons Inc.

• Hilda Roqué, executive director of Nuestras Raíces Inc.

• Ashley Sullivan, president of O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun

• Aelan Tierney, president of Kuhn Riddle Architects.

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Aelan Tierney

By George O'Brien October 27, 2022

Women of Impact 2022

Principal, Kuhn Riddle Architects

She’s Created a Blueprint for Being an Effective Leader

Aelan Tierney was recalling her search for an internship opportunity while in high school.

This was before the internet, so she used something quite foreign to people of that age today — the phone book. Starting in the A’s, she came to ‘Advertising,’ thought about it for a minute or two, and then continued turning pages until arriving at ‘Architecture,’ and decided that this was a profession she needed to explore.

When asked why she moved down the book from advertising, she said simply, “it was interesting, but it wasn’t three-dimensional.”

Architecture is, and that’s just one of the many things she likes about what eventually became her chosen field.

“Architecture impacts every aspect of our life, whether it’s your home, school, or place of work,” she told BusinessWest. “The experiences you have are shaped by the spaces that you’re in; if you’re in a good space, you do and feel good, and if you’re in a bad space, it can make your life difficult. I like how architecture makes an impact on people.”

As it turns out, that high-school internship spawned more than an interest in architecture. It started Tierney down a truly impactful career path, as an employer (she’s president of the Amherst-based firm Kuhn Riddle), as someone active her in profession and trying to diversify its ranks (much more on that later), and as someone active in her community, as a member of the board of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, for example, and also as chair of the Northampton Central Business Architecture Committee.

“Architecture impacts every aspect of our life, whether it’s your home, school, or place of work. The experiences you have are shaped by the spaces that you’re in; if you’re in a good space, you do and feel good, and if you’re in a bad space, it can make your life difficult. I like how architecture makes an impact on people.”

One internship didn’t inspire all that, obviously. What has is an ongoing desire to get involved (she’s a former Peace Corps volunteer), inspire and mentor others, and, yes, impact everyday lives through her work in architecture.

In all aspects of her life, Tierney would be considered a leader, and to her, that means someone who possesses many skills, but excels at listening and responding to what is heard. This is true when it comes to the relationship between an architect and a client, in the workplace, and in life in general.

“Listening and hearing what people are saying is really important,” she said. “We all come from very different life experiences that shape who we are and how we see and understand the world. Strong leaders try to best understand the goals and aspirations of the people they are leading.

“I think strong leaders also know how to bring the best people to them and then bring out the best in them,” she went on. “They learn the strengths of the people on their team, and they cultivate and support the growth of those strengths while also figuring out how to help them strengthen their weaknesses.”

Aelan Tierney says the past few years brought challenges the industry hadn’t seen before, but Kuhn Riddle was able to ride out the storm.

Tierney certainly fits these descriptions, and her strong leadership skills and ability to change the landscape, in all kinds of ways, makes her a Woman of Impact.

New Dimensions of Leadership

Architecture is one of those fields that is most impacted by the ups and downs in the economy, especially those downs.

And those in this profession feel the impact usually before most others.

Indeed, as the economy starts to decline, or even before that as storm clouds start to gather, building projects large and small are often put on hold or scrapped altogether. Tierney has seen the phone stop ringing, or ringing as often, several times in her career, especially during the Great Recession of 2009, when most building ground to a halt.

Still, the pandemic that started in March 2020, was something altogether different, unlike anything she or anyone else in this profession had seen before.

“Listening and hearing what people are saying is really important. We all come from very different life experiences that shape who we are and how we see and understand the world. Strong leaders try to best understand the goals and aspirations of the people they are leading.”

“It was scary,” she recalled, noting that many of the public institutions Kuhn Riddle has worked for, and it’s a long list, simply shut down and shelved most all construction and renovation work. “We actually started talking about … ‘well, what happens if we have to close the firm?’”

The firm didn’t close, obviously, and it was Tierney’s work with her partners and others at the company to diversify its portfolio — as well as those leadership skills she described earlier — that enabled it to ride out this and other storms.

“During the pandemic, I learned that leaders have to think quickly on their feet; they have to gather as much information as possible about things they never thought they would be dealing with,” she said. “They need to communicate clearly and frequently in an ever-changing and rapidly changing crisis. They need to make tough decisions, and hopefully keep the business and all of the staff afloat.”

Tierney said everything she experienced prior to the pandemic helped prepare her for that moment — as much as anyone could have been prepared. And to understand, we need to go back to that internship. Actually, our story goes back further, to Tierney’s childhood, when she spent considerable time in her father’s woodworking school for fine furniture and watching him craft pieces to meet a client’s specific needs. It was through such experiences that she developed an interest in architecture.

“I thought it was fascinating to take something from paper and transform it into an object,” she said, adding that this interest eventually led her to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, where she majored in architecture and minored in architecture history.

She graduated during one of those aforementioned downturns in the economy, the lengthy recession of the early ’90s. Unable to find work, she joined the Peace Corps as a community-development volunteer and was assigned to work in Guinea in West Africa — a learning experience on many levels, and one in which she put her education to good use.

“I was a health and community-development volunteer, and I renovated an old warehouse building into a workshop for a women’s cooperative,” she recalled. “It was amazing job to have to have as young woman in a developing country.”

She started her career in architecture at Dietz & Co. Architects in Springfield, led by Kerry Dietz, a member of BusinessWest’s inaugural class of Women of Impact, whom Tierney described as a great mentor. She then joined Kuhn Riddle in 2005 and became president and majority owner in 2016.

As an architect, she works on projects across a broad spectrum, including residential, commercial, education, and nonprofits. Her portfolio includes a number of intriguing projects, including the renovation of Easthampton’s historic Town Hall, the Gaylord Mansion historic renovation at Elms College, the new Girls Inc. of the Valley headquarters and program center in Holyoke, the Olympia Oaks affordable-housing project in Amherst, the Kringle Candle Farm Table restaurant in Bernardston, and many others. While the projects vary in size and scope, a common thread is the partnership between the client, architect, and builder that makes a dream become reality.

The new Girls Inc. headquarters in Holyoke

“As an architect, I strive to listen to my clients to learn about what types of spaces would make their lives better, and then, hopefully, we create those spaces together,” she said. “My greatest satisfaction is facilitating the collaboration between the client, design professionals, and builders to realize a client’s vision.”

In her current role, she balances her design work with her leadership responsibilities, which include setting a tone, leading by example, and creating an effective culture for the firm.

“As president of Kuhn Riddle, I strive to make our work environment as supportive as possible for our staff,” she explained. “We love what we do, but we also have lives and families outside of work, and it is important to me that everyone here has a work/life balance. I believe that people will give their best when they feel that they are being given the best possible support and appreciation.”

For Tierney, balance means time with family, but also for giving back to the community. She has been a member of the Amherst Area Chamber board for several years now, and is currently a member of its diversity task force. Formerly, she served on the board of the Enchanted Circle Theatre.

As noted earlier, she is chair of the Northampton Central Business Architecture Committee, and also vice chair of the Massachusetts Board of Registration of Architects, as well as a member of the diversity committee of the National Council of Architecture Registration Boards.

“ It was an anti-beauty pageant, because it wasn’t about looks. It was all about owning who you are, being who you are, doing some community service, sharing whatever talent you have … they didn’t have to show up and look a certain way.”

In recent years, bringing diversity to the profession, one historically dominated by white males, has become one of her priorities. She noted that, while there are more non-whites, and many more women, in architecture schools than when she was at Carnegie Mellon, they are not becoming licensed architects at the same rates.

“Diversity is important to me, not only as a woman, but as the mother of a biracial child,” she explained. “I recognize that this profession is lacking diversity, and I believe that architecture is better when all the voices are represented in the design process.”

To create a more diverse mix of voices, Kuhn Riddle now funds a scholarship for UMass Amherst’s Summer Design Academy for high-school students, specifically targeting women and people of color.

“If you get kids interested in high school, maybe they’ll go to college,” she explained, adding that several area firms now contribute to that scholarship, one of many steps she believes will eventually change the face of the profession, literally and figuratively.

Progress — by Design

As she talked with BusinessWest about her life and career, Tierney presented a small card, a marketing piece used by the firm.

On one side is a brief history of Kuhn Riddle, a quick summation of its specialties and client base, and even mention of its own headquarters, an open-design studio with no private offices to promote communication and “cross-fertilization of ideas.”

On the other side, in gray, is a map of Amherst, with properties designed by Kuhn Riddle (either new construction or renovations) in yellow.

“That’s a lot of yellow,” said Tierney as she referenced the card, noting projects in every corner of the community.

Indeed, the firm has certainly changed the landscape in Amherst over the past 32 years, enhancing, improving, supporting, and in some cases changing lives through ‘good architecture.’

Tierney has been changing lives herself, going all the way back to her Peace Corps days, as an architect, an activist, and, most of all, a leader. All of that makes her a true Woman of Impact.

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

Ashley Sullivan

By Joseph Bednar October 27, 2022

Women of Impact 2022

President, O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun

She’s Engineering Opportunities for Many in a Dynamic Field

When asked about being a leader and role model in her company and in her industry, Ashley Sullivan sums it up simply: “I like to help people, and a lot of people have helped me.”

And she knows the value of helping and encouraging others. During her college days and into her long engineering career at O’Reilly, Talbot & Okun (OTO) — after 20 years with the firm, she was named president at the start of 2020 — she sometimes questioned whether she knew enough, whether she measured up to her responsibilities, and to her peers.

It’s why events like a recent after-work gathering between OTO and Fuss & O’Neill, another civil-engineering firm headquartered in downtown Springfield, are valuable, she said, in that they help young engineers, and especially young women, not only network, but recognize their place in the field.

“I was intimidated to be in a room with a lot of people who had 20-plus years of experience on me. I always thought I had more to learn; I always thought I didn’t have as much experience as I needed,” she recalled. “But if you put me in a room with my peers, I would have been like, ‘oh, I can do this; I want to get them in situations where they see they’re good.”

“The big thing I stressed was, we all have value, and we’re all part of a team, and we need to be rowing the same way.”

Joining a small, newish engineering firm in 2000, Sullivan didn’t network much outside the company, but she sees the value in it now. “I didn’t know my path, and that’s something that’s true with a lot of people. But once they see you out there and you see yourself in that role, it just happens.”

The passion for inspiring younger engineers is what also drives Sullivan to be a mentor, not only by teaching a civil-engineering capstone design course at Western New England University, where she guides graduating students through a mock building project, but by encouraging OTO’s team members to seek any professional-development opportunities that will help them learn and advance, like she did.

“I think we should be mentors. I think it’s very important to give back to the industry,” she said. “We want to hire, and sometimes you hear complaints that there’s nobody great to hire, but is anyone helping them succeed? I think it’s our responsibility to do it.

Ashley Sullivan discusses a project at One Ferry Street in Easthampton with OTO field engineer Dustin Humphrey and client Mike Michon.

“If you give people a lot of opportunity and the skills to help them move up, I feel that benefits the company itself,” she added. “The company needs to support the development of those skills.”

And hiring and recruitment are definitely a challenge now, Sullivan said, adding that the firm saw some turnover during the pandemic but has hired seven employees since January. “We’ve been able to navigate it so far. That’s why I also think it’s important to be a mentor and reach out to students and to have the kind of culture that appeals to them.”

Sullivan has certainly navigated some transitions over the past few years, from taking the reins at OTO to almost immediately having to steer it through a pandemic. For successfully leading in what is still a male-dominated field, and for being a mentor, role model, and inspiration to the next generation of civil engineers, Sullivan is certainly a Woman of Impact.

Ninth Time’s the Charm

Engineering runs in Sullivan’s family — sort of. She said her grandmother always had a lot of respect for engineers, and her father is one of eight siblings who tried engineering but didn’t stick with it. “My grandmother really wanted one, so I said I’ll try it.”

The truth is, Sullivan had already cultivated an interest in chemistry in high school and was considering studying environmental engineering at UMass Amherst — a place where, again, her insecurity nagged at her.

“I want to set us up to the next transition, and that means giving people the skills to manage and lead — not just engineering skills, but all those other things that have to happen. Communication is a big thing we work on, and so is trust.”

“I did very well in high school, but I was nervous about going to a challenging school, or a school where there were others who would do really well too. That plays into why I like to give people confidence and why I do what I do. On the outside, I did well and came across like I had a lot of confidence. But inside, I was like, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I have no idea.’”

She had a positive experience at UMass, though she shifted gears toward civil engineering, “mainly because I found that chemical engineering students ended up in a dark lab, and civil engineering students were outside in the quad, and that just looked a lot more enjoyable to me.”

When she graduated in 1998, a lot of the jobs being offered at the time were at the Big Dig in Boston, and she wasn’t interested in heavy construction, so she stayed in graduate school, where she gained the experience she would put to use at OTO two years later.

“I was working for a Mass Highway project where we were installing wells, doing groundwater sampling, modeling groundwater flow, looking at contamination, and two years later I had my master’s in environmental engineering,” she said. “I interviewed at OTO because they were local, in Springfield, and halfway through the interview with Jim Okun and Mike Talbot, I thought I’d like to work there. It was a small firm, everybody seemed very nice, and it seemed to suit my personality.”

OTO’s services over the years have included testing commercial properties for hazardous materials and overseeing cleanup, asbestos management in schools and offices, brownfield redevelopment, indoor air-quality assessments, and geotechnical engineering, a broad term encompassing everything from helping developers assess how much force and weight the ground under a proposed structure can stand to determining the strength of a building’s foundation and surrounding topography.

“I enjoyed working for a small company, working directly with the principals,” Sullivan said, the third being Kevin O’Reilly. “I learned a lot. I also enjoyed working in my own community. It’s been fun over the years driving around the neighborhoods, whether I go to Baystate for a doctor’s appointment or a library, or take my kids to a park, and see projects that I worked on. Rather than working on a high-profile job in another city, I really liked that the jobs were near where I work.”

The other positive experience — one that would later color the kind of president she would be —was being allowed a flexible schedule when she started a family in 2005.

“That was not industry-wide; it’s just not something that was offered,” she explained. “I went down to 24 hours with my first daughter, and I stayed there until they were both in school, then went to 32 hours. But I was still allowed to progress in management.”

That was the key, she said — being able to have work-life balance without sacrificing future opportunities.

“It’s a two-way street. I got some flexibility, but there was accountability and good communication, and I would try to be available when I absolutely needed to; my kids went to some job sites. That was something you couldn’t easily find at other engineering firms. And I also kept progressing; I was allowed to manage projects and manage staff that way. So that kept me going here, to the point where we transitioned.”

Ashley Sullivan performs a phase-1 dam inspection.

In fact, when the three founders started talking about the next generation of leadership, they discussed selling OTO to an outsider, but they preferred an internal transition, and felt they had the right individual in Sullivan.

“We had a good business, we had a good foundation, and I just said, ‘I want to be part of it … I like what I do, I like the people I work with, we have a good company, let’s just try to make this work.’”

