JerseyMan Magazine V10N4

The Office COVID-19 STYLE

George Anastasia’s

MOB SCENE

Volume 10 • Number 4

$3.95

Dianna Russini ESPN’s NFL reporter & host is a rising star

INSIDE: Football without fans Football Mom Lisa Ertz Adam Taliaferro by DEI LYNAM www.jerseymanmagazine com

PUBLISHER

FROM JerseyMan Magazine THE VOLUME 10 • NUMBER 4 ____________________________________________________________________________________

BY KEN DUNEK

For The Good Times

M

y guess is that you thought my column in this issue would focus on COVID-19, or the 2020 election, or the racial tension that is gripping our country.

All are reasonable assumptions.

But in a world that seems to be spinning out of control, I want to talk about something positive.

One recent summer night when the violent clashes on the evening news were giving me a splitting headache, I decided to put the leash on my faithful friend Duke, and take him for our nightly stroll.

It was almost dark, with just a hint of silver-blue in the sky as the blackness was beginning to suffocate what remained of the light.

Crickets were in perfect harmony. And the fireflies were doing their nightly dance.

Duke was extraordinarily happy as we made our trek to find the perfect scent that would help him achieve his digestive goals. His tail was wagging at an Olympic world record pace.

He is an eleven-year-old rescue mix of hound and lab, and is the absolute star of our family.

Every morning he is greeted with the excitement of an awakening grandchild, as his kibble with a fried egg is being prepared by my wife Terri, carefully mixing in his medications that help his arthritis and overactive thyroid.

As a puppy he was an absolute terror, shredding every fabric in the house, and using our TV remote as a chew toy.

Duke Dunek I swear I was at Comcast once a week to get a replacement where they knew us on a first-name basis due to the frequent visits.

I know our time together grows short, and I cherish whatever remains.

It got me thinking about our lives and the lives on so many that have been turned upside down in the year 2020.

Perhaps we should focus on the good times, and strive to make what is lacking better for all of us.

Respectfully acknowledging and accepting our differences and finding a peaceful and united solution to our problems.

My buddy Duke would approve—with a hearty wag of the tail.

Ken Dunek Publisher ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Ashley Dunek EDITOR George Brinkerhoff ART DIRECTOR Steve Iannarelli CONTRIBUTING WRITERS George Anastasia, Jan L. Apple, Michael Bradley, George Brinkerhoff, Sam Carchidi, Alexandra Dunek, Mark Eckel, Molly Golubcow, Robert Kennedy, Sam Kraft, Dei Lynam, Anthony Mongeluzo, Tomislav S. Peric, Kurt Smith Administrative Assistant Alexandra Dunek Event Coordinator Jamie Dunek Editorial 856-813-1153 Advertising 856-912-4007 Printing Alcom Printing, Harleysville, Pa. Controller Rose M. Balcavage Sales Associates Ashley Dunek, Jamie Dunek, Terri Dunek, Allison Farcus, JP Lutz Irene Crane, intern JerseyMan/PhillyMan Advisory Board Peter Cordua (Chairman). . . HBK CPAs & Consultants Joseph Devine (Emeritus). . . . . . . . . Jefferson Health Jerry Flanagan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . J Dog Brands Ted Flocco (Emeritus). . . . . . . . . . . . . Ernst & Young Bob Hoey. . . . . . . . . . . . . Janney Montgomery Scott Kristi Howell. . Burlington Co. Chamber of Commerce Ed Hutchinson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hutchinson Robert Kennedy. . . . . . . . . . The Kennedy Companies Julie LaVan. . . . . . . . . Advanced Mediation Solutions Michael MacFarland. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TD Bank Doug MacGray . . . . . . . . . Stonecrop Wealth Advisors Anthony Mongeluzo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PCS Charlie Muracco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CLM Advisors Mike Regina. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Big Sky Enterprises Scott Tanker . . . . . . . . . . . Tanker Business Solutions Joe Tredinnick. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Republic Bank Les Vail. . . . . . . . . . . . . GreenCrown Energy and Wate Jim Wujcik. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Santander Bank

