Columbus CEO - October 2017

S i lv e r C e l e b r at i o n how new albany’s persistence landed the $750 million data center

PaGe 14

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it ecoSYSteM

information technology drives the columbus region after PaGe 64

october 2017

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easton developer works to build community, too

behind the facebook deal

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YaroMir Steiner

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Find your partner in health at OhioHealth.com/WeBelieve. Š OhioHealth Inc. 2017. All rights reserved. FY18-Brand-AWR. 09/17.

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HONORING EXCELLENCE IN RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPMENT

Members of ULI Columbus recently gathered to recognize the individuals, companies and developments that are responsibly shaping central Ohio.

VISIONARY AWARD:

JOHN W. GALBREATH

U

For his countless contributions to the real estate community globally and in his hometown of Columbus, Galbreath was awarded posthumously the Visionary Award. Members of his family accepted the award, which will be given bi-annually to those who make a remarkable impact on development.

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2017 AWARDS FOR EXCELLENCE WINNERS: EXCELLENCE IN DEVELOPMENT, LARGE SCALE:

250 HIGH

The Daimler Group and Kaufman Development produced a modern 12-story mixed-use development on a sliver of a tight urban site overlooking Columbus commons. The 12-story building was leased within months of completion and now houses offices, retail and residences.

EXCELLENCE IN DEVELOPMENT, SMALL SCALE:

400 WEST RICH

Urban Smart Growth turned this once vacant and crumbling industrial building in Franklinton into a thriving community of art studios, offices, a bar and restaurant and event space.

COMMUNITY IMPACT:

DOWNTOWN RIVERFRONT The City of Columbus and Columbus Downtown Development Corporation transformed the waterway and its banks into one of the city’s most vibrant amenities that will positively impact Columbus for generations to come.

ULI Columbus gratefully acknowledges our Awards of Excellence sponsors: Gold Sponsors:

Silver Sponsors:

To learn more go to columbus.uli.org

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Contents 40

Follow the journey of 10 business sectors in Columbus since 1992, in story and timeline. See also how New Albany landed Facebook, a deal that showcases 25 years of change.

s i lv e r C e l e b r at i o n 42 Facebook Data Center Deal 44 banking 45 Communications 47 education 49 energy 51 Healthcare 52 Hospitality 54 Housing 56 Manufacturing 57 retail 59 transportation

departments 09 editor’s Notes What was editorial staff doing 25 years ago; what are they doing now?

10 CeO Whiteboard Letters, social media buzz and developments since the September issue.

129 Leaderboards Private Schools; Women-Owned businesses

136 Office Space: Fintech 71 the fintech startup accelerator has plenty of new Downtown space as it welcomes its first class of 10 financial tech companies.

OCtOber 2017 Cover designed by

YOgEsh ChaudharY October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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

ColumbusCEO.com

vOlUMe 26 / NUMBeR 10 PReSIdeNT

Bradley M. Harmon PUBlISheR/GeNeRal MaNaGeR

Ray Paprocki

aSSOCIaTe PUBlISheR/adveRTISING dIReCTOR

Rheta Gallagher edITORIal EDITOR

Mary Yost AssOcIATE EDITOR

Bob Vitale

EDITORIAL AssIsTANT

Chloe Teasley

deSIGN & PROdUCTION

PRODUcTION/DEsIGN DIREcTOR

Craig Rusnak ART DIREcTOR

Yogesh Chaudhary dIGITal

EDITOR

Erin Edwards AssIsTANT DIGITAL EDITOR

Maya Jenkins PhOTOGRaPhy

PHOTO EDITOR

Tim Johnson AssOcIATE PHOTO EDITOR

Rob Hardin adveRTISING

ADVERTIsING MANAGER

Susan Kendall

AccOUNT ExEcUTIVE

Sue Ann Shetler cLAssIFIED sALEs

Terri Tribbie, Amy Vidrick sALEs AssIsTANTs

Sara Barton, Lauren Transue MaRkeTING

MARKETING MANAGER

14

InsIder 13 Breakdown It seems as though working for the government has lost its luster within the past 25 years.

14 Profile Q&A Easton Town Center mastermind yaROMIR STeINeR says he loves the US in a way only immigrants can.

20 Tech Talk Have you ever wished you had your company’s key business indicators on demand? Enter Voice Metrics.

28 Spotlight: Nonprofit

22 Briefing CoverMyMeds, a one-time startup now worth more than $1 billion, pays it forward to employees with CoverMyQuest. SafeChain, a startup that is still new, grows within accelerator Fintech71’s first cohort.

A large majority of the nation’s pilots are set to retire soon. Luckily, Youth Aviation Adventure fans the flame inside the heart of any child who dreams of flying.

24 Spotlight: Small Business

Worthington freshens up its commercial real estate by focusing on the redevelopment of existing properties.

Safex Owner and President Dianne Grote Adams makes sure not to get too lost in manuals and procedures. Instead, Safex focuses on the people it is hired to keep safe.

For isotope thickness gauging company Advanced Gauging Technologies, business is all about the details—even to thousandths of an inch.

adMINISTRaTION

bUsINEss MANAGER

ADVERTIsING

SUBSCRIPTIONS

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38 Events Seminars, webinars and business networking opportunities in October.

105 Employment and HR

pressreleases@columbusceo.com

circsupport@dispatch.com Toll Free: 877-688-8009

KIPP’s Battelle Environmental Center; Conway Business Tour; COTA Luncheon.

specIal sectIons

Zackary Cramp

LETTERs: letters@columbusceo.com PREss RELEAsEs

Columbus CEO (ISSN 1085-911X) is published monthly by GateHouse Media, LLC. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © 2017, 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: Send address changes to Columbus CEO, 62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289, Columbus, OH 43216.

agenda 32 Connections

26 Spotlight: Innovation

Lauren Reinhard

advertising@columbusceo.com

30 Spotlight: Commercial Real Estate

aft e r

pag e

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The Columbus Region boasts a robust information technology ecosystem as IT companies and non-tech businesses with big IT operations contribute innovations to other businesses and to each other.

Don’t expect Ohio to protect the jobs of private employees who unleash a hateful Facebook rant.

111 Columbus Legal Guide Should you ever need to lawyer up, here are some local options.

125 Health Watch In an effort to stop allergies from infecting the allergic, experts may have accidentally exacerbated the problem.

9/13/17 5:37 PM

A Tradition of Legal Excellence for 50 Years.

Celebrating

y

C

Patchen & Mu rp lile r h a

Years

Business Law • Litigation • Labor & Employment • Family Wealth & Estate Planning Real Estate • Banking • Tax • Securities • Insurance • Family Law

Contact us for more information: 614-228-6135 • www.cpmlaw.com

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Downtown Office: 366 East Broad St. Columbus, OH 43215

Dublin Office: 535 Metro Place South Dublin, OH 43017

9/13/17 9:56 AM

YOUR TRUST IN OUR CARE IS THE HIGHEST HONOR OF ALL.

When caring for people is your mission, you strive to do it at the very highest level.

That’s why we are proud to announce seven of our specialties were nationally ranked by U.S. News & World Report. And all seven ranked in the top 26 in their specialty. Fewer than 1% of hospitals in the country achieved that honor.

Honors like this are only possible thanks to the more than 23,000 physicians, nurses, researchers, faculty and staff who are committed to quality, safety and exceptional care. We thank you for trusting us to care for you and your family.

To us, that’s the highest honor of all.

wexnermedical.osu.edu

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Circa 1992

From the Publisher Mary Yost

* rpaprocki@Dispatch.com

C

hange is the norm for business, and Columbus CEO is no different. Starting early next year, a new editorial leader will take control of this awardwinning magazine.

Dave Ghose, senior editor of our sister publication, Columbus Monthly, will become editor, replacing Mary Yost.

Mary isn’t going very far—just one floor up in our building at 62 E. Broad St. She has been named the new editorial page editor for The Columbus Dispatch, where she started her career as a reporter. This position fulfills a longtime goal of running the paper’s editorial page. (Dispatch Magazines and the Dispatch are part of the Dispatch Media Group.)

Mary’s achievements are substantial as she has led Columbus CEO to numerous state and national awards since becoming editor in January 2014. We hate to lose her, but know where to find her.

On the other hand, we’re thrilled with Dave moving over a few desks in our newsroom. I started to work with Dave in 2001, when he was a freelancer new to Columbus after newspaper stints in Michigan and Akron. At the time I was an editor at Columbus Monthly and we brought Dave onto the staff, where he served first as a staff writer and then associate editor.

He then spent three years as a freelancer, again, writing for a number of outlets, including Dow Jones, Cincinnati Magazine and American Archaeology, among others. During this time, he also wrote for two Gulf Coast publications while I was publisher of a magazine group in Florida.

When I was asked to return to Columbus to run Dispatch Magazines in 2015, one of my first calls was to Dave to return to Columbus Monthly. In short, Dave is among the best journalists I’ve met in my career. Not only does he have an impressive collection of awards, but he’s earned the respect of many in this community for his fair, accurate and lively stories.

We expect great things for both Mary and Dave. And we’ll share more as the transition for both begins Jan. 2.

Ray Paprocki, Publisher

Chloe Teasley

Bob Vitale

Editor’s notes * myost@ColumbusCEO.com

Time and Change

I

n October 1992 as Columbus CEO published its first issue, I had just said goodbye to newspaper reporting and hello to a new public relations career at the Ohio Hospital Association.

Bob Vitale was a graduate student working on his master’s degree in public affairs reporting at what is now the University of Illinois-Springfield, and he had an internship in the statehouse bureau of the Chicago Tribune.

Chloe Teasley was a fetching toddler with no idea what she wanted to do when she grew up.

Fate brought the three of us together as editor, associate editor and editorial assistant, respectively, in this 25th anniversary year.

Just as our city and region have changed and grown, so have we. I am enjoying a resumed journalism career, Bob worked as a reporter and magazine editor before landing at Columbus CEO and Chloe completed her bachelor’s degree in strategic communications at Ohio State University while working here the past year.

Now Bob has left our staff to accept an opportu-

nity to edit a new statewide LGBTQ magazine, and we wish him well in his next endeavor. Chloe, we hope, will continue developing her skill as a business journalist right here. I will take on a new role in a few months (see Publisher’s Note).

In this special Silver Celebration issue, we look back on the change and growth marking the past quarter century in 10 key sectors of the central Ohio economy. We invite you to recall the past with us.

What were you doing 25 years ago?

Sometimes you can glimpse the future by revisiting the past.

Mary Yost, Editor Ocotober 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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SOLUTIONS 1. a means of solving a problem;

Whiteboard

* Reader notes, digital buzz & Columbus CEO coverage updates

FaCEBOOK REsPOnsEs

At Equity, we’re all about solutions,

solutions, which we have provided

DEVELOPMENT

BROKERAGE

CONSTRUCTION

& PROPERTY

MANAGEMENT I wanted to thank you again for the article. It looks really good and we’ve been getting a lot of positive response to it. I appreciate you taking an interest in what we’re doing.

ALL ACCESS Your backstage pass to the Arch City

Chris VOlpE, President and CEO Multivarious Games Thanks for highlighting the Girl Scouts in your latest issue. I was honored to be a part of sharing how this wonderful organization is helping build tomorrow’s leaders.

KarEn KasiCh, First Lady of Ohio Thank you for the great article on Nellie and NC4K! I have already seen many social media posts of people taking a pic of the article and tagging them!

COry DippOlD

TOp sTOriEs succession Planning: the Final sale nonprofit spotlight: nellie’s Champions for Kids

Ryan schick: Could not be more excited to sit down and read the latest edition of Columbus CEO, who has published a feature profile on one of Columbus’s leading visionaries, Christopher Volpe. it’s been over a year since i met Chris and his team at Multivarious and i am hard-pressed to iD a leader and a team with the persistence and work ethic to turn Columbus into a gaming mecca. in part due our strong health care sector and Chris’s GDEX convention, the Midwest’s largest gaming development expo (9/2910/1 @ the Convention Center), Chris is gathering investors to build the bedrock for a prolific gaming industry in Columbus, tapping into a $91 billion global industry. You’re probably thinking, “video games and health care? What do they have in common?� answer: a LOt! i’m a true believer that Chris can deliver upon this incredible goal. as an aside, can we *please* stop using “Columbus,� “next,� and “silicon Valley� in a sentence together?

Kathy Lowrey Gallowitz: thank you for showcasing the Girl scout Convention and all the community leaders supporting it. as a board member and First Class scout myself, i appreciate it! Girl scouting is more relevant and important than ever to help feed the female leadership pipeline.

Breakdown: seller’s Market tech talk: Earstorms and Reachedin

ConneCt with us Visit ColumbusMonthly.com and sign up for our weekly newsletter that includes special events, important conversations, exclusive giveaways and more.

ColumbusCEO.com @ColumbusCEOmag @CEO_editor facebook.com/ColumbusCEOmag

tWittER REsPOnsEs @ColumbusCEOmag @lauribmari: thank you @columbusceomag for a great piece on our community leaders supporting girls and @GirlscoutsOH #LeadLikeaGirlscout #Girlscouts

* letters@columbusceo.com

10 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

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Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) using Levulan diminished his brown spots and improved his overall skin texture.

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BreakdOwn Compiled by BOB VitalE + designed by YOgEsh ChaudharY

wOrking fOr the man

in 1992, when Columbus CEO put out its first issue, the State of Ohio was the region’s top employer. Since then, it has been bumped to second by Ohio State University, whose employee numbers have nearly doubled.

1992

2017

Looking Back Entity State of Ohio Ohio State University honda of america the Limited

Total Jobs

25,123 16,420 10,200 9,000 8,815

Entity Ohio State University State of Ohio JPmorgan Chase Ohiohealth nationwide insurance

Total Jobs

29,685 22,030 16,975 16,000 11,235

illustration © 2017 thinkStOCk.COm

US Postal Service

Current Leader

Source: Columbus Chamber of Commerce

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October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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PROFILE

By Mary yOst + Photos by rOb Hardin

Yaromir Steiner Founder and CEO

Steiner + Associates EduCatiOn: Masters, Civil Engineering

and Business Administration, University of Toulouse, France

Military: Served in the French 11th

Airborne Division

PrOfEssiOnal: past trustee of the

International Council of Shopping Centers, a past director of the International Council of Shopping Centers Foundation; member, Congress for New Urbanism

COMMunity: chair, Urban Land Institute Columbus; past board member of the Richard M. Ross Hospital, Arthur G. James Cancer Hospital and Richard J. Solove Research Institute Foundation, and New Albany Community Foundation; past president of the Simon Kenton Boy Scout Council of Central Ohio

From Expat to Patriot

Retail developer loves his adopted homeland.

Y

aromir Steiner may not be a native, but he’s lived in central Ohio longer than anywhere else in his life, so forgive him for delighting in his adopted hometown.

The renowned creator of Easton continues to improve on his investment in the groundbreaking retailrestaurant-entertainment-residential complex and to develop similar sites elsewhere, but Columbus has won his heart.

yaromir steiner “I’m kind of proud to have come here and moved here in ’96-’97 and (to see) where Columbus is today. It’s a very different city. I am proud of Columbus. I really am,” Steiner says from his second-floor corner office in the heart of Easton Town Center.

“It’s a great city and finally it’s receiving the accolades it needs, deserves, which goes well beyond being a retail ecosystem. It’s a great place to live and raise children,” he adds.

The path from his Eurasian upbringing to Columbus routed Steiner through Texas and New York before he put down roots in New Albany. He was raised in Istanbul through high school, and then his father, a Czech diplomat, decided he should go to college in France on grounds that “the only civilized culture was the French one,” Steiner says. “So I learned

French, went to college in France and then I lived in France for about 10-11 years until I came to the United States to start the American affiliate of a French company in Houston, Texas.”

In Texas, Steiner quickly made efforts to fit in, buying the requisite cowboy hat, belt, matching boots and even a Lincoln Town Car. “I thought that was the way to experience America,” he recalls. When his assignment in Houston was completed and his employer called him back to France, he opted to quit that job to stay in the United States.

“It was a tough time, changing business and trying to start (in the US),” Steiner says. “I lived in New York for two years, did some residential development work actually in the suburbs of Manhattan. Then I went to Miami and decided to develop the project

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which is a benchmark in the industry as well, like Easton, which then served as the inspiration for Easton.”

Gesturing out his office window, Steiner adds, “These buildings are a copy of what I did at CocoWalk, with a roof on it.”

It was that work in Coconut Grove, Fla., that put Steiner in a position to be considered for developing Easton in partnership with the Georgetown Company and with the backing of L Brands founder and CEO Les Wexner.

Steiner was working in Florida as the US was coming out of a savings and loan crisis in 1986-87. Many S&Ls and developers went bankrupt and a French financial institution owned some property in Coconut Grove in which they had invested “way too much money,” Steiner recalls.

He had been fixing up property all

over the country—from Aspen, Colo., and Hollywood, Calif., to Augusta, Ga., and Lake Pontchartrain near New Orleans, La.—but had never done a retail project and thus had “zero prejudice about what is right or what is wrong.

And we did lots of things that no one had done before, but we did not know any better,” Steiner says. Things like a large cinema on the third floor and shopping mixed with restaurants in an open-air mall set CocoWalk apart.

“We had no clue what barriers we were breaking. We were just building a building, putting tenants in it.”

One of the tenants Steiner wanted for CocoWalk was a Limited Express, and he had to make his first-ever trip to Columbus—on a dreary, zero-degree February day in the late 1980s—to persuade the reluctant retailer to put a store in the unconventional mall.

They finally reached agreement on what Steiner calls “the most aggressive deal a retailer can make. ‘You pay for my store, I’ll put merchandise in it. I’ll give you a percentage of my sales and if after two years I don’t do enough volume, I’ll just go away.’ We had no choice,” Steiner recalls.

But when the 10,000-square-foot store opened about 1990, it began doing business that was two or three times greater than other locations; so much that Limited Express ended up paying more rent than a conventional arrangement would have cost, Steiner says. And that experience eventually opened doors for Steiner to become Wexner and Georgetown’s Easton development partner.

As Easton began to take shape, Steiner was commuting from Miami, where his company was based.

“Then one day, my wife and I were in Key West, and we were drinking margaritas or something.” They were talking about their children; his twin sons from a first marriage and their young son and daughter. The older two had just finished high school and the younger two were not yet in school.

“Pat said, ‘Yaromir, instead of you commuting to Columbus two or three days a week, why don’t we move there and then you commute to Miami instead, and let’s raise these two children in Ohio rather than Miami.’ ... So after a few years we moved the accountants here, and then one day we shut the business there, we moved everybody here and then it became my headquarters. I’ve lived here the longest now, 20 years basically, of any place,” he says.

He’s been in Columbus long enough to be aware of its longstanding Midwestern humility but also to recognize a peppier new step about town. “There was a kind of a twist, something happened and we went over a tipping point, and for the first time we became aware of what we had,” Steiner says.

“I think because of the efforts of many, Columbus 2020 maybe, but even the (Columbus) Foundation’s Spirit of Columbus awards, and things like that, slowly we start realizing” what Columbus has to offer, he says.

He is proud that an organization whose board he chairs, Urban Land Institute Columbus, contributed to the growing appreciation of Columbus’s potential with its report, Columbus 2050, which plans for the ColumOctober 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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Q&A What is going on these days at Easton Town Center?

We are doing the remodeling, as you can see, the 20th anniversary fixing of Easton. We are continuously adjusting to tenants, and especially in turmoil times like we are in right now. More tenants are coming in and more are disappearing so we are continuously adjusting for that, but that’s the traditional approach.

And then there’s things happening in Easton at large, which is residential.

What lies ahead for retail?

The next biggest challenge we face is the introduction of technology or adoption of new technologies into our thinking, and this is the most disturbing thing right now because there are no pre-established models, and typical for Easton, we are kind of on the cutting edge for thinking about what to do, how to go about things, like having strong fiber, behind the scenes lots of electronics … We are trying to think if we can organize like food delivery systems in the region.

What else do you have in the works?

We’re a founding member of a Conscious Capitalism chapter for central Ohio as well.

That’s a book written by John Mackey, the founder of Whole Foods, how capitalism can be used to further societal goals for qualify of life and happiness; how capitalism is the most effective tool to achieve those goals. We are about to start a chapter in Columbus.

What is your workplace wellness initiative?

My wife actually is our chief wellbeing officer. … In our office you cannot get a Coke, because it’s no good, you can get sparkling water. So there is like food police, but there is also meditation and then there’s a book club and they’re about to publish rules about emails. … We’re asking people not to send emails to people in the middle of the night or evenings or the weekends.

I understand you teach meditation.

I’m certified almost a year now… I’ve done only two classes so far. …The method I teach requires training for two days. So far I’ve done it for others. It’s always delicate with employees. It’s kind of an intimate experience. It’s tough to be the boss and (also) a meditation teacher, but you could; that’s something I’m considering doing but I didn’t do it yet.

bus metro area to add a million new residents during a period in which the state as a whole may gain just 100,000.

“We are the powerhouse of the state.

People started realizing suddenly we have the same potential as Austin, Texas, and that we’re growing,” he says.

ULI followed its work on Columbus 2050 by working with Columbus 2020 and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission to develop insight2050, a tool to help business, community and government leaders make land use decisions to maximize the area’s population growth and avoid problems that increased density can bring. The challenge now, Steiner says, is to protect the Columbus area from what “Austin became 30 years later, a traffic-jammed, unaffordable-housing place.”

William Murdock met Steiner when he became MORPC executive director in 2013 and was seeking input for his new role. He recalls Steiner telling him bluntly, “If you really want to make an impact and you really want to get this region thinking about its future, I will do everything I can to help you. And if you don’t and you’re not interested in thinking big, I’m done. I don’t have any more time for you.”

Murdock adds, “I hope he doesn’t regret saying that because you bet I took him up on it ... He’s got a big heart and a really sharp mind when it comes to development.”

With ULI, Steiner says, “our laser focus is what are the steps we need to take so we preserve the greatness of Columbus, the assets of Columbus, so as we grow into the future we remain desirable. And sometimes you have to do things that are painful and in those early stages don’t seem necessary, but you want to do them so later they don’t become pains.”

Transportation is one of the challenges that must be addressed, he believes.

“When you can go anywhere in Columbus in 20 minutes, why would you install transit? Doesn’t make sense, right? It’s going to cost billions of dollars, and then you have to subsidize operations; makes no sense. That’s narrow thinking. The big thinking is Columbus adding a million people.

If you can take 250,000 of them and put them in transit corridors and use the existing infrastructure rather than taking hundreds of square miles of farm land, that may be fiscally more

responsible,” he says.

“I’m seeing transit as a way of dealing with intelligent land use. Intelligent land use can increase prosperity and happiness in a community if you do it well,” Steiner adds.

And that takes you to the core of what Steiner values.

“Everything I do, whether it is ULI, Buckeye Lake, my company, or what I volunteer, there’s only one goal and this is to help improve the wellbeing of the people that you impact. In my company, I impact my employees. By Easton, I impact Columbus. With ULI, I try to impact the region, and the whole goal is about wellbeing,” Steiner says.

The developer credits Wexner—both by working with him and by observing his actions—with influencing his focus on improving things for others.

“He taught me civic engagement, the importance of giving back, taking care of your family, taking care of your alma mater, taking care of your church, taking care of your community,” Steiner says.

He adds, “For my wife and I, that was a turning point. The difference between our engagement, giving back, before Les and after Les, the difference is one to 100. There is not even a comparison. So that’s one area, giving back and understanding you are only who other people made you, and you need to pay forward but you need to pay back for those other people who made you who you are.”

Wexner’s insistence on high standards is another lesson Steiner embraces.

In Wexner’s world, efforts and outcomes are measured against the best possible results in the world.

“That is the point of reference. It’s not about what have you done in Franklin County, what have you done in Ohio, not even the United States. Our school is the world and we should always

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I love this country like only immigrants really can. ... I became a citizen because I love the American Constitution.

Steiner + Associates 4016 Townsfair Way, Suite 201 Columbus 43219 • steiner.com EmplOyEEs: 180 FOundEd: 1993 lOCatiOns: Columbus, Cincinnati BusinEss: Develops, leases and manages retail and mixed-use projects with a commitment to building long-term value; portfolio includes more than $2 billion of projects comprising more than 9 million square feet of retail and mixed-use space.

learn from the best. That’s our lesson always from him,” Steiner says.

Steiner continues to learn from Wexner, even following his lead to share concerns with his own 180 employees about events of Charlottesville, Va., and the ensuing uproar over the response from President Donald Trump.

Steiner and the firm’s other two owners—his wife, Pat, and Barry Rosenberg—had sent a message in midNovember to all associates to reinforce a commitment to company values.

“When the values of our nation, enshrined in our Constitution, are openly and publicly being challenged, when persons are being insulted and vilified for their faith, their gender or their race, we believe that it is essential that we stay guided by a set of values that are not adjusted to fit the opportunity of the moment,” the owners wrote.

“With this email,” they wrote on Aug. 23, “we are reaffirming our values as stated in our email of Nov. 17, and to say again that at Steiner, we believe in soulful leadership and a commitment to the pursuit of happiness and wellbeing for all people regardless of where they worship, who they love, where

they were born, their gender, who they voted for, or the color of their skin.”

They add, “The issue here is not one of freedom of expression which is also enshrined in our Constitution, but of the moral ambivalence of the President which allows groups to claim his support for divisive values abhorrent to our nation. Consequently, going forward we will not support any political candidate or political agenda that does not clearly show that they stand with us on these principles.”

Steiner is unabashed in his views. “I love this country like only immigrants really can, I think. People ask me why did I become a citizen. I became a citizen because I love the American Constitution. ... What despairs me the most is that I’m not sure many Americans understand the fundamental strength of that document and the values it contains and how easy it would be to destroy it, and it’s a precious document. …We are a resilient system… but oh, we are being shaken to our roots, and we have to be clear about what is important for America.”

–Mary Yost is the editor.

18 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

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TeCh Talk

By JuliE bhusal sharma

@jbhusalsharma

launch Pad: Voice Metrics helps C-levels Stay Informed InvEntEd by: Stuart Crane Cost: Subscription cost undecided InvEstor: Stuart Crane aMount fundEd: Under $20,000

W

hen a CEO doesn’t know where his or her company’s key business indicators fall, bad things can happen. But pulling up the stats online can be an extra step in an already busy day. Stuart Crane created

an Alexa skill called Voice Metrics to make it easier. The skill is compatible with any technology that uses Alexa voice listening and will answer questions about company metrics that are tracked, whether it’s how many transactions a company had in a day or the best hour for sales.

“I’m most excited about how can businesses, CEOs, and C-level people in companies, utilize technology— whether it’s sitting in their kitchen, making breakfast in the morning or they’re driving to work—because Al-

Will voice Metrics achieve startup success? p o t E n t I a l

I n v E s t o r

“Voice Metrics seems like a great idea to keep business leaders informed in a timely and efficient manner. at this early stage, I’d encourage market testing across industries, user levels—inside and outside the C-suite—kPI data sources, and monetization schemes. Once investor funds come into play, a sound plan to develop the product, build the team, grow revenues and fend off competition will be key.”

VanCE ZanardElli, Member, Ohio Techangels

p o t E n t I a l

u s E r

“I currently have Siri read my briefing each week or morning from an email my assistant compiles from each department.

This whole process takes her minutes a day. Cost is minimal annually this way, and she has a pulse on everything I need to know as well.”

ZaChary TraxlEr, CeO and Founder, Traxler Printing

I n d u s t r y

exa and all of these technologies will be built into the cars,” Crane says.

Crane sees a time when asking Alexa for Voice Metrics will be a daily routine. But right now, Voice Metrics is in beta, testing the skill with Citywide Home Loans CEO Teresa Whitehead and ScriptDrop CEO Nicholas Potts.

Crane is also working with Smart Columbus to keep Mayor Andrew Ginther informed about the city’s transportation usage stats and more.

Crane plans to go out of beta by winter. And, fortunately for him, there’s no rush to start making a profit.

Crane was able to bootstrap Voice Metrics due to a lucrative sale of his former business, Definitive Homecare Solutions.

Tech elevator launches in Cincinnati Columbus’ Tech elevator is no longer the newbie after opening a year ago. Now, the Cleveland-based organization is also in Cincinnati.

Geared toward adults looking for a career pivot to tech, Tech elevator offers 14-week coding classes for a tuition of $14,000. after classes, Tech elevator’s Pathways Program looks to place its graduates in jobs within a Tech elevator location. This means that Columbus companies such as partnering businesses CoverMyMeds and JPMorgan Chase could now get more coders from Cincinnati as well as from the local branch and Cleveland.

For those interested, the spring session will start Jan. 15 for all campuses.

E x p E r t

“Voice Metrics clearly has some intriguing business intelligence/reporting value to an organization through (its) ‘daily briefing’ tailored to each functional leader. I also see value during meetings where Voice Metrics can access key kPIs real time, allowing executives to make decisions without additional follow-up.” daVid ChErry, executive advisor, Cherry advisory

Photo courtesy TeCh eleVaTOr

20 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

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BRIEFIng

By Mary yOst and ChlOE tEaslEy

Quest Investors CoverMyMeds program funds the dreams of selected employees each year.

P

rior authorization automation company CoverMyMeds is willing to cover a lot more than medication. For employees, the company offers a chance to scratch an item off their bucket lists—free, as in fully-funded.

While workplace scholarships are not a new idea, CoverMyQuest allows participants to suggest their own ideas without meeting any specific criteria. The program offers eight $4,000 mini-grants to pursue winning pitches. With a monetary match from CoverMyMeds’ new parent, global medical supplier McKesson, the number of winners has increased this year from five to eight and the grant amount has gone up $500.

Submissions were collected via lidded cardboard box and mulled over by five previous winners acting as judges.

Winners pitched everything from building a yurt—that one from Bryce Glass, product manager, incubation

CMQ judges from left to right: Joel Byler, luke Buchanan, CEO Matt scantland, alex Mooney, Peter Mueller; front row: Jacquelyn Garcia Photo courtesy COVERMYMEDS

studio—to exploring Canadian glaciers—the pet project of Kelsey Shannahan, test engineer.

One winner, Deb Bitzan, database analyst, will be taking her mom to South Korea to visit family and Bitzan’s grandmother’s grave.

Bitzan says, “My mom has spent her whole life caring for others, and I wanted to give her the opportunity to go home to South Korea to say ‘goodbye’ to her mother, who passed in 2013. She has only been home twice in 30 years due to financial/ personal hardship and logistical obstacles.” Bitzan has never been to South Korea and says she wants to visit a place so fundamental to her upbringing.

A team of two, Henry Frawley-

First Class Startups In a digital world, creative technologies are needed to ensure safe, efficient financial transactions. Columbus has the smarts to compete and the wherewithal to give fintech entrepreneurs a leg up, as witnessed by Fintech71, unusual in this space as a nonprofit startup accelerator.

From its new Columbus HQ (see this month’s Office Space feature), Fintech71 has started working with its

first cohort of 10 startups.

Each gets a $100,000 buy-in from Fintech71, six months of free office accommodations and 10 weeks of intensive mentoring.

Homegrown SafeChain joins startups from across the globe as one of the inaugural beneficiaries.

SafeChain offers secure fraud-prevention software for title professionals with client identity verification and verified ownership of bank

accounts.

Co-founder and CEO Tony Franco says, “Fintech is a complex space, and Fintech71 has done a great job pulling together established players from diverse sectors of the financial ecosystem. Rob (Co-founder and CTO Robert Zwink) and I are excited to partner with world-class businesses and impact the fintech space through blockchain.”

—Mary Yost

Fulcher, manager of internal infrastructure, and Lars Johansson, facilities manager, will participate in the Rickshaw Run, a two-week, 3,000-km. race in a rickshaw across India.

The race will raise money for Doctors Without Borders.

