SUMMER 2020
Change Agent LOCAL LEADERS REACT TO COVID AND SET THE STAGE
TELEHEALTH’S MOMENT Now comes the big push to cement gains
FOR FUTURE GROWTH
Sales snapshot How grocery habits evolved during the pandemic
PARTY ON? Three pros on the uncertain future of events
HE LLO T H E RE, Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce member! You've received this quarterly magazine as part of the Chamber's expanded partnership with the Post. In each issue, you'll find insights from and profiles of a range of Middle Tennessee leaders as well as deeper dives into the worlds of development, health care and technology. If you enjoy it and also want to subscribe to the Post’s daily newsletters, please call Gary Minnis at 615-844-9307.
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In its 21st year, the Greater Nashville Technology Council is the leading voice and advocate for Middle Tennessee’s $8 billion information technology ecosystem; and the 50,000 technology professionals who design, implement, manage, and safeguard the technology that powers our region’s economy. Our vision is to establish and support a premiere collaborative and inclusive tech community with the mission of leading greater Nashville into the world that is becoming. 500 Interstate Blvd. S, Suite 200, Nashville, TN 37210 Website: https://technologycouncil.com Twitter: @NashTechCouncil
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on leveraging big data and Founded in 1999, the Greater analytics in a two-day hybrid event Nashville Technology Council (NTC) supports Middle Tennessee’s featuring virtual and in-person presentations, workshops, and technology industry and its 520+ networking on September 21-22, member companies. The NTC 2020. The 2020 Analytics Summit coordinates local technology is Presented by AWS. workforce development and education, connects professionals Those attending in-person to cultivate a collaborative will meet at the Omni Hotel in community, and unites around Downtown Nashville. policies that nurture Combined with those expansion and attract participating online, both talent and the NTC is expecting businesses. The NTC’s 850+ attendees vision is to establish from hundreds of and support a organizations across premiere collaborative Middle Tennessee and and inclusive tech surrounding technology community with the communities. The mission of leading program includes 55+ greater Nashville Hilary Mason workshop & speaker into the world that is sessions presented by experts becoming. on a wide array of cutting edge topics and across a spectrum One of the most successful of applicable industries. This examples of the NTC’s work is the year includes a healthcare growing BI & Analytics peer group analytics track in partnership which connects professionals with Tennessee HIMSS. The NTC around effectively leverage big and committee are excited to data and analytics. Members of the peer group organize work with announce Hilary Mason, the Data Scientist in Residence at leading the NTC to produce the annual Silicon Valley venture capital firm Analytics Summit. In its 7th year, Accel Partners, as the keynote the 2020 Analytics Summit is speaker of the 2020 Summit. Nashville’s premiere conference
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S PE C I A LT IE S Greater Nashville IT Summit 2020 A hybrid in-person/virtual, one day conference hosted both at The Renaissance in Downtown Nashville and online, designed to provide high-quality, forward-looking content to IT practitioners at all levels, as well as provide opportunities for networking and peer-to-peer learning. This year’s conference theme will be “Leading Nashville into the World That is Becoming,” with keynotes, panels, and breakout sessions focused on how companies, individuals, and the greater Nashville tech community can and will excel in a post-COVID 19 world. GreaterNashvilleITSummit.com Tech Hill Commons Middle Tennessee’s tech event space is excited to welcome you back into our space beginning on August 1st! We are now accepting reservations for all of our spaces with the adjusted capacities. For more information, please visit TechHillCommons.com
12 UNTAPPED POTENTIAL Programs address female underrepresentation in tech SUMMER 2020
20 THREE QUESTIONS Vibronyx’s Clayton Nicholas talks defense industry focus
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YOU SHOULD KNOW David Lax’s Premier team makes factory floors more intelligent
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DATA BANK A statistical look at automation, interoperability, AI
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THREAT LEVEL RISING COVID’s spread brought with it a new wave of cyberattacks
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MANUFACTURING EXPERIENCE Debbie Gordon takes aim at an urgent cybersecurity need
OTHER
22 BANKRUPTCY BOOM Are there enough lawyers to handle the expected wave of cases?
24 SHOPPING SPREES A mobile shopping app reflects our pandemic behaviors
VITALS
25 TELEHEALTH’S BIG PITCH Up next: An all-out push to cement gains made under COVID
28 COPING STRATEGIES How big names from the health care ecosystem tackled the virus crisis
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SUMMER 2020 | NASHVILLEPOST.COM
BOOM
30 HOW TO REOPEN YOUR OFFICE Outlandish ideas can get the conversation started
31 REMAKING MALLS More changes are coming to Nashville’s indoor and outdoor retail centers
LEADERS
34 PART Y ON Three local pros discuss the uncertain future of events
35 WEATHERING THE STORM Nonprofit pro offers take on the financial future of charitable organizations
36 ALL-STAR BOARD The Post picks six local leaders for its eighth edition
FAVORITES
38 FOND OF THE BROWNS Ed Lanquist outlines his evolution of his whiskey appreciation
14 CHANGE AGENT Local leaders react to COVID and prep for future growth
DANIEL MEIGS
NASHVILLEPOST.COM | SUMMER 2020
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OPEN
Sharing some answers You likely saw the jokes online in March and April: “It’s unprecedented how much I’ve used the word ‘unprecedented’ lately.” More than three months after the spread of COVID-19 laid low large chunks of the economy, we’re still figuring out many aspects of the path back to something that might feel normal and acceptable. It feels like there are still many more questions than answers. But there are answers out there — and paths forward that can lead not just to recovery but also to entirely new forms of growth. In this issue, we’ve sought to gather some ideas and strategies from Middle Tennessee leaders looking to bounce back from the blows of the coronavirus. In addition to the nimble entrepreneurs highlighted in our cover story, there are best practices for reopening your office or hosting your next corporate event and insights into the evolutions of telehealth and cybersecurity. We’ll bet you still have lots of questions, but we’re hoping we’ve shared a few answers here. The team at the Post also has worked its way through plenty of changes and challenges in the past few months. Along with our colleagues and friends at the Nashville Scene, Nfocus and Williamson Homepage, we’ve (mostly) been based at home, juggling short-term needs with long-term priorities. On the latter front, we’re looking forward to unveiling this summer a refurbished website that will work even better on mobile devices while enhancing several features. If this is the first you’re holding one of our quarterly magazines, I encourage you to subscribe to our daily emails to stay abreast of the region’s changes as they’re happening. I’d like to thank our subscribers, advertisers and event sponsors for their support; we look forward to discovering more answers and growing out of this crisis alongside you. Geert De Lombaerde, Editor gdelombaerde@nashvillepost.com
editorial EDITOR Geert De Lombaerde MANAGING EDITOR William Williams STAFF WRITERS Matt Blois, Stephen Elliott, Nancy Floyd Michael Gallagher, Kara Hartnett
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PARTNER LET TER
Our year began with a robust series of conversations involving our staff and board of directors to explore our values and mission. The key values that emerged repeatedly during those exercises were integrity, collaboration, entrepreneurial mindset, creativity and promoting inclusion of all individuals and organizations. We renewed our vision to establish and support a premiere collaborative and inclusive tech community with the mission of “leading greater Nashville into the world that is becoming.” The extraordinary events in the months since those January conversations have only served to amplify the importance of these values and mission. Our world is fundamentally changing. Technology has shattered barriers and shrunk the world, reducing the distances between industries and societies - and this decade will host the most dramatic workforce transition ever seen in the history of our nation. In a world driven by devices and technology we must remember that the future is not about technology, but people. The World Economic Forum’s 2018 Future of Jobs report suggests that, by 2022, no less than 54% of all employees will require significant reskilling and upskilling. Technology can play a role in reducing racial, gender and economic inequalities for vast numbers of people. Nashville is incredibly well positioned to lead into this transformation. The Nashville region has become a premier destination for innovation and creativity. Over the last decade, Nashville has emerged as one of our nation’s leading growth cities. By training a new army of workers to find and solve critical problems, we can shape the future of our world. The future is bright, but true success will only come by creating an inclusive community with opportunities for all, regardless of race, gender, or class.
Brian Moyer President & CEO Greater Nashville Technology Council
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YOU SHOULD KNOW
David Lax Premier president and his team make factory floors more intelligent
DAVID L AX AND HIS TEAM at Premier System Integrators spend plenty of time on factory floors without getting involved with their clients’ actual mechanical processes. Instead, the company’s mechanical and computer engineers design the systems that show what’s going on with those production lines. As Lax, Premier’s president since last year, sums up, the company makes factories manufacturing processes more productive and intelligent. Premier’s ability to do that grew significantly earlier this year via the acquisition of Feed Forward, an Atlanta-area peer. That deal grew Premier’s workforce to 200 and added a Georgia office to go with locations in Middle Tennessee, Huntsville and Cincinnati. The company is on track to ring up $45 million in revenue this year. Lax started at Premier 22 years ago as an engineer out of college and spent a decade with the company before heading to business school with an eye on returning to the finance and accounting side of the business. After earning an MBA from Middle Tennessee State University and a master’s in finance from Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management, one of his projects was to study liquidity scenarios options for the firm’s five founders, who had joined forces in 1991.
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ERIC ENGLAND
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In 2014, that project began the process of turning Premier into a broadly-owned company via an employee stock ownership plan. That move, he says, has helped create a virtuous circle where Premier’s people are more invested in the company’s and clients’ successes and thus enable the company to better reward them. Premier has grown into a regional player in part thanks to the convergence over time of interfaces linked to factory-floor technology and traditional IT systems helping drive broader business decisions such as inventory management. There’s much more ground to pave there, Lax says, because “everybody’s collecting data but there still aren’t many applications for it.” Another emerging opportunity is cybersecurity. As plant floors and their components have become — like most other parts of our economy — connected to so many other things, they have become increasingly vulnerable to hacking. These considerations are especially important to infrastructure facilities, for instance.
‘Everybody’s collecting data but there still aren’t many applications for it.’
Premier’s top customer segments are food/ beverage and automotive while pulp/paper, specialty chemicals and consumer goods also are important industries. What many customers have in common, Lax says, is that they have in recent years become more hesitant to commit to big projects — particularly as the expansion of the 2010s became a record-breaker. Rather than involve Premier starting early in the planning process, Lax says a just-in-time approach has increasingly become the norm, meaning his team has to prove very quickly the value of its often intricate work when it does get called on. “If you’re selling widgets, that’s one thing…,” he chuckles.
Teaming with Feed Forward should help with that over time, too. The company, Lax says, “looked a lot like us” and has added to the team numerous experienced people who will enable Premier to sharpen its training systems and broaden workers’ knowledge base. A recent reorganization of Premier’s engineering business unit — part of its 2019 strategic plan — included making members of its leadership team directly responsible for technical training and development. “This will allow us to impose a greater degree of accountability and to create a more intentional plan to develop our engineering staff with less dependency on the traditional model of on-the-job training,” Lax says.
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DRIVING CHANGE Hundreds of health care C-suiters, insurance execs and doctor leaders were asked late last year which factor is most likely to drive interoperability in the U.S. health care system. About one of five said patients but more are looking to the government and technology.
Data Bank SOMETIMES, TRANSFORMATIONS HAPPEN VERY QUICKLY, powered by shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic. At other times, the overhaul is long-heralded yet gradual. Here’s a little grab bag about some of the big changes the economy has been grappling with and likely will continue to face.
Physician-driven initiatives ........................................................9% Adoption of APIs ........................................................................10% Consumer demand.................................................................... 21% Tech to support data exchange ..............................................26% Regulatory changes ..................................................................27%
THE NEW WAY
Source: Change Healthcare’s 2020 Industry Pulse Report
A Boston research firm this spring tried to quantify the productivity impact of the giant shift toward working from home by surveying nearly 330 professionals. Here are some key figures from its findings.
