Columbus CEO - June 2021 issue

PPE power

Deb Neo’s Asian connection: Getting masks where we need them.

Columbus Partnership The region’s corporate leaders are focused on growth-and equity.

Page 16

Page 24

Retail update

Shopping centers survived the pandemic storm with ease, but some clouds linger.

Page 20

June 2021

Kristina Johnson is leading Ohio State University with an entrepreneur’s energy and a community organizer’s engagement.

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Contents

Photo DORAL CHENOWETH

The Peninsula project west of COSI will create an entirely new, dense urban neighborhood.

Departments

24

Columbus Partnership update The region’s organization of CEOs has spent the past year more engaged than ever. The agenda? Economic development, creating a vibrant Downtown Columbus and advancing racial equity in the corporate sector.

04 Editor’s Note The view of what’s ahead for Downtown from two new CDDC board members.

53 Leaderboards Columbus region temporary employment agencies.

56 Office Space: Morgan Stanley New space in New Albany translates as homey, chic

June 2021 Cover photo by

Tim Johnson June 2021 l ColumbusCEO

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Photo TIM JOHNSON

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

ColumbusCEO.com

VOLUME 30 / NUMBER 6 Columbus Site Manager

Alan D. Miller Publisher/General Manager

Ray Paprocki E d ito r ia l

EDITOR

Katy Smith associate eDITOR

Kristina Johnson

Jess Deyo

08

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

Jeff Bell Craig Rusnak ART DIRECTOR

Yogesh Chaudhary Digita l

EDITOR

Julanne Hohbach ASSISTANT DIGITAL EDITOR

Brittany Moseley Ph otog raphy

PHOTO EDITOR

Tim Johnson Associate photo editor

Rob Hardin A dvert ising

Vice President of Sales

Eugene Jackson Senior Multimedia Sales Executive

Holly Gallucci Multimedia Sales Executives

Tia Hardman, Jackie Thiam CLASSIFIED SALES

Amy Vidrick Production designer

Rebecca Zimmer

07 Breakdown Jobs are coming back, but much less so for lower-paid workers.

08 Profile: ‘Right person, right time’ With her background as a college leader and her know-how as an inventor, Ohio State University President Kristina Johnson is uniquely qualified to move the university forward.

12 Tech Talk S.T.A.R. Support’s app is just what the doctor ordered to provide a mental health lift for first responders and others under stress.

Checking in with new Ohio Chamber CEO Steve Stivers and Geben’s acquisition.

16

M arke t ing

Lauren Reinhard pressreleases@columbusceo.com

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20 Spotlight: Commercial Real Estate Battered by the pandemic, the Columbus region’s retail industry is showing signs of a comeback.

48

Deb Neo

9 p

T

44 Business Law

ADVERTISING

advertise@columbusceo.com

A new state law aimed at resolving employment discrimination issues may help improve Ohio’s business climate.

48 Health Watch Photo ROB HARDIN

760-237-8505 columbusceo@pcspublink.com

The Mid-Ohio Food Collective wants to make better use of data to advance its “food-as-health” strategy.

In-Depth

PRESS RELEASES

SUBSCRIPTIONS

18 Spotlight: Nonprofit

14 Briefing

MARKETING MANAGER

Columbus CEO (ISSN 1085-911X) is published monthly by Gannett. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © Gannett Co., Inc. 2021, 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, PO Box 460160 Escondido CA 92046

For Deb Neo, the pandemic has been an opportunity to combine a passion for helping people with her business acumen.

Photo ROB HARDIN

PRODUCTION/DESIGN DIRECTOR

16 Spotlight: Small Business

Insider

D es i g n & P ro duct ion

Columbus region medical experts try to address people’s fears and misconceptions about COVID-19 vaccines.

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Editor’s Notes * ksmith@ColumbusCEO.com

Enjoy a quiet Downtown while it lasts Downtown, April 2020

File/Columbus CEO/ROB HARDIN

R

ecently, I asked a colleague what Downtown is like these days, how it’s doing.

While our Capitol Square offices remain officially closed, he’s been working from there frequently the past few months as the company works out the details of our return-towork plans.

He says Downtown remains quiet.

I’ve got to wonder—with a bit of unease—how long will it stay that way?

“Quiet” was actually the same way someone else described Downtown to me during a recent conversation, but she was referring to the Downtown Columbus of 30 years ago.

When Sandy Doyle-Ahern moved to Columbus from outside Philadelphia for a job, “I remember being just so surprised at how quiet Downtown was. That it really wasn’t a downtown, it was kind of a conglomerate of buildings. But there wasn’t a lot of activity occurring,” she says.

Three decades later, she’s the president at a well-regarded engineering firm, EMH&T, and as a civic leader, she’s joining the board of the Columbus Downtown Development Corp., the public-private entity that has orchestrated hundreds of millions of dollars in major projects including turning the former City Center Mall site into Columbus Commons; reinventing the Lazarus Building as an office center; bringing the Scioto riverfront back to life Downtown; and its latest ambition, the massive Peninsula project west of the river.

“When you look at all the work that’s been done Downtown to really build it out as a destination ... I really believe strongly that that core of a region, not just the city, but the region— Downtown—is extremely important to a successful region,” Doyle-Ahern says.

Her friend Christie Angel, a longtime executive with the city of Columbus who’s now CEO of YWCA Columbus and also a new member of the CDDC board, has a direct stake

in the health of Downtown: She lives and works there. The YWCA has maintained its headquarters Downtown since its 1929 founding, giving the women it supports with housing and services a central location where they can get their needs met.

Angel says she joined the CDDC board to be a voice for those women and because she’s invested in the future of Downtown.

For both women, making sure we have a Downtown everyone can access and enjoy is a goal.

“Affordable housing is top of mind,” Christie says. “But beyond that, it’s also how we come back from this pandemic, with everyone leaving the Downtown areas, some choosing not to come back. Being a part of setting that vision [for the future] and the projects that are yet to come is very important to me.”

The urban core is projected to reach 10,000 residents this year—a goal former Mayor Michael Coleman set in 2004—and while office vacancies are spiking in the central business district as companies relinquish old notions about remote work, there is activity happening.

While we don’t have a vibrant sidewalk dining scene, or muralists

covering public spaces in art, or music spilling from packed clubs in the evening, or even many places to buy a newspaper or a magazine, those things could be the reality soon.

Transformation unlike anything we’ve seen in the past 40 years is coming. As it stands now, there’s $1 billion in construction going on across 32 projects, according to the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District, plus another $1.5 billion proposed (half of that is highway construction). We can look forward to a soccer stadium, the city’s new flagship convention hotel, and what I will call many apartment buildings and parking garages.

A proposal by Edwards Cos. for a sunken plaza on East Broad Street where you can have happy hour is at the top of my list. So long as it has adequate canopy protection to keep the sun off me.

Hint, hint.

Katy Smith, Editor

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Breakdown Compiled by katy smith + Infographic by Yogesh Chaudhary

Divided economy

Employment for high-income workers (defined as making $60,000 a year or more) has rebounded nearly to pre-pandemic levels, while for low-income workers, defined as making $27,000 a year or less, the jobs have not returned.

For Franklin County, January 2020-April 1:

0% -0.086

-0.110

-0.192

-0.256

-0.225

-0.420 -0.009

High income Medium income Aggregate income -1.092

Low income

Source: Opportunity Insights project by Harvard and Brown universities

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profile

By Bob Vitale + Photos by tim johnson

Kristina Johnson President,

Ohio State University

Age: 64 In position since: August 2020 Previous: Chancellor, State University of New York; holds more than 100 national and international patents; helped found two companies; served 18 months as an undersecretary of energy during the Obama administration Education: Bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate

degrees, all at Stanford, in mechanical engineering

Board positions: Columbus Partnership, Cisco Personal: Wife Veronica Meinhard

Reinventing the presidency Ohio State University’s new chief executive is leading the institution like the seasoned CEO she is. And she’s doing it with ingenuity and heart.

“I

t’s hard to have first impressions in such an unusual year.”

That understatement comes from Columbus Partnership CEO Alex Fischer. It’s early February, and Fischer is talking with Kristina Johnson about her first few months as the president of Ohio State University amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

They share a stage at the Boathouse Restaurant, where Johnson is the guest of honor for a livestreamed, socially distanced, Columbus Metro-

politan Club forum featuring her and Fischer, a member of the Ohio State University Board of Trustees.

Fischer’s remark hints at the trial by fire Johnson has faced since taking office in August 2020. She’s led the university through a once-in-acentury global health crisis while learning an enormously complex job via Zoom calls, digital conferences and small, masked gatherings. These circumstances, obviously, have made it challenging for Johnson to get to know her new home. But she’s done her best, and when Fisher asks her to share her initial impressions of the university and Columbus, she says the right things. She praises OSU students and faculty members, of course, but also mentions the city’s beloved Columbus Zoo, which

she describes as a “favorite.” She even says kind things about Gordon Gee, the university’s only two-time president, whose immense popularity in Columbus has cast a shadow over previous OSU presidents. She calls Gee a “very dear friend.”

Johnson also has made an impression of her own. Despite the pandemic, she’s moved forward on an ambitious agenda that includes doubling research spending, expanding faculty and staff in both numbers and diversity, decreasing class sizes and eliminating student debt within the next decade. She’s emerged as a take-charge leader who’s wasted no time tackling the priorities she was hired to address, as well as new ones she’s made her own.

“She’s the right person at the right

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Kristina Johnson time for Ohio State,” says Jack Kessler, chairman of The New Albany Co. and a former OSU trustee. Kessler was on the search committee that recommended Gee as president of the university in 1990 and was among the local business leaders who lured him back for a second stint in Bricker Hall in 2007.

Johnson’s background—she holds more than 100 national and international patents, helped found two companies and served 18 months as an undersecretary of energy during the Obama administration—is markedly more diverse than her recent predecessors, including Gee. She’s the first OSU president since the 1940s, in fact, who has had a significant non-academic career. “Kristina’s different,” Kessler says. “She’s got

the ingredients that most university presidents don’t have.”

••• A couple of months after the CMC forum, Johnson sits in her Bricker Hall office for a rare in-person interview.

It’s a sunny, late April morning, the kind of day on which the Ohio State campus traditionally bursts with life, but the atmosphere feels more like midsummer than two weeks before spring commencement. Building lobbies are empty, signs posted around campus discourage congregating and Johnson’s office seems to be one of the few where everyone’s working on-site.

On this day, Johnson talks about navigating this restrictive environment. The 64-year-old mechanical engineer says she takes walks around campus just to run into people. She

and her wife, Veronica Meinhard, both sports fans and former college athletes, hosted a group of students for the April 17 spring game at Ohio Stadium that was within the university’s 10-person limit for on-campus gatherings. Franklin Park also has been a favorite off-campus destination, within walking distance from the president’s residence in Bexley.

