Realm Winter 2021 - The Journal for Queen City CEOs

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

Why Meg Whitman Is Bullish on Cincinnati

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

VOL.2, NO.4

CINCINNATI USA REGIONAL CHAMBER 04 LETTER FROM JILL MEYER

PRESIDENT AND CEO Jill P. Meyer

08 BY THE NUMBERS

Analyzing a decade of income, education, and poverty rate data across the Cincinnati region.

10 MEET COLLEEN HANYCZ

THE JUMP 12 ARTS & CULTURE MAKING SCIENCE FUN AGAIN The Cincinnati Museum Center brings people back by teaching while entertaining.

14 TALENT NKU SUPPORTS SMALL BUSINESSES The Haile College of Business launches a new program to help the community.

16 LEADERSHIP HIGH STEAKS Britney Ruby Miller honed her leadership style in the pandemic and has tips to share.

PG. 7

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER Brendon Cull VICE PRESIDENT, STRATEGIC MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Danielle Wilson TRAFFIC MANAGER Tracey Brachle

President, Xavier University.

BOARD CHAIR Leigh R. Fox, President and CEO, Cincinnati Bell

18 TALENT INSPIRING CHANGE

CHAMBER OFFICE 3 E. Fourth St. Cincinnati, OH 45202 (513) 579-3100 All contents © 2021 Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber. The contents cannot be reproduced in any manner, whole or in part, without written permission from the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber.

GE Aviation and UC partner to recruit more diverse engineering students.

20 FOOD & BEVERAGE A MENU OF NEW IDEAS LaRosa’s updates its supply sources to better align with customer tastes.

22 FINANCE EXPANDING ITS LOCAL FOOTPRINT Bank of America names its top Merrill Lynch executive to help grow its presence in Cincinnati.

PG. 56

DEEP DIVES

PG. 25

26 MEG WHITMAN’S MONEY IS ON CINCINNATI An investor in FC Cincinnati, the nationally known corporate leader explains why she’s bullish on this region.

34

IT’S NOT ALWAYS ALL IN THE FAMILY Conversations with Otto Budig Jr., Roger David, Rich Graeter, and Stephen Hightower about the joys and pitfalls of family-owned businesses.

56 PHOTO ESSAY: OKI GRANTS A snapshot of local infrastructure projects getting a boost from new federal funding.

58 ASK ME ABOUT Going deeper with John Banchy of The Children’s Home, Keith Borders of Union Savings Bank, and Kate Schroder of Interact for Health.

64 FROM THE DESK OF Candace McGraw, Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.

O N T H E C O V E R : P H O T O I L LU S T R AT I O N BY RYA N O L B RYS H / P H O T O G R A P H S C O U R T E SY F C C I N C I N N AT I , R I O T GAMES, MEG WHITMAN

FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF

42

THE IMPORTANCE OF APPRECIATION Four local executive coaches discuss the challenges and opportunities for business leaders facing the Great Resignation.

48

CELEBRATING GREAT LIVING CINCINNATIANS

PUBLISHER Ivy Bayer EDITOR-IN-CHIEF John Fox DIRECTOR OF EDITORIAL OPERATIONS Amanda Boyd Walters ASSOCIATE EDITOR Lauren Fisher DESIGN DIRECTOR Brittany Dexter ART DIRECTORS Carlie Burton, Logan Case, Jessica Dunham, Jen Kawanari, Wesley Koogle, Emi Villavicencio SENIOR ACCOUNT MANAGERS Maggie Goecke, Julie Poyer ACCOUNT REPRESENTATIVES Laura Bowling, Hilary Linnenberg SENIOR MANAGER, SPONSORSHIP SALES Chris Ohmer PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Vu Luong EDITORIAL AND ADVERTISING Email cmletters@cincinnatimagazine.com Website cincinnatimagazine.com Phone (513) 421-4300 Subscriptions (800) 846-4333

Hear from the four new honorees in the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s annual career leadership award program.

I M A G E S BY ( T O P ) S O L C O T T I / ( M I D D L E ) C H R I S V O N H O L L E / ( B O T T O M ) D E V Y N G L I S TA

WINTER 2021 REALM 3

WELCOME

T

ake time to recharge. That’s what I keep hearing at this time of year. It makes me feel a little like a device I plug in every night to get the battery back to 100 percent. We’re not devices; we’re human beings and leaders. And we need to do more than just recharge before we head into another year of uncertainty, challenge, and, yes, promise.

Last month, I heard newly-inaugurated Xavier University President Colleen Hanycz speak to a group of leaders in our region. She said she wanted her team to come to work every day ready to think strategically about the future of the organization. And to think big, they need to be ready, rested, and in a place where their minds can focus. She’s exactly right.

That’s why we must do more than just recharge this season, which you can do in many ways. Instead, I urge you to “reset.” Take time to reflect on your successes and failures in the past 24 months. Order your priorities.

Adjust your perspective and attitude. Come to 2022 with a new mindset that can take you and your team to new places.

This issue of Realm will have you reflecting on leadership, thanks to the comments from brilliant executive coaches, family-business CEOs, Great Living Cincinnatians, Meg Whitman, and dozens of other leaders across the region. Take this issue with you as you find time this season to truly reset.

I’ll see you in 2022!

JILL P. MEYER jill.meyer@cincinnatichamber.com

4 REALM SUMMER 2021

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THE JUMP

BRITNEY RUBY MILLER SHARES LEADERSHIP LESSONS FROM THE PANDEMIC. P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . C O N WAY

Get a jump on news about new business development programs at UC and NKU, LaRosa’s menu pivot, and Bank of America’s new-yet-familiar local leader.

Hear from Xavier University’s new president, and learn about Cincinnati Museum Center’s 2022 plans.

WINTER 2021 REALM 7

THE JUMP

EDUCATION ATTAINMENT 2010 VS. 2020 Percentages of the Cincinnati region’s population (age 25 and older) with a Bachelor’s degree.

Source: Emsi Burning Glass Data

2010 2020 16-COUNTY REGION .................. 35.6% ......... 42.9% NON-HISPANIC WHITE............... 36.5% ......... 44.1% BLACK ...................................... 24.5% ......... 30.8% ASIAN ...................................... 68.1%.......... 70.3% HISPANIC OR LATINO ................ 30.6% ......... 30.9% TWO OR MORE RACES ................ 35.1% .......... 41.4%

New data show that the 16-county Cincinnati region’s economic outlook improved in the past decade, with per capita income rising by almost 25 percent and the poverty rate declining by 1.2 percent. At the same time (and likely related), the percentage of adults across the region with a college education increased by more than 7 percent. Unfortunately, home ownership took a hit over the past decade, dropping by 2.7 percent.

PER CAPITA INCOME 2010 VS. 2019 The average annual income per person (all ages).

Source: Emsi Burning Glass Data

Statistics provided by the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber’s Center for Research & Data.

Source: Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber Analysis of 2008-2012 and 2015-2019 ACS 5-year Estimates

HOUSING OWNERSHIP 2010 VS. 2019

2010

2019

55.2%

2019

51.6%

2010

56.2%

2019

54.1%

2010

44.5%

2019

42.5%

2010

66.3%

2019

63.6%

2010

25.3%

2019

33.6%

30.9%

2010

RENTER-OCCUPIED

27.1%

OWNER-OCCUPIED

2010 2019 16-COUNTY REGION .................. $27,725 ....... $34,575 NON-HISPANIC WHITE............... $29,680 ...... $37,484 BLACK ...................................... $17,527 ....... $21,823 ASIAN ...................................... $33,862 ...... $41,021 HISPANIC OR LATINO ................ $17,225 ....... $20,200 TWO OR MORE RACES ................ $11,584 ....... $14,839 POVERTY RATES 2012 VS. 2019 Percentage of people (all ages) whose annual household income is below the federal poverty threshold, which is $24,246 for a family of two adults and two children under 18.

16-COUNTY REGION NON-HISPANIC WHITE

BLACK

ASIAN

44.8%

53.7%

43.8%

43.2%

55.5%

56.1%

33.7%

36.2%

72.9%

74.8%

66.4%

69.1%

Source: Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber Analysis of 2008-2012 and 2015-2019 ACS 5-year Estimates

HISPANIC OR LATINO TWO OR MORE RACES

2012 2019 16-COUNTY REGION .................. 13.4% .......... 12.2% NON-HISPANIC WHITE............... 10.0% ......... 9.1% BLACK ...................................... 32.4% ......... 27.5% ASIAN ...................................... 10.1% .......... 10.9% HISPANIC OR LATINO ................ 30.3% ......... 26.3% TWO OR MORE RACES ................ 26.4% ......... 23.4%

POVERTY RATE MOVEMENT BY COUNTY 2012 VS. 2019 Here’s how the poverty rate increased or decreased in the Cincinnati region’s 16 counties.

Source: Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber Analysis of 2008-2012 and 2015-2019 ACS 5-year Estimates

BROWN COUNTY

BUTLER COUNTY

CLERMONT COUNTY

HAMILTON COUNTY

WARREN COUNTY

BOONE COUNTY

BRACKEN COUNTY

CAMPBELL COUNTY

GALLATIN COUNTY

GRANT COUNTY

KENTON COUNTY

2.5%

-1.1%

-1.3%

-1.3%

-1.8%

-1.1%

-0.2%

1.1%

-5.4%

0.9%

-1.7%

8 REALM WINTER 2021

PENDLETON DEARBORN COUNTY COUNTY

1.6%

1.0%

FRANKLIN COUNTY

OHIO COUNTY

UNION COUNTY

-4.8% -1.6% -5.5%

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THE JUMP

PROFILE

EXPANDING THE MISSION COLLEEN HANYCZ TAKES THE HELM AT XAVIER UNIVERSITY TO “DO BIG, HARD THINGS.” – A L E X A N D R A F R O S T

S

She’s become well-acquainted with the Cincinnati staples, from Reds and Bengals games to Graeter’s, Skyline, and her beloved Sotto restaurant. Colleen Hanycz, the new face of Xavier University, has received a “warm Midwestern welcome, full on” but now she’s ready to do much more than just enjoy the sites—she’s here to prove the Xavier community can, in her words, “do big, hard things.”

Hanycz has been asked many times about the big shoes she’ll fill as she replaces Father Michael Graham, the legendary 20-year president of Xavier University who retired in June.

But she isn’t focused so much on filling them as blazing her own trail, building off of Graham’s legacy and initiatives. As the first woman and first layperson leading Xavier, she brings unique perspectives and has spent the first few months in her new role listening, watching, and learning. She is clear on Xavier’s mission and ready to carry it out, as the administration embarks on a multi-year strategic plan that includes, among other items, a commitment to social justice. “What has delighted me is the extent to which all of our colleagues, faculty, staff, and students understand the mission of this university,” she says. “Xavier is almost 200 years old and is remarkably committed to forming men and women for and with others.”

Hanycz came to Cincinnati from Toronto with a background in history and law. And she came from La Salle University, where she was also its first female president. She says that “representation” seems to be more important to others than to herself. “It’s been made very clear to me how important it is to others, in particular the young women we serve as students here, who will say to me, Dr. Hanycz, it means so much to me to see you in the president’s office.” She’s also seeing the university through the perspective of a college parent, as her youngest of three children is studying Biomedical Science at Xavier.

10 REALM WINTER 2021

“That allows me to bring a different perspective and hopefully serve our students and colleagues better,” she says, joking that she would have “flunked out by Thanksgiving” if she’d tried to study science herself.

Serving as XU’s first lay president comes with hesitation from some community members, who she says can be nervous that the mission disappears when a Jesuit president completes his time. But that’s just not the case.

“What has been a wonderful thing for this community to recognize is Father Graham isn’t the keeper of our mission but that mission is woven into the fabric of this community,” says Hanycz. “There is zero concern on this campus of the mission being in any way abandoned, diluted, or negatively impacted by the fact that we have a lay president.”

As she acclimates to Cincinnati, give her a wave if you pass her riding down Wasson Way on a bike Vice Mayor Christopher Smitherman gave her as a welcome gift at her October inauguration.

“What has delighted me is the extent to which all of our colleagues, faculty, staff, and students understand the mission of this university.”

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THE JUMP

ARTS & CULTURE

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND With The Science Behind Pixar, the Cincinnati Museum Center continues its sneaky mission to teach us about our world while entertaining families to no end. Running through April 24, the interactive show explains STEM concepts behind Pixar’s Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Cars, and other films.

COMING BACK

All things considered, 2021 was a good rebound year for the Museum Center, says CEO Elizabeth Pierce. Surveyed visitors have consistently felt safe in the facility, and when asked if they learned anything during their visit, 99% said “yes.”

