Crain's Cleveland Business

VOL. 40, NO. 31

AUGUST 5 - 11, 2019

Source Lunch

Sonia M. Winner, Cleveland Museum of Natural History Page 31

Akron

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Full Grip is raking in big business from card games. Page 28

CRAIN’S EXCELLENCE IN HR AWARDS 2019

HONORING THE HUMAN FACTOR

T

he Crain’s Excellence in HR program turns the spotlight on Northeast Ohio’s outstanding human resources executives and teams.

Winners and finalists were selected in eight categories: HR Executive/Team of the Year; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Experience; Diversity and Inclusion; Rising Star; Talent; Employee Advocacy; and “Accidental” HR Leader, given to a manager working outside of the traditional HR role who’s shown innovation in workforce management and employee engagement. Their stories begin on Page 10.

ENERGY

GOVERNMENT

Referendum to defeat House Bill 6 begins to gather energy

Strategic plan digs down into the data

By Dan Shingler

By Kim Palmer

dshingler@crain.com @DanShingler

FirstEnergy Solutions might not want to spend its bailout money just yet. There’s reason to doubt Ohioans will follow through in subsidizing the

Akron company’s nuclear plants in Lake and Ottawa counties.

While state legislators may have decided to subsidize the Perry and Davis-Besse plants with about $150 million a year from ratepayers via House Bill 6, voters have not. A referendum to overturn HB 6 is gaining support and could land on the ballot

Entire contents © 2019 by Crain Communications Inc.

in a perfect, high-turnout election year for its success.

“I think it could easily win. … HB 6 is very unpopular,” said Paul Beck, a professor emeritus and former chair of the political science department at Ohio State University.

“Many of the forces that fueled the Trump presidency, before 2016 — I’m talking the Tea Party and others — could be supportive in undoing this bill. And so could people on the left.

You may find an incredible divergent group of people aligned with each other,” added Beck, who has been following Ohio politics for more than 30 years.

To get the issue on the 2020 ballot, supporters of the referendum need to round up more than 265,000 signatures, including ample numbers from at least 44 Ohio counties.

SEE HB 6, PAGE 29

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kpalmer@crain.com

Cuyahoga County’s economic development office works off a rolling five-year strategic plan that is updated annually. Every year, the office convenes a group of civic, business and labor leaders to discuss and update the economic priorities for the region.

Ted Carter, director of the county’s economic development department, in July was tasked with presenting this plan to one of the county council committees.

The report detailed a list of investments and business growth successes.

Among them: Last year, nearly $6.2 million was loaned to 67 businesses using county funds, and more than $2

million in supplemental grants were provided to municipal and community development groups.

For the second half of 2019, Carter said, there are 12 potential economic development projects “in the pipeline,” comprising seven in the city of Cleveland and five in various suburbs, and including business headquarters, offices and mixed-use projects. The economic development office isn’t disclosing details of any of the projects.

But council members told Carter they wanted more than just a report on past successes. Instead, they wanted a more comprehenisve roadmap for future success.

“It is easy to get lost in the weeds,” Cuyahoga County council board member Dale Miller said.

SEE COUNTY, PAGE 30

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Another real estate firm is targeting Ohio City

Harsax Management purchases connected buildings that it will rent in Cleveland’s ‘hottest neighborhood’

By Stan Bullard sbullard@crain.com @CrainRltyWriter

Randy Sacks, senior vice president of Harsax Management Co. of Garfield Heights, said he dines almost weekly at restaurants in Ohio City and Tremont, which has led him and his brother to explore the area over the last two years.

“It’s the hottest neighborhood in Cleveland,” Randy Sacks said in a phone interview last Thursday, Aug. 1.

“There’s a lot of stuff going on all around the West Side Market. Every year, there’s a new restaurant and more and more property transfers in the area.”

That accounts for how Randy and Brian Sacks, through Harsax Property Holdings LLC, recently became the owners of two connected buildings that sit on a half-acre parcel at 2067 West 41st St. Harsax paid $675,000 for the property, according to Cuyahoga County land records.

A monumental sign next to a row of parking marks the site on West 41st, but leads through the Burton Court alley to a two-story building dating from 1914 and a one-story building that Cuyahoga County tax records say dates from 1990 that has a contemporary office on its second floor.

Randy Sacks said his initial thought was to convert the taller building to a SoHo-style loft project

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Brian Sacks

Randy Sacks

with about a dozen condos because the site is too small for a rental residential project. However, since landing the property last month, the company has fielded enough offers that the brothers have decided to try to rent it and keep their redevelopment options open for the future.

“If we don’t have a tenant in six months, we’ll look at it again,” Randy Sacks said.

Randy and Brian Sacks both work at the family-owned real estate company headed by their father, Kenneth Sacks, who has been well-known as a flex office/warehouse and apartment developer since the 1970s. His father, the late Harry Sacks, built houses and then apartments on Cleveland’s West Side and then in the suburbs. Both Randy and Brian grew up working on construction and maintenance and other jobs for their father and, after nearly 10-year stints in Los Angeles as a TV producer and writer, respectively, rejoined the family business.

The family’s portfolio includes of-

“It’s a reputable agency with a long history in Northeast Ohio real estate. We’re glad they appreciate the nature of the existing buildings.”

—Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc.

fice/warehouse properties lining Engle Road in Middleburg Heights and eight apartment complexes, including the Parkridge Apartments on Puritas Avenue in West Park in the early 1990s on the front side of Cleveland’s housing resurgence. Most of its apartments are in the suburbs, from Brunswick townhouses to ranchstyle rentals in Madison Village.

Most recently, the family has been constructing apartments in Brunswick, including the Villas at Fox Run. It’s about to start leasing its first suites at its latest project, The Orchard, a 100-unit project on Pearl Road in Brunswick near Mapleside Farms.

But the company has been changing some of its direction. Most recently it pursued a different type of project: buying and renovating a commercial building at 4084 Erie St. in resurgent downtown Willoughby.

That three-story building, now home to Corks Wine Bar on part of its first floor, includes 18 apartments upstairs.

Patrick Dowd, a senior vice president at Sequoia Realty Corp. of Mentor, represented the seller, TAC Enterprises, in the Ohio City deal and said the 15,000-square-foot building complex sold in just three days.

“We weren’t surprised it sold so fast,” Dowd said, “because Ohio City is so hot.” He described interest in the property as heavy, but declined to say how many bidders took a shot at it. Dowd will handle leasing of the property for Harsax.

The site was available because the prior occupant, American Awning and Canvas, relocated to expand. It’s now at 3435 Service Road, also in Cleveland, according to its website.

Even so, it’s not a property for every developer or investor. The buildings are tucked into a corner of West 40th Street and Burton Court. That means they lack visibility off a main street. But they also reflect the quirky opportunities an old city neighborhood can offer.

Tom McNair, executive director of Ohio City Inc., said the Sacks brothers met with the nonprofit development group and special improvement district operator prior to buying the property.

“It’s a reputable agency with a long history in Northeast Ohio real estate,” McNair said. “We look forward to working with them for the best outcome for the neighborhood and the property owner. We’re glad they appreciate the nature of the existing buildings.”

The property is zoned for retail use but has served industrial tenants in the past, so the industrial use is grandfathered in. The zoning could allow office or residential uses, McNair said.

With the purchase, the Sacks family joins other established Clevelandarea real estate developers — or their offspring — with positions in Ohio City, a neighborhood that a decade ago rarely attracted interest from commercial real estate brokers.

Among other local developers active in the neighborhood just across the river from downtown the last few years are Fred Geis, Chad Kertesz, Chris Smythe and Peter Snavely Jr.

8/2/19 1:36 PM

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SB 57 positions hemp industry for a breakout Bill legitimizes CBD business in state, and companies such as Avon-based ZuRI are ready to reap benefits

By Jeremy Nobile jnobile@crain.com @JeremyNobile

With hemp and its derivatives finally legal in Ohio, Scott Raybuck estimates his already-growing CBD company is poised for a breakout, in his home state particularly.

“We can quadruple what we’re doing in the next three months,” said Raybuck, president of ZuRI. “We already exploded. But it’s just a scratch on the surface compared to where we will be in another six to 12 months.”

It’s all because of Ohio’s passage of Senate Bill 57, which was signed into law by Gov. Mike DeWine last week.

For ZuRI, that bill means legitimacy plus potentially closing on some big contracts with large retail chains that Raybuck is not yet ready to disclose publicly, but which he says have been waiting for laws to change in order to stock his products in Ohio.

ZuRI, headquartered in Avon, has a manufacturing and distribution facility in North Ridgeville, where hemp extracts like CBD are mixed with other items to make infused goods such as gummi candies and lotions.

ZuRI already makes more than 90 products that are currently sold in some 1,000 stores in 41 states, but mostly excluding Ohio because of the prior legal landscape here. The company is growing at a clip of about 140% a month, said Raybuck, who is already plotting an expansion at the

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Production tech Anthony Klein shrinks the tamper seals on CBD products at ZuRI’s production facility in North Ridgeville. ZuRI’s more than 90 products are currently sold in 41 states, but mostly excluding Ohio because of the prior legal landscape. (Tim Harrison for Crain’s)

North Ridgeville warehouse.

ZuRI marked its first sale in summer 2018, during a time when products featuring hemp and cannabis compounds, like CBD, were effectively illegal in the Buckeye State.

That’s because of rules for the medical marijuana program that classified

hemp the same as marijuana and recognized sales of even hemp-derived CBD products as legal only if they occurred through licensed marijuana dispensaries.

The Ohio Board of Pharmacy emphasized this last fall, leading to rampant confusion about the legal status

of CBD-related products here. That’s because the public largely assumed the descheduling of hemp federally with the 2018 Farm Bill legalized that industry across the country. In reality, that bill legitimized hemp programs at states that piloted them — which was allowed since the 2014

Farm Bill — as well as interstate commerce. But Ohio was among a handful of states that didn’t consider hemp as a legitimate, viable industry between those 2014 and 2018 bills.

Plus, state marijuana laws further complicated the status of hemp and, by proxy, CBD, in Ohio.

So when the 2018 Farm Bill was passed in December, Tom Haren, executive vice president of the Ohio Hemp Association, who worked on Ohio’s hemp bill, said entrepreneurs and lawmakers came to realize that Ohio wasn’t actually set up to take advantage of a U.S. industry that could balloon to $22 billion by 2022.

Businesses selling CBD products either cleared their shelves or risked being raided, which happened in a few instances in places like Cincinnati.

Farmers interested in hemp crops couldn’t plant it. Aspiring processors certainly couldn’t process it. And researchers couldn’t study it. Ohio was left behind while other states moved ahead in the hemp business. According to a statement by Jonathan Miller, general counsel for the U.S. Hemp Roundtable, Ohio is the 47th state to legalize hemp.

Meanwhile, manufacturers like ZuRI were left to navigate a legally sketchy environment in Ohio, preferring to work under the radar as much as possible. Raybuck, who buys CBD isolates and hemp extracts from a company in Colorado, said he had products mixed out in the Centennial State for a while to dodge risks here.

SEE HEMP, PAGE 29

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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National rail company could double Port of Cleveland traffic

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Roughly 13 million tons of cargo moves through Cleveland Harbor annually, supporting 20,000 jobs and creating $3.5 billion in economic activity.

For ships traveling through the St. Lawrence Seaway System, Cleveland is the first major U.S. Great Lakes stop and the harbor is within an eight-hour drive of half of all U.S. households, businesses and manufacturing plants.

Barges, trucks and an estimated 200 to 300 rail cars move through the Port of Cleveland annually, delivering everything from grain to machinery to scrap metal, according to David Gutheil, chief commercial officer at the Port of Cleveland.

Gutheil said he hopes doubling the amount of cargo the port imports and exports every year is one of the outcomes of a recent agreement signed with Denver-based company OmniTRAX. In July, the port entered into a 10year agreement with OmniTRAX, one of the largest privately held rail companies in America, which now owns more than 21 separate railroad lines, including the 25 miles of the Cleveland Commercial Railroad Co. The company has been aggressive about acquiring rail lines in Ohio.

OmniTRAX will be responsible for “port switching,” something Scott Brinner, executive vice president of corporate development, said involves the logistics of moving railcars and goods on and off rail lines within the port.

The company owns these “shortrail” lines, anywhere from 25 to 50-plus miles, that connect to Class I rail lines CSX and Norfolk Southern, which then deliver cargo across the country.

Kevin Shuba, CEO of OmniTRAX, described the process as something like a large-scale assembly line. “We handle the first- and last-mile logistics,” he said. The growing national company comes with an extensive customer base and relationships with other ports, including Brownsville, Texas.

“We could easily double it (the port's business) from a marketing standpoint, and that is what we are looking to do,” Gutheil said. “They bring a lot of scale to the operation.

They have a lot of customers outside of Northeast Ohio that we believe will help us from a cargo perspective on the international side."

Gutheil pointed out that most, if not all, of the port’s rail cargo is “customer-driven,” meaning they came to the port, not the other way around. OmniTRAX’s addition to the port means that company’s 400-plus customers are all potential new customers.

“You want to leverage the relationships you have with your current providers and their customers,” Gutheil said.

Rail lends itself to large-quantity hauls and oversized cargo. OmniTRAX works with big-name companies including Cargill, Halliburton, Anheuser-Busch, Procter & Gamble and Vestas, a global wind turbine manufacturer.

In late July, OmniTRAX agreed to purchase the Winchester & Western Railroad, which comprises two divisions — 53 miles through the Shenandoah Valley and 47 miles in southern New Jersey — and more than 400 railcars owned by Independencebased Covia Holdings Corp. (NYSE: CVIA), a minerals and materials supplier for the industrial and energy markets, for $105 million.

The acquisition increased the company’s rail lines by 40% and in-

cludes developable industrial land, opening up opportunities to offer short-rail service to businesses that want to move cargo to the port to access international markets.

OmniTRAX is part of The Broe Group, a real estate, transportation, health tech and energy company that owns a 3,000-acre industrial park in Windsor, Colo., containing a number of companies all connected by short rail. When asked if the company’s property in Ohio could see the same type of development, Shuba said, “It could. … We see opportunity for industrial development.”

“That is the kind of foresight you want to hear from a partner, that we can work on business opportunities with them,” Gutheil said.

Shuba said OmniTRAX operates its rail transport service so clients can focus on their core business. It seeks out companies that are not using railroads but are transporting cargo between 500 and 1,000 miles.

Brinner, a self-described multimodal nerd, admits to studying supply chains to streamline rail service efficiency. “There are a lot of hard and complex things that need to all meld into port operations,” he said.

One possible synergy is between Northeast Ohio and the Colorado commercial property where Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturer, is located. With the promise of offshore wind farms on Lake Erie looming, Gutheil sees an obvious connection.

“If (wind) would move through the Midwest, we would certainly want to handle that through Cleveland,” he said.

Wind turbine components lend themselves to rail transport because, as Brinner noted, “One blade can be a 150-meter, one-piece structure that you can only move on rail.”

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7/31/19 10:45 AM 8/2/19 2:23 PM

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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CSU’s ‘long-term build’ starts with Gates New men’s basketball coach is being tasked with reviving program that is critical to athletic department

By Kevin Kleps kkleps@crain.com @KevinKleps

Barely four months into his role as Cleveland State University’s director of athletics, Scott Garrett has hired four head coaches.

The tally will increase to five when the Vikings find a replacement for men’s lacrosse coach Dylan Sheridan, who left CSU to become an assistant coach at Ohio State.