It’s been a demanding initiation for Johnson, unlike any other faced by her Bricker Hall predecessors. While crises are as common at Ohio State as football victories over Michigan, Johnson’s pandemic crucible seems to have set the bar for difficulty, upending nearly every aspect of university life.

For Fischer, Johnson “earned her keep” last fall when he says she acted as “a voice of reason” among Big Ten university presidents by seeking safe ways to resume fall sports after an earlier vote to cancel football and other athletic seasons. She knew from her days as a field hockey and lacrosse player that student-athletes spend years, not just preseason practice sessions, preparing for their college seasons. She also knew the disappointment her wife felt after qualifying to swim in the 1992 Olympics for her native Venezuela and being told weeks before the games that her country decided not to compete in the sport.

Through May 8, a total of 8,087 OSU students and 812 staff had contracted COVID-19. It’s a high number, even among the 10 U.S. schools with the highest 2020-21 enrollments.

But Ohio State was among a minority of universities that began the fall with in-person classes. About half of the classes offered by OSU for fall semester were either in-person or took a hybrid approach between online and classroom instruction.

Johnson says prevention, detection and control of the virus were “all consuming” during her first year and has described balancing the risks of reopening the university against the risks of not reopening. In her State of the University address in February, she said crucial research could have been derailed and academic progress stifled, but she also spoke of less tangible effects of a shuttered campus. “Many of our students consider our campuses home, and home is a tough thing to lose, even temporarily,” she said.

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••• Like a researcher eager to share her newest discoveries, Johnson steps up the pace of conversation when she’s talking about Ohio State’s future. In a job that hinges on the ability to build relationships—with students and faculty, business leaders, political leaders, donors and others—OSU’s new president engages with all of her constituencies with ease, Fischer says.

“I’m not hinting about anybody else,” Fischer quickly adds.

But praise for Johnson’s outgoing nature and enthusiasm for the job invites the obvious comparisons to her immediate predecessor, Michael Drake, the stoic ophthalmologist who retired in 2020 and then quickly left town for California and a new job as president of the University of California system.

Drake arrived in 2014 to a cool reception from those who saw him as a tepid replacement for the gregarious Gee. Many eventually grew to appreciate Drake’s low-key personality, dry sense of humor and national academic influence and standing, but some local folks still felt he never fully became a major player in Columbus and the state of Ohio. “He was gone a lot,” Kessler recalls. “He was a different president. That’s not positive. That’s not negative.”

After Gee and Drake, OSU trustees were ready to go with a president from outside academia, Fischer says. In addition to running her own companies in the past, Johnson currently serves on the board of directors for Cisco.

“Kristina Johnson is as accomplished as any CEO in the Columbus Partnership on business topics,” says Fischer, whose organization consists of the leaders of the city’s most important corporations and institutions and

is chaired by L Brands founder Les Wexner, Ohio State’s most generous and influential donor. “She’s very accomplished and therefore very comfortable in those settings. She’s challenging all of our thinking.”

Leading Ohio State is often compared to serving as the mayor of a medium-sized city, given OSU’s enrollment of 61,000, employee headcount of 45,000 and budget of $7.2 billion.

Johnson also inherited a capital budget that includes the 270-acre Innovation District on West Campus, a $165.1 million Arts District on High Street between 15th and 18th avenues, and a 9-acre mixed-use project with Campus Partners that will include retail, restaurants and bars on High Street and Pearl Avenue at 15th Avenue. “Ohio State’s land grant mission compels us to be an active participant in the community, and we continue to strengthen our relationships with community partners statewide,” Johnson says.

A key part of that community agenda is strengthening ties between Ohio State and Battelle. The two neighboring research giants have grown closer in recent years as Columbus civic leaders have pushed for more collaboration. But the coronavirus crisis amplified the need, and both OSU and Battelle responded, with researchers from the two institutions working side by side to create a rapid test for COVID-19, for instance.

Now, Ohio State leaders are hopeful that this COVID success can serve as a template for new collaborations in the future—and it appears that Johnson has an ally in Battelle CEO Lou Von Thaer, an OSU trustee who chaired the search committee that selected Johnson. “It was clear from the beginning that Kristina is an eager and capable leader who has big ideas about how

to foster collaboration inside Ohio State and with external partners,” Von Thaer said in a statement.

••• There were days Johnson didn’t see herself as a college professor, let alone as a university president. “I was eight years at Stanford and only had two women professors total, and none in any of my basic science, math or engineering,” she says. “It just didn’t occur to me that that was a career path.”

Johnson didn’t see many women in other potential career paths either, as she pursued her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate degrees, all at Stanford, in mechanical engineering. “You would be there in class constantly hearing for eight years, ‘Well, the engineer, he will do this, he will do that.

The professor, he will do this, he will do that.’ It’s just a subtle drumbeat.

Every class, there was never a female set of pronouns applied to anything.”

In 1975, Johnson experienced a similar disparity when she participated in the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, which draws young scientists yearly from more than 30 countries. Then a high school senior from Colorado, Johnson doesn’t recall seeing any girls and women among the students and judges at the fair that year.

Still, the experience was formative—and had big impact years later.

On April 20, 2009, an explosion at BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico triggered a monthlong oil spill of 210 million gallons.

When President Barack Obama first addressed the issue from the White House, his administration couldn’t estimate how much oil was spilling and at what rate.

Johnson, then working for the U.S. Department of Energy, went home that night puzzled, and then it hit her: She knew how to measure the amount of oil pouring into the gulf from more than 5,000 feet below. They could use photos of a gushing pipe taken over time to measure the rate. It was essentially same method she’d used in her high school science fair to calculate the growth of a fungus. At 3:30 a.m., Johnson talked to the head of the U.S. Geological Survey, and later that day, Obama shared the critical information the public was demanding to know.

Today, Johnson keeps her science fair award as Colorado’s state

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champion on a wall of her office as a reminder of the impact these kinds of formative educational experiences can have on people’s lives. “You give students that opportunity and it sticks with them,” she says. “It’s an opportunity to create a portfolio and a career.”

••• At Ohio State, Johnson has taken steps to boost the school’s performance in turning research into commercially viable products and businesses. More than any other field, it’s where she has made her own mark.

She was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2015.

Her work in optoelectronics led to a resurgence in 3D movies, dominated the market for rear-projection televisions in the early 2000s and improved processes for mammograms and cervical-cancer screening. She co-founded and later sold a company in the field while working at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She received one honor for her work that previously had gone to Thomas Edison, Guglielmo Marconi and Orville Wright.

Commercialization of university research is one topic that can dampen the talk of normally boosterish civic leaders in central Ohio. “Nobody’s accused Ohio State of being the best,” Fischer says.

“That doesn’t mean we’re the worst,” he adds quickly. “There’s so much more we have to unleash.”

Ohio State’s performance in the area, considered critical for economic development efforts because of the potential for university research to fuel startup businesses and new jobs, is truly average. OSU ranked 34th among universities worldwide in the number of U.S. patents granted in 2019, according to a tally by the National Academy of Inventors.

Among Big Ten schools, Ohio State’s 68 patents rank eighth.

In October, Johnson announced the appointment of Grace Wang, senior vice chancellor for research and economic development for the State University of New York system, to the new OSU position of executive vice president for research, innovation and knowledge enterprise. In February, in her first State of the University address, Johnson pledged $750 million for research over the next decade.

Wang also will lead development of the Innovation District, a $647 million

university investment in new research facilities in the West Campus area.

Johnson says her goal—she was part of similar initiatives at Colorado, Duke, Johns Hopkins and SUNY—is to take the friction out of the commercialization system and “get the technology out there.”

“Form as many license deals as you can, move quickly. File provisional or full patents fast. You’ve got to be able to seed people with ideas. Give them little grants in order to check out what they’re doing. The company that I formed [in Colorado], really was seeded with just a $150,000 grant in order to build a couple prototypes.”

“We’re a big organization,” Johnson says. “We need a big commercialization shop. I think it’s going to go well.

It’s going to take us time.”

••• Charles Johnson was one of 770 students at Ohio State back in 1896, when the university was in just its third decade and livestock grazed on the Oval. The son of Pennsylvania farmers, he came to the young university to study mechanical engineering, the same academic discipline his granddaughter (and future OSU president) would embrace some eight decades later.

Charles Johnson died in 1920 toward the end of the influenza pandemic of 1918. After his death, Black employees at Westinghouse in Pittsburgh paid tribute to Johnson, who taught them engineering after work hours at a local restaurant so they could get on a technical track toward better jobs.

Kristina Johnson cited her grandfather’s legacy in February when she announced an initiative called RAISE—Race, Inclusion and Social Equity—that has a goal of at least 100 new faculty members of color and 50

Form as many license deals as you can, move quickly. ... We’re a big organization.

We need a big commercialization shop.

new faculty who will address racial disparities and social justice in their respective fields.

In addition, Johnson is navigating new expectations when it comes to addressing systemic racism. After the shooting death in April of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant by a Columbus police officer, calls grew louder on campus for OSU to sever ties with the city’s Division of Police. The shooting came just days after a relatively muted response from Columbus police to a mob of mostly white students who overturned cars on Chittenden Avenue during the off-campus area’s annual “Chittfest.”

Johnson issued a statement on April 27 that acknowledged the calls to stop working with Columbus police and mentioned others whom she said want increased Columbus police presence off-campus. “The university is hearing you,” she said without specifying which side it agrees with.

••• Veronica Meinhard thinks the oneon-one dinners she and her wife have hosted and attended with people on their get-to-know list have allowed better conversations than the big receptions they’d be attending if there were no global pandemic.

She and Johnson have been together since 2013. Meinhard holds a bachelor’s degree in sports management from the University of Florida and an MBA from the Universidad de Alcala de Henares in Madrid. She worked in fundraising positions at her first alma mater and at the University of Maryland before starting her own philanthropy firm.

She laughs at the idea of Johnson having celebrity status in her new job—“we’re so laid back”—but sees the OSU presidency as a platform for her wife to elevate and empower others. At the State University of New York, where Johnson served as chancellor of a 64-school system, she had been working on a plan to hire 1,000 women and people of color in STEM fields by 2030. The plan to offer debtfree undergraduate degrees at OSU within the next decade is part of that platform here.

“She has the biggest heart I’ve ever seen,” Meinhard says. “It’s something that permeates her entire life.”

Bob Vitale is a freelance writer.

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Tech talk

By Cynthia Bent Findlay The S.T.A.R. Support app

by Accentus Health

Optimizing resilience S.T.A.R. Support app surrounds users with mental health resources.

T

rauma left over from responding to COVID-19 is taking its toll on first responders … but now there’s an app for that.

The S.T.A.R. Support app by Accentus Health aims to put mental health resources in the hands of those seeking help 24/7.