MACHINE POWER hours The average workday length, starting at 8:15 and ending at 6
Doctors are generally more upbeat about the influence of artificial intelligence and machine learning on health care than insurers. Here’s where the biggest gaps are between the two groups when asked if AI is creating positive change.
minutes The time spent per day dealing with tech issues
Doctors
The average reported drop in productivity among all respondents
Improving system efficiency
percent
percent
Insurers
56%
The average reported drop in productivity among those without other adults or kids at home
Source: Valoir
38% Reducing costs 42% 28%
AUTOMATION APACE Driven by big growth from auto manufacturers and the plastics and rubber sectors, robot orders in North America rose slightly in 2019 to nearly 30,000 units worth $1.68 billion. Here’s the approximate average price of a robot unit ordered in the past 10 years.
Empowering more productive doctors 36% 32% Source: Change Healthcare’s 2020 Industry Pulse Report
$70K
$64,187
$56,056
$60K
$50K 2010
2015
Source: Robotic Industries Association
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2019
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Threat level rising
MANY MORE PHISH IN THE SEA
The spread of COVID brought with it a new wave of cyberattacks
Cyberrisks spread like wildfire as the coronavirus made its way across the world. Here are a few data points.
BY KARA HARTNETT
he virtual war didn’t stop when the pandemic hit. It raged on more tactically and maliciously than ever before. The phishing schemes and malware came from all over the globe and from different cyber-terrorism groups and nation-states. They targeted consumer data and information about the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, putting health care companies who were already experiencing a disproportionate share of cyber attacks at an even higher risk of a breach. The Center for Strategic and International Studies says that in March, organizations coming out of China, Iran and elsewhere took aim at manufacturing, media, health care and nonprofit organizations as part of an espionage campaign. And in May, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced they were investigating attempts to compromise data and other intellectual property from institutions conducting research on COVID-19. As the nation reckoned with a global contagion that has — within months — infected more than 2 million people in the United States and 8 million across the globe, hackers worldwide took advantage of the news cycle and temporary workforce changes to con people into exposing their personal data through phishing attacks — which rose 600 percent during the onset of the pandemic — and other malware. They used tactics such as disguised emails car-
T
rying malicious attachments as updates on the coronavirus, mirrored links to popular video chat platforms like Zoom and Google Hangouts to harvest data, and even developed applications that when downloaded corrupt a person’s mobile phone with ransomware. “If you aren’t thinking about it, [these attempts] might seem perfectly normal at a time like this, and very reasonable. But if you act on any of the links that are included, or websites they send you to, or click on the attachments within these things, in many cases right now you are going to find yourself a victim,” says Jon Moore, chief risk officer at Nashville-based Clearwater Compliance. “They are unloading malware that may be harvesting credentials, the usernames, account names, other email addresses you might have, taking over systems.” The rapid growth of virtual private networks — in many cases being widely used for the first time after being rolled out on short notice when public health officials ordered lockdowns — also has made companies vulnerable. And the decline in regulation and subsequent expansion of telehealth also has created new cyber risks for consumers and health care organizations using unsecured networks. Moore says many organizations being pulled or pushed into new technological environments “were not necessarily prepared to implement telework” and may have vulnerabilities they don’t know about.
Phishing sites detected by Google January ................................... 149,195 February................................. 292,235 March ......................................522,495 Source: Google, PCMag
COVID-related spearphishing email attacks January .........................................137 February.................................... 1,188 March* ...................................467,825 Source: Barracuda Networks * Through March 23
COVID-themed threats January ..................................... 1,200 February................................. 10,000 March ...................................380,000 Source: Zscaler
Suspicious newly registered domains January ..................................... 3,223 February.................................. 10,165 March ......................................96,743 Source: Zscaler
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‘It could take years to assess the damage that has been done.’ JON MOORE, CLEARWATER COMPLIANCE
Not surprisingly, a lot of businesses and government agencies won’t speak publicly about current cybersecurity affairs so as to not expose their strategies or vulnerabilities to bad actors. This has been especially true during the spread of COVID-19. Large hospital organizations declined opportunities to discuss the influx of attacks their networks may be experiencing, keeping any struggles hidden from public view. The State of Tennessee has not yet reported any breaches in its networks this year and could not provide data on the number of attempts to do so. ‘Yet’ is the keyword there, according to Moore. It can take some time to identify various forms of malware as well as a breach in computer networks, and victims often aren’t notified until well after their data is exploited. “Here’s the problem: Organizations being hacked right now may not know it for some time. It typically takes months for any orga-
Aligning Performance For Smarter Outcomes
nization to ever realize they’ve been hacked,” Moore says. “There are probably organizations being hacked right now and don’t even know it. It could take years to assess the damage that has been done.” This daunting specter appears to be spurring a massive response: New market intelligence reports global spending within the security analytics market is estimated to jump from about $5 billion in 2019 to more than $28 billion by 2027, with U.S. organizations making up the largest share. Moore says past cybersecurity failures are making executives more eager to not be the next case study. “The primary reason cybersecurity executives fail is because of their inability to prove value at the business level,” he says. But with the average cost of a cyberattack rising steadily and sometimes dramatically, that value is becoming more clearly visible.
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TECHIE
‘We manufacture experience’ Debbie Gordon’s latest venture takes aim at an urgent cybersecurity need BY GEERT DE LOMBAERDE
survey published last year by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium, an industry group better known as (ISC)2, featured some stark statistics: The number of people employed in cybersecurity jobs around the world stands at around 2.9 million — but the estimated shortfall is a whopping 4.1 million and growing, with nearly one in seven of those in North America. “It’s a big ask,” the (ISC)2 report says rather understatedly. Local entrepreneur Debbie Gordon is helping provide some answers. Launched nearly two years ago, Cloud Range markets a simulation platform that helps companies recreate their tech platforms to train on cybersecurity scenarios much as pilots train in flight simulators. The goal is to boost the experience of security analysts and other tech operations pros as they chase and anticipate the threats posed by so-called black hats and other hackers. “People can’t keep up with the types and number of threats out there,” says Gordon, who previously built Snappy Auctions and S3 Asset Management. “We manufacture experience […] People can’t practice in real time.” Many organizations appear to understand their need in this regard: Gordon says 90 percent of her team’s leads are inbound. Cloud Range’s client base includes big employers — two of the Big Four accounting firms and several Fortune 500 names — in finance, travel, technology and education and spans the globe. So far this year, Cyber Range teamed up with Global Secure Solutions in Ghana to expand its reach across Africa and signed a distribution deal in the Middle East. Now at about 10 people — including former Post publisher Tori Hughes in Nashville and a technical team in Toronto — Gordon expects to at least double her sales and marketing squad in the coming six months with the help of some funding from two investors. Jumping into the cybersecurity sphere has been an interesting change of pace for Gordon in terms of strategy and leadership. Snappy Auction grew quickly in the mid-2000s — from being bootstrapped to an $18 million business with a network of franchisees in just a few years — but there’s an extra urgency that comes with running Cloud Range. “Other things I’ve done in the past were truly organic,” she says. “I have to move really fast here. There’s not a lot of time.”
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DANIEL MEIGS
NASHVILLEPOST.COM | SUMMER 2020
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Untapped potential Programs take aim at women’s underrepresentation in tech BY KARA HARTNETT
omen represent an untapped labor market needed to fill out the Nashville technology workforce. The Greater Nashville Technology Council reported there was a more than 1,500-person labor deficit in technology jobs in the region in 2014 — and the sector has grown 30 percent since then. In 2018, the number of tech jobs in Middle Tennessee, defined here as Davidson and 14 surrounding counties, totaled 49,465, according to research by Middle Tennessee State University Professor Amy Harris. That was an increase of 7.3 percent from the mark of 2017 and grew the tech sector’s share of all jobs in the region to nearly 4.3 percent. Women’s representation in those roles is not growing at the same rate, however. Females make up half of the population and 48.6 percent of the overall workforce, but they held just 36 percent of Middle Tennessee tech jobs in 2018. Still, Middle Tennessee is actually ahead of the curve nationally. While there is still a long way to go to reach gender parity by tapping a talent pool needed to fill job deficits, the number of women represented in the region’s tech workforce was 3.2 percentage points ahead of the national average. Prior to the dramatic economic shock caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, technology jobs in Middle Tennessee were projected to grow 15 percent by 2023, beating the national average by six points. According to the National Center for Women and
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Information Technology, new additions to the labor force will be able to fill only about 30 percent of those jobs, making it necessary for the Nashville region and many others to tap talent pools not already making their way into the IT jobs pipeline. Local colleges and universities house nearly 125,000 students in the surrounding area but only 6,000 of them are enrolled in tech-related majors. And women aren’t well represented in that group: The National Center for Education Statistics says women earn more than 61 percent of associate degrees and 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees across all U.S. post-secondary schools, but those numbers fall dramatically when analyzing tech programs: Only 20 percent of graduates are female. The diversity picture drawn by recent admissions data is even more bleak. Of all technology degrees sought in 2018, only 2 percent were from Black women, 1.8 percent were from Hispanic women, 3.5 percent from Asian women and 0.0002 percent from Native-American women. The education system isn’t the only driver of workforce equity, but it certainly is a basis for development. The Tech Council has been working to fill the labor deficit by adding to the region’s technology education initiatives and community outreach work. Its Apprenti Tennessee program was born with the mission to fill mid-tier tech jobs through apprenticeship programs built for compatible workers despite their educational background — with an extra focus on recruiting women, minorities and military veterans to diversify the local workforce. The council also offers summer camps and internship programs for high school and college-level students, reaching deeper into the future of Nashville’s workforce and driving students’ interest in tech before they choose their post-secondary specializations. Women in Technology in Tennessee, a community-based organization founded 20 years ago to support women in the technology sector, provides programming and leadership development for members and companies seeking to drive gender equity. The group also launched a mentorship program in partnership with Lipscomb University and MTSU that pairs professional women technologists with female undergraduate students to keep them engaged in the science. According to recent workforce development research, girls typically become interested in STEM futures around the age of 11 but many lose interest by age 14, citing a lack of mentorship and gender inequality as the main contributing factors. WiTT’s mentorship program looks to change that, and last November, the program enjoyed record enrollment.
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FINANCIAL ADVISORS
helping clients
‘Part of the secret sauce of that is that we’ve got a community here that is committed to improving on the status quo.’ AMY HARRIS, MTSU
UNEVEN PROGRESS A 2019 study of 26 tech occupations across Middle Tennessee showed that women hold 36 percent of all jobs in the sector. Here’s how women are represented in the three top-paying job categories, which have salaries at least 40 percent greater than the overall median of about $72,100.
Computer and information systems managers Median salary: $114,800 Percent women: 29.8%
Marketing managers Median salary: $109,000 Percent women: 48%
Computer network architects Median salary: $101,600 Percent women: 15.6% Source: MTSU Department of Information Systems & Analytics
“I’m always just intensely proud of the dedication and commitment of the tech community here to improving gender representation,” Harris says. “You won’t get this looking just at the numbers, but there’s just a different culture here. I think tech in general gets a bad reputation because of a lot of the stereotypes that come from Silicon Valley, and I’m not going to pretend that there aren’t those cultural elements here. But it is different and better here.” Harris says the most successful diversity initiatives come from private businesses themselves. In Nashville, she points to AllianceBernstein and Asurion as companies that have shown a big commitment to bridging the gender divide in tech jobs. As with many other diversity initiatives, such strategies can also be highly profitable: A recent Bloomberg study found female-led private technology companies are more capital-efficient, achieve 35 percent higher returns on investment, and, when venture-backed, bring in 12 percent more revenue than male-owned tech companies. While growth projections have mostly been thrown out the window amid the economic uncertainty caused by COVID-19, Harris says the tech sector has remained strong relative to other industries. As growth returns to Middle Tennessee, she hopes the community will continue breaking down societal divides and recruiting a diverse workforce in which innovation can thrive. “The numbers show we are at a minimum consistent and in some ways ahead of gender representation,” she says. “But I also think that part of the secret sauce of that is that we’ve got a community here that is committed to improving on the status quo.”
