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Driving Ambition

Alex Balise

Alex Balise

 

Alex Balise always thought she would get involved in the family business.

She just thought that would happen when she was maybe 40, not in her mid-20s, as things turned out.

But since they did turn out that way (and we’ll go back and explain way later), she is now eight years into what has become an intriguing and wide-ranging career, one that has her engaged in everything from cars — the family business is Balise Motor Sales — to car washes; from two laundromats (one in Springfield and the other on the Cape) to whatever might come next for this 105-year-old enterprise.

Indeed, Balise, 36, representing the fourth generation of the family to assume leadership roles with the company, recently saw her role change, or, to be more precise, expand. While she’s still director of Marketing, she is now also director of Corporate Strategy, which means she will play a large role in helping to shape what might come next.

“I’ve been doing more … projects,” she said, being intentionally vague. “I’ve been very involved in the car washes, and that’s been a rapid expansion, and we’re also looking at some other business opportunities that we haven’t done before.”

While doing that, she is still leading the marketing efforts for the Balise company, which has dealerships in the 413, on the Cape, and in Rhode Island; car washes in Western Mass. and Connecticut; five collision centers; and that aforementioned laundromat in Springfield’s South End.

“We’re doing a lot to highlight our people in the ads recently, and that makes sense. After all, they’re the people who make Balise … Balise. Our teams are who make the difference, so why not have them be the face?”

This a wide-ranging assignment, one that keeps a staff of six (with some help from a few agencies) busy, and includes ad creation, media buying, social media, website content, and determining if, how, and to what degree the company will honor the myriad requests it receives for support from area nonprofits, a difficult assignment because, as she put it, “I can’t think of a single thing that came in that wasn’t a good cause; they’re all good.”

For many years, marketing at Balise was the purview, if you will, of her late uncle Mike, who succumbed to stomach cancer in 2015 and was named a BusinessWest Difference Maker posthumously in 2016. He was the face of the company, she acknowledged, adding that she has resisted any and all efforts to become the new ‘face,’ noting that “I don’t have the personality for it.”

Instead, she has led efforts to make the company’s employees the collective new face, with ads featuring them in many different roles.

“We’re doing a lot to highlight our people in the ads recently, and that makes sense,” she said. “After all, they’re the people who make Balise … Balise. Our teams are who make the difference, so why not have them be the face?”

Meanwhile, she is carrying on her uncle’s tradition of getting involved in the community, especially in the broad realm of education.

Alex Balise is carrying on her uncle Mike Balise’s tradition

Alex Balise is carrying on her uncle Mike Balise’s tradition of buying coats for students at Springfield’s Homer Street School, now the Swan School.

Indeed, just as Mike did for several years, she reads in the classroom for Link to Libraries at the recently opened Swan School, a replacement for Homer Street School, which was sponsored by the Balise company for many years.

She also carries on another of Mike’s traditions — buying winter coats for students at the school — and takes it to another level with some serious shopping for deals, stretching the allotted dollars and using the savings to buy hats and other accessories.

“Costco will have these deals — ‘spend this much and get this much off,’” she explained. “So I’ll buy them in buckets so that we get the most of the discount, and then I’ll use what we saved with the discount to buy the extra things, like hats and gloves. There are definitely some things that Mike started that we’re happy to continue.”

And while doing all that, she’s also raising two young children, son Connor, 5, and daughter Emma, 3. It’s a complicated and delicate balancing act, one that she discussed, along with many other topics, in a wide-ranging interview with BusinessWest for this issue and its focus on women in business.

 

Drive Time

One of the better perks for those in the auto-sales business — even those in charge of marketing and, now, corporate strategy — is being able to drive a demo.

And for Balise, the car of choice — and there is a lot to choose from in an auto group that sells several different makes — is the Toyota Crown, a sporty hybrid sedan. Yes, a sedan. Even with two young children, she’ll leave the SUVs for others to drive.

“If we have the opportunity to have more focused donations that have a bigger impact on the organizations that we’re helping, that’s the direction we’ve decided to take.”

Although this sedan doesn’t look much like anything else on the road.

“I’ve never had more people ask me, ‘what is that you’re driving?’” she said. “Because it is a little different.”

Balise spends a considerable amount of time in whichever Crown she’s driving at the moment — she doesn’t keep them past 5,000 miles — splitting her days between the 413, Rhode Island, and the Cape. While driving, she’s usually listening to audiobooks (she likes both fiction and nonfiction and is currently ‘rereading’ the Harry Potter books) and thinking about all the many balls she’s keeping in the air at present.

All this wasn’t exactly where she pictured herself at this stage of her life and career, but there have been some, well, unexpected turns.

Like most who grew up around the car business, Balise spent summers and school breaks working in various jobs at dealerships. She recalls working in the parts department, calling customers to tell them their appointments were coming up, and even handling paperwork created by the federal government’s infamous Cash for Clunkers program designed to fuel auto sales in the wake of the Great Recession.

But she wasn’t thinking about making this a career.

Alex Balise meets some residents of the Zoo in Forest Park

Alex Balise meets some residents of the Zoo in Forest Park after the company wrapped a vehicle and donated it to the zoo for its educational programs.

Instead, while earning her undergraduate degree at Colgate University, she was thinking about teaching and then working in the broad realm of education policy.

But she graduated into a tough job market in 2009 and eventually moved to Boston with her husband, Trevor McEwen, who did manage to find work. She eventually secured some herself, working for a student health-insurance brokerage and consulting firm for three and a half years.

She learned a lot about business in that role, but decided she needed to further that education and earned an MBA, with a concentration in marketing, at Babson College. With that degree, she sought work in education consulting and hospital operations, but “couldn’t find anything I loved.”

Meanwhile, Balise Motor Sales was opening another car wash in West Springfield, and her father, Jeb, its CEO, asked her to run some pro formas and work on the project.

“That was really interesting — I didn’t know anything about car washes, so I learned a lot there,” she said, adding that she spent most of her time on the Cape, where the company opened its first such facility.

To make a long story shorter, that learning experience would be the start of her career with the company, she said, adding that she moved on to a different project, the opening of a Kia store in West Springfield in 2016 after the company was awarded that franchise.

And during that project, Balise’s vice president of Marketing retired, and Alex was asked by then-President Bill Pepper to take over that broad realm.

She did, but while doing so, she became a hybrid worker long before that phrase came to be, working at her home in Framingham two or three days a week and driving to West Springfield the others.

“My father didn’t love that idea — he felt that a manager should be in the office every day,” she recalled. “He said, ‘how can I manage these people if I wasn’t there every day?’ But I decided to do it and see if we could make it work. And we did.”

