Crain's Cleveland Business

VOL. 40, NO. 25

JUNE 24 - 30, 2019

Source Lunch

Akron Developer is betting ‘the farm’ on modular construction. Page 24

Alan Miciak, John Carroll University business school Page 27

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

The List The top-paid non-CEOs in the region Page 23

A

TWENTY IN THEIR 20S PROFILES, PAGES 10-21

GOVERNMENT

Cleveland study may lead to end of mechanical meters

By Stan Bullard sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter

Outside the trailer-like portable office that serves as the payment center for the Cleveland Municipal Clerk of Courts at 3040 Quigley Road near the steel mill, Michelle Kennedy had just parted with $20 for a parking ticket. She got it when she ran out of time at a mechanical parking meter in the Warehouse District in downtown Cleveland.

“I’d had just enough change to pay for two hours while I met with my attorney,” Kennedy said on June 13. “I had maxed out the time on the meter and still got caught, and these tickets add up. It’s frustrating.”

Even more annoying, she’d been able to use her smartphone in such a fix on a visit to Modesto, Calif., but not at home in Cleveland.

If things pan out, the city’s mechanical parking meters may be re-

placed with a new system allowing mobile payments for curbside parking. That possibility is put in play by Cleveland City Council authorizing at its June 3 meeting the spending of $300,000 for a strategic plan for the city’s on-street parking system as well as the municipal lots.

Darnell Brown, Mayor Frank Jackson’s chief operating officer, said in an interview that the study will authorize preparation of a strategic plan for the city’s parking needs. It will cover everything from what areas need parking meters to what areas no longer need them, a potential estimate for how much it would cost to move to new electronic technology systemwide and how to go about funding it.

“Our issue is to figure out how to transition to something that optimizes our options to provide parking to the public,” Brown said. “We’re looking to contract with a specialist that will recommend a procurement strategy.”

SPORTS BUSINESS

Banners and signs promoting the MLB All-Star Game are prevalent in downtown Cleveland. The festivities begin with the July 5 opening of Play Ball Park. (David Kordalski)

MLB All-Star festivities will be five-day ‘showcase’ for region

By Kevin Kleps

SEE METERS, PAGE 26

Entire contents © 2019 by Crain Communications Inc.

kkleps@crain.com @KevinKleps

The MLB All-Star festivities will kick off with the July 5 opening of Play Ball Park at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland, and things won’t settle down until well after the final pitch is thrown at Progressive Field on the night of July 9.

That means the Cleveland hospitality market will be at or near capacity for almost a week.

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Photographs by Tim Harrison for Crain’s

s Cleveland marks the 50th anniversary of one of its lowest points — the infamous Cuyahoga River fire — with celebrations of how far the city and its river have come back since then, it's worth looking at what the next five decades might hold. This year’s Twenty in their 20s class, selected by a panel of Crain’s editors, includes active, driven young professionals who will help steer the course of Northeast Ohio into that future.

“We’re all sold out. The city is sold out,” said Teri Agosta, the general manager of the 600-room Hilton Cleveland Downtown.

Don’t get Acosta wrong: Landing an event that is projected to have an economic impact of $65 million is a very good thing for Northeast Ohio.

But for many, it’s not quite the same as the Cavs’ four-year run of consecutive Finals appearances, which resulted in 39 home playoff games — 10 of which were Finals contests.

“That’s a lot of basketball,” Agosta said. “We certainly have felt the ef-

fect of not having the playoffs and not having LeBron in this city.”

According to data from STR, a global data and analytics firm that has an office in Lakewood, the year-overyear revenue for the 7,102-room Cleveland-Independence hotel market dipped 2.7% in the first five months of 2019. In April and May, when fans and businesses had gotten accustomed to James’ Cavs progressing through the postseason, the respective year-over-year revenue drops are even more slight: 1.5% and 1.7%.

SEE ALL-STAR, PAGE 26

6/21/19 12:53 PM

CONTENT

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TECH MATTERS SUSTAINABILITY SOLUTIONS

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hen BrownFlynn, a Cleveland-based corporate sustainability and governance consulting firm, formed in 1996, sustainability was generally viewed as a philanthropic consideration, its relevance not necessarily linked to the core functions of business, partner Cora Lee Mooney said.

“In 1996, companies contributed to sustainability by writing a check to a nonprofit, and it was the nonprofit’s responsibility to allocate the funds appropriately,” she said.

Corporate sustainability has evolved into a more comprehensive assessment of business resilience and an organization’s role within global society, local sustainability-focused business leaders say.

Organizations such as BrownFlynn, which was acquired in 2018 by ERM, are integrating innovative technology solutions to help drive corporate sustainability strategies — which can range from reducing a company’s environmental footprint to building an inclusive, diverse and more resilient workforce.

In February, ERM partnered with Datamaran, a software platform, to offer clients a combination of Datamaran’s AI technology with ERM’s advisory services to help companies prioritize their ESG, or environmental, social and governance initiatives.

The solution analyzes in real time millions of data points from global regulations, news, corporate reports and social media. The combination of the tool’s data capture and ERM’s advisory services helps companies develop a comprehensive understanding of their ESG priorities and build a more effective data-driven corporate sustainability strategy.

“The solution can help companies gain an edge in the

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marketplace,” Mooney said.

Similarly, Cleveland-based Dakota Software over the past 25 years has been offering a full suite of products designed to help companies achieve environmental, health and safety compliance, or EHS, as well as sustainability management. EHS compliance and sustainability performance are key to corporate responsibility, the company says.

“There are many different considerations to sustainability targets, and data can come from many different facilities,” said Julianne Wayton, Dakota Software director of human resources. “Our customers benefit by collecting their data in one system, under the same categories, using the same criteria. This makes it easier for the whole company to work toward the same goals.”

Similarly, Bridgestone views sustainability within a broad context and as a core to its business and future success as a company, said Jim DeMouy, vice president of environment, health, safety and sustainability at Bridgestone Americas. Internally, Bridgestone defines sustainability by focusing on mobility, people, environment and management. As part of its strategy to contribute to a healthier environment, Bridgestone Corp.’s goal is to reduce carbon emissions from its products’ life cycle.

“Part of the forward-looking tire development at Bridgestone includes the creation of new tire technologies aimed at significantly reducing the environmental impact of the more than 3.5 million heavyduty Class 8 long-haul tractor trailer trucks on the nation’s roads,” which could save 30 million metric tons of annual CO2 emissions, DeMouy said. “These achievements are closely aligned with Bridgestone Corp.’s goal to produce best-in-class products that contribute to reducing global CO2 emissions by 50% or greater by the year 2050.”

A MOVEMENT TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY

ver the course of the last decade of its employee engagement research, local human resource organization ERC has found that top-performing employees consistently rank their organization’s sustainability practices lower among 19 job satisfaction attributes, said ERC president Kelly Keefe. But trends in sustainability awareness indicate that is changing.

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“Local and national businesses with which we work are increasingly more aware of and proactive about instituting and enforcing sustainability policies, not just for PR or because it’s more economical, but because they know it’s simply the right thing to do for the environment ,” said Keefe, who noted that being “footprintlight” is a part of ERC’s workplace culture.

enita McGowan has more than a decade of experience in advancing sustainability for a variety of entities, including local schools and government. In her current role as sustainability manager for Eaton Corp., McGowan helps oversee the global power management company’s environmental stewardship, social responsibility and governance strategy.

With 100,000 employees and a presence McGowan in 175 countries, the company relies on its sustainability leadership, including McGowan, to help drive sustainability outcomes through setting targets and transparent reporting. She summarizes some of the ways she is helping to steer those goals.

What are your key responsibilities as sustainability manager? I play a key role in facilitating our sustainability programs, specifically advancing our Zero Waste to Landfill program, improving our water stewardship strategy and reporting progress to our external stakeholders through our sustainability report and other means. I also focus on employee engagement and embedding sustainability knowledge and activating employees across the enterprise.

What are some of the ways in which Eaton is measuring progress in these areas? We are committed to developing energy-efficient and innovative products and solutions. For example, last year, Eaton implemented a microgrid in Africa to help a community reduce its energy costs and optimize renewable energy. We are also committed to protecting the health and safety of our employees, customers and communities. We work to reduce our carbon footprint every year. In 2018, we had 148 of our manufacturing sites, or about 50%, achieve zero waste to landfill. Our goal is to reach 100% by 2030. We recently announced a goal to reduce our carbon footprint by 20% between 2015 and 2025 through operational strategies, energy efficiency and renewable energy. We also are a partner in the MIT Sustainability and Health Initiative for NetPositive Enterprise (SHINE), which means we can better calculate the “hand print,” or positive impact of our products.

Why does corporate sustainability matter? I think corporate sustainability is important because we are developing innovative products that help solve pressing issues in society, including clean energy access, the transition to renewable energy, clean water and the future of transportation. We have an opportunity to address the challenges of climate change and to innovate solutions for the transition to a low-carbon economy.

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United Way hits a ‘pivot point’ on campaigns

By Lydia Coutré lcoutre@crain.com @LydiaCoutre

Just three years ago, the United Way of Greater Cleveland did virtually no principal giving fundraising.

This year, it has forecasted roughly $4.8 million in that bucket of revenue for the organization that has historically relied solely on the money raised in its annual workplace campaign.

These principal giving dollars will fund a new venture launched this month at the United Way: The Impact Institute, which was created to identify and grow solutions to address the root causes of poverty. The institute will convene stakeholders to work together on this.

“The only way that you can get to the root cause issues and begin to solve them is if you do it together,” said Augie Napoli, president and CEO of the United Way of Greater Cleveland.

“There is not enough money in any one of these organizations or talent in any one of these organizations or will in any one of these organizations to do it alone. These problems are deeply rooted, decades old.”

The institute and principal giving funds are just a piece of the 106-yearold organization’s new approach to tackling poverty. In 2017, Napoli unveiled a new strategic plan that aimed to diversify its revenue sources and rethink how it would distribute funds. Two years into that three-year plan, the United Way has reached what Napoli calls a “pivot point.”

It has successfully raised principal dollars, launched the Impact Institute, will soon begin a new community campaign and next year, will fundamentally change how it distributes funds.

With fewer companies and people in Northeast Ohio than there were 15 years ago, Napoli said, continuing to only ask folks for support in the workplace was no longer enough.

“So rather than watch our demise, we said, ‘Well, gosh, the way to handle this is go to where the people are,’ ” Napoli said.

The workplace campaign is not going away — “We invented the workplace campaign,” Napoli said — but the organization is surrounding that traditional five-month campaign with a year-round community campaign.

The community campaign, which just began and is underway now, and the annual workplace campaign, which will launch after Labor Day as usual, will fund the United Way’s community hub for basic needs. These dollars will address the symptoms of poverty, such as a child struggling with the effects of lead poisoning, while the Impact Institute will focus on the root causes, such as stable, safe housing.

Napoli visualizes it like a tree.

“The community hub for basic needs is dealing with the symptoms, or what you see above the ground, and the Impact Institute is working on those issues that are root causes underneath,” he explained.

Board chair Paul Dolan said it’s very important that the United Way continue to fund agencies addressing immediate needs as it has done historically.

“But by pivoting and adding a focus on addressing root causes, I think we’re headed in the right direction, because ultimately we don’t solve a problem until we get to its root causes,” he said.

The United Way has previously distributed its funds to organizations working in 13 areas of focus. Realizing that they weren’t making as signifi-

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cant of an impact as they wanted, the organization has eliminated five of those focus areas: managing chronic health conditions, providing medication assistance, improving access to transportation, educating people on how to manage money and helping young readers succeed. It will instead focus on the remaining eight: guiding early learners, guiding kids outside of the classroom, creating career opportunities, empowering adults through education, stopping violence before it starts, treating substance use and mental health issues, feeding people in need and providing safe housing.

“This is the thing about United Way, is that we’ve been tentative and hesitant to say that we can’t keep spreading peanut butter across the system,” Napoli said. “That’s not the

role and responsibility of the United Way. That’s the public sector, but that’s not the United Way.” Rather than continue to spread funds broadly across the delivery ecosystem, beginning in 2020, the United Way will solely fund agencies that are either large enough to offer comprehensive wraparound services or are single-service agencies willing to collaborate with others to create a virtual comprehensive wraparound service.

Cecil Lipscomb, executive director of the United Black Fund and a visiting board member of the United Way, said that in some cases funding may be different.

“In other cases, that does mean that funding may decline,” he said, “But then there’s new opportunities, in my opinion, for entities to evolve and ap-

proach how we go about our work in terms of improving Cleveland.”

The United Way also wants to measure the real impact of its dollars and so is bringing in expertise to perform a serious evaluation of outcomes over time.

As part of the new strategy, United Way will continue to invest in the community and remain on par with $31 million invested this year, but it will focus on addressing both immediate needs and long-term solutions to break the cycle of poverty.

“My heart breaks, our heart breaks that you have to do this, but honestly, we have to do this if we’re going to remain vital to the community,” Napoli said. “Because at the end of the day — this is a controversial statement — we don’t exist to support the delivery sys-

tem. We exist to support the person who’s living under the thumb of poverty and (to) continue to retain the trust of the public that gives us the money to support the person in need.”

He emphasized that he has “all the respect in the world” for the region’s human-service delivery system, and losing funds is not a statement by the United Way on the efficacy or quality of services. It is simply a sign that the organization must be “laser-focused” on addressing needs.

“There isn’t anyone I speak to, when you talk to them on an individual basis, that doesn’t know we have to do this,” Napoli said. “You have to cross the bridge with it. Once you do, and you have to trust that on the other side, we’re going to be a stronger organization for it.”

FOR SUPPORTING ARTISTIC & EDUCATIONAL PROGRAMS AT AMERICA’S FIRST REGIONAL THEATRE Cleveland Play House thanks its corporate partners for their generous support during our 2018-19 season. Their contributions enable us to serve more than 100,000 patrons annually, as well as nearly 35,000 students with education programs like CARE (Compassionate Arts Remaking Education), the Covia Student Matinee field trip program, and the KeyBank Classroom Matinee touring program.

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Nidec Industrial is building facility in Brooklyn Heights

By Stan Bullard sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter

Nidec Industrial Solutions, a unit of the Japanese-based conglomerate Nidec Corp. that focuses on motor applications, has started a $10 million building project at Granger Road and Tuxedo Avenue in Brooklyn Heights that will be visible from I-480.

Nidec Industrial, which provides automation solutions for industrial and related concerns, is having Streetsboro-based Geis Construction build a 68,000-square-foot structure that will allow it to combine a total of 130 staffers from three locations in one.

Tom Aloor, executive vice president of Nidec Industrial Solutions – Americas, said, “It is a very important moment for Nidec Industrial Solutions. I am very glad to see our new headquarters taking shape and shortly we will be able to work all together in these new facilities, leveraging our expertise. I strongly believe in the high potential of this significant investment. I am sure that it will allow us to create a cohesive team and a wider network, able to enhance and increase our presence in the USA.” The multiple locations stem from acquisitions by Nidec. Two of the existing locations are in Independence and came from the 2012 purchase of Avtron Industrial Automation LLC. Nidec’s Valley View location resulted from its 2017 acquisition of the motors, drive and battery power generation operations of Emerson Electronics Co. Aloor said the company has already restructured the staffs to suit its product lines but sought to end the “shuffling of people and material” the trio of facilities required.

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merly owned by Hemingway at Tuxedo LLC, an investor group formed by real estate developers Fred and Greg Geis and Jim Doyle, was suitable for a building meeting Nidec’s needs, Caplan said. Nidec, he added, was not required to use Geis Construction, which is led by Greg Geis, to buy the site, but separately chose Geis to build there.

Nidec paid Hemingway at Tuxedo $1.5 million April 30 for the site, which was half of a 20-acre site that Hemingway bought in 2011 for $475,000, according to Cuyahoga County land records. The remaining 10-acre site will be donated to the village for a park.

Nidec primarily serves North and South America from its Northeast Ohio operations. It produces electrical and electronic control systems for industrial users such as steel mills, paper mills, mining equipment and windmills. Its largest recent project has been providing controls for a 315-ton crane for maritime use, Aloor said, and its systems also go into smaller cranes that move shipping containers.

Nidec also produces encoders that are capable of operating in harsh environments and often go into its industrial automation systems.

The village of Brooklyn Heights provided a property tax abatement and income tax incentive for Nidec, but their specifics are not included in legislation the Village Council adopted earlier this year. Aloor called the incentives “very helpful” for putting together the project.

Mayor Mike Procuk said in a Nidec news release that the project will make the village “part of the world market.” He did not return two calls from Crain’s Cleveland Business by 4 p.m. last Thursday, June 20.

Browns suing Hard Beverages for not paying sponsorship fee

By Jay Miller jmiller@crain.com @millerjh

FOR PRESTIGE AND ELEGANCE,​

The new building will consist of three levels, each with its own loading dock, as well as two 20-ton bridge cranes that will use Nidec’s own controllers. The new plant will feature cutting-edge production lines for encoders and a dedicated area for the assembly and tests of drives its system uses.

The operation will be able to work with centers of excellence for Nidec located in Italy, Aloor added.

