Columbus CEO - August 2020 issue

CEOs at home What it’s really like in their WFH spaces.

Page 48

Densil Porteous Showing up as a leader in the community when new voices are in demand.

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August 2020

Work shift Are the normal workday, crowded elevators and rush hour a thing of the past?

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Contents 26

home sweet home There’s no place like remote since the onset of Covid-19.

Working from home may be here to stay even when the pandemic finally ends.

30 The disrupters The pandemic isn’t the first historical event to turn the workplace upside down.

August 2020

Nathan Heerdt, CEO of Healthy Roster, and Ruby in his home office.

Photo by ROB HARDIN

Cover illustration and design by

Yogesh Chaudhary Cover photo courtesy

Istock.com/XIJIAN August 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Departments 62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289 Columbus, Ohio 43216 Phone: 614-540-8900 • Fax: 614-461-8746

ColumbusCEO.com

VOLUME 29 / NUMBER 8 Columbus Site Manager

Alan D. Miller

Publisher/General Manager

Ray Paprocki

Associate Publisher/Advertising Director

Rheta Gallagher Editorial

05 Editor’s Note Getting executive recruiting of diverse candidates right is difficult.

45 Leaderboards Central Ohio catering companies

48 Office Space–WFH Marcy Fleisher’s German Village home office blends historic and contemporary.

EDITOR

Katy Smith

Insider

CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Jeff Bell Rebecca Walters Design & Production

PRODUCTION/DESIGN DIRECTOR

Craig Rusnak ART DIRECTOR

Yogesh Chaudhary Digital EDITOR

Julanne Hohbach ASSISTANT DIGITAL EDITOR

Brittany Moseley

07 Breakdown A Dispatch Magazines survey of eventgoers indicates people are staying home.

08 Profile: Bridge builder

Crane R&D is applying data analytics to society’s biggest problems.

12 Tech Talk

22 Spotlight: Emerging Business

A Columbus-developed software platform helps employers become Flexable.

Photography

16 Spotlight: Small Business

Emma Frankart Henterly PHOTO EDITOR

Tim Johnson Associate photo editor

Rob Hardin Advertising

ADVERTISING Manager

Susan Kendall

CLASSIFIED SALES

Amy Vidrick

20 Spotlight: Innovation

Densil Porteous is facing big challenges in leading Stonewall Columbus and the new Pride Fund 1.

PROJECT MANAGER

Custom Content

Shanna Dean

Our Bar & Lounge owners have gotten creative in finding funding.

18 Spotlight: Nonprofit Make-A-Wish helps critically ill children reimagine their dreams.

A new vegan restaurant had to adapt quickly to regain its momentum.

24 CEO Corner Execs say some temporary changes are here to stay.

In-Depth

DO JU

34 Health Watch

08

Health care systems are helping their healers cope with stress.

SALES ASSISTANT

Heather Smits

36 Virtual Events

Marketing

MARKETING MANAGER

Here are some tips to make the most out of all those online meetings.

Lauren Reinhard

LETTERS: letters@columbusceo.com PRESS RELEASES

Advertising Section

pressreleases@columbusceo.com ADVERTISING

advertising@columbusceo.com Columbus CEO (ISSN 1085-911X) is published monthly by Gannett. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © Gannett Co., Inc. 2020, all rights reserved. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited materials. Known address of publication is 62 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio 43215. Periodicals postage paid at Columbus, Ohio, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Senzd address changes to Columbus CEO, 62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289, Columbus, OH 43216.

SUBSCRIPTIONS

Densil Porteous Photos by Rob Hardin

Business practices in the time of coronavirus and educating staff on social issues. A little focus is what it takes to navigate these topics.

Page 39

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Editor’s Notes * ksmith@ColumbusCEO.com

he opening sentence of a December story in the New York Times said it all: “It is no secret that the corporate world has a diversity problem.” The story—written by one of the very few Black print journalists working today, Lauretta Charlton—went on to detail how sustained diversity and inclusion efforts at the nation’s big companies are failing African-Americans, according to the results of a recent study. Case in point: As of June, only five Fortune 500 companies had Black CEOs—Lowe’s, Merck & Co., M&T Bank, Tapestry and TIAA. The reasons are varied, according to the study, “Being Black in Corporate America,” which was based on interviews with 3,736 professionals of all races and produced by the nonprofit Center for Talent Innovation, which is funded by large corporations including Johnson & Johnson, KPMG, Morgan Stanley and Disney. Chief among the roadblocks to Black people in the C-suite is a lack of Black professionals in the first place. The report found while they comprise 10 percent of college degree holders, just 8 percent of working professionals are Black, and only 3.2 percent are senior-level executives and managers.

When you layer on the challenges faced by people tasked with recruiting diverse candidates for top-level jobs, the picture grows starker. Eric Douglas Keene, founder and president of Keene Advisory Group, says the basic infrastructure of the search world works against identification of diverse candidates, which his Chicago-based boutique firm has made its specialty. Keene, who grew up in Shaker Heights and regularly returns to Cleveland and Columbus on business, spent the first part of his career at executive search behemoths McKinsey & Co. and Russell Reynolds Associates, and he’s seen firsthand how conflicts of interest keep many diverse candidates off the table

istock.com/Prostock-Studio

T

Yes/and, not either/or

for executive searches. Large firms balk at asking candidates who work for other clients to interview for new positions. “They are what we call offlimits in the industry,” Keene says.

And searches can fail if there isn’t engagement at the highest levels of an organization. “If the top leadership has not bought into this, then everything that you execute beneath it is really just a Band-Aid,” Keene says. A truly robust search goes beyond networking to include technology and dedicated researchers, he says. The excuse that there were no qualified candidates who were also diverse doesn’t cut it. “It’s both/ and, not either/or. And I’m flagrantly borrowing that from the former chief diversity officer of Case Western Reserve University, Marilyn Mobley, when I use that phrase,” Keene says.

“It’s particularly poignant when we speak about issues of diversity and inclusion. Our hypothesis is that there are fantastic qualified candidates of color and women who are out there. It is incumbent upon the search firm and the companies to go out there and find them.”

••• True diversity is one characteristic that defines the most collaborative, ingenious places to work. There are many others, such as an environment of emotional safety, having one’s voice heard and ideas advanced, and of course, competitive pay and benefits should go without saying.

Now is your chance to check in with your employees and see how they’re doing as the pandemic wears on, and see if yours makes the cut as one of the Columbus region’s Top Workplaces. To participate in the magazine’s annual program and have your employees surveyed by our partner Energage, go to columbusceo. com/nominate. The program is open to companies with 50 or more employees. Nominations close Sept. 18.

Katy Smith, Editor August 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Breakdown Compiled by katy smith + Infographic by Yogesh Chaudhary

No appetite for live events Business gatherings remain unlikely to resume in 2020, according to the results of a mid-June survey conducted by Dispatch Magazines, the division of Gannett that houses Columbus CEO, Columbus Monthly, Alive and Parent.

Dispatch Magazines events draw thousands of attendees each year, from Top Workplaces to Best New Restaurants, Best of Business,

Healthcare Achievement and more.

Slightly more than half of respondents said they would not feel comfortable at an event of any size attendance this year—and that was before Covid-19 cases began to spike in Ohio in early July.

Nearly 90 percent of survey respondents said they’d attended a virtual event or webinar since the pandemic began, and 86 percent

found such events valuable.

However, in comments, respondents shared more lukewarm feelings about virtual events: “I feel like the content is all the same,” “Nice thought in theory—not the same as one-on-one connections,” “becoming burned out on them, but trying to stay positive.”

The online survey drew 225 responses from June 15-22.

When will you feel safe to begin to gather at an event?

Since the panademic began, have you attended a virtual event?

If yes, did you find the virtual event valuable?

0.4%

10.4%

14.5%

31.8%

21.4% 21.8%

17.3% n July/Aug 2020 n Sept/Oct 2020 n Nov/Dec 2020

89.6%

7.3% n Jan/Feb 2021 n Spring 2021 or later n Never again

n Yes n No

85.5% n Yes n No

e s t. t s Source: Dispatch Magazines survey June 15-22

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profile

By Bob Vitale + Photos by rob hardin

Densil Porteous CEO

Pride Fund 1

Interim executive director

Stonewall Columbus Age: 39 In positions since: June 2020 Experience: Founder, DePorteous Consulting;

previously director of marketing/ communications and outreach, Wexner Center for the Arts; chief admissions officer, Columbus College of Art & Design; admissions roles at Stanford University and Kenyon College; director of college counseling, Drew School.

Community involvement: Chairman, Create Columbus Commission; national board member, Human Rights Campaign; board member, Legacy Fund of the Columbus Foundation Education: Kenyon College, bachelor of arts

in the psychology of gender; University of Phoenix, MBA

Personal: Porteous is partnered and engaged.

He and his partner are foster parents for a 3-year-old girl and live in Victorian Village.

Showing up as a leader Densil Porteous has very quickly found himself at the center of multiple Columbus institutions in flux. He’s prepared to give.

D

ensil Porteous is a person who somehow manages to get the word happy into one sentence three times. As in, “I know I can’t make everyone happy, but it still makes me happy to see people happy.”

Densil Porteous He’s relentlessly positive—but there he was, sitting in a meeting at a former job, waiting for feedback on work he had just presented to senior leadership. He sat back in his chair and clasped his hands together. He hadn’t said a word or made a face or even cocked an eyebrow, but a colleague told him to stop being so defensive.

“I’m not really sure how I’m being defensive,” he remembers saying.

“I’m just sitting here.”

“It’s your body language.”

Porteous, like many Black men and women, knew exactly what was

about to happen. It’s something a lot more people can recognize, too, right now, thanks to the national discussion on systemic racism and microaggressions endured by people of color.

“I know that I can’t get really upset, because the moment I show emotion, I’ll be that case of ‘the angry Black man,’ ” he says now. “I’m not here to do that. It’s a thing that I live by: I show up in these spaces, oftentimes when I’m told not to be there, because I need people to see there are smart, intelligent Black men who can sit in these spaces and do these jobs.”

Porteous is showing up in a lot

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more spaces these days. On June 1, the 39-year-old nonprofit consultant was named CEO of Pride Fund 1, a Columbus-based venture capital fund that backs early-stage businesses headed by LGBTQ entrepreneurs. On June 16, he was hired as interim executive director of Stonewall Columbus, the city’s LGBTQ community center. And on July 1, he was one of 16 people appointed by Mayor Andrew Ginther to serve on a working group that will come up with plans for a civilian review board to oversee the Columbus Division of Police.

“The funny thing is,” he says, “at the beginning of this year my plan was not to be working as hard.”

••• Pride Fund 1 is a new, $10 million effort started in 2019 by Columbusbased Loud Capital. It’s one of very few funds in its space, something “that not only supports the community, but empowers the community,” says Managing Director T. Wolf Starr.