Sullivan has taken lessons from her own experience and saw how offering flexibility in different ways to employees could benefit both them and the company, although COVID, admittedly, helped that process along. “I wanted to make sure people, whether managers or other individuals, had the skills and knew the expectations to make that kind of work more widespread.”

She has led her team, she noted, according to the company’s core values, three of which are transparency, respect, and togetherness.

“The big thing I stressed was, we all have value, and we’re all part of a team, and we need to be rowing the same way,” she told BusinessWest. “That was really important, and it was something I learned here but I saw fall away a little bit when we were going through the transition, because when times get hard, it becomes very individual: ‘what does this mean for me? Is this going to be good or bad? I’ve got to fight for my own.’ We needed to come back together.”

So she conducted sessions where she asked employees what kind of culture they want and what keeps them at OTO. “I asked, ‘what are some of the great things we can build upon? What can we do better?’ I think that was important. I like to hear what others want, and then see if I can help make that happen. So, really, one of the big things I wanted to do was to hear from more voices.

“And there was a good foundation,” she added. “My experience here was something I thought I could build upon and then bring to the next level.”

Reaching New Heights

The mission statement posted in the conference room attests that “we will elevate our industry to create and deliver the best solutions for natural and built environments.”

And to elevate an industry, Sullivan believes she must first elevate her people. “I want to set us up to the next transition, and that means giving people the skills to manage and lead — not just engineering skills, but all those other things that have to happen. Communication is a big thing we work on, and so is trust.”

When she talks to young people about a career in civil engineering, she’s quick to explain how much variety and opportunity they will encounter. “You can go into transportation or structural or geotech or environmental. You can do public work at the state or municipal level, or even the federal level. You can work in private consulting or go into technical sales. You can go into a testing lab. You can work for a contractor. That allows for some flexibility because you don’t always know when you’re right out of school and you have to make all these decisions.”

At the same time, “going into a field like civil engineering, you’re going to be needed forever. We do important projects for people. It’s important for people to have that job security and know there are so many different things you can do with that.”

The message is rersonating, especially with young women. A few weeks ago, Sullivan attended a geotechnical conference in Connecticut and was “blown away” by the number of women she saw, compared to, say, five years ago. And on a heavy construction site on Boston Road recently, she walked the grounds alongside a female field engineer and a female quality-control engineer, all from different firms.

“That was something that I hadn’t seen, to see three women working together on a project with a big rig installing ground improvement. It was really neat. Sometimes I think, ‘wow, this is happening.’

It’s happening because of the impact of women like Sullivan, who knows the value of being helped and inspired, and wants to do the same for others.

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

Hilda Roqué

By George O'Brien October 27, 2022

Women of Impact 2022

Executive Director, Nuestras Raíces

This Leader Helps Others Achieve a Sense of Belonging

Hilda Roqué was 14 when she and other members of her family arrived in Holyoke from her native Puerto Rico.

It was February, she recalled, noting that the extreme climate change from the tropical Caribbean provided a constant reminder that she was a long — as in long — way from home.

And, unfortunately, weather was far from the only such painful reminder. Language was a considerable barrier, she said, and there were myriad cultural differences as well. Overall, she did not feel included.

“I had no sense of belonging when I came here; when you come from a different country, it’s always difficult, especially when you’re trying to find your own identity,” she told BusinessWest, adding quickly that she worked hard to overcome what would be considered stern challenges to lead the Spanish newspaper at Holyoke High School and become the first recipient of its Latino Leadership honor, a poignant sign of what was come.

Indeed, fast-forwarding to today — we’ll go back and fill in some gaps later — Roqué has become a leader in this community on many levels.

She is the executive director of Nuestras Raíces, a Holyoke-based nonprofit with a broad mission that involves connecting people with the land through agriculture programs, empowering communities, and advocating for food justice.

While doing all that through a process of growth, evolution, and essentially breaking agriculture into two words — agri and culture — the team at Nuestras Raíces, and especially Roqué, have made it part of the mission to make sure that current and future generations of people coming to Holyoke from Puerto Rico and elsewhere don’t have to feel as far away from home as she did all those years ago.

“I had no sense of belonging when I came here; when you come from a different country, it’s always difficult, especially when you’re trying to find your own identity.”

Indeed, they strive to make them feel at home in as many ways as they can.

“It was always my dream to make it easier to transition,” she said. “I went through a lot of bullying and a lot of racism … there were so many barriers, including language, that I didn’t want people to feel like I felt when I came here.

“That’s why I fought so much, and why I’m still fighting, for that to happen,” she went on. “Equality — that’s something that this organization stands for. We are all worthy of eating healthy, we should all be eating healthy, there shouldn’t be so much discrimination when it comes to food; we all have the same rights. This is something that is also my passion; we should live in better places, and we should aim for the stars like everyone else.”

Roqué, who first came to Nuestras Raíces as a volunteer more than 30 years ago and took on several different roles before being named executive director in 2011, is a Woman of Impact for many reasons, starting with what she has done with this nonprofit.

Working with others, she has taken the mission in many different directions, from incubating new businesses to providing an education in financial literacy, to taking an annual harvest festival to new heights as a tradition and celebration of many different cultures.

“People from Puerto Rico thought they were in Puerto Rico; people from Colombia thought they were in Colombia; people from the Dominican Republic thought they were in the Dominican Republic,” she said of that event. “That’s what we celebrate when we separate the word ‘agriculture’ — because it is a great part of what this organization wants to pass on to the next generation, not only safe and sustainable practices in agriculture, but also the love for their culture.”

For Roqué, this is not a job, but a passion, and she sees the agency’s programs as a powerful force for change and empowerment within the community.

“It’s very rewarding when you see that we’re trying to help the environment, that we’re providing socioeconomic opportunities for people in this community so they can live a dignified life, when we can actually have people in the community graduate from our programs and they become business owners,” she said, adding that, while she has seen a great deal of progress made, there is still much work to be done.

But she is also being honored for her mentoring of young people and especially girls, her commitment to improving quality of life for those she touches, and for her various efforts to make all those in Holyoke, but especially those who come from other countries, as she did, feel included, not excluded.

All this clearly explains why she is a Woman of Impact.

Food for Thought

Nuestras Raíces translates neatly into ‘Our Roots.’

It’s a fitting name, and a play on words, obviously. Those two short words hit on both sides of the organization’s mission succinctly and effectively. The agency encourages people to put roots in the ground, both literally and figuratively, while connecting them with their roots.

The agency was born in 1992 by a group of community members in South Holyoke who had the goal, the dream, of developing a greenhouse in downtown Holyoke. The founding members were migrating farmers from Puerto Rico with a strong agricultural background who found themselves in a city with no opportunities to practice what they knew.

“I love teaching kids that there’s a future and that the future holds something good if you actually grasp opportunities and grow as a community.”

Eventually, these community leaders located an abandoned lot in South Holyoke, one full of trash, needles, and criminal activity, and came together to clean the lot, which would become the first community garden, sparking the growth of urban agriculture in Holyoke under the umbrella of Nuestras Raíces.

Today, the agency coordinates and maintains a network of 14 community gardens, including the gardens of the Holyoke Educational System and community partners, and also operates a 30-acre farm, called La Finca, that focuses on urban agriculture, economic development, and creating change in food systems.

Those gardens, and the farm, grow a wide range of crops native to Puerto to Rico, from several different types of peppers to lettuce; from garlic to peas. These are just some of the items made available at a mobile farmers market — a refurbished school bus — created as a grassroots response to address health issues and food access by providing access to produce grown at local farms in neighborhoods across the city, many of which would be considered food deserts.

“To see the foods that we used to grow in our backyards in Puerto Rico be actually grown here … there are no words to really explain the feeling that you get when you get reconnected to your roots,” Roqué told BusinessWest. “And that’s why I feel so passionate and I love this organization so much.”

She joined it as an office manager and developed into a program developer and program manager, and eventually worked her way up to executive director. It’s a broad role with a number of responsibilities, both within the offices on Main Street and across the community, that she summed up this way:

“I don’t sit behind my desk — I go out there,” she said. “I hear; I listen to people. Nuestras Raíces provides programming that is a response to the needs that we hear from constituents. We ask and respond in ways that reflect our mission, which is to connect the agriculture and the socioeconomics and the food-justice piece of it and tie it together in ways that bring opportunities to this community.”

Indeed, over the years, the mission at Nuestras Raíces has been broadened into the realms of education and economic development.

For example, the agency has created what it calls the Holyoke Food and Agriculture Innovation Center (HFAIC), which serves as a food hub for Holyoke in the form of a center of food production, innovation, and education. The agency boasts two industrial kitchens and leases those spaces to community food entrepreneurs.

It also hosts a seven-week educational program focused on providing financial and business-management assistance to community entrepreneurs based in Holyoke, Chicopee, Springfield, and other area communities. It offers bilingual lessons covering a wide range of topics including business and property insurance, permitting, bookkeeping, investing, marketing, business planning, and many others.

Beyond these offerings, Roqué and her team strive to help others understand the opportunities and open doors that are available to them through hard work, education, and perseverance.

“I love teaching kids that there’s a future and that the future holds something good if you actually grasp opportunities and grow as a community,” she explained. “If you hold each other’s hand — and that’s what we do here with our businesses and our program participants; we hold their hand — you can help them navigate their way and feel included.”

As the leader of Nuestras Raíces, as a leader in the community, and as a mentor to young people, Roqué says she tries to “teach by example,” as she put it, especially when it comes to treating all people with the respect and dignity they deserve.

“I don’t do unto others as was done unto me,” she said. “I see everyone, and when I see them, I don’t see color or race — I see people as human beings, and I try to instill that in the younger generations; I tell them to pass on the love, not the hate, and treat others the way you would like to be treated.

“I try to be an example to others, especially women, who feel that maybe they didn’t have value or are not being heard,” she went on. “That’s what I’m trying to do with my voice; I’m trying to be someone in this community who is respectable and who respects, and who likes to be heard.”

When asked to assess what has changed and improved since she arrived and the work still to be done, Roqué said there has been considerable progress, and she points to City Hall as just one example. There, Joshua Garcia, the city’s first Puerto Rican mayor, sits in the corner office.

“For a lot of years, Holyoke did not reflect the community that lives here,” she said. “Things have been getting progressively better, but there is still a lot more to do when it comes to navigating through systemic challenges. There’s still work to be done and a lot of effort needed to come together as one community.”

Bottom Line

Roqué will certainly be putting in that effort.

As she has said, and others have said of her, the work she does at Nuestras Raíces is not really work. It is, indeed a passion.

Specifically, a passion to serve, to educate, to inspire, to create opportunities, and to change lives. She does all of that, and that’s why she’s always been a leader and a Woman of Impact.

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

Laurie Raymaakers

By George O'Brien October 27, 2022

Women of Impact 2022

President, J.L. Raymaakers & Sons Inc.

She’s Spent a Lifetime Paving the Way for Others

The company was called SealMaster.

That name was chosen because it specialized in seal-coating driveways and crack filling, said Laurie Raymaakers, who started it with her husband, John, after work they were doing in property management dried up amid the banking crisis and deep recession of the late ’80s and they needed to find something — anything — to generate revenue and help provide for a growing family.

She joked — only it wasn’t really a joke — that they should have called it ‘We Can Do That,’ because while they seal-coated a lot of driveways across Western Mass., they quickly picked up other skills and took on other assignments related to driveways, landscaping, and small-scale construction.

In many ways, ‘we can do that’ describes not only the company the Raymaakers partners created, but the mindset that has driven them, and especially Laurie, over the past 40 years or so. It sums up her approach to business and life itself — always learning, always evolving, always doing whatever it takes to make ends meet, first and foremost, but also create opportunities and grow a company.

“That was the attitude that I had, that John had, and we’ve instilled it in everyone around us,” she explained. “It’s ‘I can do that’ — you can always learn, you can research, you can read … you can evolve and adjust and do what it takes.”

And she has. Over the course of those four decades, she’s worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time — everything from shifts as a police dispatcher to plowing snow to working at the local Boys & Girls Club — to help support the family and enable their Westfield-based business, now known as J.L. Raymaakers & Sons Inc., to gain a foothold and eventually thrive.

This is a story of perseverance, determination, imagination, and, well … ‘we can do that.’

Laurie Raymaakers and her husband, John, have persevered through a number of challenges to lead their company to continued growth.

Laurie Raymaakers is a Woman of Impact for many reasons, but especially the manner in which she has become a role model and mentor to others, especially women in the construction trades and other male-dominated sectors.

She can remember the early days, showing up with her sister-in-law to seal-coat driveways and finding homeowners, men and women, being indifferent about women showing up to do the work. In more recent years, she can remember being the only woman in construction-management meetings and having the others look at her as if she was there to take minutes or pour coffee. Through the course of her career, she’s been asked more times than she could remember if she worked for her husband, not with him in a leadership role.

One can only overcome such actions and sentiments by proving they are good at what they do, exhibiting large amounts of confidence, and believing in themselves, she said.

And she has always been that person.

Today, the company she leads as president is handling projects with budgets in the millions of dollars. It specializes in excavation and site work, water- and sewer-line installation, snow removal, and more.

Meanwhile, she has been involved in her community in quiet ways, be it lifelong support of the Boys & Girls Club or encouraging those in local trade schools, especially Westfield Technical Academy, that there are real opportunities in the trades, and that they should not be overlooked as one considers career options.

All along the way, Raymaakers has been convincing others that there is nothing beyond their reach if they are willing to work hard for it, make the needed sacrifices, and, as Bill Belichick might put it — ‘do your job.’

She knows, because she’s been there and done that. The sum of her life and work, as well as that ‘we can do that’ attitude and her ability to instill it in others, explains why she is a Woman of Impact.

Sealing the Deal

As she talked about the early days of SealMaster, Raymaakers got up from her desk and retrieved a photo. Actually, it was one of those wooden frames, partitioned off to hold several different photos of various sizes and shapes.

Some of the larger images were of a huge house in Longmeadow, the owner of which commissioned the biggest project the company had taken on to that time, a long, curving driveway. But there were other shots of her moving five-gallon buckets of sealer into position.

“That was the attitude that I had, that John had, and we’ve instilled it in everyone around us. It’s ‘I can do that’ — you can always learn, you can research, you can read … you can evolve and adjust and do what it takes.”

Raymaakers has kept those photos all these years because they serve to remind her of where and how things started — and of how far she and John, and now their two sons, have come since. It’s an inspiring story in many ways, and it serves as a reminder — not that anyone who has ever started and grown a business needs one — that nothing about having your name over the door (literally or figuratively) is easy, and that success only comes to those who have what it takes to ride out the hard days and find ways to create better days.

Our story really begins with Raymaakers, soon after relocating to Westfield from Hardwick when she was 24, taking a job with the Westfield Boys & Girls Club in the early ’80s.

“I knew I wanted to do something that made a difference somehow,” she recalled, adding that she started working at the club part-time, and later, after some grant funding was secured for the facility, was assigned to be program director at a satellite office in a large apartment complex called Powdermill Village.