Simon Caplan, a principal at Cushman & Wakefield Cresco, an Independence real estate brokerage, said in a June 19 phone interview that the project is another indication of a shortage of industrial-zoned land in Northeast Ohio, especially within a 5-mile radius of Nidec’s current headquarters on Pleasant Valley Road. Caplan said he and Paul DiVincenza, a Cresco vice president, found existing buildings did not fit the company’s requirement for ceiling heights for its crane operation, among other factors.

Aloor said the company searched within a 5-mile radius to retain the expertise of its current employees.

The new facility will be about the same size as the existing three properties combined, but will make for more efficient operations, he said, such as having a single warehouse rather than two.

Nidec also gained enough land with the new operation that it will be able to increase it to 100,000 square feet in size, Aloor said. The new building, which should be completed in 2021, will allow the company to expand production of equipment used in windmills. The new facility will also allow it to start producing battery energy storage systems in the U.S. that it already makes in Europe.

The 10-acre site for the project, for-

The Cleveland Browns have taken to court a beverage company whose brand was on display last year at the team’s games at FirstEnergy Stadium and at its training facility for nonpayment of a sponsorship fee of more than half-a-million dollars.

Earlier this month, the team filed suit in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas to enforce an arbitration award it won against Hard Beverages Inc., a Brooklyn, N.Y., soft drink firm for failing to pay a $525,000 fee for the first year of a five-year sponsorship of the team and its events.

The lawsuit and arbitration decision offer a rare glimpse into how sports teams earn money through sponsorships. The 32 NFL teams earned $1.39 billion — an average of $43.4 million per team — for the 2018-2019 season, up 5.1% from a year earlier, according to a study by IEG, a Chicago consultancy that advises firms on sponsorships.

In 2018, the Browns and Hard Beverage signed a five-year sponsorship agreement that would pay the football team nearly $2.8 million over five years.

The annual fee started at $525,000 and was designed to rise by 3% a year.

According to the sponsorship agreement, the Hard Beverages logo would be displayed in a variety of situations, including being on the backdrop used during player or coach interviews on the practice fields or other locations, but not in the press room, at the team’s Berea training facility from January to August of each year of the agreement. Its products would be displayed on-set during team-sponsored television broadcasts and its noncaffeinated beverages would also be available for sale within the stadium.

On its website, Hard describes its carbonated products as caffeinated energy drinks and as mixers for cocktails, made without artificial coloring or flavors, corn syrup or artificial sweeteners. They come in six varieties: club soda, tonic water, ginger, citron, grape and something called “original.”

The arbitrator, retired Cuyahoga County Common Pleas judge Richard Markus, awarded the team $525,000 plus interest, a total of $587,050.25. He said Hard Beverages failed to provide “a legally cognizable defense to the (Browns’) claim for (Hard Beverages’) breach” of a sponsorship agreement made on May 11, 2018. Markus’ opinion cited a lack of any corroboration to allegations made in unsworn statements by two

Hard Beverage executives, Ronald Kliot and Gregory Posella, of representations made by Browns employees, presumably different than the signed sponsorship agreement.

A Browns spokesman declined to comment on the pending litigation.

No executive from Hard Beverages responded to emailed or telephone messages seeking comment.

The Hard Beverage deal is modest by sports sponsorship standards. In 2013, the Browns sold naming rights to what was then Cleveland Browns Stadium to FirstEnergy Corp. Though the value of the deal was not disclosed publicly, the Akron Beacon Journal reported at the time that the Akron-based electric utility would pay $102 million, or $6 million a year for 17 years.

A 2018 article in Beverage Industry magazine noted that organic and other emerging beverages have turned to sports sponsorships as they want to associate with sports as athletes discuss their health and diet regimes.

Sponsorships aren’t just for professional sports teams. In 2013, the same year the Browns sold naming rights to their stadium, the Brunswick City School District in Medina County sold the naming rights to its stadium for 10 years for $750,000. It is now Brunswick Auto Mart Stadium.

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Slow going for Ohio’s green docs, pot clinics

By Jeremy Nobile jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile

For Ohio Marijuana Card (OMC), the Buckeye State is ground zero for building a business providing patients access to medical marijuana.

The company — which is headquartered in Westlake under its Ohio Medical Alliance LLC — wants to claim a sizable chunk of market share in the clinical side of the marijuana business in Ohio.

And it seemingly already has.

OMC opened its first clinic in Mayfield Heights last May, following that with locations in Columbus and Sharonville, north of Cincinnati. It has 10 offices in the state today.

OMC president Connor Shore said the clinic has seen 17,000 patients in the past year. Providing each of those received a recommendation, that would amount to about 40% of the 42,372 recommendations made as of May 31. Shore wouldn’t discuss details of OMC’s financials, but with prices starting at $280 for an initial consultation for non-veterans, OMC may have generated revenue of about $4.7 million in its first year.

Shore hopes to see 20,000 to 25,000 patients in the OMC network in Ohio alone as the industry opens up.

The company is looking to branch into other states with medical programs coming online, taking a similar approach to the one it used in Ohio by building an online presence early on to draw patient interest. On his radar are Missouri, Virginia, Indianapolis,

West Virginia, Arkansas and Georgia.

“We’re not interested in entering existing markets,” Shore said. “It’s hard to establish yourself if you’re not already there.”

After rules establishing a medical marijuana program in Ohio were signed into law in 2016, clinics for marijuana cards became the first businesses tied to the supply chain to pop up. That was due in part to the relatively low barriers to entry.

Licensed doctors don’t pay anything to get a certificate to recommend (CTR) marijuana, and they only need to take a couple hours of educational courses to qualify. At least 512 physicians in Ohio have a CTR today.

Some are working independently, such as Dr. Richard Silver of Silver Lake Wellness Center in Newbury, who suggested there won’t be as much opportunity for physicians like him to recommend marijuana after federal prohibition eventually comes down and large hospital systems allow their doctors to participate.

In the meantime, doctors affiliated with the likes of the Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals are sending patients interested in medical marijuana to physicians like him — where evaluations for a marijuana card start at $249 — or Dr. Alok Bhaiji, who was recruited by Ohio Green Team (OGT), a clinic brand that recently opened an office in Middleburg Heights.

OGT offers Bhaiji back-office support in exchange for a cut of the proceeds.

It’s another stream of income for Bhaiji, yet, nothing he expressly pursued to make money. Bhaijia said he just wants to offer patients some-

Medical marijuana: By the numbers Total patient recommendations: 42,372 Registered patients: 35,162 Unique patients who have purchased medical marijuana: 20,074 Most common qualifying conditions: chronic pain (25,834); PTSD (6,193); fibromyalgia (4,515)* Doctors with CTRs: 512 Current marijuana product sales: $10.6 million; 76,585 total receipts Source: Ohio Medical Marijuana Control Program. Patient data as of May 31, 2019.

Sales data as of June 16, 2019. *Some patients have more than one qualifying condition.

thing besides opioids, noting he works on staff at hospitals in Elyria and Parma, areas in the heart of the opioid epidemic.

“I’m seeing the overdoses directly,” Bhaiji said. “I’m taking care of these people. And I want to give them an opportunity to slowly get off opioids. If we can help alleviate the need for more pain meds, I’m all for it.”

Marijuana clinic executives and doctors typically report similar motivations.

Many have personal connections to opioid abuse among their friends or families, including OGT co-founder and CEO Brandon Durbin, a Dayton native who also runs Akava, a software development and consulting business in San Francisco. He said he wants to “kick the opioid crisis in its ass.”

But costs and service naturally vary.

Initial consultations at OGT start at $199. Like OMC and Silver Lake Wellness, that generally covers followup appointments for a year, at which time a patient Shore must have their card renewed with a fresh evaluation.

Nevada-based HyTek Medical advertises $99 for a consultation in Ohio, but that seemingly does not include followups, and might include other undisclosed costs, according to complaints made with the Better Business Bureau. HyTek has a BBB grade of D-. A representative of HyTek did not respond to Crain’s inquiries about its business model.

OMC and OGT have BBB grades of A-. Omni Medical Services has a C-.

The first OGT office opened in Columbus last August. Durbin said he intended from the start to make it a tech-enabled business. The company already would be capable of providing telemedicine services and even automated processing of marijuana cards, which are common features in California.

But that technology simply can’t be used in Ohio right now as laws require in-person consultations.

“From a business standpoint, because I moved to California and saw how the program here evolved, I thought we’d have a competitive advantage to predict the future,” Durbin said, describing Ohio’s regulations as comparatively strict.

In the meantime, OGT is setting up clinics in calculated areas throughout the state. The Cleveland location that opened this month is its second.

The opening’s timing was based on how long it took for the Columbus office to earn a profit, which is being reinvested in the expansion. The Columbus office has seen about 1,500 patients so far, Durbin said.

Several factors could make the clinic side of the marijuana business more or less lucrative, from lower prices — it’s going for an average of $420 an ounce today — to more dispensaries coming online to improve access. An expansion of qualifying conditions to include anxiety and autism could greatly increase the number of eligible patients. Also, more cultivators opening should drive down prices, while more processors getting to work (there are only four operating today) will stock retailers with items like edibles, vaping oils and topical creams.

“In hindsight, we opened about seven months too early,” Durbin said.

“But you take the good with the bad.

It helped us build an awesome brand and a good following.”

Although sales have been generally muted so far because of the industry’s slow materialization, companies like OMC and OGT are optimistic they can claim a big slice of the clinical market here, and maybe use Ohio as a platform to grow their brands elsewhere.

“We see a lot of potential for continued growth assuming states get it right, people with licenses get doors open and prices (for products) come down,” Shore said.

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Oberlin verdict could have extensive impact

By Rachel Abbey McCafferty rmccafferty@crain.com @ramccafferty

Earlier this month, a jury found Oberlin College guilty of libel and other charges rooted in a student protest.

If the verdict stands, its impact could spread far beyond Oberlin.

The case started back in 2016, when an Oberlin student, who is black, was accused of shoplifting from Gibson’s Bakery. An altercation involving the student and an employee followed. Students protested the bakery, alleging a pattern of racist behavior, and the college briefly stopped using the bakery as a vendor.

Although the student, along with other students involved in the incident, ultimately took a plea, the bakery filed a case against the college and its vice president and dean of students in November 2017, alleging libel and interference with business, as well as emotional distress.

In June, a jury in Lorain County awarded the defendants, Gibson’s Bakery and members of the Gibson family, more than $44 million in punitive and compensatory damages, the Chronicle-Telegram reported.

The college declined to comment for this story beyond statements available on its website.

“The students may have been right or they may have been wrong about the details surrounding the incident, but demonstrating is their constitutional right,” read a statement posted on June 19 from President Carmen Twillie Ambar. “As always, the college insisted that the demonstrations be supervised, to protect all sides and the entire community from violence and property damage. While we deeply value the jury’s work, we do not believe that case law supports the jury’s determination that Oberlin should be held liable for the speech and actions of its students. To do so is to erode a fundamental constitutional right.”

In an FAQ, the college noted the judicial process was still ongoing. The college plans to consider all of its options going forward, and filing for an appeal could be among those options.

Mark Goodman, professor and Knight Chair in Scholastic Journalism at Kent State University, sees a lot of potential changes as this case moves toward its final outcome.

First, even if the verdict stands, the amount of the damages is likely to change, Goodman said, adding that he believes the compensatory damages are far higher than the limits set in Ohio, and punitive damages are restricted to twice the amount of the compensatory.

Secondly, he said he believes there are “plausible grounds” for reversal on appeal. If the college is held accountable for statements made by students or faculty, it would be a “dramatic change” for private colleges, Goodman said.

If the case’s verdict stands as is, it could lead to some administrators, faculty and staff being afraid to offer students guidance, said Brandon Szuminsky, assistant professor of journalism at Baldwin Wallace University, speaking generally and not specifically of plans at his school.

Oberlin had argued that its involvement was in the interest of maintaining order and student safety, and now the college is being held culpable, he said. If colleges and universities try to shut down protests, they could be found to be violating free speech, Szuminsky said. This

P007_CL_20190624.indd 7

case found that if they try to guide and oversee those protests, they could be liable for lawsuits. If administrators “throw their hands up and let students run wild,” they’re probably also liable for lawsuits, Szuminsky said, and they’re not doing the job of educators.

“It really puts colleges in a really tough position, I think,” he said.

Robert W. Pool, Ashland University’s vice president for student affairs and Title IX coordinator, said he thinks the Oberlin case could have a “chilling effect” on policies around freedom of speech. The size of the damages the jury awarded the Gibsons in this case could lead colleges and universities to tighten their policies around student protests, lest they, too, get hit with an expensive

“The students may have been right or they may have been wrong about the details surrounding the incident, but demonstrating is their constitutional right.”

— Oberlin president Carmen Twillie Ambar, in a statement

lawsuit.

Ashland president Carlos Campo said he doesn’t expect this case to have an immediate impact at his school, which adopted new free-

speech principles in 2017, but it will “heighten” the senses of administrators. He wants the school to stand beside students, but this case will serve as a reminder to pause and get the facts before joining in or supporting a protest.

Universities have a variety of responsibilities to balance, said Melody Scott, Malone University’s dean of students. At Malone, the school wants to have policies to support open dialogue, she said, but it also recognizes that its decisions can impact the local community and the school’s reputation.

The university has been discussing the idea of creating a committee to draft guidelines and policies as issues arise. As the political climate has heightened conversations about

freedom of speech, there needs to be an ongoing, dynamic conversation, Scott said.

For Hiram College, the Oberlin case serves as a reminder of the work it needs to continue to do. The college has to offer students space and opportunities to discuss issues, said Liz Okuma, vice president and dean of students. And it needs to teach them constructive ways to have those discussions.

Currently, Hiram asks students to fill out a form before any type of gathering, including a protest, to alert the college of their plans.

The college isn’t interested in silencing the students, but in working with them, said Ed Frato-Sweeney, director of residential and citizenship education.

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Opinion From the Editor

Oberlin case teaches colleges a vital lesson

Editorial

Mobility works Academic research, anecdotes and common sense tell us that Northeast Ohio suffers from a workforce mismatch, with a lack of reliable transportation standing in the way of many people getting and keeping jobs.

This is a difficult problem, but it’s fixable, and we’re encouraged that there’s both increased recognition of the challenge and a willingness to get creative to find answers.

A June 17 article by Crain’s manufacturing reporter Rachel Abbey McCafferty examined the extent to which transportation has become a key issue in companies’ difficulties in finding reliable workers. Brianna Schultz, vice president of workforce development at Manufacturing Works, went as far as to say she considers transportation the “biggest barrier” to employment, in part because transportation problems can make “otherwise reliable people look unreliable.” She noted, for instance, a classic geographic mismatch: While many Northeast Ohio manufacturing jobs are in suburbs such as Euclid and Solon, a good number of available workers live in the city center, rely on public transportation and don’t have easy access to those jobs.

For those who take a bus, underfunding of public transit and subsequent service cuts by the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority have created some long commutes — two hours, in the case of one worker at a Solon company cited by Bethia Burke, vice president of the Fund for Our Economic Future.

That creates a strong disincentive for people to pursue those jobs, limiting employers’ candidate pool. For people who do manage to land a position, it creates huge pressure to be on time, or to find the time to upgrade skills.

To some extent, this validates the meaning of place. Not long ago, workforce experts thought we were approaching a point where location no longer mattered and people could work from virtually anywhere. That’s true in some fields but not others, and it turns out people like being close to things.

A new Brookings Institution report looked at the national

trend of jobs gravitating to urban cores and made a striking finding with respect to Cleveland. Crain’s government reporter Jay Miller wrote that while the number of jobs in the Cleveland area declined a bit from 2004 to 2015, “the location of those jobs has become more concentrated.” The report found job density here “increased by 30% from 2004 to 2015, from 8,924 jobs per square mile to 11,578 jobs per square mile.” That increase in density was due largely to the growth of jobs in health care and technology, stretching from Midtown Corridor to University Circle.

Chad Shearer, lead author of the report, offered this advice: “City and regional leaders can build stronger, more inclusive economies by investing in policies that promote more concentrated development patterns that better meet the needs of businesses and workers.”

Stronger funding of public transit is a key component to this, too. The state of Ohio has long been a laggard in this area, though under Gov. Mike DeWine, it has begun to increase investments for the state’s 61 urban and rural transit systems.

This is a good start, but transit has been underfunded for so long that it will take a sustained effort to bring Ohio into parity with more forward-looking states. We encourage lawmakers to see public transit as a key economic development asset and provide more funding for it in future budgets.

On a smaller scale, we’re eager to see what comes out of a $1 million effort from the Fund called the Paradox Prize, which is designed to encourage solutions to what Burke calls the “mobility paradox.” That paradox: “No car, no job. No job, no car.”

The Fund is soliciting ideas for urban, suburban and rural environments. Applicants will submit a 300-word summary of the transportation challenge they’re trying to address, a proposed solution and potential partners. A lot of you are creative thinkers on these subjects. Take the Fund up on its challenge.

Publisher and Editor: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com)

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

CLEVELAND BUSINESS P008_CL_20190624.indd 8

Managing Editor:

Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)

Contact Crain’s:

216-522-1383

Read Crain’s online: crainscleveland.com

No walls separate Oberlin College from the city it inhabits.