Stonewall Columbus, meanwhile, is a 39-year-old institution that has been besieged by problems for the last three years. The arrest and Stonewallassisted convictions of four Black Lives Matter protesters during its 2017 Pride parade brought into the open longstanding issues of race-based exclusion within a community that fights against barriers based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

Stonewall opened the doors of a remodeled Short North community center a year later, but the building with three times as much space has gone underutilized. This summer, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the annual Columbus Pride festival was rescheduled from June to October and then canceled entirely for 2020.

The event is the biggest source of revenue for Stonewall Columbus.

“There are big questions and big decisions to be made for the organization,” says board President Gerry Rodriguez. “We need strong leadership right now.”

Porteous, who also serves on the national board of governors for the Human Rights Campaign and the board of directors for the Columbus Foundation’s LGBTQ-focused Legacy Fund, jokes that the new positions officially make him “a professional gay.”

He says each offers the ability to

help people be happy, which he believes is everyone’s basic desire.

Needs abound, though, to help more LGBTQ people reach that state.

Fewer than 10 percent of venture capital deals go to women, people of color and LGBTQ entrepreneurs, according to Los Angeles-based Backstage Capital, which focuses its money on those underrepresented groups.

And despite historic advances in LGBTQ civil rights—the latest was a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that applies the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ban on sex discrimination to employmentrelated bias based on sexual orientation or gender identity—people who are gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender still face higher rates of violence, illness, homelessness and poverty.

A few days before the announcement of his Stonewall Columbus appointment, Porteous spoke with local LGBTQ activist Tom Grote during a Facebook Live discussion. Grote asked Porteous to name his “superpower.”

“I said empathy is my superpower,” Porteous recalls. “That is what inspires to me to do the things that I do. To understand that it’s not OK to hurt someone’s feelings. It’s not OK to be mean. You are fighting for people because you want them to be happy.”

Working his way up to that threehappy sentence, he adds: “It makes me happy to see people happy.”

The conversation stuck with Grote.

“I think empathy is one of the most important traits for a leader,” he says.

“I’m incredibly impressed with what Densil has done. I’m also incredibly impressed with who he is.”

••• Porteous was born in Jamaica and grew up in New York. His mother died of complications from HIV/ AIDS in 1995, and Porteous and two of his siblings moved in with an aunt in Atlanta.

He came out as a senior in high school despite family attitudes toward homosexuality that he says were typical in Jamaica, once tagged by Time as the most homophobic place on Earth.

On top of that, HIV/AIDS was still thought of by many as a “gay disease,” and that disease had recently taken his mother. He didn’t speak with one aunt for eight or nine years. With others in his family, it was a subject to avoid.

It was at Kenyon College—and in

Q&A

Densil Porteous says Pride Fund 1 is about showing investors LGBTQ companies are a good bet.

“I think the industry hasn’t caught up with humanity.”

At the Pride Fund, are you looking to make money for investors or looking to support LGBTQ entrepreneurs?

We are identifying companies that we think will be successful. It is about the return on investments, so we definitely want to make sure they will be successful ventures. That is something investors are expecting.

But if we are able to present good, strong investments that are in the LGBTQ vertical, then other companies will come along and say, “Yes, we will invest more heavily in the LGBTQ venture space because we see it’s OK. It’s safe. They are just as capable as anyone else.”

Research says less than 10 percent of investment deals go to women, people of color and LGBTQ people.

Why do you think they’re so underrepresented?

I think industry hasn’t caught up to humanity. Even in the VC space, this diversity of thought and perspective is slow to change. But it’s happening. It’s happening because more and more companies are putting themselves out there that are LGBTQ-owned or led.

If all you see are upper-class white guys who have gone to some sort of Ivy League school, that’s the traditional model. If people are seeing these different types of people in these spaces, they’re going to start to consider different types of people automatically.

At Stonewall Columbus and Columbus Pride, you work with many corporate sponsors. What is your message for them as the nation focuses more intently on issues of inequality and systemic bias?

I recently communicated with our corporate sponsors and told them, if you do support the LGBTQ community, you’re supporting all lives in the community. You’re supporting Black lives. You’re supporting trans lives. I hope they lean into that. I hope that in this moment, they’re ready to be part of this change that needs to happen.

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Columbus during regular visits— where Porteous says he finally felt at home. He returned to Central Ohio at least twice a year while living in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it’s the reason he came back for good in 2012.

“Central Ohio was the first place I felt like home. It was so welcoming,” he says. “I never had that feeling of home in all the places I’d been. I moved around so frequently.”

Joel Diaz, former director of community affairs for Equitas Health, met Porteous in 1999 when he visited Kenyon as a prospective student from Houston. They’ve been friends ever since and have worked and volunteered together. Porteous was a member of the Equitas board until June.

Diaz calls his friend quiet—“often

I know I can’t make everyone happy, but it still makes me happy to see people happy.

the most silent person in a meeting”— but action-oriented. His comments and those of other LGBTQ leaders illustrate the task ahead in rebuilding the organization. “I hope the Stonewall board will learn how to get out of its own way and let Densil lead the organization to what it should be: a true community center where everyone feels welcome,” Diaz says.

Erin Upchurch, who became the first Black leader of a Columbus LGBTQ organization when she was hired in 2018 as executive director of the Kaleidoscope Youth Center, says Porteous “has the vision to expand [Stonewall] into what it’s meant to be.

“Densil is a vulnerable, honest, wise and kind leader who brings with him the gifts of creativity and courage,” she says. “I trust him. And as a fellow queer, Black leader in our community, I have his back and look forward to leading alongside him.”

Porteous comes to Pride Fund 1 with experience as an adviser to businesses aided by Rev1 Ventures.

He also has worked with Columbus startups such as TicketFire and Acceptd, and with startups focused on

college admissions. He has worked at Kenyon, the Columbus College of Art & Design, Stanford University and Ohio State University.

“At one point in my life I said, ‘You know what you’re going to be, Densil?

You’re going to be the dean of admissions at Kenyon College.’ I picked opportunities and sought things that I believed would help prepare me to be a leader in that space.”

He became versed in marketing, finance and IT and joined nonprofit boards to learn how organizations work. He’ll need his skills in all areas at Stonewall, where Rodriguez became board president in January and says he supports Porteus’ call for people to “hold us accountable.”

In his first month at the helm, Stonewall Columbus announced that it would not contract with Columbus police for security at future Pride events until the division enacts systemic reform. The center challenged its corporate sponsors to support the Black and transgender communities as strongly as they support LGBTQ issues. Porteous also issued Stonewall’s strongest statement yet about the 2017

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Photo courtesy T. WOLF STARR

The LEAP Accelerator pitch night June 17. actions against Black activists, calling the organization’s decisions “regrettably wrong” and part of a “sordid past” of inattention to racial inequities in the LGBTQ community.

Porteous applied to be Stonewall’s executive director in 2018 when its longtime leader stepped down and a member of its board was hired to replace her. He says he was “heartbroken—I’m not going to deny that,” but he continued his own work for

LGBTQ organizations. He’s not sure if he’ll seek the position full-time—his contract runs through December—but considers this a “test drive” for the community, Stonewall and himself.

“In an organization or a community, the leader for that time shows up at the right time,” he says. “What we’re seeing in many of our communities is that leaders are showing up, and not from those traditional places we expect them to come from. We need

to get comfortable in letting these new leaders lead us into the future.”

At the job where clasped hands were interpreted as defensive, Porteous says he felt like an outsider. He remembers looking around the table as no one spoke a word of support.

It wasn’t the first time he felt that way.

“When you are a gay Black man, you are always sort of an outsider within. When you’re Afro-Caribbean, not African-American, then you become once again the outsider within.

For awhile, it was difficult to be Black in the LGBTQ community because you didn’t always feel welcome. I think I’ve always sat in that space.”

But Porteous says he will continue to sit and work and lead in spaces where he thinks he can make an impact.

“If someone sees me in the space, my hope is that some young kid will be inspired to say, ‘I can do that too.’

It’s that notion of just proving, showing up so people are seeing, ‘Oh, there are all these possibilities.’ ” Bob Vitale is a freelance writer.

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To obtain a free market analysis or to find out more about opportunities in Groveport, call Jeff Green at (614)836-5301. www.groveport.org August 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Tech talk

By Cynthia Bent Findlay

Flexable myflexable.com Business: HR technology startup CEO: Ivan Israel Employees: 2 Launch: Summer 2020 (projected)

W

orkers know that even in this strange economy, there’s work out there.

But how to find it?

Companies need reliable employees to get started right away as Covid-19 related stoppages subside and some sectors, such as online retail, grow. But how to find them?

A Columbus startup is preparing to go wheels up on a combination virtual and personal staffing solution called Flexable.

Flexable is software for employers to push onboarding event notifications and materials to workers, a human resources labor reduction tool, says founder and CEO Ivan Israel.

Flexable soon will release an app for public use to capture job seekers and connect them with employers.

Israel says the company’s first clients are in larger-scale light industrial and hospitality such as convention centers, industries needing an influx of workers for seasonal rushes or restaffing efforts.

“Our main focus is the onboarding piece—we want to own that space,”

Israel says. “We go out, get people if employers don’t have them, then onboard them as fast as possible.

Then there’s the retention piece to make sure whoever we bring on, they stay there as long as it makes sense for them to do so.”

A typical relationship might be an employer looking to hire parking lot attendants who have to fill out paperwork, receive a one-hour video training class and meet the employer a day before the first day of employment.

“It’s making sure they’re having the right interactions at the right time,” Israel says.

Flexable aims to empower recruitment and retention; it will not only bring in contract employees, but it also can help find full-time hires.

Flexable incorporated in 2017 and has been in the works on and off as Israel beta tests the model with employers. He says plans are to launch a public app sometime this summer and then scale up.

Thus far, Flexable has been able to increase employee retention for cli-

Photo courtesy Flexable

A startup is ready to launch a staffing platform aimed at making it easy for companies to quickly connect with job seekers.

Ivan Israel ents by anywhere from 40 percent to 60 percent, Israel says. For employers in those industries, that’s huge.

Also, he says, “depending on how much they want to turn on the faucet, we’ve been able to double the new applicants to any given position.”

Israel has another job as CEO of Corporate Elevator, a technology industry HR consultancy. He’s been able to bootstrap development of the Flexable platform along with chief technologist Carl Lewis.

Right now, Israel is keeping his client list and revenue under wraps, but as full launch gets closer, he says a round of fundraising could be in the works.

Ikove principals Rodolfo Bellesi and Flavio Lobato

FIle photo by Rob Hardin

Ikove nursery delivers quadruplets Ikove Capital isn’t going to let a little thing like a global pandemic get in the way of progress.

The Columbus-based startup nursery and venture capital firm has birthed not one, not two, but four startups this spring in the midst of a worldwide economic shut down.

“If we’d even dreamed of a good scenario coming out of all this, this is definitely hitting

the top line of our expectations. We’ve been very busy,” says Flavio Lobato, principal and co-founder of Ikove.

Two of the firms, Notifica Direto and Pague Direto, create financial tech solutions and will be based in Brazil. They aim to solve market issues for borrowers and lenders.

The other two, which are health care technology companies, will be based in Columbus.