“It’s certainly been all-consuming,” Garrett said. “There are so many priorities, right?”

Garrett’s top concern is a men’s basketball program that was 22-44 and posted the two lowest attendance averages in the history of the Wolstein Center during former head coach Dennis Felton’s two-year tenure. Felton was fired on July 12, after a period in which more than a handful of players — including the Vikings’ top five scorers last season — entered the NCAA’s transfer portal.

Garrett told Crain’s on July 30, after former Florida State University assistant coach Dennis Gates was announced as Felton’s replacement, that he “certainly would have liked to have the luxury of evaluating (the men’s hoops program) over a longer period of time, but my assessment and my recommendation to president (Harlan) Sands was that our program was in a position that a leadership change was necessary.”

And it wasn’t because of the transfers, Garrett added.

“It was a set of a variety of circumstances,” which the director of athletics said wasn’t “appropriate for us to share at this point.”

Felton had three years remaining on his contract, which stated that if he was terminated “without cause” (meaning the decision was based on the program’s performance and not a personal or NCAA issue), the university would be on the hook for the coach’s annual base salary of $325,000. That would amount to about $900,00, since the coach was let go three months into his third year on the job.

The terms of the coach’s buyout are still being discussed, a university source told Crain’s.

The 39-year-old Gates, a well-regarded coach and recruiter during his eight years at Florida State, also received a five-year deal. The new coach’s base salary, which starts at a prorated $280,000 in 2019-20 and peaks at $300,000 in Year 5, is lower than Felton’s, and Gates, unlike CSU’s former coach, doesn’t get an annual contribution of $100,000 into a deferred compensation account.

Instead, Gates can make up for the difference via incentives for academic performance (more than $50,000 in bonuses that are tied to the program’s APR, grade-point average and Horizon League honor rolls) and oncourt production (a cap of $100,000 per year, or $150,000 if the Vikings win their first national championship).

But even the lower-level items on the team-performance checklist in Gates’ contract — such as a .500 record in Horizon League play and getting the second or third seed in the conference tournament — are things the Vikings haven’t accomplished since 2015.

Garrett said Gates’ contract structure was “a combination of where

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Gates

Garrett

you’re at from a finance standpoint, but also what the coach is capable of making at that time in their career.”

CSU, he added, was “prepared to pay whatever we were going to pay for the experience our coach brought (Gates has never been a head coach),

but we were thoughtful about making sure that we were kind of in the wheelhouse of where other Horizon programs were.”

Gates’ $280,000 base salary, according to Crain’s research, ranks seventh among the 10 Horizon League men’s hoops coaches. It’s in line with longtime Oakland University coach Greg Kampe, who is sixth at $288,000 per year, but well below Wright State’s Scott Nagy.

Nagy, a former South Dakota State head coach who has a base salary of $500,000, is leading a program that has averaged 22 wins per season in his three-year tenure and advanced to the NCAA tournament in 2018.

That’s a level to which the Vikings, who have appeared in one NCAA tournament since 1986, are striving.

Sands, who took over as CSU’s president on June 1, 2018, likes to say athletics is “a window to our university.” He told Crain’s that, because of how important the Vikings’ signature program is to the university, he was “pretty involved” in the search that led to the hiring of Gates.

The coach’s “value set,” along with his “commitment to developing young men” were key attributes in CSU’s decision, Sands said.

“In everything we do at the university, there’s nothing more important than that.”

Garrett — who has also hired or promoted coaches for CSU’s men’s and women’s swimming and diving, men’s soccer and women’s golf programs, in addition to bringing in a deputy director of athletics and external operations, during his brief tenure — said he expects the men’s hoops team to endure some “growing pains” as it recovers from all of the departures.

“This is a long-term build,” the director of athletics said.

Gates wasn’t Garrett’s first hire at CSU, but he’s undoubtedly the most crucial addition.

“And I think we got our guy,” the director of athletics said.

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8/2/19 2:24 PM

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Opinion Personal View

For innovation and economic development, design’s a best bet

By Megan Van Voorhis

Editorial

Smart idea Local news is a pretty grim business these days, with newspaper layoffs and closings leading to less coverage of communities, many of which are becoming what’s known as “news deserts.” It’s an industry that needs to find its way with innovation, which is why it’s encouraging to be able to highlight one such effort being led by Cleveland’s ideastream.

The public media nonprofit recently received a $70,000 grant from the George Gund Foundation to study the feasibility of creating a radio/digital news collaborative that includes the anchor public radio stations in Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati. The collaborative would allow ideastream “to help lead an emerging national trend among public media organizations to share and coordinate resources to expand their mission of factbased, contextual and balanced reporting,” the foundation said.

Ideastream president and CEO Kevin Martin told us last week that ideastream is finalizing a consultant on the project and expects to complete a feasibility study in four to six months, centered on figuring out a key question: “What information do Ohioans want and need, and how can they best get access to it?” Martin also said he has been talking with leaders of NPR stations in California and Texas, where similar collaboratives are underway. Although the radio stations in Ohio’s three big cities are the hubs of the planned venture, with combined newsgathering staffs of about 50, Martin said the goal is to include all NPR stations in the state in a collaborative that could produce daily newscasts and a radio program, as well as a website and daily newsletter.

“I view the smaller stations as being really critical in making this work,” he said. The goal is to get the collaborative running in early 2020.

“There’s a sense of urgency to fill some of the gaps in information that have opened up,” Martin said.

Public media almost certainly will have a large role to play in making sure citizens have reliable information about the state of their communities. A report last week from Policy Matters

Ohio underscored just how badly the most important sources of local information — daily and weekly newspapers — have withered in the state.

The headline: The number of newspaper journalists (defined as reporters, editors, photographers and designers) in Ohio has fallen by 43% over six years, to 1,640 in 2018 from 2,870 in 2012. Ohio last year had 32% fewer newspapers than it did in 2004, Policy Matters said, citing research from the University of North Carolina. Policy Matters also pointed out, since 2014, 30% of Ohio’s papers have changed ownership. A potential merger of one big company, GateHouse, owns 50 papers in Ohio, including the Akron Beacon Journal and Columbus Dispatch, with Gannett, which owns 11 Ohio papers, including the Cincinnati Enquirer, would continue that consolidation trend.

You might say this is just the market at work, but it’s worth thinking seriously about the consequences. As Columbia Journalism Review pointed out last year, numerous academic studies “suggest that a lack of local media coverage is associated with less-informed voters, lower voter turnouts and less-engaged local politicians.” This can’t be the future anyone wants.

Policy Matters in its report included a set of proposals for Ohio that included calling on state lawmakers to increase support for public broadcasting by $5 million a year, emulating the state of New Jersey by “investing in local journalism through collaboration with educational institutions and community organizations,” and urging Congress to approve legislation to allow traditional media businesses to become nonprofits, and to implement new taxes on platforms such as Facebook and Google to create an endowment for independent journalism.

We’re more supportive of the state proposals than the national ones, but they all deserve consideration. Meanwhile, we hope the ideastream venture is one of many more efforts to revive local news.

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

CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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Managing Editor:

Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com)

Contact Crain’s:

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Read Crain’s online: crainscleveland.com

Last fall, McKinsey & Co. released a study focused on the business value of design.

The study found that among a set of 300 publicly traded companies, those that ranked in the top quartile of the McKinsey Design Index outperformed the industry benchmark by as much as 2-to-1. They also grew revenues and return to shareholders at a significantly faster rate than their industry counterparts over the same period.

Van Voorhis A 2015 study by the Design Management Institute found striking results as well: Over a 10-year period, design-led companies comprising their Design Value Index outperformed the S&P 500 by an extraordinary 211%. The takeaway? Design is a competitive edge in business. It is also a competitive edge for Northeast Ohio.

Over the last decade, Arts Cleveland has collaborated with the Levin College at Cleveland State University to con- Over a 10-year duct deep dives into the ecoperiod, design-led nomic clusters that drive Cleveland’s creative indus- companies tries. Our 2014 study, Formcomprising their ing Cleveland, examined the visual arts, crafts and design Design Value Index sector. It found that our regional share of employment outperformed the in industrial design was S&P 500 by an higher than the national average, employment in that extraordinary category was on the rise and 211%. The that the median wage for industrial designers had grown takeaway? Design 44% over the six years ana- is a competitive lyzed. Add the fact that industrial design occupations edge in business. were the second-highest pay category in the sector at an average $65,000 annually and you see we have a real competitive advantage.

Nottingham Spirk. Balance Innovation and Design. SmartShape. These are just a few of the companies that epitomize Cleveland’s industrial design scene. Of course, Northeast Ohio is not the only region in this country where design is a strength.

A 2014 analysis by Richard Florida for CityLab showed that America’s leading design cities are peppered throughout the industrial Midwest, not just on the coasts, as you might think.

The question is whether people in the industrial Midwest choose to invest in that competitive advantage.

Northeast Ohio has all of the ingredients to grow its economy through design — starting with education. Cleveland Institute of Art. Kent State University. Case Western Reserve University. All have a strength and focus in design and innovation. In fact, higher education first tried to elevate design in the Cleveland economy over a decade ago, when the Cleveland Institute of Art and Cleveland State University advanced the idea of a design district.

Higher education is only part of the workforce pipeline.

What opportunities exist for an even earlier connection to design as an occupation? Cleveland has already sown the seeds.

SEE VAN VOORHIS, PAGE 7

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.

8/2/19 1:37 PM

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Letters to the editor

Ohio’s new budget is the most pro-children plan in recent history What has gone largely unreported in the Cleveland media is that Gov. Mike DeWine signed a state budget that was incredibly favorable to our state’s most precious asset: our children.

Importantly, these children are also our future workforce and investing in them today lays the foundation to ensure a strong Ohio tomorrow.

Kudos to Gov. DeWine and our legislative leaders who kept their focus during the process and demonstrated the power of bipartisan collaboration. As Ohioans, we should all stand proud that our collective voices have yielded proactive child-health initiatives that have the potential to raise child health outcomes while preserving funding conduits for the more than 1.25 million children who rely on Medicaid for health care coverage.

Child-friendly aspects of the budget we are particularly applauding include the following: JJIncreased funding of home visitation for new mothers, a proven program to help lower infant mortality rates. An additional $20 million was allotted for 2021, bringing the total state funding for evidence-based home visiting to nearly $70 million over the biennium.

JJA $25 million investment for initiatives to combat lead exposure and lead poisoning, which will complement the efforts being championed by the Lead Safe Cleveland Coalition. An additional $24.4 million was earmarked for childhood early intervention programs, including those with toxic lead exposure and children born with neonatal abstinence syndrome.

JJA new law raising the minimum age required to purchase tobacco and vaping products from 18 to 21, a positive move for improving population health.

Ohio’s budget earmarks $1.3 billion for programs to protect our children and families and another $118 million to support Ohio’s most in-need children. Additionally, Ohio Children’s Hospital Association recently commissioned an Assessment of Child Health and Health Care in Ohio and findings indicated that Ohio’s children are depending on all of us to improve child health outcomes.

There is no excuse for babies dying; we are not a third-world country. There is no safe level of lead in a child’s bloodstream; lead poisoning is completely preventable. And if you have to be 21 to drink, you should also have to be 21 to purchase other addictive products. As business leaders, we are always challenged to “put our money where our mouth is.”

It’s refreshing to see our lawmakers following suit and demonstrating it’s a priority for them to make

VAN VOORHIS CONTINUED FROM PAGE 6

Cleveland School of Art and Design at John Hay. Cleveland High School for Digital Arts. Design Lab Early College. We already have three high schools in Cleveland focused on design. We just have to make sure we are feeding those schools by ensuring every child in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District has access to arts education no matter what school they attend. Thanks to educational programs like MOOS (Making Our Own Space) and Jamal Collins’ Creative Kids, youth in Cleveland have hands-on opportunities to learn about design at a young age.

As you can see, one pathway to equitable economic development has already emerged organically. What would happen if we strategically invested in improving the conditions that support it?

Nurturing the asset is only one part of the equation. Arts Cleveland has spent the last decade working to elevate the influence of arts and culture in neighborhoods and health care. Together with our partners, we have advanced Cleveland as a national leader in those realms. It is time to bring that thinking to the arts and economic development. The ad-

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Ohio the best place for child health through actions taken with our state budget.

Stuart F. Kline Chairman, Chase Properties Board chair, UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital Terri Kennedy Chair, Rainbow Babies & Children’s Foundation Board

In support of HB 6 As the legal assistant for the nonprofit Californians for Green Nuclear Power Inc. (CGNP) and a former Cleveland suburbs resident, I (along with many environmentalists) disagree with your opposition to Ohio House Bill 6 and your advocacy for solar and wind power. Your editorial board is, essentially, advocating for a natural-gas-fired future.

The reason is that solar and wind are inherently intermittent. And, as an Aug. 11, 2016, Washington Post analysis by Chris Mooney noted, “Turns out wind and solar have a secret friend: natural gas.”

I know from firsthand experience that California gets lots more sun than Ohio, and it has some really good areas for wind generation. Even with those advantages, the capacity factor (or percentage “on” time) is only about 20% for both California solar and California wind for the half-year ending Jan. 31, 2017, per CGNP’s regulatory filings. The implication is that the natural-gas-fired generation that backs up Ohio solar and wind will likely be running more than 80% of the time — and it will be running in an inefficient, stop-and-start manner.

This natural-gas-fired future seems like a positive move away from coal-fired generation, but it is not. First, fugitive methane emissions connected with natural gas exploitation are now taken to be around 3%. Since methane is a 70 times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, the fugitive methane problem makes natural gas dirtier than coal from a climate-change perspective.

The second problem is much more related to Ohio jobs: Natural gas is subject to curtailments when Ohio is extremely cold or extremely hot.

Those curtailments translate into power-hungry Ohio businesses being forced to shut down during those periods of bad weather. Nuclear power is much more reliable. The capacity factor of the Davis-Besse and Perry nuclear power plants is closer to 90%. Thus, nuclear power protects Ohio jobs. With these facts, Crain’s Cleveland Business should support HB 6.

Gene Nelson Legal assistant, Californians for Green Nuclear Power Inc.

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vantage of starting with design is that it is relevant to every industry. If we are placing bets, I will place mine on something that can fuel all of Northeast Ohio’s industries. Perhaps we start with our biggest: manufacturing. In 2017, the National Endowment for the Arts released a report on the importance of industrial design in manufacturing competitiveness among small to midsized manufacturers. Among the ideas discussed was the connection of industrial design to innovation and the Internet of Things. Incidentally, the report cited Cleveland as an example due to a partnership of Cleveland Institute of Art and MAGNET. One visit to University Circle should be enough to remind us of the depth of our region’s design roots. Situated at the gateway to University Circle at East 105th and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive stand a mammoth and a mastodon, sculptures designed by Cleveland industrial design icon Viktor Schreckengost. Let them be our motivation to design a new economic future that benefits everyone, not the reminder of missed opportunity.

Van Voorhis is president and CEO of Arts Cleveland, a data-driven organization working to advance arts and culture in Cleveland and Cuyahoga County.

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FoodNest gathering lessons from Hub 55’s shortcomings

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Although Hub 55, the much-anticipated effort to add food and spirits to the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood, didn’t exactly achieve what it set out to do, a researcher at Case Western Reserve University examining the food hub said the lessons learned have prompted a new study of food system change.

“Sometimes, things that don’t work actually end up riper opportunities for uncovering these kind of complexities,” said Darcy Freedman, director of the Mary Ann Swetland Center for Environmental Health at CWRU’s School of Medicine and a professor in the Department of Population and Quantitative Health Sciences.