“It was a great experience … I met some wonderful kids that have turned into great adults,” she told BusinessWest. “And what we did was needed. The kids that lived there needed a place to go after school to empower them, tell them they could make a difference, and just let them be themselves. It was a really good program, and I was there for six years.”

Looking back, she said her work went beyond the day-to-day programming and into the realm of mentoring and helping those young people overcome a difficult childhood.

“I can remember saying to them, ‘you can do it, you can do it — you can do anything you want to do,’” she recalled, adding that she stayed in touch with many of them, standing up for one at her wedding and becoming a godmother to one of her children.

Laurie Raymaakers has become a role model to others, especially women in the construction trades and other male-dominated sectors.

Her time at Powdermill was life-changing in many other respects. It was there she met John Raymaakers, who worked in maintenance at the facility, and “fell in love, got married, and all that goofy stuff.”

‘Goofy stuff,’ in this case, is decades of working together to forge some dreams and make them come true.

After a brief and unfulfilling time in Oklahoma, where John took a job, they returned to Westfield and started working for a property-management company, handling apartment complexes in several area communities, and later opened their own company. As noted earlier, with the sharp downturn in the economy, their portfolio diminished in dramatic fashion.

“We lost 70% of our business in six months,” she said, adding that they soon began looking for something else to do, settled on sealing driveways, and started SealMaster with some grit and an old Chevy pickup.

“I had to put a quart of oil in it every day to drive it down the road,” she said with a hearty laugh, noting that, while there were many tough times, especially when John was severely burned while on a job and out of action for a lengthy period of recovery, the company persevered.

She remembers preparing for the annual home show and sitting at the kitchen table with her children folding marketing pieces that she would load into the family station wagon and put in newspaper boxes across the region.

But John’s accident came at a time when the couple had allowed their health insurance to expire. It was a scary time, and one that convinced her that she needed to take a job that offered health insurance.

“This was a case of ‘when one door closes, another opens,’” she said, adding that the former director of the Westfield Boys & Girls Club, whom she worked with and for, had taken the same position in Springfield, and he hired her to manage three satellite offices — and provide more mentoring and counseling to young people.

“These were rough neighborhoods; there were a lot of gangs,” she recalled. “And I tried to convince them that they didn’t have to do it this way, with the street life, the gangs — I said, ‘you have opportunities out there. You don’t have to be a follower; you can be a leader.’”

She worked at the club from 2 to 10, which gave her the opportunity to work at SealMaster before that, she said, adding that, over the years, she would work several different jobs to help make ends meet.

In 1998, she and John started J.L. Raymaakers, specializing in paving and site work, crack-filling at places like the Holyoke Mall, snowplowing, and more, a venture that has grown over the years to now boast 41 employees. The ‘& Sons’ part of the title came later, as sons John and Joshua, who first started helping out when they were 12, officially joined the company.

While the company has enjoyed steady growth over the years, success has not come easily, and Raymaakers remembers many years when she — and John — would work at least two jobs.

“I worked at the Westfield Police Department for five years, 4 to midnight, as a police dispatcher,” she recalled. “It was exhausting; I’d get up at 6 in the morning and get the kids off to school, and then I’d do company work, and then I’d have to go to work again.

“At night, the boys used to plow,” she went on. “And then they’d come to the police station at night and switch vehicles with me; I would go out and plow all night, and they’d take my car home.”

When asked what she does day in and day out at J.L. Raymaakers, she laughed, as if to indicate that there is little she doesn’t do. The list includes project management, estimating, marketing, and many other assignments.

Summing up what it’s been like for her — and for all business owners, for that matter — she put things in perspective in poignant fashion.

“It’s been a challenge … it’s been a struggle … it’s been rewarding … it’s been frightening,” she said. “But there’s nothing else I’d rather do. Growth doesn’t come easy — it comes at a cost; you have to be willing to pay that cost.”

Concrete Example

Raymaakers recalls a time she visited a job site about eight years ago, with the intention of getting her hands dirty — literally.

“I went to pick up a wheelbarrow of asphalt to patch, just ’cause I wanted to, and I couldn’t pick it up,” she said with exasperation in her voice all these years later. “I was so ticked off … I’m like, ‘I’m out of shape!’”

It was one of the few times over the past four decades when she couldn’t say ‘I can do that.’

Because she was able to say it all those other times, she’s been not only a force in the workplace — whatever that might be — but a force in the lives of those around her, a true Woman of Impact.

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

Jodi Falk

By George O'Brien October 27, 2022

Women of Impact 2022

Director, Rachel’s Table

She’s Choreographed a Broader, More Holistic Mission at This Critical Nonprofit

Jodi Falk knows what it’s like to be like food-insecure.

For a brief time, she received assistance from the program known as WIC (Women, Infants, and Children). It’s not something she can easily talk about — and, in fact, it was something she couldn’t talk about until very recently, mostly because of the stigma attached to being in the program.

She recalled that time for BusinessWest, however, because, by doing so, she believes she’s helping to address that stigma, while also putting into perspective the feelings of those that she and the organization she leads, Rachel’s Table, serve day in and day out.

“Those were the days when it wasn’t a card you can give to a cashier or put in a machine, but checks to hand to a person who made sure that what you purchased was on their list — and this could take a while, which was embarrassing,” she recalled. “I used to look around the store to see if I knew anyone, and if I did, I would wait until I was sure they had left the store before going to the register.”

Elaborating, she said she is still embarrassed to talk about those experiences, but admits that they made her aware, and understanding, of what others may be going through when they are on government assistance. And she believes her story has given her some perspective that each individual needs to be treated with “dignity and care.”

In short, those experiences have helped in her role as director of Rachel’s Table, a program of the Jewish Federation of Western Massachusetts, and they are not the only chapter from her past that she says has earned that distinction.

Indeed, Falk spent many years professionally as a dancer, choreographer, and teacher, both here and abroad. And while her work administering Rachel’s Table might seem worlds removed from those vocations, the skill sets, and her many experiences in those roles, dovetail nicely with her current assignment. In many ways, they inspired it.

“For several of those years, besides working in the professional arts world, I also taught and choreographed in the community dance and arts world, where I worked with various populations, such as young teen moms or young women who were incarcerated and in treatment centers, elders in nursing homes, people in recovery, families in foster-care communities, and more,” she explained.

“I focused on art making as a means of making voices heard and bodies seen that aren’t always heard and seen. I became more interested in the lives of those with whom I was dancing, in their nourishment, and when Rachel’s Table had an opening for a director, I felt that I could serve more people with nourishment from a literal as well as figurative perspective.”

“We live in a world where we sometimes we don’t see the ‘other,’ if you will. How do we learn to live to live together in a much bigger society, a much broader world? We don’t know each other’s story until we really know each other’s story.”

With that, she referenced not only why she took on this new career challenge, but how dance and choreography have made her a better administrator and problem solver. And, in some ways, they help explain why she is a Woman of Impact.

To gain more perspective on why Falk has earned this honor, we need to look at all that she has accomplished since taking the helm at Rachel’s Table in 2019. In short, she has taken the agency “to a new level of food rescue for our very needy community,” said Judy Yaffe, vice president of the advisory board for Rachel’s Table, in nominating Falk as a Woman of Impact.

And she has done this through many new initiatives, including:

• A broadening of the agency’s reach; in the past, it has served only Hampden County, but has expanded into Hampshire and Franklin counties;

• A new program called Growing Gardens, an offshoot of the agency’s gleaning program, whereby constituents focus on growing and harvesting their own food;

• A new partnership with the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts to pick up food from Big Y stores and other large donors;

• A new, fully refrigerated van that will enable the agency to deliver larger quantities of food throughout the year;

• Steps that have enabled Rachel’s Table to rescue 50% more healthy produce, meat, milk, and prepared foods for the more than 50 agencies it serves;

• Upgrades to the volunteer-management program; and

• A significant increase in the number of grants received by the agency, and in the amounts of those grants, as well as a surge in the number of donors to the program.

In short, Falk has been instrumental in essentially expanding the mission and taking it in new directions, while also modernizing the agency, making it more efficient, and, yes, guiding it through a pandemic that brought challenges that could not have been imagined.

As we examine all this in greater detail, it will become abundantly clear why she’s been named a Woman of Impact for 2022.

Growing Passion

As noted earlier, Falk brings a diverse résumé to the table.

She has a bachelor’s degree from Brown and master of fine arts and Ph.D. degrees from Temple University, and she has put them to work in several different capacities.

Most recently, she served as founding director of the dance program at the Pioneer Valley Performing Arts Charter School in South Hadley, where she created nationally recognized dance programs for more than 400 students, produced more than 15 original and critically acclaimed concerts, and oversaw a national touring company. Prior to that, she was program director of the Trinity Lasban Conseratoire of Music and Dance in London. There, she directed and developed a program in choreography and community-engaged arts-education outreach for the institution, among a host of other duties.

Earlier, Falk served as chair of SEPAC (Special Education Parent Advisory Councils for the Greenfield Public School District and Franklin County Region), a family-advocacy organization that provides resources, support, and advice on policy for families of children with special needs. Before that, the was coordinator of Community Engagement for the Five College Consortium in Amherst.

As she mentioned, these various assignments, which provided in experience in everything from teaching and mentoring to grant writing and new program creation, helped prepare her for, and in many ways inspire her interest in, the position at Rachel’s Table. It also provided perspective on the need to fully understand the plight and the challenges of others in order to effectively serve them.

“We live in a world where we sometimes we don’t see the ‘other,’ if you will,” she explained. “How do we learn to live to live together in a much bigger society, a much broader world? We don’t know each other’s story until we really know each other’s story.”

As she goes about her work, she doesn’t talk much about her experiences with WIC, for many reasons. Stigma is one of them, but a bigger reason is that she received assistance for only a short time and moved on from her food insecurity. Her story, she said, doesn’t really reflect the true hardships of those in need.

A gleaning program is one of many new initiatives launched by Jodi Falk since she took the helm at Rachel’s Table in 2019.

It is those individuals’ stories that should be told, she said, and their needs that should be addressed.

And this is what she’s been doing since she took the helm at Rachel’s Table, an organization now celebrating its 30th anniversary. Over that time, and especially in recent years, it has evolved and become much more of a holistic agency while still “nourishing people with dignity,” as Falk likes to say.

It carries out its broad mission of battling food insecurity and not only distributing food but first rescuing much of it from restaurants, supermarkets, and other venues in a number of ways and through several different initiatives, including:

• A gleaning program, known as Bea’s Harvest, that works with young people and school groups to engage them in the service of collecting excess produce and donating it to agencies that serve the hungry and homeless in Western Mass.;

• Growing Gardens, which provides the Pioneer Valley with direct access to healthy foods by helping local organizations build gardens to grow culturally appropriate food;

• Bountiful Bowls, a gala staged every two years to raise funds for the agency;

• Outrun Hunger, a biennial 5K run/walk and one-mile fun walk that raises funds to “fill the bowls of those in need”;

• A Hunger Awareness Arts Fest, at which issues of local hunger were highlighted by music and dance performances and art exhibits; and

• A Teen Board, which, partially sponsored by a grant from the Harold Grinspoon Foundation, aims to alleviate childhood hunger and educate their peers about local hunger and poverty issues, and then involve them in being part of the solution.

While overseeing all of this, Falk guided the agency through the pandemic while also blueprinting the agency’s response to it, a response that included raising more than $95,000 for food in the agency’s Healthy Community Emergency Fund; purchasing and delivering more than 5,000 pounds of meat and potatoes, 3,000 pounds of fluid milk, and much more; participating with a network of partners in the USDA Farmers to Families Food Box program, delivering, at times, more than 140,000 pounds of food a month to families in need; and creating and funding a program to give lunches to first responders in all three counties.

Falk brings to all her work that perspective from being on WIC for a short time, but, far more importantly, decades of experience in leadership, inspiring those she works with to be creative, entrepreneurial, and innovative, and forging the partnerships that are critical to a nonprofit being able to not only carry out its mission, but take it in new and different directions, as Rachel’s Table has.

And she brings even greater emphasis to keeping in mind, always, the ideas, thoughts, and feelings of those most affected by food insecurity.

“This model, which we’ve had for 30 years, helps the planet — food doesn’t go into a landfill; it gets delivered to agencies that support people who are in need,” she explained. “And at the same time, I wanted to make sure that we address, more directly, some of the problems that cause food insecurity.”

She’s done that through initiatives such as the Growing Gardens program, which helps any of those agencies that want to grow their own food in collaboration with those they serve.

“Young kids from Christina’s House are getting their hands dirty in the garden, and they’re making their own salads,” she said, citing the example of the Springfield-based nonprofit that provides services to women and their children who are homeless or at risk of homelessness (and whose leader, Shannon Mumblo, was named a Woman of Impact in 2021).

“To me, that’s a bigger story than how many thousands of pounds of food we can deliver,” Falk said, “because it means there is a dignified approach to food choice, a dignified approach to having a choice about what you want to plant and grow, and we’re helping to teach people — or learn with people, because I think we all teach each other — how to make our own food and not wait for a handout.”

Food for Thought

‘Learning with people.’ That’s something that Falk has been doing throughout her career — and, really, her whole life.

It’s a pattern that has continued at Rachel’s Table, an model that has enabled the agency to expand, evolve, rescue more food, deliver more food, grow food, and, in sum, be much more responsive to agencies serving those in need.

It has enabled Rachel’s Table to do something else as well — to hear those it serves and understand their story and their needs.

That’s what Falk has brought to Rachel’s Table. And her accomplishments, not only there but at other institutions where she has enabled voices to be heard, certainly make her a Woman of Impact.

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

A Unique Model — with Promise

By Editorial October 12, 2022

Opinion

Editorial

The Latino Economic Development Council (LEDC) opened to considerable fanfare last month. And with good reason.

It wasn’t just the new digs in the old Massachusetts Lottery facility on Fort Street that has people excited. It’s the broad and laudable mission, as well as the unique model, that is turning heads, while also providing promise for changing the local business landscape — in all kinds of ways.

The mission — the unofficial mission, anyway — as stated by several of the speakers in attendance at the grand opening, is to transform employees into employers, consumers of products into producers of products, people who work for others into people who work for themselves.

And the model for doing that is indeed quite unique. The agency, which will award microgrants and provides space for meetings and co-working, has, at its core, a team of more two coaches that will provide a wide range of counseling and training that holds the promise of helping people grow their businesses and take them to the next level.

These coaches offer expertise in subjects ranging from finance to human resources; marketing to mental wellness; personal finance to accounting. It is this expertise that can help fledgling businesses create opportunities and avoid some of the problems that turn business ventures into casualties.

As we said, the model is unique. Many of the agencies within the region’s large and growing entrepreneurship ecosystem, such as Valley Venture Mentors and EforAll, provide mentoring and education in specific subjects. But there isn’t a deep bench of people who are in business and can pass on what they know to small-business owners who can benefit from their knowledge and experience.

One of the coaches, Giulberto Amador, president of the Mass 2 Miami Consultant Group and professional-development coach for the LEDC, perfectly summed up the work of the LEDC and why he became a coach when he told BusinessWest, “I want to be able to give back when it comes to development of business and entrepreneurship, teaching those basics, and helping people fine-tune their plans and the steps they need to take to become viable businesses in the community.”

