Page 8 - BusinessWest August 3, 2020

the Healing Racism Institute, now a separate 501(c)(3), but still very much affiliated with the Davis Foundation.
And these emerging issues are dominating many of those dis- cussions he’s been having as he goes about listening and building relationships.
For this issue, BusinessWest talked at length with Belsito about his new role, but especially about the challenges facing Springfield, the region, and its large core of nonprofits — all of which have looked to the Davis Foundation over the years for not simply financial support, but also direction and leadership.
Moving forward, he said the foundation will be continuing in those roles and constantly looking for new ways in which to make an impact and move the needle.
Background: Check
Tracing the steps that brought him to the Davis Foundation’s suite of offices in Monarch Place, Belsito said his professional career started at Flagship Bank and Trust Co. in Worcester, where he served as a trust administrator, working with families to help manage their assets and trusts.
While in that role, he started doing volunteer work within the com- munity, and before long, his career aspirations changed.
“All of a sudden, everything flipped, and the volunteer work became a career,” he told BusinessWest, adding that, in 2005, he started work- ing for Augustus, now the city manager in Worcester. After a stint as a private consultant, he became executive assistant to the president at Assumption, which was, in many ways, a continuation of the work he did at the State House.
“One of the things that struck me about the Davis family was the humility with which they do their work. They want to be sure they’re supporting things that generate outcomes and improve the quality of education and quality of life for children and families in the region.”
“I worked for a state senator who was very driven by policy, not politics,” he explained. “His mindset was, while we were in that build- ing, how could we improve the lives of people not only in that district, but across the Commonwealth? The policy piece was very important to me, and it carried over to the higher-education piece.”
From Assumption, he went to Hanover Insurance, which, like Mass- Mutual in this market, has historically been deeply involved in the community, often serving as a “catalyst for change,” as he put it.
He started in community relations and eventually became president of the Hanover Insurance Group Foundation.
“As we began to pivot on how to not only make the company a world-class company but also the city in which it was headquartered, I did a lot of work with the Worcester Public Schools, with the Hanover Theater, and various organizations within the community that really helped to round out the experience for children and families so that they would be successful out in the community,” he said, noting that perhaps the most significant initiative launched by the Hanover Foun- dation is the Advancement Via Individualized Determination (AVID) college-readiness program in the Worcester Public Schools.
“It was an honor to work for a company that was so committed to impact philanthropy,” he went on, “which is trying to move the needle and have outcomes and data that support the investment that you’re making.”
Slicing through his job description at Davis, he said it’s to generate this type of needle-moving philanthropy — or more of it, because the foundation has been involved in a number of potentially game-chang- ing initiatives, including Cherish Every Child, a nationally recognized Reading Success by 4th Grade program, the advocacy group Springfield Business Leaders for Education, and, most recently, the effort to estab- lish the innovative Educare Springfield early-education center, which opened last fall near the campus of Springfield College.
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The desire to continue such initiatives and create more of them brought Belsito to Springfield (via Zoom) to interview for the Davis job, a job posting that came about as he was
looking for a new challenge after spend-
ing a short stint working for the city of
Worcester on its COVID-19 response.
Davis
Continued on page 42
8 AUGUST 3, 2020
FEATURE
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