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CHANGE AT
WARP SPEED Local tales of the rapid journey from shock to adaptation to recovery No one could escape the jolt of mid-March. Sure, we could see the COVID-19 pandemic on the horizon, but few of us expected its arrival to be so sudden or its effects to be so brutal. In the course of a month, the Middle Tennessee economy lost an eighth of its jobs and entire industries were forced to reconsider much of what they do. On the following pages are a few stories of how local companies — in retail, technology, health care and manufacturing — did just that. Their case studies showcase the agility and the bravery to try new things, confidence in their teams and plans — whatever plans were needed in the moment — and compassionate and purposeful leaders charting a way through the storm. We hope you’ll find some inspiration in their stories as you (re)write your own. BY GEERT DE LOMBAERDE, KARA HARTNET T AND MAT T BLOIS
SHAUN SHANKEL, FRESH TECHNOLOGY CEO ERIC ENGLAND
NASHVILLEPOST.COM | SUMMER 2020
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Doing the next right thing Faced with wrenching changes, here’s how four local companies adapted to the COVID world BY GEERT DE LOMBAERDE
resh Technology CEO Shaun Shankel was walking the aisles of a Costco the second Saturday of March when his phone buzzed. One of his sales reps sent word that his phone was verily glowing with customers asking about the company’s to-go ordering systems. The growing awareness of COVID-19 had rapidly turned into a very tangible threat as many restaurant operators found themselves under dine-in shutdown orders from one day to the next. “We organized a Sunday meeting to prioritize,” Shankel says. “Early the next week, all hell broke loose.” By the end of that middle week of March, many restaurant brands had seen their sales fall up to 80 percent year over year. They were burning cash and looking for anything to bring in
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even a bare minimum of orders. So while the people at Fresh Technology market and service software for every aspect of a restaurant’s operations, the vast majority of their customers and prospects suddenly were interested only in being able to take online orders for pick-up or delivery. Shankel and his team scrambled their jets. Technologists were reassigned from refining Fresh Technology’s broader system to focus on the to-go offering, including adding the ability for clients to sell alcohol through that channel. New team members were hired even as the company — facing a steep revenue drop like so many of its customers — sought to preserve cash by deferring executives’ pay and cutting spending elsewhere. Strategic conversations became tactical, previously medium-term goals became right-now priorities and scenarios were drawn up and quickly redrawn. “There were many models. So many models,” says Shankel, who has led Fresh Technology since the company aligned with his former venture, ToGo Technologies, in 2017. “Our guiding question was, ‘What’s the next right thing?’ The interactions were somewhat beautiful. Everybody was developing our strategy on the fly.” The hustle paid off and, by mid-May, the day-to-day manic pressure was beginning to ease — thanks in part to a pending investment by
veteran local investor Joe Maxwell of FINTOP Capital. Shankel says Fresh Technology is in the midst of adding “a couple of thousand” restaurant locations to its previous customer base of about 5,000. It has added about 10 people to a team that totaled 40 at the start of the year and will hire that many again in the short term. By mid-2021, the plan is to be at 80 employees. “It was intense. It’s all still intense,” Shankel says.
Reacting and changing That’s saying something for Fresh Technology and its Fresh Hospitality cousin. Matt Bodnar, chairman of Fresh Technology’s board and a partner in Fresh Hospitality — where he led the company’s investments in Vui’s Kitchen and The Grilled Cheeserie, among others — says his team has long emphasized being agile and unafraid to make bold choices. In his words, the organization has “a rapid decision cadence” while also being prepared (and humble enough) to back out of a plan or change plans if the market sends feedback that it should. “Yes, you should know you general direction,” Bodnar says, “But we don’t get mired in analysis paralysis. We’ve seen organizations large and small do that and we’ve seen the consequences when they don’t act.”
ERIC ENGLAND
TECHIE
‘Everybody’s reacting and changing. I was thinking all the time that I need to be a steady hand on the tiller.’ SHAUN SHANKEL
What is today Fresh Technology began being built in the early days of Fresh Hospitality, when that company was developing Jim ’N Nick’s and Taziki’s. Software that was designed to make restaurants’ back offices — inventory and labor, for instance — run more smoothly was expanded to include customer-facing features. Think of the tablet-based systems that today handle the ordering and payment at Fresh concepts. The overarching aim is simple: Bring some of the technology and efficiency traditionally reserved for large chains to operators of a small number of restaurants. Tech insiders call this simplification — using one vendor for what in the past might have been three systems clumsily glued together — “collapsing the stack.” That unified package of services is one of the things that attracted Maxwell, who specializes in investing in back-end financial technologies, to Fresh Technology when the two parties began to talk last year. Even before the pandemic, one of Maxwell’s main investment themes was that many businesses, even enterprise-level organizations, no longer have the skill set or, more importantly, the time to gradually digitize their systems. “The time frame has definitely accelerated,” Maxwell says. “Large companies are coming to [Fresh] because they have no time to do it themselves.” And when they do, Shankel and his team are now better steeled and prepared to balance individual
organizations’ requests with their broader product goals. Fresh Technology’s CEO says the COVID experience has helped him “step out of the trenches more” and be as transparent as ever about the company’s goals and priorities. He says he realized he and the company’s other leaders needed to be on camera a lot as the pandemic changed life. That meant more expansive weekly check-ins with a team that was already dispersed at a handful of offices around the country and maintaining a steady stream of progress reports. “Everybody’s reacting and changing,” he says. “I was thinking all the time that I need to be a steady hand on the tiller. After the initial shock, the message was always, ‘We’re gonna come out on the other side of this.’” Looking ahead, Bodnar sees the upheaval from COVID’s shock as a classic opportunity-from-crisis moment, a chance for Fresh Technology to build wallet share among its newly acquired clients — which include its biggest-yet operator. The priority now is to press the advantage and use the knowledge acquired in recent months. “I’ve learned we are even more nimble than we thought we were. We have some great people who have done a great job being flexible and adaptable,” he says. “You need this weird mix of humility and decisiveness — and then be able to acknowledge if you’re wrong. But sitting and waiting for the right thing to do? There’s no time for that.”
Brennan Mason
Creating connections BY KARA HARTNETT
O
n March 19, two weeks after the first case of COVID-19 was identified in Tennessee, health care data integration company Bridge Connector began helping health care facilities integrate data points related to the virus into their electronic health records and clinical systems — free of cost. Data about the spread of COVID-19 was severely lacking at the time. State officials were reporting only confirmed cases and didn’t yet have the ability to tally the number of tests being administered at hospitals or the number of COVID-specific patients who were filling hospital beds. The situation called for an overhaul of how various health care clinical systems were talking to each so that public health officials could better understand the impact the virus was having. Nashville-based Bridge Connector specializes in getting various technology platforms within hospitals and other facilities to integrate their knowledge. Incorporating new data streams in health care can often be challenging, says Chief Marketing Officer Brennan Mason, but his team was able to pull off this project in a matter of weeks. “It’s really this network of connections that covers hundreds of different systems,” Mason says. “We can kind of pick and choose which systems need to be connected and make those connections faster than before.” Bridge Connector was able to link up the COVID data without diverting resources from its core operations, investing in new technology or contracting with extra technicians. “Everyone was just really bought in with how important this was.” Mason says. “There were a lot of people doing some crazy hours to almost treat that like a second job. It was really the human piece that let us do this and stay on track.” The Bridge Connector team initially said it would offer its new service for free for six months, but Mason says the company is in talks about extending that timeline as the pandemic persists and comprehensive data becomes more important than ever. The organizations that took advantage of the company’s offer were already clients, but recruiting new business wasn’t the sole purpose for the program. “We didn’t just want to sit on the sidelines,” Mason says.
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TECHIE
On the fast track BY MATT BLOIS
A
The beginning of a shift BY GEERT DE LOMBAERDE
ike so many other businesses, the arrival of COVID-19 momentarily stunned Ozark Riverz Manufacturing. As the economy went into lockdown, many retail, food and beverage, and education customers of the Murfreesboro-based maker of self-contained hand-washing stations put orders on hold or canceled commitments. “We honestly didn’t know what was going to happen,” says founder and CEO Martin Watts, whose team was researching just what it would take to be deemed an essential business under COVID’s restrictions. “Then the phones started going off like popcorn.” It turns out Ozark River, which employs 16 people, had become very essential to government agencies, hospitals and other organizations suddenly highly aware of the need for better hygiene practices. Orders were flying in for 200 or 300 stations — previously, a good-sized contract was 50 units — and clients and prospects wanted turnaround times faster than Ozark River could deliver. Watts and his team took a breath, gathered their thoughts and rallied suppliers to ensure they could deliver needed parts. Then it was time to turn to the KISS principle: They whittled their lineup options from 45 featuring a range of colors and counter styles to just four: white,
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black and two types of stainless steel. That helped them lower their prices from more than $1,500 per station to less than $1,000 while boosting output to about 40 per day if suppliers could keep up. Out went shipments to pop-up hospitals — 120 stations were sent to the Javits Center in New York City — as well as other health care facilities in the Northeast, home builders elsewhere and mining companies in Canada. “We just had to use logic and not overpromise,” Watts says of the surge. More than three months after the initial COVID shock, Watts and his team are still cranking out stations at beyond their normal maximum capacity, and he is investing in equipment to grow output. More than 900 units are in the pipeline and Watts expects to run his operation six days a week through at least mid-August. That’s not counting possible new contracts with school districts, big-name retailers and large employers eager to safely bring back their workers and customers. New public health standards are being shaped and they look to be a long-term boon for Ozark River. “It’s kind of mind-bending,” Watts says. “It’s been good to be a part of the solution, to feel essential. The team recognized the urgency and it’s given them great purpose.”
company in Franklin that normally builds miniature power plants this spring changed gears to design a simple ventilator to help hospitals handle the COVID-19 pandemic. Enexor, led by founder and CEO Lee Jestings, began distributing its new product after receiving emergency approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in June. The idea to transition the company’s manufacturing lines came from a doctor in a developing country who had previously partnered with Enexor to bring electricity to remote communities. Who was in desperate need of ventilators in the face of the coronavirus. In less than a month — and after consulting with doctors and respiratory therapists — the Enexor’s ventilator’s design was complete. Its simple design allows hospitals to easily store the machines without needing to continually recalibrate them. Initially, the company hoped to provide its ventilators to the doctors in developing countries that initially requested them during this outbreak or in future pandemics. However, Jestings says the company has received lots of immediate interest from within the United States as well. “We’re half the cost of anything else and it’s easy to store,” he says of the domestic interest. “Those are the same traits that are good if you’re in the middle of the Dominican Republic as well.” With some regulations having been relaxed, doctors can use the ventilators to treat patients today even though the Enexor equipment hasn’t undergone the same type of FDA review as a fully approved medical device. Scientific evidence must show that the device will be useful in treating COVID-19 to receive emergency approval. Enexor had begun manufacturing the ventilators by mid-June and was planning to ramp up production. Ventilators might not be the end of of Enexor’s product lineup expansion: Jestings and his team have been pondering the creation of other products to develop a health care portfolio. “The FDA, in a way, helped us,” he says. “We now know we can get our products FDA approved … We have confidence to bring other products to market.”
S PON S OR E D PROFIL E
Join Us In Shaping The Future of Tech COMPA N Y PROFIL E
We are a community committed to promoting women in technology through scholarships, education, community outreach, and networking.