WELCOME BACK

The Children’s Museum reopened in July and has welcomed more than 100,000 visitors. The Ice Age Gallery, closed for five years during the Museum Center’s renovation, reopened as well.

NEW INTERACTIVITY

Pierce says the pandemic pushed her staff to add new technology that, in essence, has turned the Museum Center into a 24/7 learning experience. “We’re not giving up those connections we’ve made outside of our walls,” she says.

A YEAR FOR NATURE

The coming year will focus on the theme of nature, Pierce says, including an exhibition of historic landscape paintings along with current work by Michael Scott, a DAAP grad.

The permanent John A. and Judith Ruthven Get Into Nature Gallery will open.

A BICENTENNIAL

Partnering with the Holocaust & Humanity Center, the Museum Center hosts Our Shared Story: 200 Years of Jewish Cincinnati April through October.

12 REALM WINTER 2021

P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E SY C I N C PI NHNOAT T OIGMR AU PS HE UBY M CT KE NT KT ET KR

WINTER 2021 REALM 13

THE JUMP

TALENT

NKU ADDS SUPPORT FOR SMALL BUSINESSES Its College of Business aims to better connect owners with innovation, entrepreneurship, and engagement initiatives.

—SARAH M. MULLINS

14 REALM WINTER 2021

orthern Kentucky University is launching a new center within its Haile College of Business to better connect the region’s family and small businesses to its existing Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Collaborative for Economic Engagement. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are approximately 360,000 small businesses in the state of Kentucky, with 80 percent family-owned. Seventy-five percent of new jobs across the U.S. and 57 percent of the nation’s GDP are generated by family businesses; meanwhile, 95 percent of them engage in some sort of philanthropy.

NKU’s Center for Family Enterprise and Small Business will assist family-operated businesses to simultaneously manage financial and community challenges. “We’re capitalizing on our current resources and expanding services beyond the small business to the family enterprise,” says Haile College of Business Dean Hassan R. HassabElnaby. “That will impact, to a great extent, the work we’re doing here.”

Family businesses aren’t always small, but they often are. The SBA officially classifies a small business as 500 employees or less, though a family business can be larger and still face similar struggles. HassabElnaby says succession plans, labor costs, healthcare costs, taxes, and recruiting qualified employees are common pressure points with family businesses. “One of the big items our center could help with is availability: how to access credit, how to work with lenders, and how to get some funds for the business,” he says.

According to the SBA, more than 716,000 people in Kentucky work for a small business. The top employment categories are accommodation and food service, health care, retail, manufacturing, construction, real estate, finance and insurance, and professional and technical services. The state’s small businesses together generated more than $27 million in payroll in 2018, the last year of U.S. Census data the SBA analyzed.

The Center for Family Enterprise and Small Business will be located mainly in the business school on campus, with additional offices at NKU’s Collaborative for Economic Engagement in Covington. Services will include connecting business owners with industry leaders via networking opportunities, round tables, peer mentoring, and consulting services, as well as assistance with raising funds, handling technical issues, and even brainstorming ideas to start a new business.

HassabElnaby says students will also benefit from the new center. “We’ll be able to improve opportunities for our students for internships and for consulting work on projects we can do in the classrooms,” he says. “That’s part of our vision for NKU—trying to increase opportunities for our students inside and outside of the classroom. I firmly believe that the learning process does not only take place in classrooms. Activities students do outside the classrooms are all part of the experiential learning process and critical to career development.”

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LEADERSHIP

HIGH STEAKS

Britney Ruby Miller honed her leadership style in the pandemic.

—ELIZABETH MILLER WOOD

Britney Ruby Miller’s Leadership Tips

Be still in chaos.

Don’t overreact.

New Digs Brittany Ruby Miller at the construction site across from Fountain Square, where she’s moving Jeff Ruby’s Steakhouse (below) in 2022.

Leave it to a Ruby to face crisis and come out stronger. For Britney Ruby Miller, CEO of Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment and daughter of restauranteur Jeff Ruby, the pandemic’s crippling effect on the restaurant industry wasn’t her first encounter with catastrophe.

But thanks to earlier rocky roads, she had the grit to weather it with grace.

Her new book,

5-Star Life: The Faithful Fight to Overcome Obstacles and Pursue Excellence, reveals Hollywood-worthy early years that weren’t entirely charmed. From fires and family scandal to infidelity, infertility, and toxic mental health, she spares no detail of her story’s drama and redemption. But along with peeks behind the Ruby family curtain, her pages are peppered with faith-

16 REALM WINTER 2021

filled coaching. In fact, her gospel is just as gritty as the gossip. “I didn’t feel called to write the book in the middle of my storms,” she says.

“Life can be messy, and I felt like I’m at a place where life is really great, when life hasn’t always been great.

I wanted to bring hope to people.”

Miller wrote the book over three months amidst the thick of the pandemic—just as she (and the rest of the

Empower your managers to run the business like they own the place.

world) was learning to navigate a new normal. When the shutdowns struck, she was one of the region’s first restaurateurs to rally for government support.

“Advocacy was not really anything I thought I was going to get involved with until I realized how critical it was that the restaurant industry got relief,” she says.

Miller quickly learned that politicians were far more moved by owners “who were feeling the pain” than lobbyists pushing an agenda.

So she picked up the phone, hopped on Zoom calls, wrote emails, and appeared on national news outlets, championing her industry’s needs to both sides of the aisle. In the process, she helped unify local restaurateurs for their common cause of survival. “There’s no room for competition during a crisis,” says Miller.

Jeff Ruby Culinary Entertainment introduced take-home

kits that were an instant success, and later a posh delivery experience boasting a uniformed waiter, white tablecloth, and sultry playlist. Both remain strong revenue streams for the company. “I knew that if we were silent and still, we would come up with some innovative ideas that would last forever,” Miller says.

Challenges remain, of course.

Of the 650-person staff across all company restaurants, approximately 500 were new hires in 2021, and the downtown Jeff Ruby’s Steaks will be moving to Fountain Square in 2022. If Miller’s story speaks to anything, it’s that the hard stuff in life isn’t always bad; it just hasn’t been redeemed yet. “You can choose to wake up every day to that five-star life,” she says, “but that doesn’t mean there aren’t going to be one- and two-star circumstances.”

Know your business numbers, and be prepared for the worst.

P H O T O G R A P H BY A A R O N M . C O N WAY

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THE JUMP

THE JUMP

TALENT

INSPIRING CHANGEMAKERS

where they will make a difference, but many claim engineering seems too technical and not focused enough on big-picture challenges. Next Engineers can help change that perception by –GAIL PAUL exposing students to experiences that help them grasp the true role of engineers. “Part of educating them is helping them realize, if we’re going to have livable urban centers, more acclassroom and not feel ready for that challenge.” cessible and affordable health care, or reliable UC College of Engineering and Applied infrastructure, all of that is what engineers do,” Science (CEAS) Dean John Weidner says Next Weidner says.

Engineers represents another tool for UC to Next Engineers offers three programs, infurther its impact and continue its commitment cluding Engineering Academy, for students to underrepresented students through existing ages 15-18. All students in Cincinnati who programs, such as its 2021 Marcomplete the three-year Engineerian Spencer Scholars Program ing Academy and enroll in college for high-achieving students in an engineering discipline are eli“We have at Cincinnati Public Schools. gible for a $20,000 GE Foundation In 2020, CEAS engaged with to connect scholarship.

1,409 potential students, accord- with stuGE’s Allen says Cincinnati has ing to its Inclusive Excellence & a chance to set the bar high for the dents early Community Engagement Imworld when it comes to delivering to get them an impactful program. “So, if you pact Report.

“GE’s program will abso- excited have a student in your life, whether lutely impact Cincinnati treyour own child, a friend’s child, about engi- it’s mendously,” Weidner says. or a neighbor’s child and if they “The bottom line for GE and neering.” meet the eligibility criteria and for us as well is we need more have an interest in engineering,” he engineers. We have to connect says, “we’re counting on people in with students early to get them excited about the community to help us point those students toward this opportunity. We’re on a mission to engineering.”

Weidner says students say they want careers inspire the next generation of changemakers.”

GE partners with UC to invest $5 million in recruiting a diverse new generation of engineers.

A new program designed by General Electric to increase the diversity of young people choosing engineering careers has selected Cincinnati as one of four inaugural locations for Next Engineers, a global college-readiness program that will provide first-hand engineering experiences to high school students. It will also offer meaningful financial support to eligible students to help fund their pursuit of an engineering education.

GE will invest $5 million over five years here in partnership with the University of Cincinnati to build out the Next Engineers program, hoping to reach and inspire more than 3,500 students in the Cincinnati region. GE launched similar initiatives in cities in South Carolina, South Africa, and England.

Joe Allen, chief diversity officer at GE Aviation, says the program will focus on traditionally underrepresented groups in the engineering field, particularly women and people of color.

“If students from those backgrounds aren’t exposed to engineering before college,” he says, “it can be really discouraging to step into a college 18 REALM WINTER 2021

I L LU S T R AT I O N BY S T E P H A N I E S I N G L E T O N

THE JUMP

FOOD & BEVERAGE

A MENU OF NEW IDEAS LaRosa’s updates its supply sources to align better with customer tastes.

—SARAH M. MULLINS

LaRosa’s Pizzeria founder Buddy LaRosa has been famous across the region for his motto: Good, better, best. Never let it rest until your good is better and your better best. Even though his sons Mike and Mark LaRosa are now at the company helm, the motto still informs all business decisions. Mark and his three-person research and development team rolled out a series of new products in 2021, including hydroponic lettuce and plant-based options.

FRESH MIDWESTERN GREENS

to arrive in refrigerated trucks. Deliveries now happen every other day and use 95 percent less fuel, making the process much more sustainable. The Indiana greenhouses are temperature controlled with little human interaction—picture robots tending to the crops, and when humans do enter the glass-enclosed facilities they’re fully protected head to toe. Because the produce is grown indoors, no pesticides or herbicides are used on the plants. “We have been using this product since the beginning of 2021, and delivery after delivery it’s been so consistent,” says LaRosa. “It’s crisp, fresh, vibrant, hearty, and green every single time.”

Access to produce, specifically romaine and iceberg lettuce, started to become inconsistent in recent years for LaRosa’s, which Mark attributes to food contamination, weather-related quality issues, and the pandemic’s supply chain strains. “We go through a signifiGood, Better, Best Mark (left) and Mike cant amount of salad,” he says. “And LaRosa aren’t content with business as we just saw the amount of the ocusual, changing their greens supplier to an Indiana greenhouse (below). currences of inferior quality coming our way. Sixty-six restaurants can’t turn in 66 different directions, so we just kept seeing this pressure.”

LaRosa’s innovation team considered several options for a new supplier and ultimately landed on Pure Green Farms, a company that’s only 200 miles away in South Bend, Indiana.

Lettuce had been shipped from the West coast, often from California depending on the growing season, and would take 10–14 days 20 REALM WINTER 2021

DAIRY- AND MEAT-FREE OPTIONS Market research revealed that a significant portion of LaRosa’s customers were interested in non-dairy and meatless food options, and Mark says his team started experimenting with vegan cheese. “It wasn’t that they were bad,” he says, “but for a traditional, provolone-based company it was hard to find something we felt good about offering.” After evaluating hundreds of options of cheese and proteins, they landed on a selection that launched in test stores: dairy-free cheese and plant-based pepperoni, chicken, and sausage.

Research is in the post-launch phase, evaluating and learning how customers are accepting the new products. LaRosa says they’ve received overwhelmingly positive reviews, but there’s always something to improve. “R&D and product development is a never-ending job,” he says. “Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s are our busiest time of the year, so we’ll be monitoring and evaluating the products’ performance and quality. Then we’ll reconvene and ask, OK, what’s our next opportunity? What’s the next horizon we can set our sights on? And we’ll start down the road again.”

P H O T O G R A P H S BY ( T O P ) C H R I S V O N H O L L E / ( B O T T O M ) C O U R T E SY P U R E G R E E N FA R M S

Working Toward Your Financial Dreams

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THE JUMP ank of America might be the nation’s second largest bank with more than $2.3 trillion in assets, but as late as 2018 it had just one ATM in Greater Cincinnati for consumer banking clients. Today the Charlotte, North Carolina-based company has 82 ATMs here and will open 16 newly built stand-alone branch offices by the end of 2022 to serve customers with a cumulative total of $1.1 billion in deposits.

Mark Ryan is the person in charge of BofA’s hard charge into this market. Named Cincinnati President in October, he’s familiar to business leaders and investors after arriving from Chicago in 2017 as Market Executive for Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, a BofA subsidiary. “Bank of America has had a presence here with Merrill Lynch for more than 100 years,” says Ryan, who grew up in Cincinnati before heading to Chicago for college at Loyola University. “We saw the growth of the Greater Cincinnati community and wanted to be part of it with all of our lines, including consumer and private banking. We touch many consumers with our home loan, credit card, and auto loan business, and our clients were clamoring to have true consumer financial centers.”

