Page 14 - BusinessWest Difference Makers 2021

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BusinessWest
Makers
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Makers Makers
HCC congratulates this year’s
HCC congratulates this year’s Difference Makers:
• •
Difference Makers:
•
Kristin Carlson, President, Peerless Precision Kristin Carlson, Peerless Precision
Janine Fondon, Professor, Bay Path University; Janine Fondon, Bay Path and Unity First
•
••HarHoaldroGlrdinGsproinosnp, oPohinla,nFtohuronpdisat;ioFonuanndderLibrary
• •
• Chad Moir, founder and owner, DopaFit of Aspen Square Management
Founder, UnityFirst.com
Parkinson’s Movement Center, Southampton
Chad Moir, Founder and Owner,
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Pete Westover, Conservation Works, LLC
• Bill Parks, Westfield Boys & Girls Club
••BillEPFaorkrAs,llP,rHesoildyeonkte, Boys & Girls Club of Greater Westfield • EforAllHolyoke
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SPRING 2021
You enrich our community and inspire us with your example.
Congratulations on this well-deserved recognition!
Makers
hcc.edu
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Dream Weavers
As she talked with BusinessWest at EforAll’s facility, Murphy Romboletti said being there elicited a number of different emotions.
Indeed, while she said it always feels good to be in that space, COVID-19 has made the visits far more infrequent, and it has brought what is often an eerie quiet to a place that was always full of people and energy. The co-working space is now unused for safety reasons, and there are far fewer meetings and activities taking place there, with most programs carried out virtually. All this is made more frustrating by the fact that it took more than a year of hard work to secure the space and get it ready for its opening in the fall of 2019, only to have the world change and the space go mostly dark just a few months later.
“So, during the pandemic, we kind of became therapists for a while, listening to people’s concerns and what they needed help with, and trying to connect them with all the resources that were out there. But at the end of the day, there was so much that was out of our control; we tried to be as supportive as we could and continue to provide a community for them so they could survive this.”
“For those first couple of weeks when I would come back, it was like, ‘oh, man, this is tortuous — this is a hard pill to swallow,’” she noted before quickly taking the conversation in a different, more poignant direction. “The irony is that’s exactly what so many of my entrepreneurs were feeling; a lot of them, especially those in the cohort that we graduated that March, were just coming into the world as new entrepreneurs, and the world said, ‘hold on ... we’ve got some other plans.’
“So, during the pandemic, we kind of became therapists for a while, listening to people’s concerns and what they needed help with, and trying to connect them with all the resources that were out there,” she went on. “But at the end of the day, there was so much that was out of our control; we tried to be as supportive as we could and continue to provide a community for them so they could survive this.”
COVID has changed some things, certainly, but when you get right down to it, EforAll Holyoke has always been about providing a community and helping entrepreneurs not only survive, but thrive.
Launched five years ago as SPARK, the agency quickly became an important part of the region’s growing entrepreneurship ecosystem. In 2018, it affiliated with EforAll, short for Entrepreneurship for All, a network that now boasts eight offices across the state, including the most recent, in the Berkshires.
Like many of the other offices, the one in Holyoke now conducts accelerator
Sandra Rubio credits EforAll and its director, Tessa Murphy-Romboletti, with
helping her get her venture, Totally Baked 413, off the ground.
Congratulations
to the 2021 Difference Makers
Harold Grinspoon
Philanthropist; Founder of Aspen Square Management
Bill Parks
PreCsEiOde, nBto,yBso&ysG&irlsGirls Club of Greater Westfield
Pete Westover
Founder and Partner, Conservation Works, LLC
EforAll Holyoke Kristin Carlson
President, Peerless Precision
Chad Moir
Founder and Owner, DopaFit Parkinson’s Movement Center
Janine Fondon
Professor, Bay Path University; Founder, UnityFirst.com
Thank you for all your hard work!
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