Crain's Cleveland Business

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Team NEO seeks shovel-ready industrial sites

Leaders hope to boost odds of winning jobs in Cuyahoga and Summit counties Regional economic-development leaders hope to unearth the next batch of industrial sites in Cuyahoga and Summit counties, with the goal of boosting Northeast Ohio’s odds of winning fierce contests for jobs.

Team NEO aims to identify six to 10 potential high-priority sites by the end of this year. The nonprofit group is focused on finding property that isn’t already in developers’ hands.

That search, outlined in a request for proposals from consultants released June 20, comes on the heels of Intel Corp.’s decision to build a massive semiconductor manufacturing hub outside of Columbus, in Licking County.

Northeast Ohio had no chance of landing that megaproject, which is gobbling up nearly 1,000 acres — a tract the size of Mentor-on-the-Lake, or half the size of East Cleveland. But the region will have a better shot at

securing other attraction deals, and accommodating existing employers’ growth, if officials can build a broader library of sites.

“That’s the challenge with Cleveland. You can’t drive 25 minutes outside of Cleveland and be in virgin farmland and have your choice, the way that you can in Columbus.

We’re dealing with all the challenges of a legacy of prior development,” said Dennis McAndrew, the founder and president of Silverlode Consulting, a Cleveland-based firm that is involved in site selection on a national scale.

“If Cuyahoga County and Summit had three to five good-quality sites of scale … that’s three to five more than I think they have today,” he said.

In its request for proposals, Team NEO is focusing on sites of at least 10 acres — but the bigger the footprint, the better.

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Leaders recognized for their professional and civic accomplishments. PAGE 10

KEN BLAZE FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BY MICHELLE JARBOE

Convenience drives food fight among grocers

BY STAN BULLARD

Online ordering and curbside pickup have transformed grocery shopping for many Northeast Ohio consumers. Online behemoth Amazon’s latest supermarket, Amazon Fresh, will add a new dimension to the food business.

That’s how Burt Flickinger III, a managing director at Strategic Resource Group of New York City, sees it.

“You can get in and out in 15 to 20 minutes,” said Flickinger, who comes

from a long line of grocers and is a radio host who appears on cable business shows on retail issues. “It’s world-class technology. Alexa devices guide you through the store. You can be directed to where an item is located, when it goes in your (physical grocery and online) cart and whether it goes back on the shelf.”

That’s a big contrast with conventional grocers, whose sprawling stores are designed to keep shoppers in the aisles and in the checkout line in 45 minutes to an hour. He described

Amazon Fresh as a blank-sheet redo of the grocery business from a digital standpoint after the company bought the Whole Foods market chain.

Amazon Fresh may take market share from Heinen’s Fine Foods and Giant Eagle, he said, but that won’t be easy, because both are good operators and have consistently updated their technology to offer cellphone-enabled shopping, as well as online delivery.

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Augie Napoli transforms United Way during six-year tenure

BY LYDIA COUTRÉ

In 2016, August “Augie” Napoli brought to United Way of Greater Cleveland his network of relationships, decades of experience in philanthropy and a new vision for the more than 100-year-old nonprofit.

As president and CEO, Napoli shifted United Way’s strategy to focus on tackling poverty and grew the organization’s fundraising totals and sources.

Over Napoli’s six-year tenure, United Way brought in nearly $320 million in total in fundraising.

He officially retires June 30, but will stay on through the end of September when Sharon Sobol Jordan takes over as the new president and CEO. Napoli will hand over an organization he helped to “modernize,” said Nancy Mendez, who worked with him at United Way until departing last summer to become president and CEO of Starting Point. Napoli not only transformed United Way’s investments into the community but also brought a sense of innovation and equity Mendez throughout the work, helping it to be a “relevant, modern United Way” for the community, she said.

Paul Dolan — chairman and CEO of the Cleveland Guardians who’s in his fourth year as chair of the United Way’s Board of Directors — said he “can’t imagine a more transformational Dolan time for United Way than what occurred over the past six years under Augie’s stewardship.”

Previously a pass-through entity that spread money from workplace campaigns (once its primary source of revenue), the United Way chapter is now an engaged organization designed to fight poverty with the support of diverse revenue streams, he said.

Napoli was hired for his fundraising acumen, Dolan said.

“But what we got in Augie was a very strong leader (and) visionary who had the courage to push United Way in this new direction,” he said. “And to make us all uncomfortable by raising the specter of racism as a primary cause of

poverty in our community, and really forced us to look at ourselves, what we’ve done — or more accurately, what we’ve not done — and to repurpose United Way in a way that can make a difference.”

Napoli often says he was hired as a change agent. And reflecting on what’s changed during his tenure, he said “just about everything” about the organization that he inherited looks different from today’s United Way. The biggest change, he said, is “we’ve regained our footing, we know who we are.”

In 2016, it was “hurtling toward irrelevance in the community” — a community, he noted, that has significantly fewer people and corporate headquarters than it did 30 years ago. This fact couldn’t be ignored by an organization that relied at the time solely on workplace campaigns for its fundraising.

Today, the organization is proactive, rather than re-active, and its fundraising approach and investment focus are better aligned to the community and its needs, Napoli said.

“I’m very proud of that, because it was worth doing the work — the blood, sweat and tears — that lots of people put into making this pivot,” he said.

United Way is working to break the cycle of poverty through the Community Hub for Basic Needs and the Impact Institute, both of which were launched under Napoli.

Community Hub for Basic Needs brought data to its community investment process. Dollars raised through that avenue focus on responding to the daily issues facing those living in poverty, such as hunger and homelessness.

The Impact Institute, designed to tackle the root causes of poverty through cross-sector collaboration, aims to find long-term solutions to chronic issues that keep families in generational cycles of poverty. To date, the institute has raised nearly $55.7 million.

Broadening fundraising beyond

Augie Napoli is retiring from United Way of Greater Cleveland after serving as president and CEO for six years. | CONTRIBUTED

workplace campaigns, and adding additional streams of fundraising — including principal giving and planned gifts — helped grow the annual campaigns.

For the six years of Napoli’s leadership, United Way’s average annual campaign total was $53.3 million, compared with an annual average of $41.1 million over the decade prior when the organization relied on just one stream of fundraising revenue, the workplace campaign.

The strategic shift also included narrowing the focus areas of United Way’s fund distribution, which resulted in some historically funded nonprofits losing some or all of their support. Napoli said this was painful but necessary move in order for the organization to be more effective in directing its dollars.

Having established multiple funding streams proved incredibly beneficial for United Way early in the pandemic when individual donors at the lower level put their giving on hold,

foundations and corporations stepped into philanthropy even more and additional government funding was available, said Aaron Petersal, United Way’s vice president for resource development and chief development officer.

Being nimble in those environments is “critical,” and the shift led by Napoli has helped set the organization up for the future, Petersal said. Napoli brought decades of philanthropic experience and understood the various ways to fundraise that many other organizations were already doing — major gifts, planned giving, principal gifts, multi-year commitments, grants, government funding, etc.

“He was the right person too, because having worked in myriad of nonprofits, throughout the city, he already knew the philanthropic community very well,” said Petersal, who worked with Napoli at the Cleveland Museum of Art before joining him at United Way. “Being able to have relationships with people, and communicate and articulate the mission and where we’re

going and what we’re aiming to do, has really resonated with our donors.”

The annual campaign for fiscal year 2022 (ending June 30) will be the organization’s largest in its history, totaling $75.7 million through June 22, the most recent figures available as of publication deadline. United Way of Greater Cleveland is serving as the steward for a $50 million, five-year investment from Cleveland Clinic into the Lead Safe Home Fund announced in January, which helped boost this year’s total.

In a statement, Dr. Tom Mihaljevic, president and CEO of the Clinic, said Napoli’s leadership “greatly impacted how Greater Cleveland regards those in need.”

“He has built impactful community partnerships that will continue to improve many lives in our community,” Mihaljevic said. “Cleveland Clinic has been honored to work with Augie and the United Way on crucial community issues, especially as part of the Lead Safe Coalition and the Impact Institute.”

Underlining all of Napoli’s work at United Way was a commitment to equity, said Mendez, who had been at United Way for several years before Napoli joined. She said before him, words like “racism” and “poverty” weren’t really discussed. But he talked about racism, poverty, root causes of poverty, structural racism and its effects on poverty, she said, noting that this was a couple of years before the murder of George Floyd elevated structural racism and equity to a broader national conversation.

“I don’t think people give Augie enough credit that he started that at United Way, way before that conversation. He was already talking about promoting and hiring the voices of Black and brown people and LGBT community,” Mendez said. “I’m Latina. I’m also a proud member of the LGBT community. And that didn’t matter. If anything, he saw it as an asset.”

Napoli’s commitment to equity and innovation is ultimately what transformed the United Way and served as a call to action for others to follow that path, Mendez said.

“I think he challenged a lot of organizations to think the same way,” she said.

Sharon Sobol Jordan to lead United Way of Greater Cleveland

BY LYDIA COUTRÉ

Sharon Sobol Jordan, a veteran local nonprofit and human services leader, will be the next president and CEO of United Way of Greater Cleveland, pending full approval of its board of directors Monday, June 27.

Jordan will start on Sept. 30, succeeding Augie Napoli, who’s retiring after leading the organization since 2016.

“United Way of Greater Cleveland’s core belief that social and economic change cannot be achieved without racial justice, together with its focus on permanently disrupting the cycle of intergenerational poverty, deeply resonates with me,” Jordan said in a provided statement. “I have shared this same commitment and passion in my own work over the last 35 years, and joining the United Way team is completely aligned with my values and sense of purpose.”

Paul Dolan, board chair of United Way, called Jordan a “consensus builder,” and said her ability to form community partnerships fits well with the organization’s current model, which was honed under Napoli’s leadership.

The organization is focused on eradicating the cycle of poverty through a dual-pronged approach: by treating its symptoms (such as homelessness and hunger) through its Community Hub for Basic Needs while also upending its root causes (like racism and access to stable housing) through its Impact Institute.

“I think what stood out for Sharon, though, when she got in front of the search committee, was her personal passion for the mission of addressing poverty in our community and economic and racial justice,” said Dolan, chairman and CEO of the Cleveland Guardians. “You look across her 35year career, and much of it has been

dedicated to that cause. But you saw her personal investment in that space.”

When Napoli announced his retirement last fall, United Way’s board launched a national search through a 13-member search committee, headed by board member Brian Richardson, executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Independence-based Covia. Selected from a diverse pool of nearly 50 candidates, Jordan will be the first female CEO of the organization in its 122-year history, according to a news release.

Napoli officially retires June 30 but will remain on through September to ensure a smooth transition.

“I feel really, really proud to turn the keys of the car over to the next person because they’re going to find an organization in really good shape, with so much potential and momentum behind it,” Napoli said.

Jordan comes to United Way with extensive leadership experience in a wide-ranging career. Her resume includes public service and nonprofit and for-profit organizations in various sectors.

“She truly has a unique resume that fits United Way perfectly, because she’s spent her career both working in the private sector and the public sector,” Dolan said. “She’s been with traditional organizations, she’s been with innovative organizations, and I think that fits real well with what United Way is today.”

She is founder and CEO of OpenSpace Solutions LLC, which advises leaders and organizations, including Digital C, a Cleveland-based nonprofit digital equity tech startup, where she currently serves as interim CEO. Prior to OpenSpace, Jordan was president and board member at Unify Labs, a nonprofit tech innovation center formed in 2017 to power in-

clusive prosperity.

She’s served as chief of staff for Cuyahoga County. Before that, she worked as the city of Cleveland director of law and special counsel to former Mayor Michael R. White.

As president and CEO of The Centers for Families and Children, Jordan led the merger and integration of three social service agencies and grew the combined organization.

A Cleveland native, she began her career as an associate and then partner at the Cleveland law firm Schneider Smeltz Speith Bell.

Jordan, who serves on numerous boards, earned a law degree and a master of business administration degree from Ohio State University and a bachelor of science degree from Indiana University’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs.

Lydia Coutré: lcoutre@crain.com, (216) 771-5479, @LydiaCoutre JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 3

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Fifth Third Bank continues to grapple with a federal regulator that has accused the financial services institution of opening bogus accounts and signing up customers for unwanted products and services.

A Cincinnati federal judge in the spring called out the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its lawsuit — first filed in March 2020 — for some seemingly aggressive tactics related to its collection of information intended to help the government build a case against the Cincinnati-based bank of approximately $211 billion in assets.

Fifth Third — the sixth-largest depository bank in Northeast Ohio and third-largest in the state — sought a protective order against the CFPB in late March in the wake of the agency sending mass emails to bank customers and former employees, unbeknown to the company.

Titled “Your Feedback Requested for Fifth Third Bank Law Suit,” those emails directed recipients to online surveys where they could provide details about their experiences with the bank.

In court filings, the CFPB said those surveys were “primarily intended to identify potential witnesses to support the Bureau’s already-strong and growing-stronger claims” related to Fifth Third’s “misrepresentations to consumers at large that the bank acts in consumers’ interests when selling bank products.”

Some of the 18,494 messages sent out bounced back, but at least 16,518 were delivered before the email campaign was halted, according to court documents.

Caught off-guard, many confused customers contacted the bank about the messages, which Judge Douglas Cole of the U.S District Court for the Southern District of Ohio himself said appeared to have “a lot of the hallmarks of spam, or phishing expeditions,” according to court records.

He added, “ … I’m a little surprised that CFPB would think it was a good idea to just reach out.”

Contacting customer en masse One issue here, according to court filings, is that the CFPB, Fifth Third and court agreed that the CFPB would examine a sample of 3,875 customer accounts in total from anywhere in the bank and do so with the intention of contacting the related customers.

However, the CFPB, which still hasn’t explained how it wants to assemble this sample group, contacted Fifth Third customers en masse anyway.

“If I were the agency, I would absolutely have the agency lawyers stop doing this because this can be very harmful for the agency if it gets perceived by the court of engaging in these heavy-handed, chicanery-type actions,” said Juscelino Colares, the Schott-van den Eynden Professor of Business Law at the Case Western Reserve Universi-

ty School of Law. Fifth Third asked the court to issue a protective order directing the CFPB to quit sending those emails to its customers and former employees on the grounds that the email campaign was improper, conducted without the bank’s knowledge and damaging its customer relationships.

On April 1, during a discussion about this protective order, Cole admonished CFPB counsel that he said held the “apparent view that, I think he said we’re the CFPB so, essentially, we can do whatever we want” with respect to comments about sending out those emails without explicitly communicating that it would be doing so to Fifth Third, according to court records.

Court documents show that Cole directed the CFPB to halt its sending of these emails and to disable the link to the surveys until the court gets a “better idea of what CFPB is willing to show the court about its outreach effort here, and how broadly this may be impacting Fifth Third’s” relationships with clients.

The CFPB agreed to do this without an official court order, which the bank has nonetheless sought anyway but which the CFPB said is moot because it already had stopped the email campaign — even though the agency argues in court filings that it was still within its purview to contact consumers directly.

“It’s not the role of any governing agency to prohibit relationships between a regulated entity, its customers or the public, and this is especially concerning in light of the fact that this matter is under litigation,” Colares said. “Depending on the federal judge, this may not play very well. It may actually be destructive of relationships between the agency and the courts in future relationships.”

The case remains ongoing.

How’d the bank get here?

The CFPB had been looking into Fifth Third since late 2016 before filing its lawsuit in spring 2020, scrutinizing the bank’s actions from about 2010 on with respect to things like how it went about opening new customer accounts and cross-sold services.

It also looked at the surrounding company culture for rewards and incentives for meeting sales goals it suggests may have contributed to alleged misconduct. Fifth Third rejects this idea.

Fifth Third’s court documents paint a picture of the company claiming to catch misconduct by employees who did, it acknowledges, open some accounts without customers’ consent during the investigated time frame.

According to court filings, the CFPB alleges that Fifth Third has admitted to “almost 400” instances of misconduct, including, among other things: changing accounts for which customers were enrolled; making false representations about the terms and conditions of consumer financial products to induce customers to accept

them; and falsifying consumer contact information, including by creating email addresses (or using inaccurate email addresses) to facilitate unauthorized enrollment of customers.

Additionally, the CFPB says the bank has claimed to have opened fewer than 1,100 unauthorized consumer-financial products, which could include other accounts or credit cards, for example.

With respect to the improper actions or unauthorized accounts that the bank acknowledges, Fifth Third maintains it took prompt steps to remediate any issues of misconduct, including disciplining or terminating responsible employees and refunding unauthorized costs to affected customers.

According to court documents, Fifth Third employed an outside consulting firm to review accounts with any so-called red flags that may have pointed to misconduct or an unauthorized account.

The bank said it identified fewer than 2,000 unauthorized accounts, or less than 0.02% of all accounts opened between 2010 to 2016.

This, it said, added up to approximately $30,000 in unwarranted fees the bank says were paid back.

The CFPB, however, accuses the bank in its amended complaint from June 2021 of being responsible for more instances of misconduct and opening more unauthorized accounts than it has previously admitted to.

In effect, Fifth Third argues that any misconduct within the bank was rare, halted when discovered and ultimately remediated. In this sense, allegations of widespread and systemic misconduct, it contends, are unfounded.

The CFPB, however, alleges that these issues go much deeper than the bank has let on.

Fifth Third’s defense is the CFPB continues to show no proof of this.

Fifth Third spokesman Edgar Loyd offered the following statement via email about the ongoing lawsuit: “Fifth Third has acted in a spirit of cooperation and provided a large volume of information and data to the CFPB. However, the CFPB continues to invoke discredited allegations of a vast and amorphous population of unauthorized Fifth Third accounts to propose grossly exaggerated potential penalties. Their claims distort a very simple reality: Unauthorized account openings are not — and never have been — a pervasive problem at the bank, and there is no evidence of systemic misconduct.

We do not reward employees for opening unauthorized accounts, and we do not use the controversial compensation practices that have been employed by other financial institutions, such as mandatory sales quotas and product-specific targets, threats of employee discipline, or lax oversight of account usage.”

A spokesperson for the CFPB said the agency declined to comment.

Jeremy Nobile: jnobile@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @JeremyNobile

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REAL ESTATE

MRN plans first new downtown condos in over a decade “THE IDEA OF LIVING DOWNTOWN JUST TO WALK TO WORK IS NOT ENOUGH ANYMORE. PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR BIGGER SPACES WHERE THEY CAN WORK FROM HOME, AND PEOPLE ARE LOOKING FOR THE AMENITIES THAT CREATE A VIBRANT URBAN LIFESTYLE.”

BY MICHELLE JARBOE

Bucking the apartment trend, a local developer is planning the first new condominium project in downtown Cleveland in more than a decade.

MRN Ltd. is preparing to convert two lofty office floors at 629 Euclid Ave., a mixed-use property near East Fourth Street, into for-sale housing.

At 14 units, the development is modest in size. But it could serve as a proving ground for a product that’s scarce in the central business district.

“When I look at other cities, this, to me, is the missing piece,” said Ari Maron, a partner with MRN. “Even as close as Columbus, they have much more robust homeownership in the urban core than we do.”

Condos and townhouses make up only 5% of the center-city residential market, according to the Downtown Cleveland Alliance. The nonprofit group, which represents property owners, has been advocating for more for-sale housing for years.

But financing challenges and developers’ antipathy toward condos — which busted hard during the Great Recession — have hampered progress. The last new condo project downtown, a redevelopment of the historic Park Building on Public Square, opened in 2009. The Avenue District, a ground-up condo tower completed around that same time, went through a foreclosure battle and receivership and became apartments, instead.

“I look at this as a very important pilot project,” Michael Deemer, the alliance’s president and CEO, said of MRN’s proposal. “I think we’ve felt for a long time at the alliance that there is a lot of demand for homeownership downtown. But for a variety of reasons, it’s been very challenging to develop new for-sale product.”

At 629 Euclid, MRN is reimagining the 15th and 17th floors of a historic building that already is home to apartments, offices and a Holiday Inn Express hotel. The 15th floor is part of the original structure, while the 17th floor is a modern office penthouse. (Most of the 16th floor is mechanical space, sandwiched in between.)

Floor plans show that the units will range from 1,300 to 3,000 square feet, though MRN is planning one 690-square-foot condo. All but two of the homes will provide single-story living, something Maron believes is necessary for downtown to attract more empty-nesters and baby boomers looking to shed their suburban homes.

Preliminary pricing for two-bedroom units starts in the $400,000s and stretches up to roughly $1.1 million. The smallest condo will be priced in the mid-$200,000s, said Kristin Rogers and Ted Theophylactos of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services, who are marketing the project.

The agents expect the listings to go live within the next month.

Rogers, who lives in a condo downtown, said that buyers have few options today. Many existing condo properties are former apartments, in old buildings that don’t offer updated finishes, high-rise addresses or sweeping city views.

“Aside from the Pinnacle,” she

— Ari Maron, a partner with MRN

Owner MRN Ltd. plans to add condominiums to the 15th and 17th floors of the building at 629 Euclid Ave. (center, with the glassy penthouse on top), which is already home to a Holiday Inn Express hotel, apartments and offices. | COSTAR GROUP

said, referring to a glassy project completed in 2006, “there’s no luxury, elevated condo product.”

The condos at 629 Euclid will replace offices built for Rosetta, a digital marketing agency that established an 80,000-square-foot presence downtown in 2010. The company, now called Publicis Sapient, slashed its footprint in the building even before the pandemic upended the office market, Maron said.

MRN backfilled some of that space and has shifted offices around to make way for new features, including a fitness center and a movie room on the second floor.