Supported by a $2.3 million federal grant in 2015, Freedman and a team of researchers launched the Future of Food in Your Neighborhood Study (foodNEST) alongside the development of Hub 55 to examine what happens when the food retail and social food environments change. As they concluded that three-year study — the results of which researchers are in the midst of publishing — the researchers secured an additional grant, prompting foodNEST 2.0, Modeling the Future of Food in Your Neighborhood. Taking lessons learned from the first three years, the researchers are

Case Western Reserve University professor Darcy Freedman is devising strategies to make food systems more equitable. (davidschwartzphoto.com)

working to develop strategies that can help guide efforts to make food systems more equitable.

The properties that form Hub 55, located on East 55th Street just south of St. Clair Avenue, were the subject of a foreclosure proceeding earlier this year. The owners reached a settlement with the bank, which will take possession of the property.

Hub 55’s healthy café transitioned into a doughnut shop that eventually closed, the farmers market no longer runs and the social programming that was developed to engage residents in community food work also is gone, Freedman said, noting that Goldhorn Brewery remains.

“To me, a big lesson as a researcher is just the fragility of organizations in terms of really managing and supporting and sustaining broad-scale, community-level change,” she said.

“I think that that was illuminated in this process.”

The first publication out of foodNEST 1.0, published earlier this year, examined the importance of considering the wants and needs of a community in interventions aimed at improving access to healthy food in low-income communities. Another work examined factors that influenced diet among people in the study communities.

SEE FOODNEST, PAGE 30

Building a brighter future together.

We’re proud to be named a winner in this year’s Crain’s Excellence in HR Awards for our efforts related to diversity and inclusion.

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THE TRUSTED

VOICE

Crain’s Business publications in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and New York were recently recognized in multiple best-in-class categories by The Alliance of Area Business Publishers. It’s an honor to be selected and we’re proud to recognize the remarkable achievements of our team who have helped us maintain quality journalism for more than 30 years.

BEST OF SHOW

DESIGN

BEST NEWSPAPER: LARGE TABLOIDS • Silver: Crain’s Chicago Business • Gold: Crain’s Detroit Business

• Gold: Crain’s Cleveland Business; David Kordalski, John Ferguson, Dan Shingler

BEST WEBSITE • Gold: Crain’s Chicago Business

JOURNALISM

BEST SCOOP • Gold: Crain’s Detroit Business; “Ford Pursues Deal to Buy, Redevelop Michigan Central Station”; Kirk Pinho, Chad Livengood

BEST FEATURE • Silver: Crain’s New York Business; “A Developer’s Project Becomes D His Downfall”; Dan Geiger, Brendan O’Connor

• Gold: Crain’s Chicago Business; “Woman Up”; staff BEST BODY OF WORK, SINGLE WRITER • Gold: Crain’s New York Business; Aaron Elstein

BEST COVERAGE OF LOCAL BREAKING NEWS • Silver: Crain’s Detroit Business; “Inside the Beaumont settlement: ‘Royal Family’ doctors, big paychecks, free offices”; Jay Greene

BEST INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING • Gold: Crain’s Chicago Business; “Hard Knocks”; Steve Daniels

BEST FRONT PAGE NEWSPAPER • Bronze: Crain’s Chicago Business; Thomas J. Linden, John Reinfurt • Silver: Crain’s New York Business; Carolyn McClain, Brendan O’Connor

FE BEST FEATURE LAYOUT NEWSPAPER • Bronze: Crain’s Chicago Business; “40 Under 40”; Karen Freese

• Gold: Crain’s Cleveland Business; “Book of Lists”; David Kordalski, Daniel Zakroczemski BEST OVERALL DESIGN: LARGE TABLOIDS • Silver: Crain’s Detroit Business; David Kordalski, Beth Jachman

• Gold: Crain’s Chicago Business; Thomas J. Linden, Karen Freese, M Jason McGregor BEST USE OF PHOTOGRAPHYYILLUSTRATIONS

• Silver: Crain’s Chicago Business; Thomas J. Linden, Karen Freese, Jason McGregor, Manuel Martinez, Stephen J. Serio, John R. Boehm

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BEST USE OF MULTIMEDIA • Gold: Crain’s Chicago Business; “Chicago’s Opioid Crisis Series”; Jason McGregor, Kristen Schorsch, Manuel Martinez

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BEST EXPLANATORY JOURNALISM • Gold: Crain’s Chicago Business; “In Withdrawal: Treating the Babies of the Illinois Opioid Crisis”; Kristen Schorsch BEST BYLINED COMMENTARY Sil • Silver: Crain’s Detroit Business; Dustin Walsh BEST EDITORIAL • Gold: Crain’s Detroit Business; “MSU board members should pay price for massive failure”

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CRAIN’S EXCELLENCE IN HR AWARDS 2019

HONORING THE HUMAN FACTOR

O

ften operating behind the scenes, sometimes boxed into stereotypes about pizza parties and paperwork, human resources professionals are actually the nerve centers of their company: taking care of its people, controlling costs, keeping the business in compliance and helping achieve its strategic goals.

The Crain’s Excellence in HR program is designed to honor Northeast Ohio’s outstanding human resources executives and teams.

Winners and finalists have been selected in eight categories: HR executive/Team of the Year; Compensation and Benefits; Employee Experience; Diversity and Inclusion; Rising Star; Talent; Employee Advocacy; and “Accidental” HR Leader, given to a manager working outside of the traditional HR role who’s shown innovation relating to workforce management and employee engagement.

Honorees were selected by a panel of outside judges: Huda Farunia, talent acquisition manager, Asurint; Harold G. Harrison, chief human resources officer, Cleveland Metroparks; Carole A. Torres, senior vice president, chief learning officer, KeyBank; and Thomas Hopkins, senior vice president, human resources, retired, Sherwin-Williams. (Any judge with a direct workplace connection to a nominee was asked to abstain from voting in the affected category.)

Honorees will be recognized, and winners announced in all categories, during an event Tuesday evening, Aug. 6, at the Hilton Cleveland Downtown.

03-

‘ACCIDENTAL’ HR LEADER WINNER

COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS WINNER

Trey Arney

Keith A. Feicks

Corporate recruiting specialist and director of product manufacturing, Locus Fermentation Solutions LLC

Vice president, compensation and benefits, Covia Holdings Corp.

T

hrough competent managing, recruitment and hiring, Trey Arney has helped Locus Fermentation Solutions, a biotechnology company located in Solon, to grow more than 200% since he was hired about a year and a half ago.

“He has been crucial in the strategic growth of the company by Arney advancing multiple business units — oil, agriculture and microbiological R&D — through new hires,” said Keith Heidecom, Locus director of business development and emerging technologies. “He has optimized and improved the recruitment cycle by getting frequent feedback from new hires and hiring managers within the company to improve the overall experience potential candidates have with Locus.”

Arney holds a bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in neuroscience from Baldwin Wallace University. To promote recruitment and hiring, he’s introduced talent acquisition programs, used job boards, industry networking and internal employee referrals, and established rela-

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tionships with students and alumni from local universities and those across the country, according to the nomination. In addition to his recruiting work, Arney handles new-hire orientation, including initial benefits administration, payroll and IT needs.

“As a startup company, we have large ambitions. In order to have a chance at turning our ambitions into reality, we realized that it was critical to find and hire the right people for our company,” said Don Sweeney, chief financial officer of Locus Fermentation Solutions. “Rather than relying on outside recruiting firms, Locus hired Trey Arney to lead our recruiting efforts and the results speak for themselves. Without Trey’s leadership, we would not have grown as quickly as we have for the past 13 months with the quality of employees that we are fortunate to enjoy. Trey brought a systematic and professional attitude to a function within our company that will be critical to our success.” — Allison Carey

W

hen Fairmount Santrol and Unimin Corp. merged to become Covia Holdings Corp. in June 2018, it was Keith Feicks, as a member of the merger leadership team, who helped to smooth the transition in terms of health care, compensation programs, pension liabilities and more, even bringing Feicks about comprehensive changes in time for open enrollment that fall.

The work hardly ended there. Over the next many months, Feicks was tasked with implementing additional changes for the company, which is headquartered in independence.

“Our leadership team asked Keith and his team to also implement a consolidated 401(k) plan, freeze a legacy defined benefit program which had the benefit of a balance sheet improvement of $5 million, terminate a well-loved bridge-toMedicare program, saving the company $1 million annually — all for Jan. 1, 2019,” said Brian Richardson, executive vice president of HR and chief administrative officer.

Covia, with $2.3 billion total revenues

last year, dozens of plants and hundreds of employees, is an industry leader, providing mineral-based material products and services for the energy and industrial markets.

“Keith and our entire compensation, benefits, payroll and HRIS team have risen to the occasion, over and over again throughout the past 11 months since Covia was established,” Richardson said. “We would not be as far along in our employee integration efforts without their work and his significant leadership.”

Feicks, who earned his finance and real estate degree from Kent State University and his MBA from Case Western Reserve University, has been with the company for three years, starting at Fairmount Santrol.

He also makes time to give back to the community, serving as a member of the human resources committee of United Way of Greater Cleveland, and is a past director of the Alzheimer’s Association Cleveland Area Chapter, where he also served as chair of the compensation committee, according to his nomination.

— Allison Carey

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DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION, TEAM/ORGANIZATION WINNER

FirstEnergy Corp.

FirstEnergy Corp.’s Diversity and Inclusion Team

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diverse and inclusive work environment allows the human resources team at FirstEnergy Corp. to provide superior value to its customers and investors, achieve excellence and provide a rewarding and enriching work experience for its thousands of employees.

“D&I is a business imperative,” said Christine Walker, senior vice president and chief human resources officer for FirstEnergy. Diversity and inclusion, she added, “will propel the organization forward in terms of enhanced performance and company success.”

At FirstEnergy, diversity and inclusiveness initiatives start at the top. According to the nomination, CEO Chuck Jones has a passion for D&I, which is evident from his involvement in CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion, the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advance D&I in the workplace.

Jones set FirstEnergy on its inclusive path in 2015, by establishing the company’s Executive D&I Council. Led by HR leaders and chaired by Bennett Gaines, CIO and senior vice president, corporate services, the 13-member council created a foundation with an ex-

tensive benchmarking effort, added D&I to its corporate values and formed a D&I champion network.

Further, expanding the diversity of interviewing teams and establishing relationships with high schools, universities and professional organizations helped boost the diversity of FirstEnergy’s professional hires from 28% in 2017 to 47% (YTD) in 2019.

To provide opportunities for networking, development and leadership and to establish a culture of inclusiveness, FirstEnergy created eight Employee Business Resource Groups. These groups represent minority populations, including women, people of color, LGBTQIA individuals, veterans and individuals with disabilities.

While it’s made significant strides since 2015, FirstEnergy has no plan to rest on its laurels, according to its nomination. “FirstEnergy has been on a journey to enhance our culture of diversity and inclusion. Increasing our diversity representation in the organization and ensuring that our employees feel valued, included and have a sense of belonging has been a strong focus of ours since 2015,” Walker said. — Frank DiMaria

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

EXCELLENCE IN H

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION, INDIVIDUAL WINNER

EMPLOYEE ADVOCACY WINNER

EM WI

Donald Rice

Liz Gillmore

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Director of human resources, City of Akron

Chief human resources officer; Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff LLP

Ex and

W

hen Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan began his first term in 2016, the city lacked a department of human resources. HR functions such as recruiting, workforce development, benefits administration and health and wellness were spread across several divisions.

That same year, Horrigan Rice hired Donald Rice and charged him with the task of modernizing HR practices and increasing minority participation. Rice, who earned a juris doctorate from Cleveland-Marshall College of Law at Cleveland State University, wasted no time getting a charter amendment passed that consolidated and streamlined HR functions into a single, modern HR department to serve Akron’s approximately 2,100 full-time and seasonal employees, as well as the hundreds of applicants who seek employment with the city each year.

This change allowed the mayor and his administration to make more effective and efficient use of limited staff and resources and provide a higher level of service to the city’s 200,000 residents, according to the nomination.

Rice made diversity and inclusion a priority in all city HR functions, particularly

recruiting, hiring and promotions. He developed a strategic plan that improved diversity among applicants for public safety (police and fire) positions within the city and created a new managerial position devoted to training, diversity and inclusion.

He also reinstituted the Akron Police Academy, allowing recruits to be paid during training, and increased the maximum age for new police and fire hires. As a result, the latest police recruiting class saw a 30% spike in minority applicants.

More broadly, Rice met with Akron community leaders to discuss diversity and inclusion, including the Urban League, NAACP, East Akron Neighborhood Development Corp., the YMCA and Alpha Homes.

“Director Rice has proven to be an indispensable member of my team as I work to move this city forward,” Horrigan said.

“Don has prioritized diversity and inclusion at every step of the hiring process and beyond. I am grateful for his vision, leadership and commitment to improving the service we provide to our employees, potential employees and the Akron community as a whole.” — Frank DiMaria

L

iz Gillmore doesn’t only embody the best the human resources field has the offer. She represents the “best of humanity,” according to her nomination.

In early 2019, two members of the Benesch team were attacked in downtown Cleveland by the same individual. One person Gillmore was mugged, and the other was brutally attacked and raped in a parking garage.

“When the attacks initially came to light, Liz called a firmwide meeting to address that something had happened to two of our own, one being exceptionally horrific,” the nomination stated. “She stood in front of the group with tears in her eyes and reminded us that we are a family.

We celebrate the good together and hold each other through the bad, and that we were going to take care of one another through this tough time.”

Gillmore’s response was immediate and, most importantly, compassionate.

When the employee who was raped was in the hospital, Gillmore ensured she had a cellphone and cash because her property had been taken in the attack. Gillmore’s husband, who owns a security company, installed a security system in the employee’s residence.

When an arrest was made, Gillmore made certain the two employees were fully supported by Benesch. She always made sure Benesch employees were able to be in the courtroom if she couldn’t be there.

“Liz Gillmore is a true advocate of the Benesch employees,” said Jeanne Hammerstrom, Benesch’s chief marketing officer, in the nomination. “She has demonstrated in a professional workplace the need to support each other and use the resources available to assist with difficult situations. A personal tragedy, that could have sent all employees into crisis mode, was instead used to bring the team closer together.” — Timothy Magaw

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Diversity awareness Core organizational values Inclusive leadership Unconscious bias and micro-inequities Leveraging diversity of thought in teams

• Handling diversity and conflict in communication • Cultural differences and gender intelligence • Generational diversity

corporatecollege.com/diversity 216-987-0234 19-0993

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EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, NONPROFIT WINNER

EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, PRIVATE COMPANY WINNER

Gina Cronin

Earnest Machine

Executive director, Global Leadership and Learning Institute, Cleveland Clinic

Human resources department, Earnest Machine

G

ina Cronin is all about meaningful moments.

Traditional perfomance management systems largely fail to create such moments between employees and managers. That’s why Cleveland Clinic, under Cronin’s leadership, transformed to become a contemporary Continuous Performance Management Cronin organization.

The switch, according to the nomination, has enabled the Clinic’s 60,000-plus caregivers to receive ongoing feedback that is forward-focused and frequent. A key feature of the new system includes quick — but frequent — check-ins between employees and their managers. An important part of that is ensuring managers can skillfully conduct great coaching check-in conversations, the nomination said.

“The synergy of a robust continuous management performance feedback, powered by the core values and behaviors, builds and reinforces a powerful culture,” the nomination said.