“If what you did yesterday seems big, you haven’t done anything today.” – Lou Holtz JerseyMan Magazine/PhillyMan Magazine, products of a partnership between Ken Dunek, Anthony Mongeluzo, and Alcom Printing Group, are published by New Opportunity Publishing, LLC, with offices at 7025 Central Highway, Pennsauken, NJ, 08109. Copyright 2020.

www.jerseymanmagazine.com

10

INSIDE 40

22

48 FOOTBALL MOM

ADAM TALIAFERRO

COVID-19 STYLE

There could well be a significant

drop in the need for office space post-pandemic

32 ON THE FRONT LINE

Dominic J. Valentino III, DO, FCCP, FACOI

38 NOBODY HOME

JerseyMan Magazine VOLUME 10 • NUMBER 4

ESPN’s rising star Dianna Russini

28 THE OFFICE

– Mike Tomlin

COVER FEATURE

by DEI LYNAM

“Excuses are the tools of the incompetent.”

54 ALL ABOUT BEING A KID

Putting much-needed smiles on the faces of sick children

58 IT’S THE SEAL, DUMMY

John Schwind, inventor of the N95 ReadiMask

62 CHAMPIONS OF CHELTENHAM

Football without fans

COLUMNS

22

Lisa Ertz is trying to protect football players from head injuries

Cheltenham High classmates and friends; Philadelphia attorney Steve Friedman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

1 2 J O T T I N G S • 2 0 G E O R G E A N A S T A S I A ’ S M O B S C E N E • 26 GET FIT 68 THE CIGAR GUY • 76 TECH TIME • 78 THE WINE MAN

Cover photograph Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images

jerseymanmagazine.com

JOTTINGS

“When you are good at something,

BY GEORGE BRINKERHOFF

are great at something, they will tell you.” – Walter Payton

______________________________________________________________________________ you’ll tell everyone. When you

Before Tesla

L

ONG BEFORE TESLA, INC. helped spur the current electric car boom, the Commercial Truck Company sold 22 trucks to the Curtis Publishing Company of Philadelphia, PA. Fully rechargeable electric trucks. In 1912.

These trucks were rated to carry up to five tons but regularly carried 10 tons or more. Two of the trucks carried coal from the railyards to the publishing company’s boilers, but the others were used daily to move giant rolls of blank paper and also distributing to the Post Office the print magazines they were famous for, such as the Ladies Home Journal, The Saturday Evening Post, Jack and Jill and others.

With their wooden spoked wheels and solid rubber tires, and with an electric motor powering each tire, they required regular service and were charged for six hours per day. Loaded, they could achieve a speed of about eight miles per hour, but unloaded they could do 12! And though they could outrun almost nothing, with continual, methodical maintenance, they managed to outlast nearly every other fossil fueled vehicle on the planet, as they continued to be used in service on the public highways hauling for the Curtis Publishing Company up to and into the 1960’s. How many 50-year-old trucks have you seen on the road still employed in their day job? (Thanks to Paul Hellberg for this suggestion.)

FOOTBALL WITHOUT FANS, or “ROOTERLESS FOOTBALL.” Yup, it’s happened before. During the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918, football games were held without spectators, just like in 2020.

From The Chattanooga News, Chattanooga, Tennessee, October 26, 1918: 12

How about a wine that pays tribute to the best fans in the world?

N

OW, MORE THAN EVER, it’s important to remember the great relationships we have in our lives. And one of the best relationships is between the Philadelphia Eagles and their fans. With one of the most dedicated and fiercely loyal fan bases, the Philadelphia Eagles, as a tribute to their fans, have partnered with Winc to produce their own signature brand of wine, aptly named Broad & Pattison. The line consists of three handmade offerings, a 2017 Cabernet Sauvignon, a 2019 Chardonnay and a 2019 Rose. Each one is a California appellation wine designed for easy drinking and food friendliness. All are available for $17.99 both online as well as at wine retailers across New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware, and a portion of the proceeds will benefit the Eagles Autism Foundation.

As Catherine Carlson, Philadelphia Eagles Senior Vice President, Revenue and Marketing confirmed, “This ‘sweet taste of victory’ will serve as the perfect collectable, gameday ritual and wine pairing for any occasion.” ‘Nuff said, I’ll take all three! Go to www.Philadelphia Eagles.com/wine.