Morgan Koth started Accentus Health to fill a niche he saw in the health and wellness space for providing well-rounded self-help.

Koth developed all-around fitness

Accentus Health accentushealth.com

Business: Mental health support platform Founder and CEO: Morgan Koth Employees: 5, 2 full-time Investment to date: Self-funded, would not disclose

and wellness app OptimumU with Big Kitty Labs in 2019 to combine the missions of helping users track health and fitness stats and access motivation and mindfulness resources in one central, easy-access app.

While working on OptimumU, Dan Rockwell of Big Kitty introduced Koth to Kenneth Yeager, a researcher at Ohio State University’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health.

Koth and Yeager first teamed up to help the state of Ohio launch the F.I.R.S.T. Support app in mid-2020 to streamline access to mental health resources to first responders. The effort was an outgrowth of research by Yeager’s STAR Program at OSU. Yeager’s team researches and designs data-based stress, trauma and resilience treatment programs. Koth says he and Yeager knew there could be synergies between OptimumU’s mobile app delivery of self-empowering physical wellness and Yeager’s proven resilience training research.

They decided it was eminently possible to deliver those resources via a downloadable app for use at home, confidentially and in private, on the user’s own time.

Next, Koth turned his sights onto providing similar resources to other group clients such as hospitals, other clinics, even high-stress industries like construction firms, and soon after, Accentus Health licensed OSU’s technology and launched the

Rev1 Ventures bringing home the bacon Rev1 Ventures is a nonprofit venture capital firm investing in very early stage tech companies, and mentoring and supporting entrepreneurs with office space and expertise. It counts its success a little differently than other venture firms—in impact to the Ohio economy.

In its annual report released at the end of April, Rev1 says with the December acquisition of one of its premier portfolio companies, Updox, its investments have helped generate more than $113 million in revenue and nearly $140 million in exits for the region’s startups.

Originally a regional manager for Ohio Third Frontier funds, Rev1 says it’s attracted $194 million in private capital to the region.

The company also played a role this past year distributing about $10 million in CARES Act funds in the form of grants to local small and mostly minority-owned businesses.

In March, Rev1 ramped up a new $10 million for-profit Future Value Fund, which it says it the largest pre-seed stage fund ever in Columbus. And in this year’s report Rev1 touted its commitment to diversity, with 52 percent of its funded companies boasting minority leadership.

S.T.A.R. Support app for individuals and organizations.

“Even though we are talking about mental health more in society, there still is that stigma, people still feel ashamed or weak, ‘I should be able to do this on my own, why am I not?’

Especially folks like police, physicians, nurses, even high achievers like students, their backpacks so to speak become too heavy to carry by themselves,” says Koth.

The app is free for individuals, and organizations can subscribe to create a customized program with their own specific live and online resources added in.

Users take an assessment to get started, and then get unique learning courses and nudges unique to them to help complete learning and to-dos.

The Dublin Police Department signed on as the first paying organizational client in early 2021.

Cynthia Bent Findlay is a freelance writer.

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briefing

By Jess Deyo

Stivers: ‘I want to help every Ohioan have real opportunity’

Steve Stivers

Getty Images/ALEX WONG

S

teve Stivers started his new role as CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce May 17, replacing Andrew Doehrel, who served since 1993.

The Republican steps into the role with a hefty repertoire as a former state senator and member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

He remains a major general in the Ohio National Guard.

He’ll add to those duties oversight of the chamber’s 8,000 members, leading efforts to support businesses in the state and increase Ohio’s economic competitiveness.

Within his first few days, Stivers increased Ohio Chamber of Commerce Political Action Committee funding for a two-year cycle from $30,000 to $150,000, with a goal to reach $1 million.

Accepting the job came naturally for Stivers, who previously spent five days each week in Washington, D.C., away from his family while

working with Congress. Now, he looks forward to spending more time in Columbus and the opportunity to attend his children’s sports games.

One of Stivers’ chief goals is to increase the diversity within the chamber, he says. He says with just one person of color among 17 staff members, there’s a need to better reflect the composition of the state’s population at large and create a welcoming atmosphere where people from different backgrounds can see themselves becoming successful entrepreneurs.

“Economic opportunity for all is something I believe in. Unless you

look like Ohio, you can’t help inspire all Ohioans to be excited about business. I want everybody to know that business is for everybody.”

To help increase representation, Stivers will work with Black chambers of commerce around the state as well as other minority chambers, he says.

“I want to help Ohio grow, I want to help every Ohioan have real opportunity, and I am convinced that they get real opportunity through free markets and a growing economy,” he says.

“That’s what I’m going to work every day to do.”

S

File/ROB HARDIN

Geben Communication acquires influencer marketing agency

Heather Whaling

Public relations firm Geben Communication has announced its acquisition of content and influencer marketing agency Women Online.

Founded in 2009 by Heather Whaling, Geben specializes in PR and social media and represents brands like Safelite AutoGlass, Walgreens, and the Central Ohio Transit Authority.

Women Online, founded in 2011 by online marketing expert Morra Aarons Mele, is a virtual

content and influencer marketing agency with a speciality in national social impact and nonprofit clients. The acquisition positions Geben to build a social impact practice serving foundations and nonprofits.

Whaling and Mele met through digital community TheLi.st, designed to connect high-impact women in media.

Whaling was looking to grow the PR firm through an acquisition, she says, and within three

months the two companies made the deal. Terms were not disclosed.

The Women’s Online brand and its staff will be absorbed by Geben, and Mele will assume the position of executive vice president with Geben.

For Whaling, the acquisition holds powerful symbolism.

“I think there’s something really special there about this deal and what it says for women in business,” she says.

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spotlight

By Virginia Brown + Photo by Rob Hardin

Small Business

Social calling In 2020, people desperately needed masks. Deb Neo had access to them and a desire to help.

D

eb Neo never wanted to be a business owner. She just wanted to help people.

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the licensed social worker was deeply disturbed by price gouging and unethical practices she witnessed in the personal protective equipment (PPE) industry.

“This time last year, I was seeing reports of 700 percent price-gouging, fake masks and respirators flooding the market,” says Neo, adding that surgical mask prices jumped from roughly 70 cents to as high as $7.

“People were really taking advantage

“People were really taking advantage of the fact that they had this product and people needed it, and that’s the opposite of what I wanted to do.”

DEB NEO, founder, Neo PPE

Neo PPE 670 Meridian Way, Ste. 165, Westerville 43081 neo-ppe.com Business: Personal protective equipment Owner: Deb Neo Employees: 3 Revenue: $10 million (2020)

Deb Neo of the fact that they had this product and people needed it, and that’s the opposite of what I wanted to do.”

Her familiarity with the PPE industry comes from watching her father run a successful cleanroom supply business in Asia, where he has manufactured wipes, gloves, masks and other products for over 20 years.

“I’m not a very business-minded person, but when I started hearing that I have direct access to the product and that I can offer it at an ethical price, I told my dad to send over two boxes,” says Neo, 25.

A year later, she made $10 million in sales.

Neo PPE, based in Westerville, began in Neo’s home with 960 masks shipped from her dad’s company.

Products include lab-tested N95 and three-ply surgical masks, and clients range from restaurants to medical facilities, teachers, military, law enforcement, retailers and more.

Since she has direct contact with her manufacturer, cutting down on middle-man costs, she keeps prices fair and has control over standards, something Neo says was greatly missing in the industry.

In March 2020, the U.S. government designated N95 respirators as “scarce materials” due to overwhelming need in healthcare.

“I never really considered myself an entrepreneur, I was always social work-minded,” says Neo. “I just wanted to help people through this horrible time and do what I could to keep them safe.”

Early on, Neo’s friends and family helped get word out. Clients included small dental practices and health care agencies. “Hospitals and institutions that have a lot of buying power were able to snatch all of the respirators available, and people who were left behind were some small businesses that still needed to

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protect their employees,” she says, Then Neo landed a contract with the state of California, where she sent three million masks.

“I started out packing up the two cases in my house, running to the post office and sending them to whoever my mom told me, like small dental practices,” she says. “And then suddenly I was running containers from Hong Kong straight to California.” One container holds 130,000 masks.

Other local business owners took notice and began working with Neo, including Patrick Tomsen, president and co-owner of Identity Group, a custom apparel and promotional products company, which now also sells masks.

When Tomsen, who shares office space with Neo, learned about what she was doing, he was eager to help. “I can’t tell you how many of her masks and her father’s masks we’ve placed,” he says. “You can hear people almost crying on the phone saying, Thank goodness you can help.”

“What Debbie has done is really remarkable,” says Tomsen. “She brought consistency, control, and oversight to the space when it was desperately needed. She’s one to watch.”

••• Born and raised in Singapore, Neo moved to Hartville, a small town in Stark County, when she was 11 years old. She attended Lake High School, describing her experience as “culture shock in the opposite way, moving from a big city to a small town.”

She moved with her mother, who had remarried, and her sister, to be with their stepfather. But she remained close with her father, visiting him in Hong Kong every summer until 2020. “I’ve talked with him on the phone two times a day since I was 11,” she says.

In 2014, she enrolled at Ohio State University, where she began studying English but was called to social work, and in 2018, she graduated in that field. She earned her master’s in social work in 2020, also from OSU. “The pandemic has thrown everything up in the air, but it’s given me an opportunity to combine my social work and my knowledge of PPE, and I found a passion for the business through the fact that I knew this was helping people.”

Who’s moving and shaking this Week?

Find out when you become a Columbus Ceo insider sign-up today at ColumbusCeo.com

Virginia Brown is a freelance writer.

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spotlight

By Cynthia Bent Findlay + Photos by rob hardin

Nonprofit

Critical evolution The Mid-Ohio Food Collective is advancing into its future as an agency that fights poverty using data and collaboration.

I

n the midst of transforming, the Mid-Ohio Food Collective umbrella agency has grown from the original Mid-Ohio Foodbank to expanded service models. Now, it is executing its largest-ever fundraising campaign with a goal of $30 million.

In just a few months, it’s already raised $24 million.

The funds will fuel five major initiatives toward tackling poverty.

The organization’s evolution comes after years of discussion and research internally, with customers and other agencies around the country.

“Over the last 10 years, we’ve really shifted our thinking to a food-is-health strategy, and more regular access.”

Matt Habash, CEO, Mid-Ohio Food Collective

Mid-Ohio Food Collective 3960 Brookham Drive, Grove City 43123 midohiofoodbank.org President and CEO: Matt Habash Employees: 150 Mission: To end hunger one nourishing meal

at a time while co-creating communities where everyone thrives.

2020 budget: $115.8 million; 75 million

pounds of food distributed through almost 700 partner agencies

The Mid-Ohio Farm in the Hilltop neighborhood uses vertical farming to grow food in a small area.