Other winners include Valerie Shoskes, apprentice software developer; Ash Watkins, account coordinator; Halley Immelt, graphic designer and Angela Masciarelli, PR manager.

CoverMyQuest is a program that not only makes dreams come true, but also touches the hearts of previous winners as they select next quests.

“Though it was extremely difficult to pick just eight winners, it was an immense privilege to be a CMQ judge,” says Jacquelyn Garcia, who last year was funded to work from a livable mobile office traveling wherever the whim of her coworkers took her.

“It was an excellent reminder that we work with an incredibly inspiring community of people here at CoverMyMeds. I want to extend a heartfelt thanks to all of our coworkers who shared with us a piece of their lives in their pitches,” she adds.

The creative CoverMyQuest program is one of the reasons CoverMyMeds has been a perennial winner in Columbus CEO’s annual Top Workplaces recognition, placing No. 1 in their size category three out of the last four years. –Chloe Teasley

22 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

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9/13/17 9:57 AM

spOtlight

By Kitty McCOnnEll FrEnCh + photo by tOdd yarringtOn

small Business

superheroes of safety Consulting firm provides training and tests workplaces for safety, even on short notice.

T

he secret to workplace safety isn’t technical, it’s personal.

Dianne Grote Adams makes sure to put people first with every service her company, Safex, performs for its clients.

“If you talk to any health and safety person, they went into the business because they like people, they care about people and they want to help,” says Adams, whose company provides an array of safety services to a variety of industries.

“Help in this case means: How do I keep people at work safe and healthy so they can go home at the end of the day?” she adds.

Workplace injuries cost employers

safex 140 N. Otterbein Ave., Westerville 43081 safex.us abOut: partners with employers to provide safe, healthy work environments for employees with customized safety training, safety programs for businesses, workplace hazard assessments, air quality testing, site safety monitoring for construction projects and safety packages across a range of industries.

OwnEr & PrEsidEnt: Dianne grote Adams FOundEd: 1992 FtE EMPlOyEEs: 21 2016 rEvEnuE: $2.6 million

dianne grote adams almost $1 billion every week, and that’s just the direct workers’ compensation costs, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

The indirect costs—replacement employee training, lost productivity, accident investigation and corrective measure implementation—can cost employers three to 10 times the direct costs, says Adams.

“That’s a lot of savings a company can realize when they get an effective program in place,” she says.

Sometimes, a company’s first call to Safex comes when they have a safety problem—what the Safex team would call an opportunity for improvement.

Safex certified professionals show up on construction sites or at manufacturing facilities on short notice to conduct industrial hygiene assessments and air quality testing or to

place contractors in unstaffed safety positions.

The best workplace safety plans are comprehensive, not reactive. Safex employee trainings and all-inclusive safety-support packages keep workers safe and employers OSHA-compliant.

Safex offers robust online and inperson education sessions to keep employees and managers up-to-date with the latest regulations and industryspecific refreshers.

Thanks to increased education and outreach by OSHA and the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation over the last 15 years, companies are more proactive about employee safety than they’ve ever been, says Adams.

“It’s not incident-driven anymore, it’s more about improving their business practices and realizing that they need some outside assistance in the health and safety arena.”

24 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

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Safex instructors let their personalities shine during interactive training sessions. It’s a tactic that wins over customers—mainly because it’s effective. “We work hard at engaging the participants in small group work or handson activities or games that are intended to teach something,� says Adams. She and her trainers elicit on-the-job stories from participants so they gain a practical understanding of how safety guidelines apply to their work. It’s more memorable for employees to learn the value of regulations by applying them to their own experiences—especially if the lesson can be taught with a bit of humor. “We’re not afraid to laugh,� says Adams. “It can be a very serious business, but you can also have fun while you’re learning about it.�

Employees who are involved in keeping themselves, their colleagues and their workplaces safe are more engaged in their work overall, according to Adams. In addition to a reduction in injuries, employees who take ownership of their safety are likely to demonstrate improved quality and productivity.

Adams, who began her career in environmental health and occupational safety working with Abbott/ Ross Laboratories, ChemLawn and as an Ohio OSHA consultant, absolutely loves training employees in workplace safety. “Most people would agree that health and safety can be a very dry subject,� Adams says with a laugh. “We try to use our upbeat personalities to deliver the content, so it’s not delivered as dry material.�

Safex serves a range of industries, from manufacturers to construction firms to colleges and universities.

Their clients include: Westerville’s Otterbein University, where Safex provided guidance on laboratory safety and waste management; Whirlpool, for

“We try to use our upbeat personalities to deliver the content, so it’s not delivered as dry material.� diannE grOtE adams Owner and President, Safex

whom Safex provided rapid industrial hygiene sampling; and the Knowlton Development Corporation, a contract consumer goods manufacturer that depends on Safex for a number of services.

Jeff Keller is KDC’s environmental safety manager in the company’s New Albany facility. He’s been working with Safex since the 1990s. “Everybody I’ve ever dealt with at Safex has been extremely knowledgeable about what they do and they don’t oversell,� says Keller. He trusts Adams and her certified staff to point him towards the best solution to any given safety problem. He appreciates being able to pick up the phone and seek guidance from Adams or her staff. “I’ve called them spur of the moment to get air quality monitoring, to make sure our employees are breathing the right air,� says Keller. When KDC needs temporary safety contractors to fill gaps in safety positions for a few hours, Keller turns to Safex. “I’ve never had to wait.�

Kitty McConnell French is a freelance writer.

UNITED WE FIGHT.

UNITED WE WIN. Roger Rawlins, CEO of DSW Inc., a United Way partner and game changer for more than 20 years.

October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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spOtlIght

By Evan WEEsE + photo by ROb HaRdin

Innovation

A gauge of perfection

Manufacturer of thickness gauges provides tools for precise measurements.

M

anufacturing is an industry of inches—fractions of inches, even.

For this information, many rely on Advanced Gauging Technologies LLC, a quickly growing Plain City company that makes and sells laser and isotope thickness gauges.

“A siding customer, they manufacture siding for houses, buildings, and if that material is too thin, it doesn’t meet their warranty requirements. If that material is too thick, they’re wasting raw material,” says Scott Cook, owner and president of Advanced Gauging. “The real-time feedback from our products allows people who have the capability of automating to do so.”

Cook says the 20-year-old company is primed for dramatic growth in the coming years, with prospects strengthened by a brand new, smaller gauge.

Starting in the 1980s, Cook’s father

Advanced gauging technologies, llC 8430 Estates Court, plain City 43064 advgauging.com abOUT: Designs, manufactures, assembles

and tests non-contact thickness gauges for customers on four continents.

OWnERs: scott A. Cook, president; Coralie M. Cook, vice president EmplOyEEs (not including owners): 10 FOUndEd: 1997

serviced and sold non-contact thickness gauging equipment for the steel industry. He had no employees, and never sought to grow the business beyond merely supporting himself.

That changed, however, when Cook left a corporate job in 1997 to find something more entrepreneurial. He shadowed his father, Ron, for only a few days before the two formally partnered to create Advanced Gauging.

“We hired some outside consultants to help us with the most technical stuff that we couldn’t do in-house, and we designed our own thickness gauge,” Cook says. “And it was a huge success right from the get go.”

The company quickly grew to have customers around the world.

Cook’s father died in 2001 and his mother, Coralie, took over the ownership stake, which she maintains.

But despite Advanced Gauging’s immediate success, there still was untapped potential.

Only four years ago did Cook drop other business ventures—and a passion for cards—to turn his full attention to the company.

“I was playing a lot of poker. I actually got pretty good at poker, entered a tournament and made a couple hundred-thousand dollars. If you’re playing poker 30 hours a week, it’s hard to grow this into a nice business,” he says. “I don’t know if it was an epiphany but I just said, ‘I’m going to focus everything I have on this. I’m going to put all of my time, my energy and my mental horsepower into growing this business.’”

He hired the company’s first sales person to actively drum up business with new customers. He implemented a robust employee benefits program, including companywide bonuses and free fitness training sessions, and began rolling out new products.

This year, the company introduced its third type of gauge, the smaller AGT600, to be used when a full-size gauge is impractical. The compact and portable gauge uses laser displacement sensors to measure thickness.

The company already claims to dominate the steel coil processing industry with its first two products,

the AGT400 and AGT800. The new product is more versatile.

“The 600 opens completely new markets for us. It gives us tons of— infinite—opportunity in that, before, all we could measure was steel that’s in a coil that was a quarter-inch thick or less,” Cook says. “Now, we can measure any kind of material, it doesn’t have to be in a coil, doesn’t even have to be on a processing line.

We don’t care how thick it is, we can measure it.”

The opportunity to sell even a single piece of equipment is impactful, as the gauges typically run between $30,000 and $40,000, depending on customization.

Now, Cook says, Advanced Gauging must figure out how to sell to new markets, including companies dealing in plastics and titanium. There was even an inquiry from someone wanting to measure the thickness of dough in a food processing facility.

As with other Advanced Gauging products, the accuracy of the thickness gauge will continue to be a selling point.

The first customer of the AGT600, Worthington Armstrong Venture, touts

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“Now, we can measure any kind of material ... We don’t care how thick it is, we can measure it.” sCOtt COOk President, Advanced Gauging Technologies its reliability in measuring steel coil ranging from eight-thousandths of an inch to 19-thousandths.

The company, a producer of metal ceiling grids, is a joint venture between Columbus’ Worthington Industries Inc. and Armstrong World Industries Inc. of Lancaster, Pa. Before, “if a supplier said 10-thousandths of an inch, we pretty much just took their word for it,” says Mark Paskvan, general manager of the joint venture’s facilities in Las Vegas and Benton Harbor, Mich. “By using this system upfront we’re able to get some just-in-time measurements about thickness, so we can make just-in-time adjustments as it’s running.”

scott Cook

Evan Weese is a freelance writer.

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SPOTlIghT

By MElissa KOsslEr duttOn + Photo by rOb Hardin

Nonprofit

Air-Craft Instructors Pilot-created group grows the interest and knowledge of children who want to fly.

A

s a kid, Drew Fowler liked planes.

But his interest in a career in aviation took flight after he participated in a Youth Aviation Adventure program as a Boy Scout.

“It definitely had an impact on me,” says Fowler, who graduated from the air traffic controller program at Kent State University last year and is in the process of landing a job in the field.

“It grew what was already there.”

Program co-founder Steve Wathen hopes the program, which addresses airplane basics, aviation careers and the dynamics of flight, will prompt more and more young people to pursue careers in aviation. “We want to light a spark,” and show kids that there are many aviation-related jobs that make rewarding careers, he says.

A pilot and aviation enthusiast, Wathen helped launched Youth Aviation Adventure in 1997 after he

Youth Aviation Adventure 2160 W. Case Road, Suite 104 Columbus 43235 youthaviationadventure.org MissiOn: To introduce young people to

aviation and bolster the ranks of young people learning to fly or choosing aviationrelated careers.

FOundEd: 1997 FOundErs: Steve Wathen and Dan Kiser VOluntEErs: 1,000+ nationally 2016 rEVEnuE: About $100,000 (in

donations)

“We want to get kids charged up about aviation.” stEVE WatHEn Co-Founder, Youth Aviation Adventure and a friend helped his son’s Boy Scout troop work on their aviation merit badges. The program was so popular with the scouts, Wathen and co-founder Dan Kiser decided to create a nonprofit organization focused on educating boy and girl scouts and other youngsters interested in aviation. They worked with the Ohio State University’s College of Education to develop curriculum that would engage students ranging in age from 12 to 18 and allow them to earn scout badges.

During the half-day program, which is offered twice a year in Columbus, participants visit 10 stations learning different facets of aviation, ranging from airport operations and preflight

checks to aerodynamics and instrument panels. “We try to make it really interesting,” Wathen says. “You’re not sitting in a classroom. It’s hands-on.”

Traveling from station to station made the program exciting and fun, says Courtney Dickman, a 13-yearold Columbus resident who recently participated in the program.

“I liked that we didn’t stay at any one station too long, and we got to see all different kinds of things—engines, instruments, the runway and taxiway markings and signs,” says the teen, whose mother is an academic advisor at OSU’s Center for Aviation Studies and also a pilot. “I loved playing on the flight simulators, and I really

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Melissa Kossler Dutton is a freelance writer.

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“I’m big on letting strangeness into your work. I tell students to trust themselves, to do their

insecurity as they draft, and to be careful not to revise the wildness out of their poems.

Read widely. Write whenever and wherever you can. Be bold.�

Learn more about Maggie’s story and other Columbus artists and events at ColumbusMakesArt.com.

Additional support from: The Crane Group and The Sol Morton and Dorothy Isaac, Rebecca J. Wickersham and Lewis K. Osborne funds at The Columbus Foundation.

Photo: Meghan Ralston | Design: Formation Studio

liked the Aviation-In-The-Know game.

I was really good at that. I also really liked talking to the pilot in the career station.�

A female pilot in the program shared interesting details about her career and a typical work day, Courtney says. “She helped me understand more about flying as a career. She told me about how she was getting ready to fly to New York to work after the event, since she’s a captain at Jet Blue, and how the hours can be so irregular. I like that idea, because I wouldn’t like having to get up early and do the same thing every day,� she says. “I really loved spending the day at the airport, flying the flight simulators, and basically being near airplanes all day. I realized that I can do this as a career, and it helped me to make up my mind that that’s what I wanted to do and go to college to study. I also met some of the OSU flight school students and now I can’t wait to be able to fly.�

Organizers also help participants who want to continue to learn about airplanes and aviation find ways to pursue it, Wathen says. They can recommend clubs or connect them with pilots who will take them up in a plane, Wathen says.

In 2005, YAA began offering its curriculum to other entities throughout the country that wanted to replicate the program for local youth. YAA provides other groups all the materials and training necessary to offer the program at no cost. Currently more than 30 US cities have “squadrons� that put on annual events, Wathen says. “Now we are able to put thousands of kids through the program each year,� he says.

Exposure to these STEM-related careers is especially important because experts predict the airline industry is about to face a pilot shortage, Wathen says. An estimated 22,000 pilots—or 42 percent of the US workforce at the biggest airlines—will retire over the next 10 years, according a recent report by the financial services firm, Cowen & Company. Federal law dictates that pilots retire at age 65. “By creating more access to airports and planes, we hope we’re getting more kids thinking about careers in aviation,� Wathen says. “We want to get kids charged up about aviation.�

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spOtlight

By Brian Ball + photo by rOB Hardin

Commercial Real Estate

Working with What they’ve got landlocked Worthington seeks to make the most of its opportunities by redeveloping key parcels.

W

hen Ohm Patel’s Alliance Hospitality bought the Clarion hotel in Worthington 16 years ago, he knew the 233-room property on 7.1 acres had potential beyond upgrading it to a more upscale flag.

“It hadn’t seen a lot of love,” Patel said of the lack of proper maintenance and reinvestment in the rooms. “We discovered quickly that the location could be lucrative, long-term,” he says. “But we were more of a hotel operator at the time and didn’t really have a development mindset.”

Even making upgrades to qualify for a Radisson flag proved enough a challenge for the property that had debuted in 1979 as a full-service Hilton Hotel. Further investment allowed the property to become a Holiday Inn in 2007, but the Lewis Center-based hotel developer/operator—now known as the Witness Group—believes the entire property should just get redeveloped. “We can’t afford to put any more money into it,” the Witness Group CEO says. “The market dynamics have changed.”

For the city of Worthington, redevelopment of the site for a higher grade brand with no more than 130 rooms could allow the opportunity to create another 36,000 square feet of hotel-oriented retail across West Wilson Bridge Road from where developers just a few years ago reconfigured

and upgraded the long-neglected Worthington Mall into a mixed-use project with apartments and commercial office space.

That redevelopment, a joint venture between Columbus developer Tom Carter and investors from Texas, started with opening up portions of the then-40-year-old mall and refreshing the mix of tenants with new restaurants and retailers.

“It was really at death’s door,” recalls Carter, an 18-year Worthington resident. “I watched the degradation under an absentee landlord. When we bought it in late 2010, it had 40-percent vacancy.” Carter says his knowledge of the Columbus commercial real estate marketplace made redeveloping the property that had fallen into foreclosure an easy decision. “It’s one of the best interchanges in northern Columbus and it’s very accessible, especially with the (Interstate 270 and North High Street) roadwork underway.”

The project quickly caught the attention of prospective tenants. Insight Bank, in early 2011 committed to building its headquarters and branch on the former Dalt’s restaurant site as

numerous retailers and restaurants filled up the revamped retail space.

By late 2012, Dublin-based Crawford Hoying Development Partners decided to build the 193-unit Heights at Worthington Place apartment building on a nearby site; a few months later, the developer added 23,000 square feet of commercial office on the bottom two floors.

That residential component, Carter says, “made it an even more active environment.” The developers may consider a multi-story office component. “We think there’s still some more to do,” he says.

Witness’ Patel says the hotel is no longer the primary factor in the planning. “Ultimately it will be the market demand for the retail that drives the mix of products on the site.”

Worthington Economic Development Director David McCorkle says the city, like many landlocked communities inside I-270, has had to focus on redeveloping existing properties such as the Worthington Mall and the Holiday Inn site to maintain the quality of life its residents have come to expect. Much of the effort has focused on reinvigorating office properties on

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A worker readies new space for Pet People.

Wilson Bridge Road east and west of North High Street that offered some of the first Class A office space outside of Downtown Columbus 30 to 40 years ago.

“It’s taking the existing inventory of properties and the opportunities to upgrade that product,” McCorkle says, noting Columbus-based Trivium Development LLC earlier renovated former Mettler Toledo International headquarters at 350 W. Wilson Bridge Road for Central Ohio Urology Group and other tenants.

To that end, the city in 2015 attracted organic grocer Fresh Thyme to 933 High St., site of an old office property.

That followed by a decade or so the CVS pharmacy chain’s opening of a store on a portion of a site previously occupied by grocer Jubilee Foods.

MK&K Realty Inc., owner of the former Jubilee property, has revised a decade-old plan for development with a small retail project under construction at 910 and 890 High St. without the second-floor apartments the city had sought earlier. MK&K Vice President Chris Kessler says the speculative 890 building will offer 12,656 square feet of second-floor office space above retail while retailer Pet People has signed a lease for the one-story section at 910 High St. “We went back to the drawing board to see what we could work out economically” for a secondfloor use, says Kessler.

Other redevelopment activity also has taken place closer to the city’s historic Village Green. Showe Development has put a yoga studio in the 1820 renovated Masonic Lodge and museum as well as offices at 634 High St. a block south of the square. The city also has marketed the former Worthington schools offices at 752 High St. it owns for retail or other active use for several years. The 1927 Kilbourne Memorial Building that had served as the community’s first library had attracted operators of the Sweet Carrot food truck and Grandview-area restaurant under a September 2015 lease.

But renovations and other costs skyrocketed above an agreed $550,000 maximum capital investment, so the city let the restaurateur out of its lease by mid-2016.

By that time it had attracted Sew to Speak, a boutique fabric and sewing supplies retailer that also hosts classes, relocating from Clintonville. More recently, the membership-based CoHatch Worthington co-working office and art and crafts studio location nearby at 659 High St. has committed to expanding into the Kilbourne property this fall.

CoHatch founder Matt Davis says the facility also offers conference space to its members. “We take old buildings and repurpose them for new concepts,” he says, noting the existing Worthington space that opened a year ago is the

“They’ve done a good job at preparing the community for growth. ... All of the city departments have an economic development focus.”

MATT McquAdE, managing director of business development, Columbus 2020

upper level of the former Zettler Hardware. “The city has bought our concept and has entrusted us to help activate (the Village Green) into a vibrant town center.”

The city’s McCorkle says Pet People’s interest in the retail space came as it sought an alternative to Dublin as a place to relocate its headquarters. Pet People in February moved its 30 office workers from Hilliard into about half of the long-vacant Liqui-Box at 6950 Worthington-Galena Road. Filling up existing properties, McCorkle says again, “is exactly what we look to do.”

The city still has a lot to do as many longtime residents seek to vacate the homes in which they raised their children and look for alternative housing for their retirement years. One site that could accommodate such housing is the 42-acre United Methodist Children’s Home campus at the intersection of High and Worthington-Galena Road. The site—which Continental Real Estate Cos. had proposed several years ago for a Giant Eagle-anchored shopping center—attracted the interest of Columbus-based multifamily developer Lifestyle Communities for 571 residences and some commercial development.

While the developer had a few estate homes proposed along the campus’ west border to serve as a buffer with the Worthington Estates neighborhood, the density nevertheless brought out vocal opposition among residents under the Worthington Alliance for Responsible Development banner.

Plans have not advanced much since a June 2015 public meeting between residents and the developer despite some interest for a medical facility north of a United Methodist conference center on the site.

“It’s a prime parcel in the heart of Worthington,” McCorkle says of the property. “The city would like to see some Class A offices; some people want it to become a park; Lifestyle Communities came in and wanted to put in just high density residential.”

Worthington Place’s Carter says, as a resident, he hopes the residents, developer, city and landowner can come to terms on an acceptable plan. “It’s really a hot market in Worthington right now,” he says, “and they haven’t been able to capture any of that excitement.”

—Brian Ball is a freelance writer.

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Connections

AuguST 10, 2017 + Photos by RICH SHARICK of Rich Images Photography

Citicom

Conway Center Event The 14th annual Family Business Tour provided networking for attendees.

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Debbie and Larry Koenig Jeff Lagusch and Kelly Borth Angela McDermott and Purba Majumder John Farhat and Anthony McIntosh Jay Amstutz and Suzanne Amstutz Dave Lundregan and Eric Sideri Bea Wolper, Rod Vedder and Doug Bierl Bob Moyer, Dina Shultz and Steve Heiser Brent Kenreich, Rick and Jennifer Crossland Mike Schoedinger and Mark Swepston Michele Yetzer and Dustin Wilshire Jill Kerns and Michael Solik Tom Dunson, Mike Kramer and Tim McDaniel Kevin Oakes, Holli Houseworth and Jenna Morris 15 John and Rebecca Paull and Michael Marsh

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Your local Columbus commercial banking team.

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BMO Harris Commercial Bank is a trade name used by BMO Harris Bank N.A. Member FDIC

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AgendA

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August 24, 2017 + Photos by shellee fisher PhotogrAPhy

Hyatt Regency Ballroom

CotA Annual luncheon Attendees heard from Beth osborne, vice president for technical assistance at transportation for America.

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Bruce luecke and Maude hill Crystal Causey and glenn taylor sr. devin hughes and Colleen o’Morrow Jean Carter ryan and elaine roberts laura Koprowski, emille Williams, Karen Angelou, frederic Bertley and Christina o’Keeffe emille Williams, Curtis stitt and richard Crockett Mandy Bishop, tony slanec, Brandi Braun and gary sebach Bob Weiler, John hiltz, gary sebach and Mike Bradley Kym lee, Bipender Jindal, Columbus City Councilmember shannon hardin and emmet Apolinario Ben Brown, Marcia lampman, Mark Majidzadeh Mayor Andrew J. ginther, Beth osborne, Curtis stitt and Jean Carter ryan leigh Anne Benedic, franck Wobst, Catherine Kang and Adam Bennett tasha Booker, doyline Williams and danni Palmore

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NOW SEEKING NOMINATIONS FOR THE SIXTH ANNUAL HEALTHCARE ACHIEVEMENT AWARDS The March 2018 issue of Columbus CEO will recognize businesses and individuals who are making a difference in the health and wellness of their patients, customers and community in these six categories: HEALTHCARE TRAILBLAZER Recognizes an entrepreneur or organization that has achieved outstanding innovation in traditional or nontraditional healthcare initiatives that improve the practice of medicine and patient care.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT Recognizes a longtime or retired healthcare professional who has demonstrated exceptional leadership, knowledge, decision-making skills and commitment to his or her organization, patients and profession.

PATHWAY TO POPULATION HEALTH Recognizes an organization whose efforts focus on improving community health and disease prevention in central Ohio.

VOLUNTEER(S) OF THE YEAR Recognizes individuals making positive impacts in central Ohio by devoting time, dollars or both to help local healthcare organizations, patients and the community.

PRACTITIONER OF THE YEAR Recognizes an individual who provides outstanding care and advances the practice of medicine.

EXECUTIVE OF THE YEAR Recognizes an individual who has had a positive impact through his or her outstanding efforts on the administrative side of healthcare.

Visit ColumbusCEO.com/healthcare to nominate now through Friday, Oct. 13.

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AgendA

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August 30, 2017 + Photos by JAmes deCAmP PhotogrAPhy

Battelle Environmental Center

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guests celebrated high school’s new Battelle environmental Center.

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and Jerre mcCulley Wadsworth, hannah Powell and Alex Fischer heather sherman, Andrew Bruening, Ashley Bloom and sheli smith Alesia gillison, mark real and rebecca Asmo Frederic Bertley and elizabeth Paul Charlotte and Jack Kessler and Alex Fischer Javaune Adams-gaston, Judge Algenon marbley and Alex thanos Abby Poklar and Kelley griesemer glen rowe, Larry Wendling, Bob White sr. and drew hanna steve Lyons, Blake thompson and david Burns

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Agenda

EvENTS CALENDAR: OCTOBER

Compiled by ChlOE tEaslEy

04-05

Distribution & Innovation Forum Time: 7:30 a.m.-10 p.m.

7:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.

Location: 700 Morrison Road Gahanna 43230 Cost: Free Contact: 614-716-1000 or energysymposiumblog.wordpress. com Building on the success of previous years, the forum is focused on important power delivery and distribution topics that need to be urgently addressed by companies and industry, such as system reliability and safety, distributed generation proliferation, and underground network management; all of which continue to add to the complexity of delivering a highly reliable, cost-effective product to customers.

17-18

Ohio Digital Government Summit Time: 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m.

8 a.m.-noon Location: Ohio Union, 1739 N. High St., Columbus 43210 Cost: $50 Contact: 800-940-6039 ext. 1402 or govtech.com Government Technology’s passion is helping spread best practices and spurring innovation in the public sector. The Ohio Digital Government Summit is designed to do just that. The summit has an advisory board that gathers public sector and private sector To submit a business or professional event, go to the online calendar at ColumbusCEO.eviesays.com and add your listing. All qualifying events will be listed on the website; select events also will appear each month in the magazine.

leaders to create an agenda designed to make that passion relevant and actionable to the state and local government organizations attending the summit. Participants tell us they use the inspirational keynotes, leadership discussions, networking breaks and timely topics discussed in the numerous breakout sessions to help advance the goals of their organizations and their own career paths.

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IISE All Ohio Annual Dinner & Meeting Time: 5 p.m.-8:30 p.m.

Location: Der Dutchman Restaurant, 445 S. Jefferson Ave. Plain City 43064 Cost: $10 for students; $20 for nonstudents Contact: 800-494-0460 or iiecolumbus.org Join us for our annual All Ohio Dinner Meeting. Network with fellow Industrial & Systems Engineers from all over Ohio, catch up with friends and enjoy good food.

This year’s meeting will feature five TEDx themed presentations showcasing the many roles of ISEs.

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CEO Insights: Sue Zazon, President of Huntington Bank Central Ohio Region Time: 7:15 a.m.-9 a.m.

Location: Dawson, 1114 Dublin Road, Columbus 43215 Cost: $40 for Chamber members $55 for nonmembers Contact: 614-221-1321 or columbus.org This series features interviews with local presidents and CEOs in an intimate setting at the Dawson The-

atre. Sue Zazon has enjoyed a storied journey through the local banking industry beginning with a gig at Huntington, then a 14-year career at Key Bank, through First Merit and finally back at Huntington again as president in the central Ohio region. In an interview format, Zazon will share details of her business journey and examples of the driving forces that have helped her grow. The event is hosted by the Columbus Chamber.

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Daymond John’s 5 Shark Points: Fundamentals for Success in Business and Life Time: 8 p.m.-9:15 p.m.

Location: University Hall Gray Chapel, 61 S. Sandusky St. Delaware 43015 Cost: Free Contact: 740-368-3545 or owu.edu Daymond John is the founder and CEO of FUBU, branding expert & investor on ABC’S Shark Tank. From humble beginnings to one of the most sought-after branding and marketing experts in the country, Daymond John has elevated himself to a 21st century renaissance businessman, setting the standard of excellence in marketing, branding and business.

Refreshingly candid, with respected expertise and an inspiring story that is the very essence of the American Dream, John illustrates his success strategies with insight from his allAmerican journey, offering audiences practical and invaluable tools to achieve personal and professional goals.

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Lunch and Launch: Making Your Exhibit Booth Profitable for Your Business Time: Noon-1 p.m.

Location: The Columbus Idea Foundry, 421 W. State St. Columbus 43215 Cost: $4 or $15 with lunch Contact: 614-653-8068 or sundownrundown.org Are you frustrated by promotional items getting tossed in the trash? Then listen as The Tradeshow Doctor™ shares the 12-Point Exhibitor Booth Diagnosis, which uncovers symptoms and provides cures.

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Need Knows No Season Luncheon Time: Noon-1 p.m.

Location: Greater Columbus Convention Center, 400 N. High St., Columbus 43215 Cost: $100 Contact: 614-437-2146 or co.salvationarmy.org The luncheon will highlight the work The Salvation Army offers to low-income children in this community.

25-27

Women in Digital Conference Time: 5 p.m.-9 p.m.; 7:30 a.m.-9 p.m.; 7:30 a.m.-4 p.m.

Location: Southern Theatre, 21 E. Main St., Columbus 43215 Cost: $520 each for group of five or more, and up Contact: 614-505-6221 or womenin.digital Choose from keynotes on the main stage or intermediate workshops. Mix and network with women from chapters nationwide.

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UPCOMING EVENTS ACG Columbus is the global community for middle market M&A dealmakers and business leaders. Reserve your spot at our next event to network with Columbus’ top deal-makers.

To register visit: www.ACG.org/Columbus/Events

OCTOBER BREAKFAST

Thursday, October 19, 2017

Grand Event Center | 7:30a - 9:00a Members: $30 | Non-Members: $60

Young ACG

NOVEMBER LUNCHEON Columbus Downtown Development: Past, Present, and Future

Wednesday, November 1, 2017 The Sheraton | 11:30a - 1:00p Members: $30 | Non-Members: $60

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9/12/17 2:00 PM

A Quarter Century of Change

Our look-back stories in 10 key sectors show the only constant of the past quarter century has been tremendous growth and change.

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S i lv e r C e l e b r at i o n

banking

Communications

education

energy

Healthcare

Hospitality

Housing

Manufacturing

retail

transportation

When Columbus CEO began publishing in 1992, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg was 8 years old. Recent news that his global company plans to build a highly sought data center in New Albany is the perfect example of how things have changed in the past 25 years.

Many creative entrepreneurs are impacting every aspect of the economy.

Local business, government and community leaders are courting companies that didn’t exist just a few years ago.

Read on to learn how things have changed.

tick tock...

1992 nov. 3: Ohioans vote to amend the state constitution to limit the terms of US senators and representatives from Ohio, state lawmakers and state executive officeholders.

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Sign of the Times

Rachel Peterson, facebook director of of data center strategy and development

Facebook deal shows central Ohio has joined the big leagues.

By JEff BEll

P

ersistence paid off big time for New Albany in its pursuit of a $750 million Facebook data center project that will bring about 100 high-paying jobs to the city and burnish central Ohio’s growing reputation as a go-to region for companies driven by technology.

Facebook announced in August it would build a 970,000-square-foot data center on a 345-acre site in the New Albany International Business Park off Route 161 and Beech Road. The city and New Albany Co. had tried to land a smaller Facebook data center project in 2015, but the social media company decided to build elsewhere. Instead of giving up at that point, local officials continued to stay in touch with the company.