 

To a Higher Gear

Balise eventually moved back to this area in 2018, putting her further away from the company’s dealerships in Rhode Island and on the Cape, but in a better place overall to oversee marketing for a steadily growing portfolio of auto-related businesses.

And some not auto-related.

Balise said the laundries, operating under the name Love Your Laundry, were her father’s idea, and the Springfield facility, right behind the company’s Mazda dealership, was seen as a way to help the residents of Springfield’s South End.

“It’s not something that we’re planning to blow up and have 25 locations, like the car washes, but if there are opportunities … we’ll see where it goes,” she said, adding that she has plenty of other things on her plate, especially the duties that come with being director of Corporate Strategy.

Whatever the title on the business card might be, Balise said she will always be heavily involved in the community. In fact, opportunities to do so comprised one of the larger reasons why she joined and then stayed with the company.

“I felt I could make a bigger impact through the family business than I could on my own if I worked somewhere else,” she told BusinessWest, adding this impact comes in many different forms.

One of them is playing a lead role in reviewing requests for support from the area’s legion of nonprofits and deciding which directions the Balise company’s philanthropic efforts will take.

It’s a huge responsibility and one she takes quite seriously.

“Having to say no is the worst — it’s tough,” she said, adding quickly that it’s even harder to say no when Balise doesn’t have guidelines for its giving.

So the company — more specifically, her team — created some, addressing everything from areas of focus, such as youth, education, healthcare delivery, and civic and community development, to how to make the most impact.

“In talking about it and in looking at what we’ve supported historically and where we’ve been able to have the biggest impact, we thought we could say yes to $100 for several small donations and have small impacts for some, or … we could refine our guidelines and make sure that, where we’re donating, we have a bigger impact that’s going to have a lasting result in the community.

“So instead of sponsoring a golf tournament or a gala, we want to actually sponsor the new computers or building a new classroom or medical deliveries, as opposed to the 5Ks to raise money. They’re all important, and we need all of those to fundraise, but if we have the opportunity to have more focused donations that have a bigger impact on the organizations that we’re helping, that’s the direction we’ve decided to take.”

Meanwhile, as noted, she is out in the community herself. In addition to reading at Swan School, she’s a corporator at Square One (the company also sponsors a classroom there), and, in the Providence market, she helped wrap presents to be given to patients at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, an initiative that involved many from the company.

While doing all that, she also saves large amounts of time for family, part of the balancing act that is part and parcel of being a woman (and, especially, a manager) in business today.

“It’s a lot, and it’s hard,” Balise acknowledged. “I’m lucky that I have a great team at work, and I’m lucky that I have a job that’s flexible enough that I can work from home; I can go pick up my son and transfer home when I need to, and I have family nearby that can help pick up some days.

“I don’t know how people manage it when they have kids and they have a job where they have to be at a physical location the whole time,” she went on. “When you have two young kids and you work, there is no balance. Basically, when I’m not working, I’m focused on my kids and my family, and we try to fit in as much as we can and have dinner together.”

Women in Businesss

Growth Spurt

Ashley Batlle calls confidence a “superpower,”

Ashley Batlle calls confidence a “superpower,” and aims to instill more confidence in her clients by making them look and feel better.

 

Ashley Batlle says she just took a “teenage step.”

That’s different from the baby steps businesses take after they open, in everything from products and services offered to marketing and workforce. She’s been taking those baby steps since opening her beauty and wellness spa, Beauty Batlles, five years ago.

The teenage step was more dramatic (as teenagers often are). It took the form of a physical move from a somewhat hidden space on Front Street in Chicopee to a prominent storefront on nearby Cabot Street — and a much larger floor area to provide new and expanded services.

“We’ve grown with baby steps, and now we just took a huge teenage step to where we’re at right now,” Batlle told BusinessWest. “We’re more of an advanced beauty spa now, and we’ve added a whole wellness section to it.

“That being said, a lot of people don’t understand what advanced beauty is,” she admitted. “It’s a term that I just started using to make my elevator pitch a little easier.”

Perhaps the most notable advanced service is a cryotherapy chamber. Cryotherapy, also known as cold therapy, exposes the body to cold temperatures to heal and treat various medical ailments, she explained.

“Cold helps with inflammation. It helps with circulation. It helps with mood regulating if you have anxiety or if you’re really stressed.”

“Cold helps with inflammation. It helps with circulation. It helps with mood regulating if you have anxiety or if you’re really stressed,” she said. “And there aren’t too many cryo chambers in the area.”

Batlle gave a few examples of people who might benefit from that technology.

“Obviously, athletes are number one when it comes to that. But if you suffer from fibromyalgia, if you have arthritis, any kind of condition that is caused by inflammation, when the pain comes from the inflammation, the cryo chamber would be amazing for you,” she explained. “If you have migraines, we do have localized cryo as well; we have clients that come here just to get a quick treatment to help them when they feel a migraine coming on or if they’re actually suffering through a migraine. We have some clients that are seeing some results with their vertigo. If you have back issues, we have something for you. So everybody can come in for help just getting through the day.”

 

Taking the Leap

Batlle was licensed as a cosmetologist in 2002, a path she pursued mainly because she didn’t know exactly what career she wanted to pursue after high school, and wanted something she could always fall back on no matter what career choices she made.

“After I went to cosmetology school, I worked at a couple of salons, doing hair, and realized that was not my jam,” she recalled. “So I left the industry for about 14 years. I focused a little bit more in sales — I sold everything from cell phones to cable and solar panels, which was a really great journey because it taught me a lot and led me to where I am now.”

She also worked as a makeup artist in films and television before deciding to open her own business in 2018, first in a tiny space in Holyoke, then, about a year later, in downtown Chicopee.

Beauty Batlles’ new cryotherapy chamber

Beauty Batlles’ new cryotherapy chamber is useful for a range of conditions, from fibromyalgia to arthritis to migraines.

“I started with microblading, which is a semi-permanent tattoo for your eyebrows, which is still a service that I offer. Then, little by little, we became more of a spa, adding more aesthetic-type services. I added lash services and waxing services, and then we added body-sculpting treatments, which help with reducing fat and tightening skin.”

On Front Street, she began adding body-waxing services, facials, and skin-care services, creating more of a spa atmosphere, she explained.

“We offer a lot of advanced-type facials that help with either severe acne or with anti-aging, where you can literally walk out of here looking a few years younger without any kind of surgeries, without any kind of injectables, without any invasive treatments.”

And at the new location on Cabot Street, “we added the wellness aspect to it. We have a lot of big machines that do a lot of really awesome things. They help with pain management, they help with anxiety, they help with stress, they help if you have any issues with sleeping, and they’re great for recovery. They’re not just for athletes; these are also treatments that any person can do to help them with whatever it is that they’re struggling with on a day-to-day basis.”