Ikostrips will focus on dissolvable CBD strips, offering patients advantages in safety and quantifiable dosages. Matrix Meats will provide nanofiber scaffolding to the cellular meat production industry.

Lobato says Ikove’s team is excited about the “double bottom line” they believe both companies will offer in terms of products that offer benefits to humanity as well as profit.

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briefing

By Katy Smith

A program for Black interns at The Shipyard is the first of its kind, its founders say. The hope is it will spur more.

Osei Appiah

Advancing diversity in marketing

Photo courtesy Ohio State University

R

ick Milenthal says he wishes he’d made a more concerted effort to hire Black interns at his marketing agency, now called The Shipyard, during the past decade. “By now we could have trained dozens of talented, Black professionals. I feel a strong responsibility to get it right this time and do something now,” he says.

So he’s welcoming two paid interns this summer, thanks to a collaboration with the Black Advertising and Strategic Communication Association. The group, founded by Osei Appiah, a professor and associate director of Ohio State University’s School of Communication, has a mission to advance Black students into careers in advertising, public relations and marketing.

Appiah, who created the association 12 years ago, says he is not aware of other Columbus region internships dedicated to improving Black representation in

the advertising field specifically, and the hope is this will lead to more such programs. “There is a pressing need for companies in partnership with academic institutions to rectify the under-representation of Blacks at advertising and marketing firms,” he says in response to questions from Columbus CEO. “Addressing this issue is one of the primary reasons I created the Black Advertising and Strategic Communication Association student organization at Ohio State University.

“The internship The Shipyard has created will help students acquire skills and experience, thereby increasing the pipeline of attractive Black candidates from which local and national agencies can choose.”

The marketing industry’s employee makeup doesn’t reflect the general population, which is its audience, Milenthal says in response to questions. “Black professionals are woefully represented across all levels of agency staffing. We are no better.

This must change.

“We intend to inspire other agencies and marketers to do the same. Frankly, action is long overdue.

Together, we can foster hundreds of new professionals over the coming years and change the face of this industry forever.”

Photo courtesy Dwight Smith

Words matter, but action is critical now Dwight Smith has had a long and distinguished career as founder and CEO of Columbus tech firm Sophisticated Systems, and he is a dedicated community advocate. He’s held roles on the boards of Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus Foundation, Greater Columbus Airport Authority, Columbus State Community College and more. He founded the Ross Leadership Institute at Ohio State University and is the deputy chair of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

But his greatest calling is helping children. Smith and his

wife, Renee, founded TBTG (Thanks Be To God) to provide assistance to children. Their new passion is about the power of words.

My Special Word was founded to encourage children—and adults—to choose a word that represents who they want to be and to live that word every day. Smith’s word, for example, is sold. “As in sold out,” Smith says. “The theory is we are all sold out to something—you’re completely all in. I’m sold out to Christ.”

My Special Word has been embraced at the Kipp Charter

Schools. Now he wants the power of words to manifest in board rooms. He believes words become action—and now is the time for action on matters of racial equality, Smith, 63, says.

“My dad lived in Detroit in the mid-1960s, when there were race riots,” he says. “Back then, the struggle seemed to be about, for and by African Americans. This time is different. Old and young, black and white are locking arms and saying, enough. I really believe there’s going to be material change this time around. I can feel it in my heart.”

Dwight Smith August 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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spotlight

By Tatyana Tandanpolie + Photo by rob hardin

Small Business

Tenacity pays off Our Bar & Lounge’s co-owners have creatively found business funding in the worst time imaginable for bars.

J

ust a year ago, Charles Daniels and Marlon Platt, co-owners of Our Bar & Lounge, were panicking over the state of their Olde Towne East business.

While a line of antsy patrons formed along the pavement awaiting the bar’s 8 p.m. grand opening on July 3, 2019, the team scurried around the bar, turning the fans they’d just purchased on full blast and sitting them in front of the event space’s freshly painted walls.

The painter had finished his job between 7:30 and 7:45 p.m., and with the paint still drying, the fans whirring and the crowd building outside, the duo found themselves at a crossroads marked by one question: Are we going to open?

They did. “We never got any reports that anybody had any paint on them at all, so everything was successful,” Daniels says with a chuckle.

Our Bar & Lounge’s hectic opening night set the tone for the months of

Our Bar & Lounge

890 Oak St. Columbus 43205 @OurBarAndLounge (Facebook, Twitter) Business: Bar Co-owners: Charles Daniels and

Marlon Platt

Employees: 7 Founded: 2019 Revenue: $250,000 (2019)

Marlon Platt and Charles Daniels success that followed. They’d made enough money in the business’ first few months to turn their projected income on its head. After their prosperous 2019 bar season ended with the holidays, the co-owners expected to see a lull in traffic during January and February before picking up again in March.

What they didn’t expect was a world-stopping pandemic.

When Covid-19 hit Columbus in early March, Platt and Daniels met at a similar crossroads.

“We were looking forward to March Madness and the Arnold [Sports Festival] and Saint Patrick’s

Day, all these events that you just have lined up on your calendar that you can’t wait to get to from the business side,” Platt says. “And March 15 came, and it all just stopped.”

(That was the day Gov. Mike DeWine ordered bars to close.)

What felt like a “small vacation” to Daniels and the crew-turned-family at Our Bar became a cause for concern. As pandemic-related restrictions on group gatherings tightened and Covid-19 cases rose, their hopes of quickly reopening the event space at full capacity dwindled—and so did their funding.

They weren’t overly worried,

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“We knew we had the resources of people that could help us fund it outside of our own money. So it was actually exciting.”

Charles Daniels, co-owner, Our Bar & Lounge

though. The business partners with a “lost brother” bond, as Daniels calls it, specialize in finding outside funding.

The year before, after first conceptualizing the business, they found the building that’s now Our Bar, gathered private investors and signed a lease in just three days.

“We knew we had the resources of people that could help us fund it outside of our own money,” Daniels says. “So (launch fundraising) was actually exciting because it was almost a challenge of, ‘If you don’t want to invest, you’re about to miss out on the golden opportunity.’ ” The duo’s tenacity paid off. Our Bar has received SBA loans, a grant from Facebook complete with free advertising credits to promote their business, and a grant from The U, a Columbus-based urban entrepreneur support organization.

They’re also expanding their business to sell Our Bar masks, seeking outdoor event spaces and launching a food truck, Our Kitchen.

Though allowed to reopen by the end of May, the business remained closed through mid-June. For Platt, who’s also the assistant executive director for the African American Male Wellness Agency, that was the best option; the brand’s tagline is “for the people, by the people,” after all.

“So while on the financial side, as a business, [closing] sucks, on a more ethical, health-basis side, it was the right thing to do,” Platt says.

Now that it’s open again, the business operates at half capacity with limited hours. “As long as you can come here, you can have a good time, you feel safe, you feel comfortable, you can be yourself and you can leave with a smile, I’ll feel like the job—our job— will be well done,” Daniels says.

STAY AT HOME

SERIES

Tatyana Tandanpolie is an intern for Columbus CEO. August 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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spotlight

By Heather Barr

Nonprofit

Hope is essential Make-A-Wish is in the business of delighting children, pandemic or not.

S

tephanie McCormick was named president and CEO of Make-A-Wish Ohio Kentucky and Indiana just days before the pandemic closed the nonprofit’s offices. But granting life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses doesn’t stop just because offices are closed and travel is

“The challenge for all Make-A-Wish chapters across the entire enterprise has really been how do you reimagine wishes?”

Stephanie McCormick, president and CEO, Make-A-Wish Ohio Kentucky and Indiana

Make-A-Wish Ohio Kentucky and Indiana 2545 Farmers Dr. Suite 300 Columbus 43235 • oki.wish.org Mission: To grant life-changing wishes for

children with critical illnesses.

President and CEO: Stephanie

McCormick

Employees: 78 Revenue: $14 million (2019) Funding sources: Make-A-Wish America’s National Partnership Program, events, individual giving, major gifts, corporate campaigns.

Stephanie McCormick limited. For Make-A-Wish, “hope is essential,” McCormick says.

Although she has spent a lot of her 40-year career in Southern California, McCormick fell in love with nonprofit work “by accident” while studying education and health at Ohio State University. During her senior year, a professor encouraged her to apply for an internship with the American Lung Association in Columbus, which eventually led to a full-time position with the organization.

Since that career beginning, McCormick has held leadership roles with United Way, YMCA Orange County and the Mariposa Women and Family Center.

Last year, after spending eight and a half years as the CEO of Make-AWish Orange County and the Inland Empire in Southern California, McCormick and her husband decided to move back to the Midwest to be closer to their four children, nine grandchildren and great grandchild.

“You know, you can’t get days back.

We don’t want to miss any more stuff,” she says.

As they began their long drive back to Indiana, Make-A-Wish’s

national office called to offer her an interim CEO position with the Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana chapter. She started the position last September and was officially offered the permanent position March 25, just two days before their local offices closed due to the pandemic.

Make-A-Wish, like many other nonprofits, has had to make drastic changes to continue its work during the pandemic. For a wish-granting organization, this means altering or postponing wishes if necessary.

McCormick says somewhere around 80 percent of the wishes granted by her chapter of Make-AWish include some kind of travel, which meant more than 200 wishes had to be put on hold or postponed when Covid-19 hit. McCormick says the chapter, which is the largest in the country, likely will meet only half of its expected 820 wishes for this fiscal year.

“The challenge for all Make-AWish chapters across the entire enterprise has really been how do you reimagine wishes? And how do you still enlist hope with your wish kids and their families while they’re

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Photo courtesy Make-A-Wish OKI

waiting on a wish?” McCormick says.

Although some families have decided to wait to do their original wish, McCormick says many have picked alternative wishes such as an online shopping spree, a room makeover or a treehouse.

Make-A-Wish also is trying to keep the hope alive by staying in constant contact with families through phone and video calls.

“We’re saying that ‘hope is essential.’ And we want them to still continue to have that hope that their wish will come true, that they will have a memory of that experience for a lifetime,” she says.

Elisabeth Leahy, a Columbus mom, says Make-A-Wish gave her 11-yearold son Mateo something to look forward to as he went through nine months of treatment for soft tissue sarcoma. His wish for a treehouse was granted last spring.

Now, after almost two years in remission from cancer, Mateo still plays in the treehouse with his siblings and friends.

“It gave us something we could focus on in the future,” Leahy says.

“It was like a lighthouse.”

Along with changes to wishes, McCormick says the pandemic has affected Make-A-Wish’s fundraising, with no in-person events. Although it is hosting virtual galas and doing fundraising online, McCormick says she expects 2020 revenue to be down by about $1.2 million from what was collected in 2019.

Although restaurants, stores and attractions such as Disney World in Orlando, Florida, have begun to reopen, it will be awhile before travel is an option for wish kids, as many of them are in the high-risk group for Covid-19 because of the treatments they receive that weaken their immune systems.

For now, McCormick and her team will continue granting as many of the children’s wishes as they can and adapting to any changes as they happen.

“Our world has pivoted,” McCormick says. “I do think that you’re going to see businesses working differently moving forward, including nonprofits.”