“For many years, our customers would come at end of the month, get a three- to five-day supply of food, usually canned food, and in some cases we’d never see them again,” says Matt Habash, CEO. “Over the last 10 years, we’ve really shifted our thinking to a food-is-health strategy, and more regular access.”

Habash has been at the agency for 36 of its 40 years, and he says the past 10 have been a time of sea change.

In 2010, MOFC agreed to be one of three food banks partnering with Feeding America to look at food insecurity and diabetes. The 2015 study found when patients are prescribed and receive fresh produce, plus referrals to care and self-management support over a six-month period,

patients’ average blood sugar levels showed important reductions. So did their adherence to medications and sense of control over their diabetes.

“None of us buy our perishable food once a month. We knew from diabetes research, if people come [to the foodbank] 11 to 25 times per year, they could lower a1c levels, improve diabetes, hypertension and help weight loss,” Habash says. “We knew we had to rethink our work and rebuild ourselves as a low-cost, highvalue healthcare strategy.”

That led to the Farmacy program, in which participating healthcare providers prescribe patients healthy food from the MOFC. Now MOFC is aiming to work as a net with other service agencies, education and healthcare.

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Five initiatives are the focus – the Mid-Ohio Food Markets, better data and insight gathering, the Mid-Ohio Farm, the Collective’s main facility, and the annual campaign.

Working with Feeding America, the MOFC has mined data to grasp demand for food on a real-time basis.

It also developed the FreshTrak app to help customers make appointments with pantries and shared it with the Feeding America network.

Plans are to expand the Mid-Ohio Markets, which debuted in 2019, from two to 10 in high-need areas in Franklin County. Instead of standing in line for a pre-packed box of canned goods, customers can shop at the markets for a large variety of fresh vegetables and other whole foods.

Expanding market hours will also exponentially affect customers’ access.

“Customers said to us, ‘We can’t afford to shop at the food pantry. The two days they’re open are the two days I work,” Habash says. “That was a gut punch.”

The goal is to further develop FreshTrak’s data insights to connect to healthcare and other resources— and to use data to predict what help is needed where throughout the community.

The Mid-Ohio Farm, an urban farm demonstrating vertical agriculture, connects communities with education on growing a family’s own fresh vegetables on, say, the back porch.

Finally, MOFC wants to expand its main facility in Grove City to build out a production kitchen to allow for preparation of meals or meal kits where needed throughout the markets.

“It’s a lot of, ‘Ask a mom working two jobs to go home and chop fresh vegetables.’ We can transform a 25-pound beef roast donation and allow them to pick up a healthy prepackaged meal, make the convenient choice the healthy one,” Habash says.

All of these efforts are pointing straight at the bold goal of going beyond feeding people in emergencies to ending hunger and lifting people out of poverty in central Ohio.

“We’re not only taking care of the whole person, but feeding their soul,” he says. “When it boils down to it, everyone is our neighbor.”

Cynthia Bent Findlay is a freelance writer.

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spotlight

By Jim Weiker

Commercial Real Estate

Shopping check-in

Columbus retail is recovering from pandemic, but challenges linger.

A

fter plunging in 2020, central Ohio retail is climbing out of its pandemic hole.

Foot traffic is rising, leasing is up, and new stores are opening throughout the Columbus area, but plenty of clouds remain, especially for enclosed malls and older strip centers in central Ohio, which has more than twice the retail space of the U.S. average.

“A year ago, I definitely thought I was heading into what I thought would be the worst part of my career,” says David Lukes, CEO of SITE Centers, the Beachwoodbased firm that owns or co-owns several premium Columbus shopping centers including Lennox Town Center, Polaris Towne Center, Sun Center and Easton Market. “Leasing activity now is the highest I’ve ever seen it. This is the most shocking turnaround I’ve ever seen.”

According to the real-estate information service CoStar, 3.6% of central Ohio retail space is vacant, slightly higher than a year ago and much better than the national average of 5%.

“Columbus looks really good relative to other markets and the U.S. overall,” says Liz Ptacek, CoStar’s director of market analytics for Ohio.

“Leasing accelerated noticeably in the first quarter.”

Closures, rent concessions— and a rebound Retail areas throughout central Ohio were brutalized by the pandemic as shoppers turned to online buying.

Development at Hamilton Quarter continues, while the Short North has its share of vacancies.

Among large retail users to close were Art Van Furniture in the Polaris area; Bed Bath & Beyond stores in the Polaris and Grove City areas; six Pet Valu stores and the last three Family Video stores; Pier 1 stores in the Sawmill and Easton areas; AMC Theatres in Lennox Town Center; and Field & Stream at Polaris Fashion Place.

The pandemic also saw a full menu of restaurants shut down. The departures meant shopping center landlords throughout the country lost tenants or had to provide concessions on their rent.

“We wrote more than 100 rentrelief documents – deferments, short-

term rent restructures. That was an interesting and difficult experience,” says Chris Stewart, senior vice president of leasing with PEBB Enterprises, a Boca Raton, Florida company that owns Hunter’s Ridge Shopping Center in Gahanna.

This year, PEBB has leased more retail space in the first four months than it leased all of last year, Stewart says.

Many spaces vacated across the region were quickly reoccupied. AMC Theatres at Lennox, for example, was taken over by Phoenix Theatres Entertainment while Field & Steam at Polaris is being converted to a new

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File/Dispatch/ DORAL CHENOWETH File/Dispatch/COURTNEY HERGESHEIMER

concept called Public Lands.

Notable openings include Menards on Rome-Hilliard Road, Tractor Supply Co. near Sawmill Road, the expanded La Plaza Tapatia on the West Side, and several stores and restaurants in the Hamilton Quarter development in New Albany and the northern expansion of Easton Town Center.

But while open-air and big-box centers are relatively healthy in central Ohio, other areas continue to face challenges, including older strip centers.

“Landlords seem to be doing better today, especially in A and B quality

real estate,” says Gilli Zofan, a retail leasing and sales agent with the Columbus office of Colliers commercial real estate. “The pandemic may have widened that gap between quality sites and C and D properties.”

Zofan notes the pandemic, coupled with stay-at-home workers and last summer’s protests, left a mark on Downtown and the Short North, which remain peppered with forlease signs.

“The Short North and the urban core were probably hit the hardest,” he says.

While Zofan and others expect those areas to recover as workers return to offices and consumers and diners grow more comfortable going out, other areas face more significant challenges.

Despite the uptick in retail leasing this year, especially in top-tier locations, experts say there’s far too much retail space in the nation – and in Columbus. The U.S. contains approximately 24 square feet of retail space for every person, about five times the amount in the United Kingdom and 10 times the amount in Germany.

Central Ohio has more than twice as much retail space than the national average, in part because it draws many out-of-town shoppers. According to CoStar, the Columbus area includes about 122 million square feet of retail space – more than 53 square feet for each resident.

“The retail sector, even after all these closures and space givebacks, remains oversupplied,” says Ptacek, with CoStar. “We’re still looking at a market that has too much brick-andmortar retail space, not just in Columbus, but across the country.”

Malls bear brunt of closures The lion’s share of the closings and retail bankruptcies during the pandemic were mall stalwarts such as J. Crew, Brooks Brothers, Victoria’s Secret, L’Occitane, Aldo, GNC, J.C. Penney, Jos. A. Bank, Ann Taylor, Lane Bryant, The Children’s Place, Justice, Gap, Banana Republic and Francesca’s.

As a result, some mall owners filed for bankruptcy during the pandemic while others appear headed that way, including Columbus-based Washington Prime Group, the owner of Polaris

“The retail sector, even after all these closures and space givebacks, remains oversupplied ... not just in Columbus.”

Liz Ptacek, director of market analytics for Columbus, CoStar

Fashion Place and about 100 other shopping centers.

Despite all those challenges, foot traffic at malls has risen sharply this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, citing data from the firm Placer.ai, mall traffic in March was up 86% from a year earlier.

Central Ohio’s premier indoor mall, Polaris, signed several tenants during the pandemic and is largely occupied, despite the challenges its corporate parent faces. Washington Prime is flirting with bankruptcy restructuring.

The outlook for Tuttle Crossing remains uncertain as the mall continues to lose traditional mall tenants.

According to a November report, the mall’s owner, Simon Property Group, planned to let the mall fall into foreclosure, where a receiver would be appointed to manage it.

Eastland Mall continues to limp along with a skeleton crew of tenants and no clear path forward while plans to redevelop the closed Westland Mall into “Weston” were stalled by the pandemic.

Even Easton Town Center, widely considered the premier central Ohio shopping center, has faced challenges.

It must fill large holes left by the departure of Forever 21, Bon Vie, New York & Co. and Henri Bendel.

“If you look at a lifestyle center like Easton, it had plenty of disruption with tenants unable to pay rent, but they’ve mostly been able to backfill those spaces,” says Mike Simpson, president of the Columbus commercial real-estate firm NAI Ohio Equities.

“The concerns are greater with Tuttle Crossing. We’ve seen what has happened there. And even Polaris.

There are a lot of concerns with those types of malls that are fashion-based.”

Jim Weiker is senior business reporter for the Columbus Dispatch.

June 2021 l ColumbusCEO

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A rendering of the new hospital tower at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center

Land was cleared in 2020 to make way for the Columbus Innovation District at Lane Avenue and Kenny Road.

The Peninsula development west of COSI will be a dense mix of residences, offices, hotel and retail.

Maintaining t

Courtesy OSU

DORAL CHENOWETH

DORAL CHENOWETH

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New apartment buildings are planned around Topiary Park, including a project that will be considered affordable.

The Columbus Innovation District is now being built, beginning with the Interdisciplinary Research Facility.

Work continues on the new hospital tower at Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

g the momentum

Courtesy COLUMBUS DOWNTOWN DEVELOPMENT CORP.

DORAL CHENOWETH

Courtesy OSU

June 2021 l ColumbusCEO

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Coming out of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic recession, the Columbus region is poised to continue robust growth. Columbus Partnership CEOs are engaged in making the area attractive for business.

By Mark Williams

A

year ago, the crises were piling up and Columbus Partnership leader Alex Fischer was worried.

Along with a public health emergency, the coronavirus pandemic was inflicting heavy damage on the central Ohio economy. Then came the issues of social justice and race following the murder of George Floyd by a police officer in Minneapolis and the subsequent protests in Columbus and other cities.

“We had to survive. If you can’t survive, you can’t live to work on a lot of other tough things,” says Fischer, the president and CEO of the Partnership, a nonprofit, public-private economic development group led by 75 area CEOs and executives. “Every time we got the right-hand punch, we got a lefthander coming right at us.”

Surviving meant working with state and local government leaders and CEOs weekly or even daily to help businesses navigate the economic uncertainties caused by the pandemic. It also meant working closely with federal partners on stimulus programs that provided badly needed cash to help businesses and consumers manage through the darkest days of the pandemic.