Finding a larger, more prominent space was necessary for a number of reasons. The business was growing to the point where she needed more staff to serve clients, but didn’t have enough space to house more staff and more clients. “Plus, I was in a space where I wasn’t really in a storefront. I was kind of hiding behind another business.”

“I’m glad I went down the path of wellness. It’s brought me into a whole different world, with all this technology and all of these amazing biohacking tools that I’m able to bring into our community.”

The new location on Cabot Street had been a dance studio with two storefronts, allowing her to reconfigure the interior space to both meet current needs and introduce the new wellness elements, including the cryotherapy chamber.

“I’m glad I went down the path of wellness. It’s brought me into a whole different world, with all this technology and all of these amazing biohacking tools that I’m able to bring into our community,” she said. “And I’m not done with the growth. Like I said, this is my teenage stage. I’m waiting to get to adulthood.”

 

Community Minded

The growing-up years have been marked by a commitment to community involvement as well, including the fourth annual toy and coat drive, going on through Dec. 21, which Batlle called a “pride and joy” of hers.

New, unused toys collected at Beauty Batlles are donated to children in the foster-care system through the Department of Children and Families (DCF). New, unused coats are donated to Alianza, a domestic-violence shelter in Chicopee, while used coats are donated to Tapestry to support the homeless community.

A newer wrinkle is an “adopt-a-teen” effort for teenagers in the DCF system.

“Because of all the toy drives that are happening everywhere, a lot of the younger children in DCF get toys, and they get to open presents on Christmas morning, and the teenagers just get, like, a $25 gift card because there are no presents that are age-appropriate for them,” Batlle explained. “So I’ve teamed up with DCF, and they give me a list of teenagers that are in the system; we get their name, gender, age, and their wish list, so that they can have some personalized gifts given to them on Christmas morning, just like the little ones.”

Beauty Batlles also just wrapped up a canned-food drive to benefit Lorraine’s Soup Kitchen & Pantry in Chicopee. And in 2020, when the world — and many businesses — were shut down, Batlle launched the Hero Project, collecting funds to provide complementary self-care services for healthcare workers and first responders, which they were able to use when the spa reopened.

“I was sitting at home doing absolutely nothing,” Batlle recalled. “So, I thought, let me put some time and effort into giving back to people who are doing this work.”

Collectively, such efforts simply make her happy.

“There’s something so rewarding about being able to give back … when you have a platform where you’re able to bring awareness to your clientele, and in return be able to give back to people who are less fortunate,” she told BusinessWest. “It’s joyful, and it makes me feel good. I just want to do what I can and use my platform to do it.”

Meanwhile, Batlle continues to promote her new services and treatments, with an eye toward future growth. But at the end of the day, she said, the most gratifying element about her job is making people feel better, in every way.

“My big thing is, if you look good, you feel good. Confidence is a superpower. I feel like you can take on the world if you’re feeling better about yourself,” she said. “Sometimes it’s just an eyebrow wax or being able to make somebody’s aches and pains go away, or just a facial. Sometimes we need a little TLC, and we don’t realize that. But if we make ourselves feel better, then we feel like we can take on the world and do whatever it is that we need to do.”

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Women in Businesss

Culture of Care

Karin Jeffers, CEO of Clinical & Support Options

Karin Jeffers, CEO of Clinical & Support Options

Karin Jeffers, the long-time CEO of Clinical & Support Options, knew she had a challenge on her hands when she took the reins at the struggling behavioral-health and social-services agency. But she’s never been one to shy away from a challenge, and has steadily grown the organization into the broad-based, community-focused force it is today. She’s done so by embracing constant change, a culture of learning, and a sensitivity to the unique experiences of each client who walks through the door.

As the daughter of teachers, helping and supporting people was in Karin Jeffers’ blood. How she eventually applied that idea, however, wasn’t exactly a straight line.

“I went to school at Springfield College for physical therapy and thought I had my life figured out,” she told BusinessWest. “That’s what I was going to do. But then I took an abnormal psychology class, and I was just fascinated. It was way more interesting than anything I was doing otherwise.”

After doing a bit of research and learning how mental-health professionals impact people’s lives, she was sold, and switched her major to counseling and psychology.

“That was probably three and a half years through the PT program,” she recalled. “That was a fun phone call home to my dad.”

Her career path has validated that decision in spades, however. After earning her master’s degree in psychology, Jeffers took a job with the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, over the next 13 years, rose through the ranks there, from home family therapist to coordinator to clinical director to regional director.

“It can be challenging when working with children and families, but what I found immensely rewarding — and this holds to this day — is the resilience of kids and families and their desire for a better life.”

“It was a great organization; it really exposed me to a lot of the ways you can help people and make a change in an individual, a family, and a community.”

It was telling — and another validation of her shift away from physical therapy — that she found the work rewarding, even though the issues she dealt with on a daily basis could be sobering, to say the least.

“It can be challenging when working with children and families, but what I found immensely rewarding — and this holds to this day — is the resilience of kids and families and their desire for a better life,” she said. “That really drives me through what can sound like horrible stories, whether it’s abuse or trauma or whatever people have been through.

“You rarely meet somebody who wants to be in a bad place,” she went on. “You meet people who want to do better, but they may not have the tools or the resources or the supports to get where they need to be; the hope is that you can help people get closer to healing and recovery.”

Meanwhile, Clinical & Support Options was an agency founded as a child and family organization that had crept away from that mission somewhat over the years, Jeffers said. She arrived there in 2005 to become CEO of what was then a $4 million nonprofit behavioral-health enterprise with about 90 employees and just a handful of sites, mostly in Franklin County.

“I’ve always loved challenges, and at the time that I came to CSO, it was a much smaller agency,” she said. “They had been through several CEOs in the prior few years. They had a really good core mission and core group of people, but needed some leadership, so it was an opportunity for me to make my mark on a new agency and see if we could build something that would make a difference.”

That she has. Thirteen years into her leadership tenure at CSO, it has become a $40 million organization with more than 700 employees spread across five counties, with 15 office locations, and serving some 17,000 people annually.

“We really have the full spectrum of services, from crisis intervention to family support to prevention services to support and recovery services,” Jeffers said. “Our latest merger was with Friends of the Homeless, so now we’re able to add housing and shelter to it. The way we’ve been able to integrate and really blend all those services together, we can truly say that, if you need support or help, just come here, and we’ll help you figure out where to get it, as opposed to you having to know which number to call and where to go and what to ask for. We work very hard at that kind of integration and service.”

She has spearheaded that kind of growth and integration through a specific set of values and a nimble leadership style that embraces change, and encourages her team to do the same. And she’s certainly not done.