To date, nearly 2,000 managers — and rising — have trained in the art and skill of meaningful coaching conversations with

their team members, according to the nomination.

“Gina is a visionary and strategic leader who continually looks for ways to develop and support our caregivers and leaders to provide and drive towards excellent outcomes,” said Linda McHugh, the Clinic’s chief human resource officer, in the nomination.

Cronin is also passionate about developing future leaders. For the last 11 years, she’s led the Clinic’s administrative fellowship program and its administrative internship and created a national health care case competition for graduate students. Over the last decade, she has been responsible for the selection, development and mentoring that has supported more than 100 postgraduate fellows and administrative interns.

Also, this summer, Cronin is partnering with the Clinic’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion to sponsor undergraduate students in Cleveland from underrepresented minorities to develop and nurture them as future leaders in health care, according the nomination. — Timothy Magaw

I

n the manufacturing industry — particularly for companies that have been around for more than a half a century — it’s easy to do things the way they’ve always been done. But that’s not how you create a great employee experience, according to Kirk Zehnder, CEO of Earnest Machine in Rocky River.

Bastian “The employee experience also has nothing to do with pool tables or bringing dogs to work — it’s about cultivating an atmosphere of fairness and respect,” Zehnder said in the nomination.

“Our employees are trusted they can handle balancing their work with their personal lives and not feel punished for needing an hour or two off to take the car to the shop or attend a child’s sports game. What we put into our employee experience we feel we gain back in retention and loyalty.”

Under the leadership of Elise Bastian, Earnest’s human resources department treats employees as “internal customers.”

That’s certainly reflected in the company’s

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leave policies. For example, there aren’t restrictions on how long and for whom you can grieve under the bereavement policy. Paid time off is built in such a way that vacation time is allotted and used only for time off “for fun,” according to the nomination. Personal time is to be used for life issues such as appointments and family care.

“We don’t feel employees should have to use vacation time to deal with life,” the nomination stated.

The company also developed a program called Earnest Machine Whole Health, in which it offers support for employees in three main areas: personal, professional and financial.

“During a recent employee engagement survey, employees were asked why Earnest is a unique employer. The most common theme reported was that employees feel like they’re being cared for like family,” the nomination said. — Timothy Magaw

CONGRATULATIONS, KEITH AND ALL OF THE EXCELLENCE IN HR AWARD WINNERS. The Covia team is pleased to have our own Vice President of Human Resources Keith Feicks win the Crain’s 2019 Excellence in HR Award for Compensation & Benefits. We applaud his hard work and determination, which has been pivotal in creating a company culture that’s committed to the prosperity of Covia employees.

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EMPLOYEE EXPERIENCE, PUBLIC COMPANY WINNER

KeyBank Benefits Team Team lead Dori Nelson-Hollis (back row, left) and the KeyBank Benefits Team

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David Feinerman

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Head of workforce innovation, Cuyahoga County Department of Development

Dir cou

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hen KeyBank introduced its highdeductible health plans in 2014 — as many organizations did — the initial response was negative. The company made several changes, including holding premiums flat, simplifying the wellness incentive and introducing premium pay bands.

The negative perceptions didn’t shift.

So, Key’s Benefits team got to work.

Team lead Dori Nelson-Hollis, along with Kelly Blum, Cathy Fyffe, Tracy Pesho, Debbie Summers, Katie Talarico and Kathy Walters, developed a total rewards survey to capture individual employee preferences and willingness to make trade-offs in a way that linked to employees’ likelihood of staying at Key, according to the nomination.

“The results of this survey, conducted in 2017, helped the team prioritize where trade-offs could be made to improve employee perception and enabled them to articulate Key’s benefits philosophy in a way that is more meaningful to employees,” the nomination said.

Using the compiled data, the team focused on refining medical plan options, lifestyle benefits and benefits brand. For example, the team added two new, highly differentiated medical plans. The team also launched an interactive tool to help employees choose the plan that worked best for them, as well as rolling out a fitness reimbursement, employee scholarships and disaster relief — all needs identified by the survey.

These perks, according to the nomination, have “laid a strong foundation for a culture of health” at Key. “The Benefits team took employee feedback about Key’s benefit programs to heart and committed to making real change,” said Dennis Devine, Key Consumer Bank president, in the nomination. “What sets this work apart, however, is the approach to the change. Rather than simply consider market trends and cost, the team framed our program through the lens of employee preferences — and at a very granular level across almost 20 discrete demographics.”

— Timothy Magaw

Since launching in February ometimes a city or county 2017, SkillUp has served 262 needs an individual who businesses in 15 industries,incan positively transform cluding manufacturing, health its workforce system. For Cuycare, construction and logistics, ahoga County, David Feinerman and it’s produced roadmaps for is that person.

100 unique skills and skill stanThe county hired Feinerman as dards. Thirty early-adopter busihead of workforce innovation in nesses have offered training to a its Department of Development total of 390 workers, with 13 of in 2016. In that capacity, he creat- Feinerman those organizations receiving ed SkillUp, a first-of-its kind, free business advisory service that helps com- training reimbursement for 103 of their panies identify business problems, create workers, costing Cuyahoga County a mere solutions and drive results. SkillUp com- $879 per worker.

SkillUp trainees saw an average hourly plements traditional economic development and partnership efforts by offering wage increase of $2.83, and taxpayers enmarketplace insights and alignment and joyed about a fourfold return on their investment. enhancing business growth capabilities.

“David’s innovative and entrepreneurRecognized as a best practice by The Brookings Institution and The National ial approach to designing SkillUp is having Center For The Middle Market, SkillUp a transformational impact on our workprovides three main services to Cuyahoga force system,” said Ted Carter, Cuyahoga County chief economic development and County businesses:  Its business concierge service coordibusiness officer. “David’s HR domain nates regional services and resources to knowledge, commitment to innovation and creating value for businesses large solve business challenges.  Its training service helps businesses and small is exceptional. He is a differcreate their own industry-recognized ap- ence-maker in the workforce space.”

Feinerman, who earned a master’s deprenticeship program for technical, foungree in social work from Columbia Univerdational and people skills.  Its talent brokerage service assists emsity and is certified as a Senior Human ployers in setting up a talent supply chain Resources Professional, has been recogfor recruitment, training and retention of nized locally and nationally by The Brookthe highest-quality talent at the lowest ings Institution, the State of Ohio and the cost, including the use of subsidies, tax Cleveland Society for Human Resources Management. — Frank DiMaria credits and hiring incentives.

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Veronica Oubayan

Director of human resources and senior employment counsel, Wingspan Care Group

Vice president, human resources, ExactCare Pharmacy

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OVERALL EXCELLENCE, INDIVIDUAL FINALIST

Kelli Michaud hile many organizations offering services to affiliates that provide health care and social services are shuttering, Wingspan Care Group is thriving. Wingspan, a Shaker Heights nonprofit that helps agencies operate cost-effectively and efficiently, is enjoying robust growth due in large Michaud part to the leadership of Kelli Michaud, its director of human resources and senior employment counsel.

Wingspan’s revenue is volume driven.

The more desks that are occupied, the more beds that are filled, the more revenue Wingspan and its affiliates generate.

Wingspan’s ability to generate volumedriven revenue is directly related to adequate personnel numbers. Finding and attracting educated staff to provide sometimes dangerous services at wage scale, however, is difficult.

“Personnel directly impacts revenue,” said Adam G. Jacobs, president of Wingspan Care Group, in the nomination. “(Michaud’s) ability to motivate her small recruitment team and to think creatively has enabled all Wingspan partners to thrive,” he added.

A graduate of The Ohio State University

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Moritz College of Law, Michaud works closely with her four-employee recruitment team to onboard new employees. In the most recent rolling 12-month period, Wingspan and its affiliate child service agency, Bellefaire JCB (about 750 employees), have hired 372 people, up 25% from the prior 12-month period.

Both organizations are hiring at a 10% faster pace than the prior fiscal year.

Likewise, Wingspan and its affiliate, Applewood Centers (about 275 employees), which provides mental health services, social services and education to children, adolescents and families in Cuyahoga and Lorain counties, have hired 130 people in the last rolling 12-month period, up 9% from the prior 12-month period. Moreover, Wingspan and its Lifeworks affiliate (about 85 employees), which provides adult autism services, have hired 40 people in the last rolling 12-month period, up 8% from the prior 12-month period.

“Kelli’s leadership of the Wingspan Care Group human resources team has had direct impact on the viability of Wingspan and its affiliate organizations,” Jacobs said.

— Frank DiMaria

O

ity, teamwork — based on a ver the past four years, Exnomination from a manager or actCare Pharmacy has enco-worker or a customer testijoyed tremendous growth, monial. She also instituted sevdoubling in size. To keep up with eral popular programs and onthat fast-paced change, Veronica site conveniences. One of those Oubayan, vice president of huis an on-site food market with man resources, has assembled a breakfast, lunch and snack opdynamic HR team to serve the tions, a steady rotation of lunch Valley View company. vendors, and surprise holiday In 2015, ExactCare, which Oubayan events that create a fun and offpartners with health care organizations to provide comprehensive medi- beat workplace culture unlike any other cation management for medically com- pharmacy solutions provider.

The heart of any successful business is plex, high-risk patients, rostered just two human resources staffers. Under Ou- its unique employee value proposition.

Oubayan defined the essence of Exactbayan’s leadership, it now has nine.

“Veronica has built a high-performing Care by attracting top talent using three HR organization that has been a big part of key strategies, encouraging ExactCare emExactCare’s growth and success,” said ployees to: Brad Hess, chief operating officer of Exact-  excite their passion for helping others;  elevate their careers; and Care, in the nomination.

During her five years at the HR helm,  exceed their own expectations.

Oubayan has discovered new ways to inThrough the ExactCare Advantage procrease her team’s efficiencies, according gram, Oubayan set the foundation for the to the nomination. For instance, she ExactCare brand, reinforcing internal relaunched the inaugural Recognition Pro- tention efforts and focusing on external gram, which keeps employees engaged recruiting efforts through training, setting while connecting the organization’s mis- goals, mentorship and development. sion, goals and values to day-to-day work “She brings the right mix of strategy and roles. Employees can receive a card re- people leadership to ExactCare and has a flecting one of the company’s core values long runway for success in the future,” — attitude, communication, customer Hess said. “Veronica is a true asset to our service, innovation, integrity, responsibil- company.” — Frank DiMaria

+ + +

Maloney + Novotny congratulates the firm’s HR Director, Ed Evans for being appointed as Chair for the Northern Ohio HR Conference March 12th–13th, 2020!

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OVERALL EXCELLENCE, TEAM/ORGANIZATION FINALIST

OVERALL EXCELLENCE, TEAM/ORGANIZATION FINALIST

Great Lakes Cheese

HR team, Pepperl+Fuchs

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Vice president of human resources Mara Kamat (front, fourth from right) and the Great Lakes Cheese HR team

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ged cheese is among the most desired. Aging HR systems, though — not so much.

That’s why the human resources team at Great Lakes Cheese in Hiram took on an 18-month transformation to move from an outdated, paper-based information system to one that is automated, digital, cloud-based and employee-friendly.

Company employees now have immediate access to manage their personal information and tools to drive development, according to the nomination. The paperwork portion of the onboarding process has shrunk from one hour to less than 20 minutes per person.

Also, HR managers now spend less time on paperwork and more time on strategic initiatives alongside plant leadership.

“The HR team’s diligent efforts over the past year to design and implement the HRIS has laid the groundwork for

a way of working that will grow alongside the business for decades to come,” the nomination said.

In all, the nomination said the new system allows the company to “deliver a seamless and standardized people experience to all employees.” Leaders also now have the tools, processes and data to support decision-making.

“When I first heard about the HR Information System, I saw the need, but had no idea the amount of effort the project would demand,” Great Lakes Cheese CEO Dan Zagzebski said in the nomination. “The HR team has worked tirelessly over the past two years to customize and implement a system that will keep pace with our rapid growth.”

He added, “The system enables HR to move from transactional interactions to transformative relationships.

Leaders across the organization now have the data and tools to be more effective and more present with their teams.” — Timothy Magaw

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o the right thing — even when no one is looking.

That is the Pepperl+Fuchs HR team’s No. 1 mission.

“They have gained the respect of each employee and have created a culture where employees seek out the HR team vs. being scared of them,” the nomination stated.

“Fundamentally, this team knows that the way to impact the entire organization is ensuring that the people are taken care of at every level.”

The team comprises HR manager Jennifer Keary, HR generalist Laretha Howard and payroll specialist Tammie Brodnick.

For years, Pepperl+Fuchs, a producer of electrical explosion protection and sensor technology, has aimed to create a culture of wellness. To that end, its human resources team has studied the impact of wellness in every aspect of an employee’s life. The wellness program contains five focuses: finance, technical, social, nutrition and physical. This emphasis, according to the nomination, has resulted in a leveling of medical premiums over the last several years.

“The HR team is truly the heart and soul of the company,” the nomination stated. “They set the mood and their care and concern is felt universally.”

Meanwhile, company acquisitions can present challenges for any business. Melding cultures and transitioning employees are tall tasks for any HR department. Pepperl+Fuchs’ team, though, has produced results. Because of their attention to detail and concern for each impacted employee from the company’s most recent acquisition, there was a 100% acceptance rate of employees transitioning over.

“The team knows the company culture is one true piece that sets us apart from our competitors and other companies in the region,” according to the nomination. “Their focus from the minute an employee accepts a position is to ensure they have the best introduction to the company possible. The team knows how vital it is to ensure the new employees feel welcome and that they made the right decision.” — Timothy Magaw

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OVERALL EXCELLENCE, TEAM/ORGANIZATION FINALIST

The Centers for Families and Children, Circle Health Services

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elding organizations — culturally, financially and philosophically — is a gargantuan task for any human resources team.

When you look at the public policy and financial challenges faced by human services organizations, the task is even greater. Just ask the team at The Centers for Families and Children and Circle Health Services. Together, though, these historic organizations understood the impact they could have on our region’s most vulnerable citizens.

“Throughout this process, our HR team worked tirelessly to keep our people and their needs and interests at the center of these efforts,” the nomination stated. “Our ability to pursue a more comprehensive model hinged on our work to rally these teams of skilled professionals around a common purpose and work through the inevitable changes.”

The combination already is yielding results. Prior to the affiliation, Circle Health Services — formerly the Free

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Clinic of Greater Cleveland — provided primary care to more than 4,000 people each year, while The Centers didn’t provide any. Following the affiliation, nearly 600 additional individuals from The Centers gained access to primary care, according to the nomination.

The team’s other achievement under the leadership of vice president Kerry Bohac also include launching a new human resources information system, leadership training and wellness initiatives.

“To me, resilience, especially in the face of challenges and complications, is a signal of excellence and that describes our HR team,” said Elizabeth Newman, CEO of The Centers and Circle Health Services, in the nomination. “Their flexibility, creativity and deep respect for our team members is what allows us to attract, hire, develop and retain the most incredible professionals in our respective industries. I am grateful for their leadership and contributions.” — Timothy Magaw

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RISING STAR FINALISTS

TA FIN

RISING STAR FINALIST

Amanda Sipes

Amy E. McMullen

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Human resources manager, Providence House Inc.

Manager, university relations and college recruiting, Lincoln Electric Co.