The college and the city of Oberlin both were born in 1833 and grew up together. Tappan Square serves as a gateway of sorts between the two.

Across from the square, small businesses line West College Street, wrapping south around Main Street. You can find yarn at the Ben Franklin, vintage clothing at Ratsy’s Store, handyman advice at Watson Hardware, and the best burgers (and tater tots) in town at The Feve.

I worked in Oberlin for a short time before coming to Crain’s, and I explored its many charms, quirks and history. Don’t get me started on the delicious pizza at Lorenzo’s.

Gibson’s Bakery was another of my occasional lunchtime stops. Situated in the shadows of the town square, Gibson’s has served up its delicious butter cookies, canElizabeth McIntyre dies and other sweets since 1885.

As Crain’s reporter Rachel Abbey McCafferty explains in this week’s issue, the venerable bake shop and convenience store made national headlines recently when a jury ordered Oberlin College to pay Gibson’s $44 million for defamation, infliction of emotional distress and intentional interference of business relationships. The amount of the judgment is likely to be reduced, and rightfully so, based on Ohio legal requirements.

The lasting effects of the case, however, should reverberate among colleges and universities for years to come.

According to court documents and reports in the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram, here’s what happened: In November 2016, an Oberlin undergraduate student, who is black, attempted to shoplift wine at Gibson’s and was pursued by clerk Allyn Gibson, the white great-grandson of the store’s founder. Police were called and found the student and two friends punching and kicking Gibson in Tappan Square. The three undergrads were charged and later pleaded guilty to misdemeanors.

Oberlin students then began days of protest against Gibson’s, joined by college administrators, demanding a boycott of the store. Oberlin’s dean of students and other college representatives bought pizza, used student funds to purchase gloves for the protesters, and helped pass out fliers, printed on college equipment, stating: “This is a RACIST establishment with a LONG ACCOUNT of RACIAL PROFILING and DISCRIMINATION.” Within weeks, Oberlin College temporarily suspended its purchase of baked goods from Gibson’s. Gibson’s then sued.

The case has been cast in many circles as an attack on free speech. As a journalist, I’m always the first to defend free speech, but facts matter. A student spouting an opinion is different than an organization with community standing and a billion-dollar endowment doing so. College administrators actively engaged in defaming Gibson’s Bakery and ended a long-standing contract with Gibson’s based on students’ refusal to eat its baked goods.

Higher education institutions need to provide students the space to exercise their rights to free speech and ensure safety, as Oberlin College argued in its defense. And yes, school administrators can be politically active on their own time. It crosses the line, though, when the administrators are actively protesting in their official capacity.

The smart educators at Oberlin got their advanced degrees by doing research, defending a thesis and backing up theory with logic and fact. They got the institution into legal trouble by doing none of that and instead by rushing to judgment.

I agree with Ashland University President Carlos Campo, who talked to McCafferty for her article in this week’s issue. This case should serve as a reminder for administrators to get the facts before carrying a protest sign.

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited. Send letters to Crain’s Cleveland Business, 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113, or by emailing ClevEdit@crain.com. Please include your complete name and city from which you are writing, and a telephone number for fact-checking purposes.

Sound off: Send a Personal View for the opinion page to emcintyre@crain.com.

Please include a telephone number for verification purposes.

6/21/19 12:56 PM

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Prestigious Westlake Location! » Industrial Zoning with Many Allowable Conditional Uses » Prestigious High Visible Gateway Location » Can Accommodate up to 100,000 SF Building » $450,000 » $62,327/Acre Property Features

Letters to the Editor GCP wrong to oppose bag ban I’ve always admired the great work the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP) does for Cleveland and the wider region. And so it was disappointing to read that GCP opposed Cuyahoga County’s wise choice to enact a single-use plastic bag ban.

My team and I here at Market Garden Brewery and our Ohio City restaurants have spent the last several years moving away from all possible single-use plastics across our businesses. We at first assumed this would add additional expense to our operations. We found the opposite was true, and the sustainable paper-based products were so well-received by our team and guests alike that they proved to be well worth the effort.

There is a massive and growing garbage pile of evidence clearly showing the harm that plastics and microplastics unleash across our planet and right here in our own waterways, lake, soils and drinking water. The GCP’s opposition to the plastic bag ban is on the wrong side of history and actively harms the health and well-being of our children and their children to come. I do hope the GCP will reconsider.

Let’s choose to be good ancestors rather than think only in terms of short-term profits.

Sam McNulty Cleveland

Keeping nuclear plants makes sense In response to Crain’s June 10 editorial calling House Bill 6 “bad policy,” I see on the Ohio Public Utilities Commission website that nuclear power is 15% of the total electricity production in Ohio. The website also tells me that nuclear power is 80%plus of all carbon-combustion-free electricity. The state Legislature has a mandate for 12.5% renewable electrical production from wind and solar sources.

It makes no sense to replace one proven, paid-for, existing clean electricity generation method for electricity sources that depend on the weather and daylight cycles, are by their very nature variable and require gas backup when they cannot produce the electricity needed.

Seems like we would be swapping out steady, reliable production for significantly less reliable production that still needs fossil fuel backup. I don’t know if you’ve driven around western Ohio, but I have, and I’ve seen a lot of signs opposing wind turbines. I’m not saying nuclear only and no to wind and solar; I’m saying keep the proven nuclear plants open and producing baseload electricity and let wind and solar develop on their own.

Scott Medwid Oberlin

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Personal View

Figuring out Ohio’s workforce puzzle is critical

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Therefore, the key to remaining competitive — for Ohio, its businesses and its workers — is building adaptability into the fabric of our education and workforce preparation programs.

Tackling this challenge head-on is the mission Beacon Marshall Ad 3-4-Lot 2R.indd 1 of Ohio Excels, a nonprofit coalition of Ohio Gray business leaders that brings together those doing the hiring and those doing the educating to equip the students and citizens of our state with the skills they need to succeed in today’s job market. We recognize that Ohio’s economic strength rests PRACTICE AREAS on the twin pillars of businesses that are succeeding and people who Real Estate are working, and what they both need to thrive. They need an education system and workforce training programs that prepare all OhioHotel & Hospitality ans with the knowledge and skills to succeed and adapt to the evBusiness & Corporate er-changing needs of the economy. This combination of adaptability and knowledge is what will set Ohio’s students and workers apart.

Banking & Finance Strengthening relationships between businesses and educators at all General Counsel levels was the purpose of Ohio Excels’ recent statewide workforce summit, co-hosted with the governor’s Office of Workforce Transformation.

In a series of wide-ranging discussions, Cleveland-area businesses like IBM and workforce training leaders from Cuyahoga Community College and Lorain County Community College came together to chip away at the barriers that too often stymied the partnerships needed for students and workers to have access to the right skills and knowledge to fill in-demand jobs and set up all Ohioans and their families for economic success. Building these partnerships is essential to better prepare our students for success and our state for long-term economic competitiveness, but, like any relationship, it takes work and repetition.

J.D. | M.B.A. The stakes are high. Ohio’s economic future hinges on not only being able to keep up with the competition, but to beat it. And who www.helonlaw.com is the competition? Ohio’s competitors are every other state in the union and the many foreign countries looking to attract the same employers and workers we seek to attract. In all of those competing places right now, determined leaders are having the same discussions that Ohio is having about how to piece together the workforce puzzle. The smart ones are realizing that it takes uncommon — and counterintuitive — answers to succeed.

The way forward depends on collaboration, not just between business and education but also between competitors within business and education. If Ohio is going to succeed, we need to move and act as one. Businesses must share their skills needs among their suppliers, competitors and training partners. Ohio businesses in the same industries might compete for customers, but on workforce issues they need each other’s help.

Similarly, our training programs, community colleges and universities might compete for students, but they need to come together to serve the needs of their students and Ohio’s employers. That’s because Ohio has far more to lose from a siloed, fragmented education and workforce development system and everything to gain from a unified, strategically focused system.

Collaboration on workforce doesn’t water down a business’s unique value proposition. Instead, it makes sure individual businesses have the workforce they all need to more singularly pursue their value propositions. That, in turn, gives them all the competitive edge they seek and Ohio the prosperity to provide the foundation of opportunity for us all.

Figuring out the workforce puzzle is not easy, nor is it a luxury. It is, plain and simple, critical. It is a critical ingredient to the survival of Ohio’s families, our businesses and our state’s economic strength.

When we set aside our natural — and valuable — competitive instincts long enough to see we have more to gain by working together on behalf of students and workers, the puzzle pieces begin to transform into the picture of a durable workforce built to thrive in future waves of economic and workforce changes. That adaptability is a differentiator that will propel Ohio to greater success and help us transform change from a challenge into an asset.

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TWENTY IN THEIR 20S Pages 10- 11: Pages 12-13: Pages 14-15: Pages 16-17: Pages 18-19: Pages 20-21:

Savanna Roberts, Bober Markey Fedorovich; Tyler Brummett, Freeland Ventures; Matt Buder Shapiro, MedPilot Alexandra “Allie” Schwertner, Rockwell Automation; Patrick Mahoney, University Hospitals; Daniel Cohn, Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation; Scott Ruebensaal, Jones Day Mike Vuraich, BDO USA LLP; Ben Tomins, Deloitte & Touche LLP; Katelyn Evans, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP; Vedang Kothari, MuReva Phototherapy Inc. Ettore Fantin, .Jobs TLD; Keniece Gray, Office of the Mayor of Cleveland Michael Clark, Oswald Cos.; Chengcheng Jia, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Christina Lograsso, WTWH Media; Daniel Dudley, Indago Lauren Kotmel, Yelp.com; David Percy, Chemical Bank; Monica Engelhardt, Clearsulting LLC

About the photographs:

Photographer Tim Harrison shot the portraits of this year’s cast of 20s at various sites along the Cuyahoga, which was named “River of the Year” for 2019 by the conservation group American Rivers as a tribute to the Crooked River’s remarkable turnaround since the infamous fire of 50 years ago. As the city and its river have come so much further than anyone could have imagined five decades ago, the waters seemed a fitting backdrop for a group of young people who will help propel both into an even brighter future.

S

avanna Roberts recalls being drawn to the business world as a child, but lacking direction on exactly what she wanted to do or make. Later, an adviser encouraged her to consider accounting as an option because even if she didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do, the skills would transfer to most fields.

After following up her undergrad at the University of Akron with an MBA from Walsh University and an internship with Sequoia Financial Group, Roberts landed at The J.M. Smucker Co. as a financial analyst. She discovered a passion for working with C-suite executives on M&A deals.

After a little less than five years with Smucker, those interests steered her toward Bober Markey Fedorovich, where her job entails working with investment bankers and private equity groups to vet potential deals.

“It’s exciting to see the value that’s created out of the deal process,” Roberts said, “being able to take something that you know needs to grow, but doesn’t necessarily have the resources to, and watching all those things come together.”

Like many in her field focusing on companies in Northeast Ohio, Roberts suggested the M&A industry is more vibrant here than outsiders might appreciate.

“I’ll be transparent: Before moving to Cleveland, I didn’t know that,” Roberts said. “But now I see so much activity in the market. Cleveland has such an integrated deal community.

And I love building relationships with those people.”

She humbly credits the support system around her for her success today.

SAVANNA ROBERTS, 28 Senior analyst, transaction services, Bober Markey Fedorovich

But she also admits that she tends to thrive under pressure — something that lends itself well to her field.

“I actually love to be overwhelmed,” she said, adding that working on a deal is like building a “giant puzzle.”

“And that’s what I like most about this: finding solutions to problems. My job is really market-facing and all about going out, finding and connecting people in a relationship to see how we can help them and they can help us.”

When not working, Roberts keeps her plate full with a variety of other professional and philanthropic endeavors, from the Akron Soul Train to the Downtown Cleveland Residents Association to Junior Achievement.

T

yler Brummett is a born businessman, almost literally. As a boy, he sold baseball cards and vacuum cleaners, doing landscaping work with a friend when most of the neighborhood kids were out playing.

While the stakes are higher these days, Brummett hasn’t lost the thrill of closing a sale with a customer. His professional career has taken him from Quicken Loans to launching a real estate company with a multimillion-dollar investment portfolio across various Cleveland neighborhoods.

This month, Brummett joins Freeland Ventures, where he’s tasked with, among other duties, scaling up the full-service real estate firm’s small business lending activities. At Freeland, Brummett is combining leadership skills honed at Quicken with knowledge gained as an entrepreneur renovating and investing in homes throughout the region.

“There’s a market in lending (to businesses) from $500,000 to $4 million,” he said. “One of my jobs is to make this business a name in a very niche market.”

Brummett, a Tremont resident, worked at Quicken for seven years,

P010_011_CL_20190624.indd 10

TYLER BRUMMETT, 28 Vice president of business development, Freeland Ventures; owner and founder, TB New Generations

“I’m going to continue to sharpen my skills and see where it takes me,” she said. “My route has been pretty nontraditional so far. I would expect it to probably continue that way.”

— Jeremy Nobile

starting his own firm — called TB New Generations — after an unpleasant personal property purchase soured him on the industry. Realizing the real estate market could use more honest people, Brummett worked to make financing easier for low-income families seeking safe and affordable housing.

“Tyler saw the opportunity to apply his high quality of client service and integrity, not only on the mortgage side, but also in the real estate market,” said Angela Besprozvanny, a real estate agent for Century 21. “He wanted to make a difference in the way landlords communicate and provide housing.”

Along with his day-to-day work, Brummett has refurbished homes in Slavic Village for Habitat for Humanity. By improving Cleveland a street at a time, he said he sees an opportunity to lower crime and increase property values, a double boon for a city in need of residential growth.

“Some people are in real estate for the money, but that’s shortsighted,” he said. “For Cleveland to grow and develop, you’ve got to be in it for the right reasons.” — Douglas J. Guth

6/20/19 2:58 PM

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TWENTY IN THEIR 20S

M

att Buder Shapiro always wanted to build a company in Cleveland, even if it meant leaving the always-on nightlife of New York City. Though the North Coast may not have the magnetic pull of the Big Apple, Buder Shapiro’s hometown has been a fine host for his venture-backed startup, MedPilot.

“Cleveland made sense, being a health care city,” he said. “New York is an expensive place to grow.”

MedPilot is a patient CRM system that works with outpatient facilities, hospitals, revenue-cycle management companies and practice management systems. The nascent company’s online tool not only helps people better understand their medical expenses, it allow providers to more effectively track their patients as well.

The Shaker Heights native, who founded MedPilot in 2014 with partners Nathan Spoden and Jacob Myers, develops brand- and patient-engagement strategies for the business.

Buder Shapiro sharpened his craft at a Madison Avenue marketing agency, honing those skills further at Bully Pulpit Interactive, a media firm that builds brands for leading political figures, nonprofits and corporations.

A portfolio of big brand names gave Buder Shapiro a double shot of credibility and confidence to launch MedPilot, which now employs 35 people in a 5,000-square-foot space on South Marginal Road. The company has raised $2.1 million in seed funding, a strong figure the budding entrepreneur nevertheless refuses to rest upon.

“I’m a confident person, but what makes me confident is that I don’t know everything,” he said. “But through my network I feel like I can tap into some serious resources.”

Between world-class hospital systems and a pool of talented gradu-

MATT BUDER SHAPIRO, 29 Chief marketing officer and co-founder, MedPilot

ates, Cleveland has become the perfect city in which to cultivate a health care technology startup, Buder Shap-

iro said. By year’s end, MedPilot aims to double its employee base and accrue $2 million in revenue, all in the

community in which its co-founder grew up.

“It’s exciting to see the company

growing and bringing jobs to Cleveland,” said Buder Shapiro. — Douglas J. Guth

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TWENTY IN THEIR 20S

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llie Schwertner knows that the automation solutions being sold at Rockwell Automation don’t just help customers save money. They help them do better by the environment, cutting down on water or energy waste.

Schwertner is a business development manager for advanced energy at Rockwell Automation, a role she took on in late 2018, and she’s the first person at the company to do so.

Rockwell already has a lot of automation products that can be used toward sustainability; her job is about putting them together and marketing them appropriately.

“The opportunities are overwhelming,” Schwertner said.

Sustainability has long been important to her. She remembers carrying a water bottle around in elementary school and starting a farm at Hawken School as her senior project.

“It’s definitely part of who I am,” Schwertner said.

In addition to that passion, she’s quick to point out the business case for sustainability. Power outages can cost industrial customers millions, and adding a wind turbine and battery storage can spell big savings.

Schwertner attributes a lot of her work ethic and interests to her mom, Michelle Schwertner. She answered the phones at her mom’s barber shop, and watched her garden in her spare time.

After graduating with a chemical engineering degree from Ohio State University, Schwertner got a job at Rockwell Automation. She started as an end-user account manager in Cleveland, focused on the food and

D ALEXANDRA ‘ALLIE’ SCHWERTNER, 25 Business development manager for advanced energy, Rockwell Automation, Twinsburg

beverage, chemical and energy markets.

Through her work in the beverage space, she had the opportunity to speak at a conference for the Master Brewers Association of the Americas. She said she was one of the youngest people speaking at the conference, and one of the few women. She doubted herself at first because of her age, but quickly real-

ized that it was her age — and the fact that she’s grown up surrounded by technology — that gave her a unique perspective.