We are a community committed to promoting women in technology through scholarships, education, community outreach, and networking. Whether you want to expand your expertise, connect with other women in tech or donate your time and resources, we invite you to join us in shaping the future of tech.
www.wittn.org
Women in Technology of Tennessee (WITT) Website www.wittn.org
All across Middle Tennessee, women in technology are dealing with the same challenges, craving the same opportunities, seeking new ways to grow, and looking for like-minded women to share it with. At WiTT, we connect women with a community that believes in and advocate for them.
Our History Women in Technology of Tennessee began in 1999 as a small group of female leaders in technology in the Nashville area. Since then, WiTT has expanded to include hundreds of members. It grew by word-of-mouth: women telling other women about a community where they can share their experiences, discover development opportunities, and help young women establish their own careers.
Our Mission Through education, networking, scholarships and community outreach, WiTT promotes women in technology and helps carve a path for the next generation. WiTT members contribute to the success of the amazing women in our community. We are committed to honoring those who have come before us and empowering the ones who will come after. Together, we’ll equip women throughout Middle Tennessee to shape the future of technology.
Our Pillars Education
We believe in learning from one another, sharing our knowledge and experiences, and equipping members to succeed in technology-related roles. Our educationfocused events allow members to expand their expertise and grow in their careers. Our WiTT educational events focus on an area of technology and feature a subject matter expert, technology executive from a local company, or a panel of female
technologyleaders.Thesemeetingsaregreat forums for women to educate themselves and learn more about the subject, while connecting with other successful women in IT.
Connection Monthly events and regular happy hours give you the chance to meet other women in technology and discover new opportunities. Learn from the experience of women ahead of you in their careers and lend your wisdom to those just starting out.
Outreach Through community outreach initiatives, we work to get more girls interested in technology —whether that’s introducing them to it for the first time or igniting their existing passion — through coding camps, workshops, internship opportunities, scholarships and more. WiTT gives back to our local community through outreach projects and provides volunteer opportunities for members.
Scholarships We provide scholarships to help high school and college girls, as well as women returning to school, succeed in technologyrelated fields. By serving students in Middle Tennessee, we foster the growth of female tech talent and positively influence our local workforce. WiTT partners with area businesses and educational institutions to offer a wide variety of scholarships. Our scholarships encourage and enable recipients to pursue technology-related careers and contribute to our local community of women in tech. To foster that community, we provide local scholarship recipients with the pportunity to join WiTT at no additional cost.
Twitter twitter.com/WiTTNashville Facebook facebook.com/ WomeninTechnologyofTennessee Learn More membership@wittn.org
S PE C I A LT IE S Education: Our education-focused events allow members to expand their expertise, grow in their careers, and succeed in technology-related roles. Connection: Monthly events and regular happy hours give you the chance to meet other women in technology and discover new opportunities. Outreach: Through community outreach initiatives, we work to get more girls interested in technology through coding camps, workshops, internship opportunities, scholarships and more Scholarships: We provide scholarships to help high school and college girls, as well as women returning to school, succeed in technology-related fields.
CON TAC T Email: membership@wittn.org
TECHIE
THREE QUESTIONS
Clayton Nicholas Vibronyx’s founder sees even more urgency in logistics
L AY TON NICHOL AS is founder and CEO of Nashville-based Vibronyx, a veteran-owned business process outsourcing company focused on the defense industry. Located in Brentwood, Vibronyx offers strategic consulting, data management, data integration, advanced analytics and cybersecurity. Nicholas founded the boutique company in 2018 and announced in May it has seen its contract with the federal Defense Logistics Agency extended.
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What led you to launch Vibronyx and target working with the armed forces? I began my career as an enlisted combat medic in the Army, and then as an officer after graduating from West Point. I worked for IBM after exiting the service in 2000 and focused on developing technology strategy and IT outsourcing solutions. Some of my projects required creating partnerships with other contractors, especially small businesses, to sell and deliver very large IT projects to the DoD and government clients. Throughout my career, I have used data, analytics and other technologies to drive innovation.
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TECHIE
I formed an interest in starting my own defense-contracting focused business [while] at IBM and decided to pursue that opportunity while considering a job transition a few years ago. Vibronyx was born out of the basic idea of bringing my digital innovation and analytics experience to the DoD to help support our nation’s defense, and then to develop a commercial side of the business. I used my network to further define the opportunity, develop a plan and build a team to get the business started. We won our first project with the Defense Logistics Agency in 2018 and have successfully grown the business with them and other clients. COVID-19 has generated a lot of conversations about supply chains. Do you see the virus creating an even greater demand for your services? The impacts of COVID-19 are putting a spotlight on supply chain disruptions and the capabilities needed to effectively respond. Companies and governmental organizations that are better prepared to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 have developed strong relationships with supply chain ecosystem suppliers and integrated key processes and decision-making using technology to be more responsive to disruptions in normal operations. This allows them to better understand supplier risks and enable business continuity strategies, while more readily matching evolving customer demand with production and inventory management. However, post-COVID, what will the “new normal” look like? Consumer preferences such as how we eat, shop and seek medical care have likely changed for good. Increased adoption of telework will also change the way products and services are designed, produced and delivered. Prior to COVID-19, there was already a push to use newer data integration technologies to unlock and integrate data from silo customer relationship management and enterprise resource planning systems.
Now, there is even more urgency for digital transformation strategy and to use cloud-based data integration, advanced analytics and other emerging technologies that we help clients implement. We’re excited about the opportunity to help organizations on their digital transformation journey and better understand customer demand and preferences — and link those insights to production, logistics and customer support capabilities. During your career, you’ve moved between big corporations such as Xerox and Walgreens to entrepreneurial ventures such as the original Change Healthcare and now Vibronyx. Thoughts? I have been fortunate to build a broad set of experiences with great teams and have learned a lot from our successes and missed opportunities. The structures and processes at larger organizations have often been unnecessarily bureaucratic and slow to adapt to market needs. However, I learned many best practices like how to properly manage a sales process and pipeline, develop customer success programs that improved client satisfaction and stickiness, and execute holistic talent management programs. In the smaller organizations, we often lacked some of those best practices or we were constantly evolving the organizational structures and processes to effectively scale the business. However, from this I learned how to prioritize efforts and build small but high-performing teams — as well as be nimble and adept at using the latest technologies to collaborate and drive efficiency in how things are executed. Your people are your greatest assets and your purpose is to drive value for clients. I try to take learnings to effectively cultivate talent in the organization, establishing clear goals and a culture that galvanizes engagement, with the vision of helping each other, our clients and communities to flourish.
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LEGAL
‘Bankruptcy is going to be a popular field of study’ Are there enough lawyers to handle the expected wave of cases? BY STEPHEN ELLIOTT
arc McNamee of Neal & Harwell has seen a lot in his 40-year career in bankruptcy law. First came the fall of the Butcher banks in 1983 and 1984. Then there was the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the savings and loan crisis of the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. The dot-com boom and bust and the 2008 financial market collapse followed. Each wave could be traced back to human activity, unlike the crescendo of bankruptcy filings McNamee expects to see as a result of COVID-19. “There is no way that we can have this level of unemployment and disruption in the service economies and not have fallout,” he says. Bankruptcy courts will be full of coronavirus fallout, experts believe, but attorneys haven’t yet seen much of an increase in cases. That will come late summer or early fall, predicts Nancy King of EmergeLaw. The lull in new filings can be traced to extreme uncertainty around the state of the econo-
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my, the timetable for recovery and the status of relief programs. Bankruptcy filings — unlike, say, unemployment rates — are a lagging economic indicator. “Most companies right now are either in the stunned phase, or they’re in the ‘I want to work it out with my bank’ phase, or possibly the ‘I’ve gotten a PPP loan, I think I might make it’ phase,” King says. “When all that comes to an end, I think Chapter 11 is going to end up being an option for a lot of those companies.” King left her longtime job as a clerk in federal bankruptcy court to enter private practice late last year. It may end up being auspicious timing: As bankruptcy filings rise and fall with the economy, so too do the number of local attorneys specializing in bankruptcy. The supply problem could be exacerbated in Nashville, where a decade of recovery and rapid development has seen more and more lawyers specializing on the front end of business deals. “That’s all we do, so we’re ready,” King says of EmergeLaw. “But other firms aren’t fully staffed for it. It’s almost like there’s a — not a whole generation but a long period of time where young lawyers haven’t been trained in the bankruptcy field because there was nothing to train them with. Bankruptcy is going to be a popular field of study for people in law school.” McNamee sees the same issue. He’s looking at younger attorneys at his firm who need “a little more seasoning” — that is, real-life bankruptcy experience. “When there’s no bankruptcy work to be done, good commercial lawyers have to find a way to get paid,” he says. “They go off and they do front-end work. The same thing happens when the real estate market dries up. When there weren’t any real estate loans being made, when there weren’t any big business deals being done driven by real estate, those lawyers had to go and find something else to do. So at that time, they became bankruptcy lawyers.” The flow of those skills was massively one-directional during Nashville’s 2010s boom, which saw the area economy add 288,000 jobs from the beginning of 2011 through the end of last year. Debtors filed 48 Chapter 11 cases in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Tennessee in 2019, down from an annual peak of 158 during the Great Recession. That number is sure to rise dramatically and will call for many lawyers to dust off their restructuring skills.
Nancy King
‘The early filers will be the ones that jump rather than being pushed.’ MARK MCNAMEE, NEAL & HARWELL
LEGAL
400
Business bankruptcies filed in the Middle District of Tennessee
FILINGS
368 350
Chapter 7
Bankruptcy lawyers are gearing up for a wave of new filings, after a steady decline since the height of the Great Recession.
300 250
Chapter 11 Chapter 13
Source: Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts
200
158 150
81 100
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Widespread pain One prominent Nashville industry bearing the brunt of COVID’s impact and likely to make a notable contribution to the expected bankruptcy boom: tourism and hospitality. In April, local employers in the leisure and hospitality sector laid off about half of their workers — roughly 60,000 people in the Nashville MSA. “They’re going to take it in the neck,” McNamee says. Companies like Ryman Hospitality, he says, will experience “a great deal of suffering for a period of time, driven by the fact that they simply can’t fill their resorts.” Other businesses that rely on large crowds on Lower Broadway are being similarly hit by the pandemic shutdowns. Another of Nashville’s most prominent industries, health care, could see mixed results as some companies suffer from months-long cancelations of elective procedures while others reap the reward of large-scale investment in certain priorities. A less visible beneficiary of Nashville’s recent growth could also take a hit: office space and commercial real estate. As many Nashville workplaces have transitioned to telework during the pandemic, executives may find it attractive to downsize their office leases. That could include some of the large corporations that have moved their headquarters to the area in recent years. Meanwhile, local and state governments strapped for cash will have less to give to lure new headquarters to town.
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42
30
50
126
104
147
2 2012
“We might see a lot of real estate bankruptcies as we come out of this and some companies decide they kind of like this model and they don’t need as much space as they had,” King says. The nature of recent growth in Middle Tennessee — as well as many other areas — could put more businesses in danger of falling into bankruptcy. Specifically, it’s been built on debt that has become more attractive thanks to very low interest rates. “Companies have been using debt to their advantage, so they’re all pretty leveraged up,” King says. “Now, most of them probably can’t make their debt service and they’re going to end up having to file to deleverage. That’s similar to what happened before with real estate. There was just no other option. They’d tried to work it out with the bank and it had failed.” That situation could create a competitive advantage for some businesses that come out of the Chapter 11 process “lean and mean” — unburdened by debt. While McNamee stops short of calling bankruptcy a competitive advantage under current circumstances, he points out that “clearly, bankruptcy does not have the stigma that it did 40 years ago.” Some businesses will be able to work out their issues with lenders without filing for bankruptcy protection, the attorneys say. According to McNamee, lenders prefer to work with loan recipients during hard times rather than push for bankruptcy, in part because it’s hard to get repaid
2019
in full through the bankruptcy process. That approach was evident during the early shock caused by COVID-19: Many lenders in the area, from small community banks to some of the country’s biggest financial names, rolled out forbearance programs for their customers. But those programs will run their course at some point and Chapter 11 is inevitable for some. “The early filers will be the ones that jump rather than being pushed,” McNamee says. “The later filers will be pushed. They’ll be pushed by their lenders; they’ll be pushed by the venture capitalists who backed them. They’re going to want to become more efficient, and they’re going to want to convert, to the extent that they can, debt to equity.” But with the challenge of a new wave of bankruptcy filings looming, one of the city’s most experienced bankruptcy attorneys might be sitting on the bench. This time around will be worse than 2008 or the fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and less predictable, McNamee says, and banks are going to become much more risk-averse after years of free-flowing cash. “I don’t know how ready I am,” McNamee says. “This would either be my fifth or sixth financial downturn, and I don’t know that I’ve got the fire in the belly to go ride out another. I’m 66. I’ve had all the fun I can stand. I’m happy to turn it over to my well-positioned lawyers in my firm.” Regardless of how closely he’ll be involved, McNamee knows one thing: “It’s coming.”