A layperson might look at the landscape and wonder if another bank is needed. Ryan makes the case. “We have our Merrill clients, but we also have people from throughout the country—D.C., Boston, Florida, Arizona, Chicago—moving here, so we saw the need. Our customers are asking for comprehensive packages and a high-tech experience around their personal situation and their businesses as well.”

Before October, BofA had one executive in charge of Ohio, Jeneen Marziani, who covered the state from her office in Cleveland. The company affirmed its expansion commitment with Ryan in Cincinnati and naming Kelly D’Ambrosia to run its Columbus operations. As branches open, the market leaders will become more visible as well, “shining a light,” Ryan says, on the company’s commitment to the community.

Since 2016, BofA has donated $1.4 million in grants and matching gifts locally to advance racial equality and economic opportunity and address needs brought on by the pandemic. Nationwide, its Neighborhood Builders program has spent more than $285 million to equip organizations with tools and resources to improve communities. “The ability to have someone lead the local presence of that effort is key to what we’re doing to make Cincinnati and even better place to live, raise your family, and grow your business,” Ryan says.

As BofA expands its footprint and increases its philanthropic visibility, Ryan says each new branch will have a “separate and distinct Merrill area.” The company is also demonstrating to its employees, which number 360 locally now with more to come, that they’re important.

“We have committed to a living wage,” Ryan says. “It’s $21 per hour for 2021, and it will go to $25 by 2025.

That’s a commitment we’re very proud of.”

B

FINANCE

EXPANDING ITS LOCAL FOOTPRINT Bank of America names Cincinnati’s Merrill Lynch leader, Mark Ryan, to help grow its presence here.

–BILL THOMPSON

Double Duty Mark Ryan is helping Bank of America gain visibility in Cincinnati.

22 REALM WINTER 2021

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CVGairport.com

REGIONAL AIRPORT LEADER

Propelling Community and Business Forward

Lowest average airfare and most nonstop destinations — Pre-COVID and during pandemic

LOGISTICS LEADER 7th largest cargo airport in North America, home to DHL Express Global Superhub and Amazon Air Hub

SIGNIFICANT ECONOMIC IMPACT $6.8 Billion in 2018

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BUSINESS GROWTH Expanded international clearance capabilities with new general aviation facility at CVG and added management of OXD Airport (Miami University) operations

AWARD WORTHY CVG named the World’s Best Regional Airport in North America in 2021 by SkyTrax

Celebrating 10 years of Candace McGraw’s leadership as CVG CEO.

DEEP DIVE

EXPLORE THE LAYERS OF FAMILY OWNERSHIP AT ICONIC LOCAL COMPANIES LIKE GRAETER’S AND GOLD STAR. P H O T O G R A P H BY RYA N KU R T Z

26

Meg Whitman Is Bullish on Cincinnati

34

The Joys and Pitfalls of Family Businesses

42

How to Survive the Great Resignation

48

Meet the Great Living Cincinnatians

WINTER 2021 REALM 25

DEEP DIVE

Her Money Is on Cincinnati

M

eg Whitman is among America’s most recognized veteran corporate leaders, known for displaying confidence and canny boldness while driving profits and engineering restructurings at high-profile tech companies. She began her professional career at Procter & Gamble’s corporate headquarters and today serves on P&G’s board of directors. In 2019, Whitman and her husband, Griff Harsh, M.D., bought an ownership stake in FC Cincinnati from Carl Lindner III, majority owner and CEO. Her long-time ties to Cincinnati notwithstanding, she’s the FC Cincinnati ownership group outsider; nearly every owner is from the Cincinnati region, and all but Whitman, who lives in California, are from the Midwest. “She has rolled up her sleeves,” says FC Cincinnati President Jeff Berding. “She’s involved, but with a level of dispassion from afar that’s enormously valuable to Carl and me. She’s not here every day, and the relationships aren’t as apparent to her. So she can question things with a little bit of distance and sees things a little more clearly than we see them here.”

Whitman’s investment “came in at a critical time for us that allowed us to reach our ambitions and beyond,” Berding says, largely referring to the construction of TQL Stadium. “We came out of enormous success at Nippert Stadium, where we were averaging 28,000 fans, and wanted to build the largest soccer-specific stadium in the country, with the most suites and the most club seats. But every additional 1,000 seats is $10 million extra in costs. Without Meg’s invest26 REALM WINTER 2021

AFTER INVESTING IN FC CINCINNATI, MEG WHITMAN DISCUSSES WHY SHE THINKS THE REGION IS ON THE RISE.

BY GAIL PAUL ILLUSTRATION BY ELIOT WYATT

P H O T O G R A P H BY T K T K T K

H E A D S H O T C O U R T E SY T K T K

WINTER 2021 REALM 27

DEEP DIVE

ment, we couldn’t have pulled it off in the manner we did. And then we likely don’t host USA-Mexico [World Cup qualifying match in November] because we wouldn’t have had the resources.”

Berding says FC Cincinnati is one of the top three or four revenue teams in Major League Soccer and partly attributes that success to Whitman’s tenacity in attracting sponsors “from some of the biggest companies in the country.” He says Whitman lines up meetings with prospective donors, and, when Berding joins via Zoom,

WHEN ASKED TO SERVE ON PROCTER & GAMBLE’S BOARD, WHITMAN FELT SHE’D “COME FULL CIRCLE TO THE COMPANY THAT GAVE ME A START” OUT OF COLLEGE.

he enjoys the reaction that her participation elicits. “Folks are pretty excited to be on a Zoom call with Meg Whitman,” he says.

A native of Long Island, New York, Whitman solidified a reputation for tech innovation in Silicon Valley as CEO of eBay Inc., where she oversaw its growth from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue. Later, as president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, she took the reins of a significantly challenged company and implemented an ambitious turnaround plan. A Princeton gradu28 REALM WINTER 2021

ate with a Harvard Business School degree, Whitman famously made a run for the California governorship in 2010 and has held executive-level positions at Hasbro Inc., The Walt Disney Co., and Bain & Co. In addition to serving on the P&G board, she’s a member of the board of General Motors and is the national board chair at Teach for America.

In December, President Biden announced he will nominate Whitman to serve as Ambassador to Kenya, an appointment that would not affect her FC Cincinnati stake, Berding says.

“We are proud she’s been nominated to this role. It’s an exciting adventure for her and Griff. She says she’s going to try to stay involved in supporting our efforts, which I welcome. Maybe she’ll find some players in Africa to come play for FC Cincinnati.”

Also actively working to build FC Cincinnati’s future is William Harsh, Meg’s son, who is visible in town “supporting our efforts around mixed-use development,” Berding says. District Wharf in Washington, D.C., is a model for what FC Cincinnati owners envision creating adjacent to TQL Stadium, and they’ve enlisted Wharf architects and global design firm Perkins Eastman to assist.

“Any real estate development north of the stadium on property we own and control will clearly be led by FC Cincinnati,” Berding says. “We have owners who are experienced in mixed-use development supporting those efforts, including the Whitman family, and Will specifically.”

A few days after the U.S. Men’s National Team beat Mexico at TQL Stadium, Whitman speaks via Zoom about the factors that inspired her to invest in FC Cincinnati and why

she believes the Cincinnati region is poised for bigger things and greater prominence.

WHAT HAS GUIDED YOU TO MAKE SOME OF YOUR CAREER DECISIONS TO TAKE LEADING ROLES IN HIGH-PROFILE COMPANIES?

In college, I thought I wanted to be a doctor. Then I got into the pre-med courses, Organic Chemistry being one, and I said, “Not sure this is quite what I had bargained for.” I was selling advertising for a college magazine and I said, “Hmm, you know, selling advertising is kind of like business. I think business might be something I would like.” That’s how I ended up going to Harvard Business School.

From there, my guiding principle was take the very best job you’re offered wherever it was. And trying to balance that along the way with my husband’s career and our two children. There wasn’t a direct path out of Harvard Business School to being CEO of eBay. There were a number of stops along the way. I tried to find the very best company where I would get the best training and position me for whatever came my way down the road. It was somewhat intentional, there was a philosophy, but there were lots of twists and turns.

STARTING OUT AT PROCTER & GAMBLE…

My first job out of business school.

In fact, I worked there for the summer, between first and second year at business school, and then took a fulltime job.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR IMPORTANT TOUCHPOINTS YOU HAVE TO THE CINCINNATI REGION?

When I graduated from business school, I knew I wanted to be in

marketing. Then as now, the academy company for marketing was Procter & Gamble. P&G offered me a job in Cincinnati, and I said, “OK!” I lived in Mt. Adams as a young professional and really enjoyed the river and the parks and the hiking and the Midwest feel. I’m not from the Midwest, but I liked it very much. It’s easier living than in the big East Coast cities.

I spent the first couple years of my career there, and then decided I was going to get married; my husband was training to be a neurosurgeon. We moved to San Francisco after a couple of years, but Cincinnati has always held a very fond spot in my heart. When eBay came around, [P&G CEO] A.G. Lafley called and said, “We’re looking for younger board members with digital experience, with internet experience. Would you ever be interested in being on the P&G P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E SY F C C I N C I N N AT I

board?” I said yes, because I thought, What a great situation to come full circle to the company that gave me a start and serve it on the board of directors.

P&G IS EXPERIENCING A CEO TRANSITION NOW, A SITUATION YOU’VE BEEN THROUGH A FEW TIMES IN YOUR CAREER. WHAT ARE SOME OF THE OPPORTUNITIES A LEADERSHIP CHANGE PRESENTS TO A COMPANY?

P&G is a bit of a different company from most, because there is a promote-from-within philosophy. It’s why I joined P&G back in the day, because they said, “Hey, any of you who are joining P&G today, you could be CEO.” By definition, you have a pool of candidates who know P&G, its core values, its mission, its giving back to the community, how it operates as a global player. All the candidates for

TEAM PLAYER

Meg Whitman was invited to buy a minority stake in FC Cincinnati and help Jeff Berding push the TQL Stadium project across the finish line.

CEO know the company inside out and upside down, which in my view is a real benefit. And there’s been a proven track record among those executives in the environment in which they would potentially be the CEO. There are always CEO transitions, because people come maybe in their mid50s and stay eight, 10 years, and then it’s time for another person. The No. 1 job for the board of directors is to pick and then coach the CEO. Our board has gotten to be quite skilled at doing this. I think we made a great choice with Jon Moeller. I’ve known Jon for many, many years. David Taylor did a remarkable job, and I think Jon will do just as remarkable a job.

THROUGH YOUR INVOLVEMENT ON ITS BOARD AND COMMITTEES, P&G LEANS ON YOU FOR TECHNOLOGY, CORRECT?

I have been a member of the technology committee, which is a little different from Silicon Valley. It’s IT technology, yes, but it’s also chemistry, physics, biology, and biotech that make all of these P&G products. It’s been great fun for me.

GOING INTO THE NOVEMBER WORLD CUP QUALIFYING GAME, WHAT WERE SOME OF THE EXPECTATIONS OF FC CINCINNATI AROUND HOSTING THE GAME AT TQL STADIUM?

It was super exciting for the city, for FC WINTER 2021 REALM 29

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Cincinnati, and for TQL Stadium.

The stadium and Cincinnati looked great to a world audience. There were fans from 50 states and from something like 25 countries. It was Cincinnati’s turn on the world stage. The game was great [a 2-0 U.S. win]. It’s one of the reasons I was interested in FC Cincinnati as a place to make a professional sports investment, because I knew the commitment of Carl Lindner III and his ownership group.

At the time of my investment, the stadium was not built but was on the drawing boards. The training facility was built, and the commitment was

there to create something the city of Cincinnati could be proud of. I think the U.S.-Mexico match was sort of an instantiation of something that Cincinnati could be proud of.

out where they were going to play.

They had to figure out where the training facility was going to be. So a huge amount of credit goes to them for really starting out with a plan to do a USL team, become a winning team, graduate to MLS, and build the right facilities that Cincinnati can be proud of.

The team’s core values are first of all to have a winning team, and we have work to do there. Second, contribute back to the community in a meaningful way. And that was the decision to build in the West End, a historically Black neighborhood adjacent to Over-the-Rhine, which only in the last 20 years has become what it is today.

Soccer appeals to a very diverse demographic, tends to be younger and more family-oriented than some of the other sports.

That was really a big part of what Carl and Jeff laid out. That resonated very much with our family values. Because we had a warm spot in our heart for Cincinnati, and I thought, Listen, Cincinnati is a growing city and an up-andcoming city in the Midwest. I very much appreciate the high-tech incubators that have been started downtown. They’re going to pay big dividends. GE is splitting into three companies, one of which is GE Aviation, another Fortune 500 company in Cincinnati, is great.