But the upper reaches of the building had a higher calling “I believe that the development playbook that we’ve been using for the past couple of decades that I’ve been around needs to mature,” Maron said. “Fewer people are working in the office, and I don’t think we know yet what that means. … The idea of living downtown just to walk to work is not enough anymore.

People are looking for bigger spaces where they can work from home, and people are looking for the amenities that create a vibrant urban lifestyle.”

MRN aims to start construction soon and to complete the condos by early 2024. On that schedule, buyers will qualify for 15 years of 100% tax abatement, despite looming changes to the city’s longstanding residential tax-break policy.

The developer will not have to wait for pre-sale commitments, thanks to unusual financing. The Cleveland International Fund, a private-equity fund based in Cleveland Heights, agreed to provide a $4 million loan for the project.

A federally approved EB-5 regional center, the fund lends money amassed from foreigner investors who are seeking U.S. residency.

The EB-5 visa program offers green cards to individuals and families whose investments create jobs in America.

The loan for the 629 Euclid condos involves cash from another Cleveland project where the fund

was repaid. Eight investors needed to redeploy their money for about two years to meet the federal program’s requirements for permanent residency.

“We like the project,” said Steve Strnisha, the fund’s CEO. “The fallback is that, obviously, it’s in a building that already has apartments,” he added. “So we underwrote it both ways.”

Maron hopes that sales at 629 Euclid will make traditional banks

feel more open to considering condo projects downtown, and in close-lying neighborhoods.

“In the future, if we do larger-scale projects, then we’ll probably have to go back to the baklava capital-stack stuff that we normally do,” he said. “But for a project of this scale, it didn’t make sense to go that route.”

While showing off the space during a recent broker open house, Theophylactos said he’s confident

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that there will be ample interest from homeowners looking for a change — and from renters who are paying escalating prices for new apartments.

“One-floor living, that they can buy, and be vested in the neighborhood, is something we have been dying for,” he said.

It will be worth watching to see whether MRN’s experiment does, indeed, spawn similar projects, said David Sharkey, the president of Cleveland-based Progressive Urban Real Estate.

“We’re sitting around, twiddling our thumbs, with no condos to sell,” he said. “Just recently, over the past few months, the market just dried up. There’s nothing for sale.”

Michelle Jarboe: michelle.jarboe@crain.com, (216) 771-5437, @mjarboe

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SPORTS BUSINESS

‘It’s about shining a light on our partners’ Events help NBA, Cavs extend All-Star’s impact

BY JOE SCALZO

When Kevin Clayton returned home in 2019 to work as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ vice president of diversity, inclusion and engagement, he knew there was one moment in the city’s history that he wanted to spotlight — the June 4, 1967, Cleveland Summit.

The Summit brought leading Black athletes such as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jim Brown and Bill Russell to a former Negro Industrial Building on the city’s East Side, where they made a public show of support for Muhammad Ali’s conscientious-objector stance on the Vietnam War. “It was my personal career passion to bring light to the Summit in some sort of way,” said Clayton, who was promoted earlier this month to senior vice president, head of social impact and equity.

That was supposed to happen at February’s All-Star festivities, when Abdul-Jabbar and Russell were in town for the NBA’s 75th anniversary celebration, but the foul weather and the COVID-19 pandemic forced the Cavaliers to postpone the event to mid-June, where it served as the culmination of seven community outreach/social impact events over three days in Greater Cleveland.

On Friday, June 17, a group of city leaders, politicians, Cavaliers employees and NBA officials gathered to unveil a historical marker to that moment at its original site at 10501 Euclid Ave., now the location of the American Cancer Society. The group included former Cleveland Browns defensive back Walter Beach, who turns 90 in six months.

“To hear his stories about why the

Summit started and the impact it had on his life … and to see him touched to tears to know the community recognized the Summit, that was the most powerful moment of last week,” Clayton said.

Clayton had several moments to choose from, including: ` The Cavaliers’ NBA 75th Live, Learn or Play Legacy Project. The project included a ribbon-cutting for the Mindfulness Learning Space at the Earle B. Turner Neighborhood Resource Center. ` The Jr. NBA celebration at the Cavs Academy camp. The multiday youth basketball camp took place at Independence Field House. ` An NBA All-Star FIT celebration.

The NBA partnered with Kaiser Permanente on a new basketball court and wellness and education spaces at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio — King Kennedy branch. ` An adaptive sports wheelchair basketball clinic at the Broadway Boys and Girls Club, which included youth from Empower Sports, Adaptive Sports Ohio and Achievement Centers for Children. ` A basketball court dedication at the Studio West 117 community center, which included a new basketball facility and community space for local LGBTQ youth. ` A NBA Foundation pitch competition at the Cleveland Metropolitan Conference Center: Seven college-aged entrepreneurs from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) presented their business concepts for a chance to win capital.

The entrepreneurs were part of BGV’s NextGen Program, a grantee of the NBA Foundation.

Like the Summit marker, the events

Working with Kaiser Permanente, the NBA renovated spaces at the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Ohio — King Kennedy Branch, including a new basketball court and wellness and education spaces. | CLEVELAND CAVALIERS

originally were planned for February, but January’s COVID-19 spike prompted the league to reschedule them for June to coincide not only with Juneteenth but also Pride Month.

“It was huge for the NBA to bring back these events,” Clayton said.

“They’ve never done that. Usually, when All-Star events get canceled, the league doesn’t come back. And by doing it in June, when the weather was better and COVID wasn’t at its peak, it allowed our community to come out in a more robust way. It allowed us to touch more people than if we had done this during All-Star.”

The events complemented AllStar’s February impact, which included the NBA and the NBA Players Association giving more than $3 million to community organizations in Greater

Cleveland and HBCUs. But last week’s activities weren’t designed to spotlight the NBA, said Todd Jacobson, the NBA’s senior vice president, head of social responsibility.

“It’s about shining a light on our partners who are doing the work day in and day out,” Jacobson said.

“Hopefully this creates an opportunity for others to support them and help their organizations grow and continue to do great things throughout the Cleveland community.”

NBA All-Star 2022, which was held Feb. 18-20, provided the region with $141.4 million in direct spending and a total economic impact of $248.9 million, according to a study by Temple University’s Sport Industry Research Center.

But All-Star’s impact was always

designed to make a lasting difference, particularly within Cleveland’s neighborhoods and minority-owned businesses.

“Whether it’s new facilities for the LGBTQ community, the historical marker, a celebration of Juneteenth, or youth basketball programs or adaptive sports — we want people to know all the organizations behind these events are doing incredible work and they don’t get the time and attention they deserve,” Jacobson said. “Our hope is that by you sharing the story, and others learning and reading about it, people will see that.

And for us to play a small part in it, it feels incredible.”

Joe Scalzo: joe.scalzo@crain.com, (216) 771-5256, @JoeScalzo01

EDUCATION

Greater Akron Chamber facilitates microinternships for members

BY AMY MORONA

The Greater Akron Chamber’s goal is explicitly laid out in bold white letters on the landing page of its website: Our work is sharply focused on the success of your business, your employees, and our region.

“I don’t know of a bigger issue for employers right now than the workforce,” said Steve Millard, the chamber’s president and CEO. “I don’t know of a more emotional issue for employers in our region than keeping our talent here.”

The chamber is introducing a new attempt to help address those issues for its more than 1,500 member companies. Officials are subsidizing up to $250 for a microinternship for members. These are short, fixed-term paid projects able to be completed independently by college students. Think things like content creation, market research and lead generation.

The hope is that it’s a win-win for all involved. Businesses get projects completed while connecting with students across the country. Those students, in turn, complete experiences that add to both their resumes

and their bank accounts. Plus, there’s the potential of sparking a long-term job connection on both sides.

“It was a great low-stress way to gain experience with a company before pursuing a full time role. Almost like a ‘tryout,’” one student said in a 2021 Parker Dewey survey.

Large companies often have internship programs in place, where “they can spend the money to sort of test out candidates and create projects even when there might not be huge legit work there,” Millard explained.

It can be more difficult for smaller businesses to take on interns due to size and structure. Those companies are a lot more utilitarian, according to Millard. Tasks need to add up to results that help their business. He believes these microinternships can check off a few important boxes at once.

“It’s both a way of getting some small stuff done that might not otherwise get done and a way of evaluating talent and giving people a chance,” Millard said.

Chamber officials are offering the internship through Parker Dewey, which bills itself as a “mission driven

organization.” Participating businesses set a fixed price — the typical range goes from $200 to $600 — for the project they’d like completed.

Most can be done remotely over five to 40 hours.

Ninety percent of that money goes straight to students, or “career launchers” as the company calls them. The remaining 10% goes to Parker Dewey. The company pays the collegian directly.

Getting paid is an important step in removing the barrier between who gets experience — and perhaps ultimately advances — and who doesn’t.

Jeffrey Moss, founder and CEO of Parker Dewey, said a core mission of the company when it was founded seven years ago was to create equitable college-to-career paths for everyone.

Though most interns nationwide are white and male, Parker Dewey reports 80% of students who’ve worked with them come from an underrepresented background.

“So many of those students don’t have the same social capital coming in,” he said.

Moss called this new opportunity from the Akron chamber innovative.

He said he appreciates it’s structured in a way that supports the small-business community, which might not have “the campus recruiting structures of the massive companies.”

It provides another way to engage with current college students without spending thousands of dollars on marketing events or campus visits.

Plus, since most microinternships are remote, students from places outside of Ohio who work with an Akron-based company could form a connection. High school graduates from the Akron area who went away for college can get reacquainted with the region’s new current opportunities, too.

“It’s giving them exposure to those organizations they may not have been considering,” Moss said.

The University of Akron announced its partnership with Parker Dewey in September 2020. Officials wrote that it was a good option for students who saw internships or co-operative placements cut short or paused because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The university is still working with the company two years later. Laura

Carey, UA’s director of career services and student employment, said they suggest microinternships as a way to complement, not replace, longer internships or co-ops. These opportunities also allow students who work a full- or part-time job in addition to going to college a chance to build skills and supplement their resume.

Carey said she appreciates the chamber’s move to educate businesses. It’s still a fairly new concept.

Yet students are very “savvy about wanting their resumes to have depth and have transferable skills,” said Carey, who added that these opportunities allow students to explore different careers and skills outside of their major.

“Students of this time period really like the gig economy,” she said. “They really like project work.”

Akron chamber officials said they’d be comfortable if 100 members took advantage of the incentive in the short-term. If the response exceeds that, they said they’d likely go find additional support to help fund it.

Amy Morona: amy.morona@crain. com, (216) 771-5229, @AmyMorona

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¬22 in 2022 We’ve increased our U.S. minimum hourly wage to ¬22 on the way to ¬25 by 2025.

Since 2017, Bank of America has raised the minimum rate of pay for all U.S. employees by more than 46%, bringing it to an annual rate of more than $45,000 for full-time employees.

It’s part of our commitment to being a great place to work and one way we help employees build a career with us. We’re also encouraging job growth and providing economic security for thousands of individuals who are supporting fellow teammates, our clients and the local communities where we live and work.

Offering competitive pay and benefits to support our employees and their families is critical to attracting and retaining the best talent. We’ll keep leading the way and doing more.

When you have a strong team, you want to take care of them the best way you can. Raising the minimum rate of pay is just one way for us to show that we care and value everyone’s commitment.

Jeneen Marziani President, Bank of America Cleveland

What would you like the power to do?® Learn more at bankofamerica.com/cleveland

Bank of America, N.A. Member FDIC. Equal Credit Opportunity Lender © 2022 Bank of America Corporation. All rights reserved.

PERSONAL VIEW

Steps to improve your organizational performance

ROGER STARNES SR./UNSPLASH

BY RONALD MICKLER JR.

EDITORIAL

The game begins S

ports championships? Cleveland doesn’t have many of those, at least not lately. But plans for renovated or new pro sports facilities? Those are abundant.

One of America’s poorest big cities always seems to find ways to spend public money for arenas and stadiums. So it has been for the Guardians and the Cavaliers in recent years, and it looks like we’re heading down that path again, this time for the Browns.

A report that the team was “leaning toward” building a new, possibly domed stadium led Peter John-Baptiste, senior vice president of communications for Haslam Sports Group, to issue a statement confirming the Browns are weighing their options for a possible renovation of FirstEnergy Stadium. He denied, though, that the team is looking into building a stadium and said the focus is on remaking the current lakefront site.

The statement read, in part, “A recent feasibility study we launched does not contemplate a new stadium or showcase new stadium sites. A significant stadium renovation at our current site is the premise of the study as well as a focus on how to provide accessibility to the lakefront, drive density and create ... major development opportunities that would include new public parks, retail, office, experiential and residential spaces. ... As we are just beginning the study, we certainly do not have enough information to determine the cost of renovating the stadium or what the aesthetics of such a renovation would entail.”

ETA on the feasibility study is 2023. That’s five years before the Browns’ 30-year lease at the city-owned stadium runs out at the end of 2028.

We’re not going to get into the game of trying to guess if it’s a renovation or a new stadium the Browns really want, and if it’s the latter, where that might go. (It’s not easy to find downtown sites that make sense. Suburban sites should be a nonstarter.)

It’s safe to say a few things, though. First, FirstEnergy Stadium, which cost $283 million to complete in 1999 and now is the 12th-oldest in the NFL, is showing its age. Cleveland built it fast to get the Browns back as soon as possible, and that haste contributed to a facility that no one ever loved and cer-

tainly doesn’t compete today as a money-generator with the league’s modern stadiums. A significant renovation, though, would cost at least hundreds of millions of dollars, or more, and a new one would be over $1 billion, and perhaps near $2 billion if it has a dome or a retractable roof. (Buffalo, a good market comp for Cleveland, and the state of New York will spend $1.4 billion for a new open-air stadium in suburban Orchard Park.) Whatever the cost of the Cleveland project, the public is going to be asked to pony up for a sizable portion of the bill.

Clevelanders know all too well, that, as Pro Football Talk put it, “Like every other stadium project, the taxpayer contribution will become a major factor.” Public funding was a big factor in the mid-1990s, when the Art Modell-owned Browns bolted for Baltimore to become the Ravens. Such an exodus again seems unlikely, but whatever the stadium plan here turns out to be, the Haslams will not be paying for it by themselves. Frustrating as it might be, that is not how this market functions.

The negotiation will test a new Cleveland mayor and, next year, a new Cuyahoga County Executive. The Guardians’ most recent ballpark renovation deal included a chunk of state money, and that’s likely to be on the table here, too. As always, officials should drive a hard bargain to minimize the public portion of the spending, and, unlike in the Guardians deal, there should be an aggressive community benefits offset.

Timing on talk about a stadium is awkward for the Browns.

The team has upset a portion of its fan base with the huge-money signing of quarterback Deshaun Watson, who is settling sexual misconduct claims quickly in an effort to minimize a potential suspension by the NFL. Last month, Cleveland City Council member Brian Kazy introduced a resolution to remove FirstEnergy’s naming from the stadium as a result of the utility’s role in the House Bill 6 bribery scandal, a move that forced the Browns to defend their corporate partner. Not the best circumstances for rallying public support.

At least the process has begun early, raising the likelihood that the public can get the best deal possible in this distasteful subsidy game.

Executive Editor: Elizabeth McIntyre (emcintyre@crain.com) Managing Editor: Scott Suttell (ssuttell@crain.com) Contact Crain’s: 216-522-1383 Read Crain’s online: crainscleveland.com

Improving organizational performance during this evolving environment may seem overwhelming for leaders. Inflation, the pandemic, employee retention and wages — not to mention personal challenges — can cloud the mind of anyone, let alone those among us making strategic decisions every day. However, we can improve organizational performance by Mickler is doing some simple things. executive While the environment is still fluid, director of MBA things will improve. In helping organi- programs for the zations improve performance, leaders Dauch College need to rely on their experiences by of Business and considering the past, evaluating the Economics at present, and creating the future. How Ashland many times have you failed? How University. many times have you succeeded because of failing? Through experiences, leaders are able to produce change and inspire others into becoming more effective.

Without positive and negative experiences to reflect upon, leaders will have a difficult time improving the organization’s performance. Improving organizational performance may appear to be an overwhelming task; however, with the appropriate focus, outlook and support, IN HELPING leaders have a significant opportunity to implement ORGANIZATIONS change for the betterment of IMPROVE not only the organization, but also the development of PERFORMANCE, others. As leaders, it is our LEADERS NEED TO job to ensure we are always doing both: improving the RELY ON THEIR organization and more im- EXPERIENCES BY portantly, others. Therefore, take a look at your organiza- CONSIDERING THE tion’s human capital.

PAST, EVALUATING An organization’s human capital contributes to the THE PRESENT, AND overall institution’s health CREATING THE and potential for growth. Human capital is the talent and FUTURE. skills internal stakeholders contribute. The talent and skills of an organization as well as the diversity, equity and inclusion of team members position an organization to be superior to its competitors. However, assessing the organization’s human capital doesn’t need to be complicated. The easiest and most productive way to begin this process is to give them a chance at doing something new by empowering them.

Empowering others builds trust and accentuates influence. Trusting staff and empowering them demonstrates confidence in their ability. This will develop positive relationships, reciprocating trust, and, furthermore, you’ll be transforming and serving others. Individuals who are empowered have a sense of wanting to develop others, so relational transparency will be produced, fostering a supportive environment. This will yield creativity, the accomplishment of goals and improving organizational performance, which will create a different situation within the organization.

See PERFORMANCE, on Page 38

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 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JUNE 27, 2022

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EDUCATION

Program aims to help Cleveland in struggle to attract talent

LEE & ASSOCIATES C O M M E R C I A L R E A L ESTATE S E R V I C E S

LEE CLEVELAND

BY AMY MORONA

Cleveland’s talent problems are well-documented. A recent report dialed into the TL;DR of it all: the city does well with retaining talent, but struggles to bring in those who aren’t from here.

What seems to be less talked about, though, are solutions that could help.

Summer on the Cuyahoga is one.

The program brings college students to Cleveland for paid internships, as well as a summer full of activities to get to know the city and those who live here. The hope is they’ll eventually come back for a job, or at a minimum, share positive thoughts about the city to their peers.

“We’re introducing talent from all over the country, and really the world, to this Cleveland region that might not have otherwise given us a second thought,” said Eric McGarvey, the nonprofit’s executive director.

The organization reports it’s had more than 12,500 applicants over the past decade. The application explicitly states it’s a competitive process to be selected. Approximately 70 people make up this summer’s cohort.

SOTC partners with nine higher education institutions from across the country: Allegheny College, Case Western Reserve University, Colgate University, Cornell University, Denison University, Oberlin College, Ohio Wesleyan University, Smith College and the University of Chicago.

Participating schools are chosen, according to officials, due in part to the strength of their alumni bases in Northeast Ohio. Accepted interns are matched up with an alum from their college and are also connected to the institution’s alumni network here in the region. The hope is the connection extends past the summer and provides another tie for a student’s potential future in the region.

“It’s fun to meet young people who are in the college and connecting us to it again,” said Joan Spoerl, a University of Chicago alumna and SOTC board member.

Those connections help the organization, too, as these alumni networks help open the door to potential employers to employ the interns.

The 2022 crop includes more than 30 organizations, including the Cleveland Clinic, Slavic Village Development, Brookdale Orchard, Hana Technologies and Karamu House.

In addition to the interns’ salaries, employers pay $1,100 to the program. That money goes toward housing costs for the students.

Sponsor and donor funds cover the gap in housing fees.

Case Western Reserve University charges a slightly adjusted rate to the organization in exchange for hosting the interns at a dorm on the University Circle campus. Lodging is free for interns. Having that free place to stay, according to SOTC board president Heidi Milosovic, can help to level the playing field.

“It does offer students maybe without the economic means to

Quality Service You Can Trust Students from Summer on the Cuyahoga’s participating colleges get to know each other at a mixer the first week of the program. | JOSEPH O’DONNELL/SUMMER ON THE CUYAHOGA

participate at a high level in an internship,” said Milosovic, an Oberlin grad who is the managing director and principal at Waverly Partners.

For MetroHealth, the health system considers paying that fee as an investment in its commitment to finding diverse talent, according to its director of culture and organizational effectiveness, Tiffany Short.

Nine students are interning across various departments via the program this summer. Metro recruits heavily from its own backyard institutions, Short said, but there are opportunities to go beyond that.

“It’s important for companies like Metro to expand their brand footprint, to make sure that students at these other colleges know that Metro is a viable option,” she said. “You can come and work and play and build a great life in the city of Cleveland.”

The activities SOTC offers students can help with that. It’s not just a summer of clocking in and clocking out. Interns must commit to going to a minimum of 15 activities and events, though most end up going to 20 to 25.

The calendar is stacked. There are tours of the city’s neighborhoods, visits to the area’s cultural institutions, resume workshops, a Junteenth celebration at Karamu House.

For recent Smith College graduate Rachel Tramposch, who’s interning at the Cleveland Museum of Art this summer, she always surmised that her post-grad life would begin in New York City. It’s near where she grew up.

“That’s where the adults live,” she said. “That’s where they go when they want a job.”

That line of thinking is evolving, though. She’s identified what’s needed to turn a city into her city: cultural offerings, good public tran-

sit, nightlife.

That aligns with what other interns have told SOTC officials over the years, too. The group has exactly 1.5 full-time staff members. They rely heavily on volunteers and board members and donors. Executive director McGarvey writes many grants, he said, to get more money.

The group’s in a strategic planning period now, including thinking about how to expand or boost revenue streams. Officials said they want to be in a place with a “better, more sustainable financial model.”

There’s a lot of interest from other cities — Milwaukee just called, for example — that want to learn how to do something similar in their region. There’s talk of figuring out a way to package and charge for that advice.

In the meantime, though, another summer is here, another chance to change a perception or make an impression.