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RETAIL
Shopping sprees A mobile shopping app reflects our pandemic behavior
Early February Personal care wipes Toothpaste Feminine care products Chocolate Gummy, chewy candy Cookies
DECREASE
INCREASE
103% 74% 41% 39% 23% 15%
Mid-February Biscuit sales Meat and poultry Granola bars Instant potatoes
28% 48% 28% 25%
Early March 140% 132%
Hot dogs Meat and poultry Canned vegetables Pasta
114% 109%
Mid-March 26% 19%
Frosting, topping and decorations Flour
Early April
We all adjusted our routines when the COVID-19 shutdowns hit. We began working from home in earnest, we spent more time in the yard and we downloaded every food-ordering app we could find. And we changed what we bought from the store. Did we ever: The Post asked the team at mobile shopping app Ibotta, through which Nashville-area users buy more than 270,000 items per month, to dig into the outliers of the pandemic. From pre-COVID times through the first half of May, here are some of the items that diverged in a big way from their normal sales volumes. Look how much healthier we became after we ate all the hot dogs and baked all the cakes‌
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98%
Body lotion Gummy and chewy candy Chocolate Frosting, toppings and decorations Desserts 50% Ready-to-eat meals 49% Frozen dinners
35% 20% 15% 13%
Mid-April Mayonnaise Sugar Chocolate
19% 10% 10%
Early May Melons Berries Avocados Cookies Frozen desserts
57% 22% 21% 30% 29%
VITALS
Telehealth makes its big pitch Up next: An all-out push to cement gains made under COVID BY KARA HARTNETT
elehealth has been a buzzword in the industry for years — and has seemingly had its progress thwarted for about that long by restrictive regulations and a relative lack of insurance coverage. COVID-19 appears to have changed all that in the space of a few weeks. The technology got to flex its capabilities at scale throughout the pandemic, and providers collected data and invested in infrastructure they plan to leverage in future negotiations with insurers and lawmakers as they seek to make telehealth’s dramatic expansion permanent. The rapid shift to relying on virtual solutions as people isolated in their homes forced the industry to break through multiple barriers that had long held back telehealth’s growth. Greater access to the internet, looser government regulations and broader insurance reimbursements were key factors in the success of the massive ramp-up of telehealth in March. What had formerly seemed like a pipe dream to many in the sector — or at best a mighty long slog — has quickly exploded into a comprehensive delivery platform where spending is predicted to reach $250 billion this year. “We were able to accomplish more in two months than we had accomplished in five years,” Vanderbilt University Medical Center telehealth director Amber Humphrey says.
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As soon as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services committed in mid-March to reimbursing telehealth visits at the same rate as in-person visits, many private insurers followed suit. Other government agencies also loosened restrictive protocols to allow providers some breathing room during the pandemic, paving the way for patients to connect with their doctors without running the risk of contracting COVID-19. On their end, many doctors and other providers jumped on the opportunity and shifted resources to providing virtual medicine where they could, enabling them to stay connected to their patients and monitor their physical and mental health over a phone or computer — and bringing in at least some revenue that otherwise would have been lost entirely.
Humphrey and her team at VUMC were able to mobilize their existing telehealth platform from hosting a mere 10 visits per day to handling more than 2,000 per day across primary care, pediatrics, behavioral health and specialties. Humphrey says only 160 doctors in the system’s network were using telehealth prior to March. By June — and after hosting nearly 3,300 training sessions — more than 1,700 providers and hundreds of staff were on board. The nonprofit medical center also took advantage of loosened state licensure regulations to access out-of-state markets that were formerly unreachable. Humphrey says several doctors have under emergency statutes been granted temporary licenses for bordering states and will likely seek permanent licensing there once regular rules fall back into place.
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Thinking about next steps Having hosted more than 100,000 telehealth visits in less than three months, Humphrey says her team is now working to compile data and patient satisfaction surveys to pitch more permanent changes to lawmakers and insurance companies. Vanderbilt has been working for three years to enhance telehealth coverage in the state legislature, partnering with certain lawmakers to encourage payers to begin including full telehealth coverage in their benefits packages. Carriers have in the past voiced concerns about the potential overutilization of telehealth, but Humphrey says she hopes negotiations will be different this time. “Instead of just saying, ‘We would like to do this,’ now we can show them the data from their patients,” she says. “We can show the satisfaction. We will have real cost information. So I think it will be a more meaningful conversation.” Contracts Vanderbilt currently has with four commercial payers that have yet to commit to covering telehealth permanently — Aetna, Cigna, Humana and United, who combined make up a quarter of VUMC’s payer mix — will end within two years. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee, Vanderbilt’s largest private payer by far, was one of the first non-government plans to offer free telehealth coverage to its members in March, and committed to continuing covering telehealth permanently by May. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has made the same commitment. The chances seem good that VUMC and other providers will find a more receptive audience when insurer contracts come up for renewal. The trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans signed on to a letter sent in March to Vice President Mike Pence and Congressional leaders calling for steps to preserve/ expand access to care, including telehealth. The organization has since voiced support for longer-term measures that expand access and in early June published a blog post, written by two officials at DentaQuest, that called for lasting changes to telehealth policies to build on the wave of COVID-related moves. “This trend will have a lasting influence on consumers, who already want faster, more affordable, and more convenient health encounters, and can be the basis for securing more supportive policies and greater awareness about
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the types, tools, and benefits and barriers to telehealth,” the DentaQuest executives wrote. Other players also are invested — and investing — in expanding telehealth’s reach. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has pumped millions of dollars into nationwide pilot programs that have built out technology infrastructures and tracked treatments’ efficacy. Meharry Medical College, the country’s oldest historically black medical college and landlord to Nashville’s safety-net hospital, received $719,000 to expand a telehealth program that monitors people with chronic illnesses such as blood pressure, diabetes, lung disease and heart disease. Many of those patients are low-income and don’t have reliable access to the internet that would let them connect virtually with their doctors. Meharry is using the federal funds to buy tablets, hotspots and accessories patients can take home to stay connected and monitor their vital information through bluetooth attachments. The remainder of the HHS grant will build out the medical school’s internal capabilities with the aim of launching a program that can monitor up to 1,000 patients with chronic illness. Dr. Duane Smoot, senior associate dean for clinical affairs at Meharry, says the disparities on display during the current public health crisis — black Americans are disproportionately more likely to die from COVID — underline the need to distribute technology that can help bring more health equity to underserved populations. “The problems that many of the chronic diseases that African Americans have is what is putting them at higher risk for morbidity or death,” Smoot says. “So we need to better manage the chronic illnesses of our patients by providing these devices in their home and be able to monitor them weekly.” Prior to the pandemic disrupting most economic activity, Smoot says Meharry was providing telehealth services at most one day a week. By May, he says, nearly one-third of its overall visits were through an online platform. To continue making this work possible, Smoot and others say the state legislature needs to expand existing telehealth regulations to allow patients’ homes to be originating sites. Without a public health emergency distorting the system and leading to a loosening of regulations, Tennessee has one of the most restrictive
‘We can show the satisfaction. We will have real cost information. So I think it will be a more meaningful conversation.’ AMBER HUMPHREY, VUMC
LEADERS
policies on telehealth: Providers can’t be paid at normal rates if patients participate in their care from their homes. “Direct-to-patient is the game changer,” Bob Vero, regional CEO for Centerstone in Tennessee says. “Telehealth before required the patient to travel to a licensed office. So here we are trying to increase access to people — and it did — but if you were a recipient of care, you had to get in the car and show up at a clinic so that one of our providers, no matter where they were, could deliver a service to you. That changed with this increased flexibility. Direct-to-patient is making all the difference.” Centerstone, a Nashville-based mental and behavioral health provider, transitioned nearly 5,000 of its staff members in five states and 90 percent of its care visits to virtual venues within a week, according to Vero. The organization is now providing nearly 2,500 telehealth visits per day thanks to the addition of 500 laptops and new reimbursement policies.
’We’ve taken away a lot of the reasons people don’t follow through with their care.’ BOB VERO, CENTERSTONE
Vero says the efficacy of telehealth in behavioral and mental health settings is proving itself through the pandemic: Centerstone patients have been showing up to appointments with 30 percent more frequency, and health outcomes have been equivalent to in-patient sessions. “Across the board, people are saying that no-show appointments have dropped. The kept rate for therapy has increased dramatically because we can reach people more easily and because they are more likely to keep that appointment,” he says. “We’ve taken away a lot of the reasons people don’t follow through with their care.”
Now, Vero says it’s up to insurers. With many more consumers having been exposed to a new, simpler way to stay connected to their health care, he believes telehealth is seeing a new day that will cement its place in care delivery models. “We need other insurers like BlueCross BlueShield to step forward and recognize that this has been a real benefit to their members, and that they are committed to member choice,” Vero says. “That’s the way we really need to start seeing this. Let’s make sure that as we enter into this new era of health care delivery, patient choice includes telehealth where it’s appropriate.”
SAVE THE DATE
09.16.20 Touching stories, light-hearted anecdotes and hardwon wisdom: This luncheon featuring a panel discussion among some of the city’s top female leaders — which the Nashville Post hosts in conjunction with our colleagues at Nfocus — will leave you buzzing and inspired.
VITALS
Coping strategies How three big names from Nashville’s health care ecosystem tackled the COVID crisis BY KARA HARTNETT
s our cover story illustrates, companies responded to the shock of COVID-19 with a wide range of strategies. Those whose shares are traded on stock exchanges have had to do so in much more public ways. Here are overviews of how three publicly traded companies from different parts of Middle Tennessee’s wide health care landscape responded to the shock of COVID-19 — starting with the biggest fish in the sea.