Now that the worst days of the pandemic are over, the Partnership has put its sights back on why it was

created to begin with: economic development and making the region a more prosperous place for everyone.

“If you had asked me a year ago, I would have been pretty darned scared about what the year ahead would look like,” Fischer says. “To sit here, to have a pipeline and a level of activity as busy as I’ve ever seen it suggests that the growth agenda is going to continue.”

One Columbus, the region’s economic development agency, has never been busier with better prospects and shorter time frames, he says. That’s even with all the uncertainty around COVID-19.

“Economic growth is occurring.

We’re continuing to drive a competitive agenda. That hasn’t slowed down,” he says.

But that mandate is now layered with an additional charge to address issues of race following the protests that started last summer after the death of Floyd.

“We have systemic racism in corporate America and corporate Columbus,” Fischer says. “Now if I can admit that and say we’re going to work on it, could we not admit that in other segments of our society as well?”

Over the past year, the CEOs who make up the Partnership have had tough conversations about race and racism and what to do to make the economy most inclusive, he says. CEOs have never been more

Rendering of the planned Ohio State University research facility in the Columbus Innovation District

Rendering courtesy OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

committed to a single issue, he says.

Beyond addressing issues of race, building a more diverse economy means including those with disabilities, people of different religious faiths, veterans, members of the LBGTQ community and others, local CEOs say. Inclusivity is the right thing to do—and it’s critical for economic development.

“The more diverse the community and the more we talk about it, it’s just going to attract new business here,” says Mike Kaufmann, CEO of Cardinal Health and a leader in the Partnership’s diversity efforts.

“Ensuring the workplace mirrors the diversity of the marketplace that we live in and work in is just good business and good for business,” says Kirt Walker, Nationwide’s CEO. “If we want to attract the best and diverse talent we’re going to need, we need to be intentional about building a workforce where people from all walks of life can kind of see themselves in the Columbus family photo.”

Keeping talented workers and drawing more to Columbus is a top issue for Columbus, Walker says.

“We need to make sure we keep the talent that’s already here while we continue to make central Ohio the destination for the best diverse talent who want to move and settle down here,” he says.

Nick Akins, chairman, president and CEO of American Electric Power, says the definition of economic development is becoming broader.

“It’s not just on jobs and industries and attractions, but also the brand of Columbus. What’s the culture like?

What’s the tax situation?” Akins says.

Columbus is seen as more progressive when it comes to environmental issues, he says. Building consensus on issues such as education and race in a nonpartisan way has helped build a brand for the city, he says.

An emphasis on a clean energy economy and a reliable power grid is drawing interest from businesses that have become more focused on environmental, social and governance issues, he says.

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“Columbus has put itself on the map with electric vehicles. It’s a precursor of a major shift, and Columbus is leading the way,” Akins says.

Companies considering locating in the region are demanding renewable energy. At the same time, most members of the Ohio General Assembly have been resistant to expanding renewable energy in the state.

“It’s a huge opportunity,” Fischer says. “We’re either going to grow and move forward or be left behind. If we get left behind in the renewable energy business, other industries will be right behind it because they want renewable energy.”

Fischer says Columbus is blessed with several advantages that should power the economy in the years to come.

“We are in the sweet spot of the types of places that people are going to want to live in the future, to raise a family, to live and work and play,” he says.

Ohio State University and the other colleges and universities here offer a continued pipeline of talent for central Ohio companies, he says.

The region is becoming a hub for life sciences, including the creation of the $1.1 billion Columbus Innovation District by Ohio State, Nationwide Children’s Hospital and JobsOhio, and Battelle’s recent announcement that it is opening a $200 million gene therapy startup along with other investors.

Venture capital investments, whether it is firms such as Drive Capital or Nationwide’s $350 million venture capital operation, are helping drive investments in technology and innovation, he says. The Scioto Peninsula project extends Downtown over the Scioto River.

“If we could do this locally,

“If we get left behind in the renewable energy business, other industries will be right behind it because they want renewable energy.”

Alex Fischer, CEO, Columbus Partnership

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Work continues at OSU Wexner Medical Center everybody wins,” Walker says of Nationwide’s $350 million fund.

“We support the local economy, the needs of the community and our members, and we help startups and small businesses.”

Steve Steinour, chairman, president and CEO of Huntington Bancshares, says the region’s success around insurance, healthcare, tech, retail and education give it an edge when it comes to luring companies here. The startups and venture capital money that is flowing to the region are strengths for the region.

“We believe with the success of the vaccination program and with the course of events we’re poised to move forward,” Steinour says. “There is a tremendous amount of optimism.

There is a lot of pent-up demand.”

Steinour says he would like to see the influx of federal stimulus dollars be leveraged in a way to address longterm issues Columbus is facing, such as affordable housing.

“Let’s make it an invested dollar and do good for the future of Columbus and help residents come through the pandemic,” he says.

One thing that Fischer does worry about is the nation’s political divide and whether it will harm the regional economy.

The Partnership always has prided itself on working with Republicans and Democrats locally, statewide and nationally to get things done, Fischer says.

“I’m worried that’s shifting,” he says. “I’m worried that’s changing at the local level. I’m worried that it is changing at the state level.”

Mark Williams writes about banking, insurance and the economy for The Dispatch.

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downtown mission The Columbus Partnership organization is more involved than ever before in making sure Downtown Columbus can thrive coming out of the pandemic. “As goes Downtown, so goes the region” is the mantra.

By Jim Weiker

A

mong all of central Ohio’s commercial real estate transactions in March, the one for 145 S. Front St. stood out.

The 200,000-square-foot state office building, empty since 2007, was sold for $3 million.

The buyer wasn’t a developer, but instead was The Columbus Partnership, the private, nonprofit collection of the area’s most powerful corporations, which announced plans to turn the seven-story building into a mix of offices, retail space and residences.

The Partnership has been active in economic development since its founding in 2002, but until now, has stayed away from bricks-and-mortar.

The purchase signaled a more active role for the Partnership in Downtown development. The impression was heightened by the timing of the purchase—nearly simultaneous with changes at the Columbus Downtown Development Corp. that gave Partnership members seven of the 13 CDDC board positions.

Among the new CDDC members is the Partnership’s CEO, Alex Fischer.

Fischer pointed out that the Partnership has always been involved

in Downtown development, but noted Downtown is in a more precarious position than it was before the pandemic.

“I’ve always believed, and the Partnership has always believed, that one of the key assets to the entire region from an economic development standpoint is a healthy downtown,” Fischer says. “I don’t know any cities in America that don’t have vibrant downtowns.

You could argue that as goes Downtown, so goes the region.”

For Fischer, the past year simply made the focus on Downtown more urgent. The pandemic emptied many Downtown offices, followed by protests that boarded up much of the urban core. Office vacancies rose, restaurants closed and the rush into Downtown apartments stopped.

“I don’t think we can assume that post-COVID, Downtown stays on the same trajectory it was on,” Fischer says. “I think place-making will matter more than ever after COVID, and I put a higher priority on Downtown than I did a couple years ago.”

Downtown faces the immediate challenge of bringing workers, residents and restaurants back, Fischer says.

“I think we recover from that fairly quickly,” he says. “Then the question

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DORAL CHENOWETH

becomes: What are we doing next?

There’s so much opportunity around Capitol Square, Columbus State, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, the corridor along Grant (Avenue), and to the (Sciota) Peninsula and all of Franklinton.

“I think this is a moment of reassessment and engagement to define what the next phase of Downtown development is.”

Fischer sees the Partnership’s

primary roles in Downtown development as helping set priorities, bringing parties together and providing a corporate perspective.

“We bring first-hand knowledge of what’s going on with employers,” he says. “We bring a lot of insight, strategy, specific expertise to the table.”

Real estate developer Jeff Edwards, CEO of the Edwards Cos. and a member of both the Partnership and the CDDC boards, says the Partnership

can bring a lot to the discussion on Downtown, where his company has completed several significant projects and has plans for more.

“I’m not sure exactly how an expanded role will play out, but for the entire Partnership, there’s significant resources to make things happen,” he says. “Downtown was on a roll prior to COVID, and I think it has work to do going forward.

“In the short term, we need to just put the virus behind us and get people returning to work,” Edwards says. “In the long term, it’s still a challenge to bring people Downtown from the suburbs and on weekends, but you’ve got a real jump with 10,000 people living Downtown now.”

Michael Stevens, Columbus’ director of development, welcomed the Partnership’s attention on Downtown.

“We’re excited about their participation as we come out of the pandemic,” Stevens says. “The Partnership has been focused on economic development and recognizes that for successful regional economic development, we need to have a strong and vibrant downtown.”

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The Partnership is focusing on Downtown during a transition time for the Downtown Development Corp., the private group that helped redevelop the Scioto Mile, John F. Wolfe Columbus Commons park, the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, the former Lazarus building and the River South District.

The organization is now spearheading the development of the Peninsula, the 26-acre patch immediately west of COSI in Franklinton that will include a dense mix of residences, offices and retail uses.

In March, the CDDC’s longtime CEO, Guy Worley, announced he is stepping down as the city revamped the board, in part to focus more on bringing affordable housing to Downtown.

Fischer, now on the CDDC board, says Worley’s replacement “has to first and foremost be collaborative and be able to walk between public

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“I’ve always believed, and the Partnership has always believed, that one of the key assets to the entire region from an economic development standpoint is a healthy downtown.”

Alex Fischer, CEO, Columbus Partnership

and private interests and do it in a way that brings people together.”

He says he is eager to find a replacement for Worley, whose last day is May 31.

“I think we all share a healthy sense that we’ve got to proceed with a sense of urgency, not because there’s a problem but because there’s a lot of opportunity,” he says.

Fischer says the Partnership bought the state of Ohio-owned building because members feared it would continue to deteriorate and saw it as a key part of the block that also contains the Ohio Supreme Court building and the Partnership’s own offices. But he says he does not expect the Partnership to go into the development business.

“This isn’t our core business,” he says. “Never say never, but I view this very much as a one-off.”

The Partnership is working with Brad DeHays, founder of Connect Realty, to redevelop the building.

The state had gutted the building before selling it, leaving it primed for renovation.

DeHays says he is working with the Cleveland architectural firm Sandvick, which specializes in historic renovations, on a plan that would convert the top three floors into 81 apartments, floors two and three into offices and the ground floor into retail, with parking below.

“It has a deep footprint, so we’ll need to add a light well in the middle,” DeHays says. “But the views are beautiful, and we’re excited about our preliminary designs.”

DeHays says the Partnership hopes to get the 1964 building onto the National Register of Historic Places, which also would help attract historic tax credits for the renovation.

DeHays says he is approaching the redevelopment much as he would any project, but having 70 of central Ohio’s most prominent CEOs as your boss does change things a bit.

