Page 48 - BusinessWest January 20, 2021

Thunderbirds Announce Suspension of 2020-21 Season
SPRINGFIELD — The Springfield Thunderbirds announced that they are one of three AHL franchises that have elected to opt out of play for the upcoming 2020-21 season. The decision, made in conjunction with their NHL affiliate, the St. Louis Blues, was based on numerous safety and logistical concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic and will allow the organiza-
Company Notebook
tion to turn its full focus toward the 2021-22 season. The Thunderbirds will maintain their status as active members of the AHL and return to play next season. “Over the past few months, we have worked tirelessly with the St. Louis Blues to explore every possible avenue for returning to play this season,” Thunder- birds President Nate Costa said. “Unfortunately, due to health and safety concerns, travel logistics, new player-supply rules, and other considerations, the Blues and Thunderbirds collectively determined that it was in the best interests of all parties to opt out for this season. Given the current status of the COVID-19 pandemic in Massachusetts, it has also become clear that we will be unable to host fans at our games in the foreseeable future. As an independently owned franchise, our foremost obligation is to ensure that our team is financially viable for the long term, some- thing that is not possible without game-day revenue.”
Hazen Paper Wins Award for 2020 Holographic Calendar
HOLYOKE — The International Hologram Manufac- turers Assoc. (IHMA) recently named Hazen Paper’s 2020 holographic calendar Best Applied Decorative/ Packaging Product at the Excellence in Holography Awards 2020. Featuring a fire-breathing dragon with three-dimensional scales, the oversized calendar uti- lized an array of innovative holographic techniques to create a decorative design the IHMA called “outstand-
ing.” These holographic designs included Hazen-Lens behind the months of the year, gray-motion for the sky background, color-motion for the dragon, and two-channel color-motion lenses and fire-motion lenses to animate the flames. The calendar was originated entirely within Hazen’s state-of-the-art holographic lab and manufactured in Hazen’s Holy- oke facility on Hazen Envirofoil, an environmentally friendly product. Made with renewable energy, trans-
fer-metallized Envirofoil is made with less than 1% of the aluminum of traditional foil laminate, a recycled film carrier that is reused again and again, and is repulpable as paper after de-inking. It was offset- printed using UV-cure inks with customized opaque white by AM Lithography of Chicopee.
Tighe & Bond Named Finalist for Engineering Excellence Awards
WESTFIELD — Tighe & Bond Inc. has been rec- ognized by the American Council of Engineering Companies of Massachusetts (ACEC/MA) as a 2020 Engineering Excellence Award Finalist (Gold Award). Tighe & Bond, in conjunction with a team of subcon- sultants and property owner ENGIE North America, transformed the site of the Mt. Tom coal-fired power plant into the state’s largest community solar and energy-storage facility. In 2014, the Mt. Tom coal- fired power plant in Holyoke stopped operations, and ENGIE North America began the task of decommis- sioning and closing the power-plant site. This under- taking involved demolition of the coal-fired plant and remediation of many areas of the property. A portion of the site was also used for renewable-energy gen- eration and energy storage to benefit the region and the city of Holyoke. The project team aided with the decommissioning design of the property and worked to obtain a complex array of environmental and land- use permits for the entire project for future industrial and commercial redevelopment. The Tighe & Bond environmental team developed the remedial design for the power plant and the associated coal ash man- agement on the property. The largest component of the property restoration included risk-based evalu- ations and various capping strategies to address
industries. She has an extensive background in real- estate lending and loan servicing, investor relations, secondary market, and risk management, and most recently served as vice president of Mortgage Lend- ing and Loan Servicing for a credit union based in Worcester County. In addition to her professional accomplishments, Cowles serves on the Board for CU REALM and is also on the board for the new England CUREN. She also served as an executive committee member for the CUNA Lending Council and chaired the CUNA Lending Council regulatory/legislative committee.