Those conversations included updates on improvements to infrastructure such as water lines, fiber optics and electric power, says Jennifer

File/COLUMBUS DISpATCH

Chrysler, New Albany’s director of community development. The city also reorganized staff members to better manage reviews and approvals of development plans and construction permits. In addition, staffers worked with the New Albany City Council on getting tax incentives in place.

“Every time we would make a change,” Chrysler recalls, “we would call site selectors and our friends at Facebook and say: ‘We’re just touching base to update you on what’s different about us now than when we met in

1992

1993

Nov. 11: Columbus Zoo director and national television celebrity Jack Hanna becomes the zoo’s director emeritus.

March 14: The Greater Columbus Convention Center opens. An expansion in 2001 and another completed this year bring its total space to 1.8 million square feet.

2015.’”

The goal, she says, was to help solve what she calls “the speed-to-market equation” for tech companies facing tight turnaround times for expansion projects.

That strategy ended up being critical when Facebook started looking for another data center site late last year, says Matt McQuade, managing director of business development at Columbus 2020. The regional economic development organization worked closely with the city of New Albany,

now Lennox Town Center, an enclave of stores, restaurants and a cinema, that opened in 1996.

Nov. 12: Ohio State University alumnus Max Fisher, founder of the Aurora Gasoline Co., which eventually merged to become Marathon Oil, donates $20 million to OSU’s College of Business. It’s now the Fisher College of Business.

May 7: Lennox Industries announces it will close its 770,000-square-foot manufacturing and warehousing complex at 1711 Olentangy River Rd. The site is Timeline photos: File/COLUMBUS DISpATCH

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“I think the Facebook project will bring more companies here.

We’re on a lot of people’s short list now.”

JaCk kEsslEr, Cofounder and Chairnan, New Albany Co.

New Albany Co. and JobsOhio on the Facebook deal.

“Delivering everything on (Facebook’s) timeline was challenging, but we were able to do it,” McQuade says.

It also helped that Amazon Inc. had previously chosen New Albany for one of its three data centers in central Ohio.

“That was a very powerful validation of the competiveness of the Columbus market,” McQuade says, adding the region also has a reliable power supply, ample water resources, competitive tax incentives and plenty of tech talent

needed by data centers.

The New Albany location offers excellent access to fiber-optics, a strong pool of construction and operations talent, and a “great set of community partners who have helped us move forward quickly with our project,” according to a Facebook spokesperson. The company also cited the “diligent and swift” process for key development milestones, including permits and approvals, by local and state officials.

“This is a big win for Ohio, the Columbus region, New Albany and us,” says Jack Kessler, cofounder and chairman of the New Albany Co., the real estate development firm that has led New Albany’s transformation since the early 1990s. “I think the Facebook project will bring more companies here. We’re on a lot of people’s short list now that wouldn’t have known where New Albany was a few years ago.”

Kessler praised New Albany Co. President William Ebbing for continuing to court Facebook even after the company went elsewhere in 2015.

“We had a lot of help from Columbus 2020, JobsOhio and city of New Albany,” Kessler says. “The teamwork to get to the finish line was very impressive.”

He and others familiar with the Facebook deal also praised the efforts

by American Electric Power in meeting the power needs for the data center.

Energy, water and fiber-optics are

Nov. 16: Red Roof Inns, started in 1973 with a single hotel on Stringtown Road in Grove City, says it will sell the chain to the New York-based Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund.

1994 April 7: Nationwide Insurance honors retiring General Chairman John E. Fisher by contributing $2.5 million toward an exhibit in

a proposed relocation of COSI. The science museum, since moved to the Scioto Penninsula, is now adding underground parking topped by a new park.

critical for data centers, and New Albany had those in place when the Facebook opportunity arose, says Ted Griffith, managing director for information technology at JobsOhio, the state’s private economic development organization.

Industry expertise in the information technology and energy industries are also important, he says, as is the availability of talent needed by data centers.

State and local tax incentives also helped close the Facebook deal.

Chrysler says New Albany is providing a 100 percent, 15-year real property tax abatement on each phase of the project. It is also waiving up to $250,000 in building and permit fees. Additionally, the state approved a 2 percent, 10-year Job Creation Tax Credit for Facebook along with a 100 percent, 15-year data center sales tax exemption.

While the data center will bring jobs and tax revenue to New Albany, the biggest benefit may prove to be what the Facebook project can do for the future of the city, region and state, according to Chrysler.

“Attracting a project of this caliber shows New Albany has emerged as an economic engine for the state,” she says. “We’re looking forward to the future and creating an environment for more technology companies to locate here.”

May 1: Port Columbus officials break ground on a four-gate, $21.5 million terminal expansion. The renamed John Glenn Columbus International Airport, just finished an $80 million upgrade and is planning for future expansion.

June 18: A concert by Billy Ray Cyrus opens the 20,000-seat Polaris Amphitheater. The venue closed in 2007, and its land is now

Jeff Bell is a freelance writer.

home to Columbus’ IKEA store.

Nov. 1: The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio board closes the Columbus trash-burning power plant due to financial reasons, with demolition in 2005.

1995 Jan. 9: St. Ann’s Hospital of Westerville aligns with Doctors Hospital and Mount Carmel Health, October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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Banking

Breaking the Bank, and Rebuilding Banking becomes mostly mobile and branches close as patrons choose to bank via app.

By JEff BEll

B

File/COLUMBUS DISPATCH

ack in the day 25 years ago, depositing a paycheck or moving money between accounts at a bank on a Friday afternoon required a lot of patience, with long lines of customers trying to take care of business at branches and drive-up windows. But that’s no longer the case as technological breakthroughs in mobile and online banking have made for much smoother sailing heading into the weekend—or at any other time, for that matter.

That shift to different banking channels—phone, computer and mobile— has been the big driver in banking over the past quarter century, says Sue Zazon, Huntington National Bank’s central Ohio president and a banker in the region since the mid-1980s.

She remembers how Huntington became the first bank with 24-hour banking-by-phone services in 1992.

planning an integrated health delivery system. Doctors subsequently becomes part of OhioHealth.

March 29: COTA’s board votes to kill plans for light-rail transit, citing federal budget cuts. Transit beyond buses continues to be a topic of debate.

Aug. 8: Wendy’s International acquires TDL Group Ltd., the Ca-

federal banking reform law enacted in 2010 created the Consumer financial Protection Bureau headed

by Richard Cordray.

That morphed into the mobile and online services that are commonplace today.

As a result of those technological changes and a wave of mergers, banks have been closing branches across the country, especially since the nation’s financial meltdown in 2008-09. More than 10,000 branches have been shuttered since then, including 869 in the first half of 2017 alone, according to data cited by The Economist magazine.

“But bricks-and-mortar still matters, too,” Zazon says, noting many customers want to talk face-to-face with a banker when opening an account, applying for a loan or seeking help with their finances.

In her view, regulatory changes have also been a major force in reshaping the financial services industry.

One of the important regulatory developments was the Check Clearing

nadian parent company of Tim Horton’s, the doughnut and coffee chain.

for the 21st Century Act, enacted by Congress in 2003 to enable banks to handle more checks electronically and make check processing faster and more efficient.

But the biggest regulatory change was the sweeping Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act that was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010.

Aimed at preventing a repeat of the 2008-09 financial crisis, the law is designed to lower risks in the US financial system.

Dodd-Frank’s many provisions included the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was tasked with eliminating predatory mortgage lending and creating other consumer protections. The agency has been headed by Grove City’s Richard Cordray, whose long career in public service has included stints as state

Oct. 20: President Bill Clinton opens the Midwest Economic Conference in Columbus by saying: “By the end of the century, just five years from now, half of all Americans will be knowledge workers. We have to find ways to harness this change to make the American dream available to all of our people.”

Nov. 15: The Schottenstein family

and its chain of stores donate $12.5 million for naming rights to OSU’s proposed new sports arena.

It’s now Value City Arena at the Jerome Schottenstein Center.

1996 April 13: Major League Soccer’s Columbus Crew, the city’s first professional sports franchise, wins its inaugural game over Washington, 4-0.

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Aug lumb the e Woo on O Sprin

Sep the f Indus man.

John

treasurer and attorney general.

As for banking mergers and acquisitions, JPMorgan Chase’s $58 billion acquisition of Bank One in 2004 was the big kahuna in central Ohio. It followed Bank One’s $29.8 billion merger in 1998 with First Chicago NBD Corp.—a deal that included moving Bank One’s headquarters from Columbus to Chicago.

Many people in the region feared those Bank One deals would result in the loss of jobs and philanthropic support in the community, but that didn’t happen. Chase now employs more than 18,000 people in central Ohio. That includes about 10,000 at its massive McCoy Center at Polaris, which is scheduled for a $200 million renovation.

“The expertise of the former Bank One staff, plus the availability of the Polaris Center, were critical in keeping a large number of important jobs in the area,” says Jeffery Smith, of Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease, whose law practice focuses on financial institutions.

Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial’s $5.6 billion acquisition of National City Bank in 2008 also was big news in central Ohio. National City had a large market presence here even though its headquarters was in Cleveland.

More recently, Huntington completed its $3.4 billion acquisition of Akron-based FirstMerit Corp. in 2016.

The deal made Huntington the largest bank in Ohio based on deposits.

Smith says Huntington and Chase have helped Columbus remain a financial services center. Additionally, the large number of “de novo” banks that were formed in central Ohio in the early 2000s—including Insight, First Bexley and Arlington banks—have also helped provide competition and jobs.

A number of the de novos and other

Aug. 1: Jai Lai Prime Rib, a Columbus restaurant dating back to the early 1930s and a favorite of Woody Hayes, closes. Its location on Olentangy River Road is now a SpringHill Suites hotel.

Sept. 19: John H. McConnell, the founder of Worthington Industries, steps down as chairman. He is succeeded by his son, John P. McConnell.

small to mid-sized Columbus area banks have been acquired by outside financial institutions in recent years.

Smith views that as a reflection of the attractiveness of the Columbus market for banking services.

“Those acquisitions,” he says, “have also resulted in the injection of significant sums of (money) into the market in the form of payments to shareholders of those institutions.”

One of Columbus’ long-time financial services cornerstones, Nationwide Insurance, has become an even bigger player in central Ohio over the past 25 years. Its many strategic moves included the formation of Nationwide Bank in 2007 and its recent decision to invest more than $100 million of venture capital in what it calls “customercentric solutions that help members.”

That effort includes investments in companies that will help Nationwide’s customers meet their insurance and financial needs through digital products, safeguard their personal data and protect them in the evolving area of mobility. It is part of a trend of major investments by insurance and banking companies to offer products in new ways and ward off data breaches by hackers.

Nationwide has also used its financial wherewithal to transform the former Ohio Penitentiary site in Downtown Columbus into the Arena District through Nationwide Realty Investors (NRI), the insurer’s real estate development affiliate.

Anchored by Nationwide Arena, the district now includes 2 million square feet of commercial space, 80 businesses employing about 17,000 full- and parttime employees, 20 restaurants/bars and 1,030 apartment and condo units.

Add it all up and it represents more than $1 billion in total investment since

1997, according to company estimates.

NRI is also the developer of Grandview Yard, a 125-acre mixed-use development of commercial buildings, restaurants, hotels and more than 1,300 planned residential units.

Jeff Bell is a freelance writer.

Communications

From Ink to Sync Creative channels for sharing news, pictures and even feelings are now the norm.

By mary yOst

O

MG! When you think about how we communicated 25 years ago, you may be tempted to LOL. People actually had to talk to each other!

Now, digital communication is king and ways to access it are expanding exponentially.

Want the latest news? Grab your cell phone, or consult the fancy watch on your wrist.

Need an answer fast? Google it—a now-ubiquitous function two Stanford University students invented in 1998.

Or just call out your question and Alexa, Amazon’s know-it-all personal assistant introduced in 2014, will respond.

Would you like to share info or a

Dec. 17: Arshot Development breaks ground for a 23-story building Downtown at the southeast corner of E. State and S. High streets. It’s known now as the Fifth Third Center.

1997 June 25: Columbus wins an expansion franchise in the National Hockey League, three weeks after a privately funded plan

is announced for a new arena on the Ohio Penitentiary site. Voters rejected a publicly funded arena in May. July 24: The Mall at Tuttle Crossing opens with 128 stores.

Sept. 9: Upper Arlington-based CompuServe announces that it has been sold to telecommunications powerhouse WorldCom Inc. for October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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photo quickly with friends? Use one of a growing collection of social media platforms and stick a hashtag on it to ensure your followers will find it on Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook and more. No need for words when emoticons say it all.

Twitter, a way of sharing images and messages in 140 characters or less, debuted in March 2006.

No less than the president of the United States, currently known by the Twitter handles @POTUS and @ realDonaldTrump, uses it to share his thoughts at all hours of the day and night directly with his 38 million followers. Twitter has even become the president’s preferred vehicle to announce federal policy changes.

As recently as 1992, the internet was still young and not widely used in business or everyday communications.

First-generation mobile phones existed but were large and bulky brick styles using analogue signals. The first text message was sent in December 1992.

Then, with second generation, or 2G systems, mobile phones started getting smaller and more powerful.

The first Apple iPhone was released in 2007, and now more than a billion have been sold. Adults and teens use cell phones not just to communicate but to manage activities, make purchases, capture and store images, wake themselves up in the morning and put themselves to sleep at night.

Consumers’ attachment to their phones is also good for businesses that provide products and services.

They constantly mine big data to ping consumers based on their interests, sending messages to phones as soon as customers walk into a store to promote

©2017 THiNkSTOCk.COM

The first mobile phones were bulky brick styles, much larger than today’s sleek, powerful cell phones.

$1.2 billion in stock. CompuServe will stay in central Ohio, at least for now, and immediate plans call for the new owners to keep all 3,000 workers, including 2,000 locally.

1998 Jan. 5: Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Bancorp announces plans to acquire Columbus-based State Sav-

ings Bank for $917 million in stock, creating the fourth-largest bank in central Ohio with 83 branches.

July 23: Financier Warren Buffett buys fast-growing

their favorite items and notify them of sales and special offers. Even toddlers use touch-screen technology as they play with a parent’s cell phone to amuse themselves and keep from fidgeting in a store or restaurant.

Digital communications have changed the news media immensely in the past 25 years, creating a 24-hour news cycle and turning newspapers and magazines into much more than ink-on-paper productions. Media outlets in Columbus and around the world provide news on demand on their websites. Former print-only journalists post video reports online and tweet breaking news even before sending their stories to print.

The Columbus Dispatch unveiled its first website in June 1995, with some photos and demographic information but nowhere near today’s robust content of breaking news, videos and searchable archives. In December 2000, the Dispatch started running reporters’ email addresses at the end of staffwritten stories. Now Twitter handles are also noted.

The paper got a new look in February 2013 when the Dispatch pioneered a compact size that speeds production and prints 50 percent more copies while also saving on newsprint. Then in June 2015, the Wolfe family sold the Dispatch and publications including Columbus CEO to GateHouse Media of Pittsford, NY, a Rochester suburb, ending 144 years of local ownership. The new owners committed to continue printing seven-day-a-week, bucking an industry trend to reduce days of publication or revert to all-online distribution.

Columbus was home to the world’s first online communications channel for consumers, CompuServe, founded in 1969 as a computer time-sharing ser-

NetJets—formerly Executive Jet Aviation—for $725 million in cash and stock. The company maintains its operational headquarters at Port Columbus.

Sept. 16: After 49 years in business, Groveport-based Sun Television & Appliances files for bankruptcy court protection and later decides to liquidate. Some stores were later reopened by H.H.

Gregg Appliances and Electronics, which announced in April 2017 it was going out of business.

Oct. 1: Banc One completes a $28.9 billion “merger of equals” with First Chicago NBD Corp., forming a new company called Bank One Corp. The biggest bank in the Midwest will be headquartered in Chicago but retain all Columbus employees.

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vice. It was bought by America Online, or AOL, in 1998 and operates now as an internet service provider.

Even the concept of communication is being stretched as the Internet of Things grows, turning more and more everyday devices into smart machines that can help manage human affairs, and central Ohio could well produce the next big communications breakthrough.

Verizon’s Innovation Room in Hilliard, opened in 2014, is a lab designed to figure out creative ways for machines to communicate with each other to make life better for humans. Every month the lab hosts 10 to 20 Verizon business customers—large and small companies as well as government agencies—to learn what machines can do with embedded chips and software, says Steve Van Dinter, public relations manager for Verizon’s Great Lakes market.

One smart machine demonstrated in the room is a pop machine capable of letting its owner know which cans of soda sell better, when the machine needs to be refilled and whether the temperature is cold enough, Van Dinter says. “The idea is to get our customers thinking about their own needs and then we can sit down and discuss with them some thoughts on solutions for these problems,” he says.

For AT&T, the company that started out as a provider of wired telephone service, the past 25 years has seen its focus change almost 180 degrees.

In late 1992, AT&T was Columbus’ primary telephone service provider and had just introduced a new digital voice mail for customers’ land lines.

Today AT&T’s business has flipped to focus on mobile phone, internet and pay TV service as central Ohio provider of DirecTV and U-verse.

Nov. 2: The $110 million Schottenstein Center, which features the 19,500-seat Value City Arena, opens with an OSU men’s basketball exhibition game.

1999 March 1: Big Bear parent company Penn Traffic declares bankruptcy. The grocery chain lost more than $220 million in the past four years.

In Bexley, Capital University opened its Convergent Media Center in November 2016, which it touts as “a collaborative environment for faculty and students from current areas of study—ranging from communication and music, to electronic media, film, creative writing and more—to organically mingle and positively impact one another.” As Capital President Beth Paul is quoted on the university’s website, “Educating future leaders in our rapid-fire, multimedia, constantly connected world is reliant on convergence.”

Mary Yost is the editor.

Education

New Ways to Learn Students can choose from more schools and online options in K-12 and higher education.

By JEff BEll

A

sk an average central Ohioan about the biggest developments in education over the last 25 years, and the answer could well have something to do with Ohio State University athletics.

Perhaps it is the 2002 national championship won by the Jim Tresselcoached Buckeyes or the national title team led to glory by Urban Meyer in 2014. Or how about a series of major

April 7: Ohio State University Hospitals buys Park Medical Center at 1492 E. Broad St., for $12.7 million. The 400-bed hospital is renamed Ohio State University Hospital East.

May 5: McDonald’s announces plans to buy Donatos Pizza. The founding family, the Grotes, buys the business back in December 2003.

overhauls to Ohio Stadium or the opening of the Jerome Schottenstein Center in 1998?

But the more studious among us will talk about the impact that technology has had in how our colleges and universities educate students online and in the classroom. And the last quarter century has been marked by the struggles of Ohio’s urban school districts, including Columbus City Schools, booming enrollments and building programs in central Ohio’s suburban districts, an escalation of student proficiency testing and the rise of charter schools in the state.

On the higher education front, Columbus attorney Alex Shumate of Squire Patton Boggs has seen plenty of significant changes during his three terms as a member of the OSU Board of Trustees. One of the biggest, he says, is when state lawmakers began to link state funding for colleges and universities to their performance, particularly their graduation rates.

“Universities such as Ohio State,” Shumate says, “have benefited as they work to increase the academic and diversity profiles of incoming classes and expand advising, mentoring and other services that help keep students on a path toward graduation.”

He says other important changes have included Ohio State switching to a semester-based academic calendar in 2012 and requiring sophomores to live on campus. Reforms to state construction regulations helped the university save $78 million on the new $750 million James Cancer Hospital and Solove Research Institute that opened in 2014.

The hospital construction project was one of many that have transformed the look of Ohio State’s campus over the past 25 years. Two of the more prominent additions were the Fisher

May 15: The Columbus Crew plays its first Major League Soccer game in its new stadium off of I-71, then the largest soccerspecific stadium in the US and first built for an MLS team. It becomes Mapfre Stadium in March 2015.

July 12: France’s Accor S.A., the world’s fourth-biggest hotel operator, announces plans to buy Red Roof Inns for more than $1.1 billion.

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College of Business campus, whose first two buildings debuted in 1998, and a new Ohio Union that opened in 2010.

In general, central Ohio’s higher education landscape has become a lot more crowded over the last 25 years, says Linda Steele, a long-time administrator at Franklin University.

There were only about a dozen schools competing for college students here 25 years ago, she says, but there are 56 today based on data compiled by Columbus 2020—and that doesn’t include out-of-the-region universities that advertise their online programs in central Ohio.

Steele, Franklin’s vice president of enrollment and student affairs, says one of the biggest changes she has seen is the growing willingness by colleges to accept transfer credits from other schools. That’s part of broader efforts, which include allowing Ohio high school students to earn college course credits through the College Credit Plus program, to make college more affordable.

Franklin is also one of the universities to extend its reach beyond central Ohio. It now has 29 locations in five states through alliances with community colleges, and offers master’s degree programs to students in Oman, South Korea, Trinidad and Poland.

At the same time, Steele says college students now have higher expectations of the schools they choose when it comes to employability after graduation and the ease of online services to register, take classes, receive financial aid and pay tuition bills.

She also says those expectations have driven changes in teaching methods. Lectures and old-school tests are on their way out, replaced by interactive media tools, group work and self-

2000 March 27: Jamie Dimon is named chairman and CEO of Bank One. He replaces John B. McCoy, whose father and grandfather also led Columbus-based predecessors

Ohio State University’s new Ohio Union opened in 2010, offering meeting spaces and more.

File/COluMBuS DiSPATCH

guided learning.

The central Ohio school districts that feed students to the region’s colleges and universities have also undergone major changes. In 1992, for instance, 63,977 were enrolled in Columbus City Schools. Today, that number stands at about 51,000.

The decline is due in part to families moving to the suburbs around and beyond the Interstate 270 Outerbelt where much of the region’s population growth has taken place.

Olentangy Local Schools in southern Delaware County, for example, now has three high schools compared to one in 1992 and a fourth is scheduled to open in 2018. The Westerville, Dublin, Hilliard, South-Western City and Pickerington districts have also opened new high schools during that period, and enrollments have swelled in the once-rural districts in New Albany and Canal Winchester.

Columbus’ enrollment numbers have also suffered because of student defec-

Banc One and City National Bank & Trust. Bank One merges with JPMorgan Chase in 2004. Dimon remains Chase board chairman and CEO. April 7: For the first time in more than a century, alcohol is served in a Westerville restaurant thanks to voter approval. The suburb was once the capital of the nation’s temperance movement.

tions to charter schools. A study by the Thomas Fordham Institute found that charter school enrollment in Ohio had more than doubled to 122,000 students by 2015 compared to the 2004-05 school year. Nearly 15 percent of those students were from Columbus.

Columbus City Schools, as well as their charter school counterparts, have also fared poorly on the performancebased reports cards issued by the state.

For example, the district received five “Fs” and a “D” on the 2016 reports cards, faring much worse than adjoining suburban districts.

The report cards are part of a national push toward better school accountability, including the controversial No Child Left Behind laws passed by Congress in 2001.

The result has been more testing of students, more state ratings of schools and tougher penalties against those that do meet standards for improvement.

In such an environment, a massive data-scrubbing scheme by Columbus

Aug. 25: The Kahiki, a Polynesian restaurant that became a Columbus legend over its 39 years in business, closes. Owner Michael Tsao sold the land on E. Broad Street to Walgreens.

Sept. 9: Nationwide Arena opens with a concert by Tim McGraw and Faith Hill. The Columbus Blue Jackets’ first game is a month later.

One. ficer from

20 Dec. 31: Dimon R. McFerson retires as chairman of Nationwide. He’s replaced by W.G. “Jerry” Jurgensen, a former executive vice president at Bank

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May Hosp facili 1904

Jun a par

City Schools administrators was exposed by The Columbus Dispatch in 2012. It involved administrators removing students with poor test scores from the district’s state report cards, making it appear it was doing a better job than it actually was.

On the bright side, Columbus voters in 2016 passed a school bond and tax levy issue by a wide margin. The money is to be used to improve school buildings and hire more teachers and staff. More broadly, the Columbus district used a mix of state and local funding to build or renovate 46 schools as part of a 15-year capital improvements program that began in 2001.

Jeff Bell is a freelance writer.

Energy

Energizing Industry Coal takes a back seat to cheaper and plentiful natural gas in Ohio.

By Dan GEarinO

T

wenty-five years ago, Ohio was a place where plentiful coal led to low electricity rates, and almost nobody was talking about getting oil or gas from shale. The state’s utility companies were shielded from competition thanks to a price regulation and monopoly service.

And all of that was about to change,

One. Jurgensen is the first top officer at Nationwide not promoted from within.

2001 May 25: Columbus Community Hospital, a 156-bed South Side facility that traced it roots to 1904, closes.

June 28: Michael E. Moritz, a partner at BakerHostetler and

although in fits and starts.

Ohio’s energy landscape today has been shaped by two big developments.

First was deregulation of utility service in the 1990s, with natural gas followed by electricity, moves that took years of implementation but have clearly left their mark. Second were advances in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in the 2000s, which later allowed energy producers to extract vast amounts of oil and gas from beneath Ohio.

The upshot is that gas is now plentiful and inexpensive, and Ohio companies are learning to adjust to a dramatically different set of rules.

In 1992, Ohio’s average electricity rate was 6.1 cents per kilowatt hour, which includes all residents and businesses, according to the Energy Information Administration. That was a relative bargain, giving the state the 29th highest costs in the nation.

But the statewide average did not reflect some big inequities. If a consumer lived in a territory served by American Electric Power, including central Ohio, rates were much lower than the average, thanks to a reliance on coal.

Meanwhile, the utilities that served the northern part of the state had high rates, due largely to the high expenses of running two nuclear power plants.

The disparity was a glaring problem in areas along the borders of utility territories, with customers in the same counties or metro areas having big differences in bills.

Concerns about high bills had a potential remedy in another popular idea of the 1990s: energy deregulation. Ohio was one of several states that opened its natural gas and electricity markets to competition. The gas market was the first to change in 1997, allowing customers to choose a gas supplier other than the utility.

OSU alum, donates $30 million to the law school for scholarships and other initiatives. OSU names the school in his honor.

Oct. 25: Polaris Fashion Place opens.

Dec. 1: TWA, the airline that helped launch Port Columbus in 1929, makes its final departure.

American Airlines, which acquired

“Natural gas deregulation was a response to intense volatility, and mainly supported by businesses,” says Don Mason, who was chief of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Oil and Gas and later a member of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. “People were able to lock in a lot of savings because they were able to lock in six months or a year of prices,” he says.

In 1999, the Ohio General Assembly passed Senate Bill 3, which was designed to allow customers to choose their electricity provider.

The bill was controversial, with electricity utilities and business groups jockeying for the most favorable deal.

The final package came together with a marathon session in which then-House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson got the sides to agree on key points.

“My approach was it had to get done,” as Davidson was quoted at the time by The Columbus Dispatch.

Implementation of the bill turned out to be slow and filled with detours.

A key moment was in 2008 when the General Assembly passed Senate Bill 221, which modified the rules for electricity utilities and included new benchmarks requiring the companies to invest in renewable energy. Soon after, developers broke ground on new wind farms and solar arrays that were much larger than any renewable projects the state had previously seen.

It wasn’t until the 2010s that every major electricity utility had changed their corporate structures to accommodate deregulation. This usually involved selling or spinning off their power plants. The result is the companies now focus on the delivery of electricity, and they get their supply with purchases on an open market.

With the current setup, Ohio power

TWA, assumes its six daily flights from CMH.

2002

center on Oct. 31, but it moved up the date because so few tenants remained.

Feb. 1: Douglas Kridler, leaves the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts to become president of the Columbus Foundation.

Oct. 9: Northland Mall closes.

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plants no longer have a guarantee of profit. They need to compete by offering the lowest prices, which marginalizes high-cost options. Right now, nuclear and coal are on the losing end of this market dynamic.

The shift to deregulation was happening right as one fuel for power plants— natural gas—was getting much less expensive.

Energy companies developed ways to use hydraulic fracturing to unlock oil and gas that was in previously unreachable parts of shale formations.

The shale drilling boom hit Ohio in the 2010s. The state’s gas production went from 78.1 billion cubic feet in 2010 to 1.47 trillion cubic feet in 2016. Oil production has also soared, but Ohio shale has turned out to be richer with

gas rather than oil.

In 2011, Gov. John Kasich hosted an energy conference in Columbus featuring a panel with Aubrey McClendon, who was then CEO of Chesapeake Energy, a company that was an early and prolific driller in Ohio shale.

McClendon helped to set the tone when he predicted shale energy “will be the biggest thing in the state of Ohio since maybe the plow.”

The gas boom was especially stunning for people who had been close to the energy business for decades. Mason, the former regulator who is now an energy attorney, recalls that in the 1990s “nobody was looking at the Utica shale as a gas-producing formation.”

Now, shale gas has transformed the energy economy. Among the losers

File/COLUMBUS DISPATCH

Fracking sites have become familar in eastern Ohio.

have been coal producers, who see falling demand for their product because coal-fired power plants are more expensive to operate than gas-powered counterparts.

Electricity utilities and power-plant owners are adapting with investments in gas-fired power plants, solar arrays and wind farms. But the transition is difficult. American Electric Power and FirstEnergy are trying to figure out what to do with coal-fired plants that have useful life remaining, but are not profitable enough.

In 2014, Kasich said the state was going through a “challenging time” figuring out deregulation. He was speaking at the swearing-in ceremony for a new PUCO chairman.

“The ideological effort to deregulate, I’m not so sure it’s the smartest thing we’ve done in the state of Ohio,” he said at the time. “But we are where we are and we can’t go backwards now. So it’s onward in a deregulated environment, and we’ve got to figure it out.”

What about consumers? Residents and businesses paid 10 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2015, the most recent year available, which was 21st highest in the country, up from 29th in 1992. If not for shale gas, prices would almost certainly be higher in Ohio and many other states.

One thing that hasn’t changed is that many, if not most, consumers do not understand the things that contribute to energy bills. Mason sees this as a persistent problem.

“If there is anything I could have started in 1992 to be ready for now it would be within the K through 12, making sure there is more energy education and science classes,” he says.

Dan Gearino is a Dispatch business reporter.

Nov. 18: Two days after the FBI raided its offices, National Century Financial Enterprises and 13 subsidiaries file for bankruptcy.

The company offered financing to healthcare providers. Three principals were imprisoned on criminal convictions.

2003 Jan. 22: Business author and OSU marketing professor Roger D.

Blackwell is charged with insider trading in a 1999 Worthington Foods’ acquisition. He was convicted and served a prison term.

May 5: Police search four OSU dorm rooms where students are suspected of providing pirated music and movies for download by others. The illegal downloads were draining 10 percent of OSU’s computer system.

Dec. 5: Giant Eagle says it will pay $46.8 million for seven former Big Bear stores, five in Columbus and one each in Heath and Marietta.

Jan ily an LeVe reno open

Feb pany a dec Bear 70-ye

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Healthcare

Merged and Acquired Hospitals teamed up and hired doctors as technology changed healthcare delivery.

By LauriE aLLEn

I

f one word could be used to describe changes in the local healthcare scene over the past 25 years, it would be expansion.

Expansion of hospital systems. Expansion of physical footprints. Expansion in the scope of healthcare delivery. Expansion in knowledge.

Twenty-five years ago, Doctors, Grant, Riverside and St. Ann’s all were independent hospitals. Children’s Hospital took up a relatively small portion of real estate along Livingston Avenue. Ohio State University Hospital occupied space that is dwarfed by the current medical center complex.

Mercy and St. Anthony hospitals served populations on the south and east sides of Columbus, respectively.

Today, Doctors, Grant and Riverside all bear the name of their corporate parent, OhioHealth. St. Ann’s is part of the Mount Carmel Health System.

St. Anthony now is Ohio State University Hospital East. Mercy became Columbus Community Hospital in

2004 Jan. 30: The LeVeque family announces the sale of the LeVeque Tower. Following renovation, a new Hotel LeVeque opens in March 2017.