FC CINCINNATI IS ESSENTIALLY A STARTUP. TALK ABOUT ITS IMPACT AT THE NEIGHBORHOOD LEVEL IN THE WEST END AND ITS PLACE IN A GLOBAL SPORT THAT’S GROWING.

A CORPORATE PRESENCE LIKE GE FEEDS STARTUPS AS WELL AS MIDDLE MARKET COMPANIES THAT ARE SUPPLYING IT AND ADDS TO A DIVERSE BUSINESS COMMUNITY.

When Carl and Jeff started the United Soccer League team several years ago, it was a raw startup; there was nothing before it. They had to figure

That ’s right. We have been very pleased by the sponsorship revenue and ticket revenue [for FCC]. We’ve sold out all our premium seats. We

“HAVING THE U.S.-MEXICO WORLD CUP QUALIFYING MATCH IN CINCINNATI AT TQL STADIUM [IN NOVEMBER] REALLY SHONE A BRIGHT LIGHT GLOBALLY ON THE CITY.”

30 REALM WINTER 2021

sold out most of our suites every game when we could have a full stadium, though sometimes we couldn’t because of COVID. I would say that the people of Cincinnati and the large, medium, and small companies in Cincinnati have all been big supporters. That’s important in a city like Cincinnati. You have to get the whole community to pull together.

When you’re in a big town like L.A. or New York or San Francisco or even Chicago, only portions of the community get behind the team. In Cincinnati, Kansas City, St. Louis, and Nashville, you need the whole community to get behind it. And that’s what has happened.

HOW IS FC CINCINNATI CONNECTING THE CINCINNATI REGION TO GLOBAL AUDIENCES AND OPPORTUNITIES?

Cincinnati is more of a global city than you might imagine. That’s in some part due to its heritage as a place where a lot of Germans arrived on the scene 100-150 years ago. P&G now has a very diverse senior leadership team, which involves about 30 people; I’d say probably half are non-Americans. And so you’re constantly seeing a new group of folks coming into Cincinnati who bring a different perspective from Asia and Latin America and Europe. A lot of Americans, by the way, have gone to Geneva and Singapore and Miami for P&G. There’s the core of a real global community here.

Soccer is a world sport. You could argue that the U.S. has a small portion of the world soccer interest. The European leagues are probably much more important to some degree than MLS. Maybe they won’t be in 10 or 20 years, but they are right now. And so having that World Cup qualifying game in Cincinnati at TQL Stadium

really shone a bright light globally on the city. If you’re a European company thinking about where you’d want to put your U.S. headquarters, maybe you think, OK, Cincinnati, they seem like a worldly city, and they’ve just held this World Cup qualifier. Things like that make a difference.

HOW DID YOU COME TO MEET CARL LINDNER III? DID YOU KNOW HIM PRIOR TO FC CINCINNATI?

I did not know Carl. I knew his father because I’d been in politics. When I ran for governor of California, his father was a supporter of mine back in the day, but I’d not met Carl III. And so when we decided as a family to invest in professional sports, the first question was what sport. And we ultimately settled on soccer because we thought it was the sport of the future.

I like to invest behind trends, and I liked the trends behind soccer.

Then the question was, What team?

We talked with lot of different teams, a lot of different ownership groups.

And we had heard that Carl might be interested in selling a minority position to someone like us. So my family flew to Cincinnati and met with the Lindners, Carl and Martha and their family. There was a nice meeting of the minds, and we’ve gotten along really well from there.

20 years from now, if you look at just the number of people playing video games. The League of Legends’ Finals several years ago was at Beijing’s Olympic Bird’s Nest stadium; thousands of people watched them in person and millions watched online. There were more people watching the finals of that game online than the Super Bowl. Those statistics really caught our interest. And much like we made an investment in soccer, we made an investment in e-sports, and we’ve been really pleased. These are long-term investments; you could almost think of them as generational assets.

ONE OF YOUR SIGNIFICANT INVESTMENTS IS IN A PROFESSIONAL VIDEO GAME ORGANIZATION.

It’s called Immortals Gaming Club,

and the team we own is the Immortals. That team has sub teams playing different games.

P&G HAS INVESTED IN SPONSORSHIPS IN THE E-SPORTS SPACE. IS THAT A GROWING PART OF WHAT THE COMPANY WILL BE DOING?

I think every company is looking at where the growth areas are. Sports, broadly defined, is very attractive to companies because sports bring us together in a polarized environment.

That crowd at the U.S.-Mexico game wasn’t from blue states or red states— it was the United States against Mexico. When you look at sports fans for NFL games or baseball games or soccer games or hockey games or whatever, everyone’ s rooting for their team and it brings us together. So I think

LEARNING TO LEAD

Meg Whitman’s CEO roles led her to new opportunities, including a run for California governor and now investment in Cincinnati.

YOU’VE TALKED ABOUT HOW FCC AND SOCCER HAVE CHECKED THE RIGHT BOXES OF YOUR INVESTMENT DECISION MATRIX. E-SPORTS AND GAMING ARE IN YOUR PURVIEW AS WELL. WHY IS MEG WHITMAN INVESTING IN THESE SEGMENTS?

We did a similar analysis. E-sports is growing rapidly. I think it’s another one of those sports-related entities that’s going to be a huge business 10,

P H O T O G R A P H BY A P P H O T O / C H R I S C A R LS O N

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DEEP DIVE

TAKEAWAYS CIRCLE OF LIFE When Meg Whitman and her husband decided to invest in a sports franchise, they chose a growing sport, soccer, and then FC Cincinnati after meeting with CEO Carl Lindner III and his family. Whitman’s first job out of college was with Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati.

SITUATIONAL AWARENESS Through CEO stints with eBay and HP, among other roles, Whitman says she’s learned that business is a team sport, leadership is situational, and focusing on key goals is a must.

PUNCHING ABOVE OUR WEIGHT With soccer’s worldwide popularity and P&G’s diverse leadership, Whitman says Cincinnati has the core of a real global community most Midwestern cities don’t. She feels that positions Cincinnati well as a destination for new businesses and residents.

it’s an important place for companies wanting to interact with those communities and advertise to them. It’s a really nice place to be right now.

TALK A LITTLE BIT ABOUT HOW PLAYING SPORTS HAS BEEN AN ASSET TO YOU PERSONALLY. HOW HAS THAT EXPERIENCE HELPED YOU HONE YOUR LEADERSHIP AND TEAM-BUILDING SKILLS IN YOUR CAREER?

I played all kinds of sports as a little girl, in high school, and in college.

I was a swimmer, I played squash, I played tennis, I played lacrosse. In high school I played field hockey and many other things. What I learned from those experiences is I love being part of a team. It really is the power of many, and I think we’re all better when we’re working together. What you learn from sports is to play your position and to contribute to the team’s success.

The whole often is greater than the sum of the parts. And so I think it influenced my leadership style and how I put together the best team I can. I have a saying: The right people in the right job at the right time with the right attitude. I learned that playing sports.

The other thing I learned over time is that situational leadership is really important. What’s the situation in which you find yourself ? The situation at eBay—where I joined as employee No. 30 and took it to 15,000—was quite different than the situation I found at HP, which was a company facing real challenges. One is a fast-growth startup with the industry’s wind at your back, and the other is a 75-year-old company that’s fallen on some pretty tough times; what you do in those two situations is quite different.

The other thing I’ve always found

to be true is focus, focus, focus. The key is to figure out the 20 percent of what you could do that’s going to bring you 80 percent of the value, which is really hard because usually there are 20 things you want to do. But what are the things that matter most, and set them up and knock them down; set them up, knock them down. My experience is that doing three or four things at 100 percent, as opposed to 10 or 15 things at 30 percent, produces much better results.

“WITH THE PANDEMIC, PEOPLE NOW FEEL THEY CAN LIVE WHERE THE QUALITY OF LIFE IS MORE AFFORDABLE OR WHAT THEY’RE LOOKING FOR. SO THERE’S AN OPPORTUNITY HERE FOR CINCINNATI TO GROW.”

YOU HAVE DESCRIBED CINCINNATI AS A CITY ON THE MOVE. WHAT IS YOUR VISION FOR A BETTER CINCINNATI? WHAT ARE THE CINCINNATI REGION’S GREATEST OPPORTUNITIES AND STRENGTHS?

I’m a big booster of Cincinnati. It’s a remarkable city that’s beautifully located from a geographical point of view right there on the river, with all the parks. I mean, it’s a beautiful city, right? It’s an entrepreneurial town anchored by some very big companies, which is important. It has three major

pro sports teams, which many cities the size of Cincinnati don’t have. It has a lot of the arts, whether it’s the Aronoff Center or the Symphony, and punches above its weight. If you look at the fan base for FC Cincinnati, we have some of the highest home attendance figures in all of Major League Soccer. So more people go to soccer games in Cincinnati than they do in New York or L.A. I think that’s a real testament to the city and the support that it shows for its teams.

LIKE OTHER CITIES, WE’RE FOCUSED ON SOLVING COMPLEX PROBLEMS, SUCH AS HOUSING INSECURITY

P H O T O G R A P H BY S T R / A F P V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S

AND ECONOMIC MOBILITY. CORPORATE LEADERS ACROSS THE REGION ARE ASKED TO TAKE A LEAD ROLE IN SOLVING THESE ISSUES. TALK ABOUT WHAT’S IMPORTANT ABOUT RUNNING A COMPANY IN A TIME OF GREAT CHANGE AND UNCERTAINTY.

First and foremost, you have to continue to focus on your customers. Every successful business is customer obsessed.

Despite all the stuff that’s going on around, just like, How do we best serve our customers? In FCC’s case, it’s the fan experience—you know, how do we deliver on that?

The second thing is the pandemic in many ways is going to help a city

INVESTING IN TRENDS

Meg Whitman says she’s bullish on video games and e-sports, which have worldwide appeal, including in China (below).

like Cincinnati, because not everyone feels they have to live in the big cities.

Now they can live where the quality of life might be more affordable or what they’re looking for. So I think there’s an opportunity here for Cincinnati to grow faster than it otherwise might have.

As a CEO, I always thought that if I could focus on just one thing from a community perspective, it would be K-12 education. If we can provide a great education to every student kindergarten through high school, that solves so many of our problems, whether it’s economic mobility or income inequality.

If you have that quality education, you can go on to make a life for yourself.

WINTER 2021 REALM 33

DEEP DIVE

Not Always All

FAMILY BUSINESSES, INCLUDING TREASURED LOCAL BRANDS, OFTEN BENEFIT FROM OUTSIDE ADVICE, NON-FAMILY DIRECTORS, AND THE YOUNGER GENERATION TRYING OTHER CAREERS BEFORE RETURNING TO LEAD.

BY DAVID HOLTHAUS PHOTOGRAPH BY CHRIS VON HOLLE

34 REALM WINTER 2021

in the Family THE NEXT GEN

The Gold Star family business includes the sons of its original four founding brothers: (from left) BJ David, Basim Daoud, Samir Daoud, and Roger David.

WINTER 2021 REALM 35

DEEP DIVE

T

he 1960s was a turbulent time.

Otto Budig Jr. was flying B-52 bombers from the U.S. air base in Guam to targets in Vietnam. His brother, George, was an administrator at a big college in the Southeast. The world was changing at breakneck speed.

Back home in Cincinnati, their father, Otto Sr., was running the trucking business he’d founded in 1949 on borrowed money and two rented trucks. As founders tend to do, he had thrown everything into the business, which had teetered on the brink of failure in the early days. Now it was growing so fast he had to do something out of character: Ask for help.

“Dad called us and said his business was getting so large he’d have to either bring someone in to replace him or sell it,” Otto Jr., the elder son, recalls. He turned first to his sons.

“I’m offering you an opportunity to come in,” he told them.

It was an offer, not a demand, and it was a tough choice. Budig Jr. was 14 years into a career in the Air Force, having flown in Korea and during the Cuban missile crisis and now piloting the biggest bombers the U.S. military owned. “Clearly, for me, it was the most difficult decision of my life,” Budig says today. “I was offered a challenge that neither my brother nor I had contemplated, but the offer came and we took it.”

It was a fortunate decision. Budco Group is now one of the key players in the U.S. transportation industry. Its Parsec Inc. unit is a link in the nation’s supply chain, specializing in intermodal transportation, getting freight from trucks loaded on to trains and from trains on to trucks. Its workers 36 REALM WINTER 2021

handle nearly half of all the intermodal traffic in the country, managing cargo for the major railroads at terminals and ports in 18 states and three Canadian provinces. Budco Group also leases semi-tractors, trailers, and other equipment and maintains extensive real estate holdings. The company employs 2,800 people.