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HCA Healthcare The pandemic struck HCA Healthcare at one of the most profitable times in the company’s history. And while that provided a solid financial base for the Nashville-based hospital giant as it prepped for an unprecedented global pandemic, executives say they may now have to reimagine their growth strategies. “We were outperforming our internal expectations and off to what we believed was going to be a great 2020 — and that was after a really strong 2019,” HCA CEO Sam Hazen told attendees of an RBC Capital Markets conference in May. “We turned the calendar with a lot of momentum.” By the end of March, that momentum was gone with lucrative elective procedures suspended and many hospitals preparing for a wave of patients some feared would test their limits. HCA executives lined up $2 billion in financing and — a week later — started cutting salaries across its workforce to preserve
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cash as revenues fell. Though no employees were fully furloughed, a number of departments saw across-the-board pay cuts and clinicians whose procedures were suspended or canceled were either reassigned or paid only 70 percent of their salary. In addition, contract workers were cut from payrolls and overtime pay was limited. Those moves helped lead to several run-ins with nurses unions, members of which complained about shortages of protective gear and said HCA was seeking to delay scheduled pay raises or threatened layoffs. Executives adopted a similar strategy for corporate employees in early April, ordering a 10 percent cut in salaries in order to retain every job while shielding providers from salary cuts through the brunt of the pandemic. At the same time, HCA was partnering with Google to develop a COVID-19 data repository to help communities and researchers
understand how the virus was spreading and affecting hospitals across the country. HCA’s 185-facility network — which already tracks more than 35 million patient encounters annually — and 4,000 other hospitals across the country now submit data to the platform daily, updating metrics such as bed utilization, ventilator supply and syndromic trends. HCA was one of few hospital operators that could say it wasn’t facing potential supply shortages in April, although executives did put in place conservation protocols to help build up stores. When the American Hospital Association developed a public-private partnership to address the severe lack of ventilators on the federal level, Hazen was able to take part in a White House briefing to say HCA could contribute 1,000 of its ventilators without putting any of its hospitals at a disadvantage. To date, HCA has received nearly $1 billion in federal coronavirus aid — the largest pay-
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out received by any hospital operator in the country. That has come with some criticism of the company — which netted $3.5 billion in profits last year — but Hazen says the aid doesn’t even begin to cover revenue losses. “It recognized the significant revenue disruptions providers had during this response and the expense they had in preparing for COVID patients in their marketplace,” he says of the federal funds. “I view that as much more a business interruption insurance kind of effort. It was a fraction of a percentage of the revenue disruptions that I think systems had over time.” Now, Hazen says his team is assessing how changed consumer demand and the expected growth of telehealth will shift HCA’s growth strategy. Prior to the pandemic and counter to most market trends, HCA had grown its same-facility admissions for 23 consecutive quarters. By the end of April, however, its inpatient admissions were down 30 percent and surgeries were off 50 percent. As states began reopening in May — notably Florida, Texas and Tennessee, which are the company’s largest markets — those metrics began to recover. By mid-May, Hazen said admissions were down only 15 percent yearover-year while surgeries were down 20 percent. But with coronavirus fears still looming and unemployment likely to be an ongoing economic drag, where those numbers settle remains to be seen.
Tivity Health As gyms shuttered and nursing homes went into lockdown across the country to protect people from becoming infected with COVID-19, programs projected to make up more than half of Tivity Health’s sales were grinding to a halt. Worse still, the lockdowns were coming after the company in February had written down about a quarter of the value of its Nutrisystem acquisition and CEO Donato Tramuto left, moves that dealt a massive blow to Tivity’s share price. Combined with the COVID-induced market slide, Tivity shares tumbled from more than $20 at the beginning of the year to below $2 by mid-March. Tivity leaders said they began to see membership drop and account suspensions rise in mid-March. They reached 10,000 by the end of
the month. They mobilized resources — while transitioning 1,000 office workers to work from home — to take their flagship SilverSneakers senior fitness program and other offerings virtual and quickly went from having hosted 500 online events in the company’s history to staging more than 7,000 in a matter of months. The SilverSneakers brand also offered free weekly workout sessions on Facebook Live, which executives say quickly attracted more than 50,000 viewers on average. The transition to virtual fitness offerings did not make up for lost revenue from gyms shutting down, Tivity execs said in their first-quarter earnings call, but the project does pave the way for additional revenue streams in the future. Nutrisystem, too, changed course some as the pandemic took hold. By the end of March, a number of health insurers turned to Tivity seeking a way to provide food to isolated seniors. The managers of Tivity’s Wisely Well brand, launched in November as the first spin-off product from the $1.4 billion Nutrisystem buy, began bundling packages of nutritional shakes, snacks and meals for delivery. The program was so popular that Tivity execs say that their entire stock was spoken for in short order. Wisely Well’s success provided the first glimpse of the Tivity-Nutrisystem deal’s promised cross-selling opportunities. Even as they’ve begun pondering a sale of Nutrisystem less than 18 months after buying the business, Tivity’s leaders are planning to keep the Wisely Well brand and say they would look to continue to partner with Nutrisystem should they unload that division. What to do with Nutrisystem and how to position Tivity in a world where most gyms still aren’t open at full capacity is now in the hands of former Walgreens executive Richard Ashworth, who came aboard as Tramuto’s replacement in early June. By the middle of the month, Tivity shares had climbed back to about $11, near where they were changing hands after the news of the Nutrisystem writedown and Tramuto’s exit.
Cumberland Pharmaceuticals The COVID outbreak hit the United States as Cumberland Pharmaceuticals executives were in the middle of a national launch of their latest opioid-alternative pain management ther-
apy focused on the country’s addiction crisis. CEO A.J. Kazimi and his team soon had to reprioritize their portfolio to home in on hospitals’ needs during a pandemic expected to test their capacity limits. The rollout of their next-generation Caldolor, an injectable form of ibuprofen the company markets as a hospital-based alternative to opioids, would have to make way. “Hospital admissions have slowed and many elective surgeries have been postponed,” Executive Vice President and Chief Commercial Officer Martin Cearnal said early this spring. “We look forward to working with patients who can benefit from Caldolor as places reopen.” Instead, Cearnal said the team turned to the drugs in Cumberland’s portfolio that help hospitals free up valuable intensive care beds by treating symptoms associated with hospital-acquired infections. The company refocused its sales team on those efforts and marked down the prices of two of its brands — Vibativ and Vaprisol — to increase access for hospitals. Vibativ is a treatment Cumberland acquired in late 2018 for symptoms related to hospital-acquired and ventilator-associated pneumonia. It generated net revenues of $2.4 million in the first quarter, 18 percent more than in early 2019. Vaprisol is an injection that balances sodium concentration in a patient’s blood from a condition known as hyponatremia commonly found in critical care units. It brought in about $209,000 in Q1 sales, down from more than $285,000 a year earlier. By May, communities across the country had warded off worst-case scenarios for hospital usage associated with the pandemic. Hospitals began to reopen for elective surgeries but analysts have no indication on where volumes may settle. This could hurt Cumberland beyond cutting into sales: Clinical studies being conducted by the company are being delayed, Cearnal said in a call to investors, and could ultimately push back regulatory approvals of therapies now in experimental phases. “Enrollment in the studies is currently limited due to the decrease patient flow and other restrictions associated with the medical centers across the country,” he said. “And while we wait for new enrollment, we are making sure patients who have already entered into study continue to receive their medication.”
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Keys to consider in reopening your office Outlandish ideas can get the conversation started BY CURTIS LESH
erriam Webster defines plan as “a detailed formulation of a program of action.” As more and more businesses shift people back into the office, how do we create a safer workplace plan? As with any design problem, you consider all available information, generate ideas based on the data and conceive of and implement a specific action plan. First, look at the available information. There is a lot of it, from the CDC’s Interim Guidance for Businesses and Employers to the state’s “Reopening Tennessee Responsibly” publication. Local municipalities and profes-
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sional organizations have guidelines, suggestions and checklists, too, and they are being updated seemingly daily. Guidelines are a fundamental starting point but only get an organization so far. What is missing is the detail and how recommendations apply to your specific company. What may work well for a large tech company may not suffice for a small design firm, and vice versa. Based on available information, what ideas make our work places safer? No idea is too crazy but some are crazy. Outlandish ideas are often useful in getting the conversation started. How about having a completely virtual workplace and converting your building into an urban farm? Or use those stress-reducing office pets as mobile sanitation stations to encourage good hygiene. Ideas should also be inclusive. Use an open and equal forum to share. If it is not practical to have an office-wide brainstorming session, try an open-ended survey to give everyone a chance to contribute. Remember, the goal is to generate specific ideas of how to keep your work surfaces clean, maintain your employees’ social distance, improve your space’s indoor air quality, and so on. Building on the ideas generated from the available information, we are now ready to
implement a plan of action. This plan needs to be reasonable and implementable. Design has to be coupled with policy. One without the other is ineffective. Tuck-Hinton’s office has the benefit of multiple entries. One will be designated for visitors, the other for employees. Sanitation stations will be conveniently located at strategic high-touch areas. Clear, simple signage will be in place establishing room occupancy limits and encouraging hand-washing. We are using visual prompts created with flooring products to maintain proper distances and circulation paths. Our in-office schedules are also being coordinated to limit possible congestion in the office and to plan out seating assignments. By developing this detailed program of action, we are able to create a safer environment for our employees and guests. As the available data evolves, so too will our office work plan. By using this approach of analyzing information, generating ideas and implementing a specific strategy, you can create a plan that is appropriate for your business and help to improve the overall health and safety of everyone involved. Curtis Lesh is an associate and project manager at Tuck-Hinton in Nashville. www.tuckhinton.com
TUCK-HINTON
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Remaking malls More changes are coming to Nashville’s indoor and outdoor retail centers BY WILLIAM WILLIAMS
he appearance and usage of largescale retail spaces nationwide are rapidly being altered. And Nashville’s indoor and outdoor malls are, not surprisingly, seeing such a facelift. The changes to both the form and function of indoor and outdoor retail facilities alike are being driven by multiple factors, not the least of which is a retail real estate industry that has been dramatically disrupted during a relatively brief time span. Many massive indoor malls have closed nationwide (think Bellevue Center locally) to accommodate major reinventions of the sites on which they operated, while large-scale outdoor retail strips are likewise seeing modifications that render them more “urban” in their form and function (for example, the Madison Town Center project planned for the Davidson County community from which that name derives). Clearly, this is not a new phenomenon. The former One Hundred Oaks mall was reimagined years ago, its main tenant now a Vanderbilt health facility. The ex-Harding Mall site has accommodated a Walmart Supercenter structure so long that only local old-timers remember when the property offered an indoor mall with, among others, a movie theater complex, Port O’Call record shop and a Dillard’s retail store. Around the country, many other malls are equally likely to be pushed into the history books. Steve Sadove, a former CEO of Saks, told Bloomberg News in mid-June that the combination of long-term trends and the shock of the COVID-19 pandemic will bring huge changes.
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“We’re in a reset period right now,” Sadove said. “There are 1,200 malls in the United States. I think in the next three or four years, a third of them may go away.” Today, Davidson County is home to a mere three conventional big-box indoor malls: The Mall at Green Hills, Opry Mills, and RiverGate Mall. And, as noted, many of the city’s older, large outdoor shopping centers — including Donelson Plaza, Lions Head Village (now home to a Trader Joe) and the renamed Hill Center at Nashville West (anchored by a Publix) — have seen significant updates so as to be more appealing to younger shoppers. Adding to this “new-look retail mix” is Hill Center Green Hills, which opened more than a decade ago and has been extremely popular. It has brought urban vibrancy to a site that previously accommodated typical suburban retail strip center. “The shift away from large regional shopping malls has been years, maybe decades in the making, pushed along by megatrends in technology and demographics,” says Jeff Kuhnhenn, Gresham Smith director of architectural design.
‘The shift away from large regional shopping malls has been years, maybe decades in the making, pushed along by megatrends in technology and demographics.’ JEFF KUHNHENN, GRESHAM SMITH
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“All of these facilities are located in the ‘Land that Cars Created,’” Kuhnhenn adds. “The old adage that retail follows rooftops was as true then as it is now, but it only works in these areas if you’re willing to get in your car, and the internet has changed all that. The abundance of cheap land led to segregated uses: houses in one place, offices in another, schools in a third, and shopping and services still somewhere else. Ironically, though all of these facilities are well situated among residential neighborhoods, they are nevertheless disconnected from the residential areas — separated by six-lane roads and layers of drive-thru outparcels.” Because of the physical nature, and suburban locales, of most of Nashville’s major retails strips, the key challenge is connectivity to yield a diversity of uses, Kuhnhenn says. “But remaking the transit infrastructure and geometry presents major obstacles,” he says. “Fortunately, many suburban retail centers are land-rich. You can ‘build your own diversity.’ I like concepts that bring office, hospitality and/or residential together, meaningfully, to activate the shopping and add to the critical mass of activity. Many of these have the benefit of making good shared parking scenarios. Vanderbilt One Hundred Oaks is probably the best example of this strategy in action in Nashville.” In addition, Kuhnhenn says he likes retail buildings that center around a major public amenity, such as a hybrid library/community center and/or an open green space. Examples include the aforementioned Donelson Plaza (to offer a library), Madison Town Center (to feature civic space) and Hill Center Greenwood (underway in East Nashville and to be anchored by a Publix). “They create magnets for neighborhoods to gather around that promote community cohesion,” he says. Of course, executing the vision is not easy. A long-standing effort to redevelop the site of the former Hickory Hollow Mall property was scrapped last November. Nashville-based businessman and auto dealership owner Ben Freeland had planned to reinvent the property, home to Global Mall at The Crossings and with an address of 5252 Hickory Hollow Parkway.