Heather Barr is a freelance writer.

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spotlight

By Laura Newpoff + Photo by Rob hardin

Innovation

The science of emotion Crane R&D combines Jordan Argus’ passions for analysis and outreach.

J

ordan Argus describes himself as “just a kid from Columbus City Schools.” As a Black child who lived on the north side, he considers himself fortunate that in the late 1990s he had the opportunity to get up at 5 a.m. each weekday to prepare for the hour-and10-minute school bus commute to get to Eastmoor Academy. At the time, it was one of two city high schools that offered internships.

After his first one, Argus was certain he’d become a veterinarian.

“I had the stomach for it, the steady hand and I really enjoyed it,” Argus says. “My senior year, however, I went more toward my creative side and interned with a minister. I learned about human expression and the orientation of value systems. The seeds that had been in me now had an opportunity to be watered.”

After graduating in 2001, Argus earned a Bachelor of Arts degree

Crane R&D crane-rd.com

Business: Advanced analytics-driven

consulting practice

Based: Columbus Founded: 2014 Top executive/founder: Jordan Argus Employees: Argus has built a network of 50 consultants who serve as independent contractors.

Revenue: Would not disclose

Jordan Argus

in African and African American studies from Ohio State University.

Adopted as a child, he’d go to work for Parenthesis Family Advocates, which provided counseling to adoptive families and foster children. He’d drive around town in an old, beat-up pickup truck overflowing with sports equipment, providing healthful activity for the neighborhood’s teenage boys, who came to feel comfortable talking to him about their emotions.

He went on to serve as the agency’s liaison to the juvenile court system and later a juvenile probation officer.

The work became his passion. But

he had questions. When a young kid has a bad experience, is he forever stuck on that path? Or, can he break free and travel on a new trajectory? To get answers, Argus would study high-need populations through a criminal science degree path in a master’s program at Tiffin University. He would also earn a doctor of philosophy degree in human services analytics from Capella University while working as a principal and later as the director of alternative education for an urban charter school. Along the way, he found out he was skilled

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at amassing data and performing quantitative research. He’d blend those skills with a human services mission to launch a business.

In 2014, Crane R&D landed its first gig. Argus was asked to analyze demographic data— there were 20 million variables—for the Ohio Lottery Commission. It wasn’t what he had in mind. But the project’s success—an 800 percent return on investment—cemented a belief that his approach to analytics, which was founded on “are we actually getting a number for what we want a number for?” could help clients better understand the questions they needed to ask to solve problems.

Clients that followed include Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Columbus Early Learning Centers and the Nisonger Center at Ohio State University. The firm’s studies touch on topics like infant mortality and electronic opiate intervention. Argus says the company builds intellectual property, sells it and supports it.

Argus taps into a team of 50 consultants who’ve worked at companies, universities, public service agencies, hospitals, nonprofits and classrooms

across the country. He’s proud of their diversity—diverse by race and by experience in the field.

The firm is partnering with the Global Life Chances Improvement Initiative in Columbus on research into how racial trauma fits into mental illness.

“We’re seeing the world we have before us—neuroscience and academic fervor—and translating that into creative programs that engage people and help them learn to hack their sur-

“We’re seeing the world we have before us—neuroscience and academic fervor—and translating that into creative programs that engage people and help them learn to hack their survived trauma.”

Jordan Argus, founder, Crane R&D

Dispatch

ATTRACTIONS

vived trauma,” Argus says. “It’s training people how to do it themselves.

It’s essential because it’s sustainable.

When you give someone a skill, they have it.”

Lawrence Auls, managing director of for-profit arm Global Life Chances Optimizations, says Crane has been instrumental in helping the company develop a neuro-optimization center in Houston that is designed to see if the brain can be stimulated to repair itself.

Crane, in partnership with clinical experts, produced new research methodology and 1,200 pages of curriculum, which is being prepared for field testing. The work will give the neuro-optimization center the ability to analyze its performance from a data analytics standpoint.

Auls says Argus has an ability to take “aspirational thoughts and turn them into measurable instruments or curriculum.”

“He has a passion for it,” he says.

“He can see the effects of the wounds of circumstance.”

Laura Newpoff is a freelance writer.

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spotlight

By Brittany Moseley + Photo by Rob hardin

Emerging Business

Adaptation enables endurance

Covid-19 could have been the end of Shanna Dean and Dawn Dickson’s new business, Lifestyle Cafe. Instead, it let them refocus.

S

hanna Dean grew up in the kitchen. She learned to cook from her grandmother, who taught her to make pork chops, greens and macaroni and cheese. Today, the dishes Dean prepares looks a little different, but her love of cooking remains.

In January, Dean and her longtime friend Dawn Dickson opened Lifestyle Cafe, a vegan restaurant in Olde

“Buying Black, it’s a lifestyle. It’s something that should continue. For the Black community, on an economic level, it’s empowering.”

Shanna Dean, co-founder, Lifestyle Cafe

Lifestyle Cafe

891 Oak St., Columbus, 43205 thelifestyle.cafe Business: Vegan restaurant Founders: Shanna Dean and Dawn Dickson Employees: 6 Revenue: $25,000 monthly pre-Covid

Shanna Dean Towne East in a space previously occupied by Angry Baker. It was a perfect fit for a diverse and growing neighborhood in need of plant-based options. But opening a restaurant was never part of Dean’s career plan.

After getting a degree in vocal performance, Dean took over her grandfather’s business, Right Now Courier, in 2006, which she continues to run today. Then in 2013, she decided to attend culinary school at age 34. At the time, Dean was new to veganism, but she had been a vegetarian for years.

“I was cooking a lot of food at home, and I would always entertain people, but in 2013 I decided that I wanted to go to culinary school so I could learn some tricks of the trade,” Dean says.

“I didn’t want to go into the restaurant industry at first, because I was not interested in the angry chef yelling at me and telling me what

to do. I wasn’t interested in that fast-paced kitchen life,” Dean says.

However, that changed when Dickson approached her with the idea for Lifestyle Cafe.

“It’s always been my vision to help bring to life a vegan restaurant in Columbus,” says Dickson, who also owns PopCom, an automated retail technology company. “I’m not a chef, and I didn’t have any restaurant experience, but it’s something that I knew that I would put my money into, because I felt like it was really a need.”

Dean was hesitant, but after thinking on it for a couple of days, she was in. Dickson put together a team of investors, many of whom also invested in PopCom, and Lifestyle Cafe opened Jan. 20.

For Mo Wright, it was an easy decision to invest in Lifestyle Cafe.

“One of the things that compelled me was just a growing vegan, plant-based

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population in America,” says Wright, president and CEO of Rama Consulting. “There’s a growing opportunity to change how we eat and what we eat, and at the same time not feel like you’re always eating just a salad. That got me engaged.”

For the first two months, things went well for Lifestyle Cafe. Then came March and the coronavirus.

With dine-in no longer an option, the owners reduced hours and added delivery. They received funding from the Paycheck Protection Program and the CARES Act, which allowed them to stay open even as sales fell 80 percent.

“It’s not all bad news, because we got a good two-month run in validating the market, validating the product. It’s something that people want.

People definitely support it,” Dean says. “Of course, we would like to have it booming, [but the pause] gave us a chance to regroup.”

One thing that put Lifestyle Cafe ahead in terms of adapting to Covid-19 was the restaurant has always conducted its transactions without cash.

Customers order and pay for their food at kiosks. “Me coming from a tech background and having PopCom, which is an automated retail technology company, my position was always that we want the restaurant to be a new kind of model where it’s cashless and contactless,” Dickson says.

Today, Lifestyle Cafe offers online ordering for pickup and delivery through DoorDash and UberEats.

Dean and Wright say sales are good and show signs of returning to preCovid numbers.

“They’ve been strong the last month, and I think that’s been fueled by the resurgence of people coming back out and with everything going on with local social justice stuff,” Wright says. “I think folks have been really intentional about supporting Blackowned businesses.”

Dean wants people to remember that buying Black is not a fad.

“Buying Black, it’s a lifestyle. It’s something that should continue,” Dean says. “For the Black community, on an economic level, it’s empowering. It helps to build better relationships, stronger community. My message is, continue to do that.”

Brittany Moseley is assistant digital editor for Dispatch Magazines.

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Agenda

CEO Corner

Compiled by Katy Smith

Up to the Challenge Companies are facing unprecedented change during the pandemic. What temporary changes have been made in your organization that may become permanent?

Tom Krouse

Mike Davis

Brian Brooks

President & CEO, Donatos Pizza

President, Junior Achievement of Central Ohio

President, E.E. Ward Moving & Storage

A silver lining of this crisis has been the creation and quick implementation of a number of things we will continue postpandemic. From a service standpoint, we developed an entire curbside pickup program, which we will complement with exciting new technologies moving forward. We also will continue contactless delivery for those customers who want a simple, no-hassle experience.

In terms of the organization, we found that our communications such as nationwide Zoom calls, videos from Jane Grote Abell and I, daily huddles, and more had value way beyond the pandemic.

Much of this experience has made us better as a company.

Junior Achievement’s traditional programs depend on volunteers in the classroom and at our facility to serve K-12 students through our financial literacy, work-readiness and entrepreneurship educational experiences. Covid-19 has challenged us to rethink what is possible.

We have adapted our traditional programs to online formats, as well as developed completely new digital experiences for students. JA is excited to re-engage students and volunteers in the classroom when it’s safe, but we also love that we are no longer constrained by space and distance. We will continue meeting students’ and educators’ needs, whether in school or out of the classroom.

When stay-at-home orders and safe distancing protocols were mandated in March, E.E. Ward’s sales team switched from using the moving industry standard process for sales estimating to 100% virtual and video surveys. The typical method for estimating moves is to visit customers’ homes or offices to assess the move scope. Implementing a 100 percent video format improved our consultative sales process as well as decreased miles driven by our team for estimates. Going forward we are offering video surveys as a first option. Additionally, this change has the potential to decrease the metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted from driving to sales appointments.

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Work shift If employees were no longer required to report to an office, people could live anywhere. Will WFH be the legacy of Covid-19?

By B0b Vitale + Photo by rob hardin

S

“The identity of a company will no longer be the community in which it operates.

The limitations of a company’s recruitment and all those things will no longer be a factor.”

Sean Lane, CEO, Olive

File/Columbus Dispatch/TOM Dodge

ean Lane hates the thought of “working from home,” “working remotely,” telecommuting or any other term you might use.

At Olive, the medical software company he founded in 2012, you’re either working or you’re not. You’re either on the grid, to use the company lingo, or you’re off. If you’re on the grid, it doesn’t matter to Lane or anyone else at Olive whether you’re at home, at a Starbucks or on a beach, in Columbus or California or anywhere else you choose to call home.

“We’re out of the geography business,” says Lane, whose late-May announcement of a new work model for Olive’s 240 employees was accompanied by a decision to abandon plans to build a new, bigger headquarters in Columbus.

“It’s a radical change,” he continues, thinking of the future of work if others share his ideas. “The identity

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The Rhodes Tower, with 40 floors and 28 elevators, is the quintessential large office setting. It’s a place under construction—physically and metaphorically.