Feb. 8: After its parent company’s second bankruptcy filing in a decade, central Ohio’s last Big Bear grocery stores close. The 70-year-old chain started with a

2001, then closed the same year due to financial problems.

Now occupied by Select Specialty Hospital, the building at 1403 S. High also will house a 55-bed addiction treatment center this fall. Maryhaven will operate the center to try to meet the desperate need for addiction detox and recovery brought about by central Ohio’s growing opioid crisis.

Locally, hospital growth has included the opening of hospitals within hospitals, specializing in heart and vascular conditions, cancer, neuroscience and orthopedics. Construction is a constant.

Neighborhood health centers, freestanding emergency rooms and specialty clinics sprout up regularly on the central Ohio landscape. And, in addition to growth around the I-270 Outerbelt, hospital systems continue their push into contiguous counties and beyond. Some of the larger ones have a presence in dozens of Ohio counties and affiliate with other systems, such as Cleveland Clinic.

The explosion of mergers and acquisitions has its origin in part due to managed care and changes in thirdparty reimbursement that began in the 1990s.

By consolidating, “hospitals found they had better negotiating power, and were able to lower costs and benefit from efficiencies through elimination of duplicative services,” says Jeff Klingler, president and CEO of the Central Ohio Hospital Council. And increased market share helps the corporate bottom line.

Besides physical and corporate hospital expansion, several other developments have marked the last 25 years in the central Ohio healthcare sector.

Patients and doctors alike aren’t to blame if they have trouble keeping up with the dizzying pace of technology

single store on Lane Avenue.

Aug. 14: Federated Department Stores closes its Downtown former Lazarus store after 153 years in business.

2005 Jan. 31: A citywide indoor smoking ban takes effect for restaurants, bars, offices and other public places.

advancement, which seems to change overnight.

Some of the more notable developments: Electronic medical records give providers access to the same information, which has the potential to eliminate cumbersome paperwork, duplication and mistakes.

Smartphones seem to get smarter every day. With them, doctors can look at images, consult with peers and use specialized software to help them with clinical decision-making. Columbusbased CrossChx even allows people to securely store medical history, prescriptions and other information on their phones using a downloadable app.

Telemedicine and telepsychiatry can bridge gaps and help meet healthcare needs among underserved populations, as well as allow physicians to collaborate across the miles.

The ubiquitous tracker, once used primarily for fitness, now runs the gamut. Patients can monitor myriad conditions, including mood, pain, migraines, water consumption, heart rhythm, ovulation, and autoimmune disorder symptoms.

More and more physician-practice websites feature portals, where patients can view test results, receive reminders and schedule appointments.

Then there are changes on the business side.

“Where have you gone, Marcus Welby?” is a refrain that comes to mind for Tim Maglione, a 24-year veteran of the Ohio State Medical Association.

Maglione is referring to the disappearance of the sole practitioner running his or her business independently from top to bottom.

In the last 25 years, the number of physicians who are employed by hospital systems has grown exponentially.

May 13: The Pentagon says it will add more than 1,700 civilian jobs at the Defense Supply Center Columbus over the next seven years.

Nov. 8: Ohio voters approve a $2 billion state bond package to boost tech businesses in Ohio.

July 28: Franklin County commissioners vote to increase the county sales tax by a half-cent—to 6.75 percent on most goods and services. It was expected to raise $88 million annually.

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Construction continues on Mount Carmel’s new hospital in Grove City.

different. It has expanded from the doctor’s office to the neighborhood grocery store and pharmacy. It’s another way the sector is reaching out directly to consumers.

Also in the last couple of decades, several hospitals have added on to their names, typically to reflect corporate ownership or sponsorship as well as prominent benefactors. Some examples: Bing, McConnell, Nationwide, Ross, Solove and Wexner.

Laurie Allen is a freelance writer.

Hospitality File/COLumBuS DISPATCH

Most choose that route because it frees them from many of the administrative burdens that have come with managed care. It also can provide access to a larger network of specialists, technology and expertise.

The administrative “hassle factor” also has spawned businesses designed to help physicians deal with the hurdles they may face with reimbursement and other issues. Founded in 2008, Columbus-based CoverMyMeds electronically automates the prior authorization process for medications by working with electronic health record systems, health plans, pharmacy systems and providers. Earlier this year, the company entered into an agreement with McKesson Corporation to be acquired for $1.1 billion.

On the other end of the ownership spectrum have been attempts by physicians to own and operate specialty hospitals. An orthopedic hospital was built in New Albany over opposition; legislation passed at the federal level prohibits any further such physician-

owned hospitals, Maglione says.

And groundbreaking new technologies push the frontiers of medicine.

Researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and OSU’s College of Engineering recently developed a nanochip that uses a small electrical current to deliver new DNA or RNA into living skin cells, “reprogramming” them and giving them a new function. Known as Tissue Nanotransfection (TNT), the technology can generate any cell type of interest for treatment within the patient’s own body. It may be used some day to repair injured tissue or restore function of aging tissue, including organs, blood vessels and nerve cells.

Elsewhere, bioprinting uses inkjet printer technology to produce different cells types, which could eventually be used to produce organ tissue. Researchers are working with kidney and liver tissue, skin, bones and cartilage, as well as the networks of blood vessels to keep body parts alive.

Where we get medical care is also

2006 April 17: Cardinal Health Inc. founder and CEO Robert Walter, who turned a small food wholesaler into one of the nation’s largest medical distributors, steps down and is succeeded by R. Kerry Clark.

June 7: The Nationwide Foundation pledges $50 million to Columbus Children’s Hospital for a

Options to stay, dine Eating and lodging have been transformed with new chains, more hotel beds.

By Brian Ball

D

ining or staying overnight in a hotel has changed dramatically since Columbus CEO first hit the streets 25 years ago as Columbus grew both in the core city and the outlying communities.

Developers accommodated the expansion of the dining scene with other retail projects—and particularly movie theaters—in the 1990s and early 2000s, even as new sports venues were built.

In 1992, fine dining in Columbus meant the Clarmont south of Downtown, the sky-high Christopher’s atop

new main hospital and expanded research; the hospital is later renamed Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Sept. 21: The city of Columbus, the Columbus Regional Airport Authority and the state offer $57 million to create airline Skybus to be based at Port Columbus International Airport. It ceased flying in April 2008.

2007 March 2: Wendy’s closes its original restaurant at 257 E. Broad St. May 15: Limited Brands sells off a majority interest in its Express division, focusing on its fast-growing Victoria’s Secret and Bath & Body Works lines.

Aug. 3: Sun Capital Partners of

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Boca purch store

the Riffe Center on Capitol Square or One Nation on the top floor of the Nationwide Insurance HQ near the original Ohio Center convention center.

Diners also favored the Peasant on the Lane in Upper Arlington or the Morton’s of Chicago steakhouse.

None of those restaurants remain, with the Clarmont south of Downtown renovated into a Panera Bread café and the Kahiki Supper Club closed in east Columbus in August 2000 to make way for a Walgreens drugstore.

Another dining landmark, the Jai Lai club at 1421 Olentangy River Road, shut down in August 1996 after a 41year run at the location frequented by legendary OSU football coach Woody Hayes. The large venue served as the Buckeye Hall of Fame Café from 1997 to 2010, when the building was demolished for a Springhill Suites hotel.

The Zagat-rated Refectory, however, has survived on Bethel Road for more than 40 years. Meanwhile, the Bravo Brio Restaurant Group in 1992 opened its first of six restaurants in Columbus.

Other closed restaurants include Engine House No. 5, the Damon’s chain of BBQ-and-trivia fame, and earlier this year, the original German Village location of Max & Erma’s, which had built a multi-state chain before it began a slow and steady decline.

Even the venerable 55 Group collection of restaurants so popular in the 1990s also has faded away.

The top-notch Handke’s Cuisine that opened in 1991 under master chef Hartmut Handke closed in mid-2009 under a successor operator. But noted chef Hubert Seifert’s well-regarded Spagio remains active along the fertile Grandview Avenue entertainment strip in Grandview Heights.

Restaurant industry consultant Bob Welcher says, “The whole dynamics of the industry have changed” since 1992.

“Columbus was more of a (national) chain town. A lot of those (restaurants) have fallen by the wayside.” But that is not unusual in the business area.

“Everything has a life cycle as restaurant owners deal with different tastes

File/COLuMBuS CEO

Cameron Mitchell has been a dominant restaurateur of the past 25 years.

25 percent stake in its namesake division but later sells that. The stores closed in 2017.

Boca Raton, Fla., completes its purchase of 75 percent of Limited stores. Limited Brands retains a

Nov. 6: Cameron Mitchell Restaurants agrees to sell twothirds of its locations to Ruth’s Chris for $94 million. The sale includes Mitchell’s Fish Market, Columbus Fish Market, Mitchell’s Steakhouse and Cameron’s Steakhouse.

and changing demographics,” says the owner and president of Restaurants Consultants Inc. Indeed, Bravo Brio CEO Brian O’Malley says local restaurants have gained an upper hand in Columbus.

Brothers Rick and Chris Doody opened their first Bravo Cucina Italiana on Hayden Run Road in the old Cadillac Café in September 1992 and have since grown to 115 Bravo, Brio Tuscan Grille and Bon Vie Bistro restaurants in 32 states with local sites at Crosswoods, Easton, Polaris developments as well as, more recently, the Lennox Town Center near Ohio State. “We kind of circled the area and got into the best markets,” O’Malley says.

Columbus restaurateur Cameron Mitchell, a veteran of the Max & Erma’s and 55 Group operations, also spread out. He now has 15 restaurants in Columbus as he diversified his menu beyond his inaugural Cameron’s Contemporary Cuisine (now American Bistro) in a Worthington retail strip center in 1993. His collection now includes the casual Cap City Diner, steakhouses, four upscale restaurants in the Short North and an Ocean Club seafood restaurant at Easton.

It also operates M, a premier whitetablecloth restaurant in the Miranova office and residential complex on the southwest edge of Downtown.

Even as the restaurant industry matured, Columbus saw the movie theater market expand since the Lennox 24 between Grandview and Ohio State opened in December 1996. Other megascreen cinemas have opened at Easton, Crosswoods, Buckeye Parkway in Grove City and others since, although screens in Downtown’s Arena District closed earlier this year.

The region’s hotel scene also has experienced many changes.

2008 April 5: Skybus shuts down after less than a year in operation.

July 8: Max & Erma’s Restaurants Inc. are sold to G&R

Acquisition Inc. of Pittsburgh. After several more sales, the original German Village restaurant closed in August 2017.

Sept. 15: Wendy’s International is sold to Triarc Cos., parent of Arby’s. The result is the Wendy’s/ Arby’s Group Inc., headquartered in Atlanta. Arby’s is sold in 2011 and The Wendy’s Co. HQ returns to Dublin.

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The Downtown lodging market has expanded by nearly 2,000 guest rooms atop the roughly 2,400 rooms available in 1992, according to a list of regional hotels provided by the Experience Columbus travel and tourism bureau.

And another 600 or so rooms may get built among several boutique properties planned for the Short North in the next two years as a cool alternative to the standard hotel experience when attending a convention. When the 532room Hilton convention hotel opened in October 2012, it marked the first full-service property to open since the Adam’s Mark (now rebranded as a Renaissance by Marriott) reopened in the shuttered Sheraton on North Third and East Gay streets in March 1997. The Crowne Plaza added 99 rooms to its North High Street and East Nationwide Boulevard hotel later that year. And the former Hyatt on Capitol Square is now a Sheraton.

Creation of a new convention center in 1993 and subsequent expansions in 2001 and 2016/2017 drove the development of many of the new properties, such as the adaptive re-use of an older building for a Red Roof Inn on Nationwide Boulevard and Columbus hotelier David Patel’s Hampton Inn at North High and Spruce streets. The opening of the Nationwide Arena for the Columbus Blue Jackets hockey franchise in October 2000 also has encouraged construction of new hotels to serve those attending Blue Jackets hockey games or concerts in the venue.

The venerable Hilton brand returned to Columbus in 2000 when a 345room upscale, full-service property opened as part of the Easton Town Center complex off Stelzer Road south of Morse Road. A smaller, 252-room Hilton opened in the Polaris Centers of Commerce mixed-used development

Oct. 24: PNC Financial Services of Pittsburgh announces it will acquire National City Bank for $5.58 billion in stock and cash.

Oct. 28: Netflix says it will open a video rental distribution center in Grove City.

Dec. 23: Bankrupt Value City Department Stores close their two central Ohio stores.

in 2008. The Easton Hilton recently completed renovations in September.

The Olentangy River Road corridor has expanded in the last 15 years with several properties replacing all but one of the motor lodges of decades past.

“Ohio State lodging,” says CBRE hotel broker Eric Belfrage, “was getting pretty old and tired.” One such property, the University Plaza Hotel, gave way in the last two years to a fullservice Marriott and Residence Inn. The Holiday Inn on the Lane, however, closed in early 2009 after Ohio State purchased the property to transform it into student dorms.

Brian Ball is a freelance writer.

Housing

To the suburbs and back Hot markets for home development have spread out and inward since 1992.

By Brian Ball

U

nderstanding the housing market during the last quarter century in greater Columbus rests on generations, from the baby boomers seeking quality of life while raising families in the suburbs to the millennials now rethinking the

2009 Jan. 14: Stephen Steinour is the new chairman, president and CEO of Huntington Bancshares, succeeding Thomas Hoaglin.

housing choices of their parents and grandparents.

Demands of the labor market also influenced housing in central Ohio.

Housing consultant Rob Vogt says the first wave of post-World War II babies started forming households in the ‘60s and ‘70s and filled apartments in the Hamilton Road, Morse Road and Georgesville Road corridors. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, many of these couples already had their first home and were in the market to get comfortable in the suburbs.

“Consumers hit their prime housing ages in their 40s and 50s, which is why so many upscale housing developments were getting built in the 1990s,” says Vogt, principal of Columbus-based Vogt Strategic Insights.

In a region lacking mountain views and ocean breezes, developers often build golf courses with tony clubs as an amenity to attract homebuyers. “It was all about baby boomers accumulating wealth and stimulating all of that upscale housing,” Vogt says. So developments such as Wedgewood, Little Turtle, Highland Lakes, New Albany and Heritage Lakes sprang up to meet the demand.

Corporate executives in these communities also pulled their businesses to the Interstate 270 Outerbelt and beyond, creating even more demand for housing for mid-level managers and support staff.

“The employers’ decision-makers wanted to live in Muirfield, Worthington Hills, Westerville,” Vogt says, “and they located their businesses close to where they lived.”

The northern arc above Columbus became fertile ground as Delaware County reigned for years as the fastestgrowing county in Ohio. Housing statistics for Delaware County show

Feb. 19: Nationwide and CEO W.G. “Jerry” Jurgensen leaves and is replaced by President and COO Steve Rasmussen.

Aug. 4: Columbus voters approve an income-tax increase—the new rate is 2.5 percent—that will end months of layoffs and budget cuts.

March 5: Columbus City Center closes.

Aug. 29: The first Pelotonia bike race to cure cancer begins, raising $4.5 million. It has now brought in more than $147 million.

April 18: Huntington Park opens, drawing an overflow crowd of 11,950 to see the Columbus Clippers.

Nov. 3: Ohio voters approve casinos for Columbus, Cleveland,

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just 834 single-family permits pulled in 1992, the year Columbus CEO magazine started. That activity hit 2,164 by 1999 and peaked at 3,061 in 2000 before trailing off to 1,851 units in 2005; activity slumped by nearly 700 units in 2006 as a precursor to the global financial crisis and Great Recession. Single-family construction fell to a trough below 500 in 2009.

Host subdivisions for the Building Industry Association of Central Ohio’s Parade of Homes showcase demonstrate the popularity of the northern arc for housing. Nine of the last 10 new home tours of top-end housing have taken place in Dublin and New Albany, with Dublin hosting five of the showcases and New Albany hosting four.

But the outward push has softened in recent post-recession years. In Delaware County, the number of singlefamily permits topped 1,000 in 2016 at 1,292 for the first time since 2006, when builders pulled 1,165 permits.

Vogt attributes this in part to a large percentage of millennials and others avoiding homeownership post-Great Recession and their desire to remain mobile as they consider moving closer to amenities that interest them in any given year. Many older couples past child-rearing duties also have increasingly chosen apartments because of the flexibility it affords to travel or, as they retire, spend winter in warmer, sunnier climates. Lifestyle choices also have made Downtown, the Short North, Olde Towne East and other urban neighborhoods such as Grandview and the mixed-income Weiland Park east of Ohio State University attractive to the younger set.

Columbus developer Ron Pizzuti set the pace when he delivered the first condo in his Miranova development on the southwest edge of Downtown

Columbus Commons boasts apartments and a park where City Center mall once stood.

File/COLuMbuS DiSPATCH

at Mound and Short streets. As other developers began to show interest, then-Mayor Michael Coleman set a 10,000-residents goal for Downtown within a decade, fueled by generous tax abatements.

That goal has yet to get met even as developers emphasized apartments rather than condos in the wake of the Great Recession that had stymied many of the initial for-sale projects.

Developers turned some of the condos into rentals and switched primarily to apartments in the last eight years.

“The real return to the central city had less to do with city subsidies than the lifestyle preferences of the millennials,” Vogt says, “because the trend is national and not unique to Columbus.”

Developer Borror Properties built in the suburbs as Dominion Homes and in the last few years responded to the changing market by joining long-term urban builders like the Wood Cos, Kevin Lykens, Wagenbrenner Development, constructing apartments and condos in Italian Village and Victorian

Cincinnati and Toledo. Success comes after four failed tries.

2010 Jan. 25: A byproduct of the Great Recession? The Division of Liquor Control reports that Ohioans tipped the bottle at a record level in 2009 as liquor sales reached $734.8 million.

Jan. 27: The Columbus Partner-

Village. And employers like Nationwide Insurance have answered by increasing employment in the core city.

“The employees are dictating where they want to live for lifestyle choices,” Vogt says, “and the employers are following where the employees want to live.”

The surge of apartments in the central city is joined by mixed-use projects of Crawford Hoying Development Partners’ Bridge Park in Dublin and the Polaris Centers of Commerce. Another 250 apartments are also planned around Easton Town Center.

Projected growth is so robust that the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission in 2016 doubled its 2014 estimates for regional population growth by 2050 from 500,000 new residents to one million. MORPC Executive Director William Murdock explained at the time, “When we looked at the results of the last five years, it’s pretty interesting and pretty stunning. The growth is happening faster than we thought.”

Vogt says the projected influx of new

ship unveils an economic development effort named Columbus 2020.

May 4: Voters approve moving proposed Columbus casino from the Arena District to the West Side after community leaders objected. to the Downtown site.

July 20: Honda’s Marysville plant produces its 10 millionth vehicle.

Dec. 20: AEP names Executive Vice President Nicholas Akins as its new president, succeeding Michael Morris.

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residents attracted to central Ohio’s surging economy in the next several years should support more apartments and single-family homes. He also notes rental housing construction remains below the torrid pace of 1999 through 2003, saying, “We are not yet at the point of saturation.”

File/COLUMBUS DiSPATCH

UK brewer BrewDog in Canal Winchester is one of central Ohio’s newest manufacturers.

Brian Ball is a freelance writer.

Manufacturing

Building the Future Old factories give way to smaller, cleaner high-tech facilities.

By ChOlE TEaslEy

T

wenty-five years ago, manufacturing was Ohio’s top industry, and it remained that way until 2008, despite a steady leak of manufacturing jobs locally and across the nation. In Columbus, manufacturers have come and gone—The Timken Co.’s roller-bearing plant, closed in 2001; Delphi automotive plant, closed in 2013; GE Lighting and steelmaker Columbus Castings, both closed in 2016—contributing to a 360,000-job drop in Ohio from 1990-2011.

The neighborhoods built around these plants felt the aftershock of their closings. For example, once Delphi closed its Hilltop plant, shops around it closed and Westland mall occupants

began to move out, leaving the bluecollar community without its essential factory and shopping opportunities.

And the factories that remain are unlike their predecessors.

“Today’s manufacturing is hardly recognizable from 25 years ago,” says Eric Burkland, president of the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association. “We have today a number of very sophisticated technologies we didn’t have, and they’re really revolutionizing manufacturing and the kinds of products we can make.”

As manufacturing was leaving the nation for the price points of other countries, technological advances were materializing. Now, manufacturers are moving operations back to the US and employing the technology, resulting in a fresh kind of manufacturing, aptly called “new manufacturing” by economic driver Columbus 2020.

2011 Feb. 16: Les and Abigail Wexner and the Limited Brands Foundation announce they will donate $100 million to Ohio State University, which subsequently renames its hospital Wexner Medical Center.

Aug. 21: New Franklin County appraisals show a $3.7 billion drop in property values since 2005, the first drop in recorded history in the

Perhaps surprisingly, manufacturing has grown so much in central Ohio that Burkland says it has recaptured a significant portion of the city’s economy.

“It’s not widely understood that Columbus has a manufacturing economy.

A lot of people that drive by things, they don’t know what’s going on inside those buildings,” he says.

And Burkland says the type of manufacturing contributing to the economy is very different 25 years after Columbus CEO’s first issue.

“A lot of these buildings are very sophisticated and (with) very expensive technologies they’re operating.

The old days of smokestacks are gone.

These operations are technologically advanced; they’re clean, they’re highly skilled. From the outside looking in, you can’t tell that.”

The innovations driving new

six-year interim between staterequired reappraisals.

District, a favorite of local power brokers, closes.

Oct. 3: Columbus City Council members approve the purchase of Nationwide Arena by the city and Franklin County using taxes coming from the Hollywood Casino.

March 20: Wendy’s climbs past Burger King to become the nation’s second-largest burger chain.

2012 Jan. 22: The 65-year-old Clarmont restaurant in the Brewery

Oct. 8: Hollywood Casino Columbus opens on the West Side.

Nov. 30: Plans for a new

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350,0 Outle mark cente Polar

manufacturing include everything from “3-D printing, sensing and measuring technologies, all kinds of new materials, digital and collaborative machines working together, robotics,” Burkland says, and even management style.

“They rethought what their management structures are,” Burkland says.

“Their management is much more team-based and networked and less hierarchical and then they’ve incorporated all kinds of new technologies, both in how they manufacture, and in what their products are. The result is much higher quality products, more innovative products and lower cost.”

New plants busy around town include Rogue Fitness, which occupies the former Timken site; BrewDog, which toured the US to expand operations from the UK and chose Canal Winchester upon a first visit to Columbus; and Italy-based Sofidel, the 6th-largest tissue manufacturer in the world, which is building a 1.4 millionsquare-foot facility in Circleville.

These newbies join some giants who have weathered manufacturing’s ups and downs—names like Abbott Nutrition, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, Honda, Anheuser-Busch and Worthington Industries— whose operations look different than they did in 1992.

“Worthington Industries has totally transformed itself,” Burkland says.

Director of Corporate Communications Sonya Higginbotham agrees.

“The changes in manufacturing over the last 25 years are almost too numerous to describe,” she explains.

“We entered the digital age, giving us access to technology and automation that helps us run our operations more efficiently, with more data, for better decision-making. The world has gotten smaller, making it easier to do business internationally. Twenty-five years

350,000-square-foot Tanger Outlets mall in Delaware County mark the first significant retail center for central Ohio since Polaris opened in 2001.

ago, Worthington was solely based in the US. Today, we have 85 locations in 11 countries. As market demands have changed, Worthington has shifted to new industries acquiring several companies that have taken us into new, growing markets.”

Columbus’ sharp increase in global exports and wealth of manufacturing talent are also responsible for manufacturing’s transformation, Burkland says.

“The manufacturing operations today are very sophisticated and the technology is complex,” he says. So, the kind of work that is available in manufacturing today is much more highly skilled.”

Ohio State University is on board with manufacturing innovation—made very clear by the fact that in 2014, it teamed up with none other than the University of Michigan to form the American Lightweight Materials Manufacturing Innovation Institute to strengthen the rust belt’s economy.

Its goal is to add 10,000 jobs by 2019 by teaching manufacturing workers to create and use newer, lightweight technologies. The institute is particularly focused on automotive manufacturing innovations.

Central Ohio is now home to about 1,800 manufacturing companies, employing about 80,000 people. Burkland thinks these numbers may still grow.

“I think there is the opportunity for a boom in central Ohio and Ohio itself.

The reason for that is we have a legacy of knowing how to make things. When you tie that together with the education and training systems we have, as long as we have access to capital—which we do right now—the opportunity is phenomenal.”

Chole Teasley is the editorial assistant.

2013 April 15: Based on commuting patterns gleaned from the 2010 US Census, the federal government adds Hocking and Perry counties to the Columbus Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Aug. 7: Honda plans a $215 million expansion in central Ohio.

Sept. 23: Franklin County com-

Retail

Products Give Way to Pastimes Shoppers are seeking feel-good experiences, not just a good deal.

By bOb vitalE

C

entral Ohio shoppers hit the old standbys in October 1992, plus one shiny new Downtown attraction with glass elevators, chrome columns and a full directory of stores.

Within a decade, though, a regional shopping center spree would add almost 6.5 million square feet of retail space at five major new destinations: the Mall at Tuttle Crossing, Polaris Fashion Place, Easton Town Center, and two outlet malls southwest of Columbus in Jeffersonville.

They’d hasten the death of just about everything that came before them; even the relatively young Columbus City Center quickly lost its luster—and its tenants. But as the building boom commenced, concern over the rapid expansion of retail space was confined mostly to owners of older malls such as Northland and a few taxpayers who

missioners vote to raise the county sales tax rate by half a cent per dollar.

2014 May 3: Grove City’s Beulah Park, Ohio’s first thoroughbred track, closes after 91 years of racing.

June 24: Alliance Data announces an $80 million, 40 acre expansion at Easton Square Place

with three new buildings and about 700 new employees.

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File/COluMBuS DISpATCH

Easton Town Center features several fountains.

didn’t like the city incentives offered to developers.

“There’s room for everyone,” one retail consultant told The Columbus Dispatch in August 1999, reflecting the economic exuberance of the day.

“Columbus is a great town, and jobs are plentiful. The prospects for Columbus are excellent. It’s a nonstop growth opportunity and very strong.”

Nonstop growth—Dispatch columnist Joe Blundo joked in 1997 that a mall would have to open every eight days in central Ohio to maintain the communal endorphin rush from new places to shop—would stop before long. The big malls of 1992, as well as many of the retailers who did business

July 29: Seattle-based Zulily chooses central Ohio for expansion of a new call center that will bring 900 jobs to the area.

Oct. 28: Gov. John Kasich says the state has landed a $1.1 billion Amazon data center for central Ohio.

Dec. 9: Michael Jeffries, who built Abercrombie & Fitch from a

inside them, are now either gone or shells of their former selves.

“It was overbuilt—massively,” says Deb Stilgenbauer Miller, principal and chief strategy officer at Boulevard Strategies, a research and consulting firm in Dublin that serves commercial real estate and retail clients. According to analysts for Cowen Inc., a global financial services firm, there is 48 square feet of retail space for every person in the United States, compared to 22 in the United Kingdom and 13 in Canada.

Miller says the most often-cited culprit, online shopping, hasn’t been the biggest blow to brick-and-mortar retail.

People today spend hundreds of dollars per month on new necessities such

small chain of outdoor-oriented stores into a well-known international brand, leaves the company abruptly.

as cell-phone service, internet access and cable television, which she says has eaten into their spending capacity.

The biggest factor, though? “Retail in general got complacent,” Miller says.

“They got boring. They got mediocre.

They got average.”

Now there’s a park and apartments where City Center used to be. Its last eight tenants were evicted in 2009, and the city demolished the 1.3 millionsquare-foot Downtown mall just months after the 20th anniversary of its grand opening.

Northland Mall closed in 2002. Westland Mall’s last tenant—Sears—shut its doors in September. Eastland Mall survives, but without any anchor tenants since Sears closed its doors there, too. Smaller, local centers such as Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington and the former Worthington Square Mall (now Shops at Worthington Place) have made themselves over as neighborhood destinations.

And consider just some of the mall staples from a quarter-century ago that are no longer doing business anywhere: Jacobson’s, Marshall Field’s, Musicland, KB Toys, Fanny Farmer, B. Dalton Bookseller, County Seat.

Some local retail institutions are on the casualty list as well.

Lazarus, the original Columbus department store nameplate, became Lazarus-Macy’s in 2003. Its flagship Downtown store closed in August 2004, and the name itself was retired seven months later by parent Federated Department Stores.

Schottenstein’s and their Value City discount stores closed in 2008, although Value City Furniture stores remain.

The Limited, Les Wexner’s original brand and the foundation of his retail empire, closed its 250 stores in January.

2015 March 12: Mount Carmel Health System plans to move its inpatient hospital and 1,500 jobs to Grove City from Franklinton, where it has had a presence for nearly 130 years.

June 3: The Wolfe family sells The Columbus Dispatch, Columbus CEO and its other print publications to GateHouse Media. The Wolfes

keep ownership of WBNS-TV and other broadcast properties.

July 6: OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital opens a $300 million neuroscience center to address brain and spine conditions It has seven floors of 279-square-foot patient rooms.

Oct. 25: A renovated Columbus Museum of Art reopens with a

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50,00 part camp

Sun Capital Partners, which bought the brand in 2007, promises on thelimited. com that “very soon, we’ll be together again,” but it has announced no plans to resume sales.

Brian Shafley, CEO of Chute Gerdeman, a Columbus retail design firm, says consumers now seek experiences, not just goods. They can buy stuff online. They need more than that to go shopping, he says.

“The way people shop is really wrapped up in lifestyle,” he says. “You think of Easton as a date night, not, ‘I need new pants.’ If people are going to commit to going shopping, they want something out of it. They want to feel it was a fulfilling use of their time.”

Easton has kept up best with changes in shopping habits, Shafley and Miller say. It offers more events now, and it has added more restaurants.

Wexner, who developed Easton, is still going strong as a retailer after a succession of corporate name changes and an ever-evolving list of holdings.

The Limited Inc., became Limited Brands in 2002 and L Brands in 2013.

It sold off Abercrombie & Fitch in 1996, Limited Too in 1999, Lane Bryant in 2001, and Express and Limited Stores in 2007. The company now consists of Victoria’s Secret, Bath & Body Works, Pink, La Senza and Henri Bendel.

And what Columbus 2020 refers to as a “retail ecosystem” has grown around Wexner’s companies and other Columbus-based retail companies such as Big Lots and DSW. More than 200 retail design, marketing, technology, distribution, logistics and other companies are based in central Ohio.

“Columbus really is regarded as one of the big hubs in the country for retail services,” Shafley says.

Bob Vitale is former associate editor.

Transpotation

Driving Growth Expanded highways, shipping and smart transit move Columbus forward.

By JEff bEll

N

ick Gill has had a front seat when it comes to viewing all the changes with central Ohio’s highway system over the past 25 years.

As a transportation expert at the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission during that time, Gill has seen the region’s interstates widened, interchanges added or overhauled and new highways opened. All were aimed at improving traffic flow in a metropolitan area marked by booming residential and business growth, especially in suburbs around the Interstate 270 Outerbelt.

“The growth has definitely been the driver,” Gill says, adding that’s been due in part to central Ohio’s diverse economy and the so-called “Columbus Way” in which local governments and businesses collaborate on transportation and economic development issues.

He remembers all that went into building new interchanges to serve the Easton Town Center and Polaris developments as they began to take shape in the late 1990s and at the turn of the 21st Century. Easton, plus growth in nearby

Nov. 10: Scioto Greenways, a $35 million reclamation for parkland along the Scioto River Downtown, opens.

2016 50,000-square-foot new wing, part of a $93 million capital campaign.

March 24: The US Census Bureau says the Columbus metro population has topped 2 million.