Giving back is a critical component of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, and it’s one of the principles that has enabled this region to make great strides when it comes to encouraging entrepreneurship, getting new businesses off the ground, and, as Amador said, enabling them to remain viable.

While helping individual businesses is the stated goal of the LEDC, its broader ambition, as many speakers stated at the grand opening, is to change the landscape, both figuratively and also quite literally, when it comes to new businesses on Main Street and many other streets in cities and towns across the region, especially new Latino businesses.

After all, this is the fastest-growing segment of the region’s business community, and it possesses enormous growth potential for the years and decades to come, said Andrew Melendez, director of Operations for the agency, noting that what many in that community need is a “leg up,” which can come in many different forms, from capital to that expertise provided by the coaches.

Speaking for just about everyone in the room that night, and everyone involved with the LEDC, Amador told BusinessWest, “if there’s a McDonald’s in the North End of Springfield, I want to see a Latino owner of that McDonald’s. I don’t want to hear people say, ‘let’s go to McDonald’s’ — I want to hear them say, ‘I want to own a McDonald’s.’”

This ambitious agency and its unique model of doing business holds great promise for making those sentiments become reality.

Is Your Company Letting Its Hair Down?

By Editorial September 28, 2022

Opinion

By Mark Adams

When it comes to dress codes and attire, companies for years have developed policy standards rooted in conveying a clean, conservative, and/or professional look. In so doing, employees had to conform to a singular vision or appearance. Whether defined expressly or otherwise, hairstyles have been a part of such stereotypes and visions, which has consequently left many minority applicants and/or employees on the sidelines when it came to being hired or promoted into certain positions despite being otherwise qualified to perform those roles.

Enter the CROWN Act legislation. CROWN is short for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair and is designed to break down some of the stereotypical barriers that certain minority groups were facing when being considered for employment.

To date, 17 states have adopted CROWN Act legislation, with Massachusetts being the latest to sign such measures into law. Other states include California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington. Federally, Congress has contemplated a CROWN Act measure; this measure has been referred to the Senate for further consideration.

What is its significance? For states that have adopted these measures, it makes it unlawful to discriminate based on “natural or protective hairstyles.” Examples of these hairstyles include hair that is tightly coiled or curled, or worn in locks, cornrows, twists, braids, bantu knots, or afros.

For employers that are operating in a state that has enacted CROWN Act legislation, what should you do?

First, review your company policies to see if there is any express language prohibiting such hairstyles in the workplace. Policies that I have seen in handbooks that I have reviewed where the topic of hairstyles has been addressed have included such policies as dress code, hygiene, personal appearance, and professionalism.

If you are a multi-state employer that operates in states where CROWN Act legislation both has and has not been adopted, be careful with your handbook policy and structure. If your handbook is distributed across all your locations, it may be easier administratively to adjust your policy across the board to ensure compliance. (While, conceivably, another path could be to carve out your dress code or other policies and treat them as state-specific addenda or supplements that coincide with the different state requirements, such a practice may prove to be more cumbersome to sustain over time.)

Then there is the subject of managerial and supervisory actions and practices. For instance, have managers and supervisors chosen not to hire an applicant in the past over concerns about hairstyles? Passed over an employee for a promotion? Is it a topic of conversation addressed in interviews? Has the topic been broached in performance reviews or in disciplinary writeups? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, then further discussion with management is advised to change practices (whether attributable to express or unconscious bias) moving forward.

As CROWN Act legislation continues to get adopted nationwide, companies may need to change their ways and let their hair down. Choosing otherwise could lead to discriminatory consequences and litigation down the road.

Mark Adams is director of Compliance at the Employers Assoc. of the NorthEast. This article first appeared on the EANE blog; eane.org

Introducing the 2022 Healthcare Heroes

By BusinessWest Staff September 15, 2022

Cover Story Healthcare Heroes

Since BusinessWest and its sister publication, the Healthcare News, launched the recognition program known as Healthcare Heroes in 2017, the initiative has more than succeeded in its quest to identify true leaders — not to mention inspiring stories — within this region’s large and very important healthcare sector.
The award was created to recognize those whose contributions to the health and well-being of this region, while known to some, needed to become known to all. And that is certainly true this year.
They are leaders. In some cases innovators or collaborators. In all cases, inspirations — people and organizations that have devoted their lives to improving the quality of individual lives and the health of entire communities. We find these stories to be compelling and inspirational, and we’re sure you will as well.

Overall, everyone who was nominated this year is a hero, but in the minds of our judges — the editors and management at BusinessWest — eight of these stories stood out among the others. The Healthcare Heroes for 2022 are (click on the names to read their stories):

Lifetime Achievement:

Helen Caulton-Harris, Health and Human Services Commissioner, City of Springfield

Health/Wellness Administrator:

Mark Paglia, Chief Operating Officer, MiraVista Behavioral Health Center

Patient/Resident/Client Care Provider:

Dr. Philip Glynn, Director of Medical Oncology, Mercy Medical Center

Collaboration in Health/Wellness:

Dr. Paul Pirraglia, Division Chief, General Medicine and Community Health, Baystate Health

Collaboration in Health/Wellness:

ServiceNet’s Enrichment Center & Strive Clinic and Its Partners at Springfield College and UMass Amherst

Community Health:

Addiction Consult Service at Holyoke Medical Center

Emerging Leader:

Dr. Sundeep Shukla, Chief, Department of Emergency Medicine, Baystate Noble Hospital

Innova tion in Health/Wellness:

Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation

See the BusinessWest 2022 Healthcare Heroes Special Section HERE.

We’re excited to celebrate our Healthcare Heroes on Thursday, Oct. 27 at the Log Cabin in Holyoke. Tickets cost $85 each, and tables of 10 or 12 are available.

Click HERE to Purchase Tickets for the October 27, 2022 Event

The Healthcare Heroes program is being sponsored by presenting sponsors Elms College and Baystate Health/Health New England, and partner sponsors Trinity Health Of New England/Mercy Medical Center, American International College, and MiraVista Behavioral Health Center.

Presenting Sponsors

Partner Sponsor

Innovation in Health/Wellness, The Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation

By Joseph Bednar September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

Here, Shared Research by Nurses and Engineers Will Benefit Patients Everywhere

Co-directors Frank Sup and Karen Giuliano. Leah Martin Photography

Intravenous (IV) infusion pump systems are among the most recognized technologies in healthcare, used by about 90% of hospital patients.

They’re also hopelessly out of date, Karen Giuliano said.

“The design has been around a long time, and hospitals don’t buy one; they buy an entire fleet. They have to invest in training, service contracts, and IT infrastructure. To install a platform is a huge investment and effort.”

And that has led to stagnation, she added. “Over 80% of pumps are really old platforms and don’t do the job they need to do. They’re not developed for today’s standards.”

Enter the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation at UMass Amherst, which has made improving the safety and usability of IV smart pumps one of its first major projects. The team has been exploring flow-rate accuracy in a variety of settings and use cases, with the goal of developing pumps that eliminate inaccuracy, inconvenience, and resulting medical errors through new technology and simplified design.

The work is gaining widespread attention, as Giuliano, co-director of the center and associate professor of Nursing, and postdoctoral research fellow Jeannine Blake were recently recognized by the Assoc. for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) for the Best Research Paper in 2021.

Their paper, “Nurse and Pharmacist Knowledge of Intravenous Smart Pump System Setup Requirements,” explored knowledge of intravenous smart-pump system setup requirements among nurses and pharmacists. The results were published in Biomedical Instrumentation & Technology, AAMI’s peer-reviewed journal.

“There’s already a critical nursing shortage, fatigue, and burnout. How can robotics be used to maybe alleviate some of those problems? We can use robotics as an extension of the nurse.”

“We don’t want to build a new pump; we want to build a set of requirements for manufacturers that have been sitting idle for too long without being forced to innovate for the safety of patients and the workflow of the nurses,” Giuliano told BusinessWest.

The effort demonstrates the types of innovation she and Frank Sup, associate professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering and the other co-director of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, intended when they launched the center in early 2021. It also reflects the cross-educational opportunities for people like Blake, the first nursing doctoral student to enter an engineering postdoctoral fellowship at UMass.

“Students have come out of here with a siloed education, nurses and engineers. There’s not a natural inkling to work together; they might not even know the importance of collaborating in that way,” Giuliano said. “What we want is to have students graduate that already have that in common, to reach across the aisle. The healthcare environment should not be a silo.”

Under Sup’s leadership, the center has also begun research on the use of robotics in healthcare. It teams doctoral students from both engineering and nursing, as well as an undergraduate nursing honors student, to identify challenges and develop robotic solutions to improve healthcare delivery for patients and providers.

The incorporation of robotic technology into the healthcare system is ongoing and already includes innovations like fully autonomous disinfecting systems and invasive surgical devices, and Sup feels it’s essential that these new technologies are integrated into the field of nursing at multiple levels, including hospital administration, the clinical workplace, and university education. And students need to interact with robots to better understand and utilize this technology in a controlled setting before patient care is involved.

“What are robotics, what can they do, what are they good for, and how can we start to train nurses and engineers in robotics? What day-to-day situations might nurses face in the hospital, clinic, and home, and what might be the best use cases for these robotics systems?” he asked. “That’s where this program started. Nurses are not typically trained in robotics, so we actually start to expose them to these things.”

That may seem like a scary thought to some, or imply that robots could replace nurses, but that’s far from the case, Sup added.

“There’s already a critical nursing shortage, fatigue, and burnout. How can robotics be used to maybe alleviate some of those problems? We can use robotics as an extension of the nurse, potentially doing things when they’re not there, like monitoring and lower levels of service.”

By bringing nurses and engineers together at the earliest stages of product innovation, the Elaine Marieb Center promises a raft of such breakthroughs that will result in better technology and, more important, better patient care.

Come Together

This is how Giuliano and Sup described the center’s mission at its opening last year:

“Today, healthcare technologies are too often made without the insights and understanding that clinicians bring to the table. Nurses are end users, facing healthcare challenges on the frontlines of patient care. Engineers have the expertise and skills to envision and create medical devices and can work with nurses who bring the real-world healthcare experience needed to design the best possible products and solutions.

“This transformation depends heavily on collaborative research and development work among nursing, engineering, and other disciplines,” they went on. “The ability to quickly and effectively develop and test innovations requires both nursing and engineering skillsets. The power of the nurse-engineer approach is derived from the mutual collaboration between the two, where the nurse identifies the problem, and the engineer facilitates potential solutions.”

One problem in the past, both of them explained to BusinessWest, was that products too often wound up in the hands of nurses too far along in the design and development process to change very much.

“I realized how important it was to have a front-end-user perspective built into the products rather than trying to back-engineer it when it’s 90% done.”

Giuliano, with more than 25 years of experience in critical-care nursing, medical product development and innovation, and patient-centered clinical outcomes research, should know. Prior to joining UMass Amherst, she spent many years working on medical product development from an industry perspective, including 12 years with Philips Healthcare.

Early in her career, she said, “I realized how important it was to have a front-end-user perspective built into the products rather than trying to back-engineer it when it’s 90% done.”

Now, at the center, “we have the ability to prototype things and test them in nursing simulation labs and test them in actual hospitals,” she added, the latter through a collaboration with Baystate Health.

Meanwhile, Sup was also a natural choice to co-direct the new center. As director of UMass Amherst’s Mechatronics and Robotics Research Lab, his research has long focused on developing human-centered mechatronic technologies for augmenting human performance and exploring how to enable robots to fluently interact physically with humans. To that end, he brought teams of nursing and engineering students together to work on senior capstone design projects.

The model was formalized as the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation with the help of two major gifts: $1 million in seed funding from alumni Michael and Theresa Hluchyj, longtime supporters of both the College of Engineering and the College of Nursing; and $21.5 million from the Elaine Nicpon Marieb Charitable Foundation to the College of Nursing, with a significant portion designated to support the new center.

“Innovation is often accelerated at the intersection of different academic disciplines,” Michael Hluchyj said when announcing the first gift. “The worldwide health crises resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic make clear the critical need for innovative solutions in clinical settings where both nursing and engineering play vital roles.”

And nurses need to have a seat at the innovation table early, Giuliano said.

“Nurses use more products and are part of more services than any other healthcare provicer,” she told BusinessWest. “If they’re not at the table, you’re not going to have the right products. They’re not going to be usable, and if they’re not usable, then they don’t do the job. And from an economic standpoint, they don’t generate the revenue that the company wants. So it’s a lose-lose, which we can turn into a win-win.

“We want to be a usability testing center,” she went on. “So if a company has a product at a certain point in development, has an idea what’s supposed to do and how it’s supposed to work and what its value is, we literally bring it into a sim lab.”

The usability test involves two people, a nurse and a volunteer patient, and both evaluate it, as test administrators watch how it’s used. “If the same mistake is made over and over, it’s a design flaw; it’s not a user error,” Giuliano explained. Then all those results and perceptions go back to manufacturer, who has the opportunity to make improvements early in the process.

To that end, the emerging product prototyping laboratory on the Amherst campus will enable students to design and prototype new products, while a proposed usability laboratory on the Mount Ida campus will allow for product and service testing by frontline clinical end users.

“Having a better understanding of frontline clinician knowledge is a fundamental part of our overall program of research on improving the safety and usability of IV smart pumps,” Blake said when she and Giuliano received the AAMI’s award for their research earlier this year. “We are very excited to receive this award, which supports our continued efforts in this important area of research.”

Promising Outcomes

Better research resulting in better patient care is the goal, whether it’s IV pumps, robotics at the hospital bedside, or any number of other ongoing projects at the center, from cloud-based home-healthcare monitoring to wearable sensors that record body movement to assess chronic pain.

Part of the center’s raison d’être is that nurses and engineers are both trained problem solvers who rely on innovation to find solutions, but their paths rarely cross, and the timeframes required for them to find solutions are dramatically different.

Giuliano got her PhD while at Phillips Healthcare because “I really wanted to be a better researcher so I could test products in a meaningful way.” Later, she added, “I realized I liked academia — I was a better student as a 40-year-old than as a 20-year-old — and I knew I wanted to go into academia and try to recreate the nurse-engineer pairing in the academic environment.”

By teaming up with Sup, who was already pursuing those connections, and with the help of some generous gifts from supporters who saw potential in this model, a center was created that is not only generating some impressive outcomes, but is paving a new way for diverse minds to collaborate and improve the patient experience across the globe.

“The whole idea of this center is for academic clinicians, students, nurses, and doctors to bring in industry partners,” Sup said. “It’s going to be innovative, and it’s going to make a difference.”

And it clearly lives up to the title of Healthcare Hero in the category of Innovation.

“This work that’s being done will make its way to safety standards everywhere,” Giuliano said. “Nobody else is doing that. It’s huge.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Community Health, The Addiction Consult Service at Holyoke Medical Center

By George O'Brien September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

This Critical Team Provides Hope — and a Roadmap to Recovery

Team members of the Addiction Consult Service at Holyoke Medical Center, from left: Eddie Rodriguez, John Martinez, Lauren Carpenter, Maria Quinn, Kelly Jean Deming, Em Moulton, and Jose Ramos.