About 1,300 interns have taken part in the program since 2003. Officials know of about 200 interns who’ve definitely returned to the region, though there could be more.

Some return for multiple summers.

That’s just one way the group measures success. Surveys are administered at the end of every summer, asking students if they enjoyed their time in Cleveland, what they think of the city, if they’d move here, if they would recommend the region to others.

The overwhelming majority of those responses are positive, according to McGarvey. They think highly of the city and their time here. And that can help turn former interns into forever Cleveland ambassadors, he said, no matter where they may land.

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Amy Morona: amy.morona@crain. com, (216) 771-5229, @AmyMorona JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 9

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Every year, Crain’s Cleveland Business honors a group of extraordinary women who are impacting Northeast Ohio through their leadership in business and in the community. This year, 15 more women join the ranks of female leaders who have been recognized by Crain’s for their professional and civic accomplishments.

The Women of Note class of 2022 is made up of entrepreneurs, thought leaders and innovators who have made a difference in their workplace, blazed trails for others and are leaving a mark on their communities. To call them Women of Note is an understatement.

Photography by Ken Blaze

April Miller Boise

A

pril Miller Boise likes a challenge.

And that's good, because she’s about to take on a big one as the new executive vice president and chief legal officer for technology giant Intel Corp. Boise will officially take on her new role at the Santa Clara, California-based company in July. Her background in industry at large global companies — and what she calls her “affinity for technology and manufacturing” — makes her a good fit for them.

And the company is a good fit for her, too. Boise likes that Intel is investing in U.S. manufacturing, and she thinks she can add “significant value” at a time of change for the company.

Executive vice president and chief legal officer | Intel Corp.

“I always love a challenge, and there’s a lot going on there, a lot of opportunities ahead of us,” she said.

Boise is joining Intel from Eaton Corp., which she joined in early 2020.

Her career started on Wall Street, and she spent significant time at law firm Thompson Hine, becoming a partner and managing parter there. But her heart was always in "making things," as she put it.

Boise, who first realized an interest in law as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan, went to law school at the University of Chicago.

She interned for General Motors and Saturn, and has worked at industrial companies like Meritor and Veyance Technologies Inc. Throughout Boise’s career, tack-

ling challenges and continuing to learn have been important. The teams she’s worked with have been critical, too. Boise said talent development, helping members of her team to grow and thrive, is important to her. And she enjoys getting to help set and guide strategy at a company.

“I like really being engaged and involved in driving a company’s strategy: setting that vision and then figuring out how are we going to get there,” she said.

Boise is a “superb lawyer” and an “extremely driven individual,” said Craig Martahus. Martahus was a partner at Thompson Hine when Boise joined the firm, and the two have stayed in touch, though he has

since retired and she has moved on to other roles. He's not surprised to see her taking a prominent new role at Intel.

“Believe me, it’s not luck,” he said.

“It is the result of years of hard work and dedication and commitment.”

Boise expects her new role to come with a lot of travel, as her team will be spread across the country. Speaking shortly after the Intel announcement was made, Boise said she thought she’d stay in the Cleveland area, but couldn’t say for sure.

Cleveland, where Boise was born and where she’s lived for much of her life, is close to her heart. And she’s involved in the community. She’s on the boards of organizations as varied as the Cleveland Clinic, the City Club

of Cleveland, the Assembly for the Arts and the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority, to name a few.

“I love being able to invest in the community in that way and give back to the community,” she said. “I get out of it just as much as I put into it.

Because those things, for me, in just building a place where we want to live and play and thrive, is really, really important.”

And her family’s important to her, too. Boise said her husband, David Willbrand, is her “best friend and No. 1 fan.” Between them they have four children: Zoé Miller Boise, Maxwell Miller Boise, Ella Willbrand and Ethan Willbrand.

— Rachel Abbey McCafferty

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HEALTHCARE IS ABOUT MORE THAN MEDICINE. IT’S ABOUT HOPE. The MetroHealth System is redefining healthcare by going beyond medical treatment to improve the foundations of community health and well-being: access to affordable housing, a cleaner environment, economic opportunity and access to fresh food, convenient transportation, legal help and other services. That’s why we’re devoted to hope, health, and humanity. Find out more at metrohealth.org.

Congratulations Women of Note Squire Patton Boggs pays tribute to this year’s talented honorees, including our partner Marissa Darden, and all the women who make Cleveland’s business community thrive. squirepattonboggs.com

Dr. Carol Cunningham State medical director | Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Division of EMS

ACT NOW PARTICIPATION DEADLINE: Sept. 5 Contact mara.broderick@crain.com to learn more

W

CRAIN’SCONTENTSTUDIO CLEVELAND

Congratulations to Erika B. Rudin-Luria on being a Crain’s Cleveland 2022 Women of Note honoree!

Thank you for all you do to ensure our community is HERE FOR GOOD. From your friends and colleagues at the Jewish Federation of Cleveland

hen finances forced Dr. Carol Cunningham to decline her Harvard University acceptance, her dad assured her she’d get there one day.

Decades later, Cunningham got into Harvard’s National Preparedness Leadership Initiative and visited his grave to tell him, “Daddy, you were so right.”

In June, the initiative named her the 2022 Meta-Leader of the Year in recognition of her service, dedication and innovation through the COVID-19 response.

Cunningham, state medical director for the Ohio Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Medical Services, began issuing COVID-19 guidance in March 2020 from an inpatient bed while recovering from surgery.

She worked virtually with Robert Wagoner, the division’s executive director, to offer best practices to protect health care providers. In 2021, she served as co-medical director of Cleveland’s Wolstein Center federal vaccination clinic. The COVID response is a “poignant” example of her years of dedication, Wagoner said: “She just gives and gives and gives; it doesn’t matter what it is,.”

If an EMS provider in the state sends the division a question, Cunningham will do “everything she can to get them the answer and to help them better understand,” Wagoner said. “I’ve never seen her shy away from anything.”

Cunningham is the first Black Meta-Leader of the Year, and first emergency physician and first EMS medical director to receive the honor. Her history is dotted with “firsts.” In 2004, she became country’s first Black female state medical director for EMS. During her residency, her locker was initially in the men’s bathroom because they didn’t expect female emergency medicine physicians.

When a young Cunningham

learned she didn’t have the bloodline to become a queen, she decided to read every book in the library and serve as a queen’s adviser instead.

She found her way to medicine when her uncle took an X-ray of her stuffed dog, T-Bone, in his office at the Cleveland VA and helped her administer penicillin. She was hooked.

“I can be a doctor and still advise the queen,” she said with a laugh.

“And as you can see right now, I mean I still have more than one job.”

Among other roles, Cunningham teaches at Northeast Ohio Medical University, is active with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s First Responder Resource Group and provides care at Cleveland Clinic Akron General’s emergency department, where she increased her shifts during the pandemic.

Mentorship is incredibly important to Cunningham. She participates in career days and several years ago established at Maple Heights High School (her alma mater) the Melfi-Peck-Tate Scholarship, an endowed scholarship named after three influential teachers.

“I think kids need to see somebody who, No. 1, looks like them; No. 2, came from a similar background, or even have less; and 3, see what they’ve been able to accomplish despite the odds,” she said. “I want to empower them.”

Cunningham, who serves on the boards for the Tri-C JazzFest and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, has three big loves in her life that keep her energized through her work: music, teddy bears and adventure. The Kirtland police have dubbed her home “Maynard’s House of Swing” after her favorite teddy bear Maynard and the jazz music she listens to every day. “I think you should live your life doing the things that you’re passionate about and also, not following the herd,” she said. “Explore new adventures, have the curiosity and the courage to try something new.”

— Lydia Coutré

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Bethia Burke

B

President | Fund for Our Economic Future

ethia Burke does not really like to talk about herself, but if you get her started, she has no problem talking at length about her work at the Fund for Our Economic Future.

As only the second president of the organization, founded in 2004 to help shape the regional economic development agenda, Burke brings both an intense passion and an emotional intelligence to the otherwise staid work of economic development.

“She's got a great sense of humor,” said Brad Whitehead, the fund’s first president and Burke’s former boss.

“Sometimes when you are in the office, you can hear her laugh from down the hall, and what a great thing to be in an office where you hear the boss laughing, as opposed to hearing the boss yelling.”

Burke was first hired as a manager of emerging initiatives in 2010 after honing her financial and analytical skills as lead of cost risk assessments at Northrop Grumman in the Washington, D.C., area. By 2018, she was promoted to vice president and continued adding new projects to her slate of responsibilities, including “The Two Tomorrows” report on inclusive eco-

dline ed to and tead. when uffed levenister

nomic growth in Northeast Ohio.

Her ascension to president at the fund was significant because it marked one of the first major leadership changes, followed by many more from the region’s philanthropic and civic organizations — and one that was a conspicuous move on Whitehead’s part to hand over governance to the next generation.

“The passing of the torch was intentional on his part, and I thought it was a good idea. He said, ‘This is what I'm doing, and this is why I'm doing it,’” Burke said. “Change just for the sake of newness does not always work, but sometimes you need somebody else to, as they say, pick up the crossword, and give a new perspective.”

Burke explains that a lot of crucial preparation and deliberate conversation went into preparing her to go from “program executor to inspiration leader,” which became official just as the pandemic was taking hold in March of 2020.

Burke had to immediately jump into a new role with an organization that had a pressing new imperative to aid other groups wading through the bureaucracy and confusion of federal COVID funds, Whitehead said, and was successful at both endeavors.

“She immediately embarked on a new strategy and started doing all kinds of new stuff,” he said. “She was faced with some serious headwinds and she stood firm against them, and not only did she get us through the pandemic, but she changed the composition of the board, embarked on a new strategic model and launched some new initiatives.”

The fund’s mission can be difficult to pin down as it tackles large and long-term solutions to complex problems, but Burke is clear that the mission is to work on the difficult issues. “We work on how to get from what we say matters to initiatives that can address those things and then shape those into something that is bigger and goes beyond the organization," she said.

Her ability to see beyond her role as head of the fund, to prioritize the work over her ownership of the work and all the ego that can be wrapped up in a leadership role is what makes her so perfect for the job, Whitehead said.

“She's honest about what's working. She's honest about what's not working,” he said. “The organization is bigger than her in her mind, not the other way around.”

— Kim Palmer

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outré JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 13

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6/23/2022 2:03:40 PM

Marisa Darden Partner | Squire Patton Boggs

B

INVESTING IN THE bigger picture For more than a century, you have supported the arts, education, health, neighborhoods, the economy and so much more. You see the bigger picture of what our community can—and should—be.

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reaking barriers is a family tradition for Marisa Darden. Her paternal grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Darden, functioned as the city of Sandusky’s first Black mayor. Darden’s maternal grandfather Joseph Burrucker, served as a Tuskegee Airman during World War II. Although Darden is not following the exact course of her forebears, she is blazing a trail in the primarily white-male-dominated field of law.

In March, Darden was named partner at Squire Patton Boggs after three years as principal at the Cleveland office. As the first woman of color in firm history to reach these heights locally, Darden is determined to guide her historically underrepresented colleagues along a similar path. “(Being named partner) is not only an honor or a testament, but also a responsibility to other African-American associates and law students,” said Darden, 39. “This is a path forward that they can achieve.”

Darden currently mentors Black associates through a Squire-based resource group. The Lakewood resident, who spent parts of her formative years in Shaker Heights and Sandusky, has her own mentors providing advice and honing an ever-growing skill set. Among this group is Squire global managing partner and DEI chief Fred Nance, whose client-focused insight became Darden’s watchword.

“Lawyers don’t think about working in the private sector as customer service, but that’s what it is,” Darden said. “If you can harness your networks and understand the personal connections that create valuable relationships, you’re going to be successful.”

Aside from an emphasis on mentoring and community outreach, Darden’s day-to-day includes leading the Cleveland office’s pro bono initiative. Her team recently launched a pipeline project with Equality Ohio around the legality of gender expres-

sion in the Buckeye State.

A commitment to the region brought Darden home from Manhattan, where she served as assistant district attorney. Prior to joining Squire, she worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Cleveland.

Even with her busy schedule, Darden loves spending time with her paternal grandparents, now in their 90s, who still live in Sandusky.

“My family always cared about Northeast Ohio,” said Darden. “They taught me the value of understanding where you come from so you can give back in a meaningful way.”

Tenacity when faced with adversity has been an especially crucial lesson for Darden. Standing out in a field where women of color are still making strides means being just a little bit better than the competition.

“The way I’ve done that is by putting in the hours, while leveraging my personality to make connections with clients, partners and teammates,” she said. “I’m not afraid to be vulnerable, to lay out who I really am.”

Colleague Nance pointed to Darden’s empathetic nature — combined with a dogged determination — as key to her success at Squire.

“Marisa has a vivacious, outgoing personality that people gravitate to,” said Nance. “The combination of personality and real-world experience is what led us to name her as partner so quickly.”

Darden feels privileged to achieve what she has at a relatively young age. Casting ahead, she plans to use her platform to affect additional change, ideally setting a tone that encourages others of similar background to follow her lead.

“I’m a collaborative leader — it’s important to make everyone on the team feel seen and valued,” said Darden. “I’m very aware that success is predicated on cooperation and teamwork. I also want to thank Squire for believing in me and giving me this platform in the community. I’m fortunate to be part of the team here.”

— Douglas J. Guth

14 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JUNE 27, 2022

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honoring the women who lead the way.

The exceptional women celebrated this year enrich Northeast Ohio with their leadership, vision, and humanity. They are role models and trailblazers, inspiring the next generation of leaders.

At KeyBank, we know that the best leaders thrive in a culture where every person feels included, valued, and empowered.

Congratulations to all of the women being honored, including our very own Trina Evans, for being named among the 2022 Women of Note honorees.

Trina Evans

Chief of Staff and Director of Corporate Center

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atrina Evans will always take an opportunity to bet on herself, an adventurous attitude that has served her well in 30plus years as a KeyCorp mainstay.

Evans recalls being asked to lead Key’s call centers, a virtual leadership position that entailed management of 1,200 people in five departments. Even as her experience at the time centered around operations and retail, Evans took on the challenge with her usual gusto.

“When approached about (the job), I thought, ‘Are you people crazy? I can’t do that,’” said Evans. “But I stilled that voice to say, ‘I can, I should, I will.’ That was also a seminal moment for me about the value of taking a risk. I’m always curious, and always wanting to learn. It’s a feeling that I can contribute more and make a bigger difference.”

Evans has been a difference-maker at Key since arriving in 1994. Today, she leads growth-forward efforts around marketing, communications and analytics, in 2021 orchestrating expansion of a multibillion-dollar community benefits plan for low- and moderate-income clients.

The industry-leading financial executive also steered Key in receiving 10 consecutive “outstanding”

ratings from a regulatory office at the U.S. Department of the Treasury. On the diversity, equity and inclusion side, Key has been recognized a dozen times under Evans’ watch as one of the country’s most community-minded corporations.

Overall, Evans has accelerated Key’s long DEI legacy through a diversity-centered workforce and supply-side engagement.

“These efforts are not a tough sell in the C-suite,” Evans said. “It’s incredibly rewarding to have work that’s not only central to my heart, but also central to what I want the company to be.

To have leadership mobilizing in the same way is a powerful thing.”

Key president and CEO Christopher Gorman has known Evans for two decades, watching with admiration her rise into management positions that currently encompass chief of staff and director of corporate center.

“Trina brings a versatile and dynamic set of skills to her role,” Gorman said in an email. “While Trina demonstrates business acumen and a strategic mindset, she is best known and respected for her authenticity and emotional intelligence. She is a highly trusted partner and adviser who influences others, cultivates culture, and gains the alignment necessary to move

the business forward. Trina is a culture carrier at KeyBank and a wonderful ambassador for our reputation and brand.”

Fostering inclusive leadership comes with putting the ladder down for other women on the way up, Evans added. As senior positions can sometimes put leaders in a bubble, she makes sure to remain authentic, relatable and transparent in her dealings with staff.

“Being yourself shows (colleagues) that they can be themselves, too,” said Evans. “People are going to have different yardsticks for success, so I want each team member to define that the way they want when it comes to determining their work and personal lives.”

In her own free time, Evans bikes and travels with her husband, Ken, while spending time with their teenage daughter. No matter the obstacles involved, she looks forward to continuing a lifetime of adventure in the corporate realm.

“It’s been a wonderful journey with great opportunities along the way, but it’s also had its share of challenges,” said Evans. “For me, it’s best framed by an interest in learning new things, exploring new areas of the bank, and finding other ways to contribute.”

— Douglas J. Guth

16 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JUNE 27, 2022

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IN DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

6/23/2022 2:05:48 PM

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rowing up alongside a brother who would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia, Habeebah Rasheed Grimes saw first hand what emotional trauma can do to a child.

For her brother, that meant runins with police and difficulty focusing in school. For Grimes, it had the opposite effect. She aced her classes and followed the rules. Kept her head down. In college, she told her mother and role model she was looking to become a physical therapist, but something about that route didn’t feel genuine.

It wasn’t until a friend shared a 1999 clipping from The Plain Dealer classifieds section outlining a job working one-on-one with kids with severe emotional issues that Grimes gained clarity.

“That clipping and that interview process really centered on my lived experience in a way that I hadn't known (was) possible,” she said.

Thus began a long career with the nonprofit Positive Education Program (PEP), which has provided services to Cleveland-area children with severe mental health and behavioral challenges since 1971.

Grimes began as a one-on-one aide, then went on to earn her master’s degree in clinical psychology from Cleveland State University.

She returned to PEP as a clinical supervisor for one of its day treatment centers. She went on to become a director of clinical services, then chief clinical officer. And she did all that before turning 40, even earning a spot on Crain’s Cleveland’s 40 Under Forty list in 2015. In 2018, she became CEO of the $40 million organization.

Grimes credits the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Ladder to Leadership program with helping her to see herself as a leader in her new role.

Susan Berger, chief external relations officer for PEP, said it’s Grimes' ability to build bridges with stakeholders, community members and

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everyone from staff to children that makes her so effective in her role.

“Habeebah is somebody who is uniquely skilled at standing at those junctures between different worlds and working hard to help people understand each other,” she said.

“She’s just incredibly empathic.

“She is someone who is very comfortable creating brave spaces and having courageous conversations.”

Now married with two sons, Grimes hosts a podcast called “No Crystal Stair” in which she holds conversations about the joys of Black motherhood.

The first episode features a conversation with her mother in which they discuss her late brother Hashim.

“Her podcast is beautiful,” said Berger. “She's so passionate about her role in this life as a mom, as a wife and as a daughter — who she is to her family is really important.”

Grimes said the goal of PEP is to help children who have had traumatic experiences learn how to move through the world and thrive.

“You can buffer young children from stressors and adversity by having knowledgeable adults surrounding them and by building up the village that surrounds and supports a child,” she said.

Had someone recognized the early signs of mental health struggles in her brother, he might have gotten the help he needed, Grimes said. Her mother, too, would have had support even as she worked hard to find the right help and resources for her son.

The work at PEP is taxing and the job is never done, so Grimes has her own network of support with professionals who remind her to eat and exercise and take time for herself and her own well-being, so she can show up each day to give her best effort.

“Everyone has ambition, but that’s not what drives her,” Berger says. “She’s just constantly thinking, ‘How do I use my life in service to the things I care most about? And if it’s through leadership, that’s OK.’” — Kristine Gill

Congrats

Leading the way to advance equitable economic growth across Northeast Ohio

Bethia Burke

President, Fund for Our Economic Future

and congratulations to all of this year’s WOMEN OF NOTE Honorees

We’re a network of philanthropic, higher education, community development, private sector, economic development, and civic leaders collectively investing in efforts to

Understand what matters

Advance what works

Prepare for what’s ahead

to advance an inclusive economy for Northeast Ohio.

® An initiative of the Fund for Our Economic Future

where matters.

Learn more about our latest initiatives and how you can join us at thefundneo.org.

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6/23/2022 2:06:22 PM

Yvette Ittu

President and CEO | Cleveland Development Advisors

Y

vette Ittu has earned bragging rights for helping make change in Cleveland neighborhoods, but you would never hear her say so herself.

Known as a collaborator, an empathetic leader and colleague, Ittu has overseen the operation of Cleveland Development Advisors, a corporate- and foundation-backed patient investor in projects catalyzing change in the local economy and lives of Clevelanders, for 18 years.

She recalls how her predecessor, Steve Strnisha, got her to join CDA as its first employee 23 years ago.

“I’ll never forget when he showed me my first empty building (now the apartments at 1900 Euclid Ave.), I tried to imagine it as apartments,” Ittu said. “I thought, ‘I can be a part of all this.’”

That led her to what she describes as her “dream job.” Today she oversees a staff of five at CDA and a total

of 70 staffers as she also serves in leadership at the Greater Cleveland Partnership.

Her impact, through the board she works with and its funders, is vast. With Ittu at its helm, CDA has invested $475 million in more than 160 projects that have resulted in 7,700 new housing units and 13.6 million square feet of commercial space. That includes repurposing 5 million square feet of former office space downtown as residential and hotel use, along with nonprofit projects aiding education and social services throughout the city.

Ittu actually has had several careers with the common thread of her being a Certified Public Accountant and attorney. She worked in finance for the city of Cleveland and Cleveland Public Power, as a bond lawyer at Calfee Halter & Griswold and as finance director for the city of Lakewood.

Debra Janik, a co-worker at the city of Cleveland and GCP who now

works at Bedrock Cleveland, says Ittu is brilliant.

“She has the amazing ability to sit in a meeting where a lot of ideas are tossed around, listen to what everyone has to say and put it all together in a story so that everyone knows the next step,” Janik said. “She is a Cleveland kid and knows the city she serves.