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Product Development Engineer Anastasia Altomari

You Say You Want A Revolution?

Yes, you do. A Revolution Coffee, that is.

Long before the pandemic and the shutdown of normal, everyday life, Revolution Coffee Roasters was the little company that believed that they could. And they did. Coowners Stephen McFadden, an auto mechanic who was unemployed at the time, and Justin Ettore decided to go into business in 2013, after an offhand discussion when they both were attending the same baby shower. While neither owner knew anything about the coffee roasting business, they nevertheless jumped in with both feet and were able to learn and succeed by doing. Like George Washington and the Continental Army in December of 1776 during the Revolution, their goal was to conquer a bit of New Jersey. And like George Washington, they’ve succeeded admirably more than 200 years later, winning the hearts and minds (and palates) of the people of New Jersey and beyond.

They first began roasting in May of 2013 in a small room in the back of their present building in Collingswood, NJ (at the time of 14

this writing they are moving into a new commercial space at 809 Haddon Avenue in Collingswood, right next to Hearthside restaurant).

One of their first public forays involved bagging freshly roasted coffee beans at a popular booth at the Collingwood Farmers Market and from those humble beginnings, their business steadily grew. With hard work, grit and determination they built relationships with their clientele in and around the area, and opened a brick and mortar café on a side street in Collingswood. From this location, they began to expand both their products and their business, and their business was really starting to take off. Then along came 2020 and Covid-19, and after shutting their doors for three months, they focused their efforts on website sales, both wholesale as well as retail, and delivery to the local area. They’ve since offered curbside service focused on growlers and carry-out offerings for the home brewing process, and the response has been remarkable, allowing them to actually increase their overall volume of business during the pandemic!

Co-owner Stephen McFadden

To have a Revolution of your own and for more information go to revolutioncoffeeroasters.com.

With their Product Development Engineer, Anastasia Altomari, finessing the roasts, they’ve developed a diverse product offering to take advantage of the wide-ranging coffee preferences of their clientele, and we were invited to be part of an exclusive experiential tasting at their now former storefront with Anastasia, Steve and barista Aidan Hadley leading the festivities. Our first sample was the Ethiopian coffee, a naturally processed bean. It was lightly roasted with a hint of blueberry. The second sample we tasted,

the Honduran Marcala, was medium bodied, brewed to perfection and delicious. The Papua New Guinea coffee, our third sample, was an exceptional dark roast. Our final tasting was the cold brew blend, perfect for a hot day. As was delightfully and convincingly shown through Revolution’s roasting process, each cup captured the uniquely fresh and full flavor of their incredibly enjoyable products. The vibrant contrasts between the roasts we experienced clearly demonstrated that all their hard work put into

sourcing the finest quality beans responsibly and transporting them efficiently across the globe to be expertly roasted was worth it. You absolutely can taste the care and work which goes into their products. (As suggested by their names, all of Revolution’s coffees are single origin except their cold brew and espresso blends, with many additional varieties we’ve yet to explore!) Thanks again to Revolution Coffee Roasters for a truly memorable and satisfying experience.

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THRU THE LENS Photograph by Jamie Dunek

16

Center City, Philadelphia

Wolf Commercial Real Estate Charity Golf Tournament – Mount Laurel, NJ

Project Refit First Annual Cornhole Tournament – Moorestown, NJ

Participants at the 3rd Annual Wolf Commercial Real Estate charity golf tournament at Ramblewood Country Club in Mount Laurel, NJ. The Tournament benefits the WCRE Foundation.

Anthony Mongeluzo (left) of PCS and James Corbett, co-founder of Project Refit at their First Annual Cornhole tournament on August 27th. Project Refit is a non profit aimed at helping military and first responders with PTSD. www.projectrefit.us

Emerson Group’s Laura Line, Honored as “National Staffing Employee of the Year All-Star”

by American Staffing Association

Emerson Group was honored as the announcement of one of their own was chosen as an American Staffing Association (ASA) National Staffing employee of the Year All-Star!

There were five Industry Sectors and Emerson Group’s, Laura Line, was chosen in the OfficeClerical and Administrative Sector.

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MOB SCENE

_______________________________________________________________________________

BY GEORGE ANASTASIA

Loansharking on Steroids

N

ICK CARAMANDI said it best.