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LONG-TERM TREND The U.S. regional mall vacancy rate has been climbing steadily for years. Research firm Reis said this spring that rents have held up in part because mall owners have sold off parts of their properties or converted space to self-storage facilities, trampoline parks or other nontraditional uses.
10.0%
VACANCY RATE
9.6% 9.2% 8.8% 8.4% 8.0% 7.6% 2017 Q1
2018 Q1
2019 Q1
2020 Q1
Source: Reis
A major proponent of improving the general Antioch area, Freeland was slated to buy the 27 acres of property owned by Global Mall Partnership and previously home to conventional indoor mall Hickory Hollow Mall. That vision will not be deployed, but ESa Ron Lustig says there is still hope for an updated Global Mall at the Crossings. The facility offers the type aforementioned anchors — a Metro public library, a branch for Nashville State Community College and the Ford Ice Center Antioch — that could make further improvements more enticing and successful than otherwise. “Mass transit would help to improve The Crossings as a major transportation hub,” Lustig says. “This could possibly be a stop between Nashville and Murfeesboro. There is also the possibility of adding some health care options that are close to or within [the facility].” As to RiverGate Mall — which opened to great fanfare in the late 1960s — most agree the facility needs an overhaul. Rob Foss, head of retail for the local office of Toronto-based commercial real estate
company Avison Young, says the “highest and best use of the mall land is to be redeveloped primarily with a mix of multi-family / townhomes with retail around the periphery facing the main high-traffic arteries.” “It’s a massive property and its prominence gives the opportunity to really set a new tone in the area and raise the bar,” Foss says. And on the massive property theme, local real estate investors Tom Corcoran and Jim Maddox late last year listed for sale for $30 million their Madison property on which Madison Town Center is planned. Located at 721 Gallatin Pike S., the approximately 33-acre site (formerly known as Madison Square Shopping Center) offers multiple buildings with a collective 331,000 square feet. Full-scale work is continuing at the site and will unfold in four phases. The center remains leased with multiple tenants while phase one is underway. Corcoran and Maddox have worked with Metro Councilmember Nancy VanReece, in whose District 8 the property sits, and Metro Planning Department staff regarding proper
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zoning and appropriate hoped-for development. Any future buyer will be expected to adhere to the site’s zoning requirements. The property has been approved for buildings with a collective 3.75 million square feet, including up to 1,000 residences. Of the latter, 10 percent will need to be designated as affordable. Foss says the vision related to the planned Madison Town Center is strong. “How often do you see a 30-plus acre opportunity within such a densely populated area with such great traffic counts and access?” he asks. “I love the mix of workforce and market housing [being proposed]. The challenge is to make sense of the cost to build 1,000-plus units of high-quality housing at rent thresholds that make sense. The developer(s) will need to set the tone with each phase to create value for the next. It has the potential to function as somewhat of a town square for Madison.”
ESa’s Lustig says the proposed development “does a great job” of incorporating retail and residential with housing (both affordable and market rate). “The civic space enhances the development with green space,” he says. “If Madison Town Center becomes part of a major transportation hub, it will be successful.” As to future local sites that could be updated but for which no plans have been announced, some point to Hickory Plaza Shopping Center at the intersection of Nolensville Road and Old Hickory Boulevard in South Nashville and Belle Meade Plaza, located near the Harding Pike and White Bridge Road intersection on the city’s west side. “Any place with an ocean of parking and a huge roof is a good candidate,” Gresham Smith’s Kuhnhenn says. “These such sites are already at the intersections of major roads and likely surrounded by single-family housing.
I think we might look beyond underutilized retail and consider other land-rich single-use properties. Maryland Farms is full of asphalt and open spaces. With an aging population, maybe we should be looking at hospital real estate as potentially supporting new types of synergistic, diverse development. This goes, too, for office buildings and campuses that also have loads of surface parking that sit empty two-thirds of every day.” ESa’s Lustig says Belle Meade Plaza offers some opportunities. The 1960s-era development has Kroger as an anchor and lots of surface parking that could be built upon. “Belle Meade Plaza could become more of a pedestrian-friendly experience and be connected to the greenway that runs all the way to downtown,” he says. “By creating outdoor dining spaces to a number of the restaurants here, it would increase its potential as a destination.”
SAVE THE DATE
AUGUST 27, 2020 Join the Post team at a cocktail gathering to celebrate the release of our fall magazine and get a sneak peak at the newly completed Peabody Plaza office tower. The magazine will be anchored by stories showcasing commercial and residential projects and ideas that are taking Nashville and other areas of Middle Tennessee to the next level. Join us as we raise a glass to the region's continued economic growth and development.
LEADERS
Distancing vs. networking
Party on? Three local pros on the uncertain future of events BY NANCY FLOYD
s with nearly every other facet of life A in the pandemic, the future of events remains unclear. When COVID-19 hit Nashville this spring and safer-at-home orders followed, weddings were postponed, fundraising galas went virtual and corporate gatherings, festivals and personal parties were canceled altogether. As the city stumbles its way through a phased reopening where restaurants and venues must limit capacity, perform arduous health and safety checks on employees and engage in regular sanitation, it’s hard to imagine when it will again be safe — much less feel normal — for large groups to gather. With many organizations and businesses relying on event revenues for a significant portion of their budgets, leaders are asking the same questions: When can we safely host events? How will they look different? How do we enforce social distancing guidelines at gatherings solely intended for socializing? And most importantly, will anyone feel comfortable attending? Facing a public health crisis the likes of which this country hasn’t seen in more than a century, there are no case studies to reference to indicate how things will play out. And with uncertainties about a prospective second wave this fall or winter, event organizers are justifiably concerned about whether they should move forward with their plans.
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Amos Gott
The Post asked three local experts — event planner Amos Gott of AmosEvents, caterer Kristen Winston, and Dena Tidwell, director of special events and catering for Ole Red, a division of Ryman Hospitality Properties — to share their predictions on when events will resume, how they may look different and what organizers can do to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
Private vs. corporate Gott, Winston and Tidwell are in agreement that private parties are far more likely to rebound more quickly than corporate events. Smaller crowd sizes and familiarity with other guests will be major contributing factors, according to Gott. “At social events, guests are more likely to know one another and therefore trust that they won’t be put in harm’s way, as opposed to corporate events where guests may not know one another [and] may not feel as safe,” he says. The emotional significance of private events, such as weddings, birthday celebrations or retirement parties, makes hosts more reluctant to cancel or postpone. “I think personal events have a lot more emotion tied to them, so it is very difficult to make changes and postponements to these celebratory life events,” says Winston. Tidwell agrees, adding, “No one wants to postpone a wedding and have a longer engagement.”
Incorporating social or physical distancing protocols provides the biggest challenge for organizers, impacting everything from venue selection to guest lists and food service. All aspects of traditional events will need to be re-evaluated to comply with public health guidelines. “Physical distancing will be the biggest change since we are complying with our safety standards,” says Tidwell. “This will require an adjustment to the footprint of an event but also allow for the smaller groups to have an adequate area to socialize.” Even with the proper distancing measures in place, it is a nearly impossible edict to enforce. “No matter how much space you allow or how clean surfaces are, guests are inevitably going to want to socialize,” says Gott. “It’s in our DNA. So guests have the responsibility to maintain a little more distance between one another, perhaps not hug upon seeing each other as they might have done in the past. But the venues and event organizers have a responsibility as well to provide a safe space and event. It’s going to be a partnership and compromise in the coming months.”
Buffets vs. plated Food and drinks are central to any good event, but catering and bar service are likely to see the greatest overhaul in the near future. Expect plated meals over buffet lines and for servers to wear masks and gloves. For those in the hospitality industry, these protocols, while needed, could hinder their ability to provide the quality of service they strive for. “It is required that our staff wear masks when interacting with guests or when distancing is not possible in the back of house,” Winston says. “Unfortunately, this does detract from the warmth and personal touch we like to provide at the events — not to mention uncomfortable for staff!” Gott recommends personalizing masks and even sneeze guards with the company’s logo or event name in an attempt to make them feel less sterile.
DANIEL MEIGS
LEADERS
Weathering the storm Nonprofit veteran Jeff Jowdy on the financial future of charitable organizations Jeff Jowdy
eff Jowdy’s role as president of Lighthouse Counsel, a consultancy firm for nonprofits, allows him to put his years of experience in nonprofit leadership and fundraising to work helping charitable organizations develop strategic initiatives, raise awareness of their mission and find donors. With the pandemic and subsequent safer-athome orders resulting in fewer programs, the cancellation of fundraising events and limited volunteer opportunities, nonprofits are facing dire financial challenges and uncertainties surrounding the path forward. Post Editor Geert De Lombaerde chatted with Jowdy about the shockwaves the pandemic sent through the nonprofit sector and how organizations can regain their financial footing.
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What have been your main takeaways from the shock the pandemic created? The first one is something of an evergreen: The good times can hide a lot of nonprofit sins and the money flows a lot more easily. In the bad times, the importance of best practices is even more evident. For example, having several months’ reserves set aside. That way, when bad times come, you still have to adjust but you can look at things from a higher level. Times like these also bring into focus the fiduciary role of a board member. A lot of people take it more seriously all of a sudden, but they should have been taking it seriously all along. A lot about being on a nonprofit board is about common sense and good judgment. After all, you’re running a public trust.
When it comes to putting money aside, are there benchmarks? The standard can vary. It can be three months, six months or a year of expenses. We recommend at least three months and preferably more. Organizations with those type reserves are weathering the storm and providing their services. A lot of nonprofits have put out calls for support in the past few months. How do you talk to clients about crisis communications like that? The worst thing a nonprofit can do is to disconnect. The first step should have been reaching out to donors and expressing concern for them. This concern must be genuine and should be ongoing. Then, they should share how the pandemic is impacting their mission and how they are responding. After this, it is entirely appropriate to ask for support. First, you need to know your donors and how they are impacted — financially and in terms of health — by this. Second, the appeal should be as personal as possible and it should be about the donor and the difference they can make. Even in a pandemic and recession, people still care about the organizations whose missions are closest to them. They will respond to the degree they are able. Be sure to have an ongoing dialogue with your donors in ways as personal as possible. We are encouraging our clients to make lots of phone calls and use lots of video — from personalized messaging to CEO updates.
Do major donors typically work according to long-term plans that might not be very affected by shocks like this one? Many major donors have assets and plans to weather financial storms such as these. They know that the economy will recover. They see opportunity. These donors have a longer-term financial perspective. You need to know your donors and who is impacted and to what degree. Many industries are thriving right now, some are doing OK and some are very challenged. Some people are very stressed and others are bored and ready to get back to a more familiar routine. What do you see as trends coming out of this? Overall, the shell shock seems to be over. However, no one can predict what the next few months will bring. As the economy reopens, we don’t know how fast the recovery will follow and how soon a vaccine will be in place. Many nonprofits that rely predominantly on earned income are taking a big hit — this can range from performing arts organizations that are not performing to others organizations that are reopening to partial capacity. Colleges and universities are facing uncertainties on what fall will look like on their campuses. For fundraising, I am optimistic. People in Middle Tennessee and beyond are very generous and rise to the occasion. We see many nonprofits on track to meet their annual fundraising goals and paths to success in some significant campaigns that have been ongoing.