“I don’t see this as significantly different, but there is an added emphasis of wanting to make sure they’re engaged,” he says. “They’re experienced; many are real-estate owners themselves. The level of creativity in this group is just amazing.”

Jim Weiker writes about real estate and the homes market for The Dispatch.

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Diversity agenda

The city’s organization of CEOs has been more engaged around fighting racism during the past year than at any point in its history. Here’s a glimpse of the conversation.

By Erica Thompson + Photos by rob hardin

E

ach week since January, a group of the most powerful corporate leaders in the city has been meeting to do some serious self-examination.

At one point, they asked themselves a particularly tough question: “Am I racist?”

The group includes CEOs who are part of the Columbus Partnership, a nonprofit organization founded to

further economic development. And those intense discussions are part of the organization’s reinvigorated diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

“If we keep it up week after week, month after month, year after year—I think we can change Columbus, and I think we can make a huge difference,” says the partnership’s CEO, Alex Fischer. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen as much energy, depth and commitment by a broad segment of our leadership, which is exciting.”

Like much of corporate America, the

Columbus Partnership was motivated to look at racial inequities following the death of George Floyd, a Black man who was murdered by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in 2020. The organization put together a diversity, equity and inclusion steering committee, co-chaired by Cardinal Health CEO Mike Kaufmann and Curt Moody, founder of the Moody Nolan architecture firm.

The steering committee is focused on three tasks: providing educational resources for Partnership members, encouraging members to look at DEI efforts at their own companies, and thinking through ways to effect change in the broader Columbus community.

The weekly discussions have tackled topics like white privilege and implicit bias. They’ve also featured expert guests like Robert Livingston, lecturer of public policy at Harvard, and author of The Conversation: How Seeking and Speaking the Truth About Racism Can Radically Transform Individuals and Organizations.

Asking themselves, “Am I racist?” is just the first step for Partnership

Mark Cain

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Making the list

The following Columbus Partnership members were included on Forbes’ list of Best Employers for Diversity in America.

• Fifth Third Bank

• Express

• Ohio State Wexner Medical Center

• PNC

• Abercrombie & Fitch

• Abbott Laboratories

• Nationwide Children’s Hospital

• JPMorgan Chase

• Cardinal Health

• Deloitte

• Huntington National Bank

• KPMG

• Alliance Data Card Systems

• IBM

• Nationwide

• AT&T

• White Castle System Inc.

• PricewaterhouseCoopers

• American Electric Power

• Honda

members. They also are contemplating what it means to be antiracist, which is actively working toward racial equality or justice.

Fischer and other leaders at the Partnership cited the importance of working to dismantle structural inequality.

“Systemic racism is pervasive, and the U.S. private sector is not immune,” says Irene Alvarez, vice

president of engagement, marketing and communications for the Columbus Partnership. “The underrepresentation of Black workers in leadership and industries that often have higher levels of income and job growth is one example.”

A 2019 study by the Center for Talent Innovation reported that only 3.2% of all executive or senior leadership roles at for-profit companies are

held by Black professionals. And they account for less than 1% of CEO positions at Fortune 500 companies.

Underrepresented ethnic and racial groups make up just 16.8% of board directors, according to a 2020 data analysis by the ESG division of the Institutional Shareholder Services firm, which provides investment solutions.

Alvarez pointed to a 2021 report from McKinsey & Company, which estimated it would take about 95 years for Black employees to reach talent parity across all levels in the private sector.

“Barriers must be addressed to shorten that timeline,” Alvarez says.

That also means the Partnership must get honest about its own gaps in diversity. Of its 78 members, only 18 are women, and only three are African American.

“Our membership is comprised of top-ranking officials and CEOs, and there’s no denying those roles across the U.S. lack diverse representation,” Alvarez says. “Partnership companies are focused on internal examination of how to change that over the long term in their own organizations.”

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In addition to increasing diversity of leadership teams, companies also are examining supplier networks and philanthropic giving, Alverez says.

In the meantime, the Partnership has been engaging with a diverse group of leaders outside of the organization.

One of the newest Black Partnership members is Mark Cain of Smoot Construction. He is co-president of the Columbus headquarters and president and CEO of the company’s Washington, D.C., office. He says he has been pleased with the Partnership’s DEI efforts so far.

“It’s been a huge focus that I didn’t anticipate coming in,” he says. “In a way, it’s given me an opportunity to step up quicker. We certainly have a unique perspective in terms of diversity initiatives (at Smoot).”

As a 75-year-old Black-owned, family business, Smoot represents a minority in the construction industry.

It’s apparent whenever Cain looks around the Construction Industry Round Table (CIRT), a national association of CEOs in the field.

“I walk in with two or three other Black leaders in a group of 250 across the nation,” he says. “The longevity of Black-owned businesses in this industry is pretty short.”

Smoot has overcome many challenges over the decades.

Cain shared stories of racism his grandfather and the company’s founder, Sherman Smoot, faced during this career.

“He had to travel to find work because not everybody would hire a Black crew to do masonry,” Cain says. “(Originally) based in Charleston, West Virginia, he would work the

THE SEASON NEVER ENDS AT

“I think the diversity initiatives are helping people realize what it takes to have a truly vibrant city. It’s got to represent all walks of life. People have learned that we haven’t shared the wealth.”

Mark Cain, CEO, Smoot Construction June 2021 l ColumbusCEO

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Tanny Crane Eastern seaboard all the way down to Florida, wherever he could get work to feed the family.”

After Smoot relocated to Columbus, Cain’s uncle, Chairman and CEO Lewis Smoot Sr., took a more active leadership role. He grew the business from a small masonry subcontractor to a full-service general construction company.

Along the way, he advocated for the advancement of minority businesses in the construction industry.

Cain says the company joined protests demanding that Black masons be able to work on the construction of Lincoln and Morrill towers at Ohio State University in the 1960s. Ultimately, Smoot was able to perform the masonry.

Cain recounted that history in a letter he sent out to the company following the death of George Floyd. He asked employees to reflect on what they have done to eliminate racism.

Chrystal Stowe, Smoot’s director of

community affairs, says she appreciates Cain’s guidance on DEI. “I think it’s important in our company to know that the commitment does come from the top,” she says. “That also lets employees know that this is a safe space to have what are sometimes uncomfortable conversations. As a Black woman working in this very male-dominated industry, it’s great to work for a company that actively supports the professional development of Black women.”

Cain says there are still opportunities for Smoot to improve. For example, it is exploring how to increase Latinx representation among its leadership. “We’re not exempt, and we’re not experts just because we’re Black,” Cain says.

Smoot has intentionally invested in underserved neighborhoods like Linden, and Cain is looking forward to seeing other businesses follow suit.

“I think the diversity initiatives are helping people realize what it takes to have a truly vibrant city,” Cain says.

“It’s got to represent all walks of life.

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learned you can’t take it for granted just because you’re doing well. It doesn’t mean everybody’s doing well.”

That is especially top-of-mind for longtime partnership member Tanny Crane, president and CEO of the Crane Group. She says she is especially concerned about the racial wealth gap.

In 2019, the median Black household wealth in the country was 13 cents for every $1 of wealth for median white households, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit research organization.

“We’re coming together now saying we are all responsible, and we all have to play a role,” says Crane, who is on the DEI steering committee at the Columbus Partnership. “And now we’ve got some (key performance indicators) so we can see where we are and where we want to be as a community.”

Crane says the Partnership’s DEI focus has opened her eyes to work already being done in the community—especially by Black leaders and organizations.

“What we can do is help support through funding or our members participating on boards,” she says.

Crane says she has been working to diversify the board of her own company. And she signed the letter from business owners to Columbus City Council declaring racism a public health crisis in summer 2020.

“Now, we’ll have accountability, certainly to our own company, but also to the Partnership in terms of how we’re doing. That just reflects what I think each company has the opportunity to do within the Columbus Partnership.”

The organization is developing short-term and long-term goals, and Fischer stressed DEI efforts will be an ongoing commitment.

“Not every member of the Columbus Partnership is going to be on board,” Crane says. “There’s a large part of the population that doesn’t believe that racism is an issue. There are some who will move through education.

There are some who never will, but that just can’t stop us from doing the right thing. And it doesn’t mean that we have to be enemies. We have to agree to disagree and move forward.”

Erica Thompson writes about issues of race, gender and the economy for the Columbus Dispatch.

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Business law

Employment update Here’s what businesses need to know about Ohio’s new discrimination law process.

By Laura Newpoff + Photo by rob hardin

O

hio is one of the nation’s outbound states where the number of residents leaving outpaces the number of people coming in. The outbound and inbound folks, however, have something in common. The No. 1 reason they make a move, data shows, is because of a job. Longtime employment lawyer Steve Loewengart is optimistic a new law that went into effect April 15 will reverse the outbound trend.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed H.B. 352 into law earlier this year.

Also known as the Employment Law Uniformity Act, it will usher in broad changes to how discrimination claims are handled. The legislation had bipartisan support and is meant to improve the state’s business climate and draw more investment into Ohio.

“There’s been years and years of fighting between business and labor communities about employment law reform,” says Loewengart, regional managing partner for Fisher Phillips who testified as a proponent of the legislation. “Ohio had some real out-of-step provisions compared to federal law and the laws of a lot of other states. It’s been felt strongly by Republican administrations and business groups that we need to reform it in order to better the business climate and not lose as many jobs to surrounding states.”

What’s changing Keeping cases out of court. One of the biggest changes is meant to ease the load of cases that make their way to the courts by having plaintiffs exhaust administrative remedies. That

means the claim will go to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission first. For employers, they don’t have to deal with simultaneous claims at the commission and in the courts at the same time. Ideally, the commission will fully investigate a claim and facilitate its resolution.

Amending the statute of limitations. Before this new law, an employee had up to six years to pursue a civil claim for discrimination and 180 days to pursue it before the Civil Rights Commission. A new two-year statute of limitations applies to all charges filed with the commission and civil lawsuits. According to Fisher Phillips, reducing the timeframe will ease the recordkeeping burden for businesses. It also will make it easier to track down witnesses who will have fresher recollections of the alleged events. H.B. 352 tolls

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Adam Bennett, Ulmer & Berne: “Ultimately, having HR employees who are in the know will trickle down to the rest of your employees.”

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the statute of limitations to file a civil lawsuit until the Civil Rights Commission process is completed.

Employee liability. The new law limits supervisor, manager and other employee liability for employment discrimination claims. However, it doesn’t protect against personal liability when the individual is the employer or when the individual acted outside the scope of employment or for retaliating against the plaintiff for opposing a discriminatory practice, aiding a discriminatory practice or obstructing the investigation of discrimination. According to Fisher Phillips, the law doesn’t prevent an employee from pursuing a discrimination action against a supervisor, manager or other employee or claims existing under other Ohio laws.