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n emergency shelter for children with families in crisis, Providence House helps caregivers who are struggling to meet their children’s basic needs; require medical, mental health or substance abuse treatment; are homeless; or are fleeing domestic violence. The staffers on the front lines of this Sipes mission need strength, compassion and resilience to handle their day-today stresses of their jobs.

As the first full-time human resources professional with the organization, Amanda Sipes is fostering a culture of employee support. “(She) has worked to bring new opportunities that promote a positive work-life balance, acknowledge the value of individual employees and ensure overall employee and organizational health and wellness,” said Natalie Leek-Nelson, president and CEO of Providence House.

To do so, Sipes has introduced new leave policies, including a parental leave policy and a self-care/sabbatical policy.

Parental leave gives employees up to 12 weeks to bond with newborn or newly adopted/fostered children and includes a return-to-work program to ease back into a working routine.

The self-care program grants staffers one paid day off every quarter to take care of

themselves and re-energize, while the sabbatical program grants staff who have been employed for 10 years up to three weeks off with pay and benefits, in addition to their vacation time.

Sipes has also taken the lead on boosting employee morale and engagement through events to celebrate milestones such as wedding and baby showers and service anniversaries. She launched a professional development program focused on employees’ work and personal goals for advancement and growth.

As part of her regular routine, Sipes also manages HR tasks including recruitment and training of new employees.

“With Amanda’s work supporting employees, we are better able to protect at-risk children and support families through crisis,” Leek-Nelson said. “She has positively and proactively transformed the quality of our human resource efforts. Amanda has been instrumental in cultivating a positive culture among our employee teams with a commitment to their growth, well-being and a shared future vision.”

Sipes is a member of the Society for Human Resource Management, the Cleveland Foundation’s Collaborative for Nonprofit HR Professionals and is a frequent mentor to new HR professionals. — Paris Wolfe

L

lence by creating and improving incoln Electric is a world processes for Lincoln Electric’s leader in the design, develHR department. During winter opment and manufacture 2018-19, she received approval to of arc-welding products, robotic implement a Candidate Relationarc-welding systems, and plasship Management Tool, which ma and oxyfuel cutting equipwill increase quality and efficienment, and it has a leading global cies in the recruiting processes. position in the brazing and solShe is responsible for bringing dering alloys market. The comtalent into the leadership pipepany’s 2025 “Higher Standard” McMullen line, and has improved diversity strategy focuses on four elements: employee development, customer hires by 35%.

“Amy has made outstanding contribufocus, operational excellence, and solutions and value. As manager of university tions in college recruiting, working relentrelations and college recruiting for the lessly to foster an engaging environment company, Amy McMullen integrates those for newly hired sales and engineering trainees,” said Gabe Bruno, executive vice four elements into her work life.

To facilitate employee development, Mc- president of finance and former chief huMullen helped create and chairs the Young man resources officer, in her nomination.

Professionals of Lincoln Electric. She also “Amy’s efforts to continuously improve partners with senior leaders on leadership and develop our internship program were development program curriculum. Since nationally recognized in 2018 when Linjoining Lincoln Electric, she has grown col- coln Electric was named one of the top lege programs by 50% and increased the places to have an internship.”

McMullen is the current president of conversion of interns to full-time employees to 52% annually, providing $100,000 in the Ohio Cooperative Education Association and has served on the board in other yearly savings to the company.

She serves internal customers by train- roles. She also sits on advisory boards at ing managers and interviewers in talent The Ohio State University and Cleveland selection and retention, efforts that have State University, where she offers recomboosted intern use and improved offer ac- mendations to the curriculum and career services efforts for engineering students. ceptances by 70%.

McMullen addresses operational excel- — Paris Wolfe

TA FIN

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RISING STAR FINALIST

Chris Nagel Director, team and leadership development, Global Leadership and Learning Institute, Cleveland Clinic

T

he Cleveland Clinic health care system encompasses more than 66,000 caregivers across 12 regional hospitals, 19 family health centers and locations in Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Canada, Abu Dhabi and the U.K. As director of team and leadership development in Cleveland

Clinic's Global Leadership and Learning Institute (GLLI), Chris Nagel is charged with leading the development of an internal coaching program to support 3,500 leaders across the organization. He and his team provide executive onboarding and transitional assistance to new leaders and support

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individual leader development.

Under Nagel’s leadership, the Cleveland Clinic went from having no internal coaches in 2017 to 30 internal coaches by 2019. He had 161 coaching engagements in 2018 and trained 16 new coaches. Surveys from those coaching engagements indicated the following:

 98% would recommend GLLI coaching services to others.  95% felt engaged in the coaching experience.  93% said that they acquired new knowledge and skills.  95% felt the coaching helped to clarify their values and goals to promote personal growth.

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“Chris has the unique ability to inspire and empower his team members. He embodies a leadership style that allows others the space to grow and shine,” GLLI execNagel utive director Gina Cronin said in his nomination. “I have watched in admiration as Chris’s team has emerged with hidden talents and grown into fabulous contributors.

“In addition, Chris is a masterful certified coach and has positively impacted hundreds of leaders at Cleveland Clinic in the work that we do each day to serve patients and families. His talents are boundless and there is no ego in Chris above the greater good for Cleveland Clinic or his team members.

Best of all, Chris brings a sense of family and fun into every encounter each day.”

Nagel founded a Youth Leadership Experience and has held leadership positions in the Knights of Columbus. He also serves as a Boy Scout leader and is active in his church. — Paris Wolfe

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

NCE IN HR | 2019

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TALENT FINALIST

KeyBank Campus Recruiting Team

K

eyBank considers its intern program the most efficient means to bring young talent into the fold. To that end, a team of campus recruiters is driving strategy focused on hiring interns long term and showcasing Key as an employer of choice.

Key’s intern program has grown 122% since 2014, with campus hires up 65% from 2016 to 2018. According to the nomination, three-quarters of the company’s newly hired nonretail analysts are former interns, while interns also comprise the entirety of Key’s incoming retail-analyst class.

Many of Key’s interns are placed into entry-level analyst roles, receiving training in client-facing areas such as investment and retail banking, as well as risk management and other support functions. Converting interns into full-time analysts has elevated Key to “best in class” status among peer banks, with worker conversion rates exceeding the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ standard of 45%.

Key’s intern and analyst programs also reflect a companywide commitment to diversity. According to the

nomination, the organization’s 2019 intern class is 48% diverse, while its latest crop of analysts is 38% diverse.

Led by Megan Lallo, KeyBank’s Campus Recruiting Team’s members are Kaitlin Bressler, Sheila Byrne, Pete Catavolos, Andrea Cole, Jen Cowles, Britney Huffman and Brooke Weber. In 2017, the team won an Expy Award for Best Large Company Internship Program, reflecting a program that attracts toptier recruits.

“Key’s technology and operations organization has benefited significantly from Key’s Campus Recruiting team’s strategy and mission,” said Amy Brady, KeyCorp chief information officer, in the nomination. “It is because of the candidate quality brought to us by our recruiting partners that we have continued on this upward path. Campus Recruiting has challenged us to think differently about the events we host (i.e., college campus hackathons) and the candidate profiles we seek.

As a result, we have built a solid pipeline of diverse, young talent ... who have brought fresh perspective and unique skill sets.” — Douglas J. Guth

Team lead Megan Lallo (top, back) and the KeyBank Campus Recruiting Team

TALENT FINALIST

Hiring Optics The team from Hiring Optics, with founder Chris Carmon at right

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iring Optics says it wants to help companies craft their talent strategy not only to compete in a crowded marketplace, but to come out the winner as well. According to its nomination, the company offers a consultative approach in addressing its clients’ most pressing needs in talent attraction and retention.

“We know hiring the wrong person and unfilled positions put a ton of

P018_019_CL_20190805.indd 19

stress on an organization,” the nomination noted.

An established brand and video marketing entity, Hiring Optics creates an “employer success strategy” that equips organizations with the best resources for their brand, business, customers and culture. As stated in the nomination, the company has a more than 50% candidate response rate from a proprietary talent project process

that includes a video job description.

“This greatly helps shorten time-tohire to 55 days on average,” the nomination stated.

Hiring Optics said its robust response rate derives, in part, from eliminating barriers between candidates and hiring managers, allowing wouldbe hires to understand a potential employer’s culture and make an informed decision on whether or not to engage.

“We are looking at the core of talent acquisition strategy to provide company best practices and empower them for their future talent acquisition efforts,” Hiring Optics director Nikole Keslar said in the nomination. “We help companies stop wondering what their wrong talent acquisition process is costing them. We give peace of mind and the hiring advantage with a strategy that actually works.” — Douglas J. Guth

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EXCELLENCE IN HR | 2019

TALENT FINALIST

Human Resources, Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District

T

he Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) takes leadership development seriously, tasking its human resources department with administering new programs that create an effective and focused management team.

As the district’s HR programs support a larger mission of protecting public health, a Maintenance Training Program (MTP) is building a bench of skilled electrical and mechanical tradespeople in the areas of wastewater treatment and plant maintenance. A combination of 17 trainees and full-craft employees have gone through the program as of this year.

Bolstering this effort is FLUSH (Familiarize Leaders Upon Starting Here), a 20-hour leadership program that emphasizes recruitment, retention, engagement and capability. Since its inception in 2017, the program has graduated 19 leaders ready to add value to the district, the nomination said.

Meanwhile, the district’s L.E.A.D. (Leadership Excellence and Development) program is upskilling employees recently promoted from

individual contributor roles to their first leadership position. Eighteen sessions helmed by district workers acting as “adjunct faculty” teach participants organizational values and the skills needed to motivate their teams toward high performance.

Prior to the implementation of FLUSH and L.E.A.D., NEORSD had no process for transitioning employees new to management, or managers new to the district, into their new roles.

HR’s programming has netted multiple industry awards, including recognition from the Greater Cleveland Partnership and the National Association of Clean Water Agencies, reflecting its integral role in supporting the sewer district’s core goals.

“We believe the innovative programs and overall efforts made by HR to attract, retain and develop its employees have had a positive impact on our mission of providing progressive management of sewage and stormwater through fiscal responsibility, innovation and community partnerships,” the nomination stated. — Douglas J. Guth

Director of HR Angie Smith (second from right) and the NEORSD team

Thank You WOMEN

[Women of Note logo] On Wednesday, July 17, Crain’s Cleveland Presented by: [Cleveland Foundation logo] Business welcomed more than 400 On Wednesday, July 17, Crain’s Cleveland Business and the Cleveland Foundation welcomed attendees to Public Auditorium to pay more than 400 attendees tribute to Public pay tribute to the 2019 Women of Note to theAuditorium 2019 Women ofto Note class. class.

from Northeast Ohio, including Margot E T Sixteen remarkable and influential women from Northeast Ohio, including Margot James O N James Copeland, who was this year’s O FCopeland, who was this year’s Cleveland Foundation legacy Award Winner, took the stage as Sixteen remarkable and influential women

Cleveland Foundation Legacy Award Winner,

the room honored them for their talents, passion and exceptional commitments to Greater 2019 took the stage as the room honored them Cleveland. for their talents, passion and exceptional

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commitments to Greater Cleveland.

Crain’s would like to extend a very special thank you to our presenting sponsor, the Clevewould like to extend a very special land Foundation, and to allCrain’s our sponsors and partners for supporting the Women of Note thank you to our presenting sponsor, event. the Cleveland Foundation, and to all our sponsors and partners for supporting the [Thompson Hine logo] Women of Note event.

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Workplace tips and trends from local human resources professionals

This advertising-supported section 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-Cleveland content.

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SponSored Content

Protecting employees amid M&A uncertainty Change in Control agreements useful tools in managing workforce engagement

By ANN-MARIE AHERN

C

hange in Control agreements have become a common feature of management-level compensation packages. In an era of increasing consolidation and private equity involvement, a potential for merger, acquisition or sale is a huge area of concern for employees. If key employees know the company is positioning for sale, how do you keep them fully engaged and committed, especially when such a transaction might result in their own job loss? How do you prevent the high-level employee from losing objectivity about a potential sale when closing the deal will likely result in unemployment? To retain top talent in an environment of M&A uncertainty, HR leaders often turn to CIC agreements.

CIC agreements, generally speaking, provide that a designated employee will receive a set amount of compensation upon the occurrence of certain contractually defined events.

Typically, CIC agreements are either “single trigger,” meaning that the payout occurs upon the sale of the business or a change in control, or “double trigger,” meaning that the benefit pays upon the sale or change in control, plus a job loss or material reduction in role or responsibilities within a certain time thereafter.

If, however, the employee is permitted the opportunity to remain employed by the surviving entity,

in a double trigger agreement, the CIC benefits are not paid.

Increasingly, modern CIC agreements are double trigger.

Benefits under a Ahern CIC agreement often take the form of a severance payment that is in excess of standard company policy. CIC benefits are typically expressed in terms of a multiple of base salary — the more essential the executive is to a consummating sale, the higher the multiple. It is not uncommon for bonus and fringe benefits to be paid for a like period of time.

In addition to or in lieu of severance pay, CIC agreements may involve accelerated vesting of equity that pays upon sale. This is an important consideration for those who have longterm incentive plans that involve multiyear vesting cliffs. Accelerated vesting of all unvested units can be of tremendous value and may allow an employee to realize the value of grants that would otherwise be subject to forfeiture upon separation from employment.

CIC agreements vary widely and should be tailored to create a true win-win for the company and for the executive in whom the employer hopes to inspire loyalty.

Ann-Marie Ahern is principal with McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman Co. LPA. Contact her at 216-696-1422.

August 5, 2019 S3

The power of a positive work environment L ed by partners Dino Sciulli, Nancy Vice and Mike Rao, DS Benefits Group is an industryleading provider of group benefits, organizational development and HR services. Recently, the company was named one of the Best Employers in Ohio. Rao, who has dedicated his 30year career to helping businesses create environments that maximize employee satisfaction and performance, talks about the importance of creating a positive workplace and what makes DS Benefits Group tick.

Why is it critical to build a culture where employees are happy?

Rao: Research shows that employee engagement impacts nearly every major metric of your business — from productivity to retention to growth. Workers who are engaged feel a stronger connection to the mission of the company. As a result, they become more self-motivated and are more likely to offer ideas that help the company grow.

What can companies do to create that environment?

Rao: Listen to your employees. Ask

them what improvements they would like, and why. And then, invite them to develop solutions that address the challenges they’ve Rao identified. By doing so, you are dramatically improving your chance of success, as employees are more apt to implement the solutions at a high level and hold each other accountable. This strategy will also help build a true sense of teamwork and trust within your organization.

Employee retention continues to be an issue. What can organizations do to keep their valued staff?

Rao: Invest in your people. Sit down with your employees to understand their short-term and long-term goals.

Then create a roadmap to help them achieve those goals. Whether that means giving them special training or giving them more authority within the company, make sure that you’re actively involved in their professional growth. When people feel valued, they work with passion and want to stay.

Companies can spend up to twice an employee’s annual salary to hire a new worker.

W

ith unemployment at a 49-year low, improving employee experience, or EX, requires more than making your workplace fun and offering progressive perks.

Engaging and retaining top talent today means prioritizing employee experience in your company’s cultural, physical, technological and organizational strategies.

Flexible work schedules; comfortable, functional work spaces; and updated equipment and applications are just a few of many job attributes that determine the overall degree of employee fulfillment.

When businesses design EX into every facet of their planning and decisionmaking, employees are delivered personalized experiences that align with both individual and company values.