“There’s nothing better than shark money,” the former South Philadelphia mobster-turnedgovernment witness said while offering a tutorial on life in the underworld.

This was back in the 1980s. Caramandi was living in a safe house in Ocean City, Maryland, awaiting an appearance on the witness stand in a racketeering case in Philadelphia that would bring down mob boss Little Nicky Scarfo and the organization that Caramandi had once been a part of.

As he sat in a restaurant crowded with tourists and vacationers that summer, the onetime con man, street hustler and murderer known as “The Crow” discussed the business of loan sharking.

“Ten grand at three points a week,” he said.

“That’s $,3000 in interest for a 10-week loan.

And if the guy can’t pay back the principal, we extended the loan for another ten weeks. He’s always gonna pay because we’re the mob…If he doesn’t, he knows he’s gonna get hurt.”

At the end of a year, the guy who took the loan would have paid $15,600 in interest and still owed the original ten grand. And that $15,600—or at least a part of it—would have gone back on the streets at three points for ten weeks. That’s the economic engine around which the mob has done business for years.

But it pales in comparison to the numbers surfacing in an ongoing federal investigation into a “legitimate” lending company based in Philadelphia doing business as Par Funding.

Investigators have alleged the company is in the middle of a $500 million scam in which both investors and borrowers were bilked. The FBI, the IRS and the SEC are involved in the probe which focuses on financial transactions known as merchant cash-advance lending.

Critics call it loansharking on steroids.

Par Funding, with an office in the Old City section of Philadelphia, lent millions of dollars 20

to businesses throughout the country. Most of that money came from well-heeled investors.

Authorities now allege Par Funding was playing fast and loose at both ends of the deal.

Investors were promised a 10-14 percent return. Borrowers were charged interest that averaged around 50 percent but in some cases was more than 400 percent. (The interest in a mob loan at three points a week is 156 percent annually.)

LaForte

nistic loans” on the street totaling more than a half billion dollars. One financial promoter, according to the SEC, told potential investors that Par Funding was so good it was “like the crack cocaine” of investments.

Now, it appears, everyone is coming down from their high.

The primary target of the investigation is Joseph LaForte, a 49-year-old businessman with a checkered past and mob-linked bloodlines. His grandfather and uncle were loan sharks for the Gambino crime family in New York, according to several news reports.

LaForte and his wife started Par Funding in 2011 shortly after he was released from prison where he had served sentences for fraud in New York and illegal gambling in New Jersey.

In its civil suit, the SEC says that Par Funding never disclosed LaForte’s criminal past to investors. It also alleges that Par Funding failed to accurately report the default rate on company loans, making an investment in Par Funding more attractive.

I One merchant said LaForte threatened to “blow up” his house and another said LaForte asked her if she “had ever heard of cement shoes.”

Par Funding, according to a 58-page civil complaint filed by the SEC, hid behind “multiple veils of secrecy” while putting “opportu-

N MANY WAYS, authorities allege, LaForte was running a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme with new investors’ money being used to sustain the flow of cash to older investors. Along the way, investigators say, Par Funding was able to siphon off about $33 million in “consulting fees” that was used to prop up the lavish lifestyles of LaForte and others.

Through his lawyers, LaForte has denied all allegations of wrongdoing and has contended that many of the complaints filed with the SEC by businesses were from “disgruntled merchants” who had fallen behind in their payments and were trying to avoid their debts.

Federal prosecutors, on the other hand, said that LaForte frequently resorted to violence or threats of violence in order to do business. In court papers, they detailed several allegations

based on information provided by merchants who had borrowed money from Par Funding and were harassed and threatened when they weren’t able to make their loan payments.

One merchant said LaForte threatened to “blow up” his house and another said LaForte asked her if she “had ever heard of cement shoes,” according to the government.

“Another merchant told the FBI that LaForte threatened to take all of the merchant’s assets for his failure to make a loan payment, and then said to the merchant, ‘Try to f***ing stop me. I’ll have you and your son killed.’

“Similarly, numerous witnesses have told the FBI that after entering into an agreement with LaForte, and missing a payment, a large muscular man appeared uninvited at their place of business, threatened them with physical harm, and demanded money for LaForte and his company.”