Patrick Hamel remained calm and collected as he chronicled his quarter-century-long battle against addiction.

In telling that story, he recalled more relapses than he could count; how he lost jobs, alienated family and friends, and had run-ins with the law (including some B&Es to support his drug and alcohol use); getting thrown out of the house by his wife on a few occasions; the awkwardness of having his daughter visit him in a halfway house; and even that night a little more than two years ago when he decided that enough was enough and tried to end his life.

He didn’t become emotional — though he did have to stop and collect himself a few times — until he started talking about the Addiction Consult Service (ACS), or the Recovery Support Team, as members call it, at Holyoke Medical Center’s Comprehensive Care Center (CCC) and, especially, Maria Quinn, the charismatic psychiatric mental-health nurse practitioner and leader of that unit.

That’s because Quinn, those who work with her, and those to whom she has referred Hamel have enabled him to move beyond all that has happened to him and now lead a much better life.

“She just listened, and we came up with a plan. She got me hooked up with an amazing therapist. We saw each other every week — she was there for me; she was my support.”

“She is so amazing; she’s like my knight in shining armor,” said Hamel, who would then concisely and effectively sum up what Quinn and other members of this team do. “She just listened, and we came up with a plan. She got me hooked up with an amazing therapist. We saw each other every week — she was there for me; she was my support.

“Mind you, I’ve been in other types of medical treatment facilities and other programs,” he went on. “And I always felt like I was a number, or I was there to meet a quota; it was just a job. You can see with Maria that it’s not just a job; it’s something she’s passionate about.”

Patrick Hamel says those at the Addiction Consult Service listened and helped him come up with a game plan for recovery.

Hamel didn’t nominate the ACS for the Healthcare Heroes award, but his words, and the emotion attached to them, help explain why this special unit is being honored this year in the Community Health category.

In short, there are now hundreds, if not thousands, of people, who would say the same things if they were asked — about not just what the ACS does, but how it goes about its difficult and critically important work.

“We’re essentially ever-present — we like to make jokes that we stalk our patients while they’re here, even if we’re not fully involved,” she explained, adding that this is her way of saying that Recovery Support Team members make sure that those patients with addiction issues, either from the Emergency Department or inpatient units at the hospital — many of whom don’t have anyone to visit them while they are in the hospital, for many of the reasons Hamel listed above — have someone to talk to. And, far more importantly, someone to listen, someone who can help them determine what comes next for them, whatever that might be, including ongoing support at the CCC.

“That connection needs to happen so that people can stay and continue to get the treatment that they need,” said Quinn, adding that one of the goals of the program is to build trust among those touched by the ACS, because such trust has often been missing, and it is a key ingredient in their success.

“Historically, people with addiction haven’t been treated well in the healthcare system, so there’s a lot of mistrust, and we see that,” she noted. “We talk about it often and sense that the wall may be coming down and people are starting to bloom because we see our patients become a little more trusting.”

“One thing I’ve learned in this process is that everyone’s recovery is different. You have to listen to the patient to understand what they’re looking for in their recovery. By listening to them, I’ll know what kind of direction I can give them.”

Lauren Carpenter, a certified addictions nurse, agreed. When asked how she got into this specific line of work and what she likes about her work with this constituency, she said simply, “being able to help and care for people who aren’t used to being helped and cared for — building that connection and that rapport and making sure they know there is someone there who cares.”

The ACS is comprised of a nurse practitioner, a certified addictions nurse, a recovery-support coordinator, and recovery coaches. And, as noted, it is a collaborative effort, involving partners such as Tapestry Health, the Gándara Center (which employs the recovery coaches), River Valley Counseling Center, Hope for Holyoke, and the Holyoke Health Center. Together, these agencies are working to reduce opioid overdoses and help people like Hamel find a path to a better life.

The positive results of their efforts can be seen — and heard — with people like Patrick Hamel and countless others like him.

The Power of Hope

John Martinez’s battle against addiction was and is very similar to Hamel’s.

He described several stints of incarceration, homelessness, and, by his count, four suicide attempts.

He’s been sober now for 13 years and has spent the last several as a certified recovery coach, helping others find the strength and conviction to change their lives, as well as needed referrals and direction. The process starts simply with providing hope that life can get better, he said, adding that this isn’t all that coaches provide, but it may well be the most important thing.

“I remember being hopeless — I know what that’s like,” he recalled. “One thing I’ve learned in this process is that everyone’s recovery is different. You have to listen to the patient to understand what they’re looking for in their recovery. By listening to them, I’ll know what kind of direction I can give them.”

Recovery coach John Martinez says that, among other things, he provides those he counsels with the hope that life can get better.

As noted, recovery coaches are part of the team at the Comprehensive Care Center, and part of a broad, collaborative effort that has come together at a critical time for the Greater Holyoke area.

Indeed, while much of the focus the past few years has been on the pandemic, and understandably so, addiction has only become a bigger, more dangerous, and more deadly problem for the region.

The number of opioid-related overdose deaths increased 9% in Massachusetts in 2021 over 2020. Meanwhile, there are significant disparities in overdose rates, particularly among Black and Latino individuals in Massachusetts; from 2019 to 2020, there was a 70% increase in overdose deaths among Black/non-Hispanic individuals and a 10% increase in Hispanic/Latinx individuals. From 2020 to 2021, there was a 6% decrease in Black/non-Hispanic deaths and an increase of more than 7% for Hispanic/Latinx individuals, according to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.

Steadily rising numbers over the past several years prompted the HEALing Communities Study, whereby scientists from the nation’s leading health agencies and four major academic institutions are partnering with communities in four states, including Massachusetts, to test a set of interventions designed to reduce overdose deaths by 40% over three years in participating communities.

Through a grant awarded to Boston Medical Center, a collaborative was created involving several agencies in Greater Holyoke, with Quinn taking the lead as the appointed addiction expert for the Holyoke community. The goal is to address opioid use, with a specific focus on overdoses, she said, adding that the linchpin of the initiative was creation of the ACS and the CCC.

“Prior to that, it was just me trying to do it all — start people on medication, get referrals out, try to make appointments, trying to get people to stay here [the hospital] — and it was challenging.”

“Our goal is not to cure them; our goal is to treat them with dignity and respect, and that includes treating their withdrawal. It includes giving education and resources. Some people decide that they no longer want to use and want to work toward abstaining and not using, and some don’t.”

With the grant funds, Quinn was able to hire Carpenter as well as a recovery-support coordinator and other team members.

Together, they have put together a system to “find patients,” said Quinn, noting that, before creation of the ACS, many would essentially fall through the cracks.

“Lauren became really good at figuring out which patients we should look at, and we started finding our patients and going to them, often intervening even before a consult was sent,” she told BusinessWest. “And that’s important because people would be leaving the hospital; if you were using opioids or were addicted to opioids, in particular, and didn’t get that, you would feel really, really sick, and if your withdrawal wasn’t being treated, you would probably be leaving.

“So we’d introduce ourselves and let people know why were there,” she went on, adding that, by and large, patients were not used to such a “proactive and impactive” approach to their care, and would have questions about what they could do for them.

What they can do is listen and begin a discussion about what happens next, said Carpenter, who walked through what might be a typical case.

“Someone will come into the ED, and I’ll get notified that this person is there and that they are in withdrawal,” she explained. “At that point, I will meet with the person, gather a history, assess their withdrawal, and then I’ll get Maria involved. I’ll talk with the ED provider, Maria, the addiction consult … Maria will meet with the patient, give recommendations, and order appropriate medications to treat their withdrawal. And when someone is actually on the med floor, we’d start the discussion of ‘what do you want to do from here?’”

As Quinn noted, the course varies with the patient. Often, those at the ACS will connect them to opioid-treatment programs, including two in Holyoke, if they are not already in a program, or connect them with a recovery coach while they are in the hospital.

“Not everyone’s goal is abstinence,” she said. “Our goal is not to cure them; our goal is to treat them with dignity and respect, and that includes treating their withdrawal. It includes giving education and resources. Some people decide that they no longer want to use and want to work toward abstaining and not using, and some don’t.”

When asked how those at the ACS measure success, Quinn said it depends on what how the patient would define that term.

“For some people, having air in their lungs is successful,” she told BusinessWest. “Anyone who leaves here feeling that they’ve been treated well … that’s a big success for me.”

Impact Statement

As he talked about Quinn and those she works beside at the CCC, Hamel stressed the present tense.

He is still working with these individuals at the CCC, and they are still making a huge impact on his recovery. He’s not sure they, and especially Quinn, understand just how much of an impact. So, he made it clear.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without them,” he said, adding that these individuals are more than healthcare providers, but are, in many respects, friends and even family.

“They want to make a difference — it’s not just about an f-ing paycheck,” he said in conclusion. “That’s where I get a little passionate and emotional; two years ago, I wanted to kill myself, and now…”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but didn’t really have to. The pause explained not only the journey from where he was to where he is now, but why the Addiction Consult Service is truly a Healthcare Hero.

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

Emerging Leader, Dr. Sundeep Shukla

By George O'Brien September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

Chief and Physician, Baystate Noble Hospital Emergency Department

He Has Devoted His Career to Improving the Community’s ‘Safety Net’ Net’

Leah Martin Photography

Dr. Sundeep Shukla, or ‘Sunny,’ as most everyone calls him, has always felt at home in the emergency room, and he has never really wanted to work anywhere else.

There is a fast pace and decidedly unpredictable nature to the work, he told BusinessWest, noting that each day, and each hour, are different from the one before and the one after. But there are many more reasons why he has chosen to spend his career in this setting, the most important being the ER’s important role, both to the hospital in question and to the community it serves.

“The emergency room is the safety net for all patients,” Shukla explained. “Many patients do not have access to healthcare; we feel that the ER can provide care to anyone who walks through the door, regardless of whether you have insurance, regardless of your background; we’ll see anyone who walks through our doors, and I’m proud to say that.”

But Shukla has done more than work in the ER. Indeed, throughout his career he has devoted time and energy to bringing new efficiencies, better ways of serving patients, and, yes, better ways of doing business to the ER, especially in his current role as chief of the Emergency Department at Baystate Noble Hospital in Westfield.

And he brings what would be considered a somewhat unique background to this assignment. In addition to his undergraduate degree from the University of Missouri and his medical degree from Manpial University in Karnatka, India, Shukla also earned an MBA, with an emphasis in medical management, from UMass Amherst in 2017.

He has used all these degrees, as well as his hands-on experience in the ER, to help improve service, efficiency, and quality, and reduce wait times and what are known as ‘walkouts’ — people who come to the ER but leave before being seen, for whatever reason.

“Having earned that MBA, I was able to reconfigure how I look at things in my brain. Before, it was all medicine-related, but by doing the MBA, I was able to focus on flow and how we could improve certain processes to make an impact on the total visit.”

“Having earned that MBA, I was able to reconfigure how I look at things in my brain,” he told BusnessWest. “Before, it was all medicine-related, but by doing the MBA, I was able to focus on flow and how we could improve certain processes to make an impact on the total visit.

“At Baystate Noble, we do small thinks like put a greeter in the waiting room so when patients come in there’s someone they can talk to, someone they ask questions to; they round, they give patients blankets or small things just to make them feel appreciated,” he went on. “We also strive to push our nurses and docs to really bring patients in when they come into the ER; they don’t sit very long in the waiting room.”

As a result of such initiatives, Noble’s ER has made great strides during Shukla’s tenure. The unit has dramatically increased patient-satisfaction scores, for example, while also gaining certification as a geriatric ED, well-suited to serve the needs of older patients in the community.

The sum of these efforts has earned Shukla the Healthcare Heroes award in the highly competitive category known as Emerging Leader. And he is worthy of that designation, not only for his work in the ER, but also at Baystate Health (he is on the system’s board of directors), in the community (he sits on the nonprofit People’s Institute and also coaches youth soccer and baseball), and even on the ice.

Indeed, Shukla is one of the team physicians for the Springfield Thunderbirds, and was with the team through its exciting run to the Calder Cup finals last season.

He described that work as fun and rewarding — adjectives he would apply to every aspect of his work in medicine and administration.

Degrees of Improvement

Shukla was born in England and came to this country with his family in 1980. Early on, he said, his father, a professor of Pharmacology at the University of Missouri, and mother, a school teacher, impressed upon him the importance of not only education, but service to the community.

He achieved both while serving as a volunteer at the University of Missouri Hospital and Clinics while in junior high school, work he described as a learning experience on many levels.

“During the summer, I went there every Tuesday and Wednesday and spent eight hours each day volunteering in different parts of the hospital,” he recalled. “It was then that I realized that this was my true calling because I really wanted to help people and really wanted to make a difference.”

After graduating from medical school, he became a resident at Baystate Medical Center with a focus initially on general surgery. But at the advice of some friends who implored him to consider emergency medicine because he seemed a natural for that kind of work, his career outlook began to shift.

Dr. Sundeep Shukla, seen here with his son, Deven, is one of the team physicians for the Springfield Thunderbirds, one of the many ways he is involved in the community.

“I did some shadowing, I did some shifts in the ER, and eventually I went through the process of applying to be an ER resident,” he said, adding that he quickly fell in love with that setting — again, not just because of the fast pace and each-day-is-different aspect of the work.

“Not everyone has access to healthcare, and I’m a big proponent of health equity because I feel everyone should have the same access to healthcare as your next-door neighbor,” said Shukla, who, before coming to Noble, served as associate medical director in the Emergency Department at Baystate Franklin Medical Center. “When patients some come to my ER, I treat them with respect, I treat them exactly how I’d want to treat my family members, and I try to everything I can to make sure their health is better when they leave the ER.”

Elaborating, he said many people are coming to the ER on the worst day of their life, whether they’re having a stroke, a heart attack, or other medical problem, and it is the job of the ER doctor to “step up and help those patients.”

“It’s our goal to help lift them up and help them feel better,” he went on. “And in terms of mindset, you have to be able to function on the go and multi-task many different things, because there so many problems that are detail-oriented: the lab or CT scan, whether you have to stitch someone up, give different medications … there are all these processes you have to follow, and with every visit, there’s quality involved, and you have to meet certain metrics.”

Despite the fast pace and the constant flow of new patients, Shukla said he makes it a priority to truly connect with his patients.

“I always try to make a connection with my patients because, if I’m able to make that connection, whether it’s with a sports team that they like or a restaurant that they enjoy or some type of hobby they like, I feel like we can relate much better, and they can trust me. They just met me just a few minutes ago, so it’s really important that I build a trust and a relationship with them so that when I give them advice or we have what’s called ‘shared decision making,’ we can come with a good plan together. That’s why I’ll always spend the extra minute just to know them a little better.”

“They just met me just a few minutes ago, so it’s really important that I build a trust and a relationship with them so that when I give them advice or we have what’s called ‘shared decision making,’ we can come with a good plan together. That’s why I’ll always spend the extra minute just to know them a little better.”