Affirmative defense. The new law codifies the federal Faragher-Ellerth

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Defense, which will put Ohio on a level playing field with other states.

According to Thomson Reuters Practical Law, it’s an affirmative defense employers can use to defend against claims of hostile work environment harassment if: No tangible adverse employment action was taken against the plaintiff, the employer exercised reasonable care to prevent and promptly correct the harassing behavior and the plaintiff unreasonably failed to take advantage of any preventative or corrective opportunities provided by the employer or to otherwise avoid harm by, for example, not taking advantage of reporting procedures outlined in an anti-harassment policy.

Uniform age discrimination claims. Before the new law, these claims could be pursued in multiple ways. Under H.B. 352, age discrimination claims are subject to the new two-year statute of limitations and will be pursued initially at the Civil Rights Commission.

What’s next for employers Ohio’s employers not only need to have their human resources departments get up to speed about the details of the new law, they have to be on the lookout for hundreds of employment lawsuits that were filed prior to April 15.

Chaz Billington, a partner in Vorys Sater Seymour and Pease’s employment practice, estimates around 400 such suits were filed against companies of all sizes in a variety of industries. Businesses that have never faced employment litigation are being sued

“If you have HR employees who can effectively talk about your company’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, it’s more likely that your employees will know how to report and to whom to report.”

Adam Bennett, associate, Ulmer & Berne

and, in some cases, the claims will name a manger, supervisor or other individual defendant.

“Keep your head up. You may be getting a complaint in certified mail format because the court wants to make sure you see it,” Billington says. “Operations that aren’t sued a lot, small and mid-size employers, mom-and-pop shops, those companies probably don’t have a lot of familiarity with these kinds of lawsuits. Keep your eye out because if the complaint gets served, the clock is running.”

Billington advises that in-house counsel and human resources departments should “train down,” especially if a company doesn’t have a statutory agent that is trained to handle important notices. Once a notice comes in, his advice is to issue a litigation hold so documents and electronic communications are preserved and to make sure the IT department knows to shut off routine document destruction policies.

Going forward, Adam Bennett, an associate with Ulmer & Berne, says because the federal affirmative defense is now codified, companies need to make sure they have anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies in place and ensure HR employees are properly trained on administrating those policies.

“Ultimately, having HR employees who are in the know will trickle down to the rest of your employees,” Bennett says. “If you have HR employees who can effectively talk about your company’s anti-discrimination and anti-harassment policies, it’s more likely that your employees will know how to report and to whom to report.

This empowers HR to quickly address any workplace issues that arise.”

Helen Robinson, who represents plaintiffs as an employment and civil rights attorney with Marshall & Forman LLC, says while there are new changes for employers to digest, timeworn best practices can keep them out of trouble.

“Be objective with promotions, hiring decisions, raises, bonuses and document it accordingly,” she says. “Have best practices and systems in place for the things that ultimately lead to these claims. … And, of course, don’t discriminate to begin with.”

Laura Newpoff is a freelance writer.

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Health Watch Creola Johnson receives the COVID-19 vaccine from George Tazi at Columbus Public Health.

COVID vaccines: Myths, safety, supply and variants

By Laurie Allen + Photos by Rob Hardin

W

hat seemed like too much to hope for six months ago—joyous celebrations, in-person learning and a return to things once considered “normal”—is becoming closer to reality as more Ohioans become fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Yet, like everything about COVID, vaccination programs require deft handling to address continuous and rapid change, including a drop in those rolling up their sleeves for the shot.

Since last December, Ohioans and the nation experienced an urgent, unmet demand for vaccine, a rapid if uneven rollout and an ongoing influx of data to digest. Today, health leaders’ primary focus is on those not fully vaccinated due to barriers such as access to transportation, technology and time, or because they lack credible information.

“We aren’t going to return to normal with 40 percent,” says Columbus Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts, speaking of vaccination rates in Ohio this spring. The gold stan-

dard for achieving herd immunity— when enough people are immune that the virus cannot easily spread— is roughly 75-80 percent.

Roberts, along with Dr. Joseph Gastaldo, system medical director of infectious diseases at OhioHealth, and Dr. Susan Koletar, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Ohio State University Medical Center, spoke with Columbus CEO to address common questions and misconceptions about the vaccine.

What do you know about longterm safety of vaccines in children and adolescents?

“There has never been a vaccine produced that causes long-term effects down the road,” Gastaldo says. When delayed effects have occurred, they’ve tended to happen within two months of vaccination. The Moderna and Pfizer messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines do not alter any cellular DNA or contain live virus; the vaccine ingredients and the spike proteins they produce are broken down within hours. The same is true of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, which uses a version of the

common cold virus (adenovirus) to trigger an immune response.

It’s hard to keep up with all the changes. Did the vaccine rollout happen too quickly?

Both the mRNA and adenovirus vectors have been used for years and are known quantities. “It’s not like we have a bunch of mad scientists out there,” Koletar says. When the Food and Drug Administration paused the J&J vaccine after a rare but serious complication occurred, “it was a testament to the safeguards in place.”

Roberts says “no shortcuts whatsoever” were taken in vaccine development and rollout. “The J&J pause should have confirmed to the nation that safety is more important than just vaccinating.”

The second shot seems to cause the most side effects, and it’s difficult for some people to get one vaccine, let alone two. Is it really necessary?

The short answer is yes, Gastaldo says. While one dose offers some protection, “it’s a risker proposition.” Being fully vaccinated also gets the population closer to reaching herd immunity and being protected against virus variants.

The most common side effects, such as chills, fever and muscle ache, are short-lived and in the greater scheme of things, are a small price to pay for stopping a previously unchecked pandemic, experts say. Roberts says the city health department’s no-show rate for a second vaccination is less than 1 percent, due to rigor-

48 ColumbusCEO l June 2021

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EXPERIENCE SERIES June 2 | Experience Series

Developing a Growth Mindset & Enhancing Culture The last year has brought incredible disruption to our world and workplaces. With flexibility and creativity, we have created solutions and resources to meet our needs.

Developing a growth mindset helps us by using feedback and viewing setbacks and failures as a way to learn and adapt. When we intentionally manage change, we increase our ability to recover when unforeseen events alter our plans. Join us as we dig more deeply into the power of harnessing a growth mindset and enhancing a culture of workplace collaboration.

Supported by:

Columbus Chamber Annual Meeting - PART TWO August 25 | In-Person Networking at Huntington Park

Join the Columbus Chamber of Commerce at Huntington Park on August 25 for part two of its 2021 Annual Meeting, ADAPT. Attendees will have the opportunity to network safely in-person with fellow business and community leaders.

In addition to networking, attendees have access to the replay of part one of ADAPT, which featured prominent conversations with leaders like Jeni Britton Bauer, Brett Kaufman, David Berson, Shawn Holt, and The Edge Sisters.

Supported by:

LEARN MORE & REGISTER TODAY

COLUMBUS.ORG/EVENTS

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Special advertising opportunities coming in Columbus CEO

AUGUST 2021 BEST OF BUSINESS: Columbus CEO will reveal the winners of the popular Best of Business poll, which asks our readers to name their favorite businesses and service providers. This is a great chance to thank your fans for their support.

FOCUS: A formatted section offering advertisers an article and a full page ad.

ous follow-up, but that’s not the case across the board. In the U.S., more than five million people, or nearly 8 percent of those who got a first shot, have failed to receive a second.

The business community can encourage vaccination by giving employees paid time off after a second vaccine, Gastaldo says. People also need vaccination programs that operate on weekends and off-work hours.

First, there wasn’t enough vaccine to go around, now there is too much.

What is going on?

Generally speaking, people most at risk and those with the most resources received the vaccines first. As those people have become fully vaccinated, gaps have appeared among people who find it harder to access healthcare. “We’ve reached an inflection point. It’s a time when people need to get creative” to make sure everyone eligible receives a vaccine, Gastaldo

HEALTH WATCH: An update on vaccinations and the coronavirus pandemic.

Meetings & Events Diverse Leaders in Law Emerging Business CEO LEADERBOARDS • Catering Companies • Orthopedic Group Practices Space Deadline: July 2

For advertising information, call 614-540-8900 today or email advertise@columbusceo.com

Additional facts about the vaccine: You do not have to pay for a COVID vaccine. If you receive a bill, contact the Ohio Attorney General’s office and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Gastaldo says. The vaccine itself is free, but some providers may charge a fee to administer to it, which they bill to third parties. Members are not required to pay that fee.

More than 30 forms of identification are acceptable for the COVID vaccine in Ohio. See them here at https://coronavirus.ohio.gov/static/vaccine/covid19-fact-sheet-forms-of-id.pdf It might be necessary for people to get boosters or annual vaccines, but that’s no different than childhood boosters or the annual flu vaccines, Koletar says. “The thing I love about science is it’s always moving forward. Sometimes ‘I don’t know’ is the most honest answer, but we keep trying. We’re all in this together.”

says. “We have to take vaccines to where people work and live, and to underserved areas and rural counties.”

Roberts says her department has made it a point to reach out to the Somali, Latino and Bhutanese communities, and has taken its message to grocery stores, people’s doorsteps and the business community. With fewer people knocking on the doors to receive a vaccine, health leaders are pivoting resources away from mass vaccination sites to same-day and walk-in programs, looking especially toward retail stores and pharmacies.

There is so much “out there” about the vaccine causing infertility and other problems. What’s the truth?

“There is no truth to that whatsoever. It has no validity,” Roberts says.

“Quite the contrary – not only is it safe in pregnant women, they pass antibodies on to their unborn child.”

Gastaldo calls it “science fiction” and says it should remind people not to trust everything they read online or hear from friends and family. “My job is to separate fiction from reality, with the understanding that people work 9-to 5 and don’t have the bandwidth” to evaluate all the reports they hear each day. “We need to connect them with a reliable source of truth, which is science. The most powerful advocate is when you when hear it from someone you trust,” Roberts says. “It’s much more effective than any ad.”

What about new variants that continue to emerge? Will the current vaccines be effective?

Public health leaders say viruses always mutate, and the next variant won’t come as a complete surprise.

Manufacturers already have tweaked their vaccines in response to variants, and new vaccines against emerging ones are in development, Gastaldo says. For now, “the United States is covered very, very well with existing vaccines.”

The likelihood of additional variants underscores the need for as many people as possible to get vaccinated now rather than later. The longer the virus circulates among unvaccinated people, the more opportunities it has to mutate into variants that might escape vaccine protection.

Laurie Allen is a freelance writer.

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what % of US adults say they read magazines in the last 6 months?

91

This includes 95% of those under 35 and 95% of those under 25.

228.7

MILLION THAT’S AN INCREASE OF 18 MILLION SINCE 2012.

