Page 20 - BusinessWest August 31, 2020

Cosenzi
Continued from page 18
if you will, that has earned Cosenzi not only her 40 Under Forty plaque (class of 2012), but another Business- West honor as well — the Difference Makers award in 2019. And it was on display the day BusinessWest visited Cosenzi. The golf tournament was just a few days away, and, as always, she was involved with every detail, right down to the gift baskets for the silent auction and raffle.
“I like to get involved in every aspect of this — it’s who I am,” she said. “It’s been that way from the beginning.”
But the fact there was a tourna- ment at all is testimony to Cosenzi’s competitive spirit and desire to con- tinue the fight against brain cancer.
Indeed, in the year of COVID-19, a number of fundraising events such as this one have been canceled or gone virtual — not that you can play a vir- tual golf tournament. But Cosenzi, after a number of discussions with tournament committee members
— and talks with Twin Hills Country Club, where it took place — decided to press ahead and make something happen.
And they did. It wasn’t as large as in recent years — one course instead of two and, therefore, perhaps half the number of golfers — but it was
a memorable start to the drive to
get to the second million dollars in donations.
And while Cosenzi was busy help- ing with last-minute details of the tournament, so too were her children, especially her daughter, Talia, who has become a fixture at the event in recent years. Indeed, she has her own tent, Talia’s Tent, from which she sells lemonade for the cause. Because of the pandemic, she won’t be able to do that this year, so she’s making brace- lets and sugar scrubs to sell online the day of the tournament.
“I’m proud to say that they know what they’re raising money for, and they’re very excited to help,” she said. “They feel like they’re part of making the difference, which is really exciting for me to see in my children.
“I try to instill in my children — and especially my daughter, because she’s older — the importance of community and giving back to the community,” she went on. “And she will often attend events with me; it’s important for her to be there with me to see that it’s not just about giving money — it’s about getting involved.”
Thus, the words on that Vince Lombardi poster have been passed down to a third generation of the Cosenzi family. They all live by the notion that you don’t do things right only once in a while. v
—George O’Brien
DePergola
Continued from page 19
And also why he has, for the first
time, become a finalist for the Alumni Achievement Award, five years after receiving his 40 Under Forty plaque, and two years after receiving another of BusinessWest’s honors — its coveted Healthcare Heroes award in the catego- ry of Emerging Leader.
But there are many other examples, including his steady, if not meteoric, rise within the ranks of experts in the bioethics field.
When he joined the other members of the 40 Under Forty class of 2015 at the Log Cabin, he was a staff ethicist
at Baystate and the only person to
hold that title in Western Mass. Now
a professor of Bioethics and Medical Humanities at Elms College, he’s still the only ethicist in the 413, but his influence now extends well beyond this region.
This was evidenced by his appoint- ment to the Commonwealth’s Crisis Standards of Care (CSC) Advisory Com- mittee in the spring.
The 17-member panel, which in April produced a document titled “Cri- sis Standards of Care Planning for the COVID-19 Pandemic,” was comprised mostly of noted experts from institu- tions in the eastern part of the state, including Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston’s Children’s Hospital. And DePergola was, by his estimate, 20 years
younger than any other member.
He remembers a number of heated
discussions among the members of the panel, including one that involved whether healthcare providers should receive primary access to scarce resources.
“For a while, I was the minority on that subject, saying that I did think that healthcare providers should get priority because they are the means by which we can care for many more people,” he told BusinessWest. “So even on just utili- tarian grounds, which is not the best way to make moral decisions, it just made sense that, if we didn’t take care of the individuals who are, in essence, the tools by which we could heal the general public, then there would be no one else. If we didn’t prioritize them, what incentive would they have to come to work?”
A revised version of the committee’s “Crisis Standards of Care Planning” eventually did stipulate that health- care workers would get priority, and it included a number of other measures contained in DePergola’s white paper.
The fact that the two documents
are now very similar speaks to just how quickly and profoundly DePergola his risen to the status of national, and even global, leader in the field of bioethics.
And also why he is one of the five finalists for the Alumni Achievement Award. v
—George O’Brien
20 AUGUST 31, 2020
ALUMNI ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
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