At the same time, LaForte was telling investors that Par Funding was “probably the most profitable cash advance company in the United States and maybe the world,” according to the SEC complaint.

The financial wheeling and dealing, authorities say, provided LaForte and his wife with an opulent lifestyle. There was a house in Lower Merion and vacation homes in the Poconos and Florida. There were expensive

cars and a private jet.

During a series of raids in July on Par Funding’s Philadelphia office and LaForte’s properties, the feds seized company records and then froze all company assets.

On a personal level agents found seven guns and “several bundles’ of cash, totaling $592,847, in LaForte’s home, according to court records. There was another $1,275,865 in the house in the Poconos and $596, 733 in the house in Florida.

That’s a total of $2,532,885 in cash hanging around the house…or houses.

In addition, authorities said, there was $10 million in a bank account.

B

UT LAFORTE’S BIGGEST PROBLEM— in the short term at least—were the guns and ammo found in his Lower Merion home. These included four handguns, two shotguns and a rifle. As a convicted felon, he is prohibited by law from possessing a weapon.

In August he was indicted on weapons offenses and was denied bail. At this writing he continues to sit in the federal detention center in Philadelphia while his lawyers file motions to spring him, and the FBI, IRS and SEC continue to gather information for what

could amount to a massive financial fraud case aimed at Par Funding and its principals.

Documents indicate that authorities have cooperating witnesses, some of whom posed as potential investors and secretly tape recorded conversations with LaForte and others.

Secretly recorded conversations are often game changers in federal prosecutions.

Defense attorneys can attack the credibility of a cooperating witness, but they can’t crossexamine a tape.

In a motion to deny bail in the weapons case, federal prosecutors in Philadelphia argued that “for the past several years, while attempting to appear as an honest business person, the defendant was engaged in a variety of forms of conduct, many of which are now being revealed, that have drastically altered the analysis of who Joe LaForte is. The SEC filing thus far shows that LaForte uses aliases, lies to others, misrepresents who he is and what his business is engaged in, and alters and manipulates his business records as a means to fraudulently obtain monies.”

LaForte’s business was built around hundreds of millions of dollars in loans that generated tens of millions of dollars in interest.

In all his years as a loan shark, Nick Caramandi never came close to that kind of action. n

21

DEI LYNAM

_______________________________________________________________________________ ___

Adam Taliaferro Is Still Giving Back

N

OT EVERYONE HAS A MOMENT in their life that they can point to as an actual turning point. But Adam Taliaferro does.

On September 23, 2000, the Penn State rookie cornerback saw action in his fifth college football game at Ohio State. He went to make a tackle like he had done countless times since he started playing the sport at seven years old. Only this time, when the play was dead, he lay lifeless on the field.

“I learned from a very young age; see what you hit,” Taliaferro said in a recent phone conversation. “You hit with your head up. I made a huge mistake that day because I had my head down, which caused the injury.”

Taliaferro suffered a spinal cord injury in that instance. It left him paralyzed from the neck down. With that hit, a young aspiring NFL football player had his life drastically altered. What he could not have known at the time was how rewarding the next twenty years would be.

“My story would be so different,” Taliaferro said. “I probably wouldn’t be walking right now. Everything I have today wouldn’t be if not for people. That moved me. The injury was tough, but the life lessons I learned going through it were priceless. We have to be willing to give back to people. I am not saying everyone needs help, but there are times a person needs a hand, a little help; I needed that myself. And that inspired me to give back in my little way.”

ALIAFERRO GIVES BACK through his job as a lawyer, leading the patient advocacy department for Bristol-Meyers Squibb. He serves in New Jersey’s legislature. And the Adam Taliaferro Foundation has raised over a million and a half dollars to support those in financial need after suffering a spinal cord injury. Taliaferro’s plate is full, and he hopes it remains that way for the foreseeable future.

“I feel so blessed,” he said. “If you had asked me twenty years ago if this is where I would be, at the time, I would have shaken my head and said no way. I am 38 now, and in twenty years, I don’t know what I will be doing, but I love the job I do at Bristol-Meyers and hope I am still doing that.