Schwertner challenges the status quo and makes the company better, because “she thinks differently and she asks why,” said Dave Mayewski, regional industry manager for Rockwell.

For example, at the master brew-

ers’ conference, Rockwell’s instinct would have been to talk about its technology, Mayewski said. But Schwertner challenged her colleagues to think from the perspective of an audience of recipe creators. Sharing how an automation solution could give them scalability while maintaining flexibility was a much better fit. — Rachel Abbey McCafferty

aniel Cohn thought he wanted to be a medical doctor, until he began studying public health.

“I totally fell in love with the type of change that can be made in society without the letters M.D. at the end of my name,” said Cohn. “It’s so vitally important to provide one-on-one service, but really what creates the conditions for us to be healthy happens in a community context and at the societal level.”

After earning his bachelor’s in public health from the University of Rochester, Cohn worked in Boston; Washington, D.C.; and New York before eventually moving to Cleveland to join the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation as a program officer. Today, as vice president of strategy, his work is largely focused on addressing the area’s lead poisoning problem.

Working at a foundation gives Cohn the chance to help bridge the gap between the work of nonprofits, advocates and activists happening on the ground level and the types of systems or structures that shape the opportunities people have to be healthy.

While lead poisoning is the focus of his work, Cohn is quick to give credit to those — especially women and people of color — who have been advocating around this issue for decades.

“The issue of lead poisoning has never been a question of whether we are savvy enough or resilient enough or thoughtful enough to take it on,” he said. “It’s always been a question of will. Can we cultivate the community and political will to address this issue?”

He added he believes the community is now in a political moment in which it’s no longer ethically or morally acceptable to ignore lead poisoning.

Seeing a range of important but uncoordinated projects in motion in this

area min ing, eryo “A beh effo soci and

G

raduating college with a degree in political science and international affairs, Patrick Mahoney never would have predicted he’d end up working in a medical field.

But now that he’s fallen into it, he plans to stay in the medical field well into the future.

After graduating from Baldwin Wallace University, Mahoney got a job at Steris, where he worked with medical devices and regulatory reporting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Today, as a clinical research regulatory specialist at University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, he works on premarket discoveries before they’re approved by the FDA and helps physicians develop and obtain approval for new drugs or devices that will be used in clinical trials.

“It’s really interesting because you get to see tomorrow’s medicine today,” Mahoney said. “I’m a big, firm believer that today’s clinical research is tomorrow’s bedside care.”

He sees new technologies, techniques and devices being developed for use in patient populations that may not have an alternative or a standard of care. Or perhaps they have a rare disease, he said.

“And now all of a sudden, you can see kind of the needle moving and science and innovation on the forefront of how to get these devices, these technologies, these biologics, these drugs approved with the FDA so it’s really exciting work,” he added.

There are a lot of pathways to approval, Mahoney noted, and he and his team work to figure out the best

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PATRICK MAHONEY, 27 Clinical research regulatory specialist, University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center

S way forward to help physicians who may know the science but not the regulatory framework.

“Patrick acts as a leader each day at University Hospitals and is a mentor for those on his immediate team and within our larger department,” Jenna Arlow, research manager,

FDA/Regulatory Core at UH, wrote in the nomination.

Outside of his work for UH, Mahoney is a city advocate for the Downtown Cleveland Alliance and a volunteer soccer coach. He was also elected for Ward 3 — Precinct I as a committee chairperson. As if that

weren’t enough, he’s working on his MBA with a focus on health care policy and regulation.

Although his work is in a pretty niche field that he never expected to find himself in, “it’s worked out really well,” he said. “I love what I do.”

— Lydia Coutré

cott Ruebensaal is all in on Cleveland.

He grew up in Parma and completed both his bachelor’s and law degrees at Cleveland State University. Landing at Jones Day — a law firm whose Cleveland roots trace back to the 1890s — seems particularly appropriate.

Will Herzberger, a partner at Jones Day, described it this way: “Scott brings to Jones Day an enthusiasm and work ethic reminiscent of Jones Day’s roots in Cleveland,” Herzberger said in an email. “He was born, raised and schooled in metro Cleveland and is proud to be a Clevelander. True ‘Midwest,’ no-nonsense work ethic, with an impressive devotion to both serving our clients at the highest and most so-

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“We’re bringing in BDO. The partner’s already on it.”

DANIEL COHN, 29

People who know, know BDO.SM

Vice president of strategy, Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation

in y of ton; beand Care To, his sing m. ohn bedvothe ems rtu-

BDO congratulates Michael Vuraich and the other Crain’s Cleveland honorees for their contributions to Northeast Ohio.

BDO provides assurance, tax, and advisory services to a wide range of publicly traded and privately held companies. We offer a sophisticated array of services and the resources and capabilities of the BDO global network, combined with the personal attention of experienced professionals.

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BDO 1422 Euclid Avenue, Suite 1500, Hanna Building Cleveland, OH 44115 Accountants and Advisors area, Cohn and the foundation determined they could serve as a convening, strategizing entity to help get everyone moving in a single direction.

“At just 29, Dan is already the force behind many local, state and national efforts to improve the health status of society’s most vulnerable individuals and families,” Mitchell Balk, president

of the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation, wrote in his nomination.

In his home, Cohn has 14 sticky notes, each representing one of his core values. Every week he tries to focus on one of them. One sticky note in particular keeps coming up. It’s what gets him up in the morning and keeps him up at night: Justice. — Lydia Coutré

www.bdo.com

© 2019 BDO USA, LLP. All rights reserved.

MEET YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE WITHOUT EVER LEAVING THE OFFICE. MORE INFORMATION: Lisa Rudy • lrudy@crain.com

SCOTT RUEBENSAAL, 27 Associate, real estate, Jones Day

on

and and Unilaw race icu-

ones ings work oots n an and d is Midh an ving t so-

phisticated levels while also keeping himself grounded in serving the community, both locally and nationally, in pro-bono and civic endeavors.”

At Jones Day, Ruebensaal represents clients on general commercial real estate matters, his practice including the acquisition, disposition, development, financing and leasing of commercial real estate located throughout the United States.

In addition to helping his clients on various real estate matters, Ruebensaal said he is proud of helping fellow Clevelanders work through their legal issues by participating in legal clinics hosted by Legal Aid Society of Cleveland and helping entrepreneurs access training and capital through local economic development programs.

P012_013_CL_20190624.indd 13

He and his wife, Nina Nager, whom he met in law school, mentor two Cleveland high school students through Minds Matter Cleveland, a nonprofit that helps low-income students gain acceptance to and graduate from top-tier academic programs.

Ruebensaal also is involved with his alma mater as a board member with Cleveland State University’s Young Alumni Council. In addition, he’s served in the past as a legal extern with University Hospitals and Cuyahoga Community College, as well as a law clerk with Cuyahoga County’s Public Defender Office.

“He is quickly acquiring the building blocks to become a professional and community leader in Northeast Ohio,” Herzberger said. — Timothy Magaw

Proud to support Deloitte congratulates Ben Tomins and the 2019 class of Twenty in their 20s. www.deloitte.com

© 2019 Deloitte Development LLC. All rights reserved.

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TWENTY IN THEIR 20S

The Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs congratulates

Keniece Gray for her selection to Crain’s “Twenty in their 20s.” Ms. Gray embodies core Levin College values of public service and leadership through her unwavering commitment to improving opportunities for Cleveland’s youth and the communities in which they live. The College is proud to have her among our student ranks.

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W

hen Mike Vuraich graduated from Ohio University in December 2012, many of his peers headed to New York, Chicago or California to begin professional lives.

The Wickliffe native, on the other hand, knew his future was in Cleveland.

Part of the pull back home, Vuraich said, was his close-knit Irish Catholic family, but he was also drawn to the prospect of playing a role in the North Coast’s comeback.

“That was pretty close to the beginning of the upswing for Cleveland,” he said. “When I started at BDO, we didn’t have a downtown office, so the second BDO opened one, I jumped at opportunity to be downtown. It has been about six years now and seeing the transition firsthand has been a very cool experience.”

In recent years, Vuraich has done more than watch from the sidelines. In 2013, he joined The Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club, where he currently is treasurer and a member of the board of directors. The nonprofit fosters leadership in Greater Cleveland by providing opportunities for young professionals to connect with one another and engage with charitable organizations. Inside BDO, Vuraich is chairperson of the BDO Emerging Leaders Network.

“We focus primarily on building your network and a professional presence,” he said. “Staff development/ professional development is something that is very important to me.

From BDO’s perspective, I think the sooner you are able to identify those high performers, the better off you’ll be when it comes time to anoint new leaders. From the employee’s perspective, it’s never too early to help them build that toolkit on how to be a leader.”

Vuraich interned with BDO while studying accounting at OU and joined

S

ure, Ben Tomins hopes that his team at Deloitte & Touche will breeze through every audit or that each financial statement will write itself, but he admitted he is not all that disappointed when challenges arise.

“I really like the problem-solving aspect of my role at Deloitte,” he said. “I enjoy working alongside my team to help come up with a solution, and it may not even be people in Cleveland or colleagues in my practice. It may be that we are getting specialists engaged from New York or Chicago or wherever our specific teams are located in the United States or globally. We often work cross-functionally to solve problems with different service professionals — for example, advisory, tax, IT, valuation, consulting, etc. — which requires input from people in different functions here in Cleveland or elsewhere.”

Tomins joined Deloitte’s audit and assurance staff in 2011, after graduating from John Carroll University. In his current role, he leads engagement teams of anywhere from two to 15 direct reports to deliver audit and advisory services. His teams navigate accounting matters like revenue recognition, derivative valuation, acquisitions, divestitures, IPOs and other complicated aspects of the practice, which require Tomins to stay in step with “the constantly evolving accounting/auditing standards,” according to Deloitte managing director Joe Sweeney.

Along with his technical prowess, Sweeney noted Tomins’ commitment to staff development.

“Over the years, I’ve witnessed Ben go out of his way to coach and mentor our young professionals. He does this through on-the-job training and by acting as a counselor,” Sweeney said.

Tomins credits his own mentors,

MIKE VURAICH, 29 Senior manager, assurance, BDO USA LLP

the firm full-time after graduation.

His primary responsibilities currently involve planning, supervising and reviewing audit engagements for private multinational companies. In addition to being Emerging Leaders Network chair, he leads the Cleveland office’s implementation initiative for ASC 606, a new and highly technical

reve “M tellig stres diffi Sean pass the grow

BEN TOMINS, 29 Manager, audit and assurance, Deloitte & Touche LLP

such as Deloitte partner Craig Donnan, with inspiring him to not only grow professionally inside the firm but to engage with outside causes.

Tomins’ current passion project is Lakewood Alive, a nonprofit focused on the community he now calls home.

He began working with the West Side group in 2016 and was named to its

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“Mike possesses high emotional intelligence, and it shines through during stressful times by remaining calm in difficult situations,” said BDO director Sean Kilbane. “He is also extremely passionate about the profession and the direction of our firm and the growth of his staff.” — Judy Stringer

atelyn Evans has long been interested in the business world, but her drive comes from helping others.

Evans spends her career today helping clients raise capital, a perfect marriage of her two professional interests. She’d probably be running her own company if not working with others through Taft, where she counsels startups and emerginggrowth companies on raising capital, often teaming with businesspeople her own age or younger.

Those interests first coalesced at the University of Dayton. While earning her undergrad there in business administration, a political science course she took for her minor motivated her and others at the school to help form an anti-human-trafficking initiative. The grassroots movement was designed to raise awareness about issues around the exploitation of women that amount to modern-day slavery. The effort may have helped spur the passage of Ohio S.B. 235 in 2011, which made human trafficking a felony offense and imposed stronger penalties on those involved in it.

“That really solidified my path to law school after the human-trafficking initiative,” Evans said. “I wasn’t sure exactly what path I would have, but I knew with a law degree I’d be able to help people.”

After her undergrad, Evans moved back to Northeast Ohio to pursue that law degree from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. She filed into several internships afterward: McDonald Hopkins, Progressive Insurance, Eaton. She then externed with the U.S. District Court, Northern District of Ohio, under Judge Donald Nugent. After becoming acquainted

E

board of directors in 2018. While the organization is known for popular events like Lakewood Summer Meltdown, Tomins said it has a wealth of less-publicized but impactful programs, including helping elderly residents maintain their homes and providing low-cost tool rental for people in the community. — Judy Stringer

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ver since he was 14 years old and heard the CEO of LinkedIn speak at an entrepreneurship conference, Vedang Kothari knew he wanted to have his own company.

Today, he’s already achieved that dream as the president and CEO of biotech startup MuReva Phototherapy Inc., a spinoff from Lumitex, a Strongsville lighting solutions company.

Five years ago, as an intern at Lumitex, Kothari was tasked with brainstorming additional applications for Lumitex’s phototherapy technology. During this process, he found a way to use phototherapy to treat oral mucositis, a common side effect of cancer treatment in which the patient develops painful or debilitating ulcers in the soft tissues within the oral cavity.

Last August, Lumitex spun his project out into a new company: MuReva.

A native of San Jose, Calif., Vedang first came to Northeast Ohio to study at Case Western Reserve University, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in biomedical engineering and a Master of Science in engineering and management.

He turned down opportunities to return to California to work for his father and opted instead to stay here for the opportunity to lead MuReva and for the “great network of support” the region offers.

“There’s a great ecosystem to help support companies like us, help us navigate through the different regulatory pathways,” he said. “It seems like there are a lot of people rooting for our success, and that’s really great to have.”

Investors, doctors and hospital administrators have been “highly

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KATELYN EVANS, 29 Associate attorney, Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

with civil and criminal court proceedings, she landed with Taft, where she got to flex her business acumen by steering to a focus on M&A and private equity deals.

At that point, her passion for helping others became increasingly rooted in the corporate world.

“Whether it’s in M&E or the venture capital arena, we all have one common goal in mind: getting the best deal done as quickly as possible,” Evans said. “For the startup, it’s a bit dif-

ferent because we can counsel them from early on up to the exit. You feel like you’re part of that. And when you can help clients succeed from startup to exit, that’s pretty neat to see.”

Outside of Taft, Evans is active with the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland child support clinic and the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association’s 3Rs program. She’s also been selected for the Greater Cleveland Partnership LEAD program.

Long-term, Evans said she’s dedi-

cated to her practice at Taft, where she aims to make partner, and maybe shift even more work toward M&A and private equity deals after supporting startups.

“In Northeast Ohio, I think there has been a draw toward entrepreneurship and getting capital here to fund local companies, and I think there’s a shift happening there,” Evans said. “It’s an exciting time for Cleveland in general with that growth potential.” — Jeremy Nobile

VEDANG KOTHARI, 29 President and CEO, MuReva Phototherapy Inc., Strongsville

impressed” with Kothari’s “professionalism, depth of knowledge and passion for the cause,” Lumitex CEO Peter Broer wrote in his nomination.

“Once proven in human trials, his technology can treat one of the most troubling side effects of cancer treatment,” Broer added. “We should be proud that Vedang resisted the

charms of California to focus his innovation here.”

Light therapy has been proven effective in treating oral mucositis, but the delivery methods so far have been impractical. Kothari said he believes he’s solved that with an illuminated mouthpiece made of a soft, flexible silicone material that can

deliver the correct dosage of light to all oral mucositis-susceptible tissues in the mouth simultaneously.

“So for me, just getting this to the first patient and finally being able to demonstrate being able to make a difference in their lives, that’s the moment I’ve been waiting for.”

—Lydia Coutré

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a e h l c C i l M a s r n o k i t a l u t a r g Twenty in their 20s n o C

TWENTY IN THEIR 20S

E © 2019. Oswald Companies. All rights reserved. DS2016

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We are proud of your achievements and look forward to your future success.

Learn about careers, culture, and employee ownership @Oswald

www.OswaldCompanies.com/Careers

AT HOME. IN THE OFFICE. AT THE GYM. ON THE GO.

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STAY CONNECTED.

Congratulations Vedang Kothari Crain’s Cleveland Twenty in their 20’s!

MuReva is illuminating the dark side of cancer therapy.

“True Innovation solves intractable problems with simple, elegant solutions.”

From all of us at:

P016_017_CL_20190624.indd 16

ttore Fantin was only 7 years old when he and his family moved from Chile to the United States.

He admits that assimilating back to the U.S. — where he’d been born — was a challenge.

“I remember trying to learn English, but the rules of the language were so different,” Fantin said. “So, I became shy in school, but I would still explore the world online.”

He spent countless hours online, learning how to create websites and videos. The concept of internet marketing fascinated him; he’d even flip what he could on Craigslist to earn a few bucks. His big payday came on YouTube, where he developed a knack for creating popular how-to videos, a venture that ultimately brought the teenager about $15,000 in ad revenue.

The most fulfilling payoff, though, wasn’t financial. His newfound YouTube stardom — or “influencer” status — helped him overcome his fear of public speaking.

Today, shy is the last word anyone might use to describe the serial entrepreneur Fantin’s become. During his time at Case Western Reserve University, he even pitched a business plan to the Dalai Lama, through a competition organized by the University of Rochester. (He was a finalist, but his team’s idea — to provide internet cafes powered by solar energy and Tesla-powered wall batteries — didn’t make the final cut.)