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of a company will no longer be the community in which it operates. The limitations of a company’s recruitment and all those things will no longer be a factor. ‘How are you going to get people to move to Columbus?’ is the story I always had to tell. Now it’s not even a thing, and wow, that’s a whole set of limitations that’s gone. For a family, where you live and why you live there, mostly driven by employment, completely vanishes.

“It’s freedom to roam around the country. You don’t have to stay in a place. You can move.”

None of this radical rethinking of the workplace would have taken place at Olive if not for the global pandemic of Covid-19 and the sudden shift in where and how people work. Lane was decidedly skeptical of such ideas.

But the company, like so many other office-based enterprises, had no choice in March other than to leap fully into a remote-working mode they merely had been dabbling with before.

And Lane, who previously thought

only office environments could fuel the level of energy and collaboration he considers vital in his company, discovered quickly that people’s location wasn’t the key he thought it was.

Traffic on Slack, the communications platform of choice at Olive, more than doubled. Everyone adapted quickly.

“Before this, I believed that everybody needed to be in the same building,” he says. “I thought a lot about (remote work), but I was pretty dogmatic against it. I believed that if you had two companies, all things being equal, and one was remote and the other one was together, that the one together would always win.”

Watershed moment Across Central Ohio, the nation and the world, necessity is now giving birth to reinvention—or at least a reexamination—of the workplace. Business leaders and experts say lessons learned from Covid-19 seem likely to reshape the ways we do business,

much as other watershed events did.

In the 1940s, for example, World War II reshaped ideas about women in the workplace after women took factory and office jobs to help the war effort. The rise of factories during the Industrial Revolution led to the eighthour workday and 40-hour week.

When the elevator was perfected in the mid-19th century, office buildings were born and offices on higher floors became desirable.

The idea of where we report to work appears to be the biggest lasting change on the post-Covid horizon.

Time will tell whether other temporary adjustments become cultural shifts. Are handshakes, water-cooler conversations and communal candy jars dead?

“There have been other moments in time—world wars, advances in technology and other big events—that permanently shifted how society operates,” says Alex Fischer, president and CEO of the Columbus Partnership, the organization of 70-some area CEOs.

Nathan Heerdt, Healthy Roster 28 ColumbusCEO l August 2020

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“Most certainly this is one of those moments as it relates to how people do their work. This may be one of the bigger points of disruption.”

Fischer doesn’t sound too worried about what lies ahead for Columbus in a future no one saw coming just a few months ago. Others predict a realestate glut if businesses en masse forgo physical space for remote setups. They fear business travel and convention and conference business drying up if people stick to teleconferencing.

Fischer, however, focuses on the upside of upheaval. “It means there will be all sorts of innovations, cost efficiencies, better ways of doing things that will rapidly advance.

From that innovation, new companies will grow.”

While some foresee the demise of the office—or at least the demise of large office buildings in favor of multiple sites—Fischer predicts greater attention to space-making in those that remain. David Staley, an associate professor of history and a futurist at Ohio State University, says open office spaces likely won’t survive because of the Covid-era focus on social distancing and physical barriers. A 2019 study published in the Harvard Business Review found them an actual hindrance to employee interaction, anyway.

“As much as I hate to say it,” Staley says, “I think cubes are coming back.”

Neither working environment will make a comeback at Healthy Roster, a 5-year-old health care technology company whose 20 employees began working from home in March. By April, co-founder and CEO Nathan Heerdt realized how well everyone was functioning in a setup considered temporary. By May, after surveying the staff, he decided to give up the company’s office in Dublin. By June, employees were taking desks, monitors and whatever office equipment they wanted for their now-permanent home setups.

Gone are the cost of monthly rent for the company and the headache of daily commutes for its employees.

Healthy Roster will provide access to coworking sites for people who need a more traditional office environment for certain tasks or who just want to get out of the house for the day.

Companywide meetings currently take place over Zoom, but Heerdt plans in-

person townhalls and lunches twice a month when it’s safe again.

It will be important to maintain a feeling of camaraderie, he says. He realizes Zoom just isn’t the same. The gaming website Rock Paper Shotgun reported in May that some companies began conducting their meetings as cowboys sitting around a campfire in the Wild West game Red Dead Redemption 2.

“Every time you go through these paradigm shifts, there’s a bit of nostalgia for the good things you enjoyed,” Heerdt says. “People gained immense satisfaction from working around people they liked and doing things like grabbing lunch and grabbing coffee together. We had seven to 12 people who’d walk to Starbucks every day right around the same time. We had free coffee at the office, but it was about being together.”

Gallup polls since March show that a majority of people who’ve been working from home during the pandemic would prefer to continue in that mode. The polls also show, though, that the number of people who want to return to the office jumped from 38 percent to 47 percent in just three weeks of permanent working from home.

“There’s a big element of socializing that you miss doing,” Heerdt says.

“That’s why I don’t think you can do this without that added element.”

Working from home was commonplace two centuries ago, Staley points out. When people were farmers or merchants or practiced a trade, they often lived where they worked, and the boundaries between the two were fluid. The rise of factories and offices separated work and home, he says, but the distinctions now seem to be blurring once again.

Brian Zuercher, co-founder and CEO of Columbus-based work-experience consultant Hopewell, says he hopes the Covid experience breaks businesses out of a one-place-fits-all mindset.

Hopewell studies work habits and experiences the way others study consumer preferences and behavior.

The idea is that people who work in energy-boosting environments—they vary for everyone—are happier and more productive.

“We’re finding some pretty amazing things about productivity and satisfaction,” Zuercher says. “It

took what probably would have taken 10 years and shortened it into three months.”

Nationwide Children’s Hospital conducted just 19 telemedicine visits in 2019—and more than 130,000 from mid-March to mid-June. CEO Tim Robinson says he hopes insurancereimbursement policies that were eased during the shutdown of all but essential in-person medical visits will remain amenable to telemedicine.

Patients and providers have found the format more convenient and efficient in many instances, he says.

“I think everybody’s mindset had shifted. Those change-management issues that are usually more difficult to address got expedited.”

In April, Nationwide CEO Kirt Walker announced that the insurance and financial services company would shut down 2 million square feet of office space in Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin and move more than 3,800 employees in those locations to permanent remote-working status. The company will keep five main campuses: Downtown Columbus and Grandview Yard; Des Moines, Iowa; San Antonio; and Scottsdale, Arizona.

About 30 percent of Nationwide employees will be working remotely after

Concerns about work-related factors on a scale of 1-5 My individual health or the health of my family

Transportation to and from work

Access to childcare

Adapting to new work practices

Source: Columbus Partnership survey of April 24

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100 Years of Dis David Staley remembers his father telling him once to wind the vacuum cord in a different direction every time he put it away so it wouldn’t wear out. “It was one of those behaviors that they were forced to learn during the Great Depression that stayed with them their entire lives,” the associate professor of history and futurist at Ohio State University recalls.

Staley now finds himself wondering what habits we’re picking up during the Covid-19 pandemic will stay with us in the years to come. Is the handshake dead? Will the desire for contactless interactions continue?

“Before this crisis, my definition of my personal space was 3 feet,” he offers for the list. “My sense is our definition of personal space is going to expand. It’s become a habit to think now that we have to keep distance from other people.”

Our workspaces will change in both the short- and long-term because of Covid, experts say. Here are some of the other events and advances that continue to shape the way Americans conduct business:

1929 The Great Depression “The business of America is business,” President Calvin Coolidge said in 1925 as the nation’s largely unregulated economy roared. When the

stock market crashed in October 1929, laissez-faire federal economic policy crashed with it.

The coming decade would bring a slew of new government regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the National Labor Relations Board and the Federal Housing Administration.

1938 Xerox As a law student, Chester Carlson would write out passages from textbooks at the library because he couldn’t afford to buy them. After working two years on his idea for a dry-copying machine, his first successful duplication included the date, 10-22-38.

Carlson hooked up in the 1940s with Battelle, which paid for further research and eventually licensed the technology for commercial development. Photocopy machines quickly caught on. Before they were widely available, single copies of documents had to make person-to-person rounds in the office.

1940s World War II Rosie the Riveter, the iconic factory worker who’s rolling up her sleeves and declaring, “We Can Do It!,” represented 6 million American women

who entered the labor market during World War II. Many took jobs that were traditionally held by men; women were 65 percent of the aircraft industry workforce in 1943.

Curtiss-Wright Corp.’s aircraft plant near Port Columbus was the biggest in the country. Historian Doreen Uhas-Sauer said in a 2016 episode of WOSU-TV’s “Columbus Neighborhoods” that the plant integrated its workforce, hiring Black women and men before President Franklin Roosevelt ordered defense contractors to do so.

1958 Jet travel In the 1950s, air travel surpassed train travel for the first time, and the introduction of Boeing’s 707 airliner in 1958 made flying cheaper and faster.

American workers now make more than 405 million long-distance business trips yearly. Before Covid-19, anyway, more than 1.1 million Americans were traveling for business every day.

Mid-1960s Baby boomers get to work The generation born after World War II began entering the workforce in 1964, and its values continue to shape life on the job today even as the youngest members enter their late 50s.

“They brought their vision of the American Dream, a competitive nature, a strong need to be seen as an individual and a new style of leadership,” writes Karen McCullough, a corporate speaker who focuses on workplace trends. “They replaced their predecessors’ ‘my way or the highway’-style management with a more democratic consensus of leadership and teamwork.”

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Disruption 1971 OSHA Since the Occupational Safety and Health Administration opened its doors nearly 50 years ago, the number of Americans killed on the job has decreased from 12,500 to 5,250 even as the size of the U.S. workforce has doubled.

The federal agency establishes workplace safety standards and conducts inspections to ensure they’re met.

there, whether it’s to talk to somebody through a live chat or to find a phone number or access accounts. … They don’t actually perceive us to have an office because they don’t ever go to it.”

2001 September 11

1983 Mobile phones The first commercially available mobile phone—Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000x— weighed 2½ pounds, took 10 hours to charge, lasted for 20 minutes and cost $3,995. Somehow, they managed to catch on.

Today, cellphones are replacing landlines at more businesses. A 2016 survey by Syntonic found that 87 percent of businesses expected their employees to use their own phones or tablets for work.

1991 World Wide Web Tim Berners-Lee was working as a software engineer in Geneva when he began exploring ways to share information from computer to computer.

He came up with three solutions—HyperText Markup Language, HyperText Transfer Protocol and the Uniform Resource Locator—that allowed him to share the first web page with the world in 1991.

“Our website is home,” Nathan Heerdt, CEO of the Columbus tech company Healthy Roster, says today.

“When people need stuff they go

The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, coupled with rising numbers of shootings in schools and workplaces, did away with wide-open office buildings.

Metal detectors and security guards are stationed in more lobbies today.

Office doors stay locked, and access is controlled and monitored.

2017 #MeToo Allegations of sexual assault and harassment against Hollywood titan Harvey Weinstein began a reckoning over behavior that for generations had been tolerated, ignored and oftentimes resulted in the punishment of its own victims. The resulting #MeToo movement—a hashtag with which people shared their stories—helped destigmatize victims’ experiences.