Dramatic Turnaround

The Clinical & Support Options that Jeffers joined in 2005 was saddled with what she called a bad financial picture, but a good core team that wanted to provide strong services — and needed strong leadership to do so.

“I’m a big believer in strategic planning and actually following that plan and executing it,” she explained. “Some of the growth has happened through partnerships or mergers or takeovers of other offices. We’ve actually had other behavioral-health agencies close down offices, then reach out to us at CSO to assume operation. So we were able to grow by picking up those services where they were needed and expand on them, really use it as a launch point to do even more.”

Some growth was driven by changes at the state and federal levels. The 2009 Children’s Behavioral Health Initiative, which aimed to expand and integrate children’s mental-health services in Massachusetts into a comprehensive, community-based system of care, wound up building up CSO’s roster of contracts. Meanwhile, it was one of only three agencies nationwide to win a federal grant from the Department of Justice to link victims of crime to mental-health and trauma services. Other grants followed, and the agency continued to grow.

“It’s been exciting; we’ve been able to find our niche,” Jeffers said. “There are larger agencies than us and smaller agencies than us, but we’ve really been able to find our niche in certain things and do them well, while also offering a broad range of services to the community, so people can access what they need when they need it.”

Part of meeting those needs is a strategic direction toward what she calls a “trauma-informed” culture, which is essentially a system-wide change, launched about five years ago, that emphasizes sensitivity to possible trauma in every person who comes to CSO.

“A lot of people think of trauma-informed care as just a modality, trauma treatment, and we really look at it as a much broader philosophy, which is that trauma affects way more people than you think,” she explained. “You never know who has been traumatized, so how you treat people and what culture you set and having a place where you respect choices and empowerment and safety — that’s different than just providing trauma treatment.”

To that end, CSO has embarked on a long-term culture shift that not only includes best practices in treatment, but also examines what the offices look like, how policies are received, and how people are treated.

“The end result has been an ongoing philosophy of embedding trauma-informed care and resilience throughout everything we do,” she went on. “We trained everybody, from clinicians to the janitorial staff to administrative staff and secretaries, right across the board, so that everybody had the same filter and philosophy and support in doing their jobs.”

She even enlisted people to walk through the various CSO offices, like secret shoppers, and report back on their experience. The feedback included everything from pictures on walls that might be triggering to how they were treated when they came to the front window, and that feedback was then used to initiate change.

“You never know who has been traumatized, so how you treat people and what culture you set and having a place where you respect choices and empowerment and safety — that’s different than just providing trauma treatment.”

As one example, the waiting room in the Springfield office used to have hallways on either side, and staff constantly walked through. But Jeffers heard that felt really intrusive, and bothered clients who were finally asking for help, but were being ignored by professionals in the office. So the waiting room was moved to a larger, quieter spot, where the first providers clients saw were there to help them, not walk past.

“We look at our staff from the client lens,” she said. “It really is about a culture shift, and that is ongoing. There really isn’t a start and an end. Well, there’s a start, but then it’s an ever-evolving process, and our goal is quality improvement.”

Knowledge Is Power

That training in trauma-informed care is just one reflection of an organization — and its leader — that value continual learning. In fact, CSO provides more than 500 hours of free training for staff per year, which makes it easier to promote from within; more than 48% of the management team (70 out of 145) have come up through the ranks.

“It is very much a learning culture. We do a tremendous amount of internal staff training, but we also do external training,” Jeffers said, noting CSO has trained more than 1,000 individuals in mental-health first aid (both youth and adult versions) and more than 1,100 community members in principles of trauma-informed care (TIC). That’s on top of training 820 employees in the TIC curriculum over the past four years.

“We’ve provided training to other agencies, police, schools, colleges, and community groups on trauma-informed care and the impact of trauma in the communities,” she explained. “For the lay person, a lot of the focus is on how to recognize what your role can be in helping somebody get to a better place. Stigma is still real; people are afraid of mental health, and they don’t know how to react to situations. So we’re really trying to break down that stigma and empower people and teach them what their role can be, whether it’s your family or neighbor or someone in line at the grocery store having a tough time.”

That community impact — not just in external trainings, but in the day-to-day improvement in people’s lives — is one of the things that keeps Jeffers motivated as new threats emerge, such as the opioid crisis that has become so prevalent in recent years.

“The state of Massachusetts is heading in some really exciting directions with their investments in behavioral health, so to be a part of that is really exciting,” she told BusinessWest. “We will continue to be good at what we do and then see what else we can do. We certainly don’t want to grow just to grow. We want to grow to meet the needs of our community, and I think there’s still a lot of work to be done.”

“People who work here know we’ve got to change and adapt,” she went on. “It’s not about doing the same old same old, but how do we constantly strive for better quality and better outcomes? That’s something that drives me, and it’s exciting to be a part of it.”

As a prominent female leader in healthcare, Jeffers is especially proud of the percentage of women in leadership positions at CSO, including 60% of the executive leadership team (six of 10), 73% of the senior leadership team (27 of 37), and 84% of the overall, agency-wide management team (122 of 145).

Still, at the end of the day — and some days are tougher than others — it’s all about meeting needs and creating change in the community.

“There are definitely challenges,” she said. “Challenges on the funding front, keeping up with demands, and creating a good place to work are tough. But it’s exciting to know we can impact the number of people we impact.”

Joseph Bednar can be reached at [email protected]

Women of Impact 2018

Owner, Principal, Dietz and Company Architects

She’s Long Had Designs on Building a Stronger Community

Photo by Dani Fine Photography

The course was titled “Architects as Leaders.”

Kerry Dietz taught it at UMass Amherst, her alma mater, several years ago. This was a one-off of sorts, she told BusinessWest, adding that there was a critical mass of students interested in this material — which amounted to insight and instruction not on how to design structures, but rather on how architects could and should become leaders within their communities — and circumstances haven’t permitted her to teach it again.

But while that class is no longer in the catalog, ‘architect as leader’ has been a course of action for Dietz — and those who have come to work for her over the past 30 years or so. It’s a phrase that defines her career more than any building or office interior she’s designed, and it explains, better than any other three-word phrase we can find, why she is a Woman of Impact.

Examples of this mindset abound — from her time spent on the Springfield Planning Board and Zoning Board of Appeals to her company’s involvement with several area nonprofits, from Revitalize CDC to Habitat for Humanity, to her decision to locate her growing company in Union Station at a time when that massive project was fairly desperate to land a high-profile tenant.

And then, there was the company’s 30th birthday party.

Rather than celebrate with a cake or maybe lunch on the town, the employees at Dietz & Company, as a group, decided to use that occasion to give back within the community, in a big way.

She took that number 30, added three more zeroes, and put a dollar sign at the front. And then, she and her team set about finding appropriate ways to bestow that amount on members of the community.

