Page 13 - BusinessWest 2023 40 Under Forty

Andrew Brow
Owner and Chef, HighBrow Inc.: Age 37
When asked what he likes about the restaurant business, Andrew Brow gave a quick, resounding answer: ‘everything.’
“I love the hustle and bustle; I love creating beautiful food; I love building relationships with farmers, butchers, and seafood people, and finding cool things I’ve never worked with before,” he explained. “And I like to learn and bring new ideas to reality.”
Brow is doing a lot of all this as .... the term would be ‘serial restaurateur.’ He owns, operates, and cooks at HighBrow Wood Fired Kitchen and Bar in Northampton, as well as Jackalope Restaurant and the Kitchen by HighBrow at White Lion Brewing Co., both in Springfield. And soon, there will be another location at White Lion’s new brewery in Amherst.
This is the growing enterprise that Brow has
created and now nurtures. His is an inspiring story of determination and entrepreneurship that begins “in the projects in Northampton,” as he put it, where he grew up with his mother, a single parent, and became determined to find work so he could buy better clothes.
He found it at Dunkin’ Donuts when he was only
15. Meanwhile, after a tour of Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School, he became intrigued by its culinary-arts program, took that course of study, and, upon graduation, started working at restaurants within the Spoleto Group.
Eventually, he wanted to have his own eatery, and in the fall of 2019, he opened HighBrow in Northampton — just four months before the start of the pandemic, which forced all restaurants to close for some time, then reopen for takeout and delivery, and, essentially,
Madison Bull
Owner, Madison Bull, LMHC: Age 36
Madison Bull, as one of her sev- eral 40 Under Forty nominators noted, wears a number of hats.
She’s a psychotherapist who opened a private practice in October 2019. She’s also an adjunct psychology professor
at Holyoke Community College (HCC);
a trainer, speaker, and educator for
Pathways for
Parents, helping families access mental- health resources for children; and a wife and mother who’s active in her 6-year- old daughter’s life as an elementary- school PTO president and soccer coach.
Bull was working for small group practice before deciding to branch
out on her own. She is a certified hypnotherapist and trained in perinatal mental health, but works with a wide range of clients.
“I see a variety of ages, but I mostly focus on girls and younger women. A lot of
my focus is on anxiety and OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder),” she said, noting
that opening the practice when she did, just five months before COVID turned the world on its ear, was a challenge because of the restraints it put on seeing clients in person.
“I did a lot of Zoom sessions, did it virtually, but I like one-on-one, in-person interaction, when you can really get to know someone’s story. That was a little difficult,”
she recalled. “But I found people still needed the services. Everyone was definitely thrown for such a loop.”
She said her mission for her practice is
to be completely relatable, and to create a safe, comfortable setting for those who come in. “I want people to know who I am; I want that welcoming feeling and for people to know that I am human too.”
As an adjunct professor at HCC, she has taught there on an as-needed basis for a dozen years. She also volunteers in the community, with a special focus on animal welfare, donating time and resources over the years to animal shelters. “My family and I have always been animal people,” she said.
As for involvement in her daughter’s school, well, it’s important for Bull
to make time for that, but it’s also a pleasure.
“There’s so much bad on the news and social media. Let’s find things in
the community that get people excited, things that keep people hopeful,” she said, adding that, in the case of the PTO, “planning comes easy to me. It’s not super stressful. Somebody’s got to do it. So why not someone who likes it, who enjoys it, and is motivated?”
—Joseph Bednar
reinvent themselves.
“It was quite frightening,” he recalled. “I was at a
point where I was going to board up the windows and lock all the liquor away — there was a lot of fear.”
But he persevered, and has not only added more restaurants, but become heavily involved in the community, serving as an advisor to both the Smith and Holyoke Community College culinary- arts programs, while also supporting nonprofits such as Ronald McDonald House, the Treehouse Foundation and its Stir Up the Love fundraising event, and many others.
As he talked about those perilous early days, Brow used words and phrases that capture
his intensity, drive to
succeed, and considerable
entrepreneurial spirit. “I finally got the
opportunity to open my business and work
for myself, and I said
to myself, ‘I’m not going to lose it.’ I put my head down, and I just started busting my butt.”
—George O’Brien
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