It’s a family success story, and a relatively rare one. An oft-cited Northwestern University study found that only 13 percent of family businesses make it through three generations.

That study is often interpreted to mean that most family businesses end in failure, though making it through three generations could mean a 90year run—longer than many publicly traded giants last.

Family-owned businesses support the country’s economy, accounting for 90 percent of all businesses in North America, according to the Columbus-based Conway Center for Family Business. They create the fabric of community’s identity, they build wealth that stays local, and they cultivate neighborhood and civic pride.

In Cincinnati, the success of Budco Group has resulted in Budig Jr. becoming one of the region’s major philanthropists. Through the Otto M. Budig Family Foundation, named for his father, Budig has donated millions to the Cincinnati Symphony, Cincinnati Ballet, Cincinnati Zoo, Music Hall, local theater, and many other organizations.

Now 88, he retains the title of Budco chairman but has passed on ownership and management to the third generation, sons David and Mark and daughter Julie. A grandson, Quinn, 28, works at the company headquarters in Queensgate, putting him in line to be the fourth generation. “My greatest satisfaction is seeing that the next generation is

not only doing the good job I thought it would do, but it’s expanding and is very dedicated,” Budig Jr. says.

For any family business, long-term success over generations comes about only after working through all kinds of challenges, ranging from the kind most businesses face (competition and a changing economy) to those peculiar to families (communication, rivalry, and parochialism). Running a small business in a world where bigger is considered better is hard enough.

Throw in the unpredictability of family dynamics, and the obstacles can lead to failure.

“The number 1 reason family businesses don’t succeed is lack of communication and trust,” says Carol Butler, president of the Goering Center for Family and Private Business, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the University of Cincinnati that was set up to help family-owned businesses navigate the potential pitfalls they are

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Otto Budig Jr. (right) and his brother, George (left), with their parents in 1963.

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prone to. “When interests are no longer aligned, conflict can occur.”

The Center provides resources to help family businesses stay intact and grow, such as its Next Generation Institute and Leadership Development Institute, and roundtables with other business owners. It’s the largest university-affiliated family business center in North America by membership, says Butler.

The Center was founded in 1989 by John Goering, whose family owned a meatpacking business. While working there with his father and uncle, Goering (who passed away in February 2021 at the age of 87) witnessed discord between the two, and years later he resolved to do something about it, working with UC’s business school to establish the Center. “The whole thing was born out of conflict,” Butler says.

“Out of conflict comes opportunity.”

Butler herself grew up in a family business, Butler’s Orchard in Germantown, Maryland, which is in its second generation of family ownership, with members of the third generation involved in the operation. She returns to the farm in the fall to help with the busy fall festival season. “I’m still welcomed home,” she says. “They still ask my advice.”

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HE WELL-KNOWN and -loved Cincinnati brand Gold Star also prospered by listening to outside advice. The restaurant chain was led by nonfamily CEOs for 25 years after the founding brothers looked outside of the family for help, though today it’s again led by a family member.

Gold Star was founded by four Daoud brothers who had emigrated from Jordan in the 1950s. They landed in Cincinnati thanks to an uncle who had arrived here from Jordan a few

years earlier and suggested they could find jobs.

Basheer studied at Xavier University and began a career as an accountant. Charlie followed in 1952, finding work as a door-to-door salesman. Six years later, Frank joined them and studied business at Xavier. The final brother, Dave, arrived in 1958 and landed a job as a gardener at Spring Grove Cemetery.

Like all Cincinnatians, they learned about the city’s unique style of chili and through their church began meeting other immigrants who worked at chili parlors around town. In 1963, they heard of an opportunity to buy a restaurant in Mt. Washington called Hamburger Heaven, which sold burgers, naturally, but also came with a recipe for Cincinnati chili. They decided to take the plunge but needed to come up with $12,000 as a downpayment on the business and the two-family house next door. They only had about $1,200 together, but scraped to find the rest and went to work. Charlie managed the front of the house, Dave ran the kitchen, and Basheer handled the accounting. After returning to Jordan for a bit, Frank rejoined the business.

In the kitchen, Dave tinkered with the chili recipe. As one of the few East Side restaurants serving Cincinnati chili at the time, it became a popular customer choice, and chili sales at Hamburger Heaven more than doubled. They were going so well that by 1965 the brothers decided to drop the Hamburger Heaven name and focus on Cincinnati chili. A family elder suggested the name Gold Star.

The brothers ran the business for about 25 years before deciding they needed some help. “In order for this to work, we’ve got to let go of the wheel a little bit” is how the current CEO, Roger David, recalls the decision.

They tried out a couple of nonfamily chief executives before finding John Sullivan, who ran Gold Star for 16 years. “That’s when they understood what it meant to be a shareholder and not an operating shareholder,” David says. “That was a learning curve for the founders.”

David, the son of co-founder Charlie Daoud, worked in Gold Star’s marketing department for about 10 years before going back to school for an MBA and then heading off to do his own thing. “It was not an easy decision,” he says. His father was deceased by then, and Roger was the oldest of his siblings. “To tell my mom that I’m leaving the family business was not an easy discussion to have,” he says. “But it allowed me to spread my wings, learn different things, and bring that expertise back to the organization.”

David spent 15 years away from the family business but remained a board member. He ran a competitor, Buffalo Wings and Rings, where he was CEO for a few years, turning around the chain and refashioning it into a family-style restaurant.

When Mike Rohrkemper retired as Gold Star CEO, David threw his hat into the ring to replace him. “They entertained the idea,” he says of his founding uncles. “They didn’t make it easy on me.”

David took over in 2015 and began realigning the Gold Star brand, redefining its core market to within 200 miles of Cincinnati, investing millions in store redesign and marketing, and going back to the future by introducing burgers to the menus in some locations.

Gold Star entered a new market in 2017 with the purchase of Tom and Chee, the small chain that serves creatively made grilled cheese sandwiches and soups. David believes the WINTER 2021 REALM 37

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FAMILY AFFAIR

Gold Star’s managing cousins (below) stand in the same order as their own fathers, the Daoud brothers (from left) Frank, Dave, Charlie, and Basheer.

concept can be grown beyond the Greater Cincinnati market. He and his management team created a new organizational structure, GSR Brands, to be the parent organization of Gold Star and Tom and Chee and to enable other potential acquisitions.

The number of family shareholders has grown from the original four to 16, and David says half of his extended family, about 25 people, is involved in the business in some way.

His years away from the family business helped his decision-making now as its chief executive, he says.

“When you grow up in the business, it becomes part of you, and when something becomes part of you there’s an

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emotional element involved.” Those years studying and working outside the family business “helped me be a lot more strategic about the choices we’re making,” he says.

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NE OF CINCINNATI’S oldest family-owned businesses made use of outside advice from the Goering Center to ease the transition from one generation to the next. Rich Graeter came into the family ice cream business in 1989, along with cousins Chip and Bob. It wasn’t until 15 years later that the three ascended into company leadership, with Rich as CEO and Chip and Bob running significant pieces of the operation.

Graeter’s is now in its fourth generation of family leadership, but getting there wasn’t necessarily a slam dunk. Deciding who’s going to be the boss, who’s in charge of what, and exactly how this time-honored Cincinnati business would be handed down took a lot of work. “I don’t want to understate how difficult it was,” Rich Graeter says. “We had fits and starts, high points and low points. It was a fairly grueling process.”

Since 1989, Graeter’s had essentially been run by six family members: Rich’s father, Richard; Chip and Bob’s father, Louis; Aunt Kathy, sister of Richard and Louis; and the three cousins. The three put their heads together and came up with a succession plan that they presented to the older generation. It was a welcome development.

“They were thrilled that we were presenting a plan together,” Rich recalls.

But executing the plan would take time and outside help. Along with the Goering Center, the Graeters hired a psychologist who specializes in the dynamics of family businesses. With help, the fathers, sons, brothers, sister,

and cousins were able to see how this business, launched by Louis Graeter in 1870, was bigger than each of them.

“We can accomplish more together than we can individually,” says Rich.

“Once everyone comes to that realization, you can move forward.”

After the fourth generation formally took over, they continued to seek outside help. An organizational consultant was hired to help them figure out what they wanted to be. How do you stay viable in a competitive retail landscape and keep manufacturing a high-quality, high-profile product? “We decided, number 1, that we wanted to be in business forever,” Rich recalls, saying one option that leads to the demise of many family businesses is to sell.

“That was not ever going to be our goal. You run a business you want to keep forever differently than one you want to cash out.”

The cousins decided to focus on what they do best: make great ice cream. They bought out their franchisees, ending an experiment that had begun years earlier. They would stick with the French pot method started by their great-grandfather in Walnut Hills all those years ago, a technique Rich calls “an antiquated, labor-intensive, old-world process.”

Graeter’s hired an operations consultant who helped find efficiencies in the old-fashioned practice. That resulted in an uptick in production and enough capacity to try selling their wares at grocery stores, and that went so well a new plant was necessary.

“We were making ice cream at the time at a plant that my great-grandmother bought in the Depression in 1934,” says Rich.

That year, Regina Graeter bought a factory in Mt. Auburn and trans-

formed the small business from making ice cream in the back room and selling it in the front to a real manufacturer. Although times were changing and modern production methods enabled higher volumes of ice cream to be produced by pumping air into the mix, Regina stood her ground and stayed with the old-fashioned French pot method. All over

“GETTING THE CHILDREN INVOLVED AT AN EARLY AGE IS THE KEY TO THEM BEING COMFORTABLE TO COME BACK AFTER GOING TO SCHOOL OR DOING WHATEVER ELSE THEY HAVE TO DO,” SAYS STEPHEN HIGHTOWER.

the country, homespun ice cream parlors began going out of business, unable to compete with cheaper versions being mass produced and sold in grocery stores everywhere.

The Graeter’s story, in fact, could have ended in 1920. That’s when founder Louis Graeter was killed in an accident. Regina, 19 years younger, was left with two young sons and an ice cream business to run in the midst of the Spanish flu pandemic.

She stubbornly soldiered on, opening a retail store in Hyde Park and then buying the manufacturing plant during the Great Depression.

She’s remained an inspiration to the succeeding generations. Rich WINTER 2021 REALM 39

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TAKEAWAYS GOLDEN RULE Roger David, son of one of the founders of Gold Star, says it was difficult to leave to try another career, but “it allowed me to spread my wings, learn different things, and bring that expertise back to the organization.”

He’s now CEO. FOREVER GRAETER’S Rich Graeter, who leads the iconic ice cream brand with two cousins, says they want the company to be in business forever instead of someday selling it.

“You run a business you want to keep forever differently than one you want to cash out.”

FAMILY DYNAMICS The main reason family businesses don’t succeed is a lack of communication and trust, says Carol Butler, president of UC’s Goering Center for Family and Private Business. And those family frictions often increase as generations get distanced from the founder’s original passion and mission.

Graeter and his cousins broke ground on a $12-million plant in Bond Hill during the Great Recession. The plant opened in 2010, now producing well over a million gallons of ice cream a year, enabling the company to expand the number of stores from 12 to 56 over 10 years and sell Graeter’s ice cream in 6,000 retail outlets across the country. But don’t expect that kind of growth to continue.

“That’s not in the cards,” Rich says. “I’ve seen other businesses grow themselves to death.” Growth will be managed, focusing on the Midwest and on its home market in Cincinnati. Along with the old-fashioned way to make ice cream, he believes he’s found the key to success: “The secret is not to be too greedy.”

While the three Graeters cousins hold “chief ” titles, the company has also looked outside for talent. Rich’s father hired Tom Kunzelman 19 years ago to run the manufacturing operation, and he’s now vice president of manufacturing. George Denman, a former sales exec for Dannon Yogurt, has managed national retail sales as VP of sales and marketing. Chief Financial Officer Craig Eten was recruited from Sunny Delight Beverage Co. “Everybody on the leadership team has a voice,” says Rich.

The fourth generation of Graeters, as well as the nonfamily leadership, know they’re custodians of a wellloved brand. “It’s our job to take care of it in our time and pass it on to the next generation,” says Rich. “Not just more family, but the next generation of team members and customers.”

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T E P H E N H I G H TOW E R literally grew up in his family’s business. When he was as young as 6, his parents would take him and his three siblings along to clean

corporate offices around Middletown.

Mom didn’t have a babysitter, so the kids were hauled along and helped wipe down chairs and baseboards.

The janitorial business owned by his father, Yudell, was run out of their home, with their books done on the kitchen table and business transacted in the living room. At an age when most teens are learning to drive, Stephen was running a truck crew that cleaned homes and businesses. By the time he was 18, he was negotiating contracts. “I would wear my work clothes at night, and during the day I would put on a suit and go out selling,” he says.