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Bart Galvin joined the law firm of Bulkley Richard-
son as a member of two practice groups: business, mergers, and acquisitions; and finance, banking, and bankruptcy. Galvin earned his juris doctor cum laude from Harvard Law School in 2013 and a bachelor’s degree from Brown University in 2009. Most recently, he was an attorney at the AmLaw100 law firms White & Case in Milan, Italy and Ropes & Gray in Boston, ranked ninth and 13th, respectively, by revenue among all law firms globally. He was also a law clerk for the U.S. District Court, Southern District of Iowa and the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission.
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The Realtor Assoc. of Pioneer Valley (RAPV )
announced its annual award winners at the associa- tion’s virtual Holiday Celebration meeting on Dec. 9. The Realtor of the Year for 2020 is Kelly Page of Trademark Real Estate. The Affiliate of the Year is
coal ash that has been deposited over much of the property. The successful coal-ash closure approach resulted in preserving and protecting nearby water- ways, including the Connecticut River and Kennedy Brook, as well as more than 50 acres of vegetated forest and associated rare and endangered species habitat. For the solar project, the project team pro- vided permit-level design and engineering support as well as construction-period design for the energy- storage system. This project developed the largest community solar project in Massachusetts and the largest utility-scale energy-storage installation in the Commonwealth.
UMass Amherst Grad Students Receive Financial Support
AMHERST — The economic and research hardships stemming from the global COVID-19 pandemic have strained campuses around the country, including UMass Amherst. Especially hard-hit are graduate stu- dents in the sciences, as their research opportunities and funding trajectories have been greatly reduced by COVID-19 public-health restrictions. In response, the university’s College of Natural Sciences (CNS) cre- ated the Graduate Student Fellowship Fund this fall to provide additional funding to graduate students who need to extend their work for another year, and to make available innovations in data collection for those who are unable to conduct in-person experi- ments. The largest gift to the fund so far has come from alumni and long-time supporters Richard and Barbara Mahoney, who contributed $100,000 in early December. The contribution has sparked additional donations from donors who recognize the value of graduate-student research in the college and want
to support those students. Graduate students are at the core of the research enterprise on campus, put- ting in thousands of hours to run experiments, collect data, and analyze findings. But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many graduate students have lost the opportunities they previously had to spend much- needed time in labs or out in the field. More than 1,000 graduate students are working toward degrees across CNS.
Michele Welch of Embrace Home Loans. A Realtor since 1997, Page is the broker/owner of Trademark Real Estate and has served on the RAPV board of directors since 2014. She has also served on the grievance, professional development, pro- fessional standards, communi- cations, member engagement, and strategic planning com- mittees. Page has given back to the community by attending in-person and virtual events and assisting with the Shriners Hospitals for Children blan- ket drive and training in new- member orientations, and also took time to achieve the C2EX
and earn her CRB designation. The senior loan officer at Embrace Home Loans, Welch has been a member of RAPV since 2016 and has served on the community service, affiliate-Realtor, and government affairs com- mittees. She has demonstrated a tremendous amount of support to the association and in community out- reach and volunteered in RAPV’s community-service efforts through fundraising, shelter support, support- ing the Shriners Hospitals for Children blanket proj- ect, and being heavily involved with Revitalize CDC.
People
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KELLY PAGE
from 2010 to 2014. Prior to his work in economic and community
development, Maroulis was co-director and owner of wünderarts, a commercial art gallery in Amherst, located in the same place as Cowls’ first hardware store. Before that, he had jobs in operations, fund- raising, and marketing arts and cultural organiza- tions, including Museums10, the Emily Dickinson Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Maroulis was a 2009 BusinessWest 40 Under Forty honoree, a 2014 Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce Chamber MVP, and in 2020 was award- ed the Helen Mitchell Community Service Award by Family Outreach of Amherst. He currently serves on the boards of Leadership Pioneer Valley, United Way of Hampshire County, and the Amherst Business Improvement District.
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LUSO Federal Credit Union
announced the appointment of Jennifer Cowles to chief lend- ing officer. She will be respon- sible for managing all lending staff and the credit union’s loan portfolio, while ensuring that the institution’s lending goals are met. Cowles holds a BBA in
finance from the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst and has more than 25 years of expe- rience across the financial-services and real-estate
MICHELE WELCH
JENNIFER COWLES
48 JANUARY 20, 2021
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