(MRI-Simmons, Fall 2012-2019)

THE MAGAZINE ROAS OF $6.51 WAS DOUBLE THAT OF THE TV ROAS OF $3.23, AND MORE THAN DOUBLE OF THE DIGITAL ROAS OF $2.43.

(NCSolutions 2005-Q12019)

(MRI-Simmons, Fall 2019)

HOW MANY ADULTS AGES 18+ READ MAGAZINES?

when advertisers were asked which medium offers the highest ROAS, which was the highest overall?

THE PRINT MAGAZINE INDUSTRY IS GROWING 139 new print magazine brands with a frequency of quarterly or greater were introduced in 2019 (Samir “Mr. Magazine” ™ Husani Monitor 2020)

PRINT READERS

REMEMBER MORE.

MAGAZINES REACH PREMIUM AUDIENCES IN HIGH-INCOME HOUSEHOLDS*

At a greater rate than newspapers, internet, radio or TV * Household income $250K+ (MRI-Simmons, Fall 2019)

compared to top tech sites MAGAZINES outperform reaching

WOMEN AGES 18+ (MRI Media Fusion)

PRINT STIMULATES EMOTIONS AND DESIRES PRINT IS PREFERRED BY THE MAJORITY (EVEN MILLENNIALS) PRINT READERS EXPERIENCE MORE FOCUSED ATTENTION AND LESS DISTRACTION, WHICH DRIVES SENSORY INVOLVEMENT CONTRIBUTING TO GREATER READER IMPACT, COMPREHENSION AND RECALL. (MPA, Scott McDonald, Ph.D. Nomas Research)

For advertising information call Columbus CEO at 614-540-8900 or email advertise@columbusceo.com.

For your complimentary subscription to Columbus CEO visit columbusceo.com.

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Information provided by

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1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

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Temporary Employment Agencies Ranked by 2020 Columbus region hours billed

Agency

2020 Central Ohio Hours Billed

1 Remedy Intelligent Staffing

2700 E. Dublin-Granville Road, Suite 180, Columbus 43231 614-448-0255 • remedystaff.com

2 Dawson

1114 Dublin Road, Columbus 43215 614-255-1400 dawsoncareers.com

3.1 m 1.9 m

3 Express Employment Professionals

6105 McNaughten Center Columbus 43232 • 405-441-3403 expresspros.com

1.52 m

4 Reliable Staffing Resources

6062 Huntley Road Columbus 43229 614-436-4454 rsrtemps.com

1.5 m

5 Acloche

1800 Watermark Drive, Suite 430 Columbus 43215 614-824-3700 acloche.com

1.3 m

6 Staffmark

2844 Stelzer Road, Columbus 43219 614-475-2250 staffmark.com

890,000

7 Nesco Resource 81 Mill St., Suite 200, Gahanna 43230 614-389-4603 nescoresource.com

826,749

8 Employment Solutions

355 E. Campus View Blvd., Suite 145, Columbus 43235 614-747-6443 employentsolutions.com

553,000

9 ATC Healthcare Services 1430 S. High St., Columbus 43207 614-586-1234 atchealthcare.com

325,547

10 Portfolio Creative

777 Goodale Blvd., Suite 300, Columbus 43212 614-839-4897 portfoliocreative.com

85,329

Temporaries listed with service

CENTRAL OHIO Offices

lowest-highest hourly rate

FTE Employees

4,895

4 28

Logistics, assembly and production, customer service and clerical

Safety awareness, MS Office

3 93

Office and customer service, warehouse/distribution, accounting/finance, marketing/ creative, IT, legal

Interview skills, basic computer skills, business etiquette, resume advice, safety training, anti-discrimination, occupational safety and health administration

6 30

Accounting/finance, IT, engineering, manufacturing, technical, sales, marketing, advertising, HR, legal, light industrial and skilled trades

ExpressLearn online learning program

5 35

Light industrial, warehouse, manufacturing, logistics, plastics, packaging, construction, landscaping

OSHA, company safety training, forklift operator

13 54

Customized workforce solutions including contingent staff, direct hire professionals, executive search, project labor

Interview skills, basic computer, soft skills and safety training

10 18

Admin/clerical, accounting/ finance, call center/customer service, distribution, light industrial, logistics, skilled trades, drivers

Yes

4 31

Light industrial, customer service, administrative, information technology, engineering, accounting and finance, human resources

Third-party training courses, elearning, on-the-job training

2 16

Light industrial, light manufacturing, logistics, skilled trades

Client specific

$12.50-$125 4,879 $15.44-$148.50 26,060 $13.96-$148.35 5,000 $10-$60 15,000 $11.31-$95 30,000 $11-$34 8m 12.80-$115 25,000 $13-$28 209 $12-$85 13,000 $19-$130

052-053_Leaderboard_TempAgency.indd 53

Owner Manager Kevin and Brigitte Mills Brenda Nolan

Chris DeCapua & David DeCapua Jeff Miller

Brian and Kelly Carpenter Natalie Jordan

Rocky Gasbarro Sr. Alio & Rocky Gasbarro Jr.

Ruch Corp.

Kimberly Shoemaker

Staffmark Group Todd Casler

John Tomsich Tim Shea Professional; Doug Schultz - Commercial

Charles and Christine Carter Patrick Brown

1 5

Nurse practitioner, registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, nurses aids, STNS, health Continuing education classes information technology, licensed social worker and other healthcare related positions

1 9

Short/long-term staffing, direct hire recruiting, and SOW-based project work for marketing, design, retail, advertising, and creative roles

The CEO Leaderboard features selected topics each month. The September Leaderboard will feature Columbus region nonprofit organizations. The deadline for inclusion in those surveys is July 12. If you want your central Ohio company to be considered for an upcoming CEO Leaderboard, contact Linda Deitch at ldeitch@columbusceo.com.

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

TRAINING AVAILABLE TO TEMPORARIES

PLACEMENT SPECIALTIES

Resume review, portfolio review, recommendations on trending skills and areas for training for career growth

Ed Humeidan Julie Seese

Catherine Lang-Cline and Kristen Harris Catherine Lang-Cline and Kristen Harris

m = million Source: Survey of temporary employment agencies Information compiled by REBECCA WALTERS

June 2021 l ColumbusCEO

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TELL YOUR STORY

R T C

Custom Publishing

Jo Ev (6 ww rea

SPECIAL SPECIAL ADVERTISING ADVERTISING SECTION SECTION

MORE THAN A MUSEUM

CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

90 YEARS SOLVING

8 TH ANNUAL EASTON FASHION NIGHT

|

STYLE ON POINT

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A BIG PRESENCE GETS BIGGER

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2019 F ALL FASHION TRENDS

SPECIAL COMMUNITY REPORT FOR COLUMBUS MONTHLY READERS

#EnjoyEaston E A S T O NTO W N C E N T E R . C O M

|

SEPTEMBER 2019

|

COLUMBUS MONTHLY

1

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

SPECIAL ADVERTISING SECTION

A Columbus Monthly Suburban Section

BUILDING ON

OHIO’S

ECONOMIC SUCCESS

Transforming Children’s Mental Health Through an Unprecedented Community Commitment

C B R

Parent’s Guide begins on page 21

1

Sh (6 sh ki

Work with our award-winning team at Dispatch Magazines to produce custom sections to reach our affluent, engaged and influential audiences, as well as overruns for spreading your message.

Contact us at custompubs@dispatch.com or 614-461-8723.

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Gl (6 Gl KW

In partnership with JobsOhio September 2020 ColumbusCEO

BIG LOTS BEHAVIORAL HEALTH PAVILION

K W C P

5/20/21 10:54 AM

BUS MONTHLY READERS

S TH PAVILION

al Health Through ity Commitment

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

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

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

RE/MAX TOWN CENTER

CUTLER REAL ESTATE

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

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

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

7679 COOK ROAD - Over 6,000 sq ft custom home on 6+\acres with walk out lower level, incredible landscaping, large pond and much more. DUBLIN SCHOOLS $1,269,000

KELLER WILLIAMS CAPITAL PARTNERS

FAULKNER REALTY GROUP

Glenn Moog (614) 578-2433 GlennMoog@ KW.com

JP Faulkner (614) 419-5757 JP@faulkner realty.com

629 S. GRANT AVE - Incredible German Village opportunity! Stunning, gated unit at Beck Place features high-end finishes, in-unit private elevator, 4 levels of living space and 3 terraces (1 w/downtown skyline view). Open loft-like space extends to large deck on the 2nd floor for grand-scale entertaining. 3rd floor boasts an owner’s suite, walk-in closet, bath and private terrace. Fin. LL. Attached 2-car garage. $950,000

THIS BEAUTIFUL GERMAN VILLAGE BRICK HOME boasts formal living room, casual living room, formal dining room, large Eat-in kitchen with loads of cabinet space, stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. Dine alfresco on the enclosed screen porch, or the first level Terrace. This home is complete with 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, second floor sundeck & 2 car attached garage. There’s truly nothing to do here but move-in.

COLDWELL BANKER REALTY

RE/MAX PREMIER CHOICE

Sheila Straub (614) 324-4330 sheila.straub@ kingthompson.com

Kevin Sullivan (614) 419-2026 kevins@ columbus.rr.com

387 S PARKVIEW AVENUE, BEXLEY - Historical Home in Bexley that has been renovated with the highest quality and beautiful architectural integrity! 4800 Sq Ft, 5BR, 4 full 2 half baths. All new rich hardwood flooring throughout, natural sunlight rooms, a private new garage apartment for an office, guest room or a teenage haven! $2,299,999

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AMAZING HOME IN TARTAN FIELDS - with beautiful views of the 4th Green & Fairway. 6BD, 5 Full BA, 2 Half BA, massive Owners Closet, 2 Story Office/Den, huge Florida Room and Walk out Lower-Level custom Home Theater and Wine Cellar that holds 800 bottles. $2,550,000

5/20/21 10:54 AM

Office Space

By JESS DEYO + Photos by Rob Hardin

Morgan Stanley 15 S. High St. New Albany 43054 morganstanley.com

Charm and class in the wealth management’s new space, which feels like a home.

Meditation encouraged For a moment of peace, staff can climb the ladder to reveal a comfortable retreat.

Sunlit spaces Overhead lights are optional with copious amounts of sunlight pouring in.

Warm welcome Clients are greeted with wide-open spaces and an elegant conference room.

Rich with history The office resides in a historic building and features timeless pieces.

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

Outdoor oasis Two second-level offices are connected with a balcony overlooking a meeting space.

Designed with intention Details were as important as larger pieces for Managing Director Lance White.

A place to gather The space was designed for comfort with an at-home feel.

Executive office Three executive offices showcase the team’s personality, from fully stocked bar carts to fireplaces to family photos.

56 ColumbusCEO l June 2021

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