A year after the first news reports on Weinstein, who was convicted of rape and now is in prison, The New York Times tallied the downfall of 201 men it deemed prominent and powerful. They ranged from politicians and journalists to CEOs and celebrities.

–Bob Vitale

the shift is completed in November.

What Zuercher hopes comes from companies’ Covid experience is true autonomy for workers, not just a replication of the office, complete with old-school structures and demands, at kitchen tables or in spare bedrooms.

Those locked into old structures, he says, sometimes can’t get past the experiences from their own career paths.

“There’s a rite of passage some have: ‘I came to the office at 6 a.m. and worked until 8 p.m.’ When you’re not coming in every day, some people feel you don’t want to work very hard.

There’s that psychological thing they need to get over.”

Instead, Zuercher encourages people to think back further than their first jobs to their college days. He points out how students on a college campus have specific tasks to accomplish, whether a term paper or a project or a good grade. There are times they’re expected to be in class, and sometimes they’re expected to meet in groups or labs. There are places on campus designed to facilitate research or offer quiet or collaborative spaces, but students aren’t told where or when they need to do their work.

“That’s sort of the peak level of autonomy in our lives,” Zuercher says.

“You’re getting stuff done and you’re learning about yourself and your skills and how you like to work. Then, ironically, you go to work and you’re told where to be and how to look and how to work.”

Lane doesn’t want that to be part of his job anymore as Olive’s CEO. As part of the company’s new on-the-gridor-off-the-grid work model, the main office—its “central hub”—will remain in Columbus. There will be “substations” in cities with major clients or wherever 10 employees choose to call

“I would say based on our experience so far, some form of telecommuting will be a factor for a big chunk of the state workforce in the future.”

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home. But employees can work from anywhere they choose.

“The most interesting dynamic has been, when I released the [new work model], people were talking like, ‘Hey, I need six more people to move to Savannah,” he said. “It’s like an employee-directed formation.”

An April survey of nearly 10,000 Central Ohio workers conducted by the Columbus Partnership found that 74 percent of people were working remotely. A survey in June

by OSU’s Risk Institute found that 34 percent of businesses had found enough benefit from employees working remotely during the Covid

“Before this, I believed that everybody needed to be in the same building. I believed that if you had two companies, all things being equal, and one was remote and the other one was together, that the one together would always win.”

Sean Lane, CEO, Olive

shutdown to make it a more longterm arrangement.

As of late June, the Ohio Department of Administrative Services hadn’t made decisions about the longterm use of telecommuting, but it had not set a timeline for bringing thousands of state employees back into their offices, either. About 85 percent of the state workforce had been working from home at the height of Gov. Mike DeWine’s shelter-in-place order for Ohioans.

“The last 90 days have shown it can be done,” Department Director Matthew Damschroder says. “It will be like any kind of disrupting event in an economy; it will take time to find out how permanent that disruption becomes or what rebounds to being more normal. I would say based on our experience so far, some form of telecommuting will be a factor for a big chunk of the state workforce in the future.”

Like other employers, state government must weigh any desire to bring workers back into offices against the cost of physically modifying workplaces to meet social-distancing recommendations. Options include staggered starting times—even with 28 elevators, traditional 8 a.m. arrivals for 40 floors of Rhodes Tower employees won’t keep people separated—and alternating in-office working days.

Telecommuting and other alternatives were under consideration before Covid-19, Damschroder says, because state government was seeking ways to make itself more attractive in a competitive labor market.

“The state moves a little slower,” he acknowledges. “No small reason is, if your neighbor’s a state employee and you see their car in the driveway all day and you don’t know that they’re telecommuting, your first question is, ‘Why is that state employee sitting home all the time?”

Risk Institute Executive Director Phil Renaud says there are other factors businesses need to weigh as well.

Cybersecurity—all security, really— becomes more complicated when employees are logging in, talking on the telephone or meeting in non-centralized locations. Security concerns with Zoom led organizations such as Google, NASA and the government of Taiwan to bar its use by employees this spring.

Also, Renaud said, employers are likely still on the hook for ensuring safe working environments even if they’re no longer providing the physical working space.

“Now I’m transitioned to a home environment where Phil might be working from his couch with his legs curled up underneath him in an environment that may not be conducive to long-term ergonomic design,” he says. “How do I control that as an employer? There needs to be some sort of agreement between the associate and the company that says here’s the way business will be conducted between these particular hours.”

At Olive, Lane has been thinking about what will become of cost-ofliving adjustments to workers’ pay.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told employees in May that as his company allows more people to work remotely, it will cut the salaries of those who move to cheaper areas.

According to Sperling’s Best Places, Facebook’s median 2018 salary of $240,000 at its Bay Area headquarters would translate to $45,717 in Columbus. The main reason, it says: Central Ohio’s median home price of $213,000 is a far cry from the Bay Area’s $2.3 million.

“That’s not going to be the answer,” Lane says of Facebook’s sliding scale, which will require employees to report yearly where they’re calling home. “The answer is almost going to be a national pay scale. It is what it is, no matter where you live.”

As head of the Columbus Partnership, Fischer says he has spoken with numerous Central Ohio business leaders who plan to allow a greater number of their employees to work remotely. Technology has made it possible, he says, but Covid-19 and the nationwide reckoning on race and systemic racism seems also to have taught other lessons.

“It feels like 2020 is going to be a monumental year that’s shifting society,” he says. “Everybody says we’re going to return to normal or a new normal. I think we’re going to return to the better new normal. It’s going to be a better way of working. It’s going to be a better way of treating people.

It’s going to be a better way of hopefully dealing with our issues.”

Bob Vitale is a freelance writer.

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ACG Events Have Gone Virtual www.acg.org/columbus www.acg.org g/colum mbus m mb Visit w for schedule h d l and dd details. detail ails. ail il

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7/16/20 5:51 PM

Health Watch: employee resilience

Health care employees are enduring stressors unlike any in memory.

Here are the ways they’re maintaining their resilience.

By Laurie Allen

I

t’s OK if the healers need to be healed.

As the coronavirus pandemic wears on, wellness leaders at Columbus’ health care systems bear witness to the battle fatigue that comes with combatting the multitentacled, highly infectious disease.

Long hours, uncertainty and fears for the safety of their patients, themselves and their families take physical and emotional tolls. Caregivers also have shouldered the burden of being their patients’ only constant, as visitor policies have changed and

“I think of it like a cell phone battery. How much is your battery charged? You come to work, hopefully with a fully charged battery.

How can we affect your work experience to recharge it throughout the day?”

Dr. Laurie Hommema, medical director, provider and associate well-being, OhioHealth

Photo: istockphoto/VectorStory

Taking care of the caretakers

loved ones can’t provide the bedside support as they normally would.

“There is a heaviness and a weight that had not been there before. They have been everything to everyone in the past several months,” says Chrishonda Smith, chief human resources officer at Mount Carmel Health System.

Mount Carmel and others have ramped up in-person and digital support to help the front-line providers who are particularly vulnerable, and all staff members who are part of the larger health care team.

“People are tired. A shift isn’t a shift anymore,” says Dr. Laurie Hommema, medical director, provider and associate well-being at OhioHealth. “There is the toll of increasing mortality rates and the inability to connect with patients like we normally do. We can’t offer them a hug,” she says. Even in administrative settings, “there’s also a sense of isolation in that we’re not all there together. Health care is a team sport, and if anything, to me it feels emotionally a little worse than it did at the beginning.”

An expert in mental health, Dr. Luan Phan says caregivers are more prone to “compassion fatigue,”

where it is increasingly harder to mount that sort of empathy on a sustained basis. “The things that re-energize front-line care providers aren’t there—the smiles and facial expressions shared with patients and with each other, the ability to gather during the day to vent and commiserate,” says Phan, chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. “The stress buffers aren’t there.”

Phan says OSU has embedded a fundamental appreciation of wellness in its culture, which has amplified since the Covid-19 crisis began. Its Stress Trauma and Resilience (STAR) program, started about 10 years ago, has sent out daily messages about coping strategies and provides support sessions throughout the day, as well as a 24/7 confidential crisis support line, staffed by clinicians. “We’re building out peer support, which is the closest support you can get as a health care provider. If you need additional help, you are not alone.

There is no need to feel alone.”

That type of engagement is at the core of Mount Carmel’s new Colleague Care Program, which aims to provide therapeutic communication

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and a safe space to talk about stressors staff may be experiencing. Also known as “resilience rounding,” it rolled out in high-intensity areas like intensive care units and emergency departments, with the goal of eventually reaching staff in all areas.

The program seeks to help identify and manage the daily stressors that come with working day after day through the pandemic. Rounding teams include medical providers who have been asked or volunteered to be present for their colleagues, as well as mental health professionals and “influential leaders”—someone with the authority to do something about issues seen during rounding visits, says Brian Pierson, regional director, outreach population health at Mount Carmel.

Staff in the rounding sites know about the visits ahead of time. The visitation times are designed to be discreet, private and not interfere with the daily work flow. “They don’t do therapeutic interventions (on the spot), but there is a counselor present in case he or she is needed,” Pierson says.

The system’s campuses also have “soul spaces,” which are “no-work” rooms providing a safe area to get away from stress for a few minutes, to

recharge and refocus through meditation, prayer or simple silence.

“We encourage people to take five,” Pierson says. “We want to make it OK to participate” in support found in Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services and others. “I have used EAP, and I think it’s important for people to be open, to do what works for them.”

OhioHealth has amped up outreach to its 30,000 associates, launching and fortifying EAP services, virtual support groups and peer mentor assistance. It also streams spiritual and centering content around the clock, Hommema says. “During the first few months of Covid, our chaplains provided support to 1,900 individuals and 1,500 groups of associates and providers. It’s been amazing.” In some instances, the most effective way to combat stress has been to take a break from the Covid unit, she adds. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all fix.”

The intensive care unit and emergency departments are exhausting, but so is someplace as seemingly benign as a labor and delivery unit.

“That connection with a new mother is so important. A new mom can be scared, and you’re walking in the door dressed in a space suit,” Hommema says. Providing health care in the age of Covid “is truly an ultramarathon.

This is the time for creativity.”

Hommema and other wellness leaders think in terms of resilience—how to build up mental and emotional health and then sustain it in times of prolonged external stress. “I think of it like a cell phone battery,” she says.

“How much is your battery charged?

You come to work, hopefully with a fully charged battery. How can we affect your work experience to recharge it throughout the day?”

Smith says Mount Carmel’s vision is that “every colleague can bring their whole self to work every day,” which means understanding that work life and home life are not two separate entities. Listening, offering support and providing tools, such as mindfulness, meditation and lifestyle approaches are fundamental, “but there are others that we may have yet to identify.”

Says Hommema, “If we continue to come up with solutions, it can only help. We are here to take care of each other.”

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Laurie Allen is a freelance writer.

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Virtual Events

Virtual events have quickly become the norm. Here are some best practices.