Shukla currently works at all the hospitals in the Baystate system — Baystate Medical Center, Baystate Wing, and Baystate Noble — and became chief of the ER at Noble in March 2020, just as the pandemic was reaching Western Mass.

In each setting, and especially at Noble, he has been consumed with not only treating patients and making those important connections, but improving the overall experience.

“We try to look at the entire process — from when a patient walks into the waiting room all the way to when they go home,” he explained, adding that little things, such as having a greeter in the ER and having nurses, doctors, and other care providers working collaboratively so that patients don’t have to repeat their history and answer the same questions over and over again, often add up to big improvements in service, patient-satisfaction ratings, and statistics such as those concerning walkouts.

“The most dreaded word that most people see in emergency medicine is walkouts, which is basically a person who registered but wasn’t actually seen,” Shukla said. “That’s a problem throughout the United States, so we work really hard in the Baystate Health system to bring those numbers down. Even one patient walking out troubles us.”

Meanwhile, throughout his career, and even more so during COVID, he has put considerable emphasis on outreach and educating the community, with the goal of helping people make better, smarter choices about their health and well-being.

Indeed, he’s a frequent guest on area radio stations and has penned articles for several media outlets, all with the goal of creating a better-informed community.

“If people are educated, they can take care if their health better,” he said, adding that such efforts took on greater importance during the height of the pandemic, when the public had more questions — and needed more answers — and trust was a huge factor.

“We had a lot of COVID issues to contend with, but we also had to build up trust in the community,” he said, “because a lot of people were concerned about the ways people were contracting COVID, how they would protect themselves, the vaccines … there were many thongs we had to educate people on, and we did a lot of outreach for that.”

ERing on the Side of Caution

Overall, Shukla, as chief of the ER, assumes a role that blends medicine with administration, and, with his background and MBA training, he can bring a unique perspective to the table.

“Not many physicians go back and get a degree like an MBA; most of us go to school for a very long time as physicians, so not a lot of us go back,” he explained, adding that he enjoys both sides of the equation — business and especially medicine.

“It’s important for me to be well-rounded and understand how things are run,” he said, adding that he took a marketing class in 10th grade and since then has always been fascinated by business and management. “I really enjoy business, and so there’s the budget/financial aspect that I really like in administration, because I feel I can look at spreadsheets and Excel sheets in a different way than I did a few years ago before I earned my MBA.

“I understand the budget and the finances a lot more than I used to,” he went on, “and also how I can cut costs and improve efficiency in the ER, whether it’s flow in the ER or how I can reduce the cost of staffing or increase staffing to help show a return on investment.”

Going all the way back to when he was volunteering at the University of Missouri Hospital as a junior-high student, Sunny Shulka has known that he was destined to be in a profession — and a place — where he could help people.

That profession turned out to be healthcare, and the place is the ER, or the safety net, as he called it, which is now more his home.

For his efforts to continually improve that safety net, make it stronger, more welcoming, more comfortable, and better able to serve all those who come through its doors, Shukla is certainly an emerging leader, and truly a Healthcare Hero.

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

Health/Wellness Administrator, Mark Paglia

By George O'Brien September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

Chief Operating Officer, MiraVista Behavioral Health Center

This COO Empowers Team Members and Leads by Example

Leah Martin Photography

Mark Paglia was a wrestler at Cathedral High School and later at American International College.

He said the great thing about wrestling is there is “no one-size-fits-all method that leads to success.” But there are several qualities, traits, and habits that wrestlers possess. “They trust themselves and count on their teams to train together to get better. They aren’t afraid to try new things. They are disciplined, grateful, focused, detailed-oriented, and able to adjust.”

These are qualities, Paglia told BusinessWest, that positioned him well for his current role as chief operating officer at MiraVista Behavioral Health Center, and the myriad challenges that have come with that assignment.

While working for Mercy Medical Center and its parent company, Trinity Health Of New England, Paglia served in several different roles, including executive director of Behavioral Health. He would sum up his tenure this way:

“I became the ‘project guy,’ the ‘turn-around guy,’ where I would be asked to go into departments or services that were really struggling both from a regulatory side or the financial side and turn them around,’” he said.

He was given a number of difficult assignments in that vein, such as leading efforts which led to the successful redesign of the methadone maintenance treatment program, resulting in two-year licensure with the Department of Public Health; leading efforts to open the new Clinical Stabilization Services unit; stabilizing redesign throughput for behavioral-health patients in Mercy’s emergency room; and leading the Outpatient department from a state of uncertainty to being fully licensed and financially viable. Ultimately, he was charged with winding down behavioral-health services at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital when Trinity Health Of New England made the difficult decision to close them in 2020.

As noted, these experiences, including his wrestling prowess, helped steel him for what has been his most stern career challenge, but also the most rewarding one: opening a new behavioral-health hospital, MiraVista, at the Providence Hospital site in April 2021 — in very little time, in the middle of a pandemic, in the midst of a nationwide nursing shortage and general workforce crisis, and at a time when the need for behavioral-health services was soaring due to COVID and the many ways it impacted people of all ages.

“I really find myself leading from behind, where I screen, recruit, and hire exceptional people, identify what the goals of the organization are, invite the individuals to participate, and identify what their passions are — what they believe in — and then empower them to go.”

But his efforts to open MiraVista’s doors under such difficult circumstances and then put it on a path to accreditation and expansion of both inpatient and outpatient services only partly explains why Paglia has been chosen as a Healthcare Hero for 2022 in the Health/Wellness Administrator category.

Another key consideration is the manner in which he manages — and has managed throughout his career.

He calls it ‘invitational leadership,’ which, as that name suggests, aims to ‘invite’ employees and all other stakeholders to succeed. It involves sending positive messages to people, making them feel valued, able, responsible, and worthwhile.

“I identify goals for the organization and goals for the various departments, and then invite the individuals responsible for that work to participate and own the work,” he said while explaining what this practice means to him. “Through that, I really find myself leading from behind, where I screen, recruit, and hire exceptional people, identify what the goals of the organization are, invite the individuals to participate, and identify what their passions are — what they believe in — and then empower them to go.”

Summarizing thoughts expressed by team members at MiraVista, Erin Daley, chief Nursing officer and herself a Healthcare Hero in the Emerging Leader category in 2017, wrote in her nomination of Paglia:

“His impact is garnered through his compassionate and inclusive leadership of clinical and operations teams; we find Mark, more often than not, behind the scenes working with the team and individual staff members to make them as effective and productive as they can be. Universally, team members remarked that Mark inspires them to do their best work for patients and for each other because he makes them feel their contribution is valued and an essential part of the process. Simply put, he listens. He engages people and integrates ideas, and this is what distinguishes him as a hero; his impact has longevity and grows exponentially through others.”

Such sentiments explain why Paglia will be taking the stage at the Log Cabin on Oct. 27 to be recognized as a Healthcare Hero. More importantly, they explain why he has emerged as a true leader within this region’s healthcare sector.

Taking the Lead

Paglia took what would be considered a non-traditional path to his current post with MiraVista.

Indeed, after earning a degree in business management at AIC, he went to work for a flat-glass manufacturing company. Along the way, he was asked to coach wrestling at Minnechaug High School, a role that made him realize how much he liked working with young people and helping them develop.

Mark Paglia, seen here with several team members at MiraVista Behavioral Health Center, practices what is known as the ‘invitational’ style of management.

That experience inspired him to go back to school to earn a teaching degree. He would eventually land a job in Connecticut working in a day-treatment program for youth with behavioral-health issues.

“I was really drawn to the kids, but I felt like I didn’t have enough time with them in the school setting,” he told BusinessWest, adding that these sentiments led to another rather sharp turn on the career path, this one taking him to a job as director of the Adolescent and Family Services Department at the Gándara Center’s main office in Springfield.

“I think that’s where I found my passion for caring for those who are in need,” he explained. “And that’s where I started to understand business management and performance management, and that’s where I learned the invitational model of empowering people; that was the foundation for my career.”

Fast-forwarding somewhat, Paglia said he spent nine years at Gándara before becoming program director for the Brightside Treatment Center, part of the Sisters of Providence Health System, in 2009, and later became director of Outpatient Services – Behavioral Health at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital, and then executive director of Behavioral Health for Mercy Medical Center and its affiliates, including Providence Behavioral Health Hospital, Brightside, and behavioral-health services on the Mercy campus.

“I’m blessed to work with some of the most passionate, committed, extraordinary leaders … it’s a joy to come to work every day.”

While he was in that role, Trinity Health Of New England made the difficult decision to close Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in early 2021, leaving a huge void in services available to the public.

Seeking to fill that void, Health Partners of New England acquired the property with GFI Partners with the intention of bringing back inpatient psychiatric services and a compliment of substance-use programming. And it turned to Paglia to get that difficult job done.

Recalling those days and, ultimately, the reopening of that facility, Paglia said the sum of his previous experiences certainly helped him overcome a number of hurdles, adding that he was essentially starting up a new business, starting with the hiring of staff.

The first priority was the methadone clinic, which served 600 patients and needed to remain open, and did, with the transition from Trinity Health Of New England to MiraVista, sister facility to TaraVista Behavioral Health Center in Devens, taking place at midnight on April 20. What followed was a ramping up to open an adult inpatient psychiatric unit, he went on, adding that this was achieved 10 days after the acquisition, with a second unit added in June, followed by a detox unit and then an adolescent inpatient psychiatric unit, a clinical stabilization service unit, and other substance-use addiction services.

From left, Mark Paglia with Erin Daley, chief Nursing officer; Erica Trudell, director of Nursing for Inpatient Behavioral Health Services & Education; and Alicia Morel, Talent Acquisition specialist.

Overall, MiraVista has expanded inpatient bed capacity from 36 at opening to 101 today. This includes 50 acute-care psychiatric beds in separate units for adults and adolescents, 30 detoxification beds in its acute-treatment unit for substance-use disorders, and 21 beds in post-detoxification for individuals transitioning to outpatient care. And it is staffing up for the opening of another unit, a substance-use program. Meanwhile, planning and preparation continue for the opening of what Paglia called the most challenging unit — a child psychiatric facility — with an anticipated opening date of February 2023.

Overall, MiraVista has gone from one employee, Paglia, to roughly 350 team members in just over 16 months — again, in the middle of a pandemic and a workforce crisis. In a word, he described this as an “extraordinary” accomplishment, adding that “we are midway through our journey to hire the very best staff to reach an expected 650 employees.”

Equally impressive, he said, is the number of visits from the Joint Commission on Healthcare Accreditation that the facility and its team have endured on its way to accreditation.

“Typically, an organization has one visit every three years for their accreditation,” he explained. “Because we had different lines in different units open at different times, we had four surprise Joint Commission visits where they did a complete audit and survey, and I’m incredibly proud that we passed all four with deeemed status, which gives us the opportunity to qualify for our CMS-contracted services with Medicare and Medicaid, which is a difficult achievement. To do all that in one year is pretty extraordinary.”

“I picked up quickly a long time ago that when someone is passionate about what they’re doing, they have their own internal motivation to be successful.”

He credits all that MiraVista has achieved to date to the team of leaders he has assembled.

“I attribute a lot of it to the leaders that we were able to bring in to create the foundation for this organization,” he told BusinessWest. “I’m blessed to work with some of the most passionate, committed, extraordinary leaders … it’s a joy to come to work every day.”

Shared Mindset

One of the goals of invitational management is to make all members of a team feel the same way, Paglia explained, adding that he strives to accomplish such sentiment through active listening, getting employees involved, inspiring them to assume a sense of ownership in the operation, and making sure those in every position know they have an active role in the success of the company.

MiraVista Behavioral Health Center is appropriately lit up for September, which is Recovery Month.

“I picked up quickly a long time ago that when someone is passionate about what they’re doing, they have their own internal motivation to be successful,” he said, adding that one of the goals for him and other leaders is to match this passion with career opportunities that will enable those individuals — and the company — to grow.

While doing all that, he also likes to bring fun into the equation. In fact, it’s a big part of the success formula.

“We plan for fun,” he said, adding that an ‘engagement committee’ he established has launched several initiatives that team members can take part in together, from a Halloween party to a recent barbecue and cornhole tournament; from an ice-cream social to fitness challenges.

The cornhole event and ‘mismatch day,’ where employees wear outfits that do not match, don’t explain why Paglia is an effective leader — or a Healthcare Hero for 2022 in the Administrator category.

But they are part of the explanation.

There are, in fact, many parts to this equation, but the result is an engaging administrator who has taken the lead at MiraVista — in every sense of that phrase.

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

Patient/Resident/Client Care Provider; Dr. Philip Glynn

By George O'Brien September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

Director of Medical Oncology, Sister Mary Caritas Cancer Center, Mercy Medical Center

This Physician Provides a Needed Blend of Science and Humanity

Leah Martin Photography

On one wall of Dr. Philip Glynn’s office at the Sister Mary Caritas Cancer Center, sharing space with some diplomas and a few other photographs, is a framed, signed picture of Glynn standing beside Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer.

Glynn was instrumental in bringing Mukherjee to Springfield several years ago for a talk at CityStage, and prevailed upon the author, and fellow oncologist, for a photo that would become a treasured keepsake.

As he talked with BusinessWest about his career and being chosen as the Healthcare Hero for 2022 in the Patient/Resident/Client Care Provider category, Glynn gestured toward the photo — but really Mukherjee and his widely acclaimed book — on several occasions.

He did so to indicate everything from his great fondness for the book and general agreement its author on the progress made to date to the promise of great advancements in the future, to the fact that cancer, treating patients diagnosed with it, and providing them and their families with an all-important support system has in many ways defined his life and career.

Indeed, for more than 35 years now, Glynn has been at the forefront of cancer treatment in this region, touching the lives of several generations of area residents, and in many different ways — but mostly by providing quality of life, however it is to be defined by each patient, a subject we’ll return to later.

“It’s such a challenging balance — the human side and the science side. We are all disciplined to make sure that we stay abreast of the science side — that’s our fundamental responsibility, and it all starts with knowledge; there’s no substitute for that. How you integrate that into what patients need on a daily basis … that’s the art of it.”

While he is being honored as a Healthcare Hero in the Provider category, Glynn could be a recipient in almost every one of the others, with the notable exception of Emerging Leader, which would have been an apt description a few decades ago.

He has been an effective administrator and leader, having been instrumental in creating a comprehensive oncology program at Mercy that rivals anything that can be found in much larger cities such as Boston and New York.

Meanwhile, he has been innovative on many fronts, from the telehealth program he piloted in 2017 that allows Mercy cancer patients to get a second opinion on treatment from physicians at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, to his leadership role in creation of a new palliative-care unit that at Mercy that take the name of one of Glynn’s patients, the late restaurateur and serial entrepreneur Andy Yee.

He would certainly draw consideration in the Community Health and Collaboration categories for his work in this region to not only treat cancer but work in concert with others to diagnose and prevent it. And the sum of his many accomplishments would make him worthy of the Lifetime Achievement honor.