May 10: Arshot Investment Corp., announces plans for Mil-

New Albany and development in adjoining western Licking County, also spurred construction of a four-lane section of Route 161 from New Albany to Granville that was completed in 2010.

Much construction has also taken place along Route 33 between Canal Winchester and Lancaster, including major interchanges at Diley Road and the village of Carroll and a bypass around Lancaster.

Inside the Outerbelt, a four-lane leg of Interstate 670 was completed in 1993 when the section opened between Downtown and I-270 just east of Port Columbus. And I-270 has undergone numerous lane expansions and interchange improvements, especially around the Route 23, Route 315 and Route 33 intersections along the Outerbelt’s northern rim.

While the interstate and state highway systems have remained the principal mode of moving people and goods from Point A to Point B, there also has been wider use of the Central Ohio Transit Authority’s bus system and sweeping expansion of the region’s bike path.

Additionally, Uber and Lyft ridesharing services have cut into the taxi business, and there have numerous discussions about passenger rail (none have borne fruit yet). Now, Smart Columbus is looking for the next big things in transportation, including an expansion of electric cars and introduction of self-driving vehicles.

There have been a lot of changes at Columbus’ international airport, too, including its name. The sprawling complex on the city’s East Side became John Glenn Columbus International Airport in 2016.

In addition, numerous airport facility improvements and expansions have kept pace with the region’s growth.

lennial Tower, a 25-story office, retail and residential tower at the southwestern corner of Front and Rich streets.

June 21: Columbus tops six other finalist cities in a US Department of Transportation Smart City competition to win $50 million in federal and private funding to develop new transportation solutions to urban problems.

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John Glenn Columbus International Airport continues to grow.

File/COLuMBuS DiSpaTCH

Bigger ones include a $25 million terminal renovation in 1998; $92 million in improvements in 2000; a new airport traffic control tower in 2004; a realignment of International Gateway in 2008 for better access to I-670 and parking; commissioning of a new $140 million runway in 2013; and an $80 million, multiphase terminal renovation completed in 2016.

Central Ohio’s other major air facility—Rickenbacker International Airport along the edge of Franklin and Pickaway counties—has undergone a major transformation since the 1990s.

It has become an international logistics hub, ranking among the top 10 Foreign Trade Zones in the country.

It all started with distribution centers for Spiegel/Eddie Bauer and Siemens in 1992. From there, Rickenbacker has morphed into a warehouse and distribution mecca with more than 70 million square feet under roof today.

Air cargo companies now use Rickenbacker’s five air freight terminals and runway to move goods around the world. Two of the nation’s largest rail providers, Norfolk Southern and CSX,

have become major players at Rickenbacker as well.

In 2008, Norfolk Southern and the Columbus Regional Airport Authority opened the $68.5 million Rickenbacker Intermodal Terminal. It is part of the Heartland Corridor network in which double-stacked container cars are moved by train between the East Coast and Midwest. CSX is also an intermodal partner at Rickenbacker, providing rail service and transport of containers.

All the development at Rickenbacker clearly has been the No. 1 development in central Ohio’s logistics sector over the past 25 years, says John Ness, owner and CEO of ODW Logistics Inc. The Columbus-based warehousing company has had a presence in the Rickenbacker area for decades.

“It’s been transformative for Columbus and our industry,” Ness says, noting all the development at Rickenbacker has greatly improved the financial health and quality of life in Groveport and Obetz.

But he is also quick to point out the growth in the warehousing and distribution sector has certainly not

been limited to the Rickenbacker area.

There has also been ample development in Grove City, West Jefferson, the New Albany area and Etna Township in western Licking County.

E-commerce giant Amazon has been big news in recent years with the opening of massive fulfillment centers in Obetz and Etna Township that employ several thousand workers. And now Columbus is expected to vie for Amazon’s second headquarters and the 50,000 jobs to go with it.

Ness believes the region’s logistics boom has been driven by central Ohio’s proximity to major US markets, the availability of good land and risktaking developers willing to construct the sort of spec buildings needed by an industry that makes location decisions in as little as three to six months.

Ness is taking a wait-and-see attitude toward what lies ahead for the transportation and logistics sector in central Ohio. That includes disruptive technologies such as self-driving vehicles, Uber-style freight services and even drones for small package delivery.

“We’re still a consuming economy that has got to get goods to market,” he says. “A supply chain will be required to do that.”

So will the existing highway system, adds Gill. He expects much of the region’s future transportation efforts to be focused on “expanding our existing footprint where we can and maximizing what we already have.”

He also anticipates better use of the COTA bus system and possible development of a passenger rail connecting Downtown to the suburbs.

“It will come down to funding— where does the money come from to pay for these things?” Gill says.

2017

it last housed hotel rooms, the LeVeque Tower welcomes guests with the opening of the Hotel LeVeque.

Jan. 24: Bob Evans Farms sells its restaurant division, which runs 523 stores in 18 states, to private equity firm Golden Gate Capital for $565 million.

Jan. 25: San Francisco-based wholesale drug distributor McKesson announces that it has bought Columbus-based CoverMyMeds, a private health-care

60 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

Jeff Bell is a freelance writer.

technology company, for $1.1 billion.

March 24: Fifty years after

Aug. 7: The original Max & Erma’s restaurant in German Village—a Columbus icon— closes after almost 60 years in operation, leaving the chain with 39 stores, down from a peak of more than 100.

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October 2017

How information technology is driving innovation in the Columbus Region

LocaL tec worLh d P In partnership with Columbus 2020

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age 12

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YOU’RE A SITE

SELECTOR. WE’RE A SELECT SITE. PERFECT.

EVERY THING GROWS HERE.

DUB L IN OHIO U S A .GOV

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Our Pediatric Research Means Business Discoveries at Nationwide Children’s Hospital have sparked several business startups, with more on the horizon.

Gene therapy to treat Sanfilippo Syndrome

Rapid, in-office diagnostic tests for ear, nose and throat illnesses

Fully automated analysis process for genomic medicine

Therapy to improve muscle strength in muscular dystrophy patients Gene therapy for Limb-Girdle muscular dystrophy Anti-bacterial biofilm technology enhancing effectiveness of antibiotics New method delivering probiotic bacteria to treat GI illnesses

Learn more at NationwideChildrens.org/startups

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from analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

C

o

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David White CIO, Battelle

Joelle Brock CEO, Leading EDJE

06 Letter from Columbus 2020 CEO Kenny McDonald

07 IT IN THE REGION Map of 11 counties

08 Columbus 2020 Board and Team

10 I T AS A DRIVER How tech powers jobs and growth in the Columbus Region

PROfILES By Mary yost Editor Chloe teasley Editorial Assistant tC BroWn, Mike Mahoney and evan Weese freelance Writers DESIGN By yoGesh ChaUDhary PHOTOS By roB harDin

Produced by Columbus CEO magazine in cooperation with Columbus 2020

4

PARTNER PROfILES A look at some tech businesses and non-tech companies that use IT to drive innovation in the Columbus Region.

12 signet Accel

26 leading EDJE

Data aggregator aids medical researchers as well as patients.

Geek-powered company goes deep with custom software solutions.

14 T-CETRA

28 ICC

Company helps wireless phone providers with back office services.

Consulting company helps business clients adopt digital efficiencies.

16 Pillar Technology

30 Ibm

Company innovates software solutions with marketing strategies.

Columbus Region feeds technology giant’s appetite for talent.

18 oRIs Intelligence

32 Cardinal Health

Price-checking tech protects brands and sellers from unscrupulous sales.

IT underscores all functions at global health products distributor.

20 NCT Ventures

34 Columbus Collaboratory

Venture capital firm invests in Columbus Region tech talent.

Corporate leaders share concerns and strategies to grow talent, know-how.

22 Nationwide Children’s Hospital

36 battelle

Technology role grows in all facets of medical care for children.

Tech leader adds to and benefits from the region’s knowledge base.

24 Wiretap

38 Auditgraph

Tech firm helps clients track digital footprints and avoid missteps.

Local med label company grows global with network connections.

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE

?

Individually we’re successful. Together we’re unstoppable.

That’s why so many forward-thinking organizations excel as One of US. Will you be next?

Learn more at columbusregion.com/OneofUS

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I T

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

Columbus Region is Home to extraordinary expertise in IT The Columbus Region is earning its way to the top of the list of locations to launch or accelerate a career in information technology.

The area includes mid-to largesized companies with an insatiable appetite for tech talent, a growing list of startups, a powerhouse of research and development in The Ohio State University, and an emphasis on government technology that will enable Central Ohio to lead the smart cities revolution.

Talent is drawn to great challenges and diverse, progressive companies and communities. The Columbus Region has a multitude of opportunities

across industries and is chock-full of ambitious communities that want to cater to the growing needs of the technology workforce. As you will see in the following profiles and interviews, it is a strategic priority to attract and retain great talent from all over the world to meet the greatest challenges we face, be they in healthcare, government, academia or business.

We are fortunate to have IT leaders within the Columbus Region who are working on various challenges, while contributing to the future of the area by giving their time and energy to growing the IT community.

This glimpse into the extraordinary expertise that lies within our region

should inspire us to strive even higher in this important field of work.

Sincerely,

Kenny McDonald President and CEO

The Columbus 2020 Regional Growth Strategy is an aggressive, decade-long plan to ensure economic vitality in the Columbus Region. Columbus 2020’s mission is to generate opportunity and build capacity for economic growth across the 11-county Columbus Region.

Make the mark.

Robert Shenton

614-222-9064

plantemoran.com

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The ColuMbus RegIon Major Columbus Region headquarters have spawned an entire ecosystem of ITrelated operations. The large IT workforces at Fortune 500 companies have been joined by a whole host of tech companies designed to serve retail, healthcare, finance, education, transportation, utilities, cross-industry and defense-related IT needs.

Download the full list at columbusregion.com/tech.

Rev1

#1 VC

GREAT LAKES REGION PitchBook 2015 - 2017

COLUMBUS

COLUMBUS

SMART

#1

CITY

U.S. Department of Transportation 2016

SCALING

STARTUPS Kauffman Foundation 2016

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

board of direCtors Pablo A. Vegas, Chairman Executive Vice President, Gas Segment and Chief Customer Officer, Columbia Gas Group

ADMInISTRATIOn Kenny McDonald, CEcD

Eric Phillips, Secretary

President and Chief Economic Officer

Executive Director Union County Economic Development Partnership

Mallory Donaldson

Gregory R. Overmyer, Treasurer

Kelly Winzenread

Chief Executive Officer Overmyer Hall Associates

Marilyn Brown, County Commissioner Franklin County Board of Commissioners

Corrine Burger Chief Control Officer, Consumer and Community Banking JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Executive Assistant to the CEO Executive Coordinator

Sean Grant Chief Financial Officer

Jennifer Randall Senior Staff Accountant

Alex R. Fischer, President and Chief Executive Officer

BuSInESS DEVELOPMEnT AnD PROJECT MAnAGEMEnT

The Columbus Partnership

Patty Huddle

Andrew J. Ginther, Mayor

Senior Vice President, Economic Development

City of Columbus

Matt McCollister

Michael Keller

Senior Vice President, Economic Development

Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer Nationwide

Matt McQuade

Michael W. Louge

Deborah Scherer

Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer OhioHealth

Robert H. Schottenstein Chief Executive Officer and President M/I Homes

Tom Shoupe Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Honda of America Mfg., Inc.

Managing Director, Business Development Managing Director, Global Trade and Investment

Justin Bickle, Director, Project Management Chris Strayer Senior Project Manager

Archit Dhir Project Manager, Global Trade and Investment

Tom Stipkovich, Project Manager

Julie Sloat, President and Chief Operating Officer

Stephanie Bosco, Economic Development Coordinator

AEP Ohio, American Electric Power

Tegan Lehman

Mark Smolik, Vice President, General Counsel and

Economic Development Coordinator

Secretary, and Chief Compliance Officer DHL Supply Chain

Tim Harman

Kristi Tanner, Senior Managing Director

Director, Customized Workforce Recruitment and Training

JobsOhio

InVESTOR RELATIOnS

David Williams, Ph.D., Sc.D., Executive Dean College of Engineering, The Ohio State University

Chip Holcombe

Sue Zazon, President and Executive Vice President, Central

MARKETInG AnD COMMunICATIOnS

Ohio Region, The Huntington National Bank

Managing Director, Investor Relations

Irene Alvarez

EX-OFFICIO

Managing Director, Marketing and Communications

Patrick Cornelius, Partner Squire Patton Boggs

nick Reshan, Marketing Specialist

Kenny McDonald, CEcD President and Chief Economic Officer Columbus 2020

8

Columbus 2020 team

RESEARCH Jung Kim Managing Director, Research and Business Intelligence

Sean Grant, Chief Financial Officer

Laura Hess, Research Manager

Columbus 2020

Jay Knox, Research Manager

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

Columbus Region boasts a Robust IT ecosystem Columbus is appearing on lists of the nation’s top cities for tech jobs.

By MARy yoST Columbus has ranked No. 1 on CBRE Research’s third annual ranking of top tech talent in small markets and No. 5 on SmartAsset’s list of Top 10 Cities for Tech Workers.

Then look at it in terms of where information technology has opportunity for immediate application in a wide variety of local and global industries, and the Columbus Region offers distinct advantages that can’t be matched even in Silicon Valley, industry observers contend.

“When we talk to tech companies out west or some of the other hubs around the US or even abroad, if they’re in a market that’s heavily associated around tech, like the Silicon Valley area in particular, then they really don’t have a local testing ground and customer face for the technology,” says Jung Kim, managing director, research

10

and business intelligence for Columbus 2020.

Having an auto company lab nearby is “still not the same as being here and you have the mothership of Honda for North America and Transportation Research Center and some of these other functions that could really apply what a tech company is doing on the ground,” Kim notes.

Having that demand side available locally is a strength that the Columbus Region boasts in spades with its rich concentration of industry giants such as Alliance Data Retail Services, Battelle, Cardinal Health, JP Morgan Chase, L Brands, Nationwide Insurance, oCLC and others in addition to the automotive verticals.

Columbus 2020 has mapped the robust IT ecosystem in the Columbus Region to help tell the story of just how substantial the tech workforce and infrastructure is in the 11-county area.

“We knew about the financial sector for a while and how important that was in the tech world. Some of the other categories, like education and publishing, that might have been a bit of a surprise to realize between what we have with oSU, oCLC, McGraw Hill and Highlights for Children, there is something here happening with digital publishing. There may be elements of this that maybe people knew about in bits and pieces but to have it all together in one graphic really highlights the fact that there is a concentration of companies, activity and talent,” Kim says.

Further supporting the IT ecosystem is strong local investment in fiber infrastructure, including Columbus FiberNet, several suburban networks and oARnet, part of the ohio Department of Higher Education’s ohio Technology Consortium.

Plentiful sources of venture capital and angel funds for IT enterprises are also a critical component, including NCT Ventures and ohio TechAngels Fund.

Cross-industry collaboration is another Columbus Region strength that powers the technology ecosystem.

“In other parts of the country, you do see things happening around healthcare technology or fintech involving various companies, but to see companies like AEP and L Brands and Cardinal Health coming from very different directions and realizing that they have common issues, in terms of things like analytics and cybersecurity, and then to create (the Columbus) Collaboratory to help deal with the issues, that appears pretty unique to me. I haven’t heard of other examples quite like that,” Kim says.

The relatively smaller size of the Columbus Region is an advantage, says Columbus 2020 President and CEo Kenny McDonald.

“The fact that this cluster is a little tighter knit because the population is not that of Los Angeles, you’re going to meet and run into people a lot more. you’re going to have opportunities to serve on boards together, so some of the leaders get to know each other a

Jung Kim

Kenny McDonald

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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Photo courtesy of Columbus 2020

Super Six Six major sectors in the Columbus Region are identified

by Columbus 2020 as having significant IT activity.

Education, Information & Publishing Finance Health Military/Defense Retail & Consumer Transportation & Utilities little bit better,” McDonald says.

“Business relationships are enhanced and accelerated by all that. Anytime one of these intense clusters is in a smaller place, you see it grow and become even tighter and become even stronger over time because of that size, not the lack thereof.”

McDonald adds the Region is “full of interesting people doing very, very interesting work and that alone attracts others, both talented people and the companies they work for.”

The Columbus Region’s growing IT ecosystem is important because it shows “you have these world class players that are investing and creating jobs here, and it provides great testimony for a lot of other things that we try to recruit or keep in the area. We want to continue to see it grow but we also know that it has value well beyond the boundaries of IT and other industry verticals,” McDonald says.

“It’s good evidence the area can support nearly anything.” McDonald adds.

Even with all its strengths, the IT ecosystem of the Columbus Region still needs constant attention to keep growing.

“We can’t work hard enough on the issue of talent and workforce,” McDonald says. “We couldn’t possibility do enough to help our existing companies as well as to attract new companies to the market and to fuel their needs with the people they need. It’s a national, and to some degree, an international issue.”

Dynamit staff at work

Columbus Region Ranks Well for Tech Work The Columbus Region compares well for tech jobs and opportunities with the rest of the nation. Here are a few of the high marks the area can boast.

Columbus ranked No. 1 for best American cities to work in tech in 2017, according to SmartAsset in August.

The website also says Columbus is “one of the best cities for new college grads.”

Also in August, global commercial real estate and investment firm CBRE placed Columbus at No. 7 for top markets for change in momentum of tech talent labor pools, with a 11.9 percent change in momentum. In 2016, CBRE ranked Columbus No. 1 for top tech talent in small markets.

Young IT professionals will find Columbus No. 8 on the 2017 list of best cities for them, according to Verizon’s website Right Click in May. Job-search site ZipRecruiter in June found 83 percent year-over-year growth in tech jobs in Columbus, rank-

ing it No. 14 for fastest growing tech towns.

The Center for Digital Government praised Ohio as one of just five states to earn the top A grade in its 2016 Digital States Survey. Ohio was also second for transportation and fourth for adaptive leadership.

Thomson Reuters’ CIO placed Columbus No. 10 on its 2016 list of Top 10 metro areas for STEM jobs, noting Kauffman Index research predicted 274,000 Ohio STEM jobs by 2018.

Intelligent Community Forum ranked Columbus as its 2015 Intelligent Community of the Year, following three years of reaching being in the top seven.

Also for 2015, Columbus was ranked No. 5 for “real” programmer analyst pay and No. 8 for “real” systems administrator pay by salary watchdog Glassdoor, which compared cities with the highest tech salaries when adjusted for costof-living.

—Mary Yost

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

signet Accel 585 S. Front St., Suite 50 Columbus 43215 signetaccel.com

In a sea of IT-focused companies within the Columbus Region, Signet Accel offers a unique product, not just here, but worldwide.

With the product known as Avec, two-year-old Signet Accel has the technology to gather healthcare data from dissimilar resources and aggregate that information, bringing it into one resource field for easy examination and comparison by researchers and physicians.

Known as a federated database system, it allows medical personnel to quickly find information and connect data from any computerized location in order to query diverse healthcare information, identify disease patterns with different patients and investigate potential cures.

CEO John Raden says the technology is solving some major problems in healthcare.

“There’s a lot of data in healthcare from different sources and there was an inability to aggregate it or see it in one single view because of all the unique languages of databases,” Raden says. “This opened up the ability to see all that data for a specific disease or even for particular patients.”

The technology was a long time coming. The Bioinformatics Group at The Ohio State University worked on it for more than a dozen years before introducing it to Signet’s parent company, Signet LLC, which then created the subsidiary company run by Raden.

The new company, which started with six associates, is growing quickly.

It’s not just software engineers found here, there’s a real focus on quality from managers to C-suite executives.”

JOhn RAdEn CEO, Signet Accel

12

Signet Accel now employs 37 people, including 16 engineers, Raden says.

They apply the technology which helps pull out the bits and bytes of healthcare information that can get lost in database software, and that ability to find disparate but important data helps improve the quality of lives, he says.

“For instance, we service clients with hairy cell leukemia, which is a very ugly disease that hits a very small portion of the population,” he says. “So finding cohorts to do research can be problematic, but the ability for oncology centers to look at specific cancers like this worldwide is a big deal.”

One of the “pleasant surprises” for Raden when he came on board as CEO in August 2015 was finding the IT talent pool that resides in Central Ohio.

“With all the surrounding universities and major healthcare networks and systems in Columbus, we have been able to recruit quality people with unique backgrounds,” he says. “And we see venture capital people paying a lot of attention to this area, and that says a lot about the values of the businesses here and the quality of the products they produce.”

Much of Signet Accel’s work involves collaboration with both regional and national organizations, which provides a unique perspective into IT networks, particularly in this Region. The IT ecosystem and its connecting networks here is solid and thriving, he says.

“And it’s not just software engineers found here, there’s a real focus on quality from managers to C-suite executives because of all the rich organizations doing the things they do here in central Ohio,” Raden says. “Successful companies need these kinds of resources and talented associates.”

For now, Signet offers a unique product, but Raden says he thinks it is only a matter of time before competition ensues. “We know there will be others entering the market, so gaining the market share early is really what the focus is for our sales efforts,” he says.

“It’s a great race right now to grab that market share.”

—TC Brown

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

T-CETRA 6500 Emerald Parkway Suite 310 • Dublin 43016 TCETRA.co

More people than ever, especially millennials, can be classified as “underbanked” because they limit their use of more traditional financial services, a trend that is not lost on Columbus Region technology company T-CETRA.

get signed up at brick-and-mortar or kiosk locations,” Akel says. “We help them get SIM cards activated, and we manage all the money movements for them.”

Calling the Columbus Region home when you operate a company whose major focus is IT is a distinct advantage for T-CETRA, which employs 88 people here with at least half involved in the tech-side operations of the company.

In fact, the origins of the company

are linked to The Ohio State University, where Akel was a student before dropping out to start the company.

He credits Professor Rajiv Ramnath of the Department of Computer Science and Engineering with encouraging the venture.

The university also provided $5,000 and two graduate students to get the new company up and running, which Akel says was a critical step.

“Ohio State is just one of the great

The new financial world revolves around digital, instead of traditional services like charging purchases on credit cards and having checking accounts. Tech company T-CETRA meets the new need by specializing in the prepaid wireless industry.

The company, founded in 2007, deals primarily with merchants and their distributors, providing payment processing and development of custom software to create solutions for these businesses.

The new trend is a popular one. TCETRA CEO Abdul Akel says 50 million people across the country could be called under-banked.

“These are documented US citizens who choose not to go to the bank,” he says. “They want to do everything online and they have the right tools at their fingertips. They don’t want to be in contracts and they want options.”

Enter T-CETRA, which helps more than 200 national wireless service providers recruit consumers while providing the software for these phone companies to manage their customers.

The company’s work includes payment processing, prepaid wireless activation and mobile and web app development.

“We provide tech solutions and distribution services so customers can

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many resources we have here for IT companies,” Akel says. “With Franklin University, Columbus State (Community College) and all of the other schools in the area, it is a talent-rich town.”

Many of T-CETRA’s employees have come from Ohio State.

“The majority of our interns were from OSU,” Akel says. “It is a very personal relationship to me and has been instrumental to our success having access to Ohio State and the other schools.”

The company is expected to do more than $600 million in business this year, he says.

“This area is rich in resources for IT companies with many vendors and plenty of networking,” Akel says. “If you are starting an IT company in Columbus and looking for certified vendors for help, you don’t have to fly two hours away.”

Akel points to other examples of why the Region has a vibrant IT ecosystem: Columbus won the Smart City Challenge in 2016, beating out 77 other communities for a $40 million grant from the US Department of Transportation and $10 million from Vulcan, Inc., focused on intelligent transportation.

A $15 million investment by the state of Ohio equips a 35-mile stretch of US Route 33 with high-capacity fiber optic cable to instantaneously link researchers and traffic monitors with data from embedded and wireless sensors along the roadway.

“Typical cities the size of Columbus do not have these kinds of projects,” Akel says. “That is why we are ahead of the curve, and you have to give a lot of credit to the area. It makes tech companies’ life easier and better.”

—TC Brown

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AbDUl AkEl CEO, T-CETRA Columbus 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Pillar Technology 580 N. 4th St., Suite 190 Columbus 43215 pillartechnology.com

In the end, all technologies could be linked, with humans as the living connecting focal point.

Linked technologies is a theory favored by Kimberly Clavin, a “strategic ninjaneer” for Pillar Technology, which combines business-marketing and testing strategies with the embedded software it builds for its clients.

“The world is becoming more and more connected,” Clavin says. “We are all about reducing the friction in human lives. It’s what we are passionate about.”

Clavin, a mechanical engineer by trade, adopted her unique job title as a way to describe her work as an engineer versed in strategic planning, marketing and creating solutions.

Pillar Technology, with its Forge innovation think-tank network, focuses on solving complex business problems with its custom software development for clients across a spectrum of industry, including transportation, healthcare, energy, retail and finances. But creating business strategies connected to these developments is equally important, including its speed-to-value proposition, Clavin says.

Many clients come to Pillar with very open-ended ideas about how they want to engage with customers, but beyond that general notion, they have little else to offer, she says.

“The real differentiation for us is the fusion aspect,” Clavin says. “We fuse together all of these disciplines. We create ideas and then roll it into execution if technology is associated with it.”

We love the vision of Columbus and the community. It’s an easy community to embrace.”

KIMBerLY CLAvIN Strategic Ninjaneer, Pillar Technology

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Working hand-in-hand with clients is a critical piece of the work puzzle for Pillar Technology, which collaborates with its customers through its Forge innovation center.

“We work alongside the client to teach them how to kick out a good code quickly, for instance,” Clavin says.

“You just can’t say I need three developers. We stand up with the entire team and work with them through the process.”

When the company noticed a lack of products for constantly testing the multiple sensors within an organization’s communications networks, it developed a successful technology known as Loop.

“We made the system multiple times for clients and then decided to do it as our own product because there was such a demand,” Clavin says.

While the 20-year-old company employs more than 300 here, in Ann Arbor, Mich., Des Moines, Iowa, and Palo Alto, Calif., Clavin says the company’s founders have a real passion for this area.

“We positioned ourselves here because of client relations and all the different businesses,” she says. “We love the vision of Columbus and the community. It’s an easy community to embrace with its collaborative nature and with so many people here who want to partner and collaborate.”

After five years, the company is poised to move early next year from its first-floor space at the historic Smith Bros. Hardware Co. building to a 25,000-square-foot space at the new 711 Building in the Short North.

Pillar Technology aims to become a destination employer in the Midwest to attract brilliant programmers and developers and keep them from migrating to the coasts. The company’s expectations are very high.

“We are the type of people who do not look at things as challenges,” Clavin says. “We employ no-constraint thinking and look at opportunities that are coming about. We think big and work backwards from there.”

—TC Brown

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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A BRIGHTER

FUTURE

TOGETHER Smart strategies emerge from clear strategic vision. From focusing on economic development to driving the transformation into a Smart City, AEP works with our community and elected officials and other businesses to move Columbus forward. Working together, we have boundlesss energy to break through boundaries to make Columbus’ future even brighter.

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

oRIs Intelligence 330 W Spring St., Suite 300 Columbus 43215 orisintel.com

ORIS Intelligence has become indispensable for e-commerce competitors: an online cop who can quickly identify who’s trying to undercut your prices and brand.

For some of the most popular products in the world, the internet has become a downward spiral of price-cutting, but ORIS (Online Retail Intelligence Solutions) is always on guard.

Most frequently on weekends, after business hours and during the holiday rush, some sellers and re-sellers can’t resist lowering prices to capture more business. That undercuts the minimized advertised price, or MAP, of nearly every manufacturer selling on the net.

“We work with large world-class brands selling online who hire us to patrol to make sure not only that authorized sellers are selling at the right price, but also that unauthorized sellers aren’t clogging the authorized online sellers,” says Pamela Springer, ORIS Intelligence president and CEO. ORIS employs 20 now and will expand to 25 by year’s end.

ORIS’s online PROWL service crawls the e-commerce web, providing proof of MAP violations and a web-based platform for brands to write warning notices to online violators—even threatening a yearlong cutoff in the case of repeated violations. PROWL checks every seller, every product, every three hours, seven days a week.

“We capture the information on who moves first, and we monitor so much that we can see the domino effect of who moves prices first, second, third and fourth—both the instigator and then who followed suit,” she says.

MAP policies have become crucial to protecting the brand reputation of ORIS customers like Continental Tire, bicycle retailer Finish Line, Great Day aluminum motorsports parts and InFocus, a computer projector maker that saw a 68-percent drop in MAP violations after subscribing.

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It’s ... helping good sellers, preserving the market they’re counting on.”

PAMeLA SPRINgeR President and CEO, ORIS Intelligence

Manufacturers and retailers can’t collude with each other to fix prices, but a single brand can establish networks of authorized retailers who pledge to observe a minimum advertised price.

That’s why the Sony PlayStation 4 always comes up as $449.99, whether it’s sold at Best Buy, B&H Photo, Sam’s Club or the online retailer, Newegg.

“Increasingly, the good retailers won’t sell a brand unless the brand is protecting its prices,” Springer says.

Amazon, smaller online marketplaces and even eBay resellers have come under fire for cutting prices below MAP. But it’s not always Amazon’s fault, Springer says. Often a smaller online seller will try to grow by cutting prices, and Amazon follows suit to guarantee it matches the lowest price.

PROWL helps manufacturers respond to price infractions on a timely basis through a vendor correspondence function in PROWL’s dashboardbased web app. Brands have to be thorough and consistent, catching not only infractions they notice at one online platform, but all of them, or legal claims of preferential treatment ensue.

The kernel of the ORIS price-checks began at Spinlife, a Columbus-based wheelchair and medical transport manufacturer with its own need for price protection. Spinlife spun off its price-checking function in 2013, and the ORIS services went commercial two years later, when Springer signed on.

Springer, a veteran of startups and IPOs, believes it’s an exciting time for technical firms in the Columbus Region, with new talent and ideas all the time.

—Mike Mahoney

Columbus 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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NCT Ventures 274 Marconi Blvd., Suite 400 Columbus 43215 nctventures.com

Rich Langdale, his partners and other investors pooled their resources to found NCT Ventures 20 years ago, naming the firm after their quest for the Next Cool Thing—the technology everyone would be talking about tomorrow.

The NCT Ventures team initially focused on software, advanced network, data storage and computer supplies in firms like Digital Storage Inc. and at least seven other startups. As a venture capital firm, NCT offered funding as well as hands-on advice on business strategy and technical problem solving.

NCT managers still maintain technical chops, but the firm excels in training, providing intensive coaching in entrepreneurial technology processes.

Langdale, managing partner at NCT, has become a key advocate for entrepreneurs and a driving benefactor for their training. In 2001, he provided advocacy, fund-raising and technical guidance to help found the OSU Fisher College’s Center for Entrepreneurship, which in 2013 was renamed the Langdale Academy for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization.

NCT has become an enthusiastic backer of young technologists, sponsoring student organizations and hackathons in which dozens of contestants work to provide software solutions for interesting technical problems in a daylong competition.

Today, the Smart Columbus project seems central to Langdale’s sense of excitement and optimism, and he is working to recruit and train entrepreneurs for the initiative. Smart Columbus technologies include everything from advanced mapping, traffic, logistics and autonomous vehicles to the need

We partnered with singularity university and American Electric Power to fund a smart City Accelerator.”

RICh LANgDALE Managing Partner, NCT

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for training and transportation in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods.

Langdale predicts Smart Columbus problem solving will push collaboration boundaries further. NCT hopes to draw in entrepreneurs with the skills and drive for that transformation.

“We partnered with Singularity University and American Electric Power to fund a Smart City Accelerator,” Langdale says, describing a 10-week boot-camp training program launched in September. About a dozen participants were chosen from some 360 applicants. They are getting to know the city and major Smart Columbus players while tackling technology issues.