“As far as public service, as long as people will have me, and as long as I feel I am being impactful, effective, and helping people out, then yes, I will continue. But the most important thing, I have a five-year-old son and two-year-old daughter; I want to be the best parent I can be to my kids.”

Taliaferro’s caring way is rooted in his upbringing and the people—some perfect strangers—who helped him through his seven-month rehabilitation.

He went from being paralyzed to a person who can walk again, a feat still so vivid in his mind, despite the passing of nineteen plus years.

“Both my parents were there,” Taliaferro remembered of that late December day back in 2000. “A few of my dad’s friends were there also.

Everyone had their camera out. It was like a baby taking his first steps. I had a therapist behind me, one in front, and two on either side, and they just let me go.

“I remember trying to lift my leg, and it felt like it weighed 100 pounds.

I was straining to lift that leg, but I did, and then I dragged my right leg

T

22

Taliaferro

“ I thought about all the people who helped me get to that point just for me to take that first step.

It was one of the best feelings ever.” forward. I was able to take that first step on my own. For me, it was a feeling that is hard to put into words because everything that had transpired over that last year rushed to my mind. I thought about all the people who helped me get to that point just for me to take that first step.

It was one of the best feelings ever.”

T

ALIAFERRO DOESN’T DENY that he thinks about the injury or what could have been if it had not have occurred. His thoughts, however, are not with remorse or anger. He cherished the game then and still does today.

“It’s a game I have loved since the age of five,” he shared. “Any chance I get to watch it, I’ll watch it. It’s a getaway for me to watch football. When I got to Penn State, I said to myself I am playing in the NFL. Coaches said I was going to get an opportunity to play as a freshman. From there, I had a strict mindset; I am going to play in the NFL in three to four years.

“The guy I played behind got drafted by Green Bay in the third round, and the third-string cornerback behind me got drafted by the Titans,” he continued. “ I think about what may have happened. I would have had a good shot.”

Taliaferro poses with physical therapists Chris Carroll (left) and Miko Quisumbing (right) after a training session at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital.

Adam Taliaferro never had the opportunity to tackle NFL receivers. Still, he has helped countless patients tackle problems that have arisen from injuries they suffered or diseases they are fighting.

Yes, one moment changed Taliaferro’s life forever, but it did not take away from the many riches he has reaped over the last two decades. It added to them. n

23

GET FIT

______________________________________________________________________________________________

BY ALEXANDRA DUNEK

For the Love of the Game

M

Y TRAINING DAYS ARE LONG GONE...when it comes to sports that is, but I will never forget the long and grueling practices. Hours were spent perfecting plays and running drills on an open field or inside a hot stuffy gym until the coach blew the final whistle. Those moments pushed you so beyond your comfort zone so that it was almost impossible not to become a better, more well-rounded athlete.

Burlington Township High School head football coach Tom Maderia

Head Coach Tom Maderia can relate. Formerly a football player at Mount Union College in Ohio, Maderia has been instructing the game for the last 28 years. After coaching at his alma mater, he has worked with West Virginia University and United States Naval Academy before settling down in South Jersey at Holy Cross High School in 1992. He is now entering his 18th season at Burlington Township High School.

When asked why he decided to pursue coaching he says; “I loved the game, I loved the competition, the physicality, the toughness. But most of all I loved the camaraderie amongst the players.

Guys who went through the same thing you did at times when you didn’t think you could do it anymore. I really believe football prepares you to deal with life... discipline... Getting knocked down and getting back up.”

During my interview with Tom and in light of the current pandemic, he told me about the different rules enforced by the athletic department: Phase 1: The team could only meet in groups of ten, no switching/ mixing of players, and no football is allowed to be used.

Phase 2: The team could meet in groups of thirty, again no switching/ mixing of players, but allowed to use a football. They were also allowed to use the indoor weight lifting facility.

Phase 3: No physical interaction with players or coaches, only virtual.

This was done to get the students adjusted to the new school protocol.

26

Although the Covid-19 pandemic uprooted preseason training, high school football is still underway with new regulations in place. The New Jersey State Interscholastic Athletic Association (NJSIAA) has switched to a six game schedule with two undetermined games, but no playoffs. “With everything going on, if our kids get to play eight games I will be really happy,” says Maderia.