While an undergrad major in finance at Case Western, Fantin discovered the startup realm is where he’s most comfortable. After one project on which he worked was acquired, Fantin said he interviewed for jobs all over the country, but he longed for a position where he could help build something from the

K

eniece Gray said she believes in getting involved in organizations at an early age. In addition to her day job as a performance auditor in Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson’s Office of Quality Control and Performance Management, she’s involved in several nonprofit groups and is in the process of founding an organization she’s calling Journey to the Board.

“I’m starting it because I believe that the youth have the ability and capacity to serve on boards and executive committees, but they may not have the training or skill set they need,” she said. “And so I really want to help train the next generation to be prepared to serve in those roles that will give them a seat at the table to really help change the structure and change the direction that organizations are taking.”

In nominating Gray, several people mentioned her commitment to what’s called DIE. “Diversity, Inclusion and Equity is my theme,” she explained when asked about it. She said that while growing up, she first went to a neighborhood school where everyone was like her: African-American. Then, she had an experience at a Catholic school before going to the private Hawken School for high school.

At Hawken, she saw well-maintained football fields, guidance counselors with ample time to help each student prepare for college and a 10:1 student-teacher ratio, unlike what her neighborhood friends had.

“So in my 12th-grade year I started to understand what educational inequities look like and how that could really change the direction of somebody’s path in life,” she said. “At Hawken, I was one of maybe 11 or 12 black students in my class, so out

ETTORE FANTIN, 25 Director of marketing, .Jobs TLD

ground up rather than the client-facing marketing roles he was offered.

“I’ve always been a risk-taker,” Fantin said. “That contradicts the whole finance thing about being riskaverse, but I’ve always been about finding out-of-the box angles to solve

prob H land tryin with —t tern

KENIECE GRAY, 24 Performance auditor, Office of the Mayor, Quality Control and Performance Management, Cleveland

there I was definitely the odd girl out.

Then, when I came back home, I was the oddball out because I didn’t go to school with everybody else.”

Before taking the job at the city of

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The former Club at Key Center is now

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problems people are having.”

He found that opportunity in Cleveland with a group of former colleagues trying to disrupt traditional job boards with the .Jobs top-level domain (TLD) — think an employment-focused alternative to .com or .org.

Today, in his role as director of marketing for the .Jobs TLD, Fantin leads a team of marketers focused on traffic acquisition, content and design for more than 25,000 websites.

“The No. 1 characteristic we look for in our employees is inquisitive-

ness,” said Daniel Kraciun, chief marketing officer for .Jobs. “This characteristic is ingrained in everything Ettore does. He critically evaluates not only problems, but possibilities, and sets the bar for what a marketer can be.” — Timothy Magaw

CongratulaƟons 2019 Crain’s Twenty in Their 20s

Daniel Cohn Mt. Sinai Vice President, Strategy

Judge Dan A. Polster Board Chair

Susan Ratner Immediate Past Board Chair Mitchell Balk President

ce

out. was o to

y of

Cleveland, Gray worked as an auditor at the Cleveland office of the Deloitte U.S. public accounting firm. In her current job, Gray said she evaluates programs, makes sure they are in

P016_017_CL_20190624.indd 17

compliance with all regulations and looks for ways to improve them.

“Keniece is a rare find,” said Tatyana Guzman, assistant professor of urban studies at Cleveland State Uni-

versity, where Gray is working on a master’s in public administration.

“She is thoughtful, ambitious and passionate about her work and her communal life.” — Jay Miller

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TWENTY IN THEIR 20S

I

MICHAEL CLARK, 28 Employee benefits consultant, Oswald Cos.

n baseball, a player can have a career batting average of .300 and make the Hall of Fame. Michael Clark, an ex-ballplayer himself, took that mentality into another field where failure is commonplace and overcoming rejection is paramount to success.

Instead of at-bats, Clark and his team make hundreds of sales calls daily to organizations about their health insurance and other employee benefits programs. In his five years at Oswald, Clark has logged some impressive numbers, generating $1.6 million of new residual revenue for the independent insurance brokerage and risk management firm.

Clark handles employee benefits for private and public organizations, municipalities, nonprofits and additional entities carrying between 50 and 10,000 workers. In his regional travels, he often meets C-suite executives to discuss employee health coverage.

“If someone needs a hip replacement, I’ll find them the lowest-cost provider for a given procedure,” said Clark. “We would even fly them (to another city) if that’s the least expensive alternative and that facility specializes in their need.”

Clark, a Kent State University graduate, joined Oswald after arm problems prevented him from rising within the Texas Rangers organization, where he had signed as a pitcher. While the ex-athlete’s first year at Oswald “was like drinking from a firehose,” on-staff mentors taught him about cold calling, how to run meetings and other critical industry facets.

Oswald sales director Steve Baltas said Clark’s success derives from cultivating client relationships through a holistic sales approach.

“Michael’s passion for excellence, integrity, resourcefulness and commitment to his community make him a promising leader in our organization,” Baltas said. “He is a leader, coach and tremendous teammate.”

Clark may not be striking out sluggers in the majors, but in his first year at Oswald, the company named him “Rookie of the Year/Top Newcomer.” Since then, he has led Oswald in organic sales, a trend he looks forward to continuing.

“I love what I do,” said Clark.

“We’re an employee-owned company, and the closest thing to a team from when I was actually on a team.”

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rowing up in Beijing, Chengcheng Jia always had a knack for biology. A career in the medical field seemed a logical next step, but a desire to broaden her knowledge base landed her as an economist with one of the world’s most powerful financial institutions.

Instead of enrolling at the medical school where she’d been accepted, Jia studied at Waseda University’s School of International Liberal Studies in Tokyo — a program designed to give students the freedom to choose courses without specifying a major. While there, she took to the field of economics. After transferring to the University of Notre Dame, she became convinced it was the field for her.

“Economics is the study of big questions,” Jia said. “The reason I got interested in economics was because I wondered a lot about those big questions like wealth inequality, how to promote economic growth and why some countries are rich and others are poor.”

She ultimately obtained her doctorate in economics from Columbia University in New York, under the tutelage of Michael Woodford, a leading expert in monetary theory.

Jia’s research has focused on the impact of information asymmetry between the general public and the central bank. The idea is that if the public doesn’t understand the reason behind policy decisions, people cannot behave as they would with perfect information.

Now, at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Jia helps shed light on some of the “big questions” with which she’s always grappled. It’s a role she enjoys, especially because of the cooperative relationship between colleagues — a collegiality, she noted, that often is hard to come by in academia.

“Since joining the Fed, Chengcheng has continued her research that addresses topics of vital importance to central banks around the world,” Todd Clark, a senior vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and Jia’s mentor, wrote in her nomination.

“Her research and expertise have allowed her to continue to travel the world, to present her work at prestigious universities and research conferences.” — Timothy Magaw

C J

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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CHRISTINA LOGRASSO, 25 Events marketing specialist, WTWH Media

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hristina Lograsso isn’t a fan of the mundane. So a career involved in marketing special events — and the chaos that tends to go with it — is a natural fit.

As an event marketing specialist with WTWH Media, a Clevelandbased business-to-business media company, Lograsso is tasked with crafting and executing the marketing strategies of several large-scale events across the country catering to high-tech industries, including medical technology, robotics, fluid power and solar power. It’s a job that comes with quite a bit of stress — and travel. The role has taken her to Boston, Milwaukee, Minneapolis and Silicon Valley, among other destinations.

“What I like most about my job is that it’s different every day,” she said. “The atmosphere can always change last-minute. When you’re coming down to the wire, something can blow up and you’ll have to figure out how to handle it. You have to learn to adapt and go with the flow.”

WTWH events manager Jennifer Kolasky said Lograsso is “ambitious, diligent and motivated.”

“Christina will take a project and run away with it and provide amaz-

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ing results time and time again.”

Kolasky said. “It’s very easy to lean on Christina and be confident the task will yield the results we are looking for.”

Lograsso, a native of the Cleveland area, is a graduate of Ohio State University. While in college, she interned for both Columbus Radio Group and the re-election campaign of U.S. Sen. Rob Portman — two roles she said provided her with crucial experience in special events. And although she enjoyed her time in Columbus, the Northeast Ohio native longed for the shores of Lake Erie.

“Cleveland is the underdog city,” she said. “People underrate this city. Everyone is hard-working, passionate and so excited to be part of this community.”

Lograsso’s commitment to Cleveland and its people is evident in her growing roster of volunteer work. In particular, she serves as co-chair of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance’s City Advocates program, where she leads the group on fundraising projects and workforce engagement events. She also serves as cochair of the marketing committee for the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland. — Timothy Magaw

D CHENGCHENG JIA, 29

DANIEL DUDLEY, 29

Research economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland

Chief operating officer and co-founder, Indago

P018_019_CL_20190624.indd 19

aniel Dudley possesses an independent spirit nurtured during his formative years in the Netherlands, where he’d spend entire days exploring a neighboring city by himself. That mindset led him to Cleveland in 2012, where he had no affiliation, nor a single friend or family member to acclimate him.

“I always had the drive to do my own thing,” explained Dudley, an Oberlin College graduate.

Dudley has prospered here as cofounder of Indago, a medical device company seeking to revolutionize the operating room via smart surgical tools. Projected to raise $6 million this year after securing $5.5 million in Series A funding in 2018, the fledgling enterprise is commercializing AnthroFree, a wireless camera designed for use in endoscopic surgeries.

Working alongside brothers Eugene and Ilya Malinskiy, Dudley manages Indago’s business dealings, including financing, fundraising and government relations. Talking to potential investors requires a degree of toughness, as Dudley’s youthful appearance occasionally gets him mistaken for a freshly minted college graduate.

“I’ve gotten flak from people who think I don’t know what I’m talking about,” Dudley noted. “You can’t take anything in this business personally.”

While he’s no tech wizard, Dudley is excited about an innovation now in its final stages of optimization, with FDA approval slated for sometime next year.

“Wireless camera companies have been producing the same type of camera (for surgeries) for decades,” he said.

“We started with the operating room and asked what needed to be fixed, then rebuilt the system from the ground up.”

An undergrad degree in cinema studies and visual arts is not exactly the CV one would expect for the COO of a surgical device company, but the circumstance has worked well for Dudley, noted Indago CEO Eugene Malinskiy.

“Daniel has taken the lead on everything you would expect a COO to do — real estate, fundraising, networking, conferences — and all the documentation,” said Malinskiy.

“With a startup, there’s never a shortage of things to do, and he gets them done.” — Douglas J. Guth

6/20/19 3:38 PM

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TWENTY IN THEIR 20S

LAUREN KOTMEL, 29

Senior community manager, Yelp.com

DAVID PERCY, 28 Relationship manager II, commercial banking, Chemical Bank

I

n every job or volunteer opportunity she pursues, Lauren Kotmel has one goal: for everyone to see Cleveland the way she does.

“I’ve always wanted to stay here,” said Kotmel, a Solon native who now lives in downtown Cleveland. “I get upset when people tell me they want to leave. This is a community where everyone cares about each other and wants everyone to succeed.”

So, it’s only fitting that Kotmel’s day job as a senior community manager for Yelp is centered on helping people discover all that Northeast Ohio has to offer — from businesses to special events. Her goal, she said, is to help everyone “experience Cleveland like a tourist.” She recently launched Yelp’s Culture Club, a free event series that encourages Clevelanders to

explore all that their city has to offer.

“My favorite part is to blow people’s minds with how many interesting things are happening here,” she said. “We have some of the most passionate and brightest business owners doing such fascinating things.”

Before Yelp, Kotmel held roles at Downtown Cleveland Alliance and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Her list of volunteer work is just as impressive as her professional résumé.

She has volunteered with the Cleveland International Film Festival and SPACES art gallery. She’s also the youngest member inducted onto The Cleveland Museum of Art’s Women’s Council and is a co-founder of The Cleveland Museum of Art’s young professionals group, Column & Stripe.

Currently, Kotmel serves as vice chair for Brite Winter Festival, an annual music

D

and arts fest that now draws 20,000-plus avid Percy had only been to Cleveland once — for St. Clevelanders. She helped Brite Winter esPatrick’s Day earlier that year — when he applied for a tablish a successful fundraising plan that job at KeyBank in 2012. The Buffalo native said it was has netted positive relationships with sevone of those rare sunny and warm March days in Northeast eral grantmaking organizations, according Ohio and he thought, “I had fun there. Why not?” to Donald C. Bulea, Brite Winter’s board “Plus, coming from a smaller city like Buffalo, moving here chair. He said Kotmel’s ability to develop was like moving to the big city,” Percy said. and sustain meaningful relationships has Seven years later, he is proud to call C-Town home. He’s been critical to the festival’s success. bought a house in Gordon Square and appreciates the area’s “Lauren is talented, enthusiastic and reMidwestern friendliness and good food. He also tacked a sults-driven. Lauren has been great, not master’s degree in taxation from Cleveland State University just because of her work ethic, but because onto his undergraduate degree in accounting from the State she states her opinions and beliefs with University of New York at Albany. conviction, even if they go against the Percy started at KeyBank as a portfolio manager and made grain,” Bulea said. “This causes those the leap to relationship manager later in an effort to “get out around her to rethink their own positions from behind my desk.” Earlier this year, Chemical Bank reand grow from her input, which makes cruited him to join its commercial banking team. working with Lauren a wonderful and At Chemical Bank, he’s responsible for helping organizabeneficial experience.” — Timothy03-07John Magaw tions — mostly2/23/2016 middle-market manufacturing S Grimm.qxp 10:43 AM Page 1and services

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MONICA ENGELHARDT, 27 Director and chief financial officer, Clearsulting LLC

businesses — find creative financial solutions. The region’s banks offer many of the same types of products, Percy said, so his job is to be less like a broker and more like a partner in aiding business owners’ growth goals.

“Capital is always a concern of business owners, so how do we shape those products in the right way so we are not hindering the business on the back end? Or so that we are set them up to accelerate growth at the point they want to grow?” he said.

According to Tucker Ellis LLP attorney Christina Suh, Percy’s “great success” stems from his “ability to build relationships and earn the trust and confidence of those around him.”

Outside of the office, Percy serves as a board member at the Center for Arts-Inspired Learning and, a former Scout himself, a supporter of the Boys Scouts of America. Recently, he also took on the challenge of building a regional presence for Stachestrong, which raises research funds to fight glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer afflicting one of his college fraternity brothers. — Judy Stringer

C

Grainger, where Engelhardt meets with C-suite executives who may be surprised to sit down with a 27-year-old CFO. “I’m on-site working with CFOs in their 40s and 50s, but I’m able to prove I have the knowledge and skill set needed,” said Engelhardt. “Most clients think what we’re doing is cool in having younger people bring energy to their company.”

Alongside spearheading multiple global projects, Engelhardt mentors new analysts on confidence and leadership topics. She also co-founded GRIT Squad — for Girls Rise, Innovate and Transform — designed to empower young women as industry leaders.

Coming out of a Big Four firm herself, Engelhardt understands young analysts needing a motivational boost to succeed in a competitive industry.

learsulting is a true millennial company, kickstarted by a team of 20-somethings and now gaining traction away from the typical Big Four consulting realm.

Bringing a dose of that youthful vigor is Monica Engelhardt, a former PricewaterhouseCoopers adviser who helped launch Clearsulting into the finance consultancy space in 2015. During her short tenure, Engelhardt has led company growth from three employees to more than 50 across 10 U.S. locations.

The Mentor resident splits time between client work and her CFO role, helping the team execute its on-site services while managing the upstart firm’s monthly financials. Clearsulting’s client base of Fortune 1000 companies includes Home Depot and

“(At PwC), I had to step out of my shell and say I could do this work,” she recalled. “For the three of us starting a new company, we didn’t have a choice but to step up. The situation forced me to come out of my comfort zone.”

Clearsulting CEO Marc Ursick is impressed not only by Engelhardt’s day-to-day leadership, but also by her board and volunteer leadership at Cleveland Hearing and Speech Center and other area nonprofits.

“The impact Monica has made both internally at Clearsulting and within the Cleveland community is simply amazing,” Ursick said. “She does not let her age dictate the level of leadership she provides and constantly stretches her abilities for the greater good of Clearsulting and Northeast Ohio.” — Douglas J. Guth

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Next month: Why competing as a region matters

Tackling Northeast Ohio’s talent challenge LOCAL SOLUTIONS CRITICAL TO GROWTH, BENEFIT FROM COMMON UNDERSTANDING

By ANNIE ZALESKI

THE BUSINESS IMPERATIVE

CRAIN’S CONTENT STUDIO-CLEVELAND

Northeast Ohio – and much of the nation, for that matter – is facing a talent mismatch: The skills that businesses are looking for aren’t necessarily the ones prospective workers are seeking out or developing.

So, what’s being done — or can be done — to make sure Northeast Ohio’s talent pool is full of the right kinds of potential employees?

Team NEO in its 2019 Aligning Opportunities report, slated for release July 17, zeroes in on the talent shortage facing three sectors of the economy — IT, manufacturing and health care. “Between those three sectors, there are about 39,000 unfilled jobs as it relates to the types of credentials we’re producing,” said Jacob Duritsky, Team NEO’s vice president of strategy and research.