“She has also been an inspiration to me personally in promoting and supporting social-issue programs that support food and housing for the homeless, veterans’ housing, and health and scholarship funding for low-income students and families.”

Throughout the course of the year, a cookout was hosted by Dietz & Company staff for veterans of the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke, and a monetary donation was made to assist with the home’s Veteran’s History video project. Also, a monetary donation was made and staff members volunteered their time to help make repairs to the home of a low-income Springfield resident as part of Revitalize CDC’s Green-n-Fit Neighborhood Rebuild. And $25,000 worth of materials and projects were funded for Springfield teachers through a competition in which initiative and impact were honored for educators going the extra mile to help and encourage the success of their students.

It was Dietz’s concept, but it was a company-wide effort.

“I basically said, ‘here’s my idea — the broad stroke,’” she recalled. “And people ran with it. As a company, we figured out who we wanted to support, and they (team members) did all the organizing. All you have to do sometimes is say, ‘let’s do it.’”

But Dietz has never waited for round-number anniversaries to become active and get herself — and her firm — involved. And in doing so, she has become not only an employer, but an inspirational leader, role model to those in this profession, and mentor.

“Kerry has committed her life to promoting women in the practice of architecture by promoting a fair work environment in her firm and as a leader in the Massachusetts architectural and business community,” said Kevin Riordon, an architect at Dietz. “She has also been an inspiration to me personally in promoting and supporting social-issue programs that support food and housing for the homeless, veterans’ housing, and health and scholarship funding for low-income students and families.”

While doing all that work within the community, Dietz has established herself within the field of architecture, one long dominated by men. She owns one of the largest firms in the region, and has carved out several strong niches, especially in affordable housing and education.

It is this combination of excellence in her field and career-long designs on finding ways to strengthen the community that has placed her in the inaugural class of Women of Impact.

From the Ground Up

Deitz traced the ‘architects as leaders’ concept — as a college course but also the M.O. for her career — to a summit she attended in the early ’80s that was hosted by the American Institute of Architects.

It was memorable because it was not what she was expecting.

“It wasn’t about how to be a good supervisor or how to do marketing and make more money — it wasn’t that kind of thing,” she recalled. “Instead, it was about our place in the political world and within the community — what do you have to offer?”

Kerry Dietz, right, presents a donation to the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke as part of her company’s 30th anniversary celebration. Several staff members are in the background.

Kerry Dietz, right, presents a donation to the Soldiers’ Home in Holyoke as part of her company’s 30th anniversary celebration. Several staff members are in the background.

And because of their training and the collaborative nature of their work, architects have quite a bit to offer, whether they fully understand that or not, she went on.

“If lawyers think they can run the world, and captains of industry think they can run the world, well … how about architects?” she asked rhetorically. “We receive an incredible amount of training on how to take a whole bunch of dissimilar thoughts and ideas and listen to a whole group of people, and pull it all together and create a building. And even before that, a vision of a building; it’s all really about listening to people and synthesizing all that.

“These are core skills the world needs,” she went on, adding that a commitment to putting these skills to work has guided her firm, not only in its design efforts, but within the community as well. And it’s been that way pretty much since she got into this business more than 40 years ago.

Our story starts in Ohio, where Dietz grew up and later attended Kent State University, majoring in architecture. She was one of just four women in a class of 150.

“Kerry is an outstanding example of what it means to be a community-oriented businesswoman. She is an extremely positive influence and role model for young professionals and the next generation of architects.”

After earning her master’s in architecture from Michigan State University, she worked for a few firms in Western Mass. before partnering with Phil Burdick and launching a firm that would bear both their names.

While that venture was short-lived, Dietz would go into business for herself, opening Dietz & Company Architects in 1985. It has been a staple in downtown Springfield ever since, growing from three employees to a high of 28 (currently 23).

Over those 34 years, Dietz and her staff have ridden out a number of economic downturns, which are felt in this field perhaps as much, if not more, than any other, and firmly established the firm as a leader in several areas, but especially the commercial, education, and housing realms.

The portfolio of recent projects includes the poker room and restrooms at the $960 million MGM Springfield as well as renovation of 95 State St., MGM’s local headquarters; bankESB’s banking center and corporate headquarters, as well as a number of other projects for that institution; 83 Maple St. in Springfield, the Merrick Phelps House historic preservation project; a new branch for the Bank of Western Massachusetts in Northampton; and many others.

In the education realm, the company has designed the UMass Center at Springfield facilities in Tower Square, the Hoffmann Environmental Center at Berkshire Community College, the King & Scales dormitories at Smith College, and numerous renovations and repair projects at Springfield Technical Community College, among countless others.

And in housing, recent projects include Parsons Village, multi-family housing in Easthampton; Roosevelt Towers, a multi-family project in Cambridge that is still ongoing; and Highland Woods, a multi-family and senior-housing project in Williamstown, among many others.

But while what she and her team have accomplished is certainly significant, it is how Dietz runs her company that sets her apart within the field of architecture — and makes it clear why she is a Woman of Impact.

Drawing Inspiration

And this brings us back to the company’s 30th-anniversary celebration, and also to that class she taught at UMass and the mindset behind it.

“We started reading these stories about how teachers were paying for stuff out of their own pockets and they can’t get tax deductions for it even,” she recalled. “And we thought, ‘what if we could fund some special projects that teachers wanted to do?”

Working in concert with Springfield School Volunteers, Dietz & Company invited teachers to visit a website and propose specific initiatives, listing motivations, goals, and possible outcomes. It was competition, but the company had enough money to fund all the requests.

“We had an awards ceremony at Central High School where we had wine and hors d’oeuvres for the teachers, because they don’t get recognized for all they do,” said Dietz. “And some of them are just amazing in terms of what they’re doing with the limited resources they have.”

The work with Springfield’s teachers, as noted, is just one example of the operating mindset at Deitz & Company, one that is perhaps best summed up in the company’s primary marketing slogan — ‘design that looks good, does good’ — with the supporting line: ‘with a collaborative and dynamic approach, our designs reflect the desire to create exceptional architecture that also serves.’

There is much that goes into those two words ‘good’ and ‘serves’ — everything from a focus on the environment to meeting the needs of the client; from preserving the past to sustainability. But behind it all is that focus on this firm, and especially its founder, being leaders in the community and setting a tone when it comes to giving back.

Indeed, when referring to Dietz, team members consistently use words and phrases like ‘mentor,’ ‘role model,’ and ‘inspiration’ to describe her as well as her approaches to architecture and community involvement.