It’s not just project work. It’s all about affecting change in Cleveland.”

For her part, Ittu said, “It’s important to me that whatever you are doing has purpose. I love what I’m doing. It’s something I’m really passionate about.”

Ittu also serves as a board member of Downtown Cleveland Alliance and Digital C, a group that works to increase broadband availability in underserved neighborhoods. She has served two years as president of the national New Markets Tax Coalition, an advocacy group that pushed for continued funding for the federal New Markets

Tax Credit program, which recently helped win reallocation of funds for the program from Congress Ittu balanced her career and volunteer efforts with being the mother of two now-grown children. She said she and her husband, Jim Ittu, are planning a cross-country bicycle tour in Norway to celebrate their 35th anniversary.

Ittu also loves to row on the Cuyahoga River and is a member of the 31x team of the Western Reserve Rowing Association.

“I often use rowing as an analogy for teamwork,” Ittu said. “When you are all rowing in sync, it’s almost meditative.”

Jeffrey J. Wild, chairman of the CDA board and chair of the real estate and environmental practice group at Benesch, puts Ittu’s impact succinctly.

“Her fingerprints,” Wild said, “are on our skyline and throughout the city.”

— Stan Bullard

I employ Y.O.U. youth “because it gives me the opportunity to help our youth reach their fullest potential. Potentials they never realized they had.

It is such a rewarding experience to see youth blossom!”

Ramonita Rodriguez-Johnson Summer Jobs Program Employer Director at Cleveland Catholic Charities La Providencia Hispanic Services Office Invest today in Northeast Ohio’s future workforce • youthopportunities.org 18 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JUNE 27, 2022

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Carey Jaros

I

President and CEO | GOJO Industries

t would be hard to think of an executive who’s been busier the last couple of years than GOJO president and CEO Carey Jaros.

While a lot of businesses were sending people home and sheltering from the pandemic, Jaros and her team could do no such things. Their primary product, Purell hand sanitizer, rapidly became a critical element in the battle against COVID — and it was being used up faster than GOJO was making it in early 2020.

Jaros became president and CEO the first day of 2020. On Feb. 3, the U.S. declared a public health emergency that was quickly followed by a string of shutdowns, shortages and panicked buying of things like toilet paper and, of course, hand sanitizer.

Under Jaros, GOJO quickly expanded so it could ensure health care providers and then consumers had a reliable supply of Purell.

“Carey steered GOJO’s 2,500 team members through a highly effective response to the surge, making 140 billion doses of PURELL products in 2020 — more than three times the company’s 2019 output,” Ray Hancart, GOJO vice president of strategic communications, wrote of Jaros. “In paral-

lel, she oversaw GOJO’s expansion from two to five manufacturing and distribution facilities in Northeast Ohio, and investment in a local ethanol plant, providing a path to growth and a secure supply of products that impact health and well-being.”

On top of all that, under Jaros’ leadership GOJO also started thinking about the end of the pandemic, or at least about when it would subside enough to enable life to become more normal again, long before most other companies did. At the start of this year, GOJO unveiled a detailed return-to-work plan that had input from employees across the company and that defined employee roles and specified work-from-home policies clearly.

Naming Jaros a Crain's Woman of Note this year took about as much thought as deciding whether to pump the hand sanitizer on the way out the door.

Jaros credits GOJO’s corporate culture for her success.

“Two of our GOJO Values, ‘Better Together and Always Learning,’ were essential to me during the pandemic,” Jaros told us. “We believe in molecular leadership, not heroic leadership, and I have never been more

grateful to be surrounded by others whose expertise, ideas and approaches were different than mine.

Together, we did things none of us could have done alone.”

She also credits outside help that she started receiving at home in childhood and has continued to seek in her life.

“On a more personal level, the pandemic required me to draw on nearly every life experience I’ve had and every good piece of advice I’ve ever gotten. The challenges we faced seemed to change daily, and leading through that took equal parts heart and head,” Jaros said.

Marcella Kanfer Rolnick, GOJO executive chair, on the other hand, credits Jaros for the CEO’s own success.

“Carey has that unique combination of intellectual curiosity, a focus on results, and an ability to engage people at all levels. She has an unwavering moral compass that earns the trust of all who know her,” Rolnick told us. “These skills make her a great transformational leader in good and difficult times. There is no one else that I want as my partner in shaping the future of GOJO than Carey.”

— Dan Shingler

TELEANGÉ THOMAS

Congratulations to JumpStart’s Chief Operations & Relationships Officer on being named one of Crain’s Cleveland Business 2022 Women of Note.

jumpstartinc.org JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 19

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Jeneen Marziani Ohio market president | Bank of America

Congratulations to all the Crain’s Cleveland Business 2022 Women of Note honorees.

Taftlaw.com

THE

LAND SCAPE

A CRAIN’S CLEVELAND PODCAST WITH DAN POLLETTA

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arly in her career, it wasn’t uncommon for Jeneen Springer Marziani to encounter prospective banking clients who wanted her male boss to handle a meeting instead of her.

Obnoxious as it was, she tried to not let it bother her that much. It was nonetheless something she shouldn’t have needed to deal with as a young professional trying to find her footing in what remains a male-dominated industry.

“It was hard, because it wasn’t like I didn’t know the work,” Marziani said. “My boss totally supported me.

But I think that really opened my eyes to the way people can discriminate.”

Sometimes her bosses would tell her to forge ahead on her own. Sometimes they’d come in with other team members to provide support.

Sometimes she’d get cross looks for trying to pull off an outfit with pants instead of a dress.

There were tough situations to navigate, but Marziani said the issues were more with customers than her supervisors.

But this is what it was like for a woman in banking in the 1990s.

“There were some situations like that which eroded my confidence a bit,” Marziani said. “If I had a different manager, I could’ve gone a different direction, and I could’ve lost not my way but my stride, because you start to think, ‘Are you good enough?’”

Suffice to say, time has shown that Marziani — who is now the Ohio market president for one of the largest banks in the world — is good enough.

Marziani began working for Bank of America out of college. She grew up in a military family and moved several times throughout her childhood.

That was a challenging dynamic for a kid. But it also seems to have had the unexpected effect of preparing her to handle change throughout her life.

She studied speech at Miami University in Ohio and considered a future in media. A job recommendation from a friend brought her to the

bank, where she first began in the credit department before shifting into marketing-related roles.

“Sometimes you just have to take a risk,” Marziani said. “And I think that has helped me in my life, going with my gut.”

In her work with the bank, she often helps clients with whatever needs they may have. There may be similar solutions, but each one is different.

This variety has been stimulating as well as rewarding. After all, Marziani says that what she is most passionate about — besides her family — is helping other people.

A career with the bank has enabled her to do just that, as well as in the community.

She’s active on many boards, including the Tri-C Foundation and the Greater Cleveland Food Bank.

She’s helped develop and lead book drives for the Daily Dose of Reading nonprofit and Cleveland Metropolitan School District and is an executive sponsor for the Northern Ohio LEAD for Women network.

Her impact on Tri-C is immeasurable, according to Cuyahoga Community College president Alex Johnson, who retires in June.

“She has a great personality and is very engaging in addition to being very, very professional in the manner in which she conducts business,” Johnson said. “She knows how to connect with people.”

He added that Marziani has made a “strong and meaningful impact” in just the few years since she’s settled back in Northeast Ohio proper — which led to her taking on the dual title of Cleveland market president for the bank on top of her statewide leadership role.

“Bank of America is very fortunate to have Jeneen representing them in this market,” Johnson said.

For others who aspire to follow in her footsteps, Marziani encourages being confident and driven.

“Be intentional in the path you want to take. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Lean on your network,” she said. “And don’t be afraid to take some risks and make some mistakes.”

— Jeremy Nobile

CLEVELANDNP.ORG 20 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JUNE 27, 2022

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6/23/2022 2:16:30 PM

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alerie Mayén is done thinking small.

That’s what the founder, owner and lead designer of Yellowcake Shop said she “assumed that was what I was capable of” for years. She thought her place as a business owner was relatively defined: pay your bills, buy some nice things occasionally, stay content, repeat.

But over time, as her women’s outerwear and accessories company grew, she said she realized that wasn’t sufficient. She began to challenge that line of thinking, in part by watching documentaries and learning about other female business leaders.

“If I want to be able to create real change and have a seat at the table and start supporting the businesses that I want to see more of around me, I can only do that if I have wealth behind me,” she said.

Mayén’s business is multifaceted. Of course, there’s the clothing, designed and handcrafted in Cleveland as well as Chicago. She’s an alumna of the fashion design TV show “Project Runway.”

But her Cleveland studios also do more. The Yellowcake website lists a variety of services: in-home styling, fashion illustration classes, custom garment creation, small-business consulting.

For Mayén, community is everything, according to one of her advisers. “She really has the community and the people around her at heart all the time,” said Patty Ajdukiewicz, senior adviser of small-business edu-

cation and support at JumpStart.

That mindset is present in her next project, too. She’s currently working with investor partners and developers to develop a plot of land in Cleveland’s Gordon Square neighborhood.

The plan is to turn it into a multi-use space with both commercial and residential opportunities.

“There is not a lot of real estate owned by women or people of color,” she said. “My goal is to hopefully change that.”

In fact, Mayén said the priority will be to house minority-owned businesses there while hopefully having an additional focus on female-owned businesses.

“What I've seen a lot in my community is there's an imbalance of variety between who gets noticed and who doesn't, who gets the nicer storefronts and who doesn't, who gets into the events that are in the more affluent communities and who doesn't,” she said. “And I'm tired of that.”

Owning property wasn’t really on Mayén’s agenda a few years ago. It seemed out of reach. But she said she identified that as a limiting mindset.

Now, in addition to helping others, she’s also focused on helping to build generational wealth for her family, something she said she didn’t have as a child of two immigrants.

Wealth can provide opportunities, she said. It can give growth, it can provide peace of mind, it can support rest. For Mayén, it can help her help others. And those kinds of prospects, she said, are exciting.

— Amy Morona

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JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 21

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6/23/2022 2:17:05 PM

Megan Lykins Reich

I

Executive director | Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland

t’s not often that an unpaid intern gets the exposure her company promises. She’s even less likely to get hired or promoted.

But for Megan Lykins Reich, it was an unpaid internship at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland in the summer of 2004 that kick-started her tenure at the community mainstay where she took the helm as executive director in January.

“I was just trying to get my foot in the door, which clearly worked,” Reich joked.

It’s an uncommon career trajectory, perhaps, but fans of Reich’s leadership style credit it with her experience at all levels of the organization.

“She's often worked that position or she's often dealt with both the challenges and the successes around different positions,” said Amy Cronauer, director of grants stewardship at moCa. “And it's great that way, because she really has a different value.”

A native of Cincinnati, Reich majored in art history and studio art at Pennsylvania State University. She went on to complete her master’s degree in art history and museum studies at Case Western Reserve University. In between, she interned at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Ven-

ice and fell in love with museum work through her interactions with patrons.

“I remember just watching how people processed the work, the questions they asked and how I could excite them and get them really thinking and having a conversation,” she said.

“So I've always been really interested in that relationship and making that work and sing and thrive.”

She was a fellow at moCa from 2004 to 2006 and became a full-time staffer in 2007 as an assistant curator and director of adult education. From there, she rose through the ranks to director of programs, then deputy director and interim executive director.

She threw her hat into the ring for the permanent executive director role and landed it in January after a nationwide search.

“I definitely had examples of my work to show,” Reich said.

But aside from a demonstrated history of work here in Cleveland, Reich is a great leader, Cronauer said, because she’s always learning and looking to have fun in the role.

And she’s able to inspire those around her to take ownership and pride in their work so they can best serve the community through art.

“She gave a presentation — and I

just don’t think museum people use this kind of language — but she said this work is grounded in love,” Cronauer said. “And she said the opposite of love isn’t hate, it's ego.”

Reich has been with moCa for a long time, and intends to stick around, but she’s not driven by the ambition to rise through the ranks, Cronauer said. It’s clear she believes in the museum’s role in Cleveland to reflect and engage with its community.

“She wants this work to be as authentic and meaningful as possible,” Cronauer said.

While the pandemic has been a challenging time for all museums, Reich believes the industry is in a phase of renewal and regrowth. And with a new executive director and several new staff members, it’s time to come up with a fresh strategic vision for the next five to eight years, and that includes new programming and ways of using the museum’s space.

“But along the way, people can always expect to come here and experience amazing, thought-provoking, fresh, contemporary art from artists working right here and across the globe,” she said. “So that's not going to change.”

— Kristine Gill

Cleveland Development Advisors and

the Greater Cleveland Partnership congratulate all the Women of Note honorees including our own

Yvette Ittu

President and CEO, Cleveland Development Advisors

Executive Vice President, Greater Cleveland Partnership

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Tania Menesse

T

CEO and President | Cleveland Neighborhood Progress

ania Menesse makes no apologies for the time and energy she commits to Cleveland’s inner-city revitalization — both on and off the clock.

As the leader of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, Menesse oversees two dozen staffers focused on strengthening the city’s community development ecosystem, builds the private-public partnerships necessary to advance small- and largescale urban redevelopment projects and advocates on behalf of neighborhoods that “have been left behind,” she said.

After hours, the Shaker Heights native serves in other organizations taking aim at advancing underserved neighborhoods. She is a board member of Destination Cleveland, Digital C and the Greater Ohio Policy Center, and a member of the Fund for Our Economic Future.

“I also spend a lot of time, when I’m not working, going to community events, reading, researching and actively thinking about this work — both because I really enjoy it and because I feel so blessed to do this in Cleveland and to see the transformation,” she said.

With a business degree from the University of Virginia, Menesse began her career in the telecom industry, holding sales, product development, project management and process re-engineering positions between the late ’90s and mid-aughts. It was around that time, while living in Colorado, she became enamored with then-Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper’s transformation of the city.

“I remember thinking that’s what I want to do,” she said.

Menesse and her husband returned home to Cleveland in 2008 so she could begin graduate work at Cleveland State University’s Levin College of Urban Affairs. After earning a master’s degree in urban studies with a concentration in economic development, she was hired to head Shaker Heights’ economic development department in 2010.

Four years later, she was named Cleveland's director of community development.

That role put her squarely at the helm of the city’s housing and neighborhood commercial redevelopment programs, where Menesse said she became more attuned to the importance of Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and the dozens of individual community development corporations (CDCs) it supports.

“What I saw is (that) we have this amazing infrastructure of (CDCs) that really understood resident needs. But over the last 10 years, we’ve really taken our eye off the ball of building the capacity and the talent pipeline of these organizations, specifically as it relates to real estate capacity,” she said.

The need for strong CDCs, Menesse said, is most acute in Cleveland’s most distressed neighborhoods, which lack any investment from conventional banks, developers and rehabbers. In many of the city’s east and southeast neighborhoods, she explained, CDCs are the ones “doing home repair, rehab and marketing properties.”

“They are also the folks who are out in the neighborhoods, going to community meetings, knocking on doors to get to know neighbors and residents,” Menesse added. “When it’s time to vote, when it’s time to fill out the Census, when it’s time to offer a new home repair program or get people vaccinated — that can only happen if there’s those trusted partners in the neighborhood. … Much of our work is building up the resource base to allow (CDCs) to shine and do what they do.”

Jeff Epstein, chief of integrated development for the city of Cleveland, described Menesse as a linchpin in the city’s advancement toward collective prosperity.

“She’s super smart and not only understands the big picture of where we need to go but is very tactical in terms of how we need to get there,” said Epstein, who also noted Menesse’s “tirelessness” in her commitment to the “revitalization of our neighborhoods.”

“It’s a long game,” he said, “and Tania understands that progress is made at the speed of trust.”

— Judy Stringer

“She’s super smart and not only understands the big picture of where we need to go but is very tactical in terms of how we need to get there.”

— Jeff Epstein, chief of integrated development for the city of Cleveland

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M Marika Shioiri-Clark Designer | SOSHL Studio

arika Shioiri-Clark has helped to design a hospital in Rwanda, where residents in a poor region had no access to doctors. She’s tackled projects ranging from sanitation systems in Ghana to an app that helps parents foster young children’s brain growth.

And she’s infused her style into developments in Cleveland’s Ohio City neighborhood, where she lives with her husband and partner, Graham Veysey, and their 17-month-old daughter, Rei. To call Shioiri-Clark a designer does not capture the breadth of her work.

The 38-year-old is a problem-solver, a creative spirit who parlayed an education in architecture and urban studies into an eclectic consulting career.

“She’s just great at ideas and great at execution,” said Jocelyn Wyatt, a collaborator and the CEO of Alight, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that works with refugees worldwide. “And I think it’s so rare to find someone that is able to do both of those things — and do them at the level that Marika is able to.”

Shioiri-Clark grew up in Berkeley, California. Her father, an engineer, influenced her interest in building things. Her mother, a Japanese immigrant, imbued her with an awareness of a world beyond the United States.

After attending Brown University, Shioiri-Clark obtained a master's degree in architecture from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. That’s where she and fellow students founded MASS Design Group, a nonprofit collective that approaches architecture as an avenue for healing.

Upon finishing a fellowship with global design company IDEO, she moved to Cleveland to join Veysey in 2012. The pair, who met at the Aspen Ideas Festival, had been dating long-distance. They carved out an apartment from the first floor of a former firehouse on West 29th Street.

As Shioiri-Clark worked with out-oftown clients and built up her design business, SOSHL Studio, she and Vey-

Erika Rudin-Luria

W

hen Erika Rudin-Luria and her husband, Rabbi Hal Rudin-Luria, moved to Cleveland from Manhattan, they planned to stay between three and five years.

That was 21 years ago.

“There were several moments where I was like, ‘Nah, I’m not ready to leave yet,’” said Rudin-Luria, the president of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland. “I think finally about 10 years ago, I looked at my husband and said, ‘Why are we pretending we’re going to leave?’”

Rudin-Laria grew up in a suburb of Syracuse, New York, and the couple chose Cleveland over opportunities in Westchester County, New York; Charlotte, North Carolina; and Palo Alto, California, in part because the city’s distinct ethnic neighborhoods reminded them of the East Coast.

“But we stayed in Cleveland because of the people,” Rudin-Luria said. “We just fell in love with Cleveland.”

Rudin-Luria joined the federation in 2001 as a supporting foundations

President | Jewish Federation of Cleveland

manager, working her way up through a range of positions of increasing responsibility until she became just the fifth president in the organization’s more than 100-year history in 2019.

Over the past two years, she’s helped lead her staff and the Cleveland Jewish community through the COVID-19 pandemic. She excelled at the big-picture moves — the federation raised $15.5 million, while also contributing to the Greater Cleveland COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund — and the smaller touches, like writing letters to the Jewish community each week and asking them to write back and share what was happening.

The organization focused on quickly responding to the community’s concerns, tapping its network of experts to answer people’s health questions, address their mental health and ensure they stayed connected, even if it wasn’t necessarily in person.

“We threw out a vision where we asked, ‘Twenty years from now, what do we want our children to say to our grandchildren about this pandemic?’”

Rudin-Luria said. “We want our children to say that our building was

closed, but our community was open and we left no one behind.”

Mission accomplished, said Keith Libman, a partner at the accounting firm of Bober Markey Fedorovich.

“It is said that great leaders rise out of adversity, and leading through this once-in-a-generation challenge, Erika kept our community strong,” he said.

During her two-decade tenure, Rudin-Luria has partnered with volunteer leadership on programs and initiatives such as Forward Focus (a holistic homeless prevention initiative), jHub (an interfaith outreach) and the Chesed Center Food Pantry, which distributes food, clothing, household necessities and personal care items to families in need.

Rudin-Luria also guided the development of the federation’s latest strategic plan, soliciting ideas from senior executives and academics across the country. In addition to her federation work, she is a trustee of the Jack, Joseph & Morton Mandel Foundation, the David and Inez Myers Foundation and the Maltz Foundation, and is on the board of directors of the Parkwood

Corp., a private trust company.

She’s considered one of Cleveland’s go-to people whenever there are important Jewish and community issues that require intelligence and consensus-building, said Ira Kaplan, the executive chairman at the Benesch law firm.

“She is accessible to everyone, responding to the diverse needs of the people in the community, and is a reassuring and sensible voice when these needs appear to conflict,” he said. “She has a talent for making people feel comfortable and is a strong and confident leader that we can all count on.”

That accessibility is a blessing, not a burden, she said.

“My work is fully aligned with my values and my passion,” she said.

“This is what I want to be working on.

I’m energized even when dealing with challenges, because all of our challenges are opportunities to bring people together and accomplish something great together.

“I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else.”

— Joe Scalzo

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sey refashioned that firehouse.

The couple reimagined the Striebinger Block building across the street with local retailers, apartments and a living wall. With developer Michael Panzica, they replaced a nearby parking lot with Church and State, an 11-story apartment project where two buildings flank a whimsical courtyard.

“I just try to be curious and interested in lots of things and have faith that things that I’m interested in and excited about will keep coming,” said Shioiri-Clark, who curates the aesthetics of those spaces, indoors and out.

Now she and Veysey are preparing for the August debut of the Creative Hangars, seven hut-like metal buildings at West 28th Street and Church Avenue that will hold a makers’ market and a bar. With Panzica, they’re also planning Bridgeworks, a mixed-use project at the western end of the Detroit-Superior Bridge.

“In short order, they have transformed a part of this city. Forever transformed. In a way that is completely unusual,” said Lillian Kuri, executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Cleveland Foundation. Kuri has known Shioiri-Clark for a decade and worked with her on a project that brought local and international artists together to erect murals in Ohio City.

Both women studied at the Harvard Graduate School of Design but put their architecture degrees to work in nontraditional ways.

For Shioiri-Clark, that’s using design to come up with strategies and solutions — tangible outcomes beyond bricks and mortar.