Duritsky said it will take long-term, complementary regional solutions to fully connect the dots between the available workforce and available job openings. One goal of Team NEO’s Aligning Opportunities report, prepared in partnership with Delta Dental and with support from The Sherwin-Williams Company, is to provide a framework to guide those efforts and a benchmark to track progress over time.

“We know this isn’t something we can fix in one year, two years, three years,” Duritsky said. “It’s about long-term planning, it’s about investing in the workforce now so that five, 10 years down the road, we’re closing the gap. And a part of that is giving people better information on where opportunities lie in the economy.”

Northeast Ohio isn’t alone in its challenges; in fact, talent shortages, systemic inequality, demographic shifts, and misalignment of supply and demand are national issues. But with talent increasingly the leading factor that determines where and how businesses grow, addressing these obstacles is crucial for the future competitiveness of the region.

“For companies, it’s the business development imperative,” Duritsky says. “Increasingly, if they can’t find the talent they need, that’s a differentiator on where they decide to make investments to grow their business.”

START LOCAL Addressing the talent misalignment starts with local intermediaries — the organizations or partnerships proactively working with key stakeholders within a community or sector to develop solutions.

MAGNET and the Greater Cleveland Partnership (GCP), for example, co-lead the manufacturing sector partnership for Cuyahoga Workforce Connect, a countywide effort driven by both public and private partners.

Together, GCP and MAGNET are aiming to foster collaboration among manufacturers as it relates to their industry’s talent challenge. Ethan Karp, CEO of MAGNET, said he uses the Aligning Opportunities report in his Cuyahoga Workforce Connect role to help manufacturers see the full scope of the talent issue and find ways to work together.

“In our lead role, so far we have convened a group of manufacturers and they are using data to help them decide strategically for the community, ‘What are some of the things that manufacturers can do together to make a big difference on the future of our talent pipeline here?’” Karp says.

The Akron-based workforce development group ConxusNEO, meanwhile, has found great success developing career pathways aimed at helping all people — from students and employees to employers — think about the future.

“They’re practical tools … to think about which pathway

LABOR As Northeast Ohio grows smaller in terms of population and labor force, alignment of credentials and in-demand jobs will be even more important.

EQUITY African-American, Hispanic and other minority groups have much lower educational attainment, higher unemployment rates and lower median household incomes than the white and Asian populations.

EDUCATION The region is producing 20% fewer graduates than the national average, even while retaining 47% of graduates. If the region met the national average, schools would graduate about 6,300 more students annually.

Source: Aligning Opportunities in Northeast Ohio, 2019 Report, Executive Summary

The full report will be unveiled during a July 17 event, featuring keynote speaker Youngstown State University president Jim Tressel, from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. at Corporate College East. For more information, go to aligningopportunities.teamneo.org. might make sense, in terms of how a career in that pathway might evolve,” said Sue Lacy, president of ConxusNEO, “but (they’re) also valuable tools for workforce organizations, to help guide adults, in terms of moving in the direction of a promising job that offers career opportunities.”

And, although ConxusNEO originally conceived of these schematics to support Akron’s college and career academies, the organization now is developing 40 pathways for use in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

“We’re excited,” said Lacy, noting that ConxusNEO agrees with Team NEO and others that career pathways are an initiative that can be offered to the greater whole.

WORKING OFF THE SAME PAGE Building a robust talent pipeline not only requires raising awareness of where opportunities exist, but businesses need to be clear about the skills required to fill the jobs of both today and tomorrow.

Ultimately, any effort toward bolstering the region’s talent pipeline reverberates throughout the entire business community, said Bill Blausey, Eaton Corp. CIO and chairman of the regional leadership board of RITE, an organization dedicated to building a talent pipeline for IT professionals.

“If we do (this talent-related work) really well, it helps Eaton too,” he says. “The pipeline of IT coming into Eaton is almost like a side benefit and helping the region overall.”

Blausey’s experiences underscore that improving the talent misalignment is predicated on all stakeholders — employers, educators and workforce developers — ultimately coming together and communicating honestly and openly about what’s needed to help a region move forward.

The newly created Team NEO Talent Development Council, of which Blausey is co-chair, brings together higher education and business leaders, as well as other regional and statewide stakeholders to focus on talent challenges in manufacturing, IT and health care and make connections between intermediaries.

Having 20 representatives from a wide range of organizations in the same room exchanging ideas once a month has its advantages, said ConxusNEO’s Lacy, who is also a Talent Development Council member. “When it’s a regional table, we can look at our assets as a region more holistically,” she says.

‘STRENGTH IN NUMBERS’ This big-picture outlook is important because the Talent Development Council’s focus isn’t just on growing jobs, but

on nurturing and developing talent in an integrated fashion across sectors and the region itself, notes Dr. Marcia Ballinger, president of Lorain County Community College and co-chair of the Talent Development Council.

Plus, while the council is focused on business and education needs for today’s workforce and employers, there’s also a crucial future-facing component to this work, she adds. “It’s really about where the region is going, and how talent development is such a critical part of that equation,” Ballinger says. “Eighty-five percent of the jobs that will exist in 2030 have not yet been invented.”

The Talent Development Council also stresses the importance of including historically marginalized populations in the region’s talent solutions. As the 2019 Aligning Opportunities report reveals, Northeast Ohio developing a vibrant economy is predicated on all people having equitable access to economic opportunities.

And, by gathering a cross-section of already-in-place local efforts from throughout Team NEO’s 18-county region, the Talent Development Council can leverage and scale existing efforts and benefit the region as a whole.

“There is strength in numbers, and when we’re competing against Austin or Chicago or the coasts, we have to be able to demonstrate collectively we can have more impact than we can as individual metros,” Duritsky said. “It’s trying to tease out this notion of, how do we continue to develop these things as a region so that we can compete for more of these business development opportunities?”

THE VIBRANT ECONOMY Talent is clearly a business imperative, but as we think about the demographic headwinds facing Northeast Ohio’s population, one thing becomes clear: We can’t solve the talent challenge without fully integrating all members of Northeast Ohio, regardless of race, into the labor market. We cannot survive as a market where African-Americans disproportionately have lower levels of education and pay; higher levels of unemployment; and are significantly more disconnected from access and opportunity.

Transitioning to a truly vibrant economy will require strategies to ensure equity is at the forefront of our efforts for economic growth.

This advertising-supported feature is produced by Crain’s Content Studio-Cleveland, the marketing storytelling arm of Crain’s Cleveland Business.

The Crain’s Cleveland Business newsroom is not involved in creating Crain’s Content Studio content.

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THE LIST

Highest-Paid Non-CEOs Ranked by 2018 total compensation

TOTAL COMPENSATION THIS EXECUTIVE//COMPANY YEAR MOST RECENT TITLE (TENURE IN LISTED POSITION)

2018 2017

% CHANGE SALARY

BONUS

STOCK AWARDS

OPTION AWARDS

PENSION NONEQUITY VALUE INCENTIVE CHANGE (1) PLAN

COMPANY NET INCOME

OTHER

2018 % CHANGE (MILLIONS) FROM 2017

1

Shahriar Matin/ViewRay Inc. COO (July 2018 - present)

$11,293,531 NA

NA

$187,413

$0

$5,578,650

$5,375,837

$0

$0

$151,631

($76.4)

2

Lee C. Banks/Parker Hannifin Corp. president, COO (Feb. 1, 2015 - present)

$8,948,793 $7,614,992

17.5

$950,000

$0

$2,909,002

$1,419,098

$1,417,466

$2,102,817

$150,410

$1,060.8

3

James Skulina/TransDigm Group Inc. executive vice president (April 2012 - present) (2)

$7,492,990 $8,893,120

(15.7)

$567,500

$1,688

NA

$3,602,940

$478,312

NA

$2,842,550

$957.1

60.34%

4

John P. Sauerland/Progressive Corp.

CFO, vice president (April 2015 - present)

$7,134,820 (3) $3,701,176

92.8 (3)

$597,115

$0

$5,100,092

NA

$1,425,613

NA

$12,000

$2,615.3

64.26%

5

Jorge L. Valladares III/TransDigm Group Inc. executive vice president (June 2018 - present)

$6,763,790 $5,493,885

23.1

$503,590

$920

NA

$4,933,500

$429,080

NA

$896,700

$957.1

60.34%

6

Michael D. Policarpo II/Victory Capital Holdings Inc. president, CFO, chief administrative officer (February 2019 - present) (4)

$6,326,759 (5) $3,588,884

76.3 (5)

$425,000

$855,000

$5,000,037

NA

NA

NA

$46,722

$63.7

146.67%

7

Richard H. Fearon/Eaton vice chairman, chief financial and planning officer (April 2002 - present) (6)

$5,711,318 $8,602,980

(33.6)

$946,764

$0

$2,558,793

$747,912

$1,143,218

$281,550

$33,081

$2,145.0

-28.14%

8

Kelly S. Cliff/Victory Capital Holdings Inc. president, Investment Franchises (September 2014 - present)

$5,578,042 $4,017,569

38.8

$425,000

$850,000

$4,250,020

NA

NA

NA

$53,022

$63.7

146.67%

9

Catherine A. Suever/Parker Hannifin Corp. executive vice president, finance and administration; CFO (April 2017 present)

$5,496,632 $3,550,813

54.8

$715,000

$0

$1,580,843

$771,284

$860,970

$1,461,719

$106,816

$1,060.8

7.87%

10

Christopher M. Gorman/KeyCorp vice chairman; president of banking (June 2017 - present)

$5,060,383 $5,136,301

(1.5)

$700,000

$0

$2,339,968

$259,999

$1,700,000

$25,636

$34,780

$1,866.0

43.98%

11

Christopher A. Chapman/Diebold Nixdorf former senior vice president, CFO (June 2014 - October 2018) (7)

$4,604,604 (8) $2,978,218

54.6 (8)

$494,082

$0

$1,229,721

$177,678

NA

NA

$2,703,123

($568.7)

NM

12

Robert S. Henderson/TransDigm Group Inc. vice chairman (January 2017 - present)

$4,264,317 $17,719,539 (9)

(75.9) (9)

$10,000

$0

NA

$2,964,717

NA

NA

$1,289,600

$957.1

13

Richard K. Smucker/The J.M. Smucker Co. executive chairman (May 2016 - present)

$4,216,410 $4,529,676

(6.9)

$750,000

$15,000

$1,500,000

NA

$675,000

$1,176,472

$99,938

$1,338.6

126%

14

Leila L. Vespoli/FirstEnergy Corp. former executive VP, corporate strategy, regulatory affairs; chief legal officer (May 2016 - April 2019)

$4,123,650 $5,117,611

(19.4)

$761,286

$0

$2,200,498

NA

$823,483

$322,011

$16,372

$1,348.0

NM

15

Revathi Advaithi/Eaton former president and COO, Electrical Sector (September 2015 - February 2019)

$4,071,848 $5,050,398

(19.4)

$772,263

$0

$1,706,335

$498,895

$861,459

$198,094

$34,802

$2,145.0

-28.14%

16

Uday Yadav/Eaton president and COO, Industrial Sector (September 2015 - present)

$4,061,120 $4,792,783

(15.3)

$671,580

$0

$1,535,623

$448,920

$883,531

$495,974

$25,492

$2,145.0

-28.14%

17

Andrew J. Paine III/KeyCorp president, Key Institutional Bank (January 2019 - present) (10)

$3,969,893 $4,052,340

(2.0)

$500,000

$0

$1,709,998

$189,998

$1,500,000

$19,695

$50,202

$1,866.0

43.98%

18

James F. Pearson/FirstEnergy Corp. former executive vice president, finance (February 2018 - April 2019)

$3,895,599 $5,977,966

(34.8)

$662,214

$0

$2,402,070

NA

$758,454

$55,023

$17,838

$1,348.0

NM

19

Steven T. Oakland/The J.M. Smucker Co. former vice chair; president, U.S. Food & Beverage (May 2016 - March 2018)

$3,515,458 $3,882,056

(9.4)

$628,615

$13,770

$1,377,000

NA

$344,250

$1,127,607

$24,216

$1,338.6

126%

20

Steven E. Strah/FirstEnergy Corp. senior vice president, CFO (March 2018 - present)

$3,495,512 $3,976,975

(12.1)

$594,835

$0

$1,602,699

NA

$574,240

$696,989

$26,749

$1,348.0

NM

21

Donald R. Kimble Jr./KeyCorp vice chairman, CFO (June 2013 - present)

$3,473,931 $3,585,368

(3.1)

$688,462

$0

$1,394,971

$154,998

$1,200,000

NA

$35,500

$1,866.0

43.98%

22

Allen J. Mistysyn/Sherwin-Williams Co. senior vice president, finance; CFO (January 2017 - present)

$3,366,874 $3,201,662

5.2

$667,678

$0

$1,029,869

$820,296

$665,000

$0

$184,031

$1,108.7

-37.44%

23

Mark W. Midkiff/KeyCorp chief risk officer (January 2018 - present)

$3,316,666 NA

NA

$553,846

$500,000

$1,099,981

NA

$1,000,000

NA

$162,839

$1,866.0

43.98%

24

Aaron M. Erter/Sherwin-Williams Co. president, Performance Coatings Group (February 2019 - present) (11)

$3,128,410 NA

NA

$513,756

$228,800

$666,386

$410,148

$693,000

$0

$616,320

$1,108.7

-37.44%

25

Samuel L. Belcher/FirstEnergy Corp. senior VP; president, FirstEnergy Utilities (March 2018 - present)

$3,105,315 NA

NA

$548,060

$434,700

$1,503,221

NA

$506,951

$101,296

$11,087

$1,348.0

NM

26

David B. Sewell/Sherwin-Williams Co. president, COO (March 2019 - present) (12)

$3,036,302 NA

NA

$613,500

$0

$908,708

$674,466

$715,000

$0

$124,628

$1,108.7

-37.44%

27

Terrance M. Paradie/TransDigm Group Inc. former CFO, executive vice president (April 2015 - January 2018)

$2,982,390 $7,122,400

(58.1)

$281,250

$0

NA

$1,518,000

NA

NA

$1,183,140

$957.1

60.34%

28

Campbell Jones/Covia Holdings Corp. (formerly Fairmount Santrol/Unimin) executive VP, COO (June 2018 - present)

$2,970,219 $1,873,286

58.6

$752,277

$423,000

$582,636

NA

$405,185

$37,466

$769,656

($270.5)

-275.45%

29

Donald R. Schneider/FirstEnergy Corp. former president and chairman, FirstEnergy Solutions (2009 - March 2019)

$2,942,609 $2,841,822

3.5

$536,470

$0

NA

NA

$1,794,568

$599,377

$12,194

$1,348.0

NM

30

Joseph R. Leonti/Parker Hannifin Corp. vice president, general counsel and secretary (July 2014 - present)

$2,902,014 $2,660,863

9.1

$565,000

$0

$822,790

$400,875

$578,679

$0

$534,670

$1,060.8

7.87%

NM 7.87%

60.34%

RESEARCHED BY CHUCK SODER (CSODER@CRAIN.COM)

Get data on many more executives in Excel format. Become a Data Member: CrainsCleveland.com/data

Source: S&P Global Market Intelligence (Marketintelligence.spglobal.com) and Crain's research. NM = not meaningful. An “NA” in the total compensation column indicates that a company did not report compensation for the listed executive in 2017; the executive in some cases worked for the company in 2017. Dollar figures reflect amounts listed on each company's proxy statement and in some cases include compensation the executive earned under previous titles. Some stock awards and options will vest only if an executive remains with the company for a certain period of time or if the company hits performance targets. Send feedback to Chuck Soder: csoder@crain.com.

(1) Includes change in pension value and nonqualified deferred compensation (2) Skulina also served as interim CFO from January 2018 to July 2018 and senior vice president of finance from July 2018 to November 2018. (3) Sauerland in 2018 received a $3 million restricted stock award because of growth in Progressive's auto insurance policies and a rise in the number of households with bundled auto policies. (4) Policarpo served as chief operating officer from February 2016 to March 2019. (5) Policarpo and other Victory Capital executives received a one-time stock award in January 2018, one month before the company went public. (6) Fearon became vice chairman in January 2009. (7) Chapman also served as interim co-CEO from December 2017 to February 2018. (8) Chapman received a $2,369,000 cash severance payment in 2018. (9) Henderson received a $13.4 million dividend equivalent payment in 2017 in conjunction with dividends issued that year. (10) Paine served as president of KeyBanc Capital Markets and co-head of Key Corporate Bank from October 2015 to January 2019. (11) Erter joined SherwinWilliams when it acquired Valspar in June 2017. He served as president of the Consumer Brands Group from August 2017 to February 2019. (12) Sewell served as president of Sherwin-Williams' Performance Coatings Group from

August 2014 through February 2019.

P023_CL_20190624.indd 23

6/21/19 2:21 PM

PA G E 2 4

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

AKRON

M

Wooster Brush paints a long history and is primed for more

By Bob Sandrick clbfreelancer@crain.com

An artist’s rendering shows the proposed One Twenty Building in Akron. Tober Building Co. hopes to use modular construction to build the apartment building. (Contrbuted rendering)

Developer goes all out on modular construction

By Dan Shingler dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

Richfield developer and general contractor Todd Tober is fed up with the hassles of construction he routinely faces in Northeast Ohio.