He bought his father’s business in 1981 and sold it in 1983, focusing on a new venture, Landmark Supply, selling industrial materials (drywall, lumber, nails, and so on) to commercial customers as well as to the state of Ohio.

In 1980, Ohio’s Minority Business Enterprise program was signed into law, mandating that state agencies set aside a certain percentage of their annual purchases for certified minority-owned businesses. “The state was buying everything from soup to nuts, literally,” Hightower says. “Everything the state set aside, we would go out and quote it.”

In 1982, the state set aside a portion of its fuel purchases, and Hightower, knowing little about the petroleum business, worked with a local supplier, Don Lykins, to bid on the contract. He won it. “My first contract was with the entire state of Ohio,” he says.

Three years later, the Cleveland office of energy giant BP was looking for a company to haul jet fuel to military bases in the region. He won that contract too, and it was the tipping point.

The company name was changed from Landmark Supply to Hightowers Petroleum, concentrating on delivering fuel to a range of commercial clients.

A big break came while working with the region’s major gas and electric supplier, called Cinergy at the time. Hightowers had a small contract for several years with the utility to deliver one tank of fuel a month. When Cinergy joined a purchasing consortium with other utilities, Hightowers was able to offer an e-commerce solution for the group. That expanded its territory to what was then Cinergy’s three-state region in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. In 2006, Cinergy merged with North Carolina-based Duke Energy, and Hightowers Petroleum grew exponentially.

“That was the one company that gave us a footprint beyond Ohio,” says Hightower. “Now we’re doing business in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.” And the company kept expanding from there, growing to become a national distributor for gasoline and diesel fuel for commercial fleets. Customers include GM, Ford, Kroger, Delta Air Lines, Duke Energy, and Cleveland-Cliffs (formerly AK Steel). “Those companies allowed us to have a national footprint,” says Hightower. “Today we deliver in every state in the U.S.” At 65, he has the next generation primed to contribute. Son Stephen II is chief operating officer. Daughter Stephanie has been working in the business since high school and handles job bidding and contracts. Son Quincy runs Hi-Mark Construction Group, a unit working on wastewater treatment plants. Nephew Jason Hightower is the firm’s chief information officer. Two granddaughters also work in the business.

The elder Hightower recommends getting children involved in the family business at an early (maybe not as early as 6), so they can appreciate the ups and downs of running a firm.

P H O T O G R A P H BY A R R A S M I T H & A S S O C I AT E S

Succeeding generations, he says, may not have the same commitment to the enterprise that the founder does.

“Most small businesses, when they’re growing, don’t necessarily have the best financial wherewithal,” he says.

“You have a lot of challenges. When you’re going through a difficult building time, it’s probably not attractive to other family members to go through that grind you committed yourself to.”

Two other children work out of town outside the family business.

Both Stephen II and Quincy worked for years in different endeavors before joining the Hightowers business.

“Most family businesses need to be eased into,” Hightower says. “Getting the children involved at an early age is the key to them being comfortable to come back after going to school or doing whatever else they have to do.”

Indeed, developing the next generation of leadership is critical to family business success, says the Goering Center’s Butler. “There are very iconic founders and owners,” she says. “They can be difficult roles to fill.”

She often recommends that family businesses put together an independent board of advisers, maybe three people, who can provide an outside perspective. She also recommends writing a strategic plan and sharing it with the family. “Most business leaders could write down 80 percent of their plan right now,” she says. “It’s in their heads. But you should get it documented so you can communicate it to your family and your board.”

That kind of communication and planning will help the next generation not only survive what may come, but thrive.

NATIONAL PROFILE

Stephen Hightower (center) is transitioning his company to the next generation: (from left) son Quincy, nephew Jason, daughter Stephanie, and son Stephen II.

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The Importance of Appreciation AS BUSINESS LEADERS TRY TO NAVIGATE THE GREAT RESIGNATION, EXECUTIVE COACHES ARE FOCUSING THEM ON NEW ABC S FOR EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT: AUTONOMY, BELONGING, AND CONFIDENCE.

BY LEYLA SHOKOOHE

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alk of the Great Resignation is everywhere, even if you haven’t heard about it until recently. Social media’s tie-wearer, LinkedIn, is replete with posts about folks the world over quitting their jobs and not looking back.

The pandemic was the match strike for growing frustration in workplaces of all types, but the flames in white collar corporate America specifically are at a fever pitch.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.4 million Americans left their jobs in September.

“What we are experiencing is people have had a moment to pause,” says Patrice Borders, an attorney, executive coach, and the founder of Prevention Strategies LLC. “When we’re in this craziness of life, we are on autopilot. I think in this ‘Great Awareness,’ people have had a heightened 42 REALM WINTER 2021

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realization of some of the compromises that no longer serve them professionally and personally.”

Jon Sanchez, an executive coach, former Navy SEAL, and the founder of Team Performance Institute (TPI), sees the same dynamic at work.

“COVID did one thing to the entire globe, slowing us all down,” he says.

“It gave everybody the opportunity to sit, think, and reflect. And in that reflection came what we’re seeing now and why the Great Resignation exists: More people want to be tied to value, purpose, and belonging.”

The seismic shift in pandemic- and now semi-post-pandemic workplace culture encompassed every aspect of “work,” from attire to congregation to communication. So when companies began to require their employees to head back to the office, even in the face of data suggesting work-from-home was not a revenue or productivity black hole, a number of employees turned in their two weeks notice.

More Americans quit jobs in April 2021, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, than at any other point since the beginning of the 21st century. The data also shows that quitting had been at its lowest point in April 2020 since 2013.

“When COVID happened, the natural tendency for all humans was to go, Am I going to be OK? Is my family going to be OK?” says Sanchez.

“They kept jobs, they held on, we were all scared, people took pay cuts. Now we have this pent-up demand, so you have two or three years of that, and people are now saying, Hey, all of a sudden, the job market is super-hot. We saw a lot of it peak in the summer, and we’re going to see a lot more coming. There are going to be more resignations.”

Borders agrees. “I believe we also

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A NEW SET OF PRIORITIES

have this awakening around, Am I in alignment with my true core values?” she says. “I’ve heard terminology that it’s not just the Great Resignation, it’s the Great Realization, and I really think that speaks volumes to how people are prioritizing themselves differently.”

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LSO REFERRED TO AS the “Big Quit,” the movement spans all sectors and every rung of the workplace ladder.

The effects of workplace discontent are evident in the abundance of hiring bonuses being offered in the food service industry. One of the hardest-hit sectors at the beginning of the pandemic, with federal data showing 5.5 million jobs lost between March and May 2020, restaurants are now struggling to fill positions and seeing attempts at unionization at companies like Starbucks. In corporate America, the onus of stanching rapid attrition falls squarely at the top of the hierarchy, in the C-suite.

“Employees are experiencing much more disruption, change, and turnover, which can affect the company culture, which is a C-suite issue,” says Diane Egbers, founder and president of Leadership Excelleration and author of The Ascending Leader.

“Because of this, C-level leaders must really think about reinvesting in their teams during these tough times. When change happens, redefining roles and regaining momentum is crucial, for an executive team especially. A major downside of the Great Resignation is that teams are suffering when leadership continuity is lacking. Having consistent leadership is so vital to sustaining organizational success.”

To address these issues, a reexamination of the workplace’s fun-

damental operation is paramount. For Borders, her tools of choice are emotional intelligence and mindfulness.

She’s certified in EQ-i 2.0 and EQ 360 emotional intelligence assessments, as well as being a Certified Search Inside Yourself (the leadership development program born at Google) teacher, and she starts her leader clients out with inward-facing work.

“If you have more leaders who are fully present in their connections and conversations and meetings, it’s going to be a game changer for an organization,” she says. “If more people are showing up with self-awareness and the capacity to have greater empathy and greater compassion, it’s going to exponentially impact your diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging strategy. It’s going to make people feel like they’re in an environment where they are seen, heard, supported, and valued. And the research tells us that people who feel like they truly belong are going to perform at their highest and the organizations are going to have better innovation, creativity, and profitability.”

An Ernst & Young consulting survey of more than 1,000 U.S. employees, released in October 2021, found that 90 percent believe higher job satisfaction is spurred by empathetic leadership, while 88 percent believe empathetic leadership fosters a sense of loyalty among employees. Teaching leaders “soft skills”

The Great Resignation period is also a Great Realization awakening for workers, says Patrice Border, an executive coach and founder of Prevention Strategies.

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like empathy and transparency is often the baseline for executive coaches.

“We teach communication, we teach emotional intelligence, we teach managing complexity, and we teach difficult conversations,” says Sanchez, who utilizes multiple modules for teams and individuals focusing on different types of leadership concepts. “They’re what the industry calls soft skills, but I believe they’re really hard. That’s why we exist, to help people come into their authentic leadership through those skills.”

“A MAJOR DOWNSIDE OF THE GREAT RESIGNATION IS THAT TEAMS ARE SUFFERING WHEN LEADERSHIP CONTINUITY IS LACKING,” SAYS DIANE EGBERS. “HAVING CONSISTENT LEADERSHIP IS SO VITAL TO SUSTAINING ORGANIZATIONAL SUCCESS.”

For Elaine Suess, executive coach and founder of Beyond Being, the pandemic offers a “foundational shift” for her C-level clients. “It’s been an opportunity for a C-level leader to focus more on building a relational environment and ties with people,” she says. “How are they encouraging and strengthening the relational ties between their employees and with one another? We have been able to live off a more transactional approach, where we just get the work done. But in the environment we’re 44 REALM WINTER 2021

in right now, that doesn’t work really anymore. People are really craving to be seen as employees and to be recognized and appreciated.”

Fundamental to that approach are what Suess calls the “ABCs” of employee engagement. “The A is for autonomy, and the B is for belonging, which the research really supports right now,” she says. “The C is for confidence. You don’t want to be the CEO who said to someone I was coaching that he wanted people to ‘stop complaining.’ This is in the middle of COVID and employees coming back to work. You don’t want to be that CEO.” For Sanchez and his team at TPI, the pandemic has meant pivoting to encompass a different kind of coaching. His clientele had been focused on goal-oriented tactics and training, but now the focus is squarely on the mental health of their workers.

“Clients would tell us, We have these great goals and we’re doing OK, but we’re really worried about our people,” he says.

“People were losing their minds with what I call omnidirectional stress that over time just built, and people were just at their breaking point. So TPI started focusing around self-care and how to help people just get through day to day and how to set smaller, more achievable goals. We moved away from the massive 50,000-foot view all the way down to the ground and instead said, How do we help you get through moment to moment?”

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EFRAMING WORKplace culture is, obviously, hugely important. The churn of employees on this side of

the pandemic is at a fever pitch, and the smart money is on the companies and leaders who invest in their people. Yet the fact remains that, no matter how airtight workplace strategies are, some employees are going to leave. But there’s actually power in knowing this fact and implementing a strategy around it, especially in the post-pandemic world.

“What I see as a great retention strategy would be to meet with employees around specifically the ideas and thoughts that, What if this person were to leave? Where would it leave you?” says Sanchez. “Have some difficult conversations. Ask them, Are you thinking about leaving? Visualize what it would be like if they did leave. Think about how impactful it would be if they did leave.”

Borders’ approach to retention is similarly focused on transparency. “At the end of the day, with any leadership development, you want your people to be at their absolute best,” she says. “Are you saving money by not investing in them because they might leave? Or are you investing in someone who might turn around and do phenomenal things in reframing the culture for your organization, and then they still might leave? If you’re not developing them, though, that’s always a loss.”

It should be noted that the peak of the Great Resignation may have already occurred. Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows the numbers of employees quitting has continued to drop since that all-time high in September—though the monthly numbers differ only by about 300,000.

And corporate leaders always have two tried-and-true strategies in their management arsenals: corporate advancement and increased compensation.

“Some important strategies companies are leveraging right now are to narrowly focus on identifying and retaining their high potentials by offering them career advancements within and making their growth path clear,” says Egbers.

“Another strategy is to increase one-onone career discussions while adopting professional learning components into regular virtual meetings to increase leader engagement. There are also deferred compensation opportunities that can help retain key leaders and ensure leadership continuity is not disrupted, which boosts long-term success.”

Suess again underscores top-down connection from the C-suite to entry level as both a retention and research strategy. “What I always talk with clients about when we discuss connecting

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Soft Is Hard Executive coaches Jon Sanchez (top) and Diane Egbers (center above) are helping business leaders hone soft skills like empathy, emotional intelligence, and communication to better connect with their workers.