“I think it’s incredible to have someone with her talent having as much impact here in Cleveland as she’s having nationally and globally,” Kuri said. “Her heart is here, her family is here ... but she has a global reach, a global impact.”

— Michelle Jarboe

Teleangé Thomas

A

young, and already ambitious, Teleangé Thomas imagined her future self as a high-powered legal adviser akin to her favorite fictional trailblazer — Clair Huxtable from “The Cosby Show.”

“I saw myself having a legal career because that’s what Clair Huxtable did, but I didn’t want to be in the courtroom,” said the Alliance native.

“I wanted to intersect that with business. I always saw myself being an owner or an operator of some company, making deals, building opportunity and all of that.”

Today Thomas puts that trailblazing energy into Northeast Ohio’s entrepreneurial ecosystem as a member of JumpStart’s executive team.

She joined the nonprofit in January 2021, assuming the newly created position of chief advancement and relationships officer and bringing more than 20 years of experience in public health and nonprofit management. Later that year, Thomas — who has a business management degree from Case Western Reserve

Chief operations and relationships officer | JumpStart University — took full ownership of JumpStart’s operations function.

Thomas said that while advancing social and economic equality was a common thread in previous leadership roles at Candid, the Sisters of Charity Foundation, University Hospitals and Cleveland’s public health department, the opportunity at JumpStart timed perfectly with her own desire to have a more direct impact on the region’s economic prosperity, particularly as it relates to inclusiveness.

“It was a reality of what was happening in society,” she said. “Things that were very deeply personal and had always been of importance to me from a value standpoint suddenly had a new level of emphasis and a new level of urgency. … I knew I wanted to get closer to having influence over access to resources and more closely aligned to wealth building.”

In her current role, Thomas manages the strategic operations and fundraising initiatives for the 70-person JumpStart. She’s also responsible for strengthening partnerships and

spearheading its involvement in civic initiatives, including the Cleveland Innovation Project and the Midtown Innovation District. Like JumpStart, a core tenant of those initiatives, Thomas said, it’s economic growth that benefits everyone. “(JumpStart is) investing in the individual entrepreneur, his or her hopes and dreams and success, but our success is really rooted in how the communities that we serve are being impacted from an overall standpoint of economic development and outcomes,” she said.

Cleveland Public Library executive director and CEO Felton Thomas Jr. (no relation) said Thomas’ background makes her uniquely qualified to help JumpStart and its partners embed equity into their projects and practices.

“There’s this long-held belief that job opportunities and economic growth will automatically make community members’ lives better, but you have to understand that in underserved communities, their lives are touched and impacted by health disparities, institutional rac-

ism and many things other than just unemployment,” he said. “Teleangé has spent years understanding those realities and turning that understanding into something that can better the community.”

Along with keeping “an eye and attention on equity” — as it relates to people of color as well as other under-represented communities such as LGBTQ individuals — Thomas said she hopes to drive more support for female entrepreneurs and creatives.

“Northeast Ohio has an appreciation for art and culture and a richness of creative talent,” she said. “I’d like to see us think through how we can lift them up as small-business owners and entrepreneurs.”

Thomas sits on the boards of Community Health Charities, Policy Matters Ohio, Green City Growers, the Conservancy of Cuyahoga Valley National Park and the Cleveland Public Library. She is a fellow of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, has been published in academic journals and a is member of Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and the Order of the Eastern Star.

— Judy Stringer

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From

CLIMATE MIGRANTS

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CORNELIA LI FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

‘Th

PORT IN A STORM? How the Midwest can be a refuge amid climate change — if we prepare. As droughts, floods and wildfires elsewhere force people to relocate, the Great Lakes region could get a wave of migrants

BY ERIC FREEDMAN Andrew and Shauna Parrish moved to Houghton in Michigan’s western Upper Peninsula in late 2021 after enduring a month of 100-degree days last summer in Boise under the constant haze of forest fire smoke choking out the skies of Idaho.

Rodney Puttock picked up and left his hometown of Las Vegas in mid-2021 for the literal green pastures of Holly, Michigan, where, unlike in Sin City, water is plentiful.

And in 2019, Emily Tobin-LaVoy moved from flood-prone New Orleans to Marquette — along Lake Superior — after tiring of the near-constant threat of flood damage to her home and property in Louisiana’s Bayou Country.

The early 20th century industrial rise of northern cities like Detroit, Chicago and Cleveland was fueled by the Great Migration from the South for jobs in factories.

In the early 21st century, global climate change is spawning a new kind of migrant to

the Upper Midwest: “Climigrants” seeking refuge from the forest fires of Western states, flooding along the saltwater coasts and ever-rising temperatures causing drought in different corners of the continent.

The reason for their arrival here is as old as time: Humans reacting to a threatening change in the environment around them and seeking a more habitable place to live.

That’s because climate forecasts are grim. A new report from the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration warns that the U.S. coastline will see up to a foot of sea level rise by 2050 due to climate change.

Meanwhile, more extreme weather events, such as more powerful tornadoes and hurricanes, loom. Wildfires are more common and more intense. Droughts are spreading further and lasting longer.

Now some Great Lakes communities are pondering and planning what to do to accommodate a potential influx of climigrants and to improve their own resiliency to the adverse impacts of a changing climate.

“We shouldn’t be afraid of climate migration, but we definitely need to prepare better for it,” said Conan Smith, president and CEO of the Michigan Environmental Council.

Smith notes that Michigan has lost hundreds of thousands of residents since the mid2000s and has existing infrastructure that can accommodate new arrivals. At the same time, some of that infrastructure needs repair and modernization so people can trust the purity of their drinking water and maximize water efficiency, Smith said.

There are other questions for policymakers and business leaders about planning for an economic future with new arrivals, said Mike Foley, director of the sustainability department in Cuyahoga County along the banks of Lake Erie in Ohio.

“There’s going to be migration happening,” Foley said. “If people are coming, and I think the theory is right, there will be a gradual and more-than-gradual migration into or back into the Midwest. We want those people to have a job when they come.”

Escaping calamities Many climigrants to the Great Lakes region would most likely come from eastern and southern coastal areas, from the drought-stricken Southwest and West, and from wildfire-vulnerable parts of California and the Pacific Northwest.

Some will leave ahead of disaster with enough resources to resettle comfortably.

That was the case of the Parrishes, both of whom have good-paying jobs in information technology that can be done anywhere there’s a high-speed internet connection.

Andrew Parrish, who grew up in Atlanta, arrived in Boise in 1997 after graduating from Hillsdale College in Michigan. He was drawn

by Boise’s greenbelt in the bucolic foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

But over time, Boise saw an influx of residents, causing housing prices to soar and streets to become more congested while temperatures started rising over time.

See CLIMATE on Page 27

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From Page 26

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Parrish calls this the “frog in the boiling pot of water” for Boise. Last summer, the pot boiled over with 30 days of temperatures over 100 degrees. Parrish is a runner and, starting in 2013, regularly checked Boise’s air quality index before venturing outside.

“You’re willing to forgive some things, but the final straw for me was that brutal summer,” Parrish said. “It became clear to me that this confluence of factors — the smoke and the heat and the wildfires — is not going to go anywhere anytime soon.”

Fearful of water restrictions in drought-stricken Boise, Parrish and his wife made access to fresh water a top priority in deciding where to migrate to.

“Boise is a wonderful place, but we came to determine there might be an even better place,” he said. “What bigger lake is there than Superior?”

CORNELIA LI FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

‘There’s water everywhere’ Other climigrants may be devastated financially when their homes or businesses are destroyed and they lack flood or other insurance, raising social justice questions for the comgion appear among the 10 most afmunities they might move to.

For some climate migrants, the re- fordable places to live in the country gion’s draw will be the opportunity to on the 2022-23 U.S. News & World live, work, create and play on the Report roster: Green Bay ranked secfreshwater seas while abandoning ond, Fort Wayne fifth, Pittsburgh flooding saltwater coastal areas along sixth, Peoria ninth and Youngstown the Atlantic and Gulf shorelines. For 10th. Grand Rapids, South Bend, Kasome, the pull may be family ties or lamazoo and Cincinnati are among the top 25. alumni memories.

Beth Gibbons, executive director For Rodney Puttock, water — a shortage of it — was the prime moti- of the American Society of Adaptavation to leave Las Vegas where he tion Professionals, which is based in grew up and relocate to Holly, a vil- Ypsilanti, Michigan, near Detroit, lage between Detroit and Flint that is said her research shows the Great Lakes are not yet a unique factor in still rooted in its agricultural history.

“It’s a big issue in Las Vegas, the current migration to the region.

“What we know about migration is place of my childhood,” said the 44-year-old Puttock, who makes voi- that people move first and foremost ceovers for television and radio com- based on their kith and kin relationmercials and does veteran coordina- ships,” she said. “They go to places where they expect to find tor work for the American community and relationLegion and Veterans of ships.”

Foreign Wars.

A few communities in At the time Puttock and The increase in the region, including Bufhis wife moved to MichiCalifornia acres gan in mid-2021, the two burned in wildfires falo and Duluth, have been pegged as possible climate reservoirs that supply Las per square mile havens but don’t talk that Vegas were abnormally in 2002 to 2018 way about themselves, low. Lake Mead, the largcompared to Gibbons said. est reservoir in the U.S., 1984 to 2001.

“The cities are not rewas filled to only 35% of jecting that narrative, but capacity.

It’s since SOURCE: EPA they’re not putting prodropped to a record low 31% in March of this year, while Lake grams and processes in place to actiPowell is at less than one-fourth of its vate that in terms of recruitment or receiving people,” Gibbons said. capacity.

In general, there’s been little reBut in Michigan, “there’s water evcruitment of prospective climate mierywhere,” Puttock said.

Puttock was amazed when he grants to the Great Lakes, but Remote could purchase fresh produce along Workforce Keweenaw is trying to lure some of them to the northwestern rural Michigan roadways.

“You can’t find that where I’m Upper Peninsula, where the Parrishes settled in Houghton. The group from,” he said.

For other climate migrants, the describes itself on Facebook as “a magnet may be the perceived solidity portal for those wanting to explore and serenity of place, or the lower cost locating their remote work careers in of living than where they came from, an awesome place with more affordor the ability to work remotely, or the able housing, ubiquitous natural security of being comparatively bet- beauty, no congestion and lower ter-sheltered from the vicissitudes of crime.” unpredictable weather and climate.

Five cities in the Great Lakes reSee CLIMATE on Page 28

2.46

“WE SHOULDN’T BE AFRAID OF CLIMATE MIGRATION, BUT WE DEFINITELY NEED TO PREPARE BETTER FOR IT.” — Conan Smith, president and CEO of the Michigan Environment Council

Shauna and Andrew Parrish moved to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula from Idaho. | VERONICA URBANIAK FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

AVERAGE ANNUAL BURNED ACREAGE BY STATE, 1984-2018 Wildfires have plagued Western states in recent years. These states not only have had more fires compared to other states, but have seen in increase in the number of fires in recent years.

Average acres burned in wildfires per square mile 1

Some Great Lakes communities are preparing for a potential influx of resident moving from areas hit hard by climate change, such as the drought-ridden Southwest. | BLOOMBERG

2

3

4

5

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migrants, particularly well-to-do ones, will be attracted to rural areas, putting pressure on owners of prime From Page 27 farmland to sell, especially in tourism Housing prices are rising fast in communities along Lake Michigan.

Even now, workers in parts of northsome flood-prone areas like Florida and drought-prone areas like Arizo- ern Michigan’s vacationland hospitalina. TitleMax reports that some com- ty and service industries find it imposmunities with the fastest rising house sible to find affordable housing near prices are in coastal cities such as their jobs. That situation could well Nantucket, Mass., Amagansett, N.Y., worsen as climate migrants seek jobs and Santa Monica, Calif. Another is locally, including seasonal positions Bal Harbor, Fla., just 15 miles north of on farms and orchards, and in what Miami, where the U.S. Army Corps of McDowell foresees as a burgeoning Engineers is considering whether to food processing industry in the state.

Another challenge for rural areas build a 6-mile, $6 billion sea wall up to 20 feet tall to safeguard Miami wanting to accommodate an influx of climate migrants is a need for highfrom storm surge damage.

While northern parts of the world, speed internet. The pandemic proincluding the northern U.S. and Can- vided a wakeup call about major gaps ada, are expected to remain livable in rural broadband service as people the longest, the Intergovernmental found themselves forced to work Panel on Climate Change warns that from home and as schools closed they’ll continue to be affected by ex- and moved instruction online.

“It showed we had been kind of left treme weather events — although less harshly than southern parts of behind. So many people had poorto-no broadband,” said McDowell, the globe. who has spotty service at his own Upper Peninsula farm and even had Migration spurs connection problems in a telemeetnew challenges ing with the governor.

The availability of underused waNot all climate migrants moving to the Great Lakes area are likely to re- ter infrastructure and ample fresh settle in the biggest cities. Some will water will be a significant magnet for choose smaller communities for rea- water-intensive manufacturers and sons of lifestyle, employment and other companies. So will a reliable electric grid. economic opportuni“We’re not rooting ties, lower housing for climate change, costs, quality of public but we are a region education, less traffic that has suffered ecoand easier access to nomically and lost the outdoors.

The average annual rate population,” said FoBut how will the rein inches that sea levels ley, the sustainability gion’s communities increased from 1993 to confront difficult 2018. The rate from 1880 director in Cuyahoga County. “We want to questions about availto 2013 was 0.06 inches. be ready for it and mitable infrastructure, Source: EPA igate the damage from price tags and their weather.” own vulnerability to Officials are looking at infill housclimate disruptions?

Marquette, the largest city in Mich- ing opportunities in the Cleveland igan’s Upper Peninsula, is already suburbs, said Mary Cierebiej, the exseeing new arrivals. City Commis- ecutive director of the Cuyahoga sioner Jenn Hill said most climate County Planning Commission.

“Now is the time to fill in the misstransplants so far appear to be from California and other Western states ing teeth. How can we be competitive unless we’re bringing in housing?” beleaguered by wildfires.

“It’s the smoke,” she said. “You just she asks.

In the Chicago area, the Metropolican’t live with that smoke.”

Hill said a lack of affordable housing tan Mayors Caucus has adopted one of the country’s first regional climate is her community’s No. 1 problem.

“Marquette County housing prices plans to promote measures to bolster went up more than any other county resiliency and better protect residents in Michigan since 2000,” she said. from “high-priority” climate hazards, “You look at our housing situation, such as heat, flooding, drought and and we know people are bidding on threats to the water supply.

While the caucus’s member muhomes sight unseen from California and other West Coast areas to be here, nicipalities aren’t marketing themor at least to have an investment here.” selves to prospective climate miConstruction costs are high due to grants at this point, “we recognize the escalating cost of materials and there is likely to be a coastal migrashipping, as well as supply chain dis- tion inland over the next 50 to 100 ruptions and a shortage of construc- years,” said Geneva, Illinois, Mayor Kevin Burns, who chairs the organition workers.

Climate change and housing are key zation’s environment committee.

Burns’ city, west of Chicago, is taktopics in the master plan review process Marquette is going through now. ing steps to bolster its resiliency, inThe city is also looking at its own cli- cluding designation of hundreds of mate readiness, including the capacity acres to remain open space forever, of its stormwater system to handle the increasing its use of renewable enervolume “if we get one of those massive gy, electrifying its vehicle fleet and working with manufacturers to rainstorm events,” Hill said.

Gary McDowell, the director of the “tighten the (energy) efficiency of Michigan Department of Agriculture their operations” and buildings. and Rural Development, said another major challenge is that some climate See CLIMATE on Page 30

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Rodney Puttock relocated to Holly, Michigan, from Las Vegas. | NIC ANTAYA FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

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“WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT MIGRATION IS THAT PEOPLE MOVE FIRST AND FOREMOST BASED ON THEIR KITH AND KIN RELATIONSHIPS.” — Beth Gibbons, executive director of the American Society of Adaptation Professionals

Remote Workforce Keweenaw is trying to lure migrants to cities in Michigan, including Houghton. | VERONICA URBANIAK FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

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INESS

FOCUS | CLIMATE MIGRANTS

Great Lakes residents divided on who should lead on environmental issues

CORNELIA LI FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BY WILLIAM JOHNSON

COASTAL THREAT Cities from coast to coast have seen an increase in the average number of coastal flood events per year. The following is a sampling of those cities, all of which have seen a dramatic increase in flooding in the last 10 years.

1950-69 1990-2009

1970-89 2010-20

Boston 2.8 2.7 4.2 Galveston, Texas 0.4 0.7 2.5 9.3 Charleston, S.C. 0.2 0.6 1.1 5.7 San Diego 0.2 1.1 1.5 4.8 Fernandina Beach, Fla. 0.6 0.9 1.7 4.2

Better near the lakes?

Overall, do you think each of the following situations in the area where you live (the Great Lakes Region) is better, worse or about the same compared to other places in the U.S.?

Better

About the same

Worse

Not at all sure

Job opportunities 38%

44%

14%

Access to public outdoor space 37%

50%

10%

Health of local businesses 34%

44%

15%

Access to housing 26%

47%

21%

49%

22%

Infrastructure 25%

Environment and climate change 23%

62%

9%

Transportation 23%

45%

21%

SOURCE: HARRIS POLL ON BEHALF OF CRAIN’S CHICAGO BUSINESS

IDEAS: SECURITY MEASURES

Plan now for a climate destabilized future

BY ED MILLER

13.8

Source: EPA

Cook County is already a top migration destination for those affected by climate change — and that pattern could dramatically increase if its global effects worsen.

Regional officials should start planning now for a climate-driven population influx that could unfold over the William Johnson next several decades. is CEO of The Scientists predict that cli- Harris Poll, a mate change will spark severe global public weather events, worsen air opinion, market and water quality, disrupt ag- research and ricultural seasons, destroy strategy firm. coastal areas and upset precipitation patterns. Together, these consequences endanger human populations and hatch a new type of migrant forced to leave home due to environmental disruption.

World Bank researchers estimate there could become up to 216 million internally displaced people globally due to “slow-onset climate change impacts” within the next three decades.

Harris Poll research found that 6 in 10 U.S. adults worry about the impact of climate change on their region. They are divided (54%) as to whether they would move if negatively affected.

As vast and varied as the United States is, scientists predict that climate change will affect each of the country’s regions in different ways. U.S. adults believe that Western (19%) and Southeastern (14%) states are the most likely to be negatively affected by climate change. Far fewer (4%) think the Great Lakes region — defined here as Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio — is the most likely to be negatively affected by the impacts of climate change.

The Midwest is not immune to a changing climate’s harmful effects. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, climate change may cause extreme heat, heavy rain and flooding in the Midwest. Despite these threats, the Midwest’s proximity to huge freshwater sources makes it especially appealing as droughts may worsen elsewhere.

This is not to suggest that Cook County is idyllic: It faces issues with violence, budget problems and other well-known issues.

The majority (77%) of Great Lakes residents are optimistic for their region’s future. Substantial portions consider their job opportunities (38%), access to public outdoor space (37%) and access to housing (26%) to be better than in other areas in the country, making the Great Lakes an attractive destination. Median home prices place Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio in the nation’s top 20 most affordable states. However, those states perform less well when it comes to infrastructure—at least, according to U.S. News & World Report.

When asked who should take the lead on issues related to the environment, the majority (69%) of Great Lakes residents cited some form of government. However, there is little consensus as to which level of government should be responsible: federal (26%), state (22%), or local (21%). In comparison, 31% of Great Lakes residents want either individuals or nongovernment entities like businesses to take the lead (21% and 10%, respectively).

Importantly, Great Lakes residents are ambivalent about a big increase in their ranks. A clear majority (60%) at least somewhat agrees they do not want more people moving into their area. The extent to which that will change in the face of climate impacts is unknowable, but it is a factor with which local leaders will have to reckon.

When I hear people talk about the notion of the Great Lakes region becoming a climate refuge for people fleeing extreme weather events, I think of the wisdom of a distant relative I met in my 20s.

He was in his late 70s and still farming land he’d lived on his entire life. I had long hair and Ed Miller is was fresh from studying envi- co-director of ronmental policy in college. The Joyce When I shook his hand and Foundation’s eagerly said, “Nice to meet Environment you,” he responded, “We’ll Program. He has see.” worked on While we can’t know for climate and certain whether this region energy policy in will be a large-scale refuge for Great Lakes those fleeing climate disas- states for more ters, we do know that with our than two abundant fresh water and in- decades. sulation from sea-level rise, our region has the potential to provide relative security in a climate destabilized future.

The impacts of climate change will increase everywhere in the coming decades, with low-income communities and communities of color bearing the greatest impacts. These communities deserve immediate investment to safeguard their environment and public health. Here’s what we need to do to protect our climate future for current residents as well as those who may one day call the Great Lakes region home:

1) Commit to maintaining and upgrading our infrastructure, especially water infrastructure. No one would think anyplace is a good refuge if it doesn’t have safe drinking water or if living there meant a trade-off from coastal flooding to rain and sewage flooding their basements. Aging drinking water systems in many Great Lakes communities need repairs and upgrades immediately. This includes replacing lead service lines that deliver water into homes. Successful lead service line replacement efforts in cities like Lansing, Michigan, demonstrate how this can be done methodically and in a cost-effective way.

We also need to improve our stormwater infrastructure because climate change means more of our rain is falling in heavy downpours. Flooded basements in cities across the Great Lakes show that our current stormwater infrastructure cannot handle most of it. Expanding “green infrastructure” to safely capture rainwater and upgrading traditional stormwater management systems are essential steps in ensuring Great Lakes climate resilience. In Illinois, The Joyce Foundation is supporting the Metropolitan Planning Council and Center for Neighborhood Technology to demonstrate new ways to fund and deploy green infrastructure that protects residents near Chicago waterways and Lake Michigan.