One NCT Ventures investment, Agile Networks, wants to work on the “canopy” of Wi-Fi nodes and networks needed to handle Smart Columbus’s massive internet of things: roads, autonomous vehicles, traffic patterns and bus routes. The canopy can also provide accessible networks for residents of urban communities like Linden and along Parsons Avenue, Langdale says. Agile already provides the secure network for the state’s interconnected first response system.

NCT provides mentoring for another company that hopes to provide workforce development. “We’re proposing a solution with the mayor’s office and Smart City team to start building these canopies of networks around the city.

We have wonderful training and community outreach centers in Linden and the Reeb Center near Parsons Avenue.

But the problem is you go two blocks away and people don’t know resources are there,” Langdale says.

“We’re calling this solution the Superapp. The entry for the Wi-Fi network is an access page that gives people what’s going on in their center, including workforce training, childcare, access to smart food, all the things the Smart City grant is seeking to create for these neighborhoods.”

Community and corporate participants can share the Wi-Fi canopy, Langdale adds. “It can be a beautiful circle of prosperity if we build it out.”

—Mike Mahoney

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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Nationwide Children’s Hospital 700 Childrens Drive Columbus 43205 nationwidechildrens.org

Denise Zabawski, chief information officer for Nationwide Children’s Hospital, leads a staff of nearly 300 IT professionals, serving more than 16,000 users, many of them involved in patient care and research.

A third of Nationwide Children’s Hospital staff focuses on electronic health records, from doctors’ orders, diagnoses and prescriptions to cost recovery.

Tens of thousands more users are involved through telemedicine as parents of patients call in with problems and remote pediatricians upload descriptions of symptoms, X-rays and CAT scans.

“One of the companies we’re working with is focusing on artificial intelligence that helps you contact patients on a regular basis, applications where you can do call-ahead waiting for urgent care, and other things that make providing patient care better for the patient and family. How do you make it easier for them to work at the healthcare system? We’re not live on that yet, but we’re in conversation with some of those vendors,” Denise Zabawski says.

“It’s about moving components of healthcare to the digital arena, where it makes sense. If you just have a question for your doctor, you should be able to interact with that doctor without coming in for a visit,” she adds.

“When a family has to travel a really long distance for a 15-minute appointment, are there ways to do that digitally, whether it’s telemedicine or some other solution? That’s how we’ll move the non-critical, non-emergent things to more of a digital environment, which is also what the newer generations are looking for. How can I do it on my phone? Can I do it by internet and

It’s about moving components of healthcare to the digital arena, where it makes sense.”

DeNISe ZABAWSkI Chief Information Officer Nationwide Children’s Hospital

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not have to make a visit? If I am going to make a visit, we need to make sure I can make it as efficient as possible.”

That transformation of medicine provides avenues for wider geographic service. But it’s not the only challenge for healthcare technology support in a field where every nurse, doctor, pharmacist, technician and office support staffer is linked by computers, laptops, tablets and smart phones.

In a hospital that has driven most processes online since 2006, the massive amount of data put a premium on the need for specialists in both data analytics and cyber security for the network perimeter, both hot fields where recruitment takes more time, Zabawski says.

Still, she’s optimistic about the availability of IT talent in the Columbus Region. “It’s definitely a robust flow of people coming into the Region or graduating from local universities, and the big employers (are) working with the local universities to make sure the grads come out with skill sets that match the hot jobs right now,” she says.

Beyond matching skill sets with jobs, biomedical, pharmaceutical and surgical technologies continue to develop, such as computerized drug compounding machines and new heart monitors.

“There’s a lot of focus in developing entrepreneurs locally and all that they’re trying to do to develop the new technology that’s coming out of our region. It’s all new, a lot of it, but there’s some tremendous potential in some of these small service companies,” Zabawski says.

In Central Ohio’s IT ecosystem, the technology operations of Nationwide Children’s are both significant and complex. Unlike OhioHealth, OSU hospitals and Mount Carmel Health with their networks of affiliate offices, many referring pediatricians are not employed by the hospital itself.

“Our ultimate goal is to make sure there are thriving pediatricians in all the regions, and we really want to keep the private pediatricians alive and well and have healthy practices,” she says.

—Mike Mahoney

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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Proud to help build technologically vibrant communities.

Since our beginnings in 1926, Nationwide has been proud to support the communities where our members and associates live and work. Today, we’re still focused on making a difference in Columbus, and proud to be part of a city at the forefront of technology and innovation. Our IT associates are a team of professionals who share this same passion. It’s part of why Nationwide has been selected for the 5th consecutive year as one of Computerworld’s Best Places to Work in IT.

Nationwide and the Nationwide N and Eagle are service marks of Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company. © 2017 Nationwide CPO-1071AO (09/17)

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Wiretap 111 Liberty St., Suite 102 Columbus 43215 wiretap.com

If Wiretap is rolling the dice by choosing to be located in the Columbus Region, its principals are confident their lucky numbers will continue to appear.

including identifying patterns of messaging that could later spell trouble for a company.

The technology includes a “predictive intelligence” element that Schumann likens to the 2002 sciencefiction thriller Minority Report.

“We take all of the analog interactions and create a digital footprint that can identify risks and provide behavioral insight back to the company,” he

says. “We can make sure a CEO doesn’t end up on the cover of the Wall Street Journal for not handling HR problems.”

That footprint might tell of an insider threat, it can recognize top talent, identify potential human resource issues or point out ways a company might improve its bottom line.

“It’s powerful, but employees see value in it, too,” Schumann says. “It helps them communicate better than they

The cyber security firm Wiretap began its emerging technology platform here in 2015 as a startup and it is growing quickly, with 25 employees currently and expectations that it will double in size each year, says CEO Jeff Schumann.

“We made a big bet on where this city is going,” Schumann says. “Columbus is becoming a hotbed for technology, with capital investors and the right leaders and mentorships all readily available.”

Location is also critical.

“We have access to our customers better than anywhere in the US,” he says. “Just look at the amount of enterprises within 500 miles of this region that you can reach within a day’s drive.”

Wiretap is all about strengthening the security of organizations, especially those with hundreds and thousands of employees.

“We have a few hundred enterprises running on our technology, and many of these are major enterprises with 200,000 employees,” Schumann says.

“Their immediate need is often better security, but they get equally excited about what they can learn when they adopt these technologies.”

A primary function of Wiretap’s technology is to secure data blasted out across varieties of an organization’s digital channels and platforms, but the company does a whole lot more,

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did before, and it can save them time by showing them how to accomplish tasks in a better and different fashion.”

Wiretap works with all sorts of industries, and because Central Ohio has positive livability factors, the company is able to tap more than just digital platforms.

“In the beginning we were told it would be hard to grow in Columbus and attract the right talent,” Schumann says. “We’ve proven the naysayers wrong and have brought in the best talent from all over the world who want to come here and build this technology.”

The vibrant IT ecosystem that exists in the Region has also been a boon, allowing Wiretap to draw on expertise in areas related to its work, Schumann says.

“To be successful you have to move fast, and we don’t have all the resources that come with a mega enterprise,” he says. “So we have partnerships to offset our knowledge gaps, and Columbus has everything you need across all disciplines.”

Moving forward, Wiretap must continue to look at the existing bigger picture while creating new visions for building on its business, Schumann says.

“One of the most important things to survive and thrive is the ability to outinnovate the bigger players, so we have to move very, very fast and use the ecosystem of Columbus to our advantage,” he says.

“We have to think about and engineer things that have never been done before. It’s incredibly stressful, but when you get a bunch of smart people in a room, you can do it, and we are well underway,” Schumann says.

—TC Brown

We have to move very, very fast and use the ecosystem of Columbus to our advantage.” jeff SChuMann

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leading EDJE 5555 Perimeter Drive, Suite 101 Dublin 43017 leadingedje.com

When you name your Midwestern company Leading EDJE during a high-tech revolution, better remember two things: First, bring the goods. Second, bring an attitude to match.

For Leading EDJE CEO Joelle Brock, the company name means a serious commitment to custom solutions, staff learning and—surprisingly—laughing at least once every hour. Invite the staff and family to a picnic at the Columbus Zoo, and 91 people attend.

Need a babysitter for your junior geek?

EDJE colleagues are there to help.

Where does the EDJE come from?

The acronym stands for Erica Dave Joelle Enterprises, using the first names of founders Erica Krumlauf, chief operating officer; Dave Michels, chief technology officer, and Joelle herself, but the edginess reflects strategy, culture and committed listening.

Founded 10 years ago, Leading EDJE expects to employ 50 fulltime by the end of this year, and it uses no contract or part-time staff. It provides custom software development, project management and embedded developers onsite to help clients like Safelite, Donatos and Crown Search Services.

Columbus 2020, JobsOhio and other groups have helped connect Leading EDJE to emerging enterprises here, where software breakthroughs may be essential to job growth, Brock says.

Geeky aspirations own the company’s culture. “REAL. FUN. GEEKS.” is the brand slogan—both for customers and potential employees. Brock wants to attract aggressive problem-solvers with just as much passion for fun and work-life balance. That has kept Lead-

Everything we do is on a custom basis, so it’s not as if we’re dropping in-a-box solutions.”

JOELLE BROCK CEO, Leading EDJE

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ing EDJE on Inc. Magazine’s list of 5,000 fastest-growing companies.

“We’re super-excited about being the geekiest of the geeks. When we mix our clients into our culture, that’s a release of energy for them,” Brock says.

The quest for clients may include a lot of retail, but Brock and Wendy Ivany, chief growth officer (translation: sales and recruiting), say that doesn’t reflect targeting.

“When we’re looking to engage with a new client or an existing client, we’re looking for that mutual respect, a mutual bond and that loyalty to one another. So we’re not trying to find as many clients as we can. We’re out to find the next client that wants to go as deep in our relationship as we have with our other clients,” Ivany says. The key question for potential customers is how far they want to lean forward.

“Everything we do is on a custom basis, so it’s not as if we’re dropping ina-box solutions,” Brock says. “We truly get to the root of our clients’ problems, and we do that through custom technology development.”

Leading EDJE offers NIMBLE (New Ideas Made By Leading EDJE), where a client’s subject matter experts join Leading EDJE staff in their expanding Dublin creative space to think of ways to approach their business and disrupt it with technology.

EDJErs, the website claims, are “the smartest, most capable geeks in town,” but Brock wants to make sure they’re the happiest, too. Time off, flextime and comprehensive benefits play a part.

If people pass the company’s core values test, they’ll benefit from internal investment in their ongoing training and education. “People come to work for Leading EDJE because they know they’re going to get a lot of investment from the company,” Brock says.

“The people we bring on the team are the best problem solvers there are.

They come up against a problem and they get excited about it because it’s something new. They know they’re going to solve it. The chase to the solve is what’s fun for them,” Brock says.

—Mike Mahoney

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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Grounded in history, focused on the future.

From our headquarters in one of Columbus’ most cherished historic buildings, Bricker & Eckler honors the past. But thanks to Columbus 2020, we know that the greatest days of the Columbus region lie ahead. Congratulations to Columbus 2020 for once again making Central Ohio great in 2017 with: • Columbus being recognized as the best city in the country to work in tech (SmartAsset, August 2017)

start a career (USA Today, May 2017)

Niche, April 2017)

(SmartAsset, July 2017) Contact Contact Chris Chris Schmenk Schmenk at at 614.227.2323 614.227.2323 or or cschmenk@bricker.com cschmenk@bricker.com to to learn learn more more about about how how our our economic development development team team can can help help your your business business or or community community succeed. succeed. economic

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ICC 2500 Corporate Exchange Drive Columbus 43231 icctechnology.com

As the business world becomes increasingly digital, one Columbus consulting company is leveraging the Region’s labor pool to help organizations solve their IT challenges.

ICC Technology, Ohio’s largest privately held IT services provider, specializes in strategy and design for user experience, and provides services for technology integration and business analytics.

“What you see in the world today is a movement towards what is generally called the digital transformation,” CEO Steven Glaser says.

The transition to mobile technology is especially relevant, and visible to consumers and businesses alike.

“Now it has become critical to every business, the more that millennials do business on their phones,” says Glaser, who has led the organization since 1995. “We’re all headed in this ‘Amazonian,’ Uber world, everything someday is going to come through that phone, and everybody is working to be prepared to do that.”

ICC, from its state-of-the-art development center in Columbus, has helped shape the IT strategy of many well-known firms in the Region, across a variety of industries.

Its portfolio of clients include government agencies and national and global companies such as Nationwide, L Brands and Cardinal Health.

In one local project, ICC helped Bob Evans to streamline processes, optimize inventory and share information in real-time across store, channel and system boundaries. More than 500 restaurants were integrated into an enterprise backbone to measure transaction flow to forecast labor needs at each location.

“We’ve invested a lot in the Columbus market and the people around Columbus,” Glaser says. “Columbus allows for growth, and it’s a great place for our company to have grown up.”

We’re serious tech experts who solve serious business problems, without taking ourselves too seriously in the process. In other words, we’re

REAL. FUN. GEEKS

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We compete at a high level across lots of different verticals.”

STeven GlaSer, CEO, ICC

Being located in Columbus provides not only a roster of reputable clients but a coping mechanism in facing one of the industry’s difficult tests.

“I think that the challenges in the marketplace today are labor—it’s a high-employment market,” Glaser says.

“The skillset demands are great, (and) there are less people out there with the skills that you need. These are relatively new techniques that are popping up every day—how do we deal with that?”

For one, access to talent coming out of The Ohio State University and other nearby institutions.

“The fortunate part is we’ve located ourselves in a great region. There are numerous colleges and a great labor pool for us to draw from,” Glaser says.

“We see a lot of people coming out with computer science degrees. We love the course of the last 10 years.”

ICC hires many local graduates and then trains them for the ever-changing needs of clients.

“We’ve been fortunate to have a great group of people we develop in this marketplace,” he says. “The only way that you can do that is by developing a culture that allows these people.”

Glaser says Columbus has a bit of a small-town atmosphere in many ways.

“You have a plethora of people with strong Midwestern values that want to work hard,” he says.

“The challenge you always face is competition,” he adds. “We compete at a high level across lots of different verticals. It’s not as easy as it looks. The biggest thing that differentiates us is we invest in clients and our people.”

—Evan Weese

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Columbus 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Ibm 4600 Lakehurst Court Dublin 43016 ibm.com

It’s no accident IBM bases its North America Cognitive Innovation Center in the Columbus Region.

From offices in Columbus, IBM’s Cognitive Innovation Center provides clients with services in the realm of Internet of Things, cognitive and data science and services supporting the digital transformation cycle.

“When IBM had selected Columbus as the location there were certain criteria,” says Teresa Hamid, vice president and chief technology officer overseeing the North America Cognitive Innovation Center. “Columbus was selected because of its location and proximity to colleges and universities. We knew analytics is a growth area, and talent is a must—we must have access to that talent.”

The IBM division works with clients in government and a variety of industries including financial services, distribution, retail and manufacturing. It serves businesses at various levels of maturity, some just beginning to explore the importance of analytics to their business.

Data is more than just a buzzword, as it brings about an element of change for organizations across industries.

IBM allows clients to analyze data that is “unstructured,” or raw. The services can be applied to a variety of business processes.

“It could be around a contact center, where we could create a chatbot of sorts—create messaging,” Hamid says.

“It is definitely an area of growth. But it’s also an area of challenge for all of our clients.”

Columbus was selected because of its location and proximity to colleges and universities ... talent is a must.”

TeReSA HAMID, VP & Chief Technology Officer, Innovation Center

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In providing the services, IBM is agnostic to technology, Hamid says. But, of course, the division also has access to IBM tools such as Watson, the famed artificial intelligence application.

The North America Cognitive Innovation Center has worked with hundreds of clients, both nationally and globally.

“The clients that are really going after this, and exploring and failing fast, will be the greater competitors in this space,” Hamid says. “Depending on the industry, we’re still in some areas of early adoption and in some areas of maturity.”

Access to talent is one of industry’s greatest challenges.

“Analysts are in a level of shortage.

They continue to be a critical element to any growing organization,” Hamid says. “Analytics or cognitive, be it machine learning, these are the roles that are critical and we need.”

Hamid says IBM is working closely with high schools and universities to ensure educators are grooming students to have the right sets of skills.

“We have a great relationship with OSU; we work with their school of engineering, statistics, identifying that these are the types of courses that are needed,” Hamid says.

IBM also is able to collaborate with businesses—be it in insurance, automotive, retail or pharmaceutical—that are facing the same challenge.

“It’s really a community effort and beneficial for all of us,” Hamid says.

“There has been great collaboration across the local companies in various aspects, and it doesn’t always have to be in the analytics and cognitive domain.”

The issues are important because they have far-reaching impacts across IBM’s footprint.

“While we are local, we also are a part of the broader global team that reaches out to hundreds of data scientists, analytics architects,” Hamid says. “We’re part of a larger ecosystem. The advantage of having a co-located team here in Columbus is it’s a local area for clients to come.”

—Evan Weese

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

Cardinal Health 7000 Cardinal Place Dublin 43017 cardinalhealth.com

Cardinal Health touches just about every aspect of healthcare. The Fortune 15 company offers wholesale distribution for pharmaceutical products in more than 70 countries; supply distribution; Cardinal-branded product sourcing and manufacturing; nuclear pharmacy and new postacute services.

Cardinal Health has a lot of work to keep track of. That’s why its IT system, Enterprise Information Technology, is so vital. “The technology supports the operations of the company from supply chain distribution centers, manufacturing facilities, all the way to commercial technology, which we actually sell to our customers directly, so we have technology implemented at the customer. It’s a very mission-critical part of what we do here at Cardinal,” says Patty Morrison, executive vice president of customer support services and chief information officer.

“We have a very big set of business models here that are servicing across those multiple customers. So IT here is at the base and fundamental capability of every single thing,” she adds.

Morrison credits the Columbus Region with Cardinal Health’s thriving IT operations.

“I’ve worked in a lot of different cities, and one of the things I absolutely love about Columbus is that it has a great collaborative nature to it.”

As a member of the board at Columbus Collaboratory, Morrison works closely with six other members who are chief information/technology officers at their respective companies.

“We’re able to collaborate on topics like cyber security, data and analytics, IT talent development in the Region,” she says. “We also do a lot of innovation together so we can learn across

IT here is at the base and fundamental capability of every single thing.”

PATTy MoRRISon, Executive Vice President of Customer Support Services and Chief Information Officer Cardinal Health

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industries. I think this is really unique to Columbus and part of what the business leaders and the city leaders work very hard at—creating that collaborative environment.”

“The other thing that’s really great about Columbus is just the access to really good talent. We have fantastic universities and schools in the Region that give us access to great talent,” she says.

Cyber security is one area in particular on the minds of the Collaboratory board members, and on the minds of every company in the Region, says Morrison.

“We work together on sharing best practices, where appropriate sharing threat intelligence. It’s interesting because we’re only as strong as our weakest link.”

For example, AEP runs energy to Cardinal’s data center in Dublin, and as such the two companies share details that may affect each other.

“It’s important that we understand what they’re doing to protect themselves (and) the impact it has on us— even if we weren’t affected we’ve found there are supply-chain effects that happen—so I think that collaboration is very powerful,” she says.

It seems as if there is no end to IT innovation, and the Columbus Region’s IT ecosystem will continue to explore new technological territories such as machine learning and cognitive computing as they apply to anything from financial services and healthcare, to retail and insurance, says Morrison.

“Another challenge is helping an IT organization evolve to using new ways of building applications through cloudbased services; building architectures that allow us to move faster—taking monolithic, more legacy applications and moving them to contemporary architectures that will enable the company to have options and move with speed. That’s a big challenge because, in our business, it’s very important that we constantly evolve to create new value for our customer base, so we have to have that flexibility.”

—Chloe Teasley

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When Facebook searched for the right mix of technology infrastructure and can-do attitude, they found it at the New Albany International Business Park.

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Welcome to New Albany, Facebook. We’re thrilled to have you join an expanding list of leading corporations who are choosing to locate their businesses in a place that’s wired for success. Like so many others, Facebook saw the strength of the business park’s technological infrastructure. Including one of the nation’s most robust and affordable fiber optic networks, triple electric feeds and the power of tremendous bandwidth.

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I T

H a p p e n s

H e R e

From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

Columbus Collaboratory 1375 Perry St. Columbus 43201 columbuscollaboratory.com

When seven leading Columbus businesses and organizations came together in early 2014 to create the Columbus Collaboratory, they wisely envisioned its work would be as important as it has quickly become.

ments, outputs from the engagements themselves where the member companies are deriving internal benefits from using them, a core set of services that the company itself now has and an emerging set of products that are now under development that have directly resulted from those collaboration efforts.”

The Columbus Region, already collaborative in nature, is ideally suited to the work of the Collaboratory, Wald says. “These CIOs of these seven com-

panies that sit on my board, they have really big jobs, very important jobs.

They’re very, very busy people and yet they are very, very collaborative and they are willing to compromise for the good of the whole. … They understand the bigger picture here and how by collaborating together they’re creating something greater than themselves while still benefitting from it.”

As cybersecurity threats have grown, the Collaboratory has been able to help its members address mutual concerns

The founders—American Electric Power, Battelle, Cardinal Health, Huntington Bank, L Brands, Nationwide and OhioHealth—launched a company that has gained significance as it has added value to the IT operations of each of their own ventures and the Columbus Region as a whole.

As its name suggests, the Collaboratory is a place where chief information officers of the seven founders come together to tackle IT issues that are common challenges despite their diverse business interests. Advanced analytics and cybersecurity have been the initial focus, says Matt Wald, CEO of the unique company headquartered at Battelle.

Because none of the founders compete with each other, they share IT concerns to create innovative solutions that can benefit all of them.

Now the Collaboratory is moving into the next phase as it commercializes its work and is positioned to continue as a self-sustaining enterprise.

Wald says the Collaboratory worked in parallel its first two years on project engagements with members as well as product development efforts.

“What has emerged from that now is a library of (intellectual property) that has resulted from those engage-

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better than they might have been able to do alone. For example, when the global WannaCry ransomware attack emerged in May, Collaboratory members quickly organized a Saturday conference call where they were able to learn strategies from each other for handling the threat, Wald says.

“Imagine trying to do that if we hadn’t existed.”

Another major value of the Collaboratory is its cyber rotation program in which new college IT graduates cycle through the IT departments of each founding member, giving each of them exposure to the differing company cultures while giving the companies an opportunity to get to know them as they ramp up their IT skills.

“The hypothesis was we can compress the time it takes to make new entrants to the cyber workforce eligible for hire from what used to be five years down to something shorter, like two.”

In fact, two of the first seven new grads in that program have been hired by member companies and a new class of eight is now rotating through the seven companies plus the Collaboratory itself.

“And the class of eight, we’ve attracted more kids from out of state than the original class of seven,” Wald reports.

That helps spread the word nationally that there is a lot of opportunity in IT in the Columbus Region, he adds.

“Our founding CEOs and founding CIOs took a risk; like all things in business you have to take a risk in order to hit a benefit. That was because some folks had some real vision and courage, and I think it’s paying off,” Wald says.

“It is really creating a future opportunity for them that just didn’t exist a couple of years ago.”

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They understand ... they’re creating something greater than themselves while still benefitting from it.”

MATT WAld CEO, Columbus Collaboratory Columbus 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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I T

H a p p e n s

H e R e

From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

battelle 505 King Ave. Columbus 43201 battelle.org

Battelle is seen as a leader in Central Ohio’s IT community, and even globally, but perhaps lesser known is how the research giant gets its own boost from the Region.

“The fact that we have some pretty major companies here in town is definitely beneficial,” Battelle CIO David White says. “That allows us to attract a good degree of very skilled people. Columbus is a really good place to work if you’re in IT.” Battelle was implementing a new human resources system, for example, and was able to find experienced personnel who had worked on similar projects for Nationwide Insurance and L Brands, among other reputable local employers.

“Collaboration here is kind of off the charts,” says White, who earned degrees from Columbus State Community College and Franklin University before previous career stops in the Region.

Battelle is a founding member of the Columbus Collaboratory, a cohort of businesses across seven industries that share best practices related to cyber security and analytics.

“That has actually opened a lot of doors for us,” White said. “I have contacts with all other CIOs, (to say) ‘Hey, I’m thinking about this, can you put me in contact with the right person?

Because your organization has already done it.’”

In many other cities, he says, that willingness to collaborate is not as prevalent. The collaborative spirit in Columbus actually goes beyond IT executives.

“It starts at the top, with CEOs,”

Columbus is uniquely positioned because we can actually point to the cloud in Columbus.”

DAvID WHITE Chief Information Officer, Battelle

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White says.

He says that while Columbus indeed has a strong pool from which to draw IT talent, recruiting will be an emphasis for the industry, which is aging.

Battelle’s IT department in just the past few years saw 29 staff members retire with a combined 700 years of experience, White says.

Fortunately, the Columbus Region is blessed to have a pipeline of talent flowing from a number of local schools including The Ohio State University.

Still, one of the challenges in an always-changing industry is making sure those graduates are equipped with the most up-to-date skills.

“Where’s that next crop coming from and are we really training them for the future?” White asks.

For instance, Columbus is shaping into a hub of activity for cloud technology as data is stored at facilities run by Amazon Web Services.

“Columbus is uniquely positioned because we can actually point to the cloud in Columbus,” White says.

Automation, and its impact on workforces, are other areas White and his team are watching.

“I quite frankly think that automation is going to be a big challenge for us, in IT, moving forward,” he says. “It’s changing the entire stack.”

Battelle’s Columbus operations will continue to be important to the organization as a whole. From Columbus, there is connectivity to each of Battelle’s 53 satellite offices, for IT security and other functions.

In a natural disaster or catastrophic situation, the Columbus IT operations must bring systems back online within four hours, White says.

“That’s pretty aggressive,” he says.

“We also have to support the physical security and the infrastructure across the institute.”

Battelle has researchers around the world running experiments, and they can’t afford to lose years worth of important work.

“It’s a pretty important function within the organization,” he says.

—Evan Weese

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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OUR WORK CHANGES THE WORLD, BUT OUR HEART BELONGS TO COLUMBUS. At CAS, we enable groundbreaking research that improves people’s lives every day.

We’re proud to call Columbus home and to inspire innovation in our great city as a supporter of .

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I T

H A p p e n s

H e R e

From analytics to cloud and in all sectors, information technology drives innovation in the Columbus Region.

Auditgraph 220 Market St., Suite 202 New Albany 43054 auditgraph.com

How can a company that specializes in drug labeling gain insights from a financial-services or manufacturing company?

It may seem unlikely, but the special sauce of the Columbus Region’s IT community allows for unexpected collaborations.

New Albany-based Auditgraph, which drives global patient safety by ensuring drug labels are updated in a timely and accurate manner, has partnered with a wide variety of area organizations: Columbus 2020, Rev1 Ventures, The Ohio State University, Innovate New Albany, Cardinal Health Fuse, Otterbein University, Ohio Northern University, TechOhio and the Lachey Company.

“The advantage is a network of IT collaborations which help us grow our product focus,” CEO Mauricha Marcussen says. “Columbus is a community where people are willing to share ideas and information about IT operations.”

That local network has allowed Auditgraph to grow its business to a global scale.

The company’s local team supports operations in four locations in North America and two in Europe.

Beyond simply the ability to collaborate, the Columbus Region offers best-in-class financial and mentoring resources for quickly growing companies. Auditgraph, for example, scaled at a business incubator in New Albany, Inc@8000.

The drug labeling company provides expertise for managing all aspects of a company’s labeling program, for pre-

Columbus is a community where people are willing to share ideas and information about IT operations.”

MAURICHA MARCUSSEN CEO, Auditgraph

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scription drugs, generic drugs, medical devices, consumer products and related patient information.

Various countries and regions of the world have different templates and requirements for local and corporate labeling.

“While US regulations currently require the labeling on generic medicines to be identical to their brand-name equivalents, in reality the vast majority of generic drugs carry labels that differ from the branded products,” Auditgraph notes on its website. “There are critical safety concerns of disparate labeling between the branded and generic labels.”

Labeling is important because it describes proper use of the product and describes safety and efficacy to humans, ultimately improving global patient safety.

Drugmakers have to make sure they are up to speed on the latest emerging regulations. If labeling isn’t globally compliant, it will be hamstrung.

“Our experts will provide key considerations for developing a strategic approach to implementing the Company Core Data Sheet safety changes into country-specific labeling submissions,” Auditgraph says on its website.

Auditgraph uses its proprietary ComplianceView software to handle global product labeling compliance. The platform efficiently assesses, reports and tracks critical safety differences between the Company Core Data Sheet—essentially a drugmaker’s own product description—and thousands of local country labels. It identifies labeling deviations quickly to both improve internal efficiency and to meet stringent government requirements.

Marcussen says the privately held Auditgraph, founded in 2003, will have to leverage new technologies to assist clients in the future.

“Our challenge going forward is to determine how machine learning and artificial intelligence can be incorporated into our ComplianceView technology to further drive our goal to improve global patient safety,” Marcussen says.

—Evan Weese

ColumbusCEO l Columbus 2020

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Employment & HR

Free speech rights don’t protect workers’ off-duty social media rants.

By BOB VitalE

I

t’s Monday morning. You fire up your email. The inbox is full of angry messages about an employee who posted a rant over the weekend; it has been shared hundreds of times. His profile says he works for you.

According to employment attorneys and even the staunchest defenders of freedom of speech, you’re on pretty safe ground in Ohio if you want to cut the loudmouth loose.

“For private-sector, non-union employers in Ohio, they have a lot of latitude to discipline or terminate an employee who engages in hate activity or very radical political activity,” says Kevin Griffith, a Columbus attorney with Littler Mendelson who has defended employers in hundreds of wrongful termination cases.

“Free speech protected by the First Amendment doesn’t apply in private employment settings in Ohio.”

It’s a growing tactic of activists on both sides to go after the paychecks of those with whom they disagree. After white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups marched in Charlottesville, Va., this summer, an online effort began to identify people

Photo ©2017 THinKsTOCK.COm

Keep Quiet to Keep Working photographed at the rallies and then notify their employers. Several were fired or quit.

Locally, Columbus City Schools moved in June to fire a 13-year garage supervisor after he posted comments on the Facebook page of the local LGBT Pride festival that gay people “should be killed or at least relocated.” Dozens contacted the school district, which cited a policy that balances employees’ off-duty right to free speech against “the interests of this district.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if we see more of that,” says Steven Loewengart, regional managing partner in Columbus for Fisher Phillips, a nationwide firm that specializes in employment law.

California, Colorado, New York and North Dakota prohibit employers from firing people based on activities away from work. Ohio doesn’t, but Loewengart says there are still a few exceptions to the ability of employers to fire people because of their speech or conduct away from the office.

First Amendment protections kick in if you’re a government employer. While many people assume

“the employer has every right to do that. if you work for a private employer, you can be fired for anything they deem appropriate within the law.” j. BEnnEtt guEss, Executive Director, ACLU of Ohio

freedom of speech is a right that applies to every American in every situation, it’s not. The First Amendment prohibits government—Congress, the state, city and county officials, school districts, public colleges and universities—from denying citizens the right to speak. It also restricts government’s ability to fire its own for non-work speech or conduct. And Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act protects employees’ right to speak out about working conditions. Union contracts and company policies also might address issues of free speech.

But it may be surprising to learn who backs the right of private employers to sack any whose speech they consider offensive or harmful to business. “The employer has every right to do that,” says J. Bennett Guess, executive director of the ACLU of Ohio. “If you work for a private employer, you can be fired for anything they deem appropriate within the law.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is famous for defending First Amendment rights, even of those whose speech is far out of the mainstream. The group itself proclaims as one of its proudest moments a 1978 court battle defending the right of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Party of America to march in Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb with a large Jewish population. But that was a case in which the government took action against people’s right to assemble and speak, Guess says, because local officials in Skokie tried to stop the October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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planned march. In that same vein, the Ohio ACLU spoke out against Columbus City Schools’ move in June to fire employee Christopher Dodds, whose wish for violence against LGBT people it called “vile” but protected by the US Constitution.