“Kerry has shown an ongoing desire to give back to the community on many levels, from spearheading design-inspired solutions that serve the community through addressing housing and public-space needs, to a more grassroots-level approach by dedicating personal time and efforts to enrich the lives of others face-to-face,” said Mark Hellen, a project architect with the firm. “She continually teaches her staff and colleagues that there is great importance, and great need, in helping the communities that surround us in as many ways as possible.”

Jason Newman, another project architect, agreed.

“From the perspective of a young professional, Kerry’s drive to educate and develop the next generation of architects is as much present in her company as it is in the classroom,” he said. “She continually creates learning opportunities within the context of our work, and does not punish a mistake made with good intention.

“Our office is an environment of shared learning, equity, and support in all aspects of our operation,” he went on. “In my opinion, Kerry is an outstanding example of what it means to be a community-oriented businesswoman. She is an extremely positive influence and role model for young professionals and the next generation of architects.”

Newman took the class “Architects as Leaders.” He remembers it opening his eyes to the larger responsibilities of all people in business.

“We learned about public engagement, advocacy in local governments, and serving the greater context of the communities in which we work,” he told BusinessWest. “Our assignments throughout the semester included things like attending the local government meeting of our choice and forming conclusions on the social impact of the items on the agenda, good or bad. This class taught us the importance of being aware and participating in the big-picture issues at the forefront of our communities.”

The Bottom Lines

The big picture.

That’s always been what Kerry Dietz has been focused on.

That’s not the company’s bottom line — although she’s focused on that, too. Rather, it’s the health and vitality of the communities in which she lives, works, and designs buildings.

She doesn’t teach “Architects as Leaders” anymore — actually, time doesn’t permit her to do much, if any, teaching these days.

But she still lives by that credo, and so does her firm. And that’s a very solid foundation on which to build.

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

Women in Businesss

Leadership Course

Nancy Buffone

Nancy Buffone

Nancy Buffone has three degrees from UMass Amherst and has spent her entire career working for her alma mater. The job titles and long lists of responsibilities have changed over the past 23 years, but the one constant has been that she loves — really loves — coming to work every day. As a manager, leader, mentor, and role model, she says it’s her mission to make all those on the teams she supervises feel the same way.

Nancy Buffone says that as a manager — and as a leader — one thing she tries to do is put herself in the shoes of those she’s supervising.

And in the case of younger staff members, that’s not a hard assignment, because she’s certainly been in those shoes.

Indeed, not long after graduating from UMass Amherst more than 20 years ago, Buffone went to work for the institution in the Provost’s Office. A few decades later, she is associate vice chancellor of University Relations, a relatively new realm at the school, has two offices, and manages roughly 35 people handling a wide array of assignments, from planning commencement to putting out the alumni magazine to dispensing news.

Putting herself in the shoes of those carrying out that work enables her to better understand their wants, needs, anxieties, and challenges, she said, and overall, it makes her a better leader and the offices she supervises better places to work.

“If you don’t enjoy coming to work, it can be really hard to come to work every day,” she said, making an observation that essentially defines her approach to management.

Becoming a more effective leader is one of the few things not actually listed on Buffone’s job description (we’ll get into what is a little later on), but professional development is something she takes very seriously.

In fact, earlier in her career, while working for the university’s Provost’s Office, she developed a leadership program for academic department chairs — an initiative that filled what she saw as an enormous need.

“This was something brand new, and there was a lot to the job. It was a new challenge, and it was something just so out of the box, so out of the comfort zone for me.”

As part of her own professional-development efforts, she became a participant in the Leadership Pioneer Valley program, specifically as a member of its class of 2013. She said the experience not only provided her with a much better understanding of the four-county region — one of LPV’s stated goals — but helped her do something she said all good leaders need to do — step out of her comfort zone.

In this case, that meant taking on the additional responsibilities of the Communications Department with University Relations, which effectively tripled her workload and the number of people she was managing.

“This was something brand new, and there was a lot to the job,” she said. “It was a new challenge, and it was something just so out of the box, so out of the comfort zone for me.

“And to some extent, it still is, but I love it,” she went on. “This is a place to get creative and take a lot of the work that we’re doing here every day and think about how we’re going to tell that story; that’s fun, and that’s a challenge for me.”

Her ability to move well beyond that comfort zone has been invaluable as she has taken on that ever-growing list of responsibilities, many if not most of which have to do with telling the university’s story — and telling it much better than it was told decades ago.

In many respects, it’s better story to tell these days, said Buffone, who was in a particularly good mood on the day she spoke with BusinessWest because the new U.S. News & World Report rankings of the nation’s colleges had just come up, and the university had moved up a few notches in many of the categories.

“We keep moving in the right direction,” she said, noting, for example, that the school moved up from 29th to 26th on the list of best public institutions, and from 75th to 70th among all schools.

Meanwhile, her career has taken on the same general trajectory as the university’s. For this issue and its focus on women in business, we talked with Buffone about her multi-faceted role at the university, but moreso about the broad subject of leadership and her ongoing efforts to improve those skills.

Background — Check

There are two large bowls of candy in Buffone’s office at the Whitmore Administration Building on the UMass Amherst campus. And it’s the same in her other office on University Drive, where the Community Relations staff is based.

The candy serves many purposes, she told BusinessWest, noting that, in many respects, it is an icebreaker and a temptation that brings people to those offices, which they generally leave with more than a miniature Mr. Goodbar or Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup in their hand. Indeed, they also generally leave with a smile.

“We work very hard at our jobs, so I want to laugh very hard while we’re working,” she said of her general approach to management and leadership. “I want to make sure we’re having a good time while we’re doing this.

“As for the candy … my only rule is that you’re not allowed to ask — just take,” she went on. “But over the years, the candy has been a nice icebreaker for people, and it brings people in — it’s an opening.”

Stocking her office — and later her offices — with candy is just one of the traits Buffone has developed in a career that has seen her take on a growing list of responsibilities since she graduated from the university in 1995.

Nancy Buffone sums up her broad job description by saying that that many employees she now supervises are tasked with “telling UMass Amherst’s story.”

Nancy Buffone sums up her broad job description by saying that that many employees she now supervises are tasked with “telling UMass Amherst’s story.”

As a student, she took a job working in the Provost’s Office (the provost is the chief academic officer on the campus) and had the opportunity to work for and be mentored by Judy Barker, who, as fate would have it, retired soon after Buffone graduated.

She was offered a job approximating the one Barker held, thus commencing a 14-year stint in the Provost’s Office that turned out to be learning experiencing on a number of levels.

“It was an amazing educational opportunity,” Buffone recalled. “I learned so much not just about how UMass works, but also higher education and especially public higher education. Being in the Provost’s Office, I never knew from day to day what I’d be working on; my position evolved into more of a generalist position that allowed me to get involved with many different things.”