By Rebecca Walters

W

ith millions of Americans working from home, virtual events are the new reality. Companies have embraced technology to reach people at a time when in-person networking is on pause.

Virtual events are not without challenges. Faces freeze, and audio lag times conjure thoughts of poorly dubbed foreign films. Even if technical difficulties are avoided, well-intentioned events can quickly turn into shaking-my-head moments when audiences become disengaged and head to the fridge for a snack.

An effective virtual event—from staff meetings to webinars to conferences—requires preparation, flexibility and creativity. Experts say there’s a handful of tips and tricks that enable presenters and participants to get the most out of remote encounters.

Keep it real and make it fun In a normal (non-Covid-19) year, the Columbus Young Professionals Club hosts about 150 events, says Derek Grosso, CEO and founder. With 20,000-plus members, the organization is all about networking, educating and advocacy. When Ohio’s stay-at-home order went into effect in

“It all comes down to the narrative you create.”

Mike Yearling, vice president of sales and marketing, Mills James

Photo courtesy MILLS JAMES

How to hold an audience The control room at Mills-James

March, CYPC had to figure out how to stay in touch with members and keep them engaged from afar.

One of the biggest hurdles in pivoting in-person events to a virtual environment is generating content that is relevant and informative, Grosso says. His advice: “Be authentic, be purposeful and make it engaging.”

Companies have a hard time visualizing how they can increase sales and host fundraisers in virtual environments, says Mike Yearling, vice president of sales and marketing for production company Mills James. “(But) people are constantly surprised and have a renewed hope as they realize they can actually reach more people this way,” he says. “It all comes down to the narrative you create.”

Mills James had already been seeing significant growth in this segment as companies reduced travel expenditures after the Great Recession, Yearling says. As such, his company was ready to help clients when the pandemic forced employees to work remotely. The company recently partnered with Mindset Digital to meet increased demand by offering gamified training and virtual events.

desired extent of active participation dictate the platform you choose.

“It depends on how (or whether) you want to interact with your audience,” says Fernando Bergas-Coria, integrated marketing director for Ologie, a marketing consulting and branding firm whose clients consist mainly of higher education institutions.

Yearling says he’s agnostic when it comes to platforms, but that they have to be properly vetted. “It’s a Wild West of platforms out there, and it can be scary for clients,” he says.

Kevin Lloyd, founder and CEO of Columbusblack.com, an online source for news, events and entertainment for the Black community in Columbus, quickly had to transition from live events to virtual events when the pandemic hit. “It changed my entire layout, and I learned how to livestream events on Facebook and YouTube using Zoom and other platforms,” Lloyd says.

Now Lloyd is helping others get their messages out virtually, including a weekly series with CYPC.

Pick a platform, any platform

Attendance and participation incentives are encouraged—virtual swag bags, mystery boxes delivered to home addresses and games, such as filling out bingo cards by catching someone yawn or spotting a pet.

To gauge participants’ state of mind, Ologie likes a polling plugin called Mentimeter. The results are

Equally as important as the message is the medium used to convey it.

There’s no shortage of platforms from which to choose. Zoom, Webex, GoToMeeting, Facebook Live, YouTube and a host of others share similar capabilities. The type of event and

Engage your audience

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Reimagining video production for the virtual era You still need to tell your stories, engage with audiences, grow your business. To rise to the occasion, many of our clients are adopting outsourced production models for social videos, marketing campaigns, executive messaging, virtual events, etc.

We’re helping clients implement these lean content production models using Mills James talent and equipment. Our team is your team, working in COVID-safe studios and home edit suites, sending you footage and creative for real-time remote review.

This model gives you the best of all worlds: virtual resources for maximum agility and a direct connection to one of the country’s largest production companies when you need more scale.

We’re on your team, not your payroll. As one of our clients said after adopting this new model:

“

This is a game-changer.

Learn more about us at millsjames.com Mike Yearling | Managing Partner myearling@mjp.com | 614.313.3670

tabulated almost immediately, BergasCoria says.

Yearling says attendance is increased if the process is easy and does not require passcodes, downloads or logins. “With livestream platforms, all you should have to do is click on a URL, show up and wait for it to start,” he says.

Avoid Zoom fatigue

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Being “on” all of the time takes a toll.

With face-to-face communication on hold, some folks are on calls and video chats nonstop, and workdays have no clear beginning or end.

“Zoom fatigue is a real thing,” says Bergas-Coria. Carve out time for lunch, take the dog for a walk, turn off Slack, or simply step away from your screen and block out your calendar.

Other ways to combat screen-time burnout is to limit presentations to an hour, respecting start and stop times, and to pre-record presentations, which alleviates stress for the presenter and offers flexibility to participants.

“The idea of a doing a broadcast TV-type of production is resonating with clients who are Zoom fatigued,” Yearling says.

A hybrid future

The stories not told anywhere else. columbusalive.com the Arts the Eats the Community and more

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When companies and organizations return to pre-pandemic conditions, most say they will offer face-to-face and virtual attendance options.

“The future of events is going to be hybrid,” says Lloyd, who co-founded an event app called MYLE (Make Your Life Entertaining).

Production will be a mixture of live and pre-recorded. “The power of pre-recorded presentations is that you get the best version of a person,” says Rodrick Pauley, chief creative officer for Mills James. “All of the ‘ums’ and awkward silences are edited out, and presentations become shorter.”

If there’s any bright side to the pandemic, it’s that companies have learned to evolve, and do so quickly.

Even when the world returns to preCovid working conditions, businesses will continue to explore digital opportunities as they have proven to be cost-effective ways to streamline and improve communications.

Rebecca Walters is a freelance writer.

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Special Advertising Section

Business practices in the time of coronavirus and educating staff on social issues. A little focus is what it takes to navigate these topics.

Focus Linear 1 Technologies

Change and Agility Two related words in the world of technology have different execution speeds.

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

A Corporate Commitment to Social Justice How businesses can turn messaging into action.

August 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Special Advertising Section

Focus Linear 1 Technologies

Change and Agility Two related words in the world of technology have different execution speeds.

M

any changes have been in motion for the way organizations are doing business, such as managing remote workers and providing flexibility in work-life balance through technology to motivate employees.

This change trend didn’t begin with the onset of Covid-19, but this new normal certainly catapulted these changes into the forefront of business owners’ and decision makers’ minds. With the absence of in-person meetings, telecommunications and cloud utilization have had a huge surge in importance because, for some, it is now the primary way that employees collaborate internally with peers and externally with clients and customers.

Businesses may have been slowly changing the way they interact with technology, but now the focus is on agility—pivoting quickly when change happens in a snap. Today, workplace collaboration relies more on digital communication and remote access to tools than being

face to face with someone.

In this remote and mobile world of business, the ability for employees to move around, or even stay home from the office, without missing crucial communications or functionality is more than just a benefit; it is a necessity. This is the catalyst for growth in the unified communication as a service (UCaaS) field and business collaboration applications.

Primarily a communications delivery model based on the cloud, UCaaS offers businesses the chance to integrate multiple modes of communication through a single provider. This services also offers the incredible flexibility to have a phone extension move with you, whether in the office, at home or on the road.

There are no shortages of business collaboration

applications out there.

These platforms allow for seamless collaboration between employees and clients in the form of file sharing and other communications. The full endto-end suite of Microsoft 365 services enables remote work, and specific applications—such as OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams—offer robust business continuity. With Microsoft Teams, you can host audio, video and web conferences with anyone inside or outside of your company.

Linear 1 Technologies offers VOiP solutions and communication infrastructure to businesses as part of our service provider model. This creates the agility of a business to move between home, office and on the go in addition to being a far more economical approach to

communication by eliminating the cost of individual phone lines for each employee.

As a Microsoft partner, Linear 1 has implemented Microsoft 365 for many of our clients. For additional business collaboration, we offer our own collaborative sync tool for secure and easy sharing of documents and files between employees and across devices so that users can stay productive from any location and from any device. With our 24/7 security monitoring, firewalls and anti-virus, you can be assured that your work is safe, no matter where you work from.

Not only does Linear 1 offer communication and collaboration services, but we are also a full-fledged IT MSP offering cloud infrastructure, fiber internet connectivity, cybersecurity and business continuity backups with disaster planning and recovery.

Our active helpdesk prides itself on customer service; our team of IT Support Specialists strive to make that personal connection with each client that calls.

By letting Linear 1 Technologies take care of all your IT needs, you can focus on providing the best service to your clients and customers.

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Special Advertising Section

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A Corporate Commitment to Social Justice: How Businesses Can Turn Messaging into Action Carolyn Davis, Janica Pierce Tucker and Devin Spencer

I

n the wake of the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, a call for change and end to racism and inequality swept local and global communities.

In response, many companies and business leaders issued public statements of solidarity and commitment to the fight against racism. While reaffirming a company’s pledge to social justice is important, moving beyond messaging to action is essential for change.

The following are best practices and recommendations to assist businesses in their commitment to diversity, inclusion and operating in a non-discriminatory manner.

1. Set organizational goals—and meet them.

Setting tangible goals related to your hiring practices, leadership, trainings and even your community spend can move the needle forward in diversity and inclusion efforts. Conduct diversity

audits across your leadership suite, departments and vendors to identify areas of improvement in hiring practices and promotions. Review which community organizations your company partners with and determine if funds should be redistributed to organizations that align with your diversity and inclusion goals. Remember to consult with counsel when making decisions related to impact investing and large-scale charitable contributions.

2. Create a culture of open dialogue and continuous learning. Educate your workforce on diversity and allow for discussion by implementing and supporting internal and external affinity groups. Celebrating holidays such as Juneteenth, National Hispanic Heritage Month and LGBTQ Pride Month will demonstrate to employees and clients your commitment to inclusion. Make development resources and applicable funding readily available to your affinity groups and employees so that your organizational diversity and inclusion goals are continuously at the forefront of your workplace culture.

3. Invest in training. Training employees on diversity, inclusion, discrimination and harassment is not only required by many states, it can also protect employers from various harassment allegations. The primary goals of all trainings should be to reduce the number of workplace incidents, empower employees with knowledge on how to recognize and report discrimination and harassment, and demonstrate the employer’s commitment to diversity and inclusion and the elimination of discrimination and harassment at work. Be sure that

Taft Diversity Chairs Adrian Thompson and Janica Pierce Tucker

employees understand that prohibited behavior also extends to their respective social media.

4. Assess and update human resources protocols.

Your employee handbook is an important tool to define acceptable workplace behavior. Update your handbook to include a section specifically dedicated to the employer’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. Make sure your company’s Equal Employment Opportunity section and discrimination, harassment and retaliation policies are current and include a process for filing internal complaints.

Train hiring managers and human resources professionals on recognizing implicit bias and what hiring, interviewing, evaluation and promotion practices can lead to discrimination, such as asking questions related to race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, disability or religion. Establish a protocol for asking the same interview questions for each candidate to help prevent implicit bias. Additionally, confirm that your human resources employees have access to an attorney who is well-versed in employment discrimination law for complex questions and legal needs that arise.