The labor shortages, high material costs, and delays and safety issues caused by the region’s weather have become too much to bear, he said, at least when it comes to traditional construction methods.

So he’s going into manufacturing to try to solve such problems for his own business and maybe others, too.

And Northeast Ohio could get a new factory as a result.

Tober hopes two projects — One Twenty Building in West Akron and phase two of the Stoney Pointe Commons development in the city’s Lane-Wooster area — will give him a springboard to launch ToVee, a manufacturer of modular units for residential construction.

“We’re going to build these out of modular units,” Tober said of his two projects. “We’ve bet the farm it’s going to work.”

In March, he opened a 100,000square-foot factory in Seville, spent about $3 million on specialized equipment and has started making modular units for Stoney Pointe so construction can begin in July.

Tober Building Co., which employs 20, completed the first phase of Stoney Pointe in 2018 and co-owns the affordable-housing building with Akron’s nonprofit Community Support Services. Tober plans to add 45 apartments to the existing 68 units, he said.

The eight-story One Twenty project would put 110 market-rate apartments with first-floor, mixed-use space on a currently vacant lot on South Hawkins Avenue, assuming Tober can get the project financed.

Work on One Twenty was slated to begin this spring but has been delayed because projected rents would not support the cost of its construction, Tober said.

He’s now counting on modular

P024_025_CL_20190624.indd 24

construction to lower those costs and save the project. It’s going to be close, he said, even though he has reduced the project’s cost by about 20% by switching to Tober modular.

“If we can find a scenario that shows positive cash flow on our pro forma, then I would plan to close on financing in the spring of 2020 and open for leasing in the spring of 2021,” Tober said.

Stoney Pointe and One Twenty will be tough but ideal proving grounds for the concept of modular construction, he added.

At Stoney Point, there’s the challenge of matching the new modular units, which will be stacked four stories high, with the existing four-story building. However, the original building was designed with an addition in mind.

“It’s going to be butted right up to it and the interior corridors will flow right through,” said David Siebold, principal at Hiti, DiFrancesco and Siebold, the project’s Clevelandbased architects.

At the One Twenty site, Tober has two challenges: soil and rents. The soil beneath the project is soft peat moss, he said, so constructing an eight-story building on it would require sinking supports down to solid rock. That increased cost and projected rents mean traditional construction isn’t financially feasible, Tober said.

But he hopes the savings modular construction offer will persuade financial backers.

Tober is no newcomer to the construction industry, having been in it for more than 25 years. Tober Building Co.’s projects include Wadsworth’s City Hall, AAA’s headquarters in Akron and a slew of local residential and retail developments.

But if these latest projects succeed, making modular units could be what Tober does full-time. He’s planning a 350,000-square-foot Northeast Ohio manufacturing facility to replace the

plant in Seville, he said. He has yet to settle on a location.

People have talked about using modular construction for years, but no one’s been willing to pull the trigger, he said.

“So, we’ll be our own guinea pig,” Tober said.

Modular construction traditionally has been associated with cheaper, often temporary forms of housing.

However, Tober said, modern manufacturing techniques mean it can offer nearly all of the design elements and amenities of traditional construction — at a lower cost and with less labor at construction sites.

Tober can produce units that are 12 to 16 feet wide and 20-40 feet long.

His company can make about eight modules a day, the same number that can be installed per day at a job site.

Because the units can be attached to each other on any side — with the walls between two units removed — the horizontal space they can cover, with support pillars, is virtually unlimited, he noted.

The limiting factor, though, is a height of 9 feet, 3 inches.

Inside, modular units look like traditional buildings and can be configured nearly any way a user wants.

Tober and others said there are many reasons builders have resisted modular construction. For one, it’s limited by transportation costs. To be profitable, Tober only expects to ship his units about 300 miles at most.

And the height limitation also is no small thing. It limits modular to residential, Tober said, and the One Twenty project will require some traditional construction on its first floor to give retailers high ceilings.

Still, Tober isn’t alone in thinking that modular construction might be poised to play a much larger role.

“I think we’re at a tipping point,” said Ron Lloyd, principal at RDL Architects in Shaker Heights, who met Tober at a housing conference a couple of years ago.

“He’s got a lot of people interested in this,” said Lloyd, who’s helping Tober design his new factory.

SEE MODULAR, PAGE 25

The Wooster Brush Co. has seen management trends and business buzzwords come and go over the decades, but the company always has chosen to keep things simple.

It just makes quality products and takes care of workers, company officials say.

The Wooster-based designer and manufacturer of paintbrushes has grown to 650 employees since its founding in 1851. In its more than 160 years, the company has expanded its product line from brushes made of hog bristles to more than 2,000 items.

Go into any hardware store or bigbox retailer and you’re bound to find products emblazoned with the name of the Wayne County city. The company markets to retailers and wholesalers across the United States and in Canada, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

And while the company has a long history, it’s also looking toward the future, such as eyeing an industrial client base for growth, company officials said.

David Parr, executive director of the American Brush Manufacturers Association, said it was hard to pinpoint Wooster Brush’s share in the overall market because companies within the industry are closely held and keep their information private, but one thing is for sure: It’s a growing market.

The painting tools market is set to increase from about $10 billion in 2018 to about $15.5 billion in 2025, according to a recent Global Market Insights report.

“Wooster Brush is an old and important company in the industry and has been active in the ABMA for the entire 102-year life of the association,” Parr told Crain’s Cleveland Business in an email.

A Pennsylvanian named Adam Foss established Wooster Brush after he traveled to Ohio in the mid1800s.

He was visiting his brother, who lived in Wooster, but on the way he stopped in Cincinnati and bought a

mystery crate at an unclaimedfreight auction.

“He was adventurous and a gambler,” said Scott Rutledge, Wooster Brush’s marketing director. “We don’t Rutledge think he knew what was in the crate, but who knows how well it was sealed? Maybe the contents were slightly exposed.”

The crate contained hog bristles, leftovers from the butchery process, which Foss took to Wooster. He and his brother crafted paintbrushes out of the material and sold them doorto-door throughout Ohio.

The Foss brothers had stumbled onto something, and Wooster Brush was born.

Wooster Brush occupied several downtown Wooster buildings before finding a permanent home in 1909 on Madison Avenue. It’s still the company’s headquarters and has grown from its original 14,100 square feet. In the 1960s, the company built a 117,000-square-foot addition, and in 1995 tacked on another 107,000 square feet, Rutledge said.

And while the company has a plant in Elyria that turns out a few items, such as extension poles, and a warehouse in Reno, Nev., the bulk of the work is done at its Wooster plant, where about 90% of its products are made and three shifts run five days a week.

Company officials declined to discuss revenue or sales numbers, but Rutledge said Wooster Brush had consistent single-digit sales growth for most of its history — that is until about 40 years ago, when big-box home-improvement stores like Lowe’s and the Home Depot emerged. That’s when the company’s sales growth shot into the double digits, he said.

The nature of the painting market itself helps drive those sales.

Rutledge said the company’s topselling products by far are paintbrushes and roller covers, partly because they must be replaced periodically.

SEE WOOSTER, PAGE 25

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Wooster Brush makes more than 2,000 products, including paintbrushes, roller poles, paint trays, tray liners and more. (Contributed photo)

6/21/19 12:28 PM

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MODULAR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

Lloyd said builders have been resisting modular construction for decades, but challenges that affect costs and scheduling of traditional construction get tougher each year.

Modular construction can address the nation’s housing challenges by providing affordable new places to live, he said. And it can create jobs.

“There’s an opportunity for workforce training and jobs. This factory that we’re (planning to build) is going to need about 300 people,” Lloyd said. “This type of construction doesn’t necessarily require that you’re a master carpenter, plumber or tradesperson.”

You might think architects would

hate modular construction, but some welcome the challenge. Instead, it’s the clients who usually get cold feet.

“This is our first real modular project,” Siebold said of Stoney Pointe.

“We’ve talked with other ones in the past. ... They all get shy and decide to go conventional. We find (Tober) to be innovative and always pushing the edge, which we kind of like.”

Tober said most other module-makers are on the coasts and shipping to the nation’s heartland substantially increases costs — enough to leave the market to him for now.

He’s hoping to spend a year to 18 months in his current space before he pulls the trigger on a larger factory.

“You have to take a lot of risk and buy a lot of equipment and look to the future,” Tober said.

WOOSTER CONTINUED FROM PAGE 24

Wooster Brush also offers hundreds of different styles of paintbrushes for different jobs.

Way down the pecking order are poles, trays and cage frames, which don’t need replacing as often, Rutledge said.

Along with the continuity of its past, the company enjoys a continuity of workers.

Officials say Wooster Brush long has had a culture of putting employees first. It’s had a profit-sharing program since 1917, Rutledge noted.

It also values the work-life balance, said Ben Maibach, vice president of national accounts.

As a result, the company’s average

|

employee retention rate is 13 years.

That compares to a median rate of 4.2 years for all U.S. hourly and salaried workers in January 2018, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor.

“At other companies, if you went home at 6, it was frowned upon,” Maibach said. “But workers are more efficient if they’re not dragged down and beat down by a job.”

As for the future, Wooster Brush is focusing on its traditional markets while continuing to grow its industrial client base, Rutledge said. For example, W.W. Grainger Inc. sells Wooster Brush products to automobile factories, which use the products not for carmaking but for plant maintenance.

“We’ve always had a certain amount of business there, but in the

J U N E 2 4 - J U N E 3 0 , 2 019

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PA G E 2 5

last 10 years we have focused there more,” Rutledge said.

He added that Wooster Brush will continue to innovate as well, something it’s done throughout its history, from partnering with DuPont in 1941 to create the first nylon brush for then-new latex paints to more recently introducing a new line of polyester brushes.

The pace of innovation in the industry in general has slowed over the past five years, he said, but Wooster’s sticking with its simple plan has paid off for the company for more than 160 years.

“It’s harder now to find new products that aren’t gimmicky, like those you see on TV commercials,” Rutledge said.

“We never want to be in that category.”

Advertising Section

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

To place your listing, visit www.crainscleveland.com/people-on-the-move or for more information, please call Debora Stein at (917) 226-5470 or email dstein@crain.com.

ACCOUNTING

ARCHITECTURE

ARCHITECTURE

LAW

The Siegfried Group

RDL Architects Inc.

RDL Architects Inc.

Benesch

John Behr, CPA, recently joined Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as a Senior Associate. He brings his superior analytical ability and builds strong relationships to reach his clients’ goals. John, who earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting and finance from Ohio University, was most recently a Senior Accountant at Maloney + Novotny.

RDL Architects, Inc. is pleased to announce the promotion of Lisa Elton, RA, NCARB, LEED AP to Commercial Studio Director. Upon graduation from Kent State University with master’s degrees in both architecture and business administration, Lisa’s twelve years of experience at RDL, from student intern to senior project manager has prepared her well. She will manage the technical, fiscal and scheduling resources of the studio; responsible to its retail, entertainment, office and mixed-use clients.

RDL Architects is pleased to announce that Eileen Nacht, AIA, LEED AP, EDAC, has joined the firm’s Senior Living Studio as Senior Manager responsible for technical, fiscal and scheduling resources. A graduate of the University of Cincinnati with a Bachelor of Architecture, Eileen’s 25 years of design experience spans the full continuum of care for aging populations; her specialty is gerontological design and quality control utilizing Evidence Based Design (EBD) standards.

Elliot Smith has joined Benesch as a partner in the firm’s Insolvency & Creditors’ Rights Practice Group. Elliot brings a broad and versatile corporate, litigation, and finance practice built on extensive experience representing and counseling clients in corporate insolvency, distressed lending and investing, restructuring, and bankruptcy contexts, including complex chapter 11 cases throughout the country.

ACCOUNTING

The Siegfried Group Craig Thomas, CPA, recently joined Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as a Manager.

He is people-focused and builds lasting relationships, thereby fostering a collaborative environment that benefits and develops all parties. Craig, who was most recently an Assurance Manager at RSM, earned his Bachelor of Science and MBA in accounting from John Carroll University.

ACCOUNTING

The Siegfried Group Mike Masteller, CPA, recently joined Siegfried’s Cleveland Market as an Associate Manager. Excited by new ideas and tasks, he works hard to deliver crystal-clear communications and powerful results. Mike, who was most recently a Manager at RSM, earned his Bachelor of Business Administration in accounting from The Ohio State University.

P024_025_CL_20190624.indd 25

REAL ESTATE

NONPROFITS

American Cancer Society ARCHITECTURE LAW

RDL Architects Inc. RDL Architects is pleased to announce that Chuck Tackett, RA, NCARB, JD has joined the Residential Studio team as Senior Project Manager.

Chuck received his Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Cincinnati and a Juris Doctor from the University of Akron School of Law. Chuck’s experience spans 27 years and multiple markets, from affordable and multi-family housing to Ohio school facilities, serving in positions of responsibility for architecture, development and construction firms.

Sutter O’Connell Sutter O’Connell is pleased to welcome Jay E. Krasovec, Of Counsel, to the firm effective June 3, 2019. Jay brings over 20 years’ experience in commercial and labor and employment litigation. He has extensive first-chair trial experience in numerous Federal and state courts, in addition to many proceedings through the American Arbitration Association. Jay also serves as an Adjunct Professor at The University of Akron School of Law and participates in its lawyer-to-student mentoring program.

The American Cancer Society is pleased to announce the promotion of Sarah Wells to vice president, Distinguished Partners. Wells is responsible for leading corporate development and account management, distinguished events, and major gifts to drive revenue growth across a seven-state region. She brings more than 20 years of development, community outreach, and cancer control experience to this role, and previously served as Executive Director for the Cleveland/ Northern Ohio market.

ANNOUNCE CAREER MILESTONES WITH

CRAIN’S PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

Carnegie Companies, Inc. Dylan DiNardo joined Carnegie Companies as a Real Estate Analyst. Dylan assists with analysis, facilitation, DiNardo coordination, and management of the entire deal flow process. Prior to Carnegie, Dylan worked for US Commercial Real Estate. Dylan graduated from the Lindner College of Business at University of Cincinnati.

Shana ScovilMormon joined Carnegie Companies as Assistant Property Administrator. Shana assists the Property Mormon Management team with operations, including collections, payments, lease administration, etc. Prior to Carnegie, Shana worked for Safeguard Properties handling a variety of responsibilities.

NEW GIG? Preserve your career change for years to come.

Plaques • Crystal keepsakes Frames • Other Promotional Items

C O N TA C T

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Laura Picariello Reprints Sales Manager lpicariello@crain.com (732) 723-0569

6/21/19 12:28 PM

ection

| VJEULNAEN2D4 B- U 3S 0 ,I N 2E 019 S BCELRE3V -E 9 L ,A2N018 D B U|S I PA N EGSES2 5 C RPA A IGNE’ S2 6C L E S S | | CSREAPITNE’M

ALL-STAR CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

place your listing in Crain’s Cleveland Classifieds, while it’s much too soon to sjanik@crain.com uzanne Janik atAnd313-446-0455 or email know when or if the Cavs’ rebuilding job will begin to produce annual playoff trips, the work of the Greater Cleveland Sports Commission, the city’s big three sports teams and local officials have seen to it that there will be at least one major event coming to town in five of the next six years.

On deck is the first MLB All-Star Game in Cleveland in 22 years. The 2020 NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, 2021 NFL draft, 2022 NBA All-Star Game and 2024 NCAA Women’s Final Four will follow in a historic stretch for the region.

“We look at it on two levels,” Agosta said. “First, the hotel sells out for a week. Second, it brings in people who don’t typically come downtown.”

The MLB All-Star showcase occurs during a month that is already one of the best for Cleveland hotels. July has topped the monthly revenue rankings in three of the last six years, with occupancy rates in the Cleveland-Independence market that range from 73% to 80.3% during that span.

Next month likely won’t top July 2016, when the then-7,054-room hotel market that includes downtown racked up almost $30 million in revenue, thanks in large part to the Republican National Convention. But the MLB’s Midsummer Classic should produce significant yearover-year revenue gains in the first half of the month, when the market is at capacity.

“We’ve positioned ourselves to have one showcase event every year, which is great,” Agosta said. “The goal is to keep the brand of Cleveland relevant — to get people to experience what the city has to offer.”

METERS

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

The administration has already conducted a request for proposals and has selected a national parking consultant to undertake it. However, neither Brown

The first MLB All-Star Game in Cleveland since 1997 could be a boon for downtown hotels and restaurants. (David Kordalski)

‘The biggest of the year’ The Winking Lizard also missed the Cavs in April, May and June, said Jim Callam, one of the company’s co-owners.

The Winking Lizard’s sports-centric locations — its two downtown spots, plus eateries in Bedford Heights and Lakewood, for example — felt the sting the most, Callam said.

But, in true Cleveland sports fashion, there proved to be a silver lining around the corner.

“We’re going to make it up with the Browns, and All-Star week might be the biggest of the year,” Callam said.

The return of the All-Star Game gave Northeast Ohio establishments the chance to apply for a major-event waiver that will allow them to stay open until 4 a.m. According to the state’s Division of Liquor Control, 100 permits were approved for Cuyahoga County. nor city spokesman Dan Williams would identify the firm because the contract had not been signed by both parties as of last Thursday, June 20.