That list included everything from working on a number of search committees for many senior administrative positions to creating new events on campus, working with the news office to promote faculty honors, and much more.

Along the way, she worked for several provosts who also became mentors, and she also earned two more degrees, including a doctorate in higher education policy and leadership. She said she was given the opportunity by those provosts to take what she was learning in the classroom and apply it in the workplace, especially within the broad realm of leadership and, more specifically, the academic department-chair level.

“Looking at what universities did to train the next person to be in the chair’s role, it became clear that at most places … it was nothing,” she explained. “So I was able to create an orientation leadership program for new department chairs that still exists today, although in a slightly different format.”

That program was among the hardest things to give up as Buffone moved on to the next chapter in her career in early 2009, as executive director of External Relations and University Events as part of the new University Relations department.

That office, created by then-Chancellor Robert Holub, is tasked with a wide variety of assignments, including community relations, events, media relations, federal and state government relations, and more. Early on, Buffone was placed in charge of events, with one of the first being the school’s 150th anniversary, a party that was several years in the making.

“We work very hard at our jobs, so I want to laugh very hard while we’re working. I want to make sure we’re having a good time while we’re doing this.”

These days, she leads two teams, one handing events and community relations and the other assigned to communications — a very broad term covering everything from the alumni magazine to the college website.

As she said, the expansion of her duties and the title on her business card tripled her workload and put dozens more people under her supervision, giving her more opportunities to apply lessons learned in graduate school and also while working with and for many great mentors.

Leading by Example

When asked to describe her style of management, Buffone paused for a second before noting that she’s from New York (Long Island, to be more specific) and thus relies heavily on sarcasm.

And then gave an example. Sort of.

“I learned how to manage by making mistakes, and I try not to repeat my mistakes,” she said with a laugh. “I started small, managing one person, and then four, and then it grew seemingly overnight when I took on the communications team. But whatever the number is, it’s really about trying to understand what I can do for the people I work with every day to make their jobs easier.

“If they can focus on what they need to do, especially the creative people … if I can make it so they can focus on what they’re trying to accomplish and not worry about distractions, then that means they’re going to be better at their jobs,” she went on. “I’m trying to create an environment that will foster that creativity and foster collaboration; to me, that’s really important.”

As for her own professional development, Buffone said her involvement with LPV enabled her to do something she really needed to do but was hard pressed to find the time for — doing some reflection on what she wanted to do and where she wanted to go professionally.

“I think it’s hard to find the time to think about what you want and about how to get where you need to go when you’re moving from project to project — it’s just too fast sometimes,” she explained. “Leadership Pioneer Valley offered that opportunity to really think about what I wanted and what skills I needed to keep moving forward.”

Elaborating, she said that, through her LPV experience, she decided she needed to get more involved in her community (Amherst), and she has, serving as a town meeting member and as president of the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce board.

Meanwhile, at the office — or, again, at both her offices — she works hard at her job and equally hard at making sure people enjoy their jobs, something she believes is key to promoting creativity and, ultimately, better, more effective telling of the university’s many stories.

That includes the staging of what she called ‘standing meetings,’ which are just that — 15-minute meetings, instituted about five months ago, in which the participants stand and, in this case, keep a huge inventory of individual projects (700 a year for the communications department alone, by Buffone’s estimate) on track.

“The meetings will go half an hour even though they’re supposed to go 15 minutes,” she explained. “But if you’re sitting, the meeting can go way too long; that’s the thinking, and they’ve been pretty effective.”

As have most of her initiatives, all aimed at not only getting the word out about everything going on at the school, but making everyone on the team as enthusiastic about their role as she is.

“I’ve been really lucky; I’ve been at UMass for 23 years now, and I love my job, I really do, and I love coming to work just about every day,” she said. “And that’s how I want the people I work with to feel.”

Grade Expectations

Unlike the university itself and several of its departments — from food service to the marching band — there are no rankings for communications and events departments.

But there are still measures of success, and plenty of them, Buffone said, listing everything from letters to the editor of the alumni magazine (they show that the material is being read) to feedback on a host of events, to the sense of satisfaction showed by her team members when one of those events is over.

Another measure might be how many times she has to fill those candy bowls — which is often. That shows that people are breaking the ice, coming into her offices, communicating, and enjoying their hard work.

Which, at this university and within this department, is an effective course of action — literally and figuratively.

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

Women in Businesss

Giving Credit Where It’s Due

Jennifer Calheno

Jennifer Calheno was tasked with taking LUSO Federal Credit Union from $36 million assets to $100 million in 10 years. She did it in seven.

Jennifer Calheno started working at LUSO Federal Credit Union as a teller when she was just 17 — actually, a much different LUSO than the one that exists today.

Back then, this was a tiny operation — three teller windows, a handful of employees, and a small back room in a nondescript building on East Street in Ludlow. There were just a thousand members or so, all of them part of the town’s large and very proud Portuguese community.

At the time, the credit union closed mid-afternoon on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays and reopened in the evening; Calheno, daughter of one of the institution’s board members, would work that 6-to-8 shift, not ever thinking that her very part-time job would become a career.

Today, as noted, it’s a much different LUSO, with more than 6,000 members, $220 million in assets, a gleaming new 15,000-square-foot headquarters building further down East Street, a second branch in Wilbraham, and more than 40 employees.

And Calheno, working in concert with an ambitious, forward-thinking board and that growing staff, has a lot to do with all that growth. If not the architect of that transformation — and she took on that role to some extent as well — she was certainly the builder. Taking full advantage of a spate of mergers and acquisitions within the financial-services industry and new regulations that have allowed credit unions to move well beyond their original charters and customer bases, she put LUSO on a strong growth trajectory.

And kept it on that path over the past 20 years.

When hired, she was charged with taking the credit union from $36 million in assets to $100 million in 10 years, and without diluting capital. She did it in seven years, primarily through much more aggressive marketing and building name recognition.

“I do not find myself to be an expert in everything, because then I wouldn’t be good at anything. I bring in people who are good at what they do and I listen to what they have to say, and I take their opinions into value.”

“Marketing was my focus while earning my bachelor’s degree, and I always thought that was something that was weak here,” she recalled. “We had to get over that stigma of being just the Portuguese credit union because of our name, and we did that.”

Specifically, LUSO, which originated with the Portuguese-American Club in Ludlow, changed and expanded its charter to serve anyone who lives, works, worships, or attends school in Hampden County.

“That was the pivotal changing point for us,” she noted. “That allowed me to expand my marketing, expand my targeting, and to really get out of that mindset that we were the Portuguese credit union serving the Portuguese community; slowly but surely, the message caught on.”