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TAKEAWAYS THE VALUE OF EMPATHY An Ernst & Young survey of U.S. employees found that 90 percent believe higher job satisfaction is spurred by empathetic leadership and 88 percent believe empathetic leadership fosters a sense of company loyalty.

HEAD OFF RESIGNATIONS A good retention strategy would be to meet with employees and have difficult conversations about job satisfaction, says executive coach Jon Sanchez. “Ask them, Are you thinking about leaving?”

A SENSE OF BELONGING The pandemic has changed the business world forever, says executive coach Elaine Suess. “Something like 40 percent of people are quitting without having another job. That’s how important their experience at the organization is.

They’re looking for deeper meaning, to feel valued by their managers, and to have a sense of belonging at work.”

to the employees is trying to gather that collective intelligence of all their employees, even at the lowest level,” she says. “The newest person through the door can tell us something that can be quite helpful. That doesn’t always happen where a C-level person is connecting that way. People have to trust you and trust that you have their best interests at heart. Sometimes leaders have a fear about being vulnerable, but it’s actually a lynchpin to creating trust with people.”

Looking ahead to 2022, there’s a distinct opportunity to make short-term lemons into long-term lemonade. “I think the world’s changed forever,” says Suess.

“Normal as we knew it is no longer available to us. People are not going to experiment with a new style or approach for a little while and go back to their old approach, because it just doesn’t work anyway. Something like 40 percent of people are quitting without having another job. That’s how important their experience at the organization is. They’re looking for deeper meaning, to feel valued by their organizations and managers, and to have a sense of belonging at work.”

Sanchez agrees. “For 2022, I think what we’re going to experience is going to get worse before it gets better, in terms of resignations,” he says. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime bubble that we have to get over. Looking at Q1 of 2022, the whole corporate and nonprofit world will have to deal with it. There’s going to be more movement than normal. See it as a bubble, and get ahead of it now so you’re not surprised by it. The companies that are showing investment in their executives are going to do better than anybody else.”

Egbers is optimistic for the future.

“I think 2022 represents an opportu-

nity to regain momentum,” she says.

“We’re coming out of a pandemic, and everyone is looking to reconnect, to develop a sense of belonging, and to develop a leadership community.

This is not only an opportunity for business culture development, but also an opportunity for revived socialization. There has never been a better time to reconnect and invite your leaders into a leadership community within your organization to foster alignment and connection and empower your teams.”

“PEOPLE HAVE TO TRUST THAT COMPANY LEADERS HAVE THEIR BEST INTERESTS AT HEART,” SAYS ELAINE SEUSS. “SOMETIMES LEADERS HAVE A FEAR ABOUT BEING VULNERABLE, BUT IT’S ACTUALLY A LYNCHPIN TO CREATING TRUST WITH PEOPLE.”

Borders sees the trend scaling down to the micro level in even sharper relief. “I think we’ll continue to see this Great Realization and Great Alignment, and I think we will see it happen not only on the individual basis but at the organization level as well,” she says. “Organizations are going to need to really do that work around what container they’ve created for individuals. Individuals are discerning and asking, What do I need?

What is going to give me joy? What will make me happy?”

IES I NIT NAT U T N OR CI PP E CIN O G H N TIN L IN T EGIO A E R CR R AL FO

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DEEP DIVE

Celebrating Four Great Lives LEARN FROM THE NEWEST GREAT LIVING CINCINNATIANS ABOUT LEADERSHIP AND WHY THEY SERVE OTHERS AND THEIR COMMUNITY. B Y L E Y L A S H O K O O H E / P H O T O G R A P H S B Y R O S S V A N P E L T

T

he Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber has presented Great Living Cincinnatian Awards annually since 1967, recognizing a total of 163 amazing men and women who have helped make this region a great place to live, work, and play. Awardees are chosen for their service to the community; business and civic attainment on a local, state, national or internation-

48 REALM WINTER 2021

al level; leadership; awareness of the needs of others; and distinctive accomplishments that brought favorable attention to their community, institution, or organization.

Four more Great Living Cincinnatians are joining the pantheon as 2022 honorees and will be honored at the Chamber’s Annual Dinner February 24 at the Duke Energy Convention Center downtown. Get to know each of them a little better.

JEAN-ROBERT DE CAVEL

J

EAN-ROBERT DE CAVEL IS A first-name-basis kind of person. There is a welcome, collective affinity in Cincinnati for the man people refer to, most appropriately in the service industry, as “Chef.”

A mainstay in the local culinary world since his arrival in 1993, de Cavel’s ascent through his adopted home city has truly made him a Great Living Cincinnatian. But he’s quick to give credit to everyone he met along the way.

“That’s something I got very lucky without realizing, the support of everyone,” says de Cavel. “People adopted me very quickly, and I think when people adopt you, you feel comfortable. It was easier in Cincinnati to become more myself than it was in New York City.”

One of the people who “adopted” de Cavel is former City Councilman Jim Tarbell. “Mr. Tarbell, who I have such a respect for, came and introduced himself. I think it was barely a few weeks after I was there, and he picked me up on a Saturday morning and drove me to Findlay Market. Of course, at end of 1993, Findlay Market was not what Findlay Market is today, but I was amazed by meeting all of the vendors, and he introduced me to everybody.”

Born in France and trained at Le Feguide culinary school in Lille, de Cavel made his way to the U.S. as Chef de Cuisine at La Regence and La Gauloise in New York City before joining downtown’s famous Maisonette the day after Thanksgiving in 1993, taking over as Chef de Cuisine until 2003.

“I did the same thing I would have done anywhere else, which is not try to make the city better but being proud of what Cincinnati is,” he says. “I realized it was a different time and what people were looking for, but the Maisonette was such an institution in Cincinnati. I wanted to keep that institution and keep some of the things that were done for many, many decades and were done so well. Even foodwise, it was not something I’d learned in my past, but it was something I respected because of the quality and the way it was done.”

His dedication to the art of food means

de Cavel has always been ahead of his time, and indelible markers of his personable restaurant legacy remain all across the city.

Following his Maisonette years, his portfolio of acclaimed restaurants has included Jean-Robert at Pigall’s, Greenup Cafe, Restaurant L, La Bar au Bouef, Jean-Robert’s Table, and French Crust, among others.

Earlier this year, Seventh Street at the corner of Seventh and Vine downtown was renamed Jean-Robert de Cavel Way. So what is his secret to success? “What I do is very simple: You have to be a little bit of a perfectionist, you have to be consistent,” he says. “Consistency is one of the measures of a successful hospitality business. Because then people understand what you want, people understand what your visions are, and then they want to be part of it and help you.”

For de Cavel, being in the hospitality business and making meals for people is an

intimate kind of experience that should be treated with some amount of reverence. “We are not at the mercy of others, but we are there to serve people, bring them experience, bring them memories,” he says. “It’s what the name of the hospitality business is. I think many of the memories in life are food memories based on the products you may receive but also on the experience you share.”

In 2018, de Cavel was diagnosed with leiomyosarcoma, an aggressive soft-tissue cancer. In 2019, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award at the American Cancer Foundation Strider’s Ball. He fights with quiet grace and determination, just two of his many virtues.

“It’s another challenge in life,” he says.

“What are you going to do? Are you going to give up? Why? You cannot. Giving up is not part of me. You have to take your challenge and do the best you can.”

49 REALM WINTER 2021

DONNA JONES BAKER

A

LWAYS ACT WITH INTEGRITY, be fair to everyone, and do everything with intention. That’s the credo Donna Jones Baker has operated by over the course of her leadership career, capped off by a 15-year run as President and CEO of the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio, a position she retired from in 2019.

“You don’t just do things,” she says. “You have to have intention to create or to solve or to initiate. You have to have a reason for being, and that’s my motto, if I’ve got one. I like to think of myself in social justice, as strengthening the community, and you do that by strengthening institutions that strengthen the community.”

That path of intentionality started in 1989, when Baker became executive director of the 50 REALM WINTER 2021

Associated Black Charities of Baltimore. “That was my first big job, and I loved it,” she says.

“It was a half-million-dollar organization with one funder and three staff when I started, and when I left it was Associated Black Charities of Maryland, a $25-million organization, numerous funders, and 50 staff. We were the little engine that could.”

Baker did much the same at the Urban League here, growing it from a staff of 20 to 75 employees. It also became the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio after merging with the Dayton Urban League.

“There are a few things I am most proud of,” says Baker. “We created the Business Development Division at the Urban League, and that Business Development Division helped small

and minority businesses and helped to create and to grow them. And we added a component that certifies women-owned businesses in partnership with WBENC, the nation’s largest certifier of women-owned businesses.”

Born in Paducah, Kentucky, Baker earned a bachelor’s degree in social work from Murray State University, the first person in her immediate family to attend college. Her mother told her all along she could do it. “She let me know that I could do anything that I wanted to do,” says Baker. “So that really came from her, that nudging, that encouragement, that firm belief that I am somebody.”

She also earned her MBA from the University of Baltimore, where she was honored with an Outstanding Alumnus Award. “I got the MBA because I wanted to be the person who made the decisions,” she says. “I felt I could be a really good leader, and when I looked around at those leading organizations the top people had MBAs. That one decision, I believe, helped me throughout my career and was pivotal in my work.”

Baker cares deeply about the constituents the Urban League serves, speaking at graduations for programs like SOAR (Solid Opportunities for Advancement and Retention) and staying in touch with mentees. “SOAR helped individuals to get jobs,” she says. “I had one individual who said he was dropped off from prison in Cincinnati and asked around where should he go, and they told him the Urban League. When he graduated from the three-week-program, he said he came to us feeling like the gum on the bottom of somebody’s shoe. I literally cried when he said that, because no man should ever feel that he’s worthless. He then went on to Cincinnati Cooks, and he’s doing fine now.”

Among Baker’s most valued accomplishments at the Urban League are the creation of the Business Development and Entrepreneurship division, the merger with the Dayton Urban League, and the publication of two significant Urban League regional reports, The State of Black Cincinnati and The State of Black Dayton.

Among many other civic endeavors, Baker has also served on several boards, including 13 years on the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber Board, which named her Woman of the Year (Nonprofit) in 2014.

In July 2020, she underwent a rare dual heart and kidney transplant at University Hospital.

She’s currently focusing on her health recovery, grateful for her home base of Cincinnati. “I am not a native, and the city has embraced me,” says Baker. “I am now a Cincinnatian.”

ROGER HOWE

T

HE STORY OF HOW ROGER Howe, an Ohio farm boy, became a CEO, university philanthropist, and Great Living Cincinnatian can best be summed up in one word: fortuitous. The first instance was attending Miami University, where he would meet his wife Joyce and which would, decades later, become the subject of much of his public service and their philanthropic focus. The next was when he was assigned to the Cincinnati sales office of a Boston paper company after graduation, where he reported to a “wonderful mentor” who went on to become the company’s CEO. After eventually working in the Boston headquarters, Howe left the company and returned to Cincinnati in 1970, where he purchased U.S. Precision Lens, a small optics company. “I’d long had a desire to have my own business,” he says, mentioning how he and a partner had a successful bicycle business on Miami’s campus in the 1950s. “Not for everyone, but I liked the idea of working for myself.

I wanted to build a business and have perhaps more control over my destiny than I might have otherwise.”

Under Howe’s leadership, U.S. Precision Lens grew to be a juggernaut in the optics world, expanding from a dozen employees to over 600 by 1986 and dominating production of video plastic/glass hybrid optics for every world maker of projection television systems.

He sold the company to Corning in 1986, remained as Chairman and CEO until 1989, and was board chair until his retirement in 1997.

In 1977, in a then-uncommon move, Howe published a business philosophy—essentially a five-part value statement. Part IV, Regarding Personal Performance, states in part: “Our personal and corporate success requires that we not only adjust to change, but that we also help to bring it about.”

“The reason I did it was our culture within the company was pretty well understood when we were very small and building it, but as we kept getting new people, passing this on really this was all about establishing everybody knew what we believed in, what our culture was, and how we treated each other,” says Howe. “So every new employee got that statement.”

To that end, Howe has given freely of himself to multiple corporate boards and charitable institutions. He served 47 years as a trustee of The Christ Hospital, including as chairman from 1989 to 1992. Today he remains a trustee of the Elizabeth Gamble Deaconess Home Association.

Miami University holds a special place in Howe’s heart, though. He’s served nine years on the Miami University board of trustees, three as chair. And since 1992, Howe and Joyce have been laser-focused on helping Miami University students become better writers and communicators through their Howe Center for Writing Excellence.

“What we’re doing with writing at Miami is transformational,” he says. “There’s nothing like this campus-wide effort in America, and none funded like it. It’s well known throughout academia, and so that’s a big deal in our lives. [ Joyce and I] believe that excellent writing is

the common thread within highly successful people. Every good leader and CEO I’ve known is an excellent communicator with the written word.”