Better employee experience leads to

2019 HR Guide.indd 3 P021_P027_CL_20190805.indd 23

Keefe

Rao: Many of the solutions we implement with our clients we use ourselves. We’ve developed a high level of vulnerability-based trust, we encourage constructive conflict, and we ask employees to weigh in on decisions. Our core values were developed by our employees, so we all understand and connect with our purpose. Most important of all, we want our company to feel like family.

So we celebrate the birthdays and the holidays. We’re always up for a party.

Any parting words of wisdom for companies that want to build a positive culture?

Rao: Stick to it. Company cultures don’t change overnight. So, understand what is working for you and what isn’t. And always make it a priority within your organization.

Mike Rao is a partner at dS Benefits group. Contact him at 330-760-9179 or mrao@ dsbenefitsgroup.com.

Hiring right the first time is critical.

Hiring new employees can be tedious and inefficient for you and for the prospective new employee. Paperwork can be overwhelming and keeping track of piles of documents can be time consuming and frustrating. Streamline and improve your process so you attract and interview the right candidates the first time.

7 steps for creating a great employee experience

By KELLY KEEFE

What has your organization done specifically to create a positive, productive culture?

better customer experience, which results in greater company performance — and greater emotional and financial gains for continued investment in EX.

Consider this process for building better experiences at your workplace: 1. Commit: To enhance systemwide EX, your leaders together must pledge to an employee-first business model and recognize staff satisfaction as a leading indicator of operational success.

2. Ask: Don’t decide for employees what matters to them. Inquire with an engagement survey, and devise your experience strategy to support those findings and your organization’s overall goals.

800.727.2849 www.ahola.com PAYROLL

•

HR

•

BENEFITS

•

TIME & ATTENDANCE

•

ONBOARDING

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HRGUIDEBOOK

S4 August 5, 2019

SponSored Content

What your employees want out of dental insurance

By KARI BUSH

W

hile consumer preferences continue to evolve, the desire for dental insurance to be included as part of a benefits package still remains strong. Here are four trends to consider as you identify what your employees value most in dental insurance.

Making Workplaces Great.

1. The link between oral health and overall health is gaining awareness.

Many studies have demonstrated that oral health is linked to overall health and quality of life. According to the National Association of Dental Plans, 47% of consumers are familiar with scientific evidence demonstrating a link between oral health and specific medical Bush conditions. However, there is still work to be done in educating employees about this connection.

Regular preventive dental visits, paired with proper daily oral health routines, can have a major impact on overall health, something both employees and employers can value.

Make sure your dental insurance carrier is well-positioned to help your employees avoid health issues that stem from oral health problems. For example: ● Look for a plan that covers 100% of preventive services and offers more than the standard two cleanings per year (for those who need them) so dental diseases are less likely to develop and overall health can be better managed. ● See if your dental insurance carrier will waive waiting periods, even if employees haven’t had continuous coverage. This enables employees to receive covered treatment for dental issues as soon as they arise and reduces the likelihood that conditions may worsen. ● Consider the unique needs among your employees. Look for customized plans that include specific coverage that may be needed, such as orthodontia, posterior composites (tooth-colored fillings on back teeth) and implants.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 164 million hours of work are lost each year due to oral health problems or dental visits. While regular preventive checkups may take employees out of the office briefly, they can prevent lengthier procedures and oral pain, both of which impact employee morale, productivity and attendance.

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2. Employees expect their employers to provide dental insurance.

Employees value staying healthy.

According to the National Association of Dental Plans, two-thirds of adults feel it is very important for their employer to provide dental coverage.

Although the workforce is changing as older employees retire and younger people are hired, dental insurance shows no sign of declining in importance.

Despite some employers’ perceptions

that younger employees do not care about dental insurance as much as older employees, an industry study found that the equivalent share, 78%, of employees older than age 40 and employees under age 40 rate dental insurance as an important benefit.

These findings impact all companies, large and small. In fact, small businesses might gain the most by adding dental benefits to their benefit offerings.

Research shows that only 14% of employers with two to nine employees offer dental insurance, identifying a key area for small companies to distinguish their benefits packages from those of their peer organizations. One option is for plans to be implemented on a voluntary basis, allowing employees to use pre-tax dollars to pay into and receive dental insurance through their employers.

This provides a significant benefit for employees, as they would have access to group rates, and often in the case of larger groups, customized plans.

3. Employees increasingly are becoming interested in services such as implants and orthodontia.

NADP’s 2018 consumer survey found that people wish procedures such as implants and elective orthodontia were included in their dental coverage over other benefits that were not provided.

The survey also found that people were willing to pay higher monthly premiums to secure these benefits. Of those who have dental insurance and would like implant coverage included in their plan, 78% reported that they would be willing to pay more toward their monthly premium for additional coverage. Among individuals who have dental insurance and would like elective orthodontia coverage included in their plan, 57% would pay more in their monthly premium to obtain extra coverage.

4. As employee wellness programs grow, dental benefits can play a role.

According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 70% of U.S. employers offer employee wellness programs, and data suggest these programs are continuing to grow in popularity.

SHRM attributes some of the rising popularity of wellness programs to the rising cost of health care. Wellness initiatives can prevent costly and more time-consuming procedures later on. This makes dental benefits, and incentives to get preventive dental care, an ideal fit for employee wellness programs because of the link between oral health and overall health.

Keep these trends in mind as you work with your dental insurance carrier to build the right plan for your employees to ensure the best oral health care possible.

Kari Bush is a sales executive at TruAssure Insurance Co. Contact Kari at kbush@truassure.com.

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August 5, 2019 S5

Talent crunch requires creative recruitment approach

By MARK STRIPPY

I

n today’s economy, quality talent is hard to come by. Job postings remain open longer, and organizations are struggling to find and attract the right candidates for their positions. Society for Human Resource Management reports that companies spend 90% to 200% of an employee’s annual salary to hire a new worker, so making the right hire the first time is critical. How are companies succeeding in this “seller’s market”?

How are they standing out versus their competition? We do see a few common threads in the organizations that are able to successfully hire and onboard new employees in today’s economy.

First, they attract employees by demonstrating a strong company brand and culture, which is visible on their careers page. Candidates are drawn to these organizations, and see the authenticity and positivity, before they even apply. Organizations are also standing out by integrating the core values of the organization into the fabric of the job description, creating brand consistency for the applicant.

2019 HR Guide.indd 5 P021_P027_CL_20190805.indd 25

Second, companies that are posting on multiple job boards are getting the most engagement and visibility.

Obvious, right? Not exactly.

Strippy Companies that are listed on all the well-known job boards are having some success finding candidates, but the real benefit is found on the niche industry job boards. Niche job boards that are specialized to the industry posted may reduce the number of total applications, but they have a higher chance of candidate relevance.

Companies know they are looking only at the most qualified candidates when using these boards and see higher engagement and success with converting candidates to a new hire. Many companies are also finding success utilizing Applicant Tracking Systems to automate posting to hundreds of job boards, both well-known and niche. ATS solutions can also knock out unqualified candidates, send automatic emails to candidates invited for an interview, and even save the application history

if employers want to revisit a previous applicant for another position.

Lastly, companies having success hiring and successfully onboarding top talent have a hiring and onboarding strategy. They look at the employees’ journey with the company as an interwoven process. It’s not just up to the new hire’s manager to walk them around the office and show them how to login to their email. Successful organizations have a hiring and onboarding process for new employees that details their onboarding plan with 30-60-90-day progress reviews, scheduled time with key employees, and a welcome packet to put the new hire at ease.

These organizations also let their new employees know what to expect within their first few days at their new job.

Companies that have mastered these three feats are snatching up top talent, while the remaining organizations watch their job postings stay open.

Mark Strippy is vice president of sales and service at Ahola. Contact him at 440-740-5030 or Mstrippy@ ahola.com.

7/30/19 2:59 1:51 PM

HRGUIDEBOOK

S6 August 5, 2019

SPONSORED CONTENT

Building the framework of a strong organization Foundation begins with establishing a set of core values that reflect mission, culture what values or beliefs are top of mind for employees. Core values should be simple concepts such as “integrity” and “guest focus,” but they should be defined as to how they relate to the organization.

For instance, “integrity” for a public agency can define not only employee ethics but also finances and its management of taxpayer contributions.

Consider how many core values are necessary for the entirety of the organization and its mission. Rather than having a dozen core values – six values that encompass multiple ideals may be easier for employees to focus on. For instance, “dependability,” “punctuality” and “attention to detail” could all exist under the core value of “professionalism.”

Once an initial set of words and definitions is established, facilitating small group conversations or focus groups can help employees brainstorm what principles are essential. Depending on the particular organization, holding focus groups with a diverse set of employees across multiple locations can help produce a dialogue that is equally diverse and inclusive of the entire organization.

Employee peers should be defining

background, I feel that core values should be similar to a school’s anthem, strong organization is consis- and employees should respond to them tent in its mission and built with enthusiasm. When I initiated this from passionate and dedicated process, I traveled to Disney World employees who share similar core val- and got a close look at how one of the ues. Whether the mission is to protect world’s most successful companies the environment, innovate a new prod- keeps their employees engaged and uct or so on, a checklist of core goal-oriented.

I walked organizational values can help away more confident in the guide each employee toward premise that behind every that shared mission. In a way, strong organization’s mission the core values “prop up” an orstatement are passionate ganization’s mission statement. workers with shared beliefs.

Equal time should be dedicated It’s important to to establishing a set of values Harrison remember that establishing that is true to both the organization and an organization’s core values is not the employees who drive it. about creating a moral rulebook for When electing to create or employees — it’s about establishing establish a set of core values for your an organizational culture to help organization, it’s important to ensure employees thrive. And that requires that the core values are not just a employee buy-in from the beginning. set of ideals but are made up of the While external research or assistance culture that is already interwoven into can help when preparing to establish the organization’s framework. The such an encompassing organizational human resources professional’s job in initiative, it’s even more important establishing core values should be to to look internally, and ensure that open up a dialogue on what values are employees have ownership in the important rather than to try initiate an organization’s governing principles. entirely new organizational culture.

An internal survey or questionnaire This process can and should distributed to a wide variety of take time. Coming from an athletics employees is a good start in gauging

By HAROLD HARRISON

A

“We Have To Let You Go.”

these values, not leadership. Aside from gathering employee buy-in, brainstorm sessions can help build momentum toward that ultimate organizational goal and may even refocus or re-engage long-time employees.

Once core values are established among employees, it’s important that all other key stakeholders, such as a board of commissioners, are in alignment.

The real hard work begins once your organization’s core values are selected, defined and approved. Core values should be the foundational tenets of daily work as well as decisionmaking. Informing employees of core values goes beyond a memo, email or newsletter.

To really bring awareness, the HR professional can launch a series of activities around the newly established core values. If you have an organizational picnic or quarterly update, make sure that the core values are featured in a fundamental way.

Core values should also be visible.

They should be listed on the website, in the employee handbook and on business cards. They should be hung visibly in every room where decisions

are being made.

As established core values are purpose-oriented and goal-oriented, they should also have organizational weight behind them. They should be part of the hiring process as well as connected to performance appraisal.

If the core values are aligned with the organizational mission, then evaluating employee performance based on the individual’s alignment with core values should be a commonsense initiative. Core values and their purpose in the organization are more effective when employees are expected to perform their work in manner that is in alignment with those values.

For the human resources professional, the process of establishing core values in an organization is like a coach building momentum before a big game. When the organizational goal is established, employees just need the playbook and the encouragement they’re on the right track to take home the win.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

and management feedback to make adjustments and additions that heighten EX and demonstrate your leadership’s dedication to it.

3. Plan: Building a better experience is more than just an HR department task. Bring together stakeholders from all functional areas of your enterprise to chart people-centric objectives.

Hard words to say, harder words to hear.

Whether you have to deliver the bad news or receive it, the experienced attorneys at McCarthy, Lebit, Crystal & Liffman will navigate you through the tricky matters of employment law in Ohio. Our accomplished attorneys have successfully represented both individuals and companies in hundreds of matters.

Don’t wait, your best interest is a phone call away.

4. Install: Write your employee experience agenda into central aspects of corporate communication, from your mission statement and core values to your employee handbook.

5. Manage: Keep doors and lines of communication open between leaders and employees to encourage regular conversations that increase awareness, understanding and trust.

6. Measure: Evaluate individual and company performance according to people experience metrics, and routinely poll employees formally and informally about how they feel.

7. Improve: Use continuous employee

Harold Harrison is chief human resources officer at Cleveland Metroparks. Contact him at hgh@clevelandmetroparks.com.

Together with providing challenging and meaningful work, competitive compensation and benefits, and worklife balance, employee experiencefocused workplaces are more likely to spark passion, help employees find purpose and reap rewards.

Beyond the cultural, physical and technological features of EX are the relational ones. Organizations that lead from the heart, with compassion, empathy and humanity, are winning big. Nothing turns a negative employee experience around quite like a leader asking, “How can I help?”

Kelly Keefe is president at ERC. Contact her at 440-947-1284 or kkeefe@yourERC.com.

Contact Ann-Marie Ahern or Jack Moran at 216.696.1422

Managing editor, custom and special projects Amy Ann Stoessel, astoessel@crain.com SM

Trusted Advisors. Respected Advocates.

No-fee initial consultations www.mccarthylebit.com

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Project editor: Kathy Carr

Graphic designer: Lisa Griffis

For more information about custom publishing opportunities, please contact Amy Ann Stoessel.

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CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

AKRON

Card games deal up big business for Full Grip

By Karen Farkas clbfreelancer@crain.com

Jameson Reeves found his calling — and it’s not as a rap star or banker.

Reeves, 37, owns a thriving business centered on two popular collectible and trading card games.

Full Grip Games draws fans into the store to buy cards and compete, and others to the website or YouTube streaming services.

“The success of this has exceeded my expectations,” said Reeves as he sat at a gaming table in the business on East Market Street in downtown Akron, across from the Akron Art Museum.

His creative ideas and efforts to promote Magic: The Gathering and Pokémon have led to what he projects will be more than $1 million in revenue this year.

Reeves never imagined his infatuation with Magic: The Gathering as a teenager would result in a return to his hometown and a change in his career trajectory.

His first move after breaking the bonds of a corporate life six years ago? Grow a tall mohawk. And then dye it different colors.

“As soon as I quit the bank, where you had to be conservative, I had the opportunity to let loose, so the first thing I did was grow a mohawk,” he said. “You might not remember my name, but you will remember my hair.”

Reeves grew up in Akron’s Ellet neighborhood and began playing Magic: The Gathering, the oldest collectible card game in the world, during middle school. His interest waned in high school as he became involved in athletics and other activities.

Full Grip Games contains racks and racks of game cards.

In 2013, Jameson Reeves left the corporate world to focus on the world of games. His first order of business: Lose the corporate look and grow a mohawk. Three years later, he returned to Akron to open Full Grip Games. (Photos by Shane Wynn for Crain’s)

He attended John Carroll University for a semester, planning to major in business, then set aside college for a job at MBNA, later acquired by Bank of America, to fund his pursuit of a career as a rap artist. He moved to Chicago because of better music opportunities and released an album. But nothing happened.

“It just kind of hit me,” he said, that music was not going to be his career.

He was 27, working full-time as a personal and business adviser at Chase Bank and playing clubs at night.

He set aside music and rediscovered his love for Magic: The Gather-

ing. He began meeting other players and trading cards to build decks.

In 2013, he left banking when he was asked to help start a business focused on the game. Three years later, he and his business partners parted ways. He decided to return to Akron and open his own business.