And while LUSO has grown in terms of assets, members, employees, the use of cutting-edge technology, and every other suitable measure, Calheno says she’s grown as a manager and a leader, learning, among other things, about how to manage work and life, grow a thick skin, listen effectively, and surround herself with individuals whose talents complement, but don’t necessarily duplicate, her own.

“I do not find myself to be an expert in everything, because then I wouldn’t be good at anything,” she explained. “I bring in people who are good at what they do, and I listen to what they have to say, and I take their opinions into value.”

In doing all that while growing assets and membership, Calheno has also raised the institution’s profile and gotten the credit union and its employees more involved within the community, especially with young people and the all-important realm of financial literacy.

Indeed, every Wednesday, without fail, Calheno returns to her teller roots and sits behind a small desk at St. John the Baptist School (which she attended as a child), taking deposits from the students — and teachers — there.

She says these duties represent equal parts role modeling for employees who are also active within the community and simply giving back to the town that has been her lifelong home.

“It gets me out of the office, and it’s really fun,” she said, referring not only to her banking duties, but her work teaching classes for Junior Achievement.

For this issue and its focus on women in business, we talked with Calheno about LUSO and its profound growth, but also the many roles she takes as president and CEO of the credit union, including mentor, role model, and yes, teller at St. John the Baptist School.

By All Accounts

Calheno remembers the considerable amount of flak she received from the community when plans for LUSO’s new headquarters building were announced back in 2005.

It wasn’t the bank’s expansion that had people riled up, but the chosen location — the long-time home to the Double D Dairy Bar, a small mom-and-pop restaurant and local institution.

“They made the best ice cream … everyone loved the Double D,” said Calheno, who placed herself firmly within that constituency.

What the general public didn’t know, but Calheno did, was that the mom and pop behind the Double D were quite ready to call it a career, and the landmark’s days were numbered anyway.

Today, it’s home to a start-of-the-art facility that clearly speaks to how far the credit union has come over the past 20 years, or since Calheno decided to take her career back to where it started not quite a decade before.

Jennifer Calheno says she honed a number of skills over her 20 years at LUSO

Jennifer Calheno says she honed a number of skills over her 20 years at LUSO, especially the ability to effectively listen.

By that time, Calheno, just 26, had earned her MBA from Northeastern, spent some time in banking — as manager of one of WestBank’s in-store branches in Chicopee — and taken a job with the Secretary of State’s office, one that didn’t have much growth potential, as she recalled.

Meanwhile, the manager of LUSO at that time, someone Calheno worked for during her teller days, was getting ready to retire. While looking to replace her, the credit union’s board was also looking to grow the institution — and also for someone who could make that growth happen.

“The board had come together with a strategic plan — they wanted to grow the member base, they wanted to grow the asset size, and they felt they needed a new organization chart, a new structure, in order to that; they wanted to bring in a CEO,” she recalled, adding that, because she had an MBA and some experience in the business, she was asked to put together a job description for this CEO in waiting.

She did so, and while drafting it, she began to see a match between the board’s needs, her own skills, and her desire to find employment that challenged her professionally and personally.

“I thought to myself, ‘with my background and my experience, and knowing LUSO the way I do, I think this is something I can do,’” she recalled. “I looked at other opportunities, but I felt that this was a chance to come back to the organization that gave me a start, and I felt more confident coming into an organization I already knew so much about. I knew the culture, and I’d lived in this community practically my whole life.”

She recalled that she was probably the least experienced of the 15 eventual candidates for the position, at least when it came to management. But she also believed she would work the hardest to gain the respect and recognition of the board and achieve the aggressive goals spelled out in that aforementioned strategic plan.

Fast-forwarding a little, she was awarded the job, and took it with the expectation of still being in it 20 years later.

“I clearly recall a conversation I had with Mr. Dias at that time,” she said, referring to Joseph Dias Jr., founder of the credit union. “I told him I wasn’t looking for this to be a jumping ground to something else; I’m looking at this opportunity to be my career. I told him I wanted to succeed, and if I succeeded, then LUSO would succeed.”

To make a long story short, that’s exactly what’s happened; over the past 20 years, both she and the institution have grown immeasurably.

While only 26 when she took the helm, Calheno said she already understood that she was only as good as the team in place around her, and by team, she meant both the board and the employees she worked with.

“I don’t think that any opinion is not worth listening to. If that opinion jibes with where I was already going, excellent — then, it’s an immediate ‘awesome, let’s go with it.’ If it’s something different from what I’m thinking, I’m going to pursue it further.”

In both cases, there was passion for the institution and a shared vision, she said, adding that both are necessary ingredients in any success formula.

“They give me a lot of freedom, and they give me a lot of trust,” she said of the board, adding that she has taken full advantage of both to meet the ambitious goals for assets and memberships, build and open the new building, add the branch in Wilbraham, and, overall, take LUSO to a much higher plane, one she probably couldn’t have been envisioned when she was working the night shift while in high school.

In turn, she awards those working with and for her a large amount of trust — at least when she feels it’s been earned.

“I don’t micromanage — I don’t have time to micromanage,” she said. “And I do have a lot of trust in the people here. I wouldn’t have put the management team in place the way I have if I didn’t believe in them to do things the way I want them done.

“But if you start to do things not the way I want them done … then we have a problem,” she said. “If you were to ask people here about my management style, they would say, ‘the less we see of Jen, the better job we’re doing.’”

She said the most important skill she’s developed over the years is listening and valuing the thoughts and opinions being expressed.

“I don’t think that any opinion is not worth listening to,” she told BusinessWest, adding this constitutes sound advice for all managers. “If that opinion jibes with where I was already going, excellent — then, it’s an immediate ‘awesome, let’s go with it.’ If it’s something different from what I’m thinking, I’m going to pursue it further, and I’m never just going to disregard someone.”

As for work-life balance, this is for her, as it is for most women with ‘president and chief executive officer’ written on her business card, a real challenge, one that isn’t really mastered, but dealt with to the best of one’s ability.

“My family sometimes does say to me, ‘put the phone down’ or ‘get away from the computer,’ because my job is not a 9-to-5 job,” she said. “My job is 24/7, and I do tell my family that sometimes, LUSO has to come first. If I can do both, I will. Multi-tasking? That’s what I do all day, every day.”

Dollars and Sense

Calheno’s office in the new headquarters building is large, modern, and bright — there are four glass walls, after all.

Through those walls she can see the offices around her, Ludlow Country Club across the street, and the parking lot where the Double D once served up ice cream. Figuratively speaking, though, what she can see is how far she and LUSO Federal Credit Union have come in 20 years, and especially since she was a teller there in high school.

What she can see is how those remarks she made to Joseph Dias all those years ago — about how she wanted to succeed, and if she did, LUSO would succeed as well — have come to fruition.

From all angles, and in every way, it’s quite a view.

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