Dr. Philip Glynn, seen here with Oncology Nurse Manager Cynthia Leonard (left) and Stephanie Palange, RN, has spent his career guiding patients and their families through their cancer ‘journeys.’

But he is being honored in the Provider category because this is what Glynn, who is certified in medical oncology, palliative care and hospice, and internal medicine is perhaps most noted for — being a provider, of not only direct care, but also information, guidance, and, on many occasions, inspiration to fight the most difficult fight of one’s life.

He is described as a fierce advocate for his patients and a great listener who enables patients and their family members to be heard. Glynn said that what begins when individuals hear that they have cancer is a journey, one that often tests them in ways they could not have foreseen or imagined, and he is there with them for every step of that journey.

Overall, he described oncology as an intricate, all-important blend of science and humanity.

“It’s such a challenging balance — the human side and the science side,” he said. “We are all disciplined to make sure that we stay abreast of the science side — that’s our fundamental responsibility, and it all starts with knowledge; there’s no substitute for that. How you integrate that into what patients need on a daily basis … that’s the art of it.

“The other thing that’s really important is that you don’t give treatment for hope. You give treatment to help people live longer and better.”

“And that’s where the greatest satisfaction comes in,” he continued. “When you sit down with someone and say, ‘here’s what we’ve got, here’s the science that will take care of this disease, here’s the limits of the science for this disease’ — that communication with the patient, with the family, brings you to the point where they’re comfortable with the plan of action.”

Making patients and families comfortable, in every sense of that term, is why Glynn is certainly worthy to be called a Healthcare Hero.

A Compelling Story

As he offered BusinessWest a tour of the Caritas Center, Glynn talked with recognizable pride in his voice about what has been accomplished at that facility.

Formerly a provider of radiation treatment, it is now a true cancer center, he said, noting that it now includes a large treatment space with more than 30 infusion bays, an oncology pharmacy, laboratory space, and other facilities. Overall, the center provides care that may include cancer surgery, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and clinical trials that provide patients with access to new treatments.

In many respects, the expansion and evolution of the cancer center is the culmination of a career spent in oncology, one that was inspired by many factors and several role models.

Early on, however, Glynn wasn’t sure if he was a good enough student or if he would work hard enough to pursue a career a health career.

Two summers working as an orderly at an Appalachian hospital in West Virginia while he was attending Boston College eventually convinced him that he did.

“The second summer I was there, I was hooked. I said, ‘this is what I want to do,’” he recalled. “It was a great experience; it all become something that I wanted to be part of.”

Glynn earned a degree in psychology at BC, attended Columbia University for pre-med, and earned his medical degree in Italy after failing to gain admission to schools in this country (and learning Italian). After residency at St. Raphael Hospital in New Haven, he completed a medical oncology fellowship at Baystate Medical Center.

Initially, he had visions of becoming a primary-care physician in a rural setting, but during residency, several role models in oncology steered him toward that specialty. He went into private practice, first in Agawam and then Springfield, while also serving as director of Medical Oncology at Noble Hospital and the Noble VNA and Hospice Service.

In 2012, he joined Mercy Medical Center and the Sister Caritas Cancer Center as director of Medical Oncology. In that role, he wears many hats and is responsible for all aspects of the program, including cancer prevention, screening, diagnosis, state-of-the-art treatment and services, counseling, and rehabilitation. He also assists with the implementation of new initiatives, such as cancer survivorship, navigation, community outreach, and clinical research and clinical-trial participation.

He is also a provider, seeing 20 patients a day on average and guiding them through their own individual journey that generally begins with three basic questions regarding their cancer: ‘what is it?’ ‘how much is there?’ and ‘what are you going to do about it?’”

Obviously, the answer to that last question has changed most profoundly over the course of his career.

“I couldn’t have imagined it when I started; it’s changed that much,” Glynn said, gesturing toward the picture on the wall and how Mukherjee had carefully and effectively chronicled the advancements. “Seventy years ago, we did gruesome surgery, and then we had gruesome surgery with radiation, and then you added in chemotherapy. But now we’ve learned about cell biology and what drives cancer cells, so we look at genes, potential immunotherapy, a host of options; it’s absolutely exceptional.”

His ultimate goal is to bring to each patient an improved quality of life, which, as noted, varies with each case.

“If you come in, an oncologist sits down, describes to you what you have, and says, ‘this is not a curable disease; this is lung cancer that has spread to the bone,’ or ‘this is colorectal cancer that has gone to multiple different organs; you do not have a curable disease. Then, what becomes critically important is to give a treatment that is going to ideally shrink the tumor and help someone live longer and better,” he explained. “You need to avoid treatments that are going to make the treatment worse than the disease. Someone may come in with bad disease, but they’re not terribly symptomatic with it … you don’t want to give them a treatment that’s going to be terribly debilitating if you can’t give them some kind of promise that they’re going to live longer from it.

“On the other hand, if you take the other end of the spectrum, the 22-year-old kid with an advanced testicular cancer … that kind can be cured,” he went on. “You have the conversation with him and say, ‘look, the next several months are going to be hell, but you’re going to get through it, and you’re walking away. That quality of life is a quality of life you’re giving a promise to — ‘you’re going to be OK,’ as opposed to the quality of life of ‘this isn’t curable, but we’re going to make sure you’re as comfortable as you possibly can be.

“The other thing that’s really important is that you don’t give treatment for hope,” Glynn continued. “You give treatment to help people live longer and better.” All this brings him back to that integration of humanity and science that he spoke of earlier, a balance, he said, which is at the very heart of effective oncology care.

There are many aspects to this equation, he added, with one of the most important, and sometimes the challenging, being communication and providing information.

“And there are times when it gets really hard,” he explained. “We live in a world that’s packed with information. Some of it’s good, and some of it’s not so good. Patients come in with very unrealistic expectations, and that becomes a very challenging conversation.”

For that reason, he brings patients to his office, positions them in front of his computer, and directs them to websites he considers reliable, with much of the rest he described as ‘storytelling.’

He said patients — and, often, family members — want and need to know about everything from prognosis to the toxicity of treatments; from their therapeutic options to recovery time and what recovery will be like.

“But it’s also important to let them know that we’re going to have a support system there for them,” he explained. “There is going to be a doctor available 24/7.”

Throughout his career, Glynn has been that doctor, there for early-morning and late-night phone calls to make sure patients are heard, and staying with them often well beyond the end of treatment, regardless of outcome.

The Plot Thickens

Returning once again to the photo on wall, Glynn said he believes the best message of that book is the promise of the future.

“He [Mukherjee] says that we probably won’t cure cancer, and I find that sensible,” Glynn noted. “After all, we don’t cure diabetes, we don’t cure heart disease, and we won’t cure cancer.”

But there will be new advancements, new and better ways of screening, preventing, and treating the emperor of all maladies, he said, adding that, while his career is winding toward its conclusion, the oncologists who follow him will have new, previously unimagined tools with which to carry on the fight.

And they can certainly draw inspiration from him.

Glynn may not have written the definitive biography of cancer, but he has authored a remarkable career, one marked by treating patients with respect and dignity, handling the heavy burden of their care with grace and humility, and providing that critical blend of science and humanity.

And that makes him more of than worthy of the title Healthcare Hero.

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

Collaboration in Health/Wellness, Dr. Paul Pirraglia

By Joseph Bednar September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

Division Chief, General Medicine and Community Health, Baystate Health

He Convened a Broad, Effective, Street-level Response to a Pandemic

Leah Martin Photography

From his years working at a VA hospital in Rhode Island to his more recent community-health role overseeing Baystate Health’s medical practices in Springfield, Dr. Paul Pirraglia has always seen himself as a problem solver.

“It’s gratifying to take care of a patient and get a problem solved, or at least controlled for them — when you can address a concern that is having an impact, not just around a health issue, but in a broader sort of way,” he said. “Take a patient who has diabetes. You can get their diabetes under control, but because food is such a huge part of diabetes, if you can actually get them access to good, nutritious foods, then it’s not just about the diabetes; it’s a life changer in a way.

“As medical professionals, we really want to make a difference in people’s lives,” he went on. “So it’s gratifying to be able to serve when there’s a substantive need.”

COVID-19 would certainly qualify.

Which is why Dr. Andrew Artenstein, Baystate’s chief physician executive, who spearheaded pandemic response throughout the system when COVID arrived early in 2020, asked Pirraglia and Dr. Jackie Spain, co-chief medical officer of Baystate’s BeHealthy ACO, to convene a workgroup to mitigate the impact of coronavirus on the most vulnerable patients in the community, particularly those with significant social needs.

“It was clear that traditionally underserved populations were going to get hit especially hard by this pandemic.”

The workgroup included representatives from Baystate Health and its four community health centers, Caring Health Center, the BeHealthy Partnership (a Medicaid accountable-care organization, or ACO, that includes Health New England as the insurer and Baystate Health and Caring Health Center as care sites), the Public Health Institute of Western Massachusetts, and University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School – Baystate.

The group looked at factors that could contribute to risk, such as low-income housing, where COVID cases were occurring, where ACO members lived, medical conditions were associated with worse COVID outcomes, as well as solutions such as access to pharmacies that home-deliver, food delivery, and transportation.

“On a personal level, I’m drawn to research: here’s a vexing problem; how do we solve it?” Pirraglia said, which is one reason this strategy resonated with him. “When Dr. Artenstein said we needed to do something, it was very, very early on, but it was clear that traditionally underserved populations were going to get hit especially hard by this pandemic. He said, ‘do what you need to do; I’ve got your back.’ So what Jackie and I did was convene a group which was not limited to just Baystate; we got all the leaders we needed.”

That included professionals from a wide range of offices at Baystate and beyond, from infection control to diagnostics and laboratory; from diversity, equity, and inclusion to community relations.

“We were able to pull together a multi-disciplinary group of folks who saw the importance of convening and doing this work,” Pirraglia said. “Despite the jobs they had and their schedules, we met on a weekly basis for many, many months in a row; attendance was phenomenal. That’s because people saw the need to do this.”

This Springfield Housing Authority testing event was organized by the COVID mitigation team.

The goal was to figure out the needs of the Springfield population and communicate with them in a way that was meaningful, and the work progressed rapidly.

Initially, the workgroup explored ways to protect people who were at risk, trying to catch people who had not been infected and keep them from getting infected, while identifying who was infected and making sure those around them had protection. To aid in this effort, a grant from the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts enabled community health workers (CHWs) to supply materials such as facemasks, portable pulse oximeters to measure blood-oxygen levels, and room dividers and air mattresses so families could quarantine within their own living spaces.

“We really broke into two groups, one group more patient-facing and another group more community-facing, and then continued to meet and engage and make sure there was good crosstalk back and forth between us,” Pirraglia told BusinessWest, while stressing the importance of communication early on.

“The communication was with the community and within all the different groups that were participating in this workgroup. But we were also communicating with our community health workers, the on-the-ground folks, the ones gathering the patient needs and delivering on those needs. And the communication, I have to say, was pretty robust, in large part because people were committed to making this happen.”

The group performed geographic analysis to determine where to focus its efforts, gathering information about patient conditions in various areas so they could inform the CHWs on the ground about which areas were riskiest and who needed help, he explained.

“I can’t emphasize enough how important our community health workers were in this work. We were the coaches, but they were the players; they were the ones on the field making this happen.”

“We had to prioritize what we were doing, so communication was paramount. At our Tuesday meetings every week, we’d say, ‘this is what the maps are showing, this is what we now about pharmacy deliveries, this is what we know about food deliveries, this is what we know about the ability to reach out to people.’ We needed to make sure all the different arms knew what the others were doing so we were able to work in concert.”

Mission Accepted

In nominating him for the Healthcare Heroes award in the Collaboration category, Michael Knapik, Baystate’s vice president of Government and Community Relations, noted that Pirraglia — an attending physician who sees some of the city’s most vulnerable patients at Baystate Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center and also a professor of Medicine at UMass Chan Medical School – Baystate who teaches residents at Baystate High Street Health Center and Baystate Brightwood Health Center — has always been mission-driven.

“This became especially important as the COVID pandemic snapped into sharp focus the inequities that have been occurring in healthcare,” Knapik said. “People who were already suffering due to inequities related to their vulnerabilities — socioeconomic, racial, ethnic, and identification factors as well as medical comorbidity all contributing — were now at highest risk from COVID-19 in terms of cases, hospitalizations, and death.”

But Pirraglia himself stressed multiple times during his interview with BusinessWest that he’s not the Healthcare Hero here, not really.

“I can’t emphasize enough how important our community health workers were in this work,” he said. “We were the coaches, but they were the players; they were the ones on the field making this happen. Based on priority lists that we made for them, they were able to reach out to patients and find out what their needs were. We created a needs assessment, and then the CHWs were the ones who came up with a contact-free delivery system. COVID mitigation isn’t their primary work, but they jumped in with both feet: ‘what do you need us to do?’ If you ask me, they’re the heroes.”

As the initial surge eased and vaccines became available early in 2021, the workgroup pivoted to that effort, as vaccination delivery to traditionally underserved groups has been a challenge in a state where early allocations from the federal government were deemed insufficient to supply both mass-vaccination sites and smaller providers, Knapik noted. The rollout through a state registration site put those without access to the internet, as well as transportation to such sites, at a disadvantage.

To address this, Baystate started to vaccinate patients age 75 and older from its community health centers in lockstep with the state’s phased rollout, with staff calling patients and inviting them to get vaccinated. In all, they were able to vaccinate 650 people over the course of six weeks, many of them individuals who would have had difficulty getting to any of the state sites. Meanwhile, the workgroup used a series of webinars and other outreach programs to communicate the importance and safety of vaccines.

Pirraglia and his team prepared a lengthy article for the International Journal for Equity in Health last year called “COVID-19 Mitigation for High-risk Populations in Springfield,” detailing the workgroup’s efforts. It concluded, “our highly intentional and methodical approach to patient and community outreach with a strong geographic component has led to fruitful efforts in COVID-19 mitigation. Our patient-level outreach engages our health centers’ clinical teams, particularly community health workers, and is providing the direct benefit of material and service resources for our at-risk patients and their families. Our community efforts leveraged existing relationships and created new partnerships that continue to inform us — healthcare entities, healthcare employees, and clinical teams — so that we can grow and learn in order to authentically build trust and engagement.”

That’s not to say the group couldn’t have done some things differently, Pirraglia said. “It’s difficult because we’re not in a setting where these entities would necessarily be meeting and collaborating. So there was probably more we could have done that was broader and more in concert.

“But I feel confident that, if another crisis came, we could convene another group, or at least use the methodology we used,” he continued. “Certainly, the community outreach and patient-oriented piece of it worked really well, and we’d probably carry that forward if we had another crisis. It really was, in my mind, highly effective.”

Mission Accomplished

As noted earlier, Pirraglia has always taken a mission-based approach to care.

“What I mean by that is we take care of a traditionally underserved population with a lot of social challenges in their life,” he told BusinessWest. “These are patients who have difficulty with travel, with food, with shelter, with a lot of other issues in their lives. So just being able to deliver care is more challenging because the patients oftentimes have these other contexts to deal with. Our work has been to try to deliver the best care we can to our patients despite some of the challenges they face.”