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Sunny Bray Cartmell Catalyst Collective Cartmell’s work sits firmly at the center of startups, growth, technology and network building. After working as a sales and business development consultant in Indianapolis, she moved to Nashville as Tennessee community leader for TechBridge, a nonprofit that helps other nonprofit organizations fight poverty. Now, she’s the local director for the Network Under 40 networking organization, which she helped bring to Nashville, as well as the founder and CEO of Catalyst Collective and a board member of Women in Technology of Tennessee. At Catalyst, Cartmell helps nonprofit organizations foster growth through technology, fundraising and story-telling.
THE 2020 ALLSTAR BOARD HALFWAY THROUGH A YEAR that has been a whirlwind of change, it’s more apparent than ever that our organizations — for-profit or nonprofit, private or public, corporate or civic — need all the good advice and guidance they can get. Boards have had to do some heavy lifting in 2020 and there’s more to come as the economy clambers back to its feet. If you’re looking for help, you can’t go wrong with this year’s members of our All-Star Board.
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Bill Brown A2B Advisors A consummate board member, Brown helps lead the Nashville Entrepreneur Center, Epion Health and Chartwise CDI. Until last year, he was CEO at Entrada, where he helped the grow the company from less than $1 million in sales to more than $13 million, leading to a successful sale. Now back at A2B Advisors, Brown helps other companies build toward the same successes. With his two decades of experience in health technology, there are few people in town in better position to do so.
LeShane Greenhill SalesCocktail Greenhill has been a leader in the Nashville business community for years, dating back to a term as president of the Nashville Junior Chamber more than a decade ago. Since then, he has worked as a startup advisor at the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and held entrepreneur-in-residence titles at both the Nashville Business Incubation Center and CODE2040. As the founder of both Sagents.com and SalesCocktail, Greenhill has worked to make other businesses function more efficiently, the former in the realm of supply chain analytics and the latter with small businesses trying to tap into growth opportunities.
Past honorees
Dan Hogan Barrel Stock Trading Company Though his latest venture — whiskey-focused Barrel Stock Trading Company — just launched, Hogan has a long track record as an entrepreneur focused on health care and software. After growing Medalogix before handing the reins to Elliott Wood in 2017, he served as entrepreneur in residence at Belmont University and as an adviser to Givful, a software startup that provides infrastructure for charitable giving and volunteering. At Medalogix, his management of the company’s steady growth attracted an equally steady stream of strategic investors.
2019
John Deane — John and Natasha Deane Foundation Vicki Horne — civic leader Ronald Roberts — DVL Seigenthaler Finn Partners Loraine Segovia-Paz — Casa Segovia-Paz Yanika Smith-Bartley — Asurion Susan West — Belmont University
2018
Harry Allen – Studio Bank Frank Bumstead – Flood Bumstead McCready & McCarthy Rebecca Finley – Executive Aura Ray Guzman – Intermedix Jim Varallo – Whitehorse Partners Terry Vo – Comcast
2017
Linda Leathers Operation Andrew Group One of Nashville’s most successful nonprofit leaders in recent years, Leathers recently took over as the first fulltime president of Operation Andrew Group, a faith-based organization founded 20 years ago. In 2004, she led a grassroots effort to establish The Next Door Inc., which she went on to run as executive director and CEO for 15 years. That organization — which focuses on behavioral health, affordable housing and community reintegration for formerly incarcerated women — has served more than 8,000 women since its founding and grown its operating budget from less than $100,000 to more than $10 million.
Jean Ann Banker — civic leader CeCe McCormick-Moore — Soles4Souls Sharon Roberson — YWCA Tara Scarlett — Scarlett Family Foundation Bo Spessard — 1115 Group
2016
Jim Armistead — Regions Bank Mark Dixon — USr Healthcare Tony Heard — InfoWorks Nancy Falls — The Concinnity Company Deb Varallo — Varallo Public Relations
2015
Steve Curnutte – Tortola Advisors Jay Graves – Strategic Solutions for Business Gavin Ivester – Flo Thinkery Betsy Jones – The Countdown Group Scott Kozicki – Brentwood Capital Advisors Sarah Meyerrose – Civic Bank & Trust
2014
David Wells Family Capital Strategy The general-interest nature of Wells’ Fifteen on Friday newsletter proves he is more than just a financial mind — though he is that, too. Wells worked in financial services and research for outfits including Accenture, Avondale Partners and Thompson Research Group before taking on founding and leadership roles at Hanson Wells Partners, Woodmont Investment Counsel and, most recently, Family Capital Strategy. He offers strategy consulting for family-owned companies, specifically including questions about liquidity events and changes in family dynamics. His board experience includes Nashville Classical Charter School and Travellers Rest Historic House.
Tawn Albright — Vanderbilt University Jim Lackey — Complete Holdings Group Scott McWilliams — OHL Julia Polk — W Squared Lynn Simon — Community Health Systems Dwayne Tucker — Compass Executives
2013
John Aron — The Pasta Shoppe Jan Babiak — Women Corporate Directors Agenia Clark — Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee Marc Fortune — Force Five Debbie Gordon — S3 Asset Management Richard Herrington — Franklin Synergy Bank Kevin Lavender — Fifth Third Bank Mike Shmerling — XMi Don Williamson — Compass Executives Organizations listed are as of publication dates
FAVORITES
My favorite browns to geek out on IP lawyer Ed Lanquist sketches the evolution of his appreciation for whiskey
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SUMMER 2020 | NASHVILLEPOST.COM
ERIC ENGLAND
FAVORITES
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LIKE SO MANY PEOPLE, I started drinking whiskey in college — always mixing it with some kind of sweet, carbonated beverage. I was keen on moving past the Sloe Gin Fizzes and Mad Dog 20/20 of my youth and I wanted to prove my worldliness. The sugary soda I insisted on adding to my whiskey might have undermined my newfound sophistication a bit. But everyone else was doing it — so what the heck? When I came to Nashville in 1988, I started volunteering for whatever not-for-profits would have me. Eventually, I wound up chairing a bike ride for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society that was so unsuccessful we had to do it over. When a local cyclist pitched a route that traveled from Franklin to Moore County and back, a friend and I couldn’t help but make eye contact. “Jack Daniel’s,” we said, in unison. Thus, began the National MS Society’s annual “Bike to Jack and Back.” Always one to support our donors, I decided to give Jack Daniel’s Single Barrel a try. Its sweet, subtle vanilla flavors offered the perfect gateway to drinking whiskey on the rocks. A few years later, the same local MS chapter developed a wine event, sponsored in part by Horizon (now Empire), which distributed Jameson Irish Whiskey. Around the same time, I happened to be at a law conference in New York — the perfect excuse to visit Manhattan’s John Barleycorn Pub. I learned a few things that night: Irish music is a hell of a lot more depressing than country, and Jameson on the rocks, with its sweet and fruity flavors, tastes incredible even on a hot summer evening. In time, my interest in whiskey grew stronger and my understanding grew deeper. The more I learned, the more intrigued I became. I understood some of the basics: Different grains cre-
ate different flavors and the time spent in the barrel affects the end product. But then I learned about how yeasts and fermentation temperatures can change the flavor of your drink before you’ve even put it in the still. And I discovered how distillers adjust the proof of what they put in the barrels to further alter the flavor. I’m sure my engineering background had something to do with how thoroughly I geeked out on the science of it all. Along the way, my palate and nose became much more discerning. (I’m proud to say I no longer exclusively drink whiskey on the rocks.) And my passion for whiskey ended up coming at the perfect time. Right now, we live in a golden age of whiskey. Mass producers and craft distillers are pumping out a lot of good product, and that good product can be found at a range of price points. When people ask me what my favorite whiskey is, I tell them the answer varies over time. When they ask me what they should drink, I tell them that it depends upon their own palate. I then recommend that they taste three whiskeys: W.L. Weller 12 Year, W.L. Weller Special Reserve, and Old Weller Antique. Tell me which of those you like — try them three times before making a final determination — and I can provide you with some direction. Perhaps my favorite thing about whiskey is that you can drink with good friends and discuss anything — including the brown — if the conversation drags. That, and the mere feeling of having a Glencairn glass in hand. I can imagine little else so relaxing. Ed Lanquist is a shareholder at Patterson Intellectual Property Law in Nashville. He chaired the Bike to Jack and Back for three years and remained involved for another 10. iplawgroup.com
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April 14, 2020
MORNING NEWS
N A S H V I L L E P O S T .CO M
INDEX
A-C
D-G
Ozark River Manufacturing 14
Jeff Kuhnhenn 31
Premier System Integrators 6
Jim Maddox 32
RiverGate Mall 31 Rob Foss 32 Ron Lustig 32
A.J. Kazimi 29
David Lax 6
Joe Maxwell 14
AllianceBernstein 13
Debbie Gordon 11
Jon Moore 9
Amber Humphrey 25
Dena Tidwell 34
Kristen Winston 34
American Hospital Association 28
Donato Tramuto 29
Lee Jestings 14
Donelson Plaza 31
Lighthouse Counsel 35
Duane Smoot 26
Lions Head Village 31
EmergeLaw 22
Madison Town Center 31
Enexor BioEnergy 14
Marc McNamee 22
ESa 32
Martin Cearnal 29
Feed Forward 6
Martin Watts 14
AmosEvents 34 Amos Gott 34 Amy Harris 12 Apprenti Tennessee 12 Asurion 13 Avison Young 32 Belle Meade Plaza 33 BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee 26 Bob Vero 27 Brennan Mason 14
FINTOP Capital 14 Fresh Hospitality 14 Fresh Technology 14
Google 9, 28 Greater Nashville Technology Council 12
Center for Strategic and International Studies 9
Gresham Smith 31
Centerstone 27
H-M
Clayton Nicholas 20
Middle Tennessee State University 6, 12
Snappy Auctions 11
N-R
The Mall at Green Hills 31
Nancy King 22 Nancy VanReece 32 National Center for Education Statistics 12
Cloud Range 11
Hill Center at Nashville West 31
Neal & Harwell 22
COVID-19 8, 9, 12, 15, 21, 22, 24, 25, 28, 34
Hill Center Green Hills 31
Nutrisystem 29
SUMMER 2020 | NASHVILLEPOST.COM
Sam Hazen 28
SilverSneakers 29
HCA Healthcare 28
International Information System Security Certification Consortium 11
S3 Asset Management 11
Meharry Medical College 26
Clearwater Compliance 9
Cumberland Pharmaceuticals 29
S-Z Shaun Shankel 14
National Center for Women and Information Technology 12
Hill Center Greenwood 32
Ryman Hospitality Properties 34
Matt Bodnar 14
Global Mall at The Crossings 32
Bridge Connector 14
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 25
40
Jeff Jowdy 35
Ole Red 34 Opry Mills 31 Owen Graduate School of Management 6
Steve Sadove 31
Tivity Health 29 Tom Corcoran 32 U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Tennessee 22 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 26 U.S. Food and Drug Administration 14 Vanderbilt One Hundred Oaks 32 Vanderbilt University 6, 25 Vanderbilt University Medical Center 25 Vibronyx 20 Wisely Well 29
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RESILIENCE Nashville is a resilient city filled with risk-takers. Positive energy and camaraderie fuel the spirit of the region. Every day, people find new ways to take advantage of opportunities offered, to make something from nothing, to make their mark, to realize their dreams. At the center of this spirit is the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. Be a part of something great. nashvillechamber.com
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