Columbus City Schools spokesman Scott Varner says Dodd was fired because he posted “highly offensive, unprofessional comments” on Facebook and other social media forums from a district computer during work time. He also used school resources to operate a personal business during work hours, Varner says.

Whether an action is taken by the government or a private entity acting within its legal rights is the line of demarcation for the ACLU, Guess says.

“Many people wrongly assume the First Amendment protects your right to say what you want, any time you want, any place you want,” he says. “I like to say the First Amendment doesn’t give you the right to talk back to your mother.” People have the right to speak, US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote in 1892, but they don’t have the right to a job.

Social media are a new way to monitor behavior, but the underlying issues are old ones.

“It’s faster and it’s more visible because of social media,” Griffith says. “But it’s the same thing as, ‘Do you know what Jim does on the weekend? Do you know where I saw Sue?’” The tactic now used against white supremacists was used by them against civil rights activists in the 1950s and ‘60s, says Hasan Kwame Jeffries, an associate professor of history at Ohio State University.

Rosa Parks was fired from her job as a department store seamstress after she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger and triggered the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott in Alabama. State police informants wrote down license plate numbers of attendees at civil rights meetings and demonstrations throughout the South, Jeffries says. Employers fired workers, landlords evicted tenants, and colleges expelled students who participated in protest activities.

Jeffries says he doesn’t attach a moral judgment to the political tactic, but he does judge the motives of those using it. People being fired for supporting racial equality then and for advocat-

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ing white supremacy now reflects on what society deems acceptable in both eras, he says.

“It is very much an interesting reversal,” he says. “You’re calling on employers to say, ‘Where do you stand on these issues in the public sphere?

This is a representative of your company. Now what are you going to do about it?’”

Loewengart says Ohio companies are well within their rights to fire workers whose off-duty activities could affect business or whose actions hurt workplace morale. Written policies about off-duty activities can be a double-edged sword, though, he says.

They are often the best defense when a terminated employee sues, but a poorly crafted policy can backfire.

Ohio is an “at-will” employment

state, and Griffith says that means nongovernment employers who don’t have collective bargaining agreements in place or contracts with individual employees can fire people for pretty much any reason that’s not covered by federal or state laws.

“They can say, ‘Look, we’re not going to employ you if you’re part of a white supremacist or neo-Nazi group, but we don’t even have to give you a reason why.’ You could give a lot of reasons for it, but an at-will employer in Ohio doesn’t have to give a reason.”

Zuni Corkerton, founder and president of RefCheck Information Services Inc., says employers have good reason not to hire someone whose nonwork activities might indicate problems. But Facebook isn’t the place to do that kind of research, she says.

“I advise clients not to look at social media. We don’t feel that it’s solid enough information.”

ZunI COrkErtOn, Founder and president of RefCheck Information Services, Inc.

“I advise clients not to look at social media. We don’t feel that it’s solid enough information,” she says. “When there’s not enough staff to do good background checks, social media becomes an easy way.”

RefCheck, which performs preemployment background screenings, relies on conversations with former employers, as well as checks of public records, employment history, education and other data.

And yes, Corkerton says, it’s still possible to get good information from reference checks. Insights into temperament, judgment and ethical lapses aren’t obtained through data searches.

There are questions employers should ask themselves before monitoring employees and potential employees on social media, Corkerton says.

“Why are you looking at social media? What is your purpose? What are you hoping to find?” she asks.

“Once you have that information as an employer, what are you going to do with it?”

Bob Vitale is the former associate editor.

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Alban & Alban

7100 N. High St. Suite 102, Worthington 43085 614-340-4044 Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Probate/estates/ trusts; real estate/ construction; foreclosures & title matters

COLuMBuS LEgAL DIRECTORy The Columbus CEO Legal Directory contains information on local firms available for hire to detail a plan of sale, keep a business safe, help make a will or solve a life crisis, to name a few uses.

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ou never know when you may need a lawyer. With 75 percent of the over-one million lawyers in private practices all over the US, there is no shortage. And luckily, Columbus vaunts hundreds of private practice firms that are just a call or drive away.

Included are its largest firms, according to Columbus CEO’s July Leaderboard: Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP, Bricker & Eckler LLP, Kegler Brown Hill + Ritter and Baker Hostetler.

See firm size and top practice areas to aid in your search for a lawyer or inform you about the excellent law being practiced in central Ohio, from Downtown to Marysville; from Grove City to New Albany.

Allen Kuehnle Stovall + Neuman LLP

17 S. High St., Suite 1220, Columbus 43215 614-221-8500 aksnlaw.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 11 PraCtiCE arEas: Bankruptcy/debtorcreditor; litigation/ trial practice; taxation

Anspach Meeks Ellenberger, LLP

175 S. 3rd St. Suite 285 Columbus 43215 614-745-8350 anspachlaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Commercial; litigation/trial practice; real estate/construction

Atkins and Atkins, Attorneys at Law LLC

490 City Park Ave. Columbus 43215 614-485-8248 atkinsandatkinslaw. com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal; family/juvenile; probate/estates/ trusts

Babbitt & Dahlberg LLC

503 S. Front St. Suite 200, Columbus 43215 614-228-4200 bdfamilylaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile

Bailey Cavalieri LLC

10 W. Broad St. Suite 2100, Columbus 43215 614-221-3155 baileycav.com Central OH Partners: 30 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 51 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; probate/ estates/trusts; directors & officers liability

Baker Hostetler

200 Civic Center Drive Suite 1200 Columbus 43215 614-228-1541 bakerlaw.com Central OH Partners: 34 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 75 PraCtiCE arEas: Healthcare; labor/employment; litigation/ trial practice

Barnes & Thornburg LLP

41 S. High St. Suite 3300 Columbus 43215 614-628-1401 btlaw.com Central OH Partners: 10 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 24 PraCtiCE arEas: Labor/employment; litigation/trial practice; real estate/ construction

Barrett, Easterday, Cunningham & Eselgroth LLP

7259 Sawmill Road Dublin 43016 614-210-1840 ohiocounsel.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 10 PraCtiCE arEas: Commercial; corporate; probate/estates/ trusts

Barr, Jones & Associates LLP

150 E. Mound St. Suite 200, Columbus 43215 614-702-2222 barrjoneslegal.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Bankruptcy/ debtor-creditor; criminal; family/ juvenile

Becker & Lilly

100 E. Broad St. Suite 2320 Columbus 43215 614-469-4778 beckerlillly.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Copyright/trademark/ patent; corporate; probate/estates/ trusts

The Behal Law Group LLC

501 S. High St. Columbus 43215 614-643-5050 behallaw.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; family/juvenile; litigation/trial practice

Benesch

41 S. High St. Suite 2600 Columbus 43215 614-223-9300 beneschlaw.com Central OH Partners: 17 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 23 PraCtiCE arEas: Healthcare; litigation/ trial practice; transportation/logistics

Bergman + Yiangou

3099 Sullivant Ave. Columbus 43204 614-279-8276 byattorneys.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Bankruptcy/ debtor-creditor; family/juvenile; social security disability

Blaugrund, Haynes, Kessler, Myers & Postalakis Inc.

300 W. Wilson Bridge Road Suite 100 Worthington 43085 614-764-0681 bkmplaw.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 10 PraCtiCE arEas: Administrative; family/juvenile; labor/employment

Bloomfield & Kempf LLC

1880 Mackenzie Drive Columbus 43220 614-224-9221 bloomfieldkempf.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Immigration law practice

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Brosius, Johnson & Griggs, LLC

Columbus Legal Directory Bluestone Law Group LLC

141 East Town St. Suite 100 Columbus 43215 614-220-5900 bluestonelawgroup. com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; real estate/construction; real property taxation

Bricker & Eckler LLP

100 S. 3rd St. Columbus 43215 614-227-2300 bricker.com Central OH Partners: 67 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 123 PraCtiCE arEas: Healthcare; litigation/ trial practice; public sector

Bridges, Jillisky & Streng, LLC

302 S. Main St. Marysville 43040 937-644-9125 cfbjs.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Bankruptcy/ debtor-creditor; criminal; workers’ compensation

1600 Dublin Road Suite 100, Columbus 43215 614-464-3563 bjglaw.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 5 PraCtiCE arEas: Real estate/ construction; local government/land use

Browning & Meyer Co. LPA

300 W. Wilson Bridge Road, Suite 250 Worthington 43085 614-471-0085 elderlaw.us Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Elder law; estate planning & probate

Calfee, Halter & Griswold LLP

1200 Huntington Center 41 S. High St. Columbus 43215 614-621-7767 calfee.com Central OH Partners: 7 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 19 PraCtiCE arEas: Government relations

Carlile Patchen & Murphy

366 E. Broad St. Columbus 43215 614-228-6135 cpmlaw.com Central OH Partners: 28 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 36 PraCtiCE arEas: Business law; litigation; probates/ estates/trusts

Carpenter Lipps & Leland LLP

280 N. High St. Suite 1300 Columbus 43215 614-365-4100 carpenterlipps.com Central OH Partners: 20 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 38 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; public policy

Chappano Wood PLL

691 N. High St. 3rd Floor Columbus 43215 614-228-4422 cwpll.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Copyright/trademark; international

Clark, Perdue & List Co, LPA

695 Bryden Road Columbus 43205 614-460-1604 www.clarkperdue.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Personal injury; pharmaceuticals and medical devices

Collns & Slagle Co. LPA

21 E. State St. Suite 2300 Columbus 43215 614-228-1144 collins-slagle.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; litigation/trial practice; probate/ estates/trusts

Connor, Kimmet & Hafenstein LLP

2000 W. Henderson Road, Suite 460 Columbus 43220 614-779-0675 cehlaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Personal injury; workers’ compensation; social security; professional licensing

Cox, Koltak & Gibson LLP

Dickie McCamey & Chilcote, PC

250 S. Civic Center Drive, Suite 280 Columbus 43215 614-258-6000 dmclaw.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 9 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; transportation; professional negligence defense

Dickinson Wright PLLC

5 E. Long St. Columbus 43215 614-224-4357 ohioinjuredworkers. com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Social security disability; workers’ compensation

150 E. Gay St., Suite 2400, Columbus 43215 614-744-2575 dickinsonwright.com Central OH Partners: 10 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 26 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; education; real estate/construction

Crabbe Brown + James, LLP

Dinsmore & Shohl LLP

500 S. Front St. Suite 1200, Columbus 43215 614-229-4567 cbjlawyers.com Central OH Partners: 11 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 15 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; general practice; litigation/ trial practice

Decker Vonau LLC

620 E. Broad St. Columbus 43215 614-744-4102 deckervonau.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; probate/ estates/trusts; real estate

191 W. Nationwide Blvd., Suite 300 Columbus 43215 614-628-6880 dinsmore.com Central OH Partners: 39 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 69 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; healthcare; real estate/construction

The Donahey Law Firm LLC

495 S. High St. Columbus 43215 614-224-8166 donaheylaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Medical malpractice; personal injury; workers’ compensation

Eastman & Smith Ltd.

100 E. Broad St. Suite 2100 Columbus 43215 614-564-1445 eastmansmith.com Central OH Partners: 6 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 11 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; environmental; labor/ employment

Eley Law Firm Co., LPA

7870 Olentangy River Road Suite 311 Columbus 43235 614-825-3539 eleylaw.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Copyright/trademark/ patent

Emens & Wolper Law Firm

One Easton Oval Suite 550 Columbus 43219 614-414-0888 emenswolperlaw.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Probate/estates/ trusts; corporate; energy/utilities

Fishel Hass Kim Albrecht Downey LLP

7775 Walton Parkway Suite 200 New Albany 43054 614-221-1216 fishelhass.com Central OH Partners: 6 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 14 PraCtiCE arEas: Labor/employment; litigation/trial practice; workers’ compensation

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Friedman & Mirman, Co. LPA

Columbus Legal Directory Fisher, Skrobot & Sheraw, LLC

471 E. Broad St. Columbus 43215 614-233-6950 fisherskrobot.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Banking/finance; commercial; corporate

1320 Dublin Road Suite 101 Columbus 43215 614-221-0090 friedmanmirman.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 9 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile

Frost Brown Todd

10 W. Broad St. Suite 2300 Columbus 43215 614-464-1211 frostbrowntodd.com Central OH Partners: 24 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 38 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate, labor/employment, litigation/trial practice

Fusco, Mackey Mathews & Gill LLP

655 Cooper Road Westerville 43081 614-523-7575 ohiolaws.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 5 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; personal injury; probate/ estates/trusts

Gamble Hartshorn LLC

One E. Livingston Ave., Columbus 43215 614-221-0922 ohiobusinesslawyers. com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Healthcare; litigation/ trial practice; real estate/construction

Gallagher Gams, Pryor Tallan & Littrell, LLP

471 E. Broad St. Suite 1900 Columbus 43215 614-228-5151 ggptl.com Central OH Partners: 7 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 10 PraCtiCE arEas: Alternative dispute resolution; criminal; litigation/ trial practice

Gallagher Kavinsky & Burkhart LPA

8740 Orion Place Columbus OH 43240 614-885-9022 Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Commercial; real estate/construction

Garvin & Hickey, LLC

Golden & Meizlish Co. LPA

Gittes Law Group

Griffith Law Offices

181 E. Livingston Ave. Columbus 43215 614-225-9000 garvin-hickey.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 5 PraCtiCE arEas: Workers’ compensation

723 Oak St. Columbus 43205 614-222-4735 gitteslaw.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Civil rights; labor/employment; litigation/ trial practice

923 E. Broad St. Columbus 43205 614-258-1983 golmeiz.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; family/juvenile; litigation/trial practice

522 N. State St. Westerville 43082 614-890-4543 griffithlaw.org Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; probate/estates/ trusts; real estate/ construction

Local Presence. National Reach.

Standing left to right: Mary McWilliams Dengler, Ray Pantle, Mary Barley-McBride, Joseph Golian, R. Leland Evans, Kelli Amador, Richard Silk Seated: Jessica Reese, Megan Kleinman

Dickie McCamey & Chilcote, P.C. 170 lawyers strong–providing valuable legal counsel–since 1906 16 OFFICES | 9 STATES | 1 FIRM www.dmclaw.com

250 Civic Center Drive, Suite 280 Columbus, Ohio 43215 614.258.6000

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Celebrating Our Best in Columbus We congratulate the 19 lawyers in our Columbus office who are recognized in The Best Lawyers in America® 2018. We are proud of these, and all of our Columbus lawyers, who are a driving force behind our firm, in Ohio and across the globe.

David W. Alexander, Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation Patrick D. Cornelius, Corporate Law Gregory R. Daniels, Public Finance Law Christopher J. Franzmann, Public Finance Law John R. Gall, Bet-the-Company Litigation, Commercial Litigation, Litigation – Intellectual Property, Litigation – Patent, Litigation – Securities Donald W. Hughes, Corporate Law Thomas F. Kibbey, Real Estate Law

Michael D. Saad, Real Estate Law Kendra Sherman, Environmental Law, Litigation – Environmental Alex Shumate, Administrative/Regulatory Law, Corporate Law, Government Contracts, Government Relations Practice Keith Shumate, Commercial Litigation Fredric L. Smith, Tax Law Fred A. Summer, Mergers and Acquisitions Law, Securities/Capital Markets Law

Jill S. Kirila, Employment Law – Individuals, Employment Law – Management, Labor Law – Management, Litigation – Labor and Employment

Lee A. Wendel, Tax Law, Trusts and Estates

Steven F. Mount, Tax Law

C. Craig Woods, Commercial Litigation, Litigation – Environmental

Peter A. Pavarini, Healthcare Law

Karen A. Winters, Environmental Law, Litigation – Environmental

Squire Patton Boggs 2000 Huntington Center 41 South High Street Columbus, OH 43215 T +1 614-365-2700 46 Offices in 21 Countries squirepattonboggs.com

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Local Connections. Global Influence.

9/11/17 1:10 PM

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Providing Central Ohio with Professional Legal Advice for more than 50 years BANKRUPTCY & INSOLVENCY BUSINESS REPRESENTATION CIVIL LITIGATION ESTATE PLANNING • FAMILY LAW PROBATE • REAL ESTATE

A.C. STRIP JOHN W. HOPPERS PAUL W. LEITHART, II TIMOTHY J. McGRATH MYRON N. TERLECKY NELSON E. GENSHAFT KENNETH R. GOLDBERG JOEL R. CAMPBELL AARON C. FIRSTENBERGER KRISTIE A. CAMPBELL JOHN W. KENNEDY

Offices in German Village and Dublin www.columbuslawyer.net 614.228.6345

Hill & DeWeese, LLC

Columbus Legal Directory Hahn Loeser & Parks LLP

65 E. State St. Suite 1400 Columbus 43215 614-233-5109 hahnlaw.com Central OH Partners: Central OH FTE Attorneys: 12 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; litigation/ trial practice; real estate/construction

Harris McClellan Binau & Cox PLL

37 W. Broad St. Suite 950 Columbus 43215 614-464-2572 hmbc.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 5 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; Family/ juvenile;; real estate/ construction

Hennis Rothstein & Ellis LLP

Box 211046 Columbus 43221 614-441-9530 hennisrothstein.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Technology/computer; internet law; international business law

7737 Olentangy River Road Columbus 43235 614-848-6500 hadlegal.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; probate/estates/ trusts; real estate/ construction

Hrabcak & Company, LPA

67 E. Wilson Bridge Road Suite 100 Worthington 43085 614-781-1400 hrabcaklaw.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Commercial; corporate; litigation/ trial practice

Hunter Carnahan Shoub, Byard & Harshman

3360 Tremont Road Columbus 43221 614-442-5626 hcands.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 8 PraCtiCE arEas: Administrative; labor/employment; workers’ compensation

Hyslop Law Office

3962 Brown Park Drive, Suite B Hilliard 43026 614-777-4411 hysloplaw.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Estate planning; personal injury; domestic practice

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Ice Miller LLP

250 West St. Suite 700 Columbus 43215 614-462-2246 icemiller.com Central OH Partners: 40 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 68 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; labor/employment; litigation/ trial practice

Isaac Wiles Burkholder & Teetor LLC

2 Miranova Place Suite 700, Columbus 43215 614-221-2121 isaacwiles.com Central OH Partners: 40 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 54 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; litigation/trial practice; real estate/ construction

James E. Arnold & Associates LPA

115 W. Main St. Suite 400, Columbus 43215 614-460-1600 arnlaw.com Central OH Partners: 8 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 1 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; medical malpractice; personal injury

Johrendt & Holford

250 E. Broad St., Suite 200, Columbus 43215 614-464-0082 Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; probate/estates/ trusts; taxation

Jones, Troyan & Perkins, A Legal Professional Association

Two Miranova Place Suite 700, Columbus 43215 • 614-888-8500 jonestroyan.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; probate/ estates/trusts; real estate/construction

Joseph & Joseph Co. LPA

155 W. Main St. Columbus 43215 614-449-8282 josephandjoseph.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; litigation/trial practice; real estate/construction

Mediator Jessica Goldman breathes life into negotiations that otherwise wither at impasse.

• Product liability • Breach of fiduciary duty • Intellectual property • Eminent domain • Unfair competition • Disability • Negligence • Defamation • Breach of contract • Employment • Fraud • Construction disputes

Relying on her proprietary blend of tenacity and patience, Jessica Goldman, breathes life into negotiations that would otherwise wither at impasse. jessica@goldmanmediation.com 614.638.3487 www.goldmanmediation.com

Kagay, Albert, Diehl & Groeber

6877 N. High St. Suite 300, Worthington 43085 614-433-9612 kadglaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Probate/estates/ trusts; real estate/ construction; taxation

Kegler Brown Hill + Ritter

65 E. State St. Suite 1800 Columbus 43215 614-462-5400 keglerbrown.com Central OH Partners: 42 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 75 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; litigation/ trial practice; government affairs October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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Kravitz, Brown & Dortch, LLC

Columbus Legal Directory

Your needs are unique… so is our experience LeeAnn M. Massucci, Esq. Eimear M. Bahnson, Esq. Colleen M. Marshall, Esq. J. Collin Brown, Esq. Lisa L. Eschleman, Esq., Of Counsel

Family Law Practice Areas • Shared Custody Agreements • Divorce/Dissolution • Child/Spousal Support • Same Sex Family Formation • Post-Decree Modifications

www.MassucciLawGroup.com 614-358-4477 • LeeAnn@MassucciLawGroup.com 250 Civic Center Dr., Ste. 600 Columbus, OH 43215

Kincaid Randall & Craine

2201 Riverside Drive Columbus 43221 614-224-7193 krc-law.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Probate/estates/ trusts

Koenig & Long, LLC

5354 N. High St. Columbus 43214 614-454-5010 columbuscriminal defenseattorney.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal defense; OVI

Strategy.

Play to win. www.taftlaw.com

Kooperman Mentel Ferguson Yaross

100 S. 4th St., Suite 100, Columbus 43215 614-344-4800 kmfylaw.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; real estate/ construction; government relations

65 E. State St. Suite 200 Columbus 43215 614-464-2000 kravitzllc.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal; energy/utilities; litigation/trial practice

Kremblas & Foster

7632 Slate Ridge Blvd.

Reynoldsburg 43086 614-575-2100 ohiopatent.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Copyright/trademark/ patent

Lane Alton & Horst

2 Miranova Place Suite 200 Columbus 43215 614-228-6885 lanealton.com Central OH Partners: 17 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 24 PraCtiCE arEas: Administrative; litigation/trial practice; probate/ estates/trusts

The Law Offices of Saia & Piatt, Inc. 713 S. Front St. Columbus 43206 614-444-3036 splaws.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal; family/ juvenile; litigation/ trial practice

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Law Offices of William L .

Geary Co, LPA

155 W. Main St. Suite 101, Columbus 43215 614-228-1968 columbusfamily lawyer.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; general practice

Lawrence Law Office

496 S. 3rd St. Columbus 43215 614-228-3664 lawrencelawoffice.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; probate/estates/ trusts; technology/ computer

Littler Mendelson PC

21 E. State St. 16th Floor Columbus 43215 614-463-4201 littler.com Central OH Partners: 10 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 14 PraCtiCE arEas: Labor/employment; workers’ compensation

Lumpe, Raber & Evans

37 W. Broad St. Suite 1140, Columbus 43215 614-221-5212 ohioliquorlaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Administrative; alcohol beverage law

Mac Murray & Shuster LLP

6530 W. Campus Oval, Suite 210 New Albany 43054 614-939-9955 mpslawyers.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 10 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; consumer protection regulatory compliance & defense

Manley Deas & Kochalski LLC

1555 Lake Shore Drive, Columbus 43204 • 614-572-0133 mdk-llc.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 25 PraCtiCE arEas: Banking/finance; bankruptcy; litigation/ trial practice

Manos, Martin & Pergram Co., LPA 50 N. Sandusky St. Delaware 43015 740-363-1313 mmpdlaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; education; real estate/construction

Mason Law Firm Co., LPA

PO Box 398 Dublin 43017 614-734-9450 maslawfirm.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Civil rights; labor/employment; litigation/ trial practice

Massucci Law Group LLC

250 Civic Center Drive Suite 600 Columbus 43215 614-358-4477 massuccilawgroup. com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile

Mazanec, Raskin & Ryder

175 S. 3rd St. Suite 1000 Columbus 43215 614-324-1040 mrrlaw.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Civil rights; insurance; labor/employment

McNees Wallace & Nurick LLC

21 E. State St. 17th Floor Columbus 43215 614-719-2850 mwn.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 9 PraCtiCE arEas: Energy/utilities; labor/ employment; litigation/trial practice

Meyer Wilson Co., LPA

1320 Dublin Road Suite 100 Columbus 43215 614-705-0951 investorclaims.com, meyerwilson.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 5 PraCtiCE arEas: Securities & class actions

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Big firm results; small firm attention.

Best Lawyers in America

Best Law Firms – U.S. News and World Report (Best Lawyers) Best Ohio Attorneys SuperLawyers Ohio – Top 100 SuperLawyers - Rising Stars

SuperLawyers Top 50 Lawyers – Columbus, OH AVVO Top Rating (10/10)

Martindale-Hubble LexisNexis Preferred Rating (5/5) Columbus Business First Central Ohio Top Firms

Columbus Legal Directory

Columbus CEO Top Lawyers National Trial Lawyers Top 100 Ohio Trial Lawyers

The American Society of Legal Advocates Top 100 Criminal Defense Attorneys in Ohio

splaws.com | 614-444-3036 | Columbus, Ohio

Morgan & Justice Co. LPA • Workers’ Compensation • Personal Injury • Automobile Accidents

2000 W. Henderson Road, Suite 460 Columbus, Ohio 43220 (614) 779-0675 www.cehlaw.com

• Social Security • Police/Fire Disability

Who’s moving and shaking this Week?

906 E. Broad St. Columbus 43205 614-258-1133 morganandjustice.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Social security disability; workers’ compensation

Mowery, Youell and Galeano, Ltd.

485 Metro Place S. Dublin 43017 614-764-1444 myglaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 8 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; labor/ employment

Murray Murphy Moul + Basil LLP

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1114 Dublin Road Columbus 43215 614-488-0400 mmmb.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Commercial; corporate; litigation/trial practice

Newhouse, Prophater, Kolman & Hogan, LLC

5025 Arlington Centre Blvd., Suite 400 Columbus 43220 614-255-5441 npkhlaw.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 8 PraCtiCE arEas: Labor/employment

Onda LaBuhn Rankin & Boggs Co. LPA

35 N. 4th St., Suite 100, Columbus 43215 614-716-0500 olbrlaw.com Central OH Partners: 6 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 13 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; litigation/ trial practice; real estate/construction

Petroff Law Offices, LLC

140 E. Town St. Suite 1070 Columbus 43215 614-222-4288 petrofflawoffices.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile

Plevin & Gallucci

2323 W. 5th Ave. Suite 240, Columbus 43204 614-276-8959 injuredinohio.com Central OH Partners: 3 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 8 PraCtiCE arEas: Personal injury; social security disability; workers’ compensation

Plymale & Dingus

136 W. Mound St. Suite 600, Columbus 43215 614-542-0220

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plymaledingus.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; personal injury

Attorneys: 7 PraCtiCE arEas: Administrative; taxation

Poling Law

1170 Old Henderson Road, Columbus 43220 614-442-1953 braccolawoffice.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; family/ juvenile; litigation

300 E. Broad St., Suite 350, Columbus 43215 614-737-2900 poling-law.com Central OH Partners: na Central OH FTE Attorneys: 18 PraCtiCE arEas: Healthcare; litigation; medical malpractice

Porter Wright Morris & Arthur LLP

41 S. High St. Suite 2800-3200 Columbus 43215 614-227-2000 porterwright.com Central OH Partners: 69 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 114 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; labor/employment; litigation

Reminger Co. LPA

200 Civic Center Drive, 8th Floor Columbus 43215 614-228-1311 reminger.com Central OH Partners: 12 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 25 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; litigation/ trial practice; probate/ estates/trusts

Rich & Gillis Law Group, LLC

6400 Riverside Drive Dublin 43017 614-228-5822 richgillislawgroup.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE

Robert A. Bracco & Associates

Roetzel & Andress LPA

41 S. High St. 21st Floor Columbus 43215 614-463-9770 ralaw.com Central OH Partners: 13 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 18 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; probate/estates/ trusts; public law/ government relations

Rourke & Blumenthal

495 S. High St., Suite 450, Columbus 43215 614-220-9200 randbllp.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Civil rights; litigation/ trial practice; medical malpractice

Schatz Brown Glassman LLP

4200 Regent St., Suite 200, Columbus 43219 614-344-7603 esopplus.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; taxation; ERISA

Shumaker Loop & Kendrick, LLP

41 S. High St. Suite 2400 Columbus 43215 614-463-9441 slk-law.com Central OH Partners: 9 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 14 PraCtiCE arEas: Environmental; litigation/trial practice; real estate/ corporate

Sowald Sowald Anderson Hawley & Johnson

400 S. Fifth St. Suite 101 Columbus 43215 614-464-1877 sowaldlaw.com Central OH Partners: 5 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 6 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile

Squire Patton Boggs

200 Huntington Center, 41 S. High St. Columbus 43215 614-365-2700 squirepattonboggs. com Central OH Partners: 28 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 76 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; insurance; litigation/trial practice

Standley Law Group LLP

6300 Riverside Drive Dublin 43017 614-792-5555 standleyllp.com Central OH Partners: 6 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 10 PraCtiCE arEas: Copyright/trademark/ patent; litigation/trial Practice

Steptoe & Johnson PLLC

41 S. High St. Suite 2200 Columbus 43215 614-221-5100 steptoe-johnson.com Central OH Partners: 8 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 17 PraCtiCE arEas: Energy/utilities; labor/ employment; litigation/trial practice

Strip, Hoppers, Leithart, McGrath & Terlecky Co. LPA 575 S. 3rd St. Columbus 43215 614-228-6345 columbuslawyers.net Central OH Partners: 9 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 11 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation; real estate/construction; insolvency

Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

65 E. State St. Suite 1000 Columbus 43215 614-334-6167 taftlaw.com Central OH Partners: 23 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 39 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; healthcare; litigation/trial practice

Thompson Hine LLP

41 S. High St. Suite 1700 Columbus 43215 614-469-3200 thompsonhine.com Central OH Partners: 16 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 34 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; litigation; securities

Advertising opportunities in

DECEMBER 2017 GIVING: Guide to Personal & Corporate Philanthropy (polybagged with Columbus CEO & Columbus Monthly) From corporate donations to blacktie balls to fitness events, Columbus is a generous community. With the December issues, Columbus Monthly and Columbus CEO magazines are partnering to publish GIVING, an annual publication that highlights these efforts and more in Central Ohio.

Profile Ads Deadline: October 6 Display Ads Deadline: October 13

CEO of the Year Awards Senior Living Featured in Columbus CEO’s December issue is the Senior Living Directory, for aging parents and family members.

Some retirement communities offer accommodations that include assistance with daily living essentials and meals.

CEO Leaderboards Colleges & Universities Credit Unions Office Furniture Companies

Space Closing: October 27

For advertising information contact Susan Kendall today at 614-410-0692 or email Skendall@columbusceo.com.

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Columbus Legal Directory Tsibouris & Associates LLC

470 Olde Worthington Rd., Suite 480 Westerville 43082 614-360-3133 tsibouris.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 3 PraCtiCE arEas: Banking/finance; technology/computer; privacy and security

The Tyack Law Firm Co. LPA

Volkema Thomas Miller & Scott

Ulmer & Berne LLP

Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease LLP

536 S. High St. Columbus 43215 614-221-1342 tyacklaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal; litigation/ trial practice; personal injury

65 E. State St. Suite 1100 Columbus 43215 614-229-0000 ulmer.com Central OH Partners: 9 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 12 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; insurance; litigation/trial practice

300 E. Broad St., Suite 190, Columbus 43215 614-441-8553 vt-law.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation/trial practice; medical malpractice; personal injury

52 E. Gay St. Columbus 43215 614-464-6317 vorys.com Central OH Partners: 99 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 176 PraCtiCE arEas: Corporate; labor/employment; litigation

Weston Hurd LLP

10 W. Broad St. Suite 2400 Columbus 43215 614-280-0200 westonhurd.com Central OH Partners: 6 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 9 PraCtiCE arEas: Insurance; litigation/ trial practice; workers’ compensation

Williams + Strohm, LLC Attorneys at Law

2 Miranova Place Suite 380, Columbus 43215 614-228-0207 williams-strohm.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Litigation; real estate/ construction; HOA law

Wolinetz & Horvath, LLC

250 Civic Center Drive, Suite 220 Columbus 43215 614-341-7775 wolinetzlaw.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 4 PraCtiCE arEas: Family/juvenile; litigation/ trial practice

Wright & Noble LLC

7662 Slate Ridge Blvd.

Reynoldsburg 43068 614-626-6323 mgwlawfirm.com Central OH Partners: 2 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal; family/ juvenile; personal injury

Yavitch & Palmer Co. LPA

511 S. High St. Columbus 43215 614-224-6142 ohiolegaldefense.com Central OH Partners: 1 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 2 PraCtiCE arEas: Criminal; OVI/traffic; white collar/federal

Zaino Law Group, LPA

5775 Perimeter Drive Suite 275, Dublin 43017 614-799-2800 zainolawgroup.com Central OH Partners: 4 Central OH FTE Attorneys: 5 PraCtiCE arEas: Probate/estates/ trusts; taxation; franchising

.com

DISCUSS THE FUTURE OF COLUMBUS Monday, Oct. 16: Educating the Central Ohio Work Force for Today and Tomorrow Featuring Columbus State Community College President Dr. David Harrison, Columbus 2020 President and Chief Economic Officer Kenny McDonald, Regionomics Owner Dr. Bill LaFayette and Dispatch Reporter Mark Williams.