2) Take full advantage of increased federal infrastructure funds. Billions are now available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, as well as other recent federal programs. Great Lakes states must direct these funds to communities that need them most. In Michigan, Joyce is partnering with the C.S. Mott Foundation in supporting the Michigan Municipal League Foundation’s MI Water Navigator program. That program will

help Michigan communities access available water infrastructure resources, including an application cycle this November where local governments can seek financial support for drinking water, wastewater and stormwater upgrades.

Joyce is also supporting related technical assistance efforts in other Great Lakes states. The availability of expanded federal infrastructure resources is a once-in-a-generation opportunity. We cannot underestimate its importance — or squander it.

3) Do our part to reduce the severity of climate impacts. Successfully reducing the pollution that is driving climate change requires action worldwide. Great Lakes states can play an important role by adopting effective, forward-looking climate and energy policies. Last fall, Illinois adopted the Climate & Equitable Jobs Act, a bold initiative making the state a national leader toward a 100% clean-energy future. The act will eliminate carbon emissions from the electric power sector, provide equitable access to clean energy jobs, increase utility accountability and provide transition supports for communities historically dependent on fossil fuels. Recently developed climate and clean energy plans in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota also lay out sustainable paths to a clean energy future. These efforts across Great Lakes states will help our region do its share in reducing global warming pollution, make the air cleaner and healthier locally, and create thousands of new jobs.

Will the Great Lakes become a climate refuge for multitudes fleeing extreme weather disasters?

We’ll see. Either way, we can get ready in ways that also meet the needs of current residents. The time to act is now.

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FOCUS | CLIMATE MIGRANTS

CLIMATE

From Page 28

“Everyone can agree that what was once the 100-year flood is now every five years,” Burns said. “Whether they attribute it to climate change or not, people want that resolved.”

Planning for future demand Affordable housing isn’t the only challenge.

Parts of the Great Lakes region already struggle to remedy their existing climate-related vulnerabilities, and that reduces their ability to plan for future ones.

Detroit neighborhoods, its suburbs and metro-area roadways have confronted — and failed to prevent — massive flooding and sewage problems for years. In Chicago, even modest rain can overwhelm the combined sewer system, leading to sewage backups and flooding, as well as opening the floodgates to let some of the overflow enter rivers and Lake Michigan.

In both cities, environmental problems disproportionately affect low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.

Overall, communities are poorly prepared for the public health consequences of climate migration within the United States, according to a 2021 study by Columbia University researcher Nika Sabasteanski. The study predicts “huge challenges because of the American health system’s unique, pre-existing weaknesses” and urges federal, state, local and tribal govern- mate change, she cautions that use of a ments to adopt a universal health care climate plan “is pretty minimal withpolicy that shifts primary care away out a willingness to invest in the recfrom physicians and toward other pro- ommendations of that plan.” fessionals.

Thus it’s a battle to find the political Meanwhile, work continues on Chi- will to invest in climate resiliency projcago’s multibillion-dollar “Deep Tun- ects, usually infrastructure. nel” — more formally the Tunnel and “It’s a really good idea for communiReservoir Project — intended to store ties, for the state and the whole region over 20 billion gallons of water. to think about how we attract people As part of regional resiliency work in and who we want to have in place to southeast Michigan, the Great Lakes receive different kinds of migrants,” Water Authority is developing “addi- Gibbons said. “What is the culture tional operational strategies for larger when people arrive here?” rain events” to lower the odds of basement backups that have become more The relief of higher ground frequent.

In Grand Rapids, Michigan, sustainEmily Tobin-LaVoy said she ability and performance management wouldn’t have considered a 2019 move officer Alison Sutter said she believes to Marquette with her future husband climate migration “will drive people to were it not for increasingly frequent the greater Grand Rapfloods in New Orleans, ids area.” one of which rose 5 feet Michigan’s secin her neighborhood.

The number of people in ond-largest city is cre“It totaled my car, ating its first climate the U.S. projected to live on which I couldn’t afaction and adaptation land that will be considered ford to replace at the plan, which will adtime, and scared me a flooded in 2100. dress climate migralot,” said Tobin-LaVoy, Source: PLOS ONE tion, and is developing a colorist for an aniits next 20-year commated web series. “It’s munity master plan, Sutter said. really a disaster. I was getting tired of “This will be something we will raise living one day to the next wondering for discussion,” she said. if my house would be OK or if I’d have In some ways, planning is the easy to climb on my roof to get away from part politically and financially, accord- the floodwater.” ing to Gibbons of the American Society As for water, she now lives about of Adaptation Professionals. two blocks from Lake Superior.

Gibbons lists the Twin Cities of Min“I don’t have to worry about floodneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, and ing here,” Tobin-LaVoy said.

Ann Arbor, Marquette and Ypsilanti in Michigan among communities doing Eric Freedman is a Pulitzer Prizegood planning, a process she said must winning journalist and director of the include social justice considerations.

Knight Center for Environmental While Gibbons sees a “public will Journalism at Michigan State and often a political will” to plan for cli- University.

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“THERE’S GOING TO BE MIGRATION HAPPENING. . . .WE WANT THOSE PEOPLE TO HAVE A JOB WHEN THEY COME.” — Mike Foley, director of the sustainability department in Cuyahoga County

Chicago’s “Deep Tunnel” will help the area adapt. | METROPOLITAN WATER RECLAMATION DISTRICT

Burning trees from wildfires cover the

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FOCUS | CLIMATE MIGRANTS IDEAS: SEMANTICS

Social justice in a time of migration

CORNELIA LI FOR CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

BY JOHN SLOCUM

Who are these “climate refugees” who will come streaming into the freshwater-rich Great Lakes region, bringing both opportunities for economic growth and potential conflicts over land and resources?

For starters, most aren’t refugees at all — at least not in a John Slocum is strict legal sense. The term ref- the executive ugee is commonly applied to director of anyone forcibly uprooted Refugee Council from their home. But to satisfy USA and a the legal definition, a person nonresident must be displaced across an senior fellow at international boundary and the Chicago meet a fairly strict set of crite- Council on ria.

Global Affairs.

People who have been displaced within their own country through war or environmental factors are more accurately called internally displaced persons, or IDPs. Globally, there were 38 million internal displacements in 2021, about two-thirds caused by conflict and violence, and one-third by disasters — and a cumulative total of over 50 million IDPs worldwide.

Internal displacement isn’t something that only happens in other countries. According to the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre, over half a million people in the United States were IDPs at some point over the course of 2021, mostly due to storms, wildfires or floods.

The vast bulk of displacement is temporary, but

over 56,000 people in the U.S. remained displaced at the end of last year. As coastal erosion and flooding continues, we will increasingly see whole communities forced to move.

What about those displaced by climate change across national borders? Climate-forced displacement can result from sea-level rise, drought, extreme heat, and increasingly frequent and severe storms. Displacement can be a direct result of climate change or a secondary consequence when environmental disruption leads to conflict.

Most of those displaced by climate factors stay relatively close to home, either as IDPs or cross-border refugees in neighboring countries.

And causality is hard to attribute: The negative impacts of climate change tend to fall hardest on those who are poor and vulnerable to begin with, and movement in response to slow-onset climate change can be indistinguishable from economic migration.

Won’t we eventually see climate refugees coming to the U.S. from abroad? To a certain extent, we already are. Climate change impacts, including more frequent natural disasters, already contribute to outmigration from Central America and other parts of the world.

Not all persons forced to leave their home country count as refugees. Under international and U.S. law, a person can be recognized as a refugee only if they are fleeing persecution on the basis of one of five grounds: race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Climate change is not on this list. But for many refugees, climate stressors can exacerbate other vulnerabilities, adding to their need for international protection.

There is currently no way for a person to enter the U.S. and be permitted to stay on the basis of having been displaced by the impacts of climate change. But environmental risks, like health risks, are mediated by socioeconomic factors.

Bluntly speaking, the world’s wealthy, when faced with climate disasters, will have places to which they can escape, as well as the means to get there. Absent purposeful interventions — including options for humanitarian visas for the most vulnerable — many of the poor will be left to fight it out among themselves.

In short, climate resilience, at home and abroad, is a matter of social justice.

Yes, residents of Southeastern states may move to Chicago when faced with coastline erosion and intolerable heat. Or, like most people around the world, they may simply move to higher ground.

Yes, the economy of the Upper Midwest may experience a climate bump. But this will mean little if we cannot address the disproportionate impact that flooding already has on Chicago’s Black and Latino neighborhoods (a recent Redfin study showed that flooding is significantly more prevalent in formerly redlined areas).

And white nationalists will seize on the specter of “climate refugees” as a pretext for further weakening the welcome that we as a country provide for those in need of protection and safety.

In the spirit of justice and solidarity, we must get out ahead of this sort of fearmongering and be proactive in our response to climate-induced displacement, both domestic and international. Our efforts must be focused on expanding the opportunities for more people to thrive on a changing planet — even, and especially, when climate change forces them to move.

IDEAS: BULWARKS

What a stormy night in a tent revealed

BY BETH GIBBONS

Floodwater sits after Hurricane Delta made landfall in Cameron, La. | BLOOMBERG

the

landscape in California. | BLOOMBERG

A year ago, alongside my two young sons, I woke up inside a tent to a brutal storm.

As we huddled close, the wind buffeting the tent walls so hard they at times touched the floor, my mom armor of calm reassurance was pierced by my professional knowledge as an expert in climate impacts. Beth Gibbons is This extraordinary storm was the executive something that my kids — and director of the all our kids — will experience American again and again throughout Society of their lives.

Adaptation The next morning, reports Professionals rolled in to the group of friends and co-author of we were camping with. Base- the Midwest ments with water rising — 6 chapter of the inches, then 12, then 18 — and 5th National one by one families hastily Climate packed up and sped home to Assessment. survey the damage wrought by the storm and made worse by outdated, undersized and ineffective water management systems.

This is what climate change looks like across the Great Lakes states.

To be sure, we are facing and will continue to contend with the impact of extreme and extended heat events, a changing growing season, increasing ice storms and potential wildfire risk in our northern forests. However, it is the 14% increase in precipitation overall and 31% increase in the most severe storms that will lead to acute loss of life, property damage and long-term deterioration of health and well-being.

Despite these risks, which are already with us today and will only worsen if unchecked, the Great Lakes region and cities like Chicago, Detroit and Cleveland continue being discussed as climate havens.

How could that be? The answer is that everything is relative.

Yes, we have climate-enhanced risks in our region, but they pale in comparison to the climate crisis gripping other parts of our own county, to say nothing of what is going on beyond our borders.

Across the coasts, 13.1 million people live in areas that will be completely underwater with 3 feet of sea level rise. That’s a threshold we are likely to reach in the next 50 to 70 years. In the Western U.S., 60 million people depend on the dwindling reserves of Lake Mead and Lake Powell for their drinking water.

While our fellow Americans suffer water crises of deluge and depletion, we sit on the banks of 80% of the country’s surface fresh water and wring our hands — and towels — as more water falls upon us.

There is a version of our future where states, towns, tribes and the people who live within them thrive. Where those who are here today have infrastructure that incorporates nature, protects them from the changing climate paradigm, and where every single person can turn on the tap in their home and trust that water will flow and that it will be clean and safe to drink.

From my national perspective as executive director of the American Society of Climate Adaptation Professionals to my local experience as a sustainability commissioner in the city of Ypsilanti, Michigan, I have come to believe that the opportunity we have in our region outweighs the risks.

I believe that we can leverage the massive investment of the Infrastructure Investment & Jobs Act dollars to build future-ready infrastructure, we can center justice and equity in all our climate planning, and we can build on the foundation of the Great Lakes Compact to develop regional policies that serve the well-being of our natural resources and the people who live here.

I cannot stop the storms that will rage or the wind that will blow against my children’s future,

The Fairport Lighthouse at the Mentor Headlands Beach on Lake Erie. The Great Lakes region continue being discussed as climate havens. | LISA MARTIN/UNSPLASH

but if all of us can work together to embrace this transformative moment, we can be a haven — a beloved, safe and inclusive place for those who are already here and those to come.

Gibbons is also a public voices fellow with The Oped Project in partnership with the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication.

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FOCUS | CLIMATE MIGRANTS

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IDEAS: REVERSAL OF FORTUNE

Chicago has some natural advantages

BY E

BY HOWARD A. LEARNER

Is climate migration beginning to reach Illinois? We know the panicked headlines were wrong: The Chicago area, in particular, and Illinois, overall, is modestly gaining, not losing, population. The U.S. Census Bureau now reports that 250,000 Illinoisans were “undercounted” in the recent census.

It’s Chicago political sport to bad-mouth our city.

Compared to many other places, however, the Chicago region is now looking attractive to people elsewhere who are facing the growing ravages of climate change realities.

Tired of droughts in California and the overbuilt Southwest? Fed up with wildfires in the West? Had enough of destructive hurricanes on the East Coast and the Southern coastal states? Come to Chicago.

Climate migration is likely to bring many more Americans from the coasts to Chicago and the Midwest. That’s above and beyond Chicago already becoming the affordable big-city destination for legions of graduates from Midwest colleges and business, law and medical schools. Here are some of Chicago’s competitive advantages for attracting domestic climate refugees.

Howard A. Learner is executive director of the Environmental Law & Policy Center, a Midwest environmental legal advocacy and sustainability organization.

` Abundant freshwater supplies: The Great Lakes are where we live, work and play. They are a global gem, providing a largesse of fresh water for drinking and industry. They drive our region’s economy while providing great ecological value.

While overbuilt Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Phoenix and many California and Texas cities face enormous drought pressures, there’s plenty of water for people living in Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee. While Lake Mead is drying up, there’s plenty of water to boat and swim in Lake Michigan. Let’s recognize and be sure to protect our extraordinarily valuable freshwater resources. ` No wildfires, hurricanes or extreme heat waves: Climate change impacts in the Midwest are serious and real: more extreme Lake Michigan water levels, both higher and lower, and more extreme summer heat and winter cold. That requires taking public policy actions and making social and physical infrastructure changes to adapt for resiliency, public health and environmental sustainability.

Compared to what? Climate change is exacerbating devastating wildfires in the Western states along with earthquake threats in California, and more intense hurricanes and severe storms that are pummeling the East Coast and Southern coastal states. Check out the even scarier heat waves in Arizona, Texas and other places that make Chicago’s hot summers seem merely balmy by comparison. Lots of folks are saying goodbye to places with wildfires, hurricanes and heat waves that are getting worse. They’ve had enough and are looking to relocate during the lull before the next storm. ` Better food access: The Midwest is the nation’s breadbasket and has a temperate enough climate (for now) and sufficient water to support waves of crops. Climate change will affect what can be grown where, but that’s relatively manageable in the medium term. That’s a world of difference, however, from California’s almond, pistachio and fruit growing that requires huge amounts of piped-in irrigation water. Midwest agriculture provides nearby food supply, which will continue to benefit us. ` Housing and infrastructure: Chicago has real housing affordability challenges, but our housing costs are still much lower than in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, and Boston, New York City and Washington, D.C. The Midwest cities also have significant available land to build out new housing. Try finding vacant space in San Francisco or Manhattan.

In addition, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Milwaukee’s transportation and other infrastructure has available capacity to handle population growth with an influx of new residents.

Climate change is real. Climate migration is likely to grow. Chicago’s competitive advantages can help attract more people and talent.

THE GREAT LAKES ARE WHERE WE LIVE, WORK AND PLAY. THEY ARE A GLOBAL GEM, PROVIDING A LARGESSE OF FRESH WATER FOR DRINKING AND INDUSTRY. THEY DRIVE OUR REGION’S ECONOMY WHILE PROVIDING GREAT ECOLOGICAL VALUE. THERE’S PLENTY OF WATER FOR PEOPLE LIVING IN CHICAGO, CLEVELAND, DETROIT AND MILWAUKEE

The Great Lakes region is positioned to receive a population boost from those fleeing less stable environments. | DJ JOHNSON/UNSPLASH

IDEAS: WATER ECONOMY

Let’s responsibly manage Great Lakes’ precious water economy

BY BRYAN STUBBS

Earlier this month, when Cleveland joined large portions of the country with a heat index over 100 degrees, we were firmly reminded that climate change is here today. In northeast Ohio, we are seeing our average annual temperatures increase, coupled with high heat events occurring more often and earlier in the summer season. Heavy Bryan Stubbs is precipitation events are more fre- president and quent. And our winters are becom- executive ing shorter. director of And then I am reminded of the Cleveland Water world outside our regional bubble. Alliance, a The Western region of the United nonprofit States is experiencing increasingly focused on the extreme heat, drought and more fre- water industry. quent forest fires. Powerful hurricane seasons are impacting the Gulf Coast and Eastern Seaboard, along with saltwater encroachment affecting every low-lying coastal region in the world.

When it comes to climate, Cleveland has many advantages: We are positioned directly adjacent to the largest freshwater system in the world, it’s cooler by the lake, and the city sits at 653 feet above sea level. While the Great Lakes region is not immune to the effects of climate change, it is well-positioned to receive a population boost from those fleeing less climate-stable environments and support the businesses, jobs and innovations these climate migrants bring.

Since 2014, the organization I lead, Cleveland Water Alliance (CWA), has been accelerating technology and leading-edge innovations that clean, protect, manage and provide data about our freshwater resources. We recently launched a beta climate calculator tool, funded in part through the Cleveland Foundation, Cuyahoga County and Greater Cleveland Partnership, with assistance from CDP, a global disclosure system for investors, companies, cities, states and regions to manage their environmental impacts. The outputs of the calculator firmly demonstrate the real cost of doing business in areas already experiencing the impacts of climate change — like the West Coast — which include higher insurance rates, increased capital costs, true energy us-

age, and water impact and costs (inputs proposed by the Securities & Exchange Commission for disclosure by public companies).

Make no mistake, we are in for a rough ride that will require increasing decarbonization, investment in our infrastructure and resilient adaptation. And while our region is expected to have less severe climate impacts through this century, we must not take our abundance of fresh water for granted. In fact, the time is now to rise to the challenge and harness its potential to generate solutions to global water issues, create jobs and spur a water technology ecosystem.

Thanks to the support of the U.S. Economic Development Administration, along with funding received from the State of Ohio in 2021, CWA is forging the world’s largest digitally connected freshwater body. The Lake Erie Watershed Testbed is a sandbox allowing innovators to test technologies under various conditions before bringing them to market. These efforts are helping us clean up pollution and algae on our Great Lake, detect lead in pipes without having to break ground, and attract international companies to the region.

Currently, more than 300 new water economy jobs are created annually in greater Cleveland, and even more when Sandusky and Toledo are included. These jobs support the hundreds of water-expertise companies in our region, and CWA is working to attract even more. We continue to develop relationships with companies around the world interested in relocating here because of the desirable access to fresh water and reliable energy sources (it’s much easier to cool a server farm or battery manufacturer in the Great Lakes region than it is in New Mexico), as well as low insurance rates. Thanks to investments from Cleveland Water, our region’s physical water infrastructure allows for resiliency around impacts of climate change and increased population, and Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District will wrap up project Clean Lake in 2036, reducing Lake Erie pollution by 4 billion gallons per year.

We must not let up on the collaborative momentum of fostering the water economy. Climate change is a challenge that we must continue to navigate and prepare for together. This includes responsibly welcoming climate migrants, growing industries to support their workforce, and demonstrating to the world that Cleveland is a dedicated leader in protecting and managing our most precious resource.

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FOCUS | CLIMATE MIGRANTS

Whether environmental or social, climates have long uprooted people

BY ERIC FREEDMAN

Climate change and migration are not new.

For thousands of years, environmental and climate factors have influenced migration to and through the Great Lakes region.

As a matter of survival, the travel routes of mobile Native American hunter-gatherers tracked their fluctuating food sources.

For example, archaeologists excavating a site along the Grand River near Lake Michigan just east of Grand Haven, Michigan, found underground cache pits along hunting routes and trails used to store seasonably abundant foods during the often-unpredictable seasons that followed the Little Ice Age. Some cache pits in the Great Lakes region date back to around the year 1000.

Even since then, there have been large-scale internal “climigrations” in the U.S. Prominent among the precipitating factors were the Dust Bowl of the 1930s that pushed millions of Americans to move westward and permanently settle elsewhere, predominantly in California, and 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, which led to the relocations, some permanent, of hundreds of thousands of residents from the hard-hit Gulf Coast.

A scene from the Dust Bowl in Oklahoma, April 1936. | LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

The Great Lakes region was a major destination for two earlier mega-migrations.

The first took place in the late 1700s through the mid-1800s as thousands of settlers and dreamers, many of them immigrants or the children of immigrants from Europe, arrived in search of cheap, fertile land, jobs, lumber and other natural re-

sources to extract or mercantile opportunities to exploit.

Groups like the Washtenaw County Society for the Information of Emigrants, just as modern-day economic development promoters do, touted Michigan as a settlement destination. They even had a song promising, “We here have soils of various kinds, To suit men who have different

minds, Prairies, openings, timbered and education environment of the land, And burr oak plains, in Michi- South and its racial violence. gan.”

There was “terribly little planning Yet not all was as promised or (to accommodate the newcomers) hoped for as arrivals found much of outside the initial recruitment efthe affordable land to be swampy, in- forts,” and new arrivals frequently fertile or inaccessible. A 19th-century found themselves in cramped houssong advised, “Don’t go to Michigan, ing in densely populated neighborthat land of ills; the word means hoods such as Chicago’s South Side ague, fever and chills.” Some emi- and Detroit’s Black Bottom, he said. grants were defrauded by “land“What planning takes place is in sharks” who “sold” land they didn’t the hearts of individuals and families own. that go north,” Finkenbine said.