“I looked at about 30 to 40 places and saw this place,” he said. The former piano store had 4,300 square feet and was near freeways and the University of Akron.

He named his business Full Grip, which he said comes from a full hand of cards when playing a game.

Ironically, his banking background helped when he sought financing for his business. He chose not to bring in any partners. He opened in April 2016.

The front of the building houses gaming tables and sales racks that include cards and a variety of board games. Board games also can be rented by the day or week, which draws in families. But the majority of his customers and gamers are males in their 20s and 30s, generally from the University of Akron and Northeast Ohio.

Seventy percent of his income is from online sales, 15% from his store and 15% from trade-show sales, he said.

He sells through his website, fullgripgames.com, as well as Amazon and TCGplayer.com.

He has seven full-time employees and one part-time worker.

Two of his most astute moves were placing a strong focus on Pokémon, which he said is the largest media franchise in the world, and hiring Andrew Mahone, whose sole job is to livestream on YouTube.

Mahone works in a recording studio in the back of the store and his

Tricky Gym channel has more than 44,000 subscribers. He promotes the store and products, also livestreaming Pokémon tournaments, including commentary, every Wednesday night in the store.

The back rooms of the building contain racks of cards that are bought and sold. When new card sets are released, more than 100 fans will line up at midnight to buy and play them, Reeves said.

“My clientele typically doesn’t have a place to go, and here they can socialize together and play games,” he said.

Reeves’ efforts have received national attention. He was asked by Wizards of the Coast, which publishes Magic: The Gathering, to host a Mythic championship qualifier. The June 1 event at the John S. Knight Center drew 133 participants from several states and offered a $5,000 prize.

He also is working with Warner Bros., which contacted him to promote the new Pokémon movie and other films by the company.

The revitalized building benefits downtown, said Suzie Graham, president and CEO of the Downtown Akron Partnership.

“He has done so much to improving the street-facing character of the building,” she said. “Because of his business model, he draws all kinds of people and activates the storefront in a way not seen for some time.

“I can’t emphasize enough, especially as downtown is working through the construction phases, the importance of small business. They add to the community in a way that large corporations or nonprofits can’t do," she added.

Reeves, who lives in Akron, said future plans include buying his building to expand and offer space to tenants.

UA trademark clinic helps startups, students alike

By Judy Stringer

University of Akron trademark clinic director Daniel Thomson, left, meets with client Robert Martin of Coates Christian Apparel LLC. (Contributed photo)

clbfreelancer@crain.com

Renee Volchko’s “aha” moment came in 2015. The Akron graphic designer regularly packed salad lunches for work. One day, a colleague challenged her to create a portable version, which Volchko — joking at the time — called a “salad bar.”

It didn’t take her long, however, to decide that the product just might fly.

A dehydrated, kale-based nutrition bar would be a pretty unique offering.

Perhaps more importantly, Volchko recognized very early on that “salad bar” could be a catchy pun and a trademark on the name Super Salad Bar would be key. With no legal expertise and “very little funds,” she turned to students at the University of Akron School of Law for help.

“I couldn’t afford a lawyer,” Volchko explained. “In the beginning, this was just a hobby, a project that was becoming very expensive. Once I found out about the free trademark clinic at the University of Akron, it suddenly seemed more like a business possibility, like something I could protect.”

The law school’s trademark clinic is one of several classes that enable students to work with real clients under the supervision of a law professor or practicing attorney. Since early 2016, Daniel Thomson, co-managing part-

P028_CL_20190805.indd 28

ner of Akron-based Emerson Thomson Bennett and an adjunct UA professor, has overseen the clinic. Over those three-plus years, his students have filed 100 trademark applications. They’ve obtained 48 registrations so far.

“Quite a few are still pending,” Thomson said. “Of the 100 or so that we have filed, we’ve probably had fewer than 10 marks that we couldn’t get registered, and that was because there was a likelihood of confusion with a previous mark. And with all 10, I am pretty sure we told them this is either not going to work or it is a long shot.”

According to Thomson, there are only a handful of clinics around the country that are specially designated by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Of-

fice (USPTO) to allow law students to prosecute trademark applications. As one of them, the UA clinic receives client referrals from the USPTO. Other referrals come from area attorneys or from the university’s Small Entrepreneur and Economic Development (SEED) legal clinic.

“Basically, what we do is we help real-life people with their trademark applications and provide students with real-world legal experience,” Thomson said.

To qualify for the free trademark assistance, a company must be fewer than 6 years old and have revenue or personal income of $100,000 or less, Thomson said. Students are required to complete 90 hours of work to get law school credit

for the clinic. In addition to filing the applications, students conduct trademark searches, respond to inquiries (“office actions”) from the USPTO and — most importantly, he said — “interact and deal with real clients.”

“That is something you don’t always learn in law school,” he said.

While preparing a trademark application is not super-complicated, Nathan Gugliotta, a former clinic student who now practices intellectual property law with his father at Gugliotta & Gugliotta in Akron, said the electronic form can be “easy to mess up” for people who don’t know what they are doing. Once students learn about the process and get used to the online form, however, they can typically prepare and file an application in fewer than 30 minutes.

Much of the legwork, he added, happens before the actual filing, when students conduct a search to see if the mark is already in use and advise clients on how to proceed.

“To be able to do that a dozen times or so in the course of a semester really gets you familiar with the whole process, in addition to diving deep in the trademark practices of the office,” Gugliotta said.

Students who file applications early in the semester also may hear back from the examining USPTO officer before the end of the four-month clinic, and could get the chance to defend

an application that is under question.

The student applications are fasttracked as a federally approved clinic.

Entrepreneurs and business owners who hire a private practice lawyer to help with a trademark application typically spend $2,000 to $2,500 for the service, Thomson noted. Clients of the clinic only pay the $225 filing fee. Although his primary concern is the students, the Rubber City attorney admits a little tinge of pride when he sees ideas that have come through the clinic make it to the market, especially in situations — like Volchko’s — where that might not have happened otherwise.

Along with Volchko’s Super Salad Bars, Thomson’s students have helped secure trademarks for former Akron soccer star Kofi Sarkodie’s Ninety+ training and mentorship program; Zae & Sam’s Bath Bombs, a Bedford-based skin care startup; and Unionville’s The Old Tavern, an 18th-century watering hole currently being restored. The program's most distant client was an Israeli startup.

Thomson said the trademark clinic is part of UA’s effort to support entrepreneurship and economic development. That effort also includes the law department’s SEED clinic and some business courses aimed at assisting startups. The law school has had some early discussions about developing a patent clinic, although, he added, “there is a whole lot more to that.”

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HEMP

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 3

Research institutions, like Ohio State University, will have to apply to be registered with the state, but don’t To place your listing in Crain’s Cleveland Classifieds, have to be officially licensed.

The school already formed a Hemp contact Suzanne Janik at 313-446-0455 or email sjanik@crain.com Task Force with its faculty, Central State University and the state and is finalizing plans to buy 2,000 hemp plants to be grown both indoors and outdoors at three or four locations across Ohio.

“It is too late in the season to expect anything planted outdoors to go to maturity, but we are still interested in getting our faculty used to working with this crop,” said Gary Pierzynski, associate dean for research and graduate education at OSU’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

“For future work, we will be working on traditional agronomics — soil fertility, planting dates, pest control, varietal evaluations, etc. — plus eventually more basic work such as breeding and genetics. Simultaneously, we hope to work on additional uses for hemp fiber to help develop markets.”

Back on the consumer products front, Pelanda said her department’s food safety division has already begun ZuRI president and CEO Scott Raybuck, shown in the warehouse of ZuRI’s production facility in North Ridgeville, looking for any products that may be says Senate Bill 57 “substantially opens up our visibility now in Ohio.” (Tim Harrison for Crain’s) claiming to cure diseases immediateda said there will be no limits on who that do have legislation already in marketed toward cannabis, and a ly and is directing sellers to desist.

That’s part of a “truth in labeling” inican apply to grow or process hemp, place and can grow industrial hemp,” small CBD line called #Hemp.

“This is a really great opportunity tiative, she said, which will also inand no licenses required for manu- said Ty Higgins, spokesperson for the facturers — like ZuRI or Clean Reme- Ohio Farm Bureau. “It’s a way for for farmers,” she said. “They’ve been volve testing products in the future.

“We are about making sure people dies — mixing hemp compounds farmers to diversify operations and through a lot these past few years with add in a crop that might be an addi- the tariffs and weather this year. have correct information about what with other products.

Farmers need a new crop because they’re buying in Ohio,” Pelanda said.

Ohio farmers are clamoring for tional revenue stream for them.”

But the department also needs hemp, particularly those reeling from One of those aspiring farmers is Ju- they’re not making a lot of money in some money to work with because the tariffs and prices on cash crops likes lie Doran, founder of the Ohio Hemp corn or soybeans or wheat.”

The Department of Agriculture hemp bill was passed without any corn and soybeans that have been Farmers Cooperative, who wants to dropping since 2012. plant hemp at her family’s Doran planted hemp at its research farm in budget appropriations. Pelanda said “What we know is SB 57 puts Ohio Farm in the Columbus area. Doran Columbus on Aug. 1 in order to begin she plans to ask for a hemp-related budget of $12 million later this month. on a level playing field with states also runs Meigs Fertilizer, which is studying it.

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The day the bill was signed, ZuRI began mixing in Ohio again.

“It was frustrating because I’m from the Cleveland area,” Raybuck said. “I love Ohio. We wanted to plant a flag here and just hadn’t been able to. We did what we could without drawing too much attention on this side. Now, this substantially opens up our visibility in Ohio.”

Opening doors CBD manufacturer Clean Remedies of Rocky River is in a similar position.

Its CEO, Amherst native Meredith Farrow, also runs a hemp processing operation in Oregon called Green Mile Enterprises that white-labels several products for other companies.

Clean Remedies products are in some 300 stores in about 30 states, Farrow said. She just launched the Ohio company last year and is expecting a big uptick in sales with Ohio’s hemp laws finally in place.

“It’s definitely going to open doors for bigger-box stores based in Ohio,” she said.

She also plans to apply for a hemp processing license in Ohio. But she won’t be able to do that until the Department of Agriculture establishes rules for licensing farmers and processors.

That will be worked on through the next six months or so, said Dorothy Pelanda, director of the Department of Agriculture, with the goal of farmers being able to plant crops next spring.

While rules are not out yet, Pelan-

HB 6

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

A group calling itself Ohioans Against Corporate Bailouts has gathered the initial 1,000 signatures needed — it actually got more than 2,800 — and now hopes to gather more once the state approves its ballot language, said Gene Pierce, a spokesman for the group.

“We’re ready to roll,” said Pierce, who added that the group filed its initial signatures and ballot language last Monday, July 29, and is waiting for approval from the state by mid-August. If the group gets the goahead, it will immediately begin deploying volunteer and paid petition gatherers, he said.

Beck and other observers say HB 6 has it all, in terms of angering voters.

Liberals and even some conservatives hate that it guts support for renewable energy after the state used subsidies to lure those industries to Ohio. Liberals hate that it subsidizes dirty coal plants. Many conservatives hate that it picks winners and losers by subsidizing one industry over another.

The fossil fuel industry is opposed, because while about $20 million a year from the new subsidy would go to a couple of coal plants, one of them is out of state and other Ohio coal plants get nothing. At the same time, natural gas drillers and investors in new Ohio electricity plants powered by national gas vehemently oppose subsidizing their own competition. That’s a significant issue, considering the southeast quadrant of the state is fully engaged in shale drilling.

The American Petroleum Institute and API Ohio not only opposed HB 6, but paid for a survey in June, which it said shows more than 70% of Ohioans oppose the bailout. Opposition was broad, with 73% of Republicans and 67% of Democrats opposed, along with 73% of independent vot-

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“We helped, greatly, create an industry that helped bring jobs to Ohio. Now, we’re just going to whisk them away with the stroke of a legislative pen? Why would anyone trust Ohio again?”

— State Sen. Joe Uecker, a Republican from Clermont County

ers, API reported.

Even the Ohio Environmental Council and the Ohio Manufacturers Association are opposing HB 6, claiming it guts the state’s renewable power industry and puts small manufacturers at risk of paying uncompetitively high rates.

Meanwhile, virtually everyone everywhere on the political spectrum is a ratepayer, and subsidies generally tend to be unpopular among those who pay for them. The Ohio Consumers’ Counsel also opposed the bailout.

All of that, combined with an election that many are predicting will draw an extremely high turnout, could create the perfect storm that sinks HB 6, observers say.

Unlike in an off-year election, high turnout in communities benefiting from the subsidies — namely Akron, Toledo and Perry — likely will be blunted. The same might hold true for special-interest spending on this one issue, when voters are already being driven to the polls by a highly contentious presidential election.

“If it’s a small-turnout election, it’s easier to defeat the referendum,” said Ned Hill, former dean of Cleveland State’s College of Urban Affairs and an Ohio State University professor

who has testified against HB 6 on the grounds that it hurts economic development in the state.

Even at least one of the Republicans who firmly control the statehouse — not that HB 6 didn’t also have Democratic support — favors the referendum.

Asked if he thought the measure could get on the ballot and pass, state Sen. Joe Uecker, a Republican from Clermont County, replied, “I certainly hope so.”

Uecker said his district east of Cincinnati, like a lot of rural Ohio, is fairly low-income, will see little to no benefit from the subsidies and does not support them. He noted that when he made a Facebook post opposing the measure — before a similar speech he gave in the Senate on July 17 — it got more than 20,000 views and he received more than 300 responses. Only about a dozen were in support of HB 6, he said.

Uecker pointed out that three coal plants have already closed in his district, and a fourth won’t benefit from the new subsidies but will only have to compete against them.

“Jobs along the Ohio River should be just as important as jobs near the lake,” Uecker contended.

Statewide, the new nuclear subsidies are being offset by the elimination of subsidies for renewable energy, but Uecker said he thinks the state should stay the course on renewables — and that the two subsidies have only an artificial attachment.

“I’m in favor of renewables, just not of subsidizing them ... but we did it, the Republicans did that,” Uecker said. “We helped, greatly, create an industry that helped bring jobs to Ohio. Now, we’re just going to whisk them away with the stroke of a legislative pen? Why would anyone trust Ohio again?”

If a referendum makes the ballot, Uecker said it will pass easily in districts like his. He just hopes others in the state feel the same.

“It would be solidly supported in my area,” Uecker said. “But the majority of voters in Ohio are at I-70 and north, and I’m not sure what that part of the state’s feelings are.”

We may find out next year, when not only the communities benefiting from the subsidies but a host of environmental groups, small manufactures, free-market advocates and others chime in.

If that’s the case, prepare for more arguments, lots of claims about the need for the subsidies and charges of both sides using dark money to represent out-of-state interests — which observers say both sides will no doubt do, in what Hill predicted will be a “battle of hedge funds” with divergent interests.

On the bright side, if a referendum

does succeed in overturning HB 6, that still doesn’t mean the nuclear plants will close. Hill, among others, said he believes the plants are profitable, so he doesn’t think they’ll shut down whether they get the subsidies or not.

“They wouldn’t have closed. Based on the financials we’re seeing coming out of bankruptcy court, someone would have bought them and those plants would have been saved anyway,” Hill claimed.

For their part, the state’s Republican caucus and FirstEnergy Solutions appear to be hoping the matter goes away. A FirstEnergy Solutions spokesperson declined to discuss the possible referendum. A spokesman for the statehouse GOP caucus did not respond to questions on the issue.

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Miller pushed the development office to elaborate on the strategic plan and to present at least five specific economic objectives for the coming year.