Implementing protocols such as the above can help reduce the risk of discrimination, harassment and implicit bias while also fostering purposeful change in the workplace. While messaging is an important component in demonstrating your company’s commitment to social justice, assessing and implementing diversity and inclusion best practices will channel these statements into meaningful action.

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Lawyers with one mission: to advance yours.

Our Employment attorneys help businesses achieve inclusive workplaces.

Taftlaw.com

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ENDLESS OPTIONS. EFFORTLESS CATERING. Donatos catering makes large gatherings easy, affordable, and fun starting at just $4.50 per person.

Now offering No-Contact Delivery.

CALL 1-888-DONATOS OR VISIT DONATOS.COM/CATERING

NEW! VIRTUAL PIZZA PARTY – INDIVIDUALLY PACKAGED MEALS FOR OFF-SITE EMPLOYEES

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10

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EES

Central Ohio Catering Companies

Ranked by 2019 catering sales and, for ties, by number of full-time catering employees

COMPANY

2019 CATERING SALES

1 Mitchell Premier Events 7619 Huntington Park Drive Columbus 43235 614-848-4700 cameronmitchellpremierevents.com

$6.1 m

3895 Business Park Drive Columbus 43204 • 614-444-5050 schmidthaus.com

40% 60%

$9 m $6 m $300,000

Full service, sports concession, on-site, full event design and production

Cameron Mitchell

2001

Mike Redcay

38% 62%

$5.4 m $397,000 $1.8 m

Weddings, corporate, sport services, private aviation, on- and off-premise, nonprofit, creative event planning

Scott Bast

20% 80%

25 50

40% 60%

$2 m

9 125

$1.4 m

9 24

$1.2 m

10 15

$1.1 m

15 20

10 Schmidt’s Hospitality Concepts

Catering Manager

50% 50%

9 PC Events Catering

50 S. Liberty St. Suite 100 Powell 43065 • 614-792-3993 pceventsinc.com

Year Founded

$4.8 m $2.5 m

Owner

Drop-Off

50 100

8 L.A. Catering

670 Harmon Ave., Columbus 43223 614-358-5252 la-catering.com

6 1

Off-Site

CATERING SERVICES

$5.1 m

7 Gourmet Fresh

651-C Lakeview Plaza Worthington 43085 • 614-255-6456 gourmetfresh.biz

Private

2019 SALES

On-Site

45 100

6 Creative Cuisine Catering 839 Busch Court, Columbus 43229 614-436-4949 creativecuisinecolumbus.com

Part-Time

$7.6 m

5 Milo’s Catering

980 W. Broad St., Columbus 43222 614-224-0272 cateringbymilos.com

Corporate

27 18

4 Together & Co.

550 S. High St., Columbus 43215 614-882-7323 togetherandco.com

Full-Time

$15.3 m

3 Donatos Pizza

935 Taylor Station Road Columbus 43230 • 614-340-3333 donatos.com

Catered EVENTS

65 108

2 Catering by Scott

2980 E. Broad St., Columbus 43209 614-237-1949 cateringbyscott.com

CATERING EMPLOYEES

42% 58%

70%

65%

65%

30%

35%

35%

20% 80%

$5 m $1m na $2.6 m $1.8 m $672,840

1989 Menu planning and delivery service for corporate events, weddings, receptions, graduations, anniversary parties, school/team parties and fundraisers

1963

Audriana Bast

Jim Grote Lianne McGlade

On-site, off-site, drop-off catering, event planning, weddings

Angela Petro

1997

Carly Ziemer

$2.4 m na $2.4 m

Delivery and pickup, corporate events, social receptions, weddings, and holiday parties

Louie Pappas & Demetra Stefanidis

$2 m na

Full-service catering, drop-off breakfast and lunch, event planning, equipment rentals

$500,000 $2m na na $786,385 $487,477 $136,987 $1 m na $150,000 $650,000 $450,000 na

The CEO Leaderboard features selected topics each month. The November Leaderboards will feature Central Ohio accounting firms, SBA lenders and wealth management firms. The deadline for inclusion in those surveys is August 21. If you want your Central Ohio company to be considered for an upcoming CEO Leaderboard, contact rwalters@columbusCEO.com.

Information included in this survey was provided by companies listed and was not independently verified.

1998

Stacy Terman

1986

Jayne Roberts

Full culinary services for any event type, specializing in wedding receptions, corporate and social events

2014 Full array of catering services

2001

John Brooks Jennifer Rasar

LifeCare Alliance David Imwalle

Corporate events, wedding receptions, cookouts, fundraisers, breakfast, buffet

1990 Drop-off, with service, outdoor grills

1886

Shauna Chrisman, Dan Mummaw

Kevin Porter Diane Gleason Frank Andrew Schmidt Sarah Meade

Note: All figures in millions are rounded. m = million na = not applicable, Source: Survey of catering companies

Information compiled by Rebecca Walters

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AUGUST 6 & 7 | Retail Summit Virtual Event

R T C

Jo P (6 w re

AUGUST 10 | New Albany Country Club

C R E

CEO INSIGHTS

N (6 ne

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS WITH CENTRAL OHIO LEADERS

C B K T

B (6 la k

AUGUST 19 | Virtual Conversation TO LEARN MORE & REGISTER, VISIT COLUMBUS.ORG/EVENTS

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Wouldn’t you like to be looking at your home?

Ask your Realtor to market your home in the Executive Living section of Columbus CEO Magazine!

East of I-71 call Telana Veil at (614) 469-6106 or e-mail at tveil@dispatch.com West of I-71 call Amy Vidrick at (614) 461-5153 or e-mail at avidrick@dispatch.com

MICHAEL SAUNDERS & COMPANY

KEY REALTY

Leslie Emery & Aaron Corr (941) 400-9710 www.beach2barn.com

Donna Westhoven (740) 704-1150 dlwrealtor@yahoo.com

325 MORGAN LANE, GAHANNA - Stately home in gated Founders Ridge 5BR, 4.5BA, 6012 SF, huge 1st flr master suite. 2 Story Great Rm, Huge Walk out Lower Level. Ravine lot w/ steam view. Conveniently located close to Easton, 270/670, airport & downtown.

From sand to sunsets and live oaks to acreage, Florida is calling to you.

Team Beach2Barn is your Buckeye connection to your new Florida dream home and lifestyle! Our passion for hands-on service provides you a knowledgeable and trustworthy experience, before and after closing. For new construction or re-sale, we look forward to working with you.

RE/MAX TOWN CENTER

RE/MAX TOWN CENTER

Joe and Patty Evans (614) 975-7355 www.joeandpattyevans. realestate

Joe and Patty Evans (614) 975-7355 www.joeandpattyevans. realestate 3017 NW MOUNTS RD, ALEXANDRIA - Gorgeous custom home w/over 10,000 SF, SEVEN CAR GARAGES, ELEVATOR to ALL FLOORS, OBSERVATION DECK on 3.84 acres. THERMADOR appliances & GRANITE countertops in kitchen. WALKOUT LL IS OPEN and ready for your pool table, ping pong table, and any other fun game ideas.

Basement access to the HOT TUB & SALTWATER INGROUND POOL.

8550 TARTAN FIELDS DR, DUBLIN - TRUE CUSTOM HOME built by Jimenez-Haid custom builders and improved with an updated kitchen, covered entertainment outdoor area, outdoor fireplace, some new windows,updated lighting and more that can make this YOUR ideal home.

CUTLER REAL ESTATE

CUTLER REAL ESTATE

Neil Mathias (614) 580-1662 neil@themathiasteam.com

Neil Mathias (614) 580-1662 neil@neilmathias.com

DEER RUN - A limited number of building lots available in this exclusive private gated community. Deer Run is a secluded, private lush wilderness in the heart of Dublin. Bring your own builder and design your dream home in one of the last centrally located communities in the city of Dublin. Acreage from 2-3+ Acres and Pricing starting at $825,000/lot. www.deerrunoh.com

WOULDN’T YOU LIKE TO BE LOOKING AT YOUR HOME?

COLDWELL BANKER KING THOMPSON Barbara Lach (614) 324-4002 lachexperience@ kingthompson.com

Ask your Realtor to market your home in the Executive Living section of Columbus Monthly magazine!

OLD WORLD CHARM - Lovely South of Lane, Tudor style home on two parcels, exudes class and family warmth with an updated interior. Delightful sitting room/porch off gracious living room that leads to dining room. Spacious kitchen opens to a comfortable family room w/vaulted ceiling, frplc, access to patio. Fin. bsmt. $1,497,000

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4131 BRINSWORTH DR - Custom built 4BR home in Wedgewood Glen on 2/3 acre of a private wooded lot! Updated Chefs kitchen w/large island, SS appls & granite counter tops. The open floor plan & wet bar between the family room & kitchen provides the perfect space for entertaining. Huge bonus/theater room & 2nd laundry upstairs. This home has so much to offer inside & out! $730,000

Call Amy Vidrick at (614) 461-5153 or e-mail at avidrick@dispatch.com

7/15/20 2:09 PM

Office Space: WFH edition By laura newpoff + Photos by Rob Hardin

Marcy Fleisher Founder, Team Fleisher Communications teamfleisher.com

Public relations guru Marcy Fleisher turned a portion of her historic German Village property into her home office.

Blending the historic and the contemporary

A second-floor landing is where Fleisher does most of her work these days. The desk was her mother’s back in Chicago. She’s proud to display her Emmys, one for PR and the other for work at WBNS-10TV. Below is the dining room where Fleisher goes for Zoom meetings with clients.

Framed by family

Pictures of her daughters adorn a wall in Fleisher’s office. Maddy recently graduated from the University of Cincinnati and Samantha will be a junior at the University of Michigan in the fall.

Visit columbusCEO.com for a full article on the space.

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Community Banks Build Relationships Local reinvestment is essential for small business growth and a catalyst for community well-being. At Heartland Bank, our relationship-banking philosophy is the foundation for the way we build our business – one customer, one loan at a time.

Schoedinger Funeral & Cremation Service Dublin facility opening Fall 2020

Heartland is proud to partner with Schoedinger Funeral & Cremation Service and Ruscilli Construction on the new Dublin Schoedinger Funeral Home scheduled to open in the fall of 2020. As Schoedinger’s goal is to provide dignified and compassionate services to the local community, their partnership with Heartland is a perfect fit as both organizations are deeply devoted to the families and the communities they serve.

Project done in conjunction with

Aloft Hotel

Now Open

Indus Hotels has developed the Aloft boutique hotel on the 2.9 acre property located at 1295 Olentangy River Road. The project includes 164 rooms with upscale finishes and room amenities. The public space features the W XYZ bar and outdoor patio, 600 SF of meeting space, fitness center, and an indoor pool

We want to learn more about you!

Call today to start building a business relationship with Heartland Bank

(614) 416-4601

#FeelGoodBanking since 1911 Member FDIC

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Heartland.Bank

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7/15/20 2:02 PM

THANK YOU

Your transformational investment in Columbus Metropolitan Library will help ensure more children and teens are given the opportunity to reach their full potential.

foundation.columbuslibrary.org

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