Howe is particularly proud of a recent Writing Center success story. “Mariel Padilla worked in the Writing Center with students for three years, and then she went to Columbia University’s School of Journalism. And she was sitting in her journalism class in the first year, and a friend texted her and said, Did you just win a Pulitzer Prize? Well, she was an intern at The Enquirer when they won the Pulitzer in 2018.”

Here again, Howe walks the walk. He has published two books, including A Farm Kid’s Journey, a memoir for his descendants. The other, a history of U.S. Precision Lens, shares a name with his unofficial motto. “That would be: Doing interesting things with interesting people in interesting places,” he says.

51 REALM WINTER 2021

DR. CHARLES O. DILLARD

C

HARLES O. DILLARD IS QUICK to point out the difference between his name and his father’s—their middle initial—but the similarities are otherwise hard to ignore. The son followed a close parallel to his father over the course of his life serving in the military, joining him in the medical field, choosing to practice in underserved communities in Cincinnati, and practicing for just about 50 years.

“His practice was in the West End at that time, and he made care available to everyone, and I’ve done the same thing,” says Dr. Dillard.

“I wasn’t going to come back home because he was a doctor here. I said, ‘Oh, well, he’s already done it, I’ll go somewhere else.’ ” 52 REALM WINTER 2021

For Cincinnatians, it’s a good thing he came back. Dr. Dillard has continued to help underserved and disadvantaged communities over the course of his career, and even now, after retirement, he’s not quite done. “Well, one of the main things I do now is purchase fruit and give it to areas where kids can’t afford fruit,” he says.

“I’ve been giving it to the Boys and Girls Club, a couple inner city schools, some of the food pantries. This work ties into something I do with the military organization called Mission Readiness—our aim is to provide food and to lobby the politicians to put more money in early childhood education and nutrition.”

A graduate of Fisk University, Dr. Dillard

(again following his father’s wisely-tread path) attended Meharry Medical College, the historically black medical school in Nashville. After graduation, he served two years in the Army via the doctor draft, leaving in 1964. He finished his residency in Detroit in 1967 and returned to Cincinnati, opening an office in Avondale.

“In medicine, I’ve always advocated that healthcare should be a right, not a privilege,” says Dr. Dillard. “I just felt that the poor and disadvantaged need quality healthcare, and unfortunately it’s rationed to those without the means.

Money talks and buys the best healthcare. I was instrumental in setting up a neighborhood health center where we didn’t turn away people without health insurance or other resources. All along in my practice, I’ve been very, very intent on making sure that healthcare should be available for everyone.”

Through his work with Caring Partners International, both as a doctor and as a board member, Dr. Dillard serves as a medical missionary (something he has also done through the military in 15 countries) and collects much-needed medical supplies. “We would subsidize medication, to make sure that people got the right medicine,” he says. “They would see the doctor but couldn’t afford the medicine, so we tried to overcome that barrier. Not just here, but going to disadvantaged parts of the world and providing health care. One of the plans we insisted on was, where we provide the healthcare, we set up plans to not just be there one day and gone the next, but to keep an ongoing availability of care.”

In the late 1970s, Dr. Dillard decided to give military service a try again and joined the Ohio National Guard. He became one of the first African American medical officers in the country to attain the rank of Brigadier General.

He serves as a backup physician for the MRDD center in Batavia. He’s also an active member of the NAACP, Zion Baptist Church, Alpha Phi Alpha, and Sigma Pi Phi. In 1980, Dr. Dillard purchased a building in Walnut Hills to transform into a medical center, which eventually became the community and business center it is today. Once more, his father’s influence lives on. “I named the building after my father, the Charles E. Dillard Memorial Building,” he says. “I tell people I’m not vain—it’s not named after me, it’s named after my father.”

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PHOTO ESSAY

BRIDGING THE GAP IN LOCAL FUNDING OKI announces its next round of infrastructure grants to help fund roadway, trail, and transit projects on both sides of the river.

–JOHN FOX

PHOT OGR A PHS: TIM BAYER, LOGAN CASE, B R IT TANY D EXT ER , D EVYN GLISTA, J U S TI N S CH A F E R

56 REALM WINTER 2021

P HHOETAODGSRHAOPTHCBY O U RD TE EVSY Y N TGKL ITSKTA

WINTER 2021 REALM 57

PHOTO ESSAY

REGIONAL PRIORITIES

In October, the Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana Regional Council of Governments (OKI) approved its next round of federal funding grants to area infrastructure projects, awarding a total of $53.8 million to 26 applying organizations. The projects include roadway, bridge, and sidewalk repairs; public transit upgrades; safety improvements; and bike/ pedestrian access improvements. Funds will be dispersed starting this Spring.

EAST OF EDEN

A total of $6 million was awarded to rehab work on the bridge connecting Eden Park to Victory Parkway and Walnut Hills (above and previous pages) over Kemper Road. Vehicle lanes will be reduced, sidewalks will be extended along Eden Park Drive, and street lighting will be replaced.

The city of Cincinnati plans to add an on-street bike facility.

EASY RIDING

The Transit Authority of Northern Kentucky will receive $2.2 million to replace four diesel buses with hybrid electric models. TANK currently has 23 hybrid buses in service (above and right), accounting for nearly one-third of its fixed-route fleet, and acquired its first ones in 2007.

58 REALM WINTER 2021

BIKE AROUND THE AIRPORT

Boone County received more than $2.4 million total for two new sections of the CVG Loop Trail, planned as a 14-mile pedestrian and bicycle trail around the airport. The first segment of trail runs beside Aero Parkway (left and below), and these extensions will be designed later in 2022 primarily along county- and state-owned right of way on Donaldson Road and connecting streets.

WEST IS BEST

One of the region’s most significant infrastructure projects, a replacement for the Western Hills Viaduct (left and bottom), received $1 million in this funding cycle. As OKI noted in its announcement, a total of $126 million is in place for the project through federal, state, and local funding, including more than $18 million from OKI. It’s possible that funds from the $1.2 trillion federal infrastructure bill could be allocated to the viaduct as well.

H E A D S H O T C O U R T E SY T K T K

We’re addressing healthcare’s toughest challenges - and we can’t do it without you.

FOR THE LATEST ON COVID-19 TESTING AND VACCINATION VISIT: testandprotectcincy.com Join us healthcollab.org/membership

ASK ME ABOUT

KATE SCHRODER NEW CEO INTERACT FOR HEALTH My ASK ME ABOUT vision for a healthy and strong Cincinnati.

JOHN BANCHY PRESIDENT AND CEO THE CHILDREN’S HOME

HOW DID THE PANDEMIC AFFECT YOUR MISSION OF SERVING AREA KIDS? Most of our counselors and therapists are in schools, and clients see our providers during the academic day.

When schools closed, we had to figure out how to keep serving kids. We were able to craft a telehealth system, and our telehealth visits

increased nearly 400 percent in one year to about 60,000 visits total.

HAS THE DEMAND FOR YOUR SERVICES GROWN SINCE THE PANDEMIC? The demand for our services has steadily increased every year. In 2015, we served 6,657 clients, and by 2021 we were serving nearly 15,000.

Our country is

62 REALM WINTER 2021

ASK ME ABOUT How the pandemic has impacted our mission of helping children.

getting better at diagnosing mental and behavioral health challenges. If anything, the pandemic and social isolation exacerbated issues and brought others to the surface.

HOW DO YOU HOPE TO CONTINUE GROWING THE ORGANIZATION? We recently opened a Pediatric Urgent Care Mental Health clinic,

which is the first of its kind in our region, and we’ve welcomed Cincinnati Arts and Technology Studios (CATS) into our cadre of services. Our students attend more than 300 schools in the region, and we provide services in another 200 community locations.

We’re hiring more licensed social workers to meet the

communities’ needs. We’ve been serving our neighbors since 1864, and I think people recognize an organization that simply wants to do good things for our community. — E L I Z A -

BETH MILLER WOOD

IN WHAT WAYS HAVE YOU SEEN DEI IMPROVEMENT IN THE BANKING INDUSTRY BECAUSE OF THE OHIO BANKERS LEAGUE’S EFFORTS? One is the strategic engagement, communication, and implementation from the leadership of banking institutions. Another is institutions like the Summer Banking Institute, which has the goal of creating job opportunities for diverse talent coming out of universities.

WHY ARE DEI INITIATIVES PARTICULARLY ESSENTIAL TO THE BANKING INDUSTRY? First, as we have an aging employment base alongside a growing industry, there is a deficit of minority talent. Second, there’s a great need to look at underbanked or unbanked populations. If minority populations don’t trust the industry and are not utilizing banking services, it impacts their ability to

P H O T O G R A P H C O U R T E SY T H E C H I L D R E N ’ S H O M E

WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT WHEN IT COMES TO KEEPING CINCINNATI HEALTHY? We have huge disparities in our health outcomes throughout this region. Life expectancy can vary by up to 20 years depending on the neighborhood in which someone is born.

Black babies in Cincinnati are three times more likely to die than white babies. These differences are

build wealth. When minority talent has a deeper understanding of banking, they go back and share that with their communities. That’s a win-win-win for banking institutions, for citizens, and for the state.

IN WHAT WAYS DO YOU FEEL THE INDUSTRY STILL HAS ROOM TO IMPROVE? We have a long way to go in terms of demystifying the banking industry for minority populations, getting greater numbers of minority representation, and decreasing numbers of the unbanked and underbanked. We’ve got to do better in terms of minorities who serve on boards of directors of financial institutions, but I think we’re on the right track. I think OBL is leading in the right direction.

unacceptable.

As a community, we need to come together to move the needle and improve overall health outcomes, especially health equity.

and then work tirelessly to make measurable progress on these. In my work, I’ve always strived to live out the African proverb: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

WHAT STRATEGIES DO YOU HOPE TO ENACT TO TACKLE WHAT ROLE DO SOME OF THESE CHALLENGES? My VACCINATIONS vision is that PLAY IN OUR can we rally CURRENT HEALTH around a colLANDSCAPE? As lective health agenda—aligning resources and partner efforts around a shortlist of top priorities—

someone who spent many years working in global health, I’ve seen firsthand the indescrib-

able anguish of preventable deaths and the life-saving power of vaccines.

Everyone deserves access to life-saving medicines and vaccines. Equitable access and reliable information are things we should all strive for across our neighborhoods, our country, and our global community.

— E.M.W.

KEITH BORDERS VICE PRESIDENT OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT UNION SAVINGS BANK ASK ME ABOUT My work to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the banking industry.

— E.M.W.

P H O T O G R AHPEHASD SCHOOUTR TCEOSY U R (TTEOSYP ) TKKATT KE S C H R O D E R / ( B O T T O M ) K E I T H B O R D E R S

WINTER 2021 REALM 63

FROM THE DESK OF

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3

4

1

LOGISTICS

ONWARD, UPWARD

You might be flying out of CVG less during the pandemic, but CEO Candace McGraw says expansion work has continued. The Car Rental Center opened in October adjacent to the terminal, eliminating shuttle rides, as did a $70-million runway upgrade.

She says passengers are returning, with 2021 numbers finishing at 70 percent of 2019 (compared to the projected 50 percent). – J O H N F O X

A cardboard Bruce Springsteen inspires McGraw and has been known to participate in her Zoom calls. She’s seen The Boss perform about 25 times.

1

64 REALM WINTER 2021

Alaska and Sun Country joined CVG’s airline lineup in 2021, including cargo carriers, represented by model planes gifted to McGraw over the years.

2

A collection of business books are fronted by a small plaque reading, “Dear Karma: I have a list of people you missed.”

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McGraw received a Canadian flag sash after leading the Airport Council International’s North American region and “loving” her “fun” Canadian colleagues.

4

P H O T O G R A P H BY D E V Y N G L I S TA

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Joseph B Beshear uses LiveWell Capital as a marketing name for doing business as representatives of Northwestern Mutual. LiveWell Capital is not a registered investment adviser, broker-dealer, insurance agency or federal savings bank. 07-1002 © 2020 Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company (NM), (life and disability insurance, annuities, and life insurance with long-term care benefits) and its subsidiaries in Milwaukee, WI. Joseph B Beshear provides investment brokerage services as a Registered Representative of 1RUWKZHVWHUQ 0XWXDO ,QYHVWPHQW 6HUYLFHV //& 10,6 , a subsidiary of NM, broker-dealer, registered investment adviser and member FINRA and SIPC. Joseph B Beshear is a District Agent(s) of NM. Joseph B Beshear provides investment advisory services as an Advisor of Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Company®, (NMWMC) Milwaukee, WI, a subsidiary of NM and a federal savings bank. There may be instances when this agent represents companies in addition to NM or its subsidiaries.