Daunting as the task of detailing a region’s economic development needs might be, the development department already was in the process of doing just that. It’s working with researchers to create a specific set of indicators to measure factors ranging from population to poverty, and it plans to use that information to gauge the county’s progress with more precision than in the past.

The Office of Business Intelligence, a 2016 initiative from Carter that’s led

by Paul Herdeg, county director of strategic planning, created a list of indicators to measure economic success and projections of what that success will look like.

“We have been working with Cleveland State University Center for Economic Development over the past year to put these measurements together,” Herdeg said. “We used to have more metrics, but we streamlined them to focus on the county’s priorities,” he added.

The 2019 strategic plan update now includes seven key economic priorities for the region. The group identified entrepreneurship, workforce development, economic inclusion, population demographics, business growth and attraction as data points they needed to better inform the development department’s policy recommendations. The seventh is something called the “opportunity index,” which Herdeg said has multiple variables, including data from four areas: economy, education, health and community.

The variables dug down further, measuring unemployment, household income, poverty, incarceration, and drug and suicide mortality rates.

The seven indicators were assigned a composite score, and that

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

Workforce development gap Northeast Ohio retains only 47% of higher education graduates, leaving a significant gap between needed positions in key sectors and skilled workers qualified to fill them.

30,000 25,000 20,000 15,000

2018 Demand vs. Credentials awarded in 2017

29,775

Demand

21,021

Credentials

12,661

10,446

10,000 5,000 0

2,216 IT

2,076 Health Care

Manufacturing

SOURCE: The Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs Center for Economic Development

score was projected out five years in the future.

The “economy” metric is made up of common-sense measures, such as unemployment, household income and poverty rates. Education looks at statistics for student performance ranging from preschool years to college. Health includes demographics on birth weight, health insurance rates, and drug and suicide mortality rates. The “community” metric is the most complex, including data on volunteering, voting, violent crime and incarceration rates in the eventual score.

The data then were used to compare Cuyahoga County to peer counties in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Indiana, as well as Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Franklin County (Columbus).

Cuyahoga County scored slightly below Franklin County in business starts and significantly below in population growth, but it’s projected to have similar existing business growth. Cuyahoga County fell in the middle when evaluating each county’s opportunity index (an overall community-wellness metric), as it was below Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) and above Marion County

(Indianapolis). The projections in all seven indicators showed positive growth except for population, which had Cuyahoga County losing more than 4% by 2023. Only Wayne County (Detroit), at 5%, was predicted to lose more people.

Using the new county performance measures, initiatives like workforce education and preparation can now be measured, and the significant county resources that already have gone into advancing the workforce through job training can be objectively evaluated.

“We needed to know these things in order to take the next step, needed a baseline to know where are we now and where do we expect to be,” Miller said.

The full county council still needs to meet and approve the 2019 strategic plan update, but the economic development committee members have asked for an update using the projections in a few months.

Council members told the economic development staff they did not expect substantial movement in the seven indicators in just a few months.

“Hopefully, we can move the needle,” Miller said.

FOODNEST CONTINUED FROM PAGE 8

One of the biggest things gleaned from the first study, Freedman said, was the complexities of the factors affecting food habits.

“Even if the food hub had become this most amazing vibrant food hub, there were so many other things going on in the community at the same time that we kind of were missing the mark in terms of how we were evaluating,” she said.

“We became very interested in using new analytic techniques to better understand system dynamics around local food system change.”

That spurred the current grant funding the new study: $936,000 from the nonprofit Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research. The foodNEST 2.0 initiative is supported by an equal amount of matching funds from a bevy of other partners.

In addition to CWRU, the study team includes researchers from Ohio State University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine, as well as community stakeholders with expertise in community-based food systems, community and economic development, food security, health equity and neighborhood action.

“I hope that it moves the needle forward in a more positive direction, that people will be more informed to make better choices,” said Marilyn Burns, community leader, resident of the Woodhill community and a member the foodNEST 2.0 core modeling team, a group of stakeholders who are serving as advisers to the study.

While the first study focused on studying a food hub as a potential solution, the new study takes a broader look at how communities can identify a number of solutions to help address access to healthy food.

It aims to develop tools that can inform how future food systems change should be developed, designed and implemented, focusing on different strategies’ abilities to move three needles: economic op-

portunity, food security and nutrition equity in neighborhoods. The study is looking at four neighborhoods: Buckeye-Shaker, Central, Hough and St. Clair-Superior.

“We know we need to be thinking about upstream factors, but I think people thought focusing on supermarket development was upstream enough,” Freedman said. “But, you know, we need to be talking about how to get more money into the pockets of these households. And that is a whole different level of intervention.”

So far, foodNEST 2.0 has examined the different ways the myriad factors affecting diet and food choices interact with one another, such as access to health care, living-wage jobs, job training programs, education, transportation, quality housing and more. Ultimately, these are all connected, Freedman said.

Armed with a better understanding of how these factors touch one another, the researchers are employing a methodology called simulation modeling, using software that plays out various scenarios to better understand the impact of potential solutions.

Freedman said the goal is, by this time next year, to have a menu of solutions the model says will work and from there, go to community stakeholders and work with them to use this tool to guide local food systems decision-making in neighborhoods.

Jennifer Scofield, CEO of Hunger Network of Greater Cleveland and another member of the foodNEST 2.0 core modeling team, noted that hunger is pervasive.

“It’s not just kind of a one-off situation for people; so there are things that contribute to that,” she said. “And I wanted to be part of looking at that food system in a much more intentional way in saying, ‘OK, what are the pieces that are happening here in Cleveland that contribute to hunger, that contribute to food insecurity and how can an organization like the Hunger Network and my work in particular help improve those systems?’ ”

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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

ACCOUNTING

CONSTRUCTION

FINANCIAL SERVICES

LEGAL

BDO

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Taft Stettinius & Hollister LLP

BDO USA, LLP, one of the nation’s leading professional services firms, has announced that Teri Schaffer has been promoted to Assurance Office Managing Partner for the Northeast Ohio Offices effective July 1, 2019. Teri has more than 20 years of experience in public accounting, serving clients in the public, privately-held and non-profit sectors. She serves on the Accounting Advisory Group for Miami University and is the Finance Chair of Circle Health and The Centers for Families and Children.

BDO USA, LLP, one of the nation’s leading professional services firms has announced that Dave McClain has been promoted to Tax Office Managing Partner for the Northeast Ohio Offices effective July 1, 2019.

Dave will be responsible for advising clients on tax-efficient structuring and the tax implications of purchasing and selling business. His practice focuses on tax credits and strategic business incentives, analyzing their impact and potential cost savings for clients.

Austin Bischoff, of Richfield, Ohio, has been named account manager with Rudolph Libbe Group’s Northeast Ohio office in North Ridgeville. In his new role, Austin will focus on growing customer accounts and developing new opportunities.

He joined the Rudolph Libbe Group in 2016 as a project engineer and holds a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from the University of Toledo. Austin is a member of the Association for Iron & Steel (AIST).

Risk & Insurance Management Society, Northeast Ohio Chapter (RIMS)

P030_CL_20190805.indd 30

Tanisha McBride, MBA, CRMA, CICRA has been named the first African American President of the Risk & Insurance Management Society, Northeast Ohio Chapter (RIMS).

Currently, Tanisha works for The Cleveland Clinic as a Corporate Finance Program Manager, where she also serves on The Cleveland Clinic Finance Engagement Committee and The Cleveland Clinic Mentorship Program. As a Cleveland native, Tanisha brings over 20 years of experience in Financial Statement Controls and Risk Management.

Julie Taft joins as a partner in the Private Client group. She guides the wealth management and estate planning needs of high net worth individuals and their families.

Her practice involves tax and other planning for owners of closely held businesses. She litigates will and trust constructions, will contests, claims by and against fiduciaries, and tax controversies. Julie is an OSBA-certified specialist in Estate Planning, Trust and Probate Law and is licensed to practice in Ohio and Florida.

8/2/19 4:00 PM

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SOURCE LUNCH

Sonia M. Winner President and CEO, Cleveland Museum of Natural History Natural history museums have a lot to offer to today’s conversations about sustainability, climate change and biodiversity. ¶ Sonia Winner, president and CEO of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, is working to ensure the museum remains part of those conversations as it approaches its centennial next year, which will be marked by a significant transformation of its campus, made possible by a $150 million Centennial Campaign. ¶ “I think that this museum always had had a lot of moxie. It started with very humble beginnings, with families deciding to invest in a museum of this kind in this region,” Winner said. “So as we celebrate, we want to honor those legacy families.” ¶ Honoring the museum’s 100 years at the end of 2020 will also be about opening the museum up to the public. Everything the museum does will be about health — individuals’ own health as well as the health of the planet, she said. ¶ Winner sat down with Crain’s to discuss her work.

The conversation has been edited for clarity and length. — Lydia Coutré

The Winner file Hobbies: Spin classes and reading history

Currently reading: “Washington: A Life,” by Ron Chernow, and “Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell,” by Alan Eagle, Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg At the top of her travel bucket list: Sicily, a bike ride through Spain or anywhere in South America

Lunch spot Table 45 9801 Carnegie Ave., Cleveland 216-707-4045

The meal Warm kale salad, Table 45 Caesar and iced teas

The vibe This Zack Bruell restaurant located inside the InterContinental Cleveland on Cleveland Clinic’s main campus offers modern American cuisine in a fine-dining setting.

The bill $44.72 with tip

They recruited you to join the museum in 2017, and you came as chief advancement officer. Why was that a good move for you?

Why did you say yes?

So I had always loved the natural history museum. My son learned to walk at the natural history museum, and it always held a special place in my family’s heart, because my kids just loved the place. And I always felt as if it was one of those legacy institutions — it’s been around a long time, but didn’t have the same stature as perhaps the other institutions in the area. And I knew about its global research and the amazing work they had done in human origins with the finding of Lucy and other things, but I never knew until I was recruited how expansive that was. Not only the global expertise, but the regional expertise about what’s going on here in Ohio and particularly Northeast Ohio, and the conservation of 10,000 acres in Ohio. So those are that living collection and the Perkins live-animal area presented by KeyBank — I don’t think that people get enough of a chance to really see wildlife and understand why it’s important. Why are turkey vultures important? Why are coyotes important in how they help our ecosystem? So I was really excited about that opportunity.

Did you have any background in the sciences?

Well, I won the fourth-grade science award — although my teacher told me never to become a botanist. But other than that, I was always the kid that was interested in microscopes, astronomy. I always took all of the science courses, until I got to middle

school. And I was the typical profile of the girl, the really smart girl, who started getting teased and bullied because I liked science. I liked doing biographies of the famous scientists, and I was always amazed that the only one was Madame Curie and no one knew about all the other women who’ve contributed to science. ...

That’s why I really believe in education for women in particular around the sciences and supporting them and making sure they have good role models. … I think that the background that they were looking for and the board was looking for for this particular role was really someone who has strong leadership skills and building real strategy for the institution.

Tell me about the projects the museum is working on.

So one of the things we’re doing by 2020, which is our centennial, is we’ll have three projects done by then, which will be the Smith Courtyard, which is our outdoor interior courtyard that is inside the building.

The second part is the auditorium.

So we’re redoing the Murch Auditorium, renovating it. And the third piece is what we’re calling a science news area so that there is current science that we can discuss.

And those will all be done by when in 2020?

December of 2020, which is when we launch our centennial. So our hope is that this will gain momentum and excitement. We’ve already finished the parking garage and then the Perkins Wildlife Area presented by KeyBank. And then the third is the Sears Garden. This is really launching

an overall total facelift of our building. We are thinking about future state. I’m always thinking with our colleagues and the board about what do we want the natural history museum to be in the future? And the building is not just about a collection of, you know, people say stuffed animals. It’s about really talking about relevant science topics — what we know about sustainability, what we don’t know — and really presenting that to the public.

You mentioned that some people don’t necessarily view the museum as having the same prestige as some of the other really critical anchor institutions in the area. What are you doing to change that and why is it important that the community recognize what it is that the Cleveland Museum of Natural History does?

I think the reason is maybe to do with us. It’s a very modest group of people.

And I think it’s helping the public understand collections and the importance of collection-based research and showcasing those assets that we have and really inviting the public in to share the experience and helping them understand what does it mean, like what does biodiversity mean and why is that important to me? I think that people need to know that why. We have to answer that “why” question. … So we all are part of a larger story of life, and the amazing part is we do tell that story of life. No one else tells the story of life, and we tell it from the past, the present and the future.

And I’m really interested in that future-state part of what we do.

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 Rachel McCafferty, Manufacturing/ energy/education Jeremy Nobile, Finance Kim Palmer, Government Dan Shingler, Energy/steel/auto/Akron Lydia Coutré, Health care/nonprofits Senior data editor Chuck Soder Cartoonist Rich Williams Local sales manager Megan Lemke Events manager Erin Bechler 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 31 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 A taste for the Exotic

the annual U.S. News & World Report’s Best Hospitals ranking. The Clinic ranked No. 1 in the country for heart care for the 25th consecutive year. Overall, the Clinic is ranked as the No. 4 hospital in America — the 21st consecutive year it has ranked as one of the nation’s top five hospitals.

Cleveland Clinic main campus was ranked No. 1 in Ohio. University Hospitals was ranked second among all hospitals statewide. Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center was ranked third.

Parker Hannifin Corp., the Mayfield Heights-based maker of motion and control technologies, agreed to buy Exotic Metals Forming Co. of Kent, Wash., for $1.725 billion in cash. Adjusted for about $170 million of expected tax benefits, the net transaction value is about $1.56 billion. The transaction is expected to be completed in the next two to three months. Privately held Exotic Metals, founded in 1966, makes high-temperature, high-pressure air and exhaust management systems for aircraft and engines. It has annual sales of about $450 million and 1,600 employees working in three U.S. locations.

On their marks Cleveland Clinic and University Hospitals both earned high marks in

P031_CL_20190805.indd 31

Payback

Cleveland Clinic has been ranked as the No. 4 hospital in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, marking the 21st consecutive year it has been in the top five on the Best Hospitals list. (Stan Bullard)

The former board president of the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority pleaded guilty to theft charges and agreed to pay restitution stemming from his 24-year tenure at the transit organization. According to

an agreement with the Cuyahoga County prosecutor’s office, former board president George F. Dixon III will pay $132,000 in restitution for unpaid health insurance premiums he accumulated during his more than two decades with the RTA. Dixon resigned from the board last March.

See how they grow The Ohio Tax Credit Authority approved tax assistance for 12 projects expected to create 3,962 new jobs and result in $153 million in payroll statewide. Six of the businesses, estimated to bring more than $68 million in new annual payroll, are in Northeast Ohio. The biggest of them is Amazon.com Inc., which plans to build a fulfillment center in Akron on the site of the former Rolling Acres Mall.

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A FIRM FIT for me “For years, I was sitting on an idea about creating a community space to share insights relating to construction law. Buckingham got behind my vision and three years ago we launched ‘YouDig?,’ an online advice column for those who work in the construction industry to connect and learn. We tackle real issues and complex situations but provide straightforward, no-nonsense, and often entertaining responses. It’s been a hit with clients and business partners alike.

I approach client matters with the same passion and creative thinking; and I’m grateful to work at a firm that encourages innovation.”

John Swansinger, Buckingham Cleveland Partner in Charge and youdig.biz creator

out what it’s like To learn more ab gham, visit to work at Buckin /careers www.bdblaw.com

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