Throw in a pandemic, and … well, you can see why we consider the effort heroic, even though Pirraglia doesn’t consider himself a hero.

“It was a really gratifying experience to have people totally on point, using their expertise in trying to figure out this really scary problem,” he said. “We learned that you can be nimble, you can be collaborative, you can tackle a really complex problem. And when you’re working on a group like this and the communication is good, the sense of mission is good, and there’s clarity about where we’re going with it, great things can happen.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Lifetime Achievement, Helen Caulton-Harris

By George O'Brien September 15, 2022

Healthcare Heroes

Health and Human Services Commissioner, City of Springfield

Public Health Has Become Her Life’s Work

Leah Martin Photography

When then-Mayor Michael Albano invited her to take on the considerable challenge of directing Springfield’s Health Department and Human Services Department as one entity and oversee that consolidation effort, Helen Caulton-Harris was caught somewhat off guard.

She didn’t know Albano, was not active in his campaign for the corner office, and was not expecting any invitations to join his administration.

So when the request came, she had to think about it for a while, but eventually said ‘yes.’ But certainly not with the expectation that 26 years and two mayors (including the current office holder, Domenic Sarno, who has had the job for 14 years) later, she would still have that title on her business card.

“I certainly didn’t see this as something that I would be doing two and half decades later,” she said, adding that she has stayed in this post for several reasons, but especially because she loves not only the work, but also her ability to make a real difference in the community, and also because there is still considerable work to do.

And there are always new and different challenges to meet, not the least of which is the COVID-19 pandemic, which has tested Caulton-Harris and her department in every way imaginable. It has also been a learning experience on many different levels, as we’ll see, and one that has provided some valuable lessons on how things can be done better and more efficiently.

“The way in which our public-health community has shifted because of the pandemic is that we’ve learned to work together,” she told BusinessWest. “We understood that we had to collaborate and coordinate, and that we must share information. We’re no longer working exclusively in silos; we are working across the public-health venue.

“The way in which our public-health community has shifted because of the pandemic is that we’ve learned to work together.”

“Every two weeks, we have a session with all of our partners to talk about our outreach, lessons learned, and best practices,” she went on. “So those things are part of what has happened as far as COVID-19 is concerned — our communication strategies have become more concrete.”

Caulton-Harris is the 2022 Healthcare Hero in the prestigious Lifetime Achievement category, and she has truly accomplished quite a bit in her career, especially this current chapter.

Overall, she has been an advocate, a true believer in the power of information — she preaches education — and a leader who has taken problems head on and achieved notable progress in areas ranging from teen pregnancy to infant mortality; from care for the homeless population to policies limiting smoking in public places; from substance-use disorders to violence prevention.

There are always new challenges, she said, adding that, today, there are many that she and her department are addressing as the landscape continues to change and evolve.

“Today, we’re dealing with the legalization of marijuana; cannabis is legal, but we still need to educate people about it,” she noted. “Also, gaming and problem gambling. We also have an opioid crisis, which is different than other substance-abuse matters because of fentanyl and the cheap way in which individuals are getting their products and how it escalates and has such an impact on our young people and our communities as well.”

Helen Caulton-Harris has tackled many different public-health issues over the years, from teen pregnancy and infant mortality to violence, drugs, and HIV/AIDS. Leah Martin Photography

While there have been many accomplishments during her lengthy career, she considers the biggest to be the merger of the Health and Human Services departments into one entity.

“They should not be seen as separate — they flow together,” she said with clear conviction in her voice. “I describe public health as a social-justice movement rooted in science. And Human Services really is about social justice.”

For all that she has accomplished during her life and career, and for the manner in which she has worked to improve the health and well-being of all those living, working, and doing business in the City of Homes, Caulton-Harris is a true Healthcare Hero.

A Life’s Work

When asked if she misses the regular weekly press briefings that came to symbolize the early months of the pandemic, Caulton-Harris flashed a wide smile and said simply, “not really.”

Those briefings, which also featured Sarno; Dr. Mark Keroack, president and CEO of Baystate Health; and Dr. Robert Roose, chief administrative officer at Mercy Medical Center, were conducted to keep city residents informed about was happening and what to possibly expect next, and provide up-to-date statistics concerning cases, hospitalizations, deaths, and more.

She doesn’t miss them because they came to symbolize the very worst days of the pandemic in a city that was hit very hard by COVID. But also because, while Caulton-Harris, as noted, preaches the importance of information and education and still makes regular appearances on TV, she prefers not to be in front of the camera. Instead, she would rather be working behind the scenes, advocating of behalf of area residents and providing a voice for those who struggle to make to make their voice heard.

It has been that way since her early days in the broad realm of healthcare, working with women on the issue of reproductive health, a subject which has, to a large degree, come full circle with the recent Supreme Court vote to overturn Roe v. Wade (more on that later).

“I would talk to them about the choices as far as pregnancy, whether that was to continue the pregnancy, terminate, or adopt,” she said. “So very early on in my career, I became an advocate.”

Later, while working at what is now the Mason Square Neighborhood Health Center, she was influenced by several role models, especially African-American nurses, who showed her that there were career paths for young people like her.

“I got an opportunity to see what the possibilities were for my own career,” she said. “There were individuals from my community who were making a difference in the lives of others.”

“I did not believe it was going to go on for two and half years — we’re still dealing with the pandemic today. Early on, we thought it might be a month or two, but it continues to be a pervasive virus that we’re dealing with.”

In 1994, Caulton-Harris would become executive director of the Area Health Education Center at Springfield Technical Community College, one of six such facilities in the Commonwealth, a role that enabled her to work with young people who were interested in careers in healthcare.

“I got to mentor and nurture them in a way that was very special to me,” she said, adding that, while she was in that post, she was approached by Albano about being the first commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services.

Recalling that conversation she had with the mayor about this opportunity that doubled as a stern challenge, she said it focused on why the departments should be merged and how that should be undertaken, but also how such a merger could help address the emerging health issues of that day.

And there were many of them, she recalled, citing a sky-high teen-pregnancy rate, an equally alarming infant-mortality rate, HIV/AIDS, violence, and drugs, among others.

And it was that conversation that prompted her to leave what was a good position and step into one that would be challenging on many levels but also one that would enable her to impact lives and make a difference in the community.

“I was not quite clear on the politics of the position,” she admitted. “For me, I filtered it with the fact that I really can make a difference in the city by putting policies in place that would stay as a foundation moving forward.”

And that is exactly what she has done.

Learning Experiences

While tackling the many challenges that impact health, Caulton-Harris and other city leaders were confronted by the pandemic, which in some ways defines her career, but also sums up her straight-on approach to issues affecting the public.

“The pandemic was something that I was not prepared for and could not have foreseen as something that I would have to deal with,” she told BusinessWest. “I don’t think anyone thought we’d be dealing with a pandemic like we did in 1918, but here we are, 100 years later, dealing with a global pandemic that was devastating the world.

“Very early on, it was clear that this was devastating — our hospitals were overrun with COVID patients; our community was devastated. The Black and Brown communities in the city of Springfield probably got hit the hardest in terms of livelihood and being able to work, so we knew that staying home from some jobs simply wasn’t an option for some people. So it was all-consuming; I lived COVID-19 education every day, and I continue to do that.”

The seriousness of the virus was one issue, Caulton-Harris went on, adding that the degree of difficulty in coping with the situation was compounded by information from state and federal agencies that was often lacking, inconsistent, and at times quite confusing.

“In the early part of the pandemic, we were told that masks were not necessary, and then we were told we needed to mask up,” she recalled. “We did not have vaccines, so education and working with the public became critical. It was my lived public-health experience that enabled me to take on the pandemic. I did not believe it was going to go on for two and half years — we’re still dealing with the pandemic today. Early on, we thought it might be a month or two, but it continues to be a pervasive virus that we’re dealing with.”

As she noted, the COVID experience, if you will, has generated improvement in how those involved in matters of public health communicate, collaborate, and work together to serve the community.

As an example, she cited the work of a collective that came to be known as the ‘VAX FORCE.’

“This was a combination of physicians, community members, researchers … there were 15 individuals who were appointed by Mayor Sarno to be part of this VAX FORCE,” she recalled. “We met to put strategies in place to be able to work with the public, and that manifested itself in vaccination clinics that we had in the North End, the South End, Mason Square, Indian Orchard, and other neighborhoods. We were very intentional about the fact that we had to meet people where they were, and we used all of the expertise of the individuals on the VAX FORCE to come up with a strategy to market and make sure we were hitting all the various communities that we needed to hit.

“That, to me, was a very important strategy, and one that we put together in a way that was different than what we would have done had we not experienced the pandemic,” she went on, adding that this will be the blueprint for how to do things moving forward.

The Next Chapter

When asked what might come next for her as she nears retirement age, Caulton-Harris opted to borrow some words used recently by tennis star Serena Williams, who eschewed the term ‘retirement,’ and instead said that she will be ‘transitioning,’ or ‘evolving.’

Caulton-Harris said she will likely be doing some of the same, noting she is working on a book, a personal history of sorts, that she started maybe a decade ago.

“It’s going to be about the journey that I’ve had, from the public-health perspective, but also the personal side,” she said. “I think it’s important to be able to talk about the experiences and let people know the human side of who we are.”

Some would say she’s already written the book, the one about how to be a true leader in public health and make a difference in the community. The one about how to be a Healthcare Hero.

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

BusinessTalk with Katie Allan Zobel, outgoing president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts

By BusinessWest Staff September 12, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 129: September 12, 2022

George Interviews Katie Allan Zobel, outgoing president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts

BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien has a lively discussion with Katie Allan Zobel, outgoing president and CEO of the Community Foundation of Western Massachusetts. The two talk about Zobel’s eventful tenure at the community foundation, the many new programs introduced in recent years, and the evolution of the institution into what she calls a “catalyst for change.” It’s all must listening, so join us for BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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BusinessTalk with Mark Rivers, event producer for Hooplandia

By BusinessWest Staff September 5, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 128: September 5, 2022

George Interviews Mark Rivers, event producer for Hooplandia, the giant 3-on-3 basketball tournament coming to the region next summer

BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien has a lively discussion with Mark Rivers, event producer for Hooplandia, the giant 3-on-3 basketball tournament coming to the region next summer. The two talk about how this concept came together, how it survived three years of cancellations and delays due to COVID, and why this tournament, a production, led by the Big E and the Basketball Hall of Fame, has the potential to become a legacy event. It’s all must listening, so join us for BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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BusinessTalk with with Jeff Daley, president and CEO of Westmass Area Development Corp.

By BusinessWest Staff August 29, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 127: August 29, 2022

George Interviews Jeff Daley, president and CEO of Westmass Area Development Corp.

BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien has a lively discussion with Jeff Daley, president and CEO of Westmass Area Development Corp. about the agency’s most ambitious, project to date, redevelopment of the massive Ludlow Mills complex. Daley recounts the latest developments and talks about how the project has turned a critical corner. It’s all must listening, so join us for BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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Senior Planning Guide 2022

By BusinessWest Staff August 18, 2022

Guide to Senior Planning Special Coverage Special Publications

Preparing for Life After 65

View the 2022 Planning Guide HERE

When people think about strategizing for their senior years, they often see it as a downbeat task, one marked by growing incapacity, financial stress, and, well, dying.

That’s not what this guide is about, although it definitely contains plenty of information about what to do before that day comes. But the goal isn’t planning to die; it’s making sure you get all your plans in order — from where you or your loved ones will live to how finances will be distributed — so you don’t have to worry about it. You can, instead, enjoy life.

And that planning is an increasingly important task. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of Americans age 65 and older rose from 35 million in 2000 — 12% of the population — to 56.1 million, or 17%. By 2030, the bureau estimates, more than 21% of U.S. residents, about 73.1 million, will have passed their 65th birthdays.

That’s a lot of people. And a lot of planning. And a lot of living left to enjoy.

Achieving your goals — and your desires for your loved ones — requires careful thought, and that’s where our annual Senior Planning Guide comes in. So let’s sort through some of the confusion and get those conversations — and the rest of your life — started.

BusinessTalk with Peter Picknelly, chairman of Peter Pan Bus Lines and president of OPAL Development

By BusinessWest Staff July 11, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest, in partnership with Living Local, has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 120: July 11, 2022

George talks with Peter Picknelly, chairman of Peter Pan Bus Lines and president of OPAL Development

BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien talks with Peter Picknelly, chairman of Peter Pan Bus Lines and president of OPAL Development. The two discuss everything from the price of diesel fuel to the housing project taking shape in Court Square. But mostly, they focus on Picknelly’s recently revealed, very ambitious plans for a new courthouse in Springfield, a project he believes will reshape the riverfront in Springfield. It’s all must listening, so join us for BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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40 Under Forty Gala Set for Tonight

By BusinessWest Staff June 16, 2022

Daily News

HOLYOKE — BusinessWest will celebrate its 40 Under Forty Class of 2022 tonight at its annual gala at the Log Cabin Banquet & Meeting House. The event will also feature the announcement of the Alumni Achievement Award winner for 2022.

The sold-out event begins with a VIP hour at 4 p.m. for invited guests, honorees, and sponsors only. The doors for general admission open at 5:30, and the program begins at 6:30.

Attendees are encouraged to carpool. In addition to parking at the Log Cabin, there will be parking at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, 34 Jarvis Ave., with shuttle service — complete with beer and wine — to the Log Cabin. The shuttle service ends at 11 p.m.

For those who cannot attend in person, the event will be livestreamed. To watch, visit: https://businesswest.com/40-under-forty/40underforty/

The event is sponsored by presenting sponsor PeoplesBank, with supporting sponsors Comcast Business, Live Nation, Mercedes Benz of Springfield, The Mill District, UMass Isenberg School of Management, and Stand Out Truck. The Young Professional Society of Greater Springfield is an event partner. The Alumni Achievement Award is sponsored by Health New England.

BusinessTalk with Charlie Epstein, senior vice president of HUB International and Epstein Financial

By BusinessWest Staff May 30, 2022

Business Talk Podcast Special Coverage

We are excited to announce that BusinessWest, in partnership with Living Local, has launched a new podcast series, BusinessTalk. Each episode will feature in-depth interviews and discussions with local industry leaders, providing thoughtful perspectives on the Western Massachuetts economy and the many business ventures that keep it running during these challenging times.

Go HERE to view all episodes

Episode 114: May 30, 2022

George O’Brien talks with Charlie Epstein, senior vice president of HUB International and Epstein Financial

BusinessWest Editor George O’Brien talks with Charlie Epstein, senior vice president of HUB International and Epstein Financial. The two discuss his upcoming show at Holyoke Community College — Yield of Dreams — and how it brings together his twin passions — acting and educating people about not just saving for retirement, but realizing their dreams. It’s all must listening, so join us on BusinessTalk, a podcast presented by BusinessWest in partnership with Living Local and sponsored by PeoplesBank.

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