However, that means the results of the study may be in hand in about eight weeks after the study is commissioned.

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The tally includes permit-holders that have multiple waivers issued for one location (there are four for the Velvet Dog on West 6th St. and three for the Metropolitan at The 9 on East 9th, for instance). Of the 100, 88 are in Cleveland and eight were issued for Lakewood establishments.

Asked what he’s expecting for the five-day event that culminates with the All-Star Game at Progressive Field, Callam said, “Big crowds. I think it will be a nice time to showcase Cleveland.”

‘A cool destination’ Northeast Ohio sports fans know GV Art + Design for the creative spin the Lakewood apparel company puts on Browns-, Cavs- and Indiansthemed gear.

In 2017, though, GV became an officially licensed brand of the Major The city gets complaints about coin-operated meters on a sporadic basis.

Terrell Cole, Cleveland deputy chief of operations, said in the same phone call with Brown that the city often gets cryptic comments like, “What are these quarters that you speak of?” However, most customers want to know what app they can use for phone payments, and he said the city would like to have one app that would be universally available.

The city’s mechanical meters also are aging out of use. Brown said the city can no longer find a manufacturer of mechanical meters or even parts. For several years, he added, it has scavenged damaged meters to repair others.

That prompted the city’s move to credit card payment systems in a few locations a few years ago. Brown said about half of the on-street meters are mechanical at this point and half are electronic, which enables the use of credit cards.

The city has saved about $500,000 to pay for upgrading meters, Brown said. However, it delayed doing so in order to take a more global approach to updating the system. Brown said Cleveland city councilman Kerry McCormack, whose Ward 3 includes parking-meter-rich downtown Cleveland, has discussed it with him several times, but no interest groups have particularly pushed for the change.

Brown said the city’s parking department and the administration have long followed the development of new parking technology, particularly since vendors constantly call on the city to show administrators what’s new. He added that the administration has decided systems

6/19/19 12:08 PM

League Baseball Players Association — a deal that is especially relevant in the coming weeks.

On Tuesday, June 18, GV unveiled the first design in a new line of T-shirts that will feature some of the top players in baseball. Eight to 10 shirts will be available for sale, and another five or six designs could follow when the All-Star Game arrives, said GV co-founder George Vlosich.

The work will be part of a GV popup shop that recently opened in the Caxton Building at 812 Huron Road.

The shop will stay open through July and will feature new artwork and Etch A Sketch drawings — something for which Vlosich gained national notoriety via interviews with the likes of Oprah Winfrey, Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman.

“We want it to be a cool destination,” Vlosich said of the GV popup shop.

The 40-year-old — who, along with his brother, Greg, oversees the company’s stores in Lakewood and Willoughby — said the benefits of such major events can be felt by businesses big and small. GV, though, will always keep a key lesson in mind.

“There are a lot of variables,” Vlosich said. “We’ve learned not to chase the money. These events are fantastic and awesome, and they’re a great way to showcase your work. We look at it that way. We’re passionate about what we’re doing.”

Kick-starting a relationship The work of Brokaw Inc. was on full display last week, when a New Balance campaign to get Indians shortstop Francisco Lindor “elected” as an American League All-Star starter was featured on social media, in radio and TV advertisements, on digital signage at RTA stations and six downtown billboards.

The Cleveland agency enlisted the

help of local celebrities and some of its business partners for the “Vote for Lindor” campaign, and it squeezed about two months of work into a period of a few weeks, said Tim Brokaw, the company’s managing partner and co-founder.

The All-Star Game “is great for the city and great for businesses,” Brokaw said. And for the agency, it’s a chance to establish a long-term bond with a national footwear and apparel company.

“We hope to continue that relationship with New Balance beyond this,” Brokaw said. “That’s the goal of any of these projects.”

National spotlight League-led events such as the MLB All-Star Game are far from a financial windfall for the host teams.

The Indians will turn over Progressive Field to MLB officials beginning on July 1, and by the time the festivities conclude nine days later, the club will be more than $1 million in the hole, according to a source.

But the Tribe, like the Browns and Cavs in future big-event years, will happily take one for the team. The MLB All-Star Game will bring in more than 2,000 members of the media — a number that is comparable to the 2016 World Series and an impact that goes beyond dollar figures.

In the case of the MLB festivities, there is a secondary piece — the July 8 Home Run Derby — that is almost as popular as the main event, along with a third day of games (the celebrity softball contest and Futures Game on July 7) and a fan festival that is expected to draw 100,000.

“It’s national coverage,” said Agosta, the Hilton Cleveland Downtown general manager. “The World Series, NBA championships — any event that puts us in the media nationally sparks new interest.”

Although she managed a smile for the camera, Michelle Kennedy of Garfield Heights was frustrated by getting a Cleveland parking ticket because she couldn’t buy more time through a more contemporary meter system when her meter expired. (Stan Bullard)

have evolved enough that now might be the time to update.

McCormack said he has made updating the city’s antiquated on-street parking meter system a priority since he joined City Council three years ago.

“This is to move beyond 1950,” McCormack said. “I recently told our intern and staff about these things that we used to use called quarters.” He said people generally complain about how ridiculous it is to pay by coin in an era of mobile payments.

“When I go to the bank to get a roll of quarters to feed parking meters,” the tellers laugh about it, McCormack said. “However, It’s really about making a friendly, welcoming city.”

As with all city activities, there will be pluses and minuses to such an undertaking.

McCormack said mobile payment goes with the customer. Under the old mechanical system, when someone feeds a meter for more time than they need to run into a coffee shop and takes off, the next motorist could park and take advantage of the extra time at no cost. A mobile system could bring in more revenue in such an instance.

Brown said electronic systems may also give the city better, faster data on revenues and which areas have parking issues. The system might allow surge pricing, he added, which would let the city charge a special-event rate during Browns and Indians games.

The current mechanical system makes such a move, along with other flexible operations, impossible.

6/21/19 12:23 PM

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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Alan Miciak John M. Boler Dean, Boler College of Business, John Carroll University Alan Miciak joined John Carroll University as dean of the business school in 2015 and has seen the business program through a lot of change. Since Miciak has been at John Carroll, the university has revamped its business program, turning it from a school to a college. It’s also established two new schools in accountancy and information sciences and in leadership and social innovation under that larger umbrella. The latter school is designed to “build the bridge” between the College of Arts and Sciences and the Boler College of Business, Miciak said. There are experts across campus, not just the business college, who can help inform the leaders of the future. “And we’re really trying to lean into that,” Miciak said. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. — Rachel Abbey McCafferty

The Miciak file Favorite Cleveland spots The East 4th Street restaurants

How he spends his free time He considers himself a “handyman.”

Recommended reads “Good to Great,” by Jim Collins

What he wanted to be as a kid Running back for the Browns

Inspiration for life His parents, an English war bride and a World War II veteran

Lunch spot Pizzazz on the Circle 20680 John Carroll Blvd., University Heights 216-321-7272

The meal One had the vegetable wrap and one had the portobello sandwich, both with waters.

The vibe This casual, close-to-campus spot offers a variety of choices from sandwiches to salads to calzones to, of course, pizza.

The bill $25.92 with tip

What drew you to academia?

I remember driving from Toledo to Detroit with my boss and he said, “Al, if you weren’t doing this” — I was in sales at the time — “if you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing?” And I just said, “I’d be teaching at a university.” So it must have been in the back of my mind at the time, but I always enjoyed learning. I love teaching. I enjoy research. So it was just a good fit for me.

What drew you to John Carroll in particular?

I had completed two terms as dean at Duquesne, so I was done there.

But I did spend another two years on the faculty. And then I got a call and saw John Carroll’s position was open. And Cleveland is my hometown.

I’d been gone a long time. I’d been gone 25 years. There’s two things I’d say about John Carroll. One is the quality of academic programs.

They’ve always really, really held strongly to quality and rigor in their academics. So their reputation has been earned and it’s been maintained. And the other thing I really noticed is the enthusiasm and the love of John Carroll alumni for their alma mater is unmatched. That level of enthusiasm signaled to me a level of support. And many of the grads stay in the region and have gone on and done great things in the Northeast Ohio community.

We’ve been able to, just with the two new schools and the Boler College, raise $22 million in the last year on our Inspired Lives capital campaign. It’s a good indicator of the support that we have from our alumni community. And it allows us

to do some of the innovative things that you can’t do on the normal course of events.

Why is collaboration between the colleges of arts and sciences and business important to you? Why do you think that’s something the business college needs to be doing?

We live in a unique moment in time where businesses are no longer measured solely by their profitability, and that businesses are under increasing scrutiny and pressure to provide benefits to their workforce, benefits to the communities they work in. They are required to do that in environmentally responsible ways.

So we talk about leadership for the triple bottom line, so that managers today are not measured just on their financial performance but also on their social and environmental performance. One of the interesting things for a business school at a Jesuit university, there’s this Jesuit tradition, and the characteristics of a Jesuit education. There are a number of them, but the one that I really focus on is this idea that you live in the right relationship with others and you live in the right relationship with the environment.

We’re facing some really, really significant challenges as a global community and, certainly, as leaders in businesses. And the mandate for solutions to a lot of these challenges are going to come from the private sector, not necessarily the government or the public sector.

I’ve noticed more and more collaboration inside colleges and

universities. How important do you think that is to education today?

That’s where all the growth will come. I’m reading a book right now called “Leap” by Howard Yu, basically saying we live in a time when anyone can copy anything you do. And so, how do companies actually achieve leap strategies?

This is kind of where we’re at with introducing our two new schools.

Look, we can try and recruit some more marketing students and some more psychology students and some more finance students and you can be successful at that, even fighting against the demographic drought that we’re into. But the real opportunity for growth, or the leap strategies, are not there. There in the integrated sense. So what are we doing with psychology, sociology, criminology and business? What are we doing with mathematics and computer science and business?

Everything has a nexus around the commercial application.

Do you get to do any teaching in your administrative role?

I do a lot of guest lectures or guest appearances. I don’t take on a whole class. We have a professional development series, and so each year, I would see all the freshmen, all the sophomores, all the juniors, all the seniors in these pods of 40 or 50 over a three- or four-week period.

And I would have a series of messages and a little bit of content with each, based on their position.

With the freshmen, the message is different than with the seniors. I do enjoy working with the students. And I’ll work with student leaders, student organizations. It’s important.

CLEVELAND BUSINESS 700 W. St. Clair Ave., Suite 310 Cleveland, OH 44113-1230 Phone: (216) 522-1383 www.crainscleveland.com Twitter: @CrainsCleveland Publisher/editor Elizabeth McIntyre Group publisher Mary Kramer Managing editor Scott Suttell Sections editor Michael von Glahn Creative director David Kordalski Web editor Damon Sims Associate editor/Akron Sue Walton Assistant editor Kevin Kleps Senior reporter Stan Bullard, Real estate/construction Reporters Jay Miller, Government Dan Shingler, Energy/steel/auto/Akron Rachel McCafferty, Manufacturing/ energy/education Jeremy Nobile, Finance Lydia Coutré, Health care/nonprofits Senior data editor Chuck Soder Cartoonist Rich Williams Sales and Events coordinator Megan Lemke Integrated marketing manager Michelle Sustar Managing editor custom/special projects Amy Ann Stoessel Associate publisher/Director of advertising sales Lisa Rudy Senior account executives Dawn Donegan, John Petty Account executives Laura Kulber Mintz, Loren Breen People on the Move manager Debora Stein Office coordinator Denise Donaldson Pre-press and digital production Craig L. Mackey Media services manager Nicole Spell Billing YahNica Crawford Credit Thomas Hanovich Crain’s Cleveland Business is published by Crain Communications Inc.

Chairman Keith E. Crain Vice chairman Mary Kay Crain President KC Crain Senior executive VP Chris Crain Secretary Lexie Crain Armstrong CFO Robert Recchia G.D. Crain Jr., Founder (1885-1973) Mrs. G.D. Crain Jr., Chairman (1911-1996) Reprints: Laura Picariello, 732-723-0569 or lpicariello@crain.com Customer service and subscriptions: 877-824-9373 Volume 40, Number 25 Crain’s Cleveland Business (ISSN 0197-2375) is published weekly, except for the last week of December, at 700 West St. Clair Ave., Suite 310, Cleveland, OH 44113-1230.

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THE WEEK Making progress

after leasing space at 1880-1890 W. 25th St. in Cleveland, currently the Ohio City location of Daniels Furniture. An affiliate of the furniture firm sold the property with about 18,000 square feet of usable space to an investment group led by real estate developer Chad Kertesz for $2.3 million, Cuyahoga County land records show. Rise’s 16-Bit+Bar Arcade consists of classic arcade games; Pins Mechanical offers duckpin bowling, foosball and other traditional games.

Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert was released from a Detroit-area hospital nearly a month after suffering a stroke, Quicken Loans Inc. confirmed on June 20.

Gilbert “will now continue focusing on his recovery at an in-patient rehabilitation center,” said Jay Farner, CEO of Quicken Loans.

Gilbert, 57, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans and Rock Ventures LLC, was taken to the hospital by a family friend on May 26 after falling ill earlier in the day.

Off to Ireland

Game on Columbus-based Rise Brands plans to open a location for both of its entertainment concepts, Pins Mechanical Co. and 16-Bit Bar+Arcade,

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The Ohio City location of Daniels Furniture might become home to an entertainment center offering duckpin bowling and classic arcade video games. (Stan Bullard)

With new responsibilities overseas, Edward Crawford officially resigned from diversified industrial company ParkOhio.

The Cleveland company said Crawford, who spent 26 years as chairman and CEO of what had been

known as Park-Ohio Holdings Corp., resigned from the board and as president effective June 17 as he became U.S. ambassador to Ireland.

In the money Cleveland wealth manager MAI Capital Management expanded its footprint to the Washington, D.C., market with the acquisition of Reston, Va.-based MTX Wealth Management, which serves high-net-worth individuals, with a focus on professional athletes and entertainers.

MAI said the deal increases its assets under management by more than $400 million. As of March 31, MAI managed and advised on $5.4 billion in assets.

MTX advisers who work with athletes and coaches will become part of a dedicated service group within MAI, branded MAI Sports.

6/21/19 12:20 PM

40th Annual Ronald McDonald House

PRO-AM GOLF TOURNAMENT The Mayfield Sand Ridge Club • Monday, June 24, 2019 Presented by Truline Industries and University Hospitals, the Ronald McDonald House Pro-Am Golf Tournament is the longest-running and most successful fundraising event in the history of the Ronald McDonald House® of Cleveland. Over the past 39 years, the tournament has raised more than $4 million to support the Ronald McDonald House’s mission of keeping families together when it matters most. Led by committee chairman Andy McCartney, this tournament is made possible by the dedication of our committee members, sponsors, and golf professionals.

PRESENTING SPONSORS

UNDERWRITING SPONSORS ®

CORPORATE SPONSORS American Consolidated Industries, Inc.

The Crawford Group

BDO

First Energy Foundation

Bridgestone Senior Players Carnegie Investment Counsel Chemical Bank

Hilton Garden Inn, 700 Beta Banquet and Conference Center

Davey Tree Expert Company

Hyland

First National Bank

Interstate Diesel Company

Hanna Commercial Real Estate

Ironhawk Industrial Distribution

NSK Industries

Suburban Press

Resource Strategies, Inc.

Taylor Oswald

Ronald McDonald House Charities of Northeastern Ohio

Wellspring Financial Advisors

ShurTech Brands LLC

SPECIAL THANKS: Company Car, IMG and Suburban Press Our heartfelt thanks to the PGA and LPGA tour professionals and the NOPGA local resident professionals for their commitment to the Ronald House Pro-Am event:

TOUR PROFESSIONALS: Ryan Armour, Corey Conners, Billy Hurley III, Jason Kokrak, Nancy Lopez, Curtis Luck, Peter Malnati, Will McGirt, Larry Mize, Dicky Pride, Robby Shelton, Hal Sutton RESIDENT PROFESSIONALS: Dominic Antenucci, Mark Bixler, Steve Bordner, Jennifer Creech, Matthew Creech, Mark Evans, Jimmy Hanlin, Jaysen Hansen, Mike Heisterkamp, Rob Moss, Drew Pierson, John Sico, Mark Sierak, Judd Stephenson, Tom Waitrovich

“It would have been a big financial strain for us to pay out of pocket for food and lodging.

You not only provided us comfortable accommodations, but wonderful, stress-free meals and the fellowship and friendships of the families...

The hospital healed our child’s body, but you all healed our hearts. ‘Thank you’ can’t possibly do justice to our gratitude.”

– Ronald McDonald House Guest

Since 1979, the Ronald McDonald House of Cleveland (RMH), a not-for-profit organization, has offered a welcoming place to stay for families of children receiving medical treatment at area hospitals. In addition to the 55-family House on Euclid Avenue, Ronald McDonald Family Rooms in four area hospitals offer caregivers a place to rest and recharge just steps from their child’s treatment room, and Ronald McDonald STAR Centers provide support to families in two area outpatient centers. RMH relies on the generosity of the local community to provide support and services to thousands of families each year.

www.rmhcleveland.org RMHC_PA_Crains_0619.indd 1 CL_062419_FP Template.indd 1

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