6 p.m. at the Columbus State Conference Center Reserve your FREE tickets today at cscc.edu/cbusforum

Wednesday, Nov. 1: The Future of the Arts in Columbus Wednesday, Dec. 6: The Future of Business in Columbus

New editions of CbusNEXT appear in The Dispatch the fourth Friday of each month.

Oct. 27:

Wednesday, Dec. 20: The Future of Columbus

Arts, Culture and Sports

Noon Luncheons at The Boat House at Confluence Park (679 W. Spring St.)

Economy and Leadership

For CMC ticket prices and reservation information, please visit columbusmetroclub.org or call (614) 464-3220, Ext. 1.

Dreams for the Future

Nov. 24:

Dec. 22:

All CbusNEXT installments, as well as additional stories, videos, predictions, visions, interactive graphics and more can be found at CbusNEXT.com.

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Action with purpose.

MY BENESCH MY TEAM

Uncommon Value

41 South High Street, Suite 2600 Columbus, OH 43215-6164

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Nipping It in the Bud Researchers who once called for avoidance are now exploring early exposure to prevent allergies.

By LauriE aLLEn

P

eanuts, pollen, dust and dairy.

When it comes to allergies, they’re among the worst offenders, making millions miserable, non-productive—and in some cases—dangerously ill.

Allergies are on the rise, affecting as many as 30 percent of adults and 40 percent of children in the United States, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America. The prevalence of peanut allergies alone has doubled in the past 10 years among children in Western countries, studies have shown.

Tempering that trend are important advances in the treatment and potential prevention of allergies.

Why the increase in allergies? Experts have many theories but few hard facts. The most prevailing hypothesis has to do with hygiene—in Western societies; children’s immune systems are exposed to far fewer bacteria and other organisms, which modifies their response. An allergic reaction essentially is an immune response to the body’s perceived threat of attack from foreign objects.

“We train our immune systems how to respond,” says Dr. Princess Ogbogu, division director of Allergy and Immunology in the Department of Otolaryngology at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Before the dawn of modern medicine and still today in underdeveloped countries, immune systems were exposed to such deadly threats as parasitic disease, malaria and whooping cough. In Western countries, our

immune systems aren’t working that hard.

Immune cells known as T cells are primarily responsible. In healthier society, T cells adapt to target less obviously threatening substances, such as cat dander or ragweed, says Dr. Summit Shah, an allergist with Premier Allergy.

“It’s almost as if our immune systems become bored” and therefore seek new targets, Ogbogu says.

Still, she and others agree—allergic disease is nothing to, well, sneeze at.

“This really impacts people’s quality of life and is one of the leading causes of healthcare costs,” Shah says.

In the case of pollen allergies, Ogbogu says central Ohioans were particularly hard hit this year because of a mild winter with many fluctuations.

“We didn’t have a prolonged freeze, which can cause plants to ‘super pollinate,’” she explains.

When it comes to treating allergies, immunotherapy has been the standard for decades. It involves exposing patients to incrementally increasing doses of an allergen in order to desensitize and re-train their immune systems, and thereby reduce allergic reactions.

A huge shift now is occurring in the way physicians approach some allergies—namely, peanuts.

It’s been standard practice for physicians to urge avoidance of peanuts, eggs and milk in at-risk children the first three to five years of life.

However, the landmark Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study found that introducing peanut protein to babies at four to seven months significantly reduced the rate at which they developed allergies.

“This is exciting, potentially gamechanging research,” Ogbogu says.

“There actually is some thinking that

“This really impacts people’s quality of life and is one of the leading causes of healthcare costs.”

SummiT Shah, Allergist, Premier Allergy

© 2017 thinkstock.com

Health Watch

MISERY MAKERS A list of some of the most common allergens: • Pollen (tree, grass, weed) • Cat and dog dander • Dust mites • Food

THE BIG 8 • Peanuts • Tree nuts • Eggs • Milk

• Shellfish • Fish • Soy • Wheat

NOte: People often outgrow food allergies, with the exception of nuts and seafood.

ALLERGIES TAKES TOLL • Allergic disease, including asthma, is the fifth-leading chronic disease in the United States; among children under 18, it is the third most common.

• Americans lose more than six million work and school days and make more than 16 million visits to their doctors annually because of allergies and asthma.

• Food allergies cost about $25 billion each year.

Source: Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America

October 2017 l ColumbusCEO

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9/13/17 10:18 AM

maybe we in the medical community unknowingly may have been contributing to the problem by preaching avoidance.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics issued new guidelines last year recommending that at-risk infants be exposed to peanut protein at about four to six months of age. “It’s a complete switch in mindset,” says Dr. David Stukus, associate professor in the Division of Allergy and Immunology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

“We’re now looking at the idea that we might be able to prevent thousands of cases from occurring in the first place,” Stukus says.

Researchers are studying how much peanut protein children must consume to stay protected, and for how long.

In similar research on other food triggers, Stukus says data have looked “very positive” for eggs, while results for milk have been mixed.

Stukus says allergies have a disproportionate effect on urban, inner-city populations, due in part to environmental factors such as dust mites and cockroaches. “We see these kids really suffer. It impacts their lives on a daily

basis, and it can affect learning and school performance.”

Allergic reactions can range from relatively mild—sneezing, watery eyes and itching—to serious, such as anaphylaxis, which can be fatal.

As the medical community learns more about the exact nature of allergies, patients now may have additional options for confronting the problem, including: • Oral administration of allergens in immunotherapy, including for food allergies • Patches that slowly deliver allergen doses through the skin. The so-called “peanut patch” is currently being studied in clinical trials, including one in Cincinnati.

“The medical community unknowingly may have been contributing to the problem.” prinCEss OgbOgu, a Director of Allergy & Immunology, OSU Wexner Medical Center

• “Rush” immunotherapy, where patients receive several injections during one visit, reducing total overall treatment time.

• Using immunotherapy to allow patients to tolerate certain medications, such as penicillin. Patients are given antihistimine medications beforehand and are closely monitored after.

Also on the horizon is targeted immunotherapy using biologic agents to wage a far more precise attack on allergies.

A drug like prednisone, for example, is effective at reducing inflammation but comes with significant side effects, Stukus says. “It’s like putting out the fire. We’re trying to extinguish the match. A combination of genetic information and biologic markers will allow us to get very specific.”

Local experts look forward to being able to offer their patients more choices in allergy treatment, as well as the possibility of preventing allergies altogether. For some allergies, Ogbogu says, “All we’ve had until now is strict avoidance and carry an EpiPen.” Laurie Allen is a freelance writer.

Voted #1 Allergist by readers of The Columbus Dispatch

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614.328.9927 • www.premierallergyohio.com 126 ColumbusCEO l October 2017

124-127_SS_Healthwatch.indd 126

9/13/17 4:17 PM

HUN COL OF B WOM COL COLU

HUNTINGTON • BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU CENTRAL OHIO COLUMBUS 2020 • OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY FISHER COLLEGE O F B US I N ES S E X ECU T I V E M BA • STO N E WA L L CO LUM B US WOMEN’S FUND OF CENTRAL OHIO • PICKERINGTON • DUBLIN C O LU M B U S FO U N D AT I O N • WO RT H I N G T O N • G A H A N N A COLUMBUS DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION • POWELL

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124-127_SS_Healthwatch.indd 127

9/11/17 1:23 PM

1

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3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

128-129_Leaderboards_WomenOwnedBiz.indd 128

9/11/17 1:25 PM

CENTRal oHIo woMEN-owNED BUSINESSES Ranked by 2016 companywide revenue

CoMPaNY 1 Kokosing, Inc. 6235 Westerville Road, Westerville 43081 614-212-5700 kokosing.biz

2 Acloché 1800 Watermark Drive, Suite 430 Columbus 43215 • 614-824-3700 acloche.com

3 King Business Interiors. Inc. 1400 Goodale Blvd., Grandview Heights 43212 614-430-0020 kbiinc.com

4 Lightwell 565 Metro Place S., Suite 220 Dublin 43017 • 614-310-2700 lightwellinc.com

5 Velvet Ice Cream 11324 Mt. Vernon Road, Utica 43080 740-892-3921 velveticecream.com

6 Leaderpromos 790 E. Johnstown Road, Columbus 43230 614-416-6565 leaderpromos.com

7 Team Fishel 1366 Dublin Road, Columbus 43215 614-274-8100 teamfishel.com

8 UNIGLOBE Travel Designers 480 S. 3rd St., Columbus 43215 614-237-4488 uniglobetraveldesigners.com

9 UNICON International, Inc. 241 Outerbelt St., Columbus 43213 614-861-7070 unicon-intl.com

10 Caster Connection 2380 International St., Columbus 43228 800-544-8978 casterconnection.com

2016 REvENUE Central Ohio Total

NUMBER oF EMPloYEES

Central Ohio Total

ToTal NUMBER oF oFFICES

$278 m $1.1 b

903 2,919

$54.4 m $54.4 m

89 89

13

$39 m $39 m

67 67

3

$37.1 m $39.7 m

97 221

4

$30 m $30 m

125 150

8

$27.5 m $27.5 m

85 90

$27 m $342 m

230 2,160

$26 m $26 m

35 43

$25 m $26.1 m

173 223

$18 m $18 m

35 39

42

5 27

owNER DESCRIPTIoN oF BUSINESS

YEaR FoUNDED

CENTRal oHIo ToP oFFICER

General contractor, commercial, industrial, transportation, aggregate and asphalt

Burgett Family

wm. Brian Burgett

Customized workforce solutions including contingent staff, direct Georgia Ruch hire professionals, medical staffing, project labor and temporary employees in a variety of industries Full-service commercial office furniture and flooring dealership; Darla King provides complete design/space planning, a wide variety of office furniture and flooring products, walls, raised flooring, etc.

Develops, implements and manages technology solutions.

Michelle Kerr The company serves organizations across North America and Western Europe who have a desire to interconnect

1968 1998

Premium ice cream manufacturer and distributor

Kimberly a.

Shoemaker CEO

Darla King President

Michelle Kerr, President

Founder & Chairman

luconda and Joanne Dager

luconda Dager

1914 1995

1936

Elizabeth Blount McCormick

2

A minority, women-owned, award-winning, full-service travel management company

3

Information Technology consulting services including application Peichen lee development, risk management, project management, system integration and infrastructure support

1

Manufacturer of casters and wheels, and master distributor of elite brand casters, wheels and other material-handling products

1981 1990

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

CEO

1998

Creator of custom-branded solutions to build everlasting Stephanie leader client partnerships; approach is fueled with extensive in-house capabilities such as agency-level creative design Utility construction and engineerDiane Fishel ing contractor servicing the telecommunications, broadband cable, Keeler electric power, natural gas and low voltage technology industries for over 80 years

The CEO Leaderboard features selected topics each month. The January Leaderboards will feature central Ohio Hotels, Independent Insurance Agencies and MBA Programs. The deadline for inclusion in those surveys is Oct. 20. If you want your central Ohio company to be considered for an upcoming CEO Leaderboard, contact Columbus CEO at 614-461-5109 or cteasley@columbusCEO.com.

128-129_Leaderboards_WomenOwnedBiz.indd 129

1976

Sally Hughes

2009

President

Stephanie leader

CEO

Diane Fishel Keeler Chairwoman

Elizabeth Blount McCormick President

Peichen lee

CEO and President

Sally Hughes CEO

m = million, b = billion Source: Survey of Women-Owned Businesses Information compiled by CHLOE TEASLEy

October 2017 l ColumbusCEo

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9/13/17 12:40 PM

1

2

3

4

5

You instill it.

We develop it.

He realizes it.

6

7

At The Wellington School, we know you are your child’s first and most important teacher.

We join you in this journey of profound discovery and growth as the world opens up for him. Igniting intellectual curiosity, providing opportunities to succeed and fail, building a strong sense of self. Together we will prepare him to soar.

preschool through grade 12 | www.wellington.org

130-132_Leaderboard_PrivateSchool.indd 130

8

9

10

Jacob & Andrew M. Thomas, M.D.

9/11/17 1:28 PM

mas, M.D.

Central OhiO Private SChOOlS

ranked by total enrollment and average total student-to-teacher ratio, respectively enrOllMent

SChOOl 1 Columbus Academy

4300 Cherry Bottom Road Gahanna 43230 • 614-475-2311 columbusacademy.org

tOtal enrOllMent

1,093

averaGe StUDentFUll-tiMe teaCher ratiO

K-8

nUMber OF teaCherS

Grade 9-12

Full-Time

Other

Part-Time

8:1

669 392 32

136 18

11:1

na 982 na

61 13

8:1

563 349 na

57 20

17:1

na 793 na

50 9

8:1

369 240 58

132 na

14:1

560 na 90

36 4

18:1

na 645 na

36 5

17:1

335 180 105

25 15

20:1

587 na 28

30 3

8:1

321 197 49

68 6

2 Bishop Watterson High School

99 E. Cooke Road, Columbus 43214 614-268-8671 bishopwatterson.com

982

3 Worthington Christian Schools

6675 Worthington Galena Road Worthington 43085 • 614-431-8215 worthingtonchristian.com

912

4 St. Francis DeSales High School

4212 Karl Road, Columbus 43224 614-267-7808 • sfdstallions.org

5 The Wellington School 3650 Reed Road 614-457-7883 wellington.org

793 667

6 Saint Brigid of Kildare School

7175 Avery Road, Dublin 43017 614-718-5825 stbrigidofkildare.com

650

7 St. Charles

Preparatory School

2010 E. Broad St., Columbus 43209 614-252-6714 • stcharlesprep.org

645

8 Fairfield Christian Academy

1965 N. Columbus St. Lancaster 43130 • 740-654-2889 fcaknights.org

620

9 St. Matthew the Apostle Catholic School

795 Havens Corners Road Gahanna 43230 • (614) 471-4930 cdstmatthew.org

615

10 Columbus School for Girls

65 South Drexel Ave. Columbus 43209 • 614-252-0781 columbusschoolforgirls.org

567

The CEO Leaderboard features selected topics each month. The January Leaderboards will feature central Ohio Hotels, Independent Insurance Agencies and MBA Programs. The deadline for inclusion in those surveys is Oct. 20. If you want your central Ohio company to be considered for an upcoming CEO Leaderboard, contact Columbus CEO at 614-461-5109 or cteasley@columbusCEO.com.

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

130-132_Leaderboard_PrivateSchool.indd 131

Year FOUnDeD FUll-Year tUtiOn

1911 $11,300 $26,550

1954 $9,145

1973 $4,528$9,982

1960 $8,975

1982 $23,500 (grades 9-12)

1996 $6,050

1923 $9,865

1998 $5,200$6,200

1968 $5,450

1898 $23,975

FeatUreS anD PrOGraMS

heaD OF SChOOl aDMiSSiOnS DireCtOr

Focus on character development; strong emphasis on arts and athletics in addition to challenging academic curriculum; half-day and full-day prekindergarten options

Melissa Soderberg

Class of 2017 earned more than $27 million in college scholarships and completed nearly 25,000 hours in service to the community; 161 courses offered; Business Center Classroom

Deacon Chris Campbell

35 interscholastic athletic programs; Internship Academy; award-winning fine and performing arts program; 95% of our seniors pursue post-graduate degrees; national award winner College-prep programs; 16 Advanced Placement courses; Google school with 1:1 iPad Program; St. Thomas Aquinas Program, designed for students with Academic Special Needs

John Wuorinen

Mary Kate Campbell Troy McIntosh Lisa Raikes

Dan Garrick Julie Barber

Forward-thinking curriculum; differentiated instruction; independent research; performing and fine arts; open-participation athletics

Robert Brisk

Catholic faith formation; after-school learning opportunities; STEM & Tech Lab; athletics; wellness program

Kathleen O’Reilly

Fifteen varsity sports; theater; robotics; engineering; My Brothers Keeper Mentoring Program

James Lower

On site college classes— CCP; daily Bible and weekly chapels; championship athletic programs; awardwinning fine arts department ; STEM award winner for five consecutive years Catholic faith formation includes weekly school masses, sacramental preparation, etc; rigorous curriculum; strong intervention program; K-8 STEM teacher Leadership development designed for girls from age 3-grade 12; college counseling program; In 2017, 96 percent of seniors were accepted to colleges in their top three choices

Maryline Michel Kulewicz

Cindy Sovik

James Lower Craig Carpenter Kara Stephens Susan Maloy Susan Maloy Jennifer Ciccarelli Jenni Biehn

na=not applicable Source: Survey of Private Schools

Compiled by CHLOE TEASLEY

October 20176 l ColumbusCeO

131

9/13/17 12:42 PM

Central OhiO Private SChOOlS

ranked by total enrollment and average total student-to-teacher ratio, respectively enrOllMent

SChOOl

tOtal enrOllMent

11 Tree of Life

Christian Schools

935 Northridge Road, Columbus 43224 614-263-2688 • tolcs.org

12 St. Brendan School

4475 Dublin Road, Hilliard 43026 614-876-6132 stbrendanschool.us

13 St. Andrew School

4018 Reed Road, Columbus 43220 614-451-1626 standrewschool.com

529 475 440

averaGe StUDentFUll-tiMe teaCher ratiO

K-8

nUMber OF teaCherS

Grade 9-12

Full-Time

Other

Part-Time

13:1

269 223 37

35 16

25:1

475 na na

29 2

16:1

395 na 45

26 na

8:1

na 400 na

25 3

13:1

325 na 75

25 2

15:1

398 na na

27 2

13:1

280 43 65

29 1

10:1

239 78 70

33 7

9.84:1

208 117 na

26 7

14:1

260 na 40

14 3

14 Cristo Rey Columbus High School

400 E. Town St., Columbus 43215 614-223-9261 cristoreycolumbus.org

15 St. Mary Delaware

66 East William St., Delaware 43015 740-362-8961 stmarydelaware.org

400 400

16 Immaculate Conception School

366 E. North Broadway St. Columbus 43214 • 614-267-6579 iccols.org

398

17 Liberty Christian Academy

10447 Refugee Road, Pataskala 43062 740-964-2211 libertychristianacademy.org

388

18 Gahanna Christian Academy

817 N. Hamilton Road Gahanna 43230 • 614-536-1601 ourgca.com

387

19 Granville Christian Academy

1820 Newark-Granville Road Granville 43023 • 740-587-4423 granvilleca.org

20 St. Catharine School

2865 Fair Ave., Columbus 43209 614-235-1396 stcatharineschool.com na=not applicable Source: Survey of Private Schools

Compiled by CHLOE TEASLEY

132 ColumbusCeO l October 2017

130-132_Leaderboard_PrivateSchool.indd 132

325 300

Year FOUnDeD FUll-Year tUtiOn

1978 $1,752 $8,248

1964 $5,700

1956 $4,485

2013 Based on ability to pay

1886 $3,880

1916 $3,498

1982 $5,100

1980 $6,318 + student fees

1997 $5,100$5,500

1949 $5,040

FeatUreS anD PrOGraMS 40 in-house dual credit hours available; one-on-one college and career guidance; International Student Program; student body represents more than 130 different churches

STEM, Spanish

Catechesis of the Good Shepherd instruction; Spanish instruction grades K-5; Latin instruction grades 6-8; after-school care program; transportation provided by several districts

College preparatory; all students work at professional companies; 100 percent college acceptance

Jon Peterson provider; EdChoice Expansion program; intervention services; OT and PT services; foreign language instruction STEM enrichment; highly qualified teaching staff; two years of Spanish for junior high; many student leadership opportunities; strong community/parental involvement Full-day preschool and kindergarten; extended care options; middle and high school athletics; college credit plus opportunities; world-wide mission experiences Student-centered, passiondriven, project based, innovative school; engineering, maker space and coding; variety of music, art, PE, world language and electives A college prepratory school that builds generations for Jesus Christ. K-5th emphasizes the basics; 6th8th emphasizes high school readiness; 9th-12th emphasizes college readiness Math Counts program; spanish program; Battle of the Books program; state-of-the-art technology; supportive and involved community

heaD OF SChOOl aDMiSSiOnS DireCtOr Todd Marrah Carol Tanner William Gruber William Gruber Joel Wichtman Debbie Joseph Jim Foley Meghan Devring Gina R. Stull Gina R. Stull Colleen Kent Marina Hachwa LaVonne McIlrath Lisa Evenson April Domine Cheryll Haugen Timothy Barrett Jeff Dalzell Janet L. Weisner Johnean Goodwin

The CEO Leaderboard features selected topics each month. The January Leaderboards will feature central Ohio Hotels, Independent Insurance Agencies and MBA Programs. The deadline for inclusion in those surveys is Oct. 20. If you want your central Ohio company to be considered for an upcoming CEO Leaderboard, contact Columbus CEO at 614-461-5109 or cteasley@columbusCEO.com.

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

9/13/17 12:42 PM

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!

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

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Virgil & Neil Mathias (614) 526-5638 (614) 889-0808

NICKLAUS ESTATES RETREAT - This is one of those special properties that rarely comes to the market. Ideally set up with a circular flow & ample decks/patios overlooking the second fairway. The centerpiece is a 2 story banquet hall that has hosted pro golfers, presidents, & golf’s elite. $2,950,000. www.5353MuirfieldCourt.com

TARTAN WEST LUXURY RANCH - Rare upscale dazzler like-new on private wooded lot, high-quality throughout, 3-bedroom with walkout, cook’s dream kitchen, home office, deluxe owner’s suite, monstrous deck, perfect for entertaining, gorgeous landscaping, impeccable condition. $849,900 www.9268DonatelloDr.com

COLDWELL BANKER KING THOMPSON

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

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

CAMPDEN LAKES SHOWPLACE - Entertainers’ dream home on 1+Ac wooded lot! Over 5000SF w/ 5BR/5BA, large fin walkout to state-of-art outside kitchen to new pool, spa & firepit. 1st floor deluxe master, s/s kitchen, lodge-like Great Room, covered porch & scr porch, huge deck. A true “wow”! $1,195,000. www.4703CranleighCourt.com

TARTAN RIDGE MOVE-IN READY! - You’ll feel right at home in this 4353sqft, 5 br, 4 full bath built by Romanelli & Hughes. Detailed molding + trim, granite countertops, SS Wolf appliances, LL home theater setup, first floor guest suite, 2nd floor laundry & cozy backyard fireplace await you! $765,000. www.7293MaristLane.com

COLDWELL BANKER KING THOMPSON

COLDWELL BANKER KING THOMPSON

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

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

INCREDIBLE DUBLIN COMMUNITY! - This custom built MKM home is only 2 miles Jerome HS & Glacier Ridge Metro Park! Enjoy an open floor plan w/ natural light, from the great room with 2 story windows to the cook’s kitchen with dual islands. Fenced yard backing to trees w/ pergola & built-in grill! $759,000 www.8570MallardCircle.com

EASY LIVING IN MUIRFIELD! - Enjoy luxury & privacy mere steps from the tournament course! Situated at the top of a cul-de-sac, this all brick & maintenance free patio home in gated Birnam Wood features hardwood floors, white wainscoting + built-ins, vaulted ceilings, & private brick patio. $465,000. www.8802DunsinaneDrive.com

COLDWELL BANKER KING THOMPSON

COLDWELL BANKER KING THOMPSON

Virgil & Neil Mathias (614) 526-5638 (614) 889-0808

Virgil & Neil Mathias (614) 526-5638 (614) 889-0808

TARTAN FIELDS CASUAL ELEGANCE - New listing! Stunning architecture on one of best wooded golf course lots - #3 green! 4-5 BR, 6-Bath, screened porch, patio, huge exceptionally finished walkout with deluxe bar & media room, high quality finishes, super kitchen, an entertainer’s dream home. $875,000. www.8870TartanFieldsDr.com

133-135_ExLiv.indd 133

MUIRFIELD TOURNAMENT STUNNER! - One of the premier homes on the Muirfield Championship course, this 4-season showplace offers an elegant but casual lifestyle w/ incredible amenities & breathtaking views of the 15th tee. Experience luxurious indoor & outdoor living, all year round! $1,795,000 www.5932WhittinghamDr.com

9/11/17 12:40 PM

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!

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

RE/MAX METRO PLUS GERMAN VILLAGE

RE/MAX METRO PLUS GERMAN VILLAGE

Al Waddell (614) 832-4079 al.waddell@ remax.net

Al Waddell (614) 832-4079 al.waddell@ remax.net

HIDDEN CREEK AT THE DARBY - Large foyer leads to impressive 3 sty staircase & stone elevator tower. Magnificent great rm w/ soaring ceilings, walls of glass & massive stone frplc 1st flr In-Law suite w/ private entry. Finished walkout LL. Secluded on 4.8 acres. Visit www.385Larkspur.com. Offered at $1,999,900

HIDDEN CREEK AT THE DARBY - Stunning Craftsman style designed by Sullivan Bruck Architects & custom built by Troyer Homes. Open concept living area with stone WBFP, beamed ceilings & quality bamboo floors. Over-sized kitchen w/ top of the line appls, granite counters & custom concrete bar.

1st flr mstr suite & 1st flr laundry. 3 BRs & 2 baths upstairs. Geothermal radiate heat, generator & many more features. 3-D VR walk thru at www.140HiddenCreek.com $899,900

RE/MAX METRO PLUS GERMAN VILLAGE

RE/MAX METRO PLUS GERMAN VILLAGE

Al Waddell (614) 832-4079 al.waddell@ remax.net

Al Waddell (614) 832-4079 al.waddell@ remax.net

4.68 ACRES ON THE LITTLE DARBY - Custom built home with elegant leaded glass entry opens to 2 story foyer featuring marble floor & sweeping bridle staircase. 20 ft tall wall of glass in the great room offers stunning vista of the Little Darby & nature preserve across the water. Soaring vaulted ceilings w/ exposed structural beams & massive stone fireplace. 1st Flr Master is palatial.

Fin walk-out LL offers media rm, workout rm & in-law suite. $939,900. www.380Larkspur.com

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HIDDEN CREEK AT THE DARBY - An American Colonial custom designed and quality built with wrap around front porch. Open concept living area w/ true chef’s kitchen, 2 story great room w/ massive stone WBFP 1st flr MBR w/ vaulted ceilings, dual WICs, luxury bath. PLUS In-Law suite with fully equipped kitchen, living area w/ WBFP. High-end finishes everywhere in 6547 SF on 2.4 ac. 3 car gar. LOW TAXES, priced well below reproduction cost! $874,900

BORROR PROPERTIES

SORRELL AND COMPANY

Kaileigh Steiner (614) 389-5929 ksteiner@ borror.com

Martha Corbett (614) 395-6551 martha@ sorrellandco.com

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NOT ACTUAL PROPERTY

APARTMENTS FOR LEASE AT 303 - BRAND NEW! Studio, 1 & 2 BRs in Downtown Columbus. Limited Penthouse Suites available. Highend fixtures, hrdwd flrs, two-tone trim & SS appls. Secured parking!

Rooftop Patio equipped w/gas grills & outdoor lounge seating for Entertaining. Schedule a Tour Today!

RIVERSTONE ESTATES - Newest upscale development located in Upper Arlington.

Rare opportunity to build your dream home on a beautiful one acre wooded lot. Enjoy the amenities of the City of Upper Arlington, Only mins to downtown Cols, OSU and airport. Builder recommendations available or bring your own custom builder. For more information go to www.sorrellandco.com. Priced from $395 to $495k.

BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY CALHOON COMPANY

RE/MAX TOWN CENTER

Tom Calhoon (614) 296-3400 tomcalhoon@ bhhscc.com

Roni Leeman (614) 428-7444 rpittler@aol.com

103.5 AC HORSE ESTATE IN 10 AC WOODS - 4800 sq ft plus 1200 LL. 8 stone Fireplaces, 7 garages, 5 Ba, 4/5 BR, 1st & 2nd fl Mast, Heated fls, Subzero, 6 gas burner stove, 6 stall, tack rm 2000 bale Barn, extensive pastures & $75,000 of new horse fence w 60’x 120’ machine shed / indoor arena, 3ac lake w dock, 65 AC farmed. $2,222,000

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DREXEL AVE, BEXLEY - Stately brick and stucco home on half acre lot.

Great room is all glass and you feel like you are actually a part of nature.

Many recent updates throughout this 5 BR, 3.5 bath home. Hardwood floors, slate, and neutral decor throughout. Updated kitchen with new granite counters. Fabulous master suite with many built-ins. $689,000.

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614-583-5760 HELP WANTED

LANDSCAPING

ADVERTISING SALES:

rchitects & quality crete bar. nerator &

Dispatch Magazine Group seeks team player to join our advertising sales team. Our family of publications includes Columbus Monthly, Columbus Weddings, Columbus CEO and Columbus Alive! as well as digital media. Responsibilities include servicing and growing existing client base and generating new business working with a variety of advertisers. Sales experience preferred. Must be self-motivated, driven to succeed, able to identify and implement solutions for clients, excellent at communication, personable energetic and creative.

If you would make a good addition to our fast-paced, professional work environment, please send your resume with cover letter to:

addirector@columbusmonthly.com

INFORMATION

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REAL NEWS. The Columbus Dispatch Columbus Monthly / Alive / ThisWeek Columbus Parent / Columbus CEO

Go to dispatch.com/rewards to enter and save today.

COMMUNITY-FOCUSED. ALWAYS LOCAL.

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Go to dispatch.com/subscribe

9/11/17 12:41 PM

Office Space By chloe teasley + Photos by rob hardin

Fintech71 107 S. High St. Columbus 43215 fintech71.com

New nonprofit accelerator has been working with its first startup cohort since Sept. 18. a Firm by any other name

A graphic on the wall indicates this floor’s latest inhabitant. Although apparel company Print Syndicate has vacated, much of its decorative influence remains.

high Views alternate transport

Fintech71 makes good use of its expansive floor with an office bicycle. It has plenty of room for future growth.

These floor-to-ceiling windows look out over bustling South High Street near the Columbus Commons and make for an energizing alternative workspace.

having a little Pun

The office maintains a fun and playful vibe throughout, perhaps unexpectedly so for a fintech firm.

oversized art

Large canvases lighten the mood with surreal subjects and complement colorful furniture.

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

136 Columbusceo l October 2017

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9/13/17 10:57 AM

There is no routine mammogram.

When it comes to mammograms, routine just isn’t enough. That’s because routine applies only to what’s predictable, straightforward and logical. And breast cancer simply isn’t. At The James, our radiologists read only mammograms, all day, every day. They’re trained to detect the nuances that people who don’t read mammograms all day might miss. It’s that level of expertise that results in prevention, detection and peace of mind that are far beyond routine.

Don’t get a routine mammogram. Get a James mammogram.

To schedule yours, call 800-240-4477 or visit cancer.osu.edu/mammoceo17.

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