Later came the Great Migration of “They could work on it for years. SetAfrican Americans from the South to tling up for sharecroppers at the end the factories of Detroit and Youngstown, Akron and THE GREAT LAKES REGION WAS A Chicago, Gary and CleveMAJOR DESTINATION FOR TWO land.

The movement took off in 1914-15 as World War I EARLIER MEGA-MIGRATIONS. loomed and the influx of European immigrants stalled. As Uni- of the year to help pay for the railroad versity of Detroit-Mercy history pro- ticket, or gas in the later years if you fessor Roy Finkenbine explained, had a car.” labor organizers recruited Black As for the racial climate and living sharecroppers and other workers, conditions in the industrial cities of while African American media such the Great Lakes, he said, “They knew as the Chicago Defender spread the it was not perfect but knew it was betword about economic opportunities ter than what they left behind.” in the North.

They were, in a way, also environ- Eric Freedman is a Pulitzer Prizemental migrants, but only tangential- winning journalist and director of the ly because of the natural environ- Knight Center for Environmental ment, Finkenbine said. Rather they Journalism at Michigan State were escaping the social, business University.

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JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 33

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CRAIN'S LIST | WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES Ranked by full-time-equivalent local employees as of March 1, 2022 RANK

COMPANY

LOCAL STAFF 1 1-YEAR CHANGE DESCRIPTION

% OWNED BY WOMEN/ ORGANIZATIONS CERTIFYING COMPANY IS WOMEN-OWNED

MAJORITY OWNER(S)

TOP LOCAL EXECUTIVE(S)

1

INFOCISION 325 Springside Drive, Akron 330-668-1400/infocision.com

1,110 22.2%

Telemarketing/direct marketing firm

64% / California Public Utilities Commission

Karen Taylor, board chair

Craig Taylor, CEO; Karen Taylor, board chair

2

LAKESIDE FACILITY SERVICES GROUP 2122 St. Clair Ave. N.E., Cleveland 216-771-2400/lfs-group.com

220 2.3%

Janitorial services provider for commercial and health care facilities

51% / City of Cleveland

Katiya Cassese, president; Anthony Cassese, CEO

Katiya Cassese, president; Anthony Cassese, CEO

3

STAFFING SOLUTIONS ENTERPRISES 5915 Landerbrook Drive, Suite 100, Mayfield Heights 440-684-7218/staffingsolutionsenterprises.com

197 2 —

Recruitment and staffing firm

100% / WBENC

SueAnn Naso, president, CEO

SueAnn Naso, president, CEO

4

MARS ELECTRIC CO. 6655 Beta Drive, Suite 200, Mayfield Village 440-946-2250/mars-electric.com

180 5.9%

Distributor of electrical, lighting and power distribution products

51% / City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, city Fran Doris, CEO of Canton, NEORSD, Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority

5

UNIVERSAL METAL PRODUCTS INC. 29980 Lakeland Blvd., Wickliffe 440-943-7310/ump-inc.com

178 -1.1%

Manufacturer of custom metal stampings

51% / WBENC

Kim Koeth, director of finance; Kristin Jenkins, director of sales and diversity

Scott Seaholm, CEO

6

QUALCARE LLC (HOME INSTEAD - MENTOR) 7334 Center St., Mentor 440-257-5800/homeinstead.com

150 20%

Home care services provider

100% / None

Therese Zdesar, president, CEO

Therese Zdesar, president, CEO

7

TRI-MOR CORP. 8530 N. Boyle Parkway, Twinsburg 330-963-3101/trimor.com

147 -5.2%

Concrete paving and infrastructure 51% / WBENC contractor

Neille Vitale, CEO

Neille Vitale, CEO

8

NOVAGARD 5109 Hamilton Ave., Cleveland 216-881-8111/novagard.com

146 22.7%

Research and manufacturing of silicone sealants, coatings and foam

55% / WBENC

Sarah Nash, chairman, president, CEO

Sarah Nash, chairman, president, CEO

9

VOCON 3142 Prospect Ave., Cleveland 216-588-0800/vocon.com

125 8.7%

Strategy, architecture and design firm

51% / WBENC

Debbie Donley, founder, chief experience officer

Debbie Donley, founder, chief experience officer; Paul Voinovich, CEO

10

FRANK NOVAK & SONS COS. 23940 Miles Road, Bedford Heights 216-475-5440/franknovak.com

110 -12%

Commercial finish contractor and manufacturer of custom lighting, acoustic panels and OEM parts

51% / City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority

Gayle Pinchot, president; Gayle Pinchot, president; Pamela Bozsvai, vice president Pamela Bozsvai, vice president

11

US COMMUNICATIONS AND ELECTRIC INC. 4933 NEO Parkway, Garfield Heights 216-478-0810/uscande.com

105 -0.9%

Network design and integration services firm

100% / WBENC, city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, ODOT, NEORSD

Patricia Connole, CEO

Patricia Connole, CEO

12

MURTECH STAFFING & SOLUTIONS LLC 4700 Rockside Road, Suite 310, Independence 216-328-8580/murtechconsulting.com

100 2 0%

Staffing and solutions company

60% / WBENC

Ailish Murphy, board chair

Ailish Murphy, board chair

13

VMI GROUP INC. 8854 Valley View Road, Macedonia 330-405-4113/thevmigroup.com

99 28.6%

Commercial and industrial contractor specializing in foundations and structure

51% / City of Cleveland, ODOT

Neille Vitale, president

Neille Vitale, president

14

TYLOK INTERNATIONAL INC. 1061 E. 260th St., Euclid 216-261-7310/tylok.com

85 0%

Instrumentation fittings and valves, Medlok medical gas connections

100% / WBENC

Carol Hahl, majority owner

Scott Hahl, COO

15

THE AKA TEAM 1306 E. 55th St., Cleveland 216-751-2000/akateam.com

77 71.1%

Construction management, commercial waterproofing and general contracting company

100% / City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County

Ariane Kirkpatrick, president, CEO

Ariane Kirkpatrick, president, CEO

16

HUNTER INTERNATIONAL RECRUITING 38100 Colorado Ave., Avon 440-389-0023/hirecruiting.com

70 2 —

STEM staffing agency

100% / WBENC, state of Ohio

Gabrielle Christman, president, CEO

Gabrielle Christman, president, CEO

16

MCSTEEN LAND SURVEYORS 1415 E. 286 St., Wickliffe 440-585-9800/mcsteen.com

70 7.7%

Residential and commercial land surveying

51% / None

Terry Feller, board member; Molly Woeste, president; Maureen Feller, COO; Kevin Woeste, CEO

Kevin Woeste, CEO

18

D&J QUALITY CARE ENTERPRISES INC. (COMFORCARE HOMECARE) 13315 Prospect Road, Strongsville 440-638-7001/comforcare.com

65 0%

Private duty homecare services helping clients remain in their homes as they age

100% / None

Deb Vermillion, president

Deb Vermillion, president

18

REGENCY CONSTRUCTION SERVICES INC. 5475 Engle Road, Brook Park 216-529-1188/regencycsi.com

65 -4.4%

Commercial construction company 91% / WBENC, city of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, NEORSD, city of Columbus, Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, state of Ohio

Tari Rivera, president

Tari Rivera, president

20

MIDWEST MATERIALS INC. 3687 Shepard Road, Perry 440-259-5200/midwestmaterials.com

63 5%

Steel service center

60% / None

Noreen KoppelmanGoldstein, president

Brian Robbins, CEO; Noreen KoppelmanGoldstein, president

21

ALCO-CHEM INC. 45 N. Summit St., Akron 330-253-3535/alco-chem.com

61 5.2%

Manufacturer and distributor of janitorial and sanitation supplies

100% / None

Luanne Worthington, CEO

Luanne Worthington, CEO

22

METIS CONSTRUCTION SERVICES LLC 175 E. Erie St., Suite 303, Kent 330-677-7333/metisconstruction.com

60 4.3%

Commercial general contractor

100% / NWBOC, state of Ohio

Julie Brandle, president; Donna Komar, CFO

Julie Brandle, president; Donna Komar, CFO

23

SAFE CHOICE LLC 11811 Shaker Blvd., Suite 415, Cleveland 216-231-7233/safechoicellc.com

58 9.4%

Provider of security personnel, security systems, safety training and investigations

51% / City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, NEORSD

Anita Spencer, president

Anita Spencer, president; Anthony Spencer Jr., senior vice president

24

COOK PAVING AND CONSTRUCTION CO. INC. 4545 Spring Road, Suite 1, Brooklyn Heights 216-267-7705/cookpaving.com

50 —

Asphalt paving, underground 90% / City of Cleveland, Cuyahoga County utilities, concrete installation, cable placement

Linda Fletcher, president, CEO

Linda Fletcher, president, CEO

24

CYNERGIES CONSULTING INC. 26301 Curtiss-Wright Parkway, Suite 115, Richmond Heights 216-798-6655/cynergies.net

50 2 100%

Information technology staffing provider

95% / WBENC

Patrick Renier, executive director; Debbie Holy, president; Ellie Chalko, executive VP

Debbie Holy, president

24

MARGARET W. WONG & ASSOCIATES LLC 3150 Chester Ave., Cleveland 216-566-9908/imwong.com

50 0%

Immigration, deportation and criminal law firm

100% / None

Margaret Wong, president, managing partner

Margaret Wong, president, managing partner

Fran Doris, CEO

Research by Chuck Soder (csoder@crain.com) | Information is from the companies. To be listed, companies must be at least 51% women-owned. Crain's does not require that companies be certified as women-owned; companies with

certifications listed were not required to provide documentation. If your organization requires documentation please request it before doing business with a listed. WBENC = Women's Business Enterprise National Council; NWOBC = National Women Business Owners Corp.; NEORSD = Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District. NOTES: 1. Full-time equivalent as of March 1, 2022. 2. This is a staffing firm. Most of these employees work on behalf of other companies.

Get 89 companies, 190+ executives and more contact info in Excel. Become a Data Member: CrainsCleveland.com/data 34 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | JUNE 27, 2022

P034_CL_20220627.indd 34

6/24/2022 11:59:41 AM

LIST ANALYSIS

Women-owned businesses say 2022 should be better

BY CHUCK SODER

What is the biggest challenge facing women in the business community and what can be done to solve it?

2021 was a good year for companies on the Crain’s Women-Owned Businesses list. And 2022 doesn’t look so bad either.

Combined local employment on the full Excel list rose 9.5% for the 12 months ending March 1. That includes 66 companies that provided Crain’s with two years of employment data.

The increase was still pretty strong, 5.5%, even if you exclude the biggest outlier on the list — a 22.2% increase reported by InfoCision. The Akron-based contact center company is by far the largest local employer on the list and thus has an outsized impact on the data.

Companies on the list also are doing pretty well financially, judging by a few other statistics.

First, consider the 29 companies who gave Crain’s revenue figures for both 2020 and 2021.

The median company in that group saw revenue rise 8.3% in 2021.

And a few of the larger companies reported big increases. For instance, Valley Ford of Huron, which is tied for No. 42 on the list by local employment, is now easily the biggest by total revenue following a 190% increase in 2021. Likewise, Mars Electric, No. 4 on the list but No. 2 by revenue, reported a 29.1% increase.

A few other stats suggest 2022 may be even better.

“The limited amount of other women-led companies. We need to encourage and uplift other women to start, buy, or grow their businesses in Northeast Ohio.”

Joan Armbruster, president, Armbruster Moving & Storage

GOVERNMENT

“To help curb [the gender pay gap], I believe new policies are needed, including more paid parental leave, support for child care, and other profamily policies.”

Lauren Clifford, president, Quadcoast LLC (UPS Stores)

Local leaders make the case for refugee, immigrant hiring practices

BY KIM PALMER

“I believe the biggest challenge is having a seat at the table, where decisions are being made. Open up opportunities on boards [and] committees to place businesswomen at the table.”

Heather Baines, president, HR Construction Services LLC

Outlook for 2022

Crain’s also asked companies on the list two optional multiple choice questions about whether revenue and profits will rise or fall in 2022.

The short answer: Both will rise.

Looking only at respondents with at least 15 local employees, 95.6% (45 respondents) expect revenue to rise in 2022, and 84.8% (46 respondents) said profits will rise.

Granted, we gathered the responses from May 4 through June 17, and companies’ projections may have changed had we asked them later, given all the economic news that occurred toward the end of that period.

Namely, the S&P 500 stock index

Global Cleveland and Rise Together are pushing for Northeast Ohio companies to hire non-U.S. citizens. | GLOBAL CLEVELAND

continued its 2022 losing streak, and the Federal Reserve raised its benchmark federal funds rate by .75 percentage points — a move to control inflation that also stoked fears of a recession (Google searches for the word “recession” more than quadrupled during the first few weeks of June, according to Google Trends).

The full Excel list includes 89 companies and is available exclusively to Crain’s Data Members. To learn more visit CrainsCleveland.com/data.

Chuck Soder: csoder@crain.com, (216) 771-5374, @ChuckSoder

Outlook for 2022 looks good That’s according to the majority of the women-owned businesses who answered multiple choice questions about whether revenue and profits would increase or decrease in fiscal year 2022.

Revenue

Profit

Increase significantly

10

7 Increase somewhat

19 Increase slightly

9

24

13

Remain about the same 0 3 Decrease slightly 2 4 No companies selected decrease somewhat or decrease significantly. Chart only includes companies with at least 15 employees; 45 companies answered the revenue question and 46 answered the profit question. Responses were collected between May 4 and June 17.

SOURCE: SURVEY FOR CRAIN’S WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES LIST

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS GRAPHIC

Local groups Global Cleveland and Rise Together want Northeast Ohio companies to know that hiring non-U.S. citizen talent is not as risky, expensive or time-consuming as some might fear.

Before Mick Jendrisak last year took over Pilot Plastics, a custom injection-molding manufacturer in Cuyahoga Falls, the company had an employee attraction and retention problem and relied on temporary employment firms for 60% of its floor workers.

“Having that many temp workers does not correlate to a healthy company,” said Jendrisak, who became president and CEO of Pilot Plastics after the death of his father. “People did not want to work at Pilot. They just knew that this wasn’t a good place to work, so we had to change cultures really fast.”

After raising wages, improving working conditions and adding a human resources department, Jendrisak looked to bring in more dependable, permanent full-time workers.

He and his team looked inward, identifying a recent “standout” employee from the local resettled Nepali community and asked if the worker knew others who might be interested in a job. From there, Jendrisak took an old-school marketing approach to recruiting in the local Nepalese community.

“What we did was printed up flyers in both Nepali and Hindi,” he said. “We put them all over in the Nepali community — at the grocery stores and the little boutiques everywhere that would allow us.”

There was a quick response, and Pilot received an influx of new employee applications for the $17-anhour, 12-hour shifts that offer full benefits, perks and the possibility of overtime. As of early summer 2022, about 85% of the company’s 6 p.m.to-6 a.m. shift is Nepali, Jendrisak said.

Pilot Plastics is a case study for a promoting the type of equal opportunity for international talent and newcomers that Tanya Budler of Rise Together, a local workforce and immigration advocacy organiza-

tion, wants to see other Northeast Ohio businesses adopt.

“The talent pool in Northeast Ohio is shrinking, but the refugee and immigrant community continues to grow,” she said.

Ohio, Budler points out, consistently ranks in the top 10 states for resettlement of refugees — many with unrestricted work authorization.

The international newcomer community, which is made up of immigrants, resettled refugees and international students, grew 7.3% between 2014 and 2019 and now makes up 5.7% of the total population of Northeast Ohio, according to a 2022 report, “New Americans in Northeast Ohio.” The most recent statistics found about 1,900 resettled refugees have come to the region so far in 2022.

Meanwhile, a recent Fund for Our Economic Future report found that 80% of Northeast Ohio companies reported experiencing a “talent shortage,” and 94% of those businesses said most of the applicants applying for jobs were underqualified.

“This is a crucial moment for the region, because now the most pressing question is no longer job creation, but where are the workers?”

Budler said.

In conjunction with Global Cleveland, Budler released what she characterizes as a “call to action,” entitled: “Here Are the Workers,” playing off a 2022 report by the Fund, “Where Are the Workers.” The two-page guide makes the case for businesses to look to recent immigrants and refugees as a “driver of economic recovery.”

The strategic part of “here are the workers” hinges on businesses reevaluating how to recruit, hire and create immigrant-friendly policies within companies to remove employment barriers.

In the guide, Budler suggest a multifaceted approach to marketing and recruiting these international newcomers, including removing requirements such as “fluent in English” from job postings; writing job descriptions in multiple languages; and adding the phrase “accepts unrestricted work visas” to those postings.

Employers also can partner with Global Cleveland to gain access to the refugee resettlement community and get guidance on how to recruit and hire skilled immigrants who require a visa, or how to team with local colleges and universities to gain access to the international student talent pool.

The new employees at Pilot have worked out well, Jendrisak said. The group came with a built-in support system that included community carpooling and allowed for the fluent English-speaking members of the group to translate for the others.

“We’ve revamped how we go about training, just with a lot more visual communication,” he said. “There are a couple real strong English speakers, and (we) relied on them to help with the translations. And had zero issues.

With this new stable workforce, we’ve grown our sales, grown as a company and are doing far better than we ever expected.”

The company’s experience has been so positive that Jendrisak is working to recruit another wave of newcomers.

In May, the federal government extended the renewal period for certain work permits from 180 to 540 days and announced that resettled refugees from Afghanistan and Ukraine were eligible for temporary protected status and an Employment Authorization Document or work permit issued by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

“We already reached out to the Ukrainian diocese and to the churches on the West Side of Cleveland to tell them that we are here and what we do,” Jendrisak said.

The move toward intentionally recruiting and hiring international workers in this call to action, Budler said, has received the support of Northeast Ohio’s universities; national and local refugee and Hispanic groups; and government, business, civic, philanthropic and organizations.

“There are so many co-signers to this,” Budler said. “It demonstrates an overall commitment to the effort.”

Kim Palmer: kpalmer@crain.com, (216) 771-5384, @kimfouroffive

JUNE 27, 2022 | CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS | 35

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TECHNOLOGY

Benesch hangs out a digital shingle in the metaverse

BY JEREMY NOBILE

Benesch’s newest location is on the ground floor of a freshly built office tower that’s techy and clean, although sparsely filled.

Its space in the Law City complex is still being built out, though. There’ll likely be more to see in the future.

After all, this is expected to be an up-and-coming market, and the location is designed to handle some potentially futuristic amenities.

The surrounding community is in reportedly high demand and poised for further development, although there is no construction noise to be heard.

A large fountain marks one entrance to the tower, which has no nearby streets or available parking.

Next door, a “thwomp” from Super Mario Bros. listlessly bobs up and down in an effort by a neighboring property owner to draw eyes to a plot they’re trying to sell.

If this doesn’t sound like a typical metro downtown, that’s because it’s not.

This is the metaverse.

“We decided we couldn’t really understand our clients’ issues if we were not experiencing those issues, too,” said Michael Stovsky, chair of Benesch’s innovations, information technology and intellectual property (3iP) practice group and head of its metaverse team. “Even though we don’t sell products, we sell services.

So, we figured, let’s establish a presence ourselves in the metaverse and put ourselves through the paces.”

Decentraland Cleveland-based Benesch, an AmLaw 200 company and the third-largest law firm in Northeast Ohio, recently became the biggest real-world firm to take up residency in the virtual Law City.

Located in the blockchain-powered Decentraland, Law City (37, -58 Decentraland) bills itself as the legal directory of the metaverse.

Since opening in April, its digital tower has secured 10 law firms, mostly small and niche outfits. Being an anchor tenant, Benesch gets a high-visibility space on the first floor.

The spaces there are free to roam through for Decentraland visitors — who can access the tower easily through their typical web browser — but they are not filled with people, avatars, art or really much of anything right now. The whole thing kind of resembles an early test version of an unfinished video game level, which could be said of a lot of the locations that compose Decentraland today.

What Law City tenants do get is a space with their branded signage complete with link to their respective websites.

They also get the marketing splash that comes with touting a presence in the buzzy metaverse world.

This could be a differentiator for firms like Benesch looking to drum up work with clients interested in the metaverse themselves, at it shows that they’re actually playing in the same sandbox where customers want to be.

“Part of this is admittedly some marketing,” Stovsky said. “But another part of this is the experience of doing it. I think that is actually more

A view of the Law City office tower in the metaverse’s Decentraland where Cleveland-based law firm Benesch has signed on as an anchor tenant. | DECENTRALAND

beneficial and has advantages with clients.”

Something else metaverse firms are exploring is the prospect of a new way of conducting business and connecting with the public.

“With the way the metaverse — the way smart contracts and blockchain — comes together, you are looking at the world this next generation is growing up in. This is really the next iteration of the internet,” said Lance Wyllie, a marketing director and metaverse strategist for Law City, referencing Web 3.0 technology. “It’s to be seen what stays and what hangs around. But you have to be in it to know it. And like the dot-com days and the early days of Facebook and social media, the people who were there early grabbed market share. We are trying to get people to understand what is going on and the worlds in which they’ll be operating in the future.”

also could act as a marketing tool for drawing in younger talent to a segment of the legal sector new attorneys don’t exactly flock to.

How we got here

While the concept of a metaverse has been around for a long time, it has picked up steam in recent years with the growing popularity of games like Fortnite — where players have been able to watch exclusive live concerts in-game — and with Facebook changing its name to Meta in a nod to the digital universe.

Aspects of the metaverse could include games and virtual communities, augmented and virtual reality applications and 3D worlds where you can buy clothes or other products. The metaverse already contains a variety of storefronts where users can buy items for their avatars that are also sent to them in reality.

“WITH THE WAY THE METAVERSE metaverse is — THE WAY SMART CONTRACTS AND the“The porting over of what we see in the BLOCKCHAIN — COMES TOGETHER, world into a YOU ARE LOOKING AT THE WORLD THIS physical digital world where NEXT GENERATION IS GROWING UP IN. everything you would normally encounter THIS IS REALLY THE NEXT ITERATION or see is happening as well,” said Joseph OF THE INTERNET.” Raczynski, a technol— Lance Wyllie, a marketing director and ogist and futurist with metaverse strategist for Law City Thomson Reuters.

Decentraland is This perspective is embraced by one of several “lands” that exist withdisability law firm Liner Legal, an- in the metaverse that are not themother Law City tenant that also is selves directly connected to each based in Cleveland. other.

Liner’s clients include people with As its name implies, it is decentralphysical and mental health impair- ized and powered by the blockchain. ments that can be less relevant in the It is what is known as a DAO, or dedigital world. centralized autonomous organiza“In the metaverse, physical, real tion. This is a fundamental difference world movement is not an obstacle. from something like Fortnite, which The fact that the metaverse could re- is centralized and controlled by a move this barrier for our clients is parent entity. what initially piqued my interest,” In Decentraland, anyone who said firm founder and managing owns land via nonfungible tokens shareholder Michael Liner. “For a (NFTs) or related currency — the number of reasons, many of our po- preferred currency in that world is tential clients value anonymity; an- the crypto token mana, which is curother issue the metaverse could ad- rently valued at approximately 87 dress. So initially I thought the cents per coin — has voting power. metaverse would open a new avenue The more you own, the more voting for us to offer accessibility and ano- power you have. nymity, which it does.”

LawCity.com is an owner of digital He said the metaverse presence property in Decentraland. The com-

pany behind it is New Jersey law firm Grungo Colarulo, which also has a space in Law City.

The firm declined to say what it has spent on its metaverse endeavor or what kind of revenue Law City anticipates.

But Wyllie noted that Law City is looking for VC money to scale up, which means acquiring more virtual space. Despite the seemingly boundless nature of the internet, he said a tower in Decentraland can’t be built infinitely high because there are limits to computing power.

Several businesses have already staked a claim in the metaverse on their own, including law firm ArentFox Schiff, Big 4 accounting firm PwC and financial services behemoth JPMorgan.

Some large companies have thrown mountains of money at scooping up digital land in the metaverse.

Portion, an NFT auction house, spent about $1.2 million on virtual real estate in Decentraland in January. In November, Metaverse Group spent $2.43 million on property there. They were soon followed by Atari, which bought $4.3 million worth of land in the SandBox metaverse.

While “owning property” in the metaverse may feel like an illusion, there’s nonetheless real money behind it right now.

Establishing a presence in the metaverse independently for a small firm might cost between $25,000 and $40,000, Wyllie said, citing reports he’s seen. He declined to say what Law City charges its tenants, and tenants also declined to discuss specific figures.

But Benesch is paying at least a few thousand dollars a month and has a one-year contract in place for its Law City space.

This significantly lower cost is why firms like Benesch might opt for a space in Law City versus trying to build something independently as they dabble in a metaverse experiment.

So what comes of all this?

What the future holds for law firms and businesses in the metaverse is anyone’s guess.

As far as Law City goes, firms may one day be able to meet with clients

or host events, among others things.

Wyllie suggested that some judges in Brazil are interested in the possibility of holding court proceedings in the digital world. Certain laws and ethical rules would need to be addressed to allow for this, just as they were with respect to conducting legal services over the internet just a couple of decades ago.

Liner, meanwhile, said his firm is looking at hosting a continuing legal education course in the metaverse.

As far as what a metaverse office might look like in the future or what role it has in the legal business, “I don’t think we even got that far yet,” Stovsky said. “We first want to take a look and see how this evolves and how clients respond to it.”

But the key message the firm wants to convey is that it’s prepared to navigate legal issues that are bound to come up in the space, which could touch on intellectual property disputes, ownership of digital assets, privacy concerns, insurance and all aspects of the blockchain.

“What we are trying to say with this is we think there are going to be new issues and new bodies of law that arise, and we want to be there when those new bodies of law are being developed,” Stovsky said.

Raczynski — who also serves on the governing board for the American Bar Association’s Center for Innovation and consults with law firms about the metaverse, legal needs related to it and ways to operate within it — said firms getting involved in the metaverse now do have the potential to benefit from being one of the early adopters, even if they don’t completely understand what may come of it.

He also feels that the more AmLaw firms like Benesch jump into the metaverse, the more others will follow suit.

“The general view is that people are scratching their heads a bit and trying to understand what the heck this is,” Raczynski said. “Once they understand what it is, they ask, does it make sense for us to get into it? This makes sense now for firms trying to be edgy. But in 10 years’ time, I think most firms will have a presence in the metaverse. No question.”

Jeremy Nobile: jnobile@crain.com, (216) 771-5362, @JeremyNobile

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SITES

From Page 1

The organization is working separately with partners across 18 counties to identify very large sites, like the emerging 470-acre Turnpike Commerce Center in Portage County, and to explore ways to create mega-sites of 1,000 acres or more, said Christine Nelson, who leads Team NEO’s efforts around projects, sites and talent.

“One of the things that Christine and I think about a lot is almost a portfolio approach. … Remove the political boundaries and think about it in terms of a regional site inventory,” said Bryce Sylvester, Team NEO’s senior director of site strategies.

The site-selection process is swift and, increasingly, digital, Nelson said. Local officials must know their sites intimately — and have details about everything from power capacity to topography to soil conditions at their fingertips.

In addition to identifying land for

assembly and redevelopment, Team NEO’s outside consulting team will need to address utilities, zoning, real estate costs and proximity to labor.

The idea is to determine what needs to be done to make each site marketable and, eventually, to match up the sites with developers who can do the work.

Team NEO has budgeted $130,000 for the analysis, using money from the Fund for Our Economic Future, Cuyahoga County and a collaboration between Summit County, the Greater Akron Chamber and the city of Akron, Sylvester said.

Along with the city of Cleveland and the Cuyahoga Land Bank, those partners will participate in the site-identification process.

The Cuyahoga County Planning Commission already has mined its databases and mapping systems to pinpoint dozens of potential development sites that might be worth discussing.

Even if most of those sites don’t rise to the top of Team NEO’s list, the exercise will help public officials get a better grasp of the landscape and

the polishing that properties require, said Paul Herdeg, Cuyahoga County’s economic development chief.

“We hear about opportunities several times a week, mainly for industrial, sometimes for office, that we know don’t exactly fit what’s available,” he said. “But part of the problem is that we don’t know what exactly is available.”

He mentioned requests ranging from a few dozen acres in the city, for a mysterious project that might have been a brewery, to 100-plus acres for battery makers or producers of solar panels. The tight industrial market, combined with federal policy shifts and heightened interest in onshoring, is driving much of the demand.

Smaller sites are more likely to support expansions of existing businesses than to lure new employers to the region. For example, a nearly 12acre site on Cleveland’s East Side, along the Opportunity Corridor boulevard, is earmarked for a cold-storage warehouse that will be run by an affiliate of Orlando Baking Co., a homegrown food producer across

the street.

That site, assembled through a public-private collaboration, is one example of the type of opportunities that Team NEO hopes to find. It’s close to the priority job hubs of University Circle and the Health-Tech Corridor in Midtown — two places that already are centers of economic buzz. And it’s located near workers and public transportation, in a low-income neighborhood that bears the scars of decades of disinvestment.

“I hope, ultimately, we can get the information needed to have proactive, strategic site development planned for these places where we have a lot of existing groundwork on which to build,” said Bethia Burke, president of the Fund for Our Economic Future, a philanthropic organization that is trying to combat sprawl and encourage thoughtful development.

The fund and Team NEO mapped out regional job hubs a few years ago and refined their list in 2021 to focus on 22 key locations. This year, they unveiled a tool that allows business-

GROCERS

From Page 1

Local grocers say they’ll face the challenge with personal service, product focus and their own innovations.

To consider the prospect for competition in the region, note that a 40,000-square-foot Amazon Fresh store is smaller and more efficient to shop than existing Whole Foods supermarkets, which range from 50,000 to more than 100,000 square feet in size.

Flickinger and others estimate Amazon Fresh could start with a half-dozen stores and quickly add more scale to a dozen to serve the bulk of Cleveland and Akron areas and justify broad television ad buys.

David Livingston, a longtime grocery consultant and now principal of the David Livingston Trust in Hawaii, is more measured in his appraisal of Amazon’s latest food venture.

“These new formats from Amazon will take a long time to be impactful,” Livingston wrote in an email.

Moreover, he said, the grocery business is very different from a decade ago, because a range of retailers not only embrace technology but implement finely tuned consumer strategies.

“Aldi, nothing is like it. Trader Joe’s, no one comes close. Walmart is the king of supercenters, and Costco’s the king of the club stores,” Livingston wrote. “Grocery stores are far different than they were 20 years ago.

And the stores that are out there 10 years from now are not likely out there today.”

That shows how Heinen’s use of Instacart for deliveries online and Giant Eagle’s mobile app are mixing things up as online ventures change their game to play to their strength as digital companies. Curbside pickup from a Giant Eagle or a Discount Drug Mart can’t differ much.

Although Amazon does not discuss its proposed store locations and won’t comment on an Amazon Fresh at Great Northern Plaza in North Olmsted that’s on leasing diagrams of the property’s owner, Bridge 33 of Seattle, it’s clearly afoot. The similarity of a planned location in Fairlawn has been reported by the Akron Beacon Journal, but plaza owner Stark Enterprises of Cleveland has declined comment on it.

The Amazon Fresh market entry is

CRAIN’S CLEVELAND BUSINESS

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Amazon Fresh offers customers who shop on their phones in the store the “just walk out” option if they don’t want to go through a cashier’s line. This photo was provided by Amazon from an undisclosed location. | CONTRIBUTED

well-known among retail real estate agents.

Tori Nook, principal at the Anchor Cleveland retail and investment brokerage in Beachwood, said brokers know of multiple locations, because when they hear the phrase “national grocery,” as it appears on building department records in the city of North Olmsted, it means Amazon Fresh.

“They’re working on locations,” she said. “It’s just that the brokers and landlords sign nondisclosure agreements so no one talks about them.”

Nook, whose firm put Meijer into multiple locations the last few years in Northeast Ohio, said she suspects Amazon Fresh may face challenges, but not in finding multiple locations.

“Like any grocer, it depends on the experience of the shopper,” Nook said. “Remember that the majority of people are not that techie. They don’t want to deal with it. Just watch some people struggle with an iPad when they fill out forms at a doctor’s office.

It suits the need for those who want to shop from the Amazon app on their phone. But if they don’t have time to go to the store, they’ll just order online.”

Giant Eagle said its “Scan Pay & Go” service, which customers use over their phones or a handheld device available in the store, allows shoppers to use a dedicated register kiosk or self-serve lanes for a faster, more convenient “checkout experience.”

Dan Donovan, spokesperson for Giant Eagle, wrote in an email, “While the number of guests who have used Scan Pay & Go remains small in comparison to either the traditional method of in-store shopping or via online ordering, the rate of repeat use of Scan Pay & Go is high among guests who have tried the technology.” On Amazon Fresh’s pending debut, Donovan said, “The Northeast Ohio supermarket landscape continues to be very competitive, with both existing retailers evolving how they serve their customers and new retailers considering entrance into the market.”

However, at the store level, there’s appreciation for the risk, because operators believe multiple Amazon Fresh stores will take a bite out of the market in Northeast Ohio, which lacks the population growth usually cited for opening new stores.

Billy Buckholtzer, the proprietor for 12 years with his wife, Michele, of the Murray Hill Market in Little Italy, terms himself a fan of Amazon shopping.

“I swear, they have a truck parked at the end of my street, knowing what I like so when I order it, the item is delivered in no time,” Buckholtzer said. “But can they offer personal service? Let me tell you a story.”

Once, three couples stopped to admire the Buckholtzers’ bodega-cafe store and its ready-made foods. They said they had dinner reservations at a nearby restaurant and asked if they could come back in three hours to

pick up an order. One couple decided on two raviolis, but one woman said she was gluten-free.

“My wife told her to come back after dinner,” Buckholtzer said. “My wife went downstairs and made her gluten-free ravioli, including wrapping it ready for the freezer. Provide service like that, and they are cus-

es to evaluate sites based on access to talent, racial equity and climate considerations.

Now, the goal is to bulk up that directory by working with real estate experts and sharing data more effectively across civic groups. Team NEO and its partners eventually could seek money for site assembly, cleanup and other preparations from state and federal sources and JobsOhio, the state’s private nonprofit economic-development corporation.

McAndrew endorses the effort to establish a bank of shovel-ready sites, though he’s not sure consultants will turn up any big surprises in a region where savvy industrial developers already are prowling for land.

“Northeast Ohio really will be in the game more,” he said, “if we can do that homework to uncover sites, identify the strengths and weaknesses of those sites, address the weaknesses and put them in as close to a developable state as possible.”

Michelle Jarboe: michelle.jarboe@ crain.com, (216) 771-5437, @mjarboe tomers for life. I don’t think they’ll put us out of business because of our personal touch.”

Gabe Nabors, CEO of the Mustard Seed Market chain, said what distinguishes his stores from others is that they are not trying to serve multiple markets or multiple geographies.

“We think every day about bringing the best, tastiest food we can to people in Akron,” Nabors said. “That will never change. More grocery stores does not mean people will eat more food. But they’re not after Mustard Seed Market. They’re after Heinen’s, Giant Eagle. That’s where they will find market share.”

Jeff Heinen, Heinen’s co-president, did not return three phone messages by 4 p.m. last Thursday, June 23.

S E PAmazon T E M B E R Fresh 3 - 9 , 2continued 018 | PAto G Ede29 cline to comment on Northeast Ohio locations.

“We don’t comment on our future store roadmap,” an Amazon spokeswoman wrote by email.

Amazon has opened about 30 Amazon Fresh stores across the nation since the debut of the concept two years ago.

Stan Bullard: sbullard@crain.com, (216) 771-5228, @CrainRltywriter

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CLASSIFIEDS To place your listing in Crain’s Cleveland Classifieds, contact Suzanne Janik at 313-446-0455

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PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

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CONSTRUCTION

ENGINEERING / CONSULTING

HOSPITALITY / TOURISM

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Tober Building Company

CT Consultants, Inc.

Kimpton Schofield

Ulmer & Berne LLP

Rodney Spurlock and Matt Rutledge joined Tober Building Co. in 2022 and both serve as Project Superintendent.

Rod has been a Superintendent for 10+ Spurlock years, and a Journeyman Carpenter for 14 years, focusing on home building. He utilizes his experience to get jobs done efficiently and reliably with hands-on project management. For 20 years, Matt has co-led many of the biggest building projects in Cleveland. He is skilled Rutledge in all areas of commercial carpentry management, including steel and industrial construction.

He has extensive experience in cold form steel framing, steel stud curtain wall construction, interior systems, and engineered systems and excels in lean-practice and high-quality standards.

Rod and Matt are tried and true leaders of the industry.

CT is pleased to announce Diane L. Oress, PE as a new shareholder. Diane has 20 years of experience and is a Vice President and Market Leader for CT’s Lakeshore Market, which covers northeast Ohio and northwest Pennsylvania. As a Market Leader, she ensures CT’s resources meet our client’s desired outcomes, including quality, scope, schedule, and budget. Diane is also responsible for engaging, coaching, and developing staff, emphasizing quality communications and attention to detail.

George Toma, an emerging leader on the local hotel scene for over a decade, has joined the Kimpton Schofield Hotel as director of sales and marketing.

His top priority is ensuring unparalleled accommodations and personal experiences for guests. The boutique property in the heart of downtown Cleveland offers respite and relaxation with warm, modern finishes and whimsical, custom décor pieces that celebrate the rich social and industrial history of the area.

Ulmer welcomes Kim Stein as a partner in the Trusts & Estates Practice Group. With extensive trust and estate planning experience, she provides counsel relating to estate and retirement planning; individual, fiduciary, and corporate income and transfer tax matters and controversies; trust and estate administration; and formation, qualification, and ongoing compliance of charitable organizations. She earned her B.A. with honors from University of Rochester and her J.D. from Cornell Law School.

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DLZ Ohio, Inc.

CONSULTING

Gallagher Gallagher Benefit Services is pleased to welcome Rob Elwood to the Gallagher team.

Rob joins us as the Retirement Practice Leader for the Ohio and Michigan Regions. Rob brings over 30 years of experience in the Retirement Plan Industry. Our clients will greatly benefit from his adaptability when it comes to providing in-depth consulting services in an ever-changing retirement plan landscape.

DLZ is pleased to announce that Lindsay Lenze, MSc, joined our firm bringing more than 16 years of experience in construction services, management and previously, building product manufacturing.

Based out of our Akron, Ohio office, Lindsay’s primary focus will be coordinating Northeast Ohio’s business development efforts.

Having formerly led marketing, business development and national account strategies, she naturally aligns very well with DLZ’s culture and business mode.

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

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LAW FINANCIAL SERVICES

Ancora

NEW GIG?

Buckingham is proud to welcome attorney Andrew C. Stebbins to their Cleveland office as Partner in the Litigation Practice Group, with a focus on online defamation. He brings with him more than a decade of litigation experience, handling every aspect of litigation and trial in both state and federal courts. In recent years, due to increasing demand, he has focused on representing clients whose reputations have been inappropriately damaged.

We are happy to announce that Andrew Page has joined Ancora as Director of Corporate Development to seek growth opportunities for the firm including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, capital raising opportunities and new market entrances. Prior to joining Ancora, he worked as a member of Focus Financial Partners’ investment team after beginning his industry experience with Colebrook Capital as an analyst. Andrew earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from St. John’s University.

Taft Cary M. Snyder has rejoined Taft as of counsel in Cleveland.

With a practice focused on higher education, news media, and health care, Cary has developed substantial experience over the past decade litigating sophisticated matters before trial and appellate courts.

Cary has defended colleges and universities in matters involving claims of defamation, breach of contract, and Title IX gender discrimination. He also represents media companies to safeguard their right to access public records.

LAW

Ulmer & Berne LLP Ulmer welcomes Daniel Utrata as an associate in the firm’s Health Care Practice Group. He will assist with a variety of real estate and corporate transactional matters, including commercial real estate leasing, acquisition, and disposition, as well as with business counseling, mergers and acquisitions, commercial contracts, corporate governance, and compliance. He earned his B.A. and M.A. from Ohio University, and his J.D. from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law.

PERFORMANCE

From Page 8

Different situations call for different leadership styles, and an organizational leader must take an active role in being aware of the current situation. This awareness will afford the opportunity to deploy the appropriate style(s) and/or behavior, which is where true leadership takes place. One of the easier leadership styles to apply in any situation is authentic leadership.

Authentic leadership contains the core aspects of self-awareness, ethics and values. In other words, be yourself and remain true to yourself! Knowing and acting authentically demonstrates self-awareness, which exudes an understanding of a leader’s sense of the world. A leader’s true self emerges, creating an environment for others to be comfortable with contributing ideas and solutions that will improve performance.

Therefore, being self-aware and acting authentically through experiences that shaped your identity creates trust and influence.

Organizational leaders need to help followers accomplish goals.

While there are a multitude of ways to help followers, you can start with reflection, assessing human capital, empowerment and being authentic. The only investment these behaviors require is time and your ability to deploy these behaviors. As a leader, improving organizational performance begins with you, so if you’re needing to improve your organization’s current situation, before hiring consultants, consider changing your behaviors. What have you got to lose?

THE WEEK TAX CREDITS A REALITY: A $5 million state historic tax credit will help developers remake the former Phantasy Entertainment Complex in Lakewood into a polestar for the region’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities. The property, once known as the Homestead Theatre Block, won the largest possible award this week in a fierce contest for state preservation aid. The building is slated to house new venues and small businesses as part of a broader project called Studio West 117. Gov. Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Development announced almost $40 million in tax credits on Wednesday, June 22, for 38 projects across the state. That list included 10 Northeast Ohio winners, from a former Cleveland public school to a downtown Elyria building earmarked for an esports hub.

HOME SWEET HOME: For Firestone Racing, Akron is, and will always be, home. The city that saw the launch of the iconic Firestone brand in 1900 will now house Firestone race tire manufacturing — namely the Firestone Firehawk race tire — for the NTT IndyCar Series in a new factory. Bridgestone Americas on Wednesday, June 22, christened the $21 million, 80,000-square-foot facility, which involved new construction and renovations. The site, across the street from one of Bridgestone’s three major global R&D centers, features the latest manufacturing technologies to advance the innovation around race tires.

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crainscleveland.com

Publisher and CEO KC Crain Group publisher Jim Kirk (312) 397-5503 or jkirk@crain.com Executive editor Elizabeth McIntyre (216) 771-5358 or emcintyre@crain.com Associate publisher Amy Ann Stoessel (216) 771-5155 or astoessel@crain.com Managing editor Scott Suttell (216) 771-5227 or ssuttell@crain.com Assistant managing editor John Kappes (216) 771-5359 or john.kappes@crain.com Web editor Damon Sims (216) 771-5279 or dpsims@crain.com Assistant editor Rachel Abbey McCafferty (216) 771-5379 or rmccafferty@crain.com Art director Kayla Byler (614) 312-7635 or kayla.byler@crain.com Senior data editor Chuck Soder (216) 771-5374 or csoder@crain.com Cartoonist Rich Williams REPORTERS

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