Here are five tips for young athletes from this high school head coach:

1. P lay because you love the ga me... don’t play for a scholarship or your pa rents.

2. Y our education is the most important thing... get your degree.

3. B e there best you can be... reg ardless of your ability. In football...in school... or at work. If you always give your best effort you will always be a winn er.

4. E njoy these Friday nights, they go by way too quickly. For many, th eir high school football career will be th e end of their football career.

5. P lay multiple sports... do not be a “one sport” player if possible.

One more tip for parents; encourage and support your child...don’t add pressure to them and let them stand on their own two feet. n

For more guidance, follow Alexandra, NASM Certified Personal Trainer on Instagram at @TipsfromAFitChick

The Office E L Y T S -19 D I V O C

CHRISTOPHER JERJIAN SAW IT.

Five years ago, he looked at the margins and the work needed to steal tenants away from other landlords and decided to get out.

He would leave the real estate brokering game before the market became too difficult to navigate and impossible to profit from.

28

BY MICHAEL BRADLEY

Things were going well. Then came the pandemic. Now, Jerjian and Kiwi appear to be in a tremendous spot, as months of working from home by employees all over the area and the world has started to convince companies that their office requirements might not be so robust. When the pandemic abates—however it abates—the return to work will feature a variety of circumstances that will be different than what prevailed in March 2020.

One of them could well be a significant drop in the need for office space. As companies have discovered that they can get plenty of productivity from employees working from home, they could welcome the return to normalcy with cuts in their in-person footprints and requirements. Jerjian could well profit, but developers and brokers may be facing a climate that features lower rents and trouble meeting construction debt payments, thanks to a suppressed demand. Think about a company with a large sales force. Since many of those folks are on the road quite often, they don’t need specific offices at the main headquarters. They can handle a lot of

Photo: Wolf Commercial Real Estate

It was something of a radical decision, since at the time occupancy was near 100 percent throughout the Philadelphia region.

Construction was booming, and businesses were expanding. Opening. They weren’t contracting. Right?

Not according to Jerjian. He had started to see a trend, and no matter how high the stock market went or how rosy economic predictions were, things would be soon trending in the other direction.

“There wasn’t enough demand,” he says.

“The phone would ring, and someone would ask for a smaller space.”

In 2016, Jerjian began Mt. Laurel-based Kiwi Offices, which provides modest offices for companies that don’t need amenities. Kiwi offers finished, ready-to-move-in space with internet and conference room availability. It allows companies to blend in-person work opportunities and remote capabilities in a hybrid that provided what companies needed and nothing else.

“For a lot of people out there, that’s all they want,” Jerjian says.

Christopher Jerjian

their administrative duties from home and come into the home office for sales meetings and some client connections.

A September article in The New York Times reported that “demand for office space has slumped,” as companies are less likely to follow through on expansion plans and those who are signing leases are inking shorter-term deals. Experts believe the rebound could take

29

As offices are reconfigured for new tenants, rehabbed by owners or constructed from the ground up, the idea of “healthy buildings” will grow. a long time, and veterans are remarking that the climate is unprecedented. “It has never been turned upside down like this before,” Robert Ivanhoe, a real estate lawyer. Granted, Philadelphia is not New York, but if the financial capital of the nation—and, many say, the world—is experiencing problems, it makes sense there are similar issues here.

Dan Mayock, a 30-year veteran of the real estate wars who just started a company—Real Property Opportunities—that will purchase and rent apartments, notes that the concept of working from home has “rubberbanded” back and forth ever since the internet became widespread. After the coronavirus quarantines and subsequent long-term shutdowns, that band could snap.

“What has become a viable and likely scenario is the ‘office hotel,’” Mayock says.

“People walk in and sit in a cubicle in the office and set up to work. There are no names on the cubicles, and you are just in there for a couple of days each week when you need to

30

see people and meet with people. The other three days of the week, you’re home.

“It’s a great set-up, as long as the WiFi doesn’t go down in the house.”

THIS IS NOT AT ALL TO SAY

that every company in the area will be downsizing its footprint, encouraging employees to work from home and buying Zoom’s premium packages. Plenty will still have significant space needs, and many different industries rely on the larger, more impressive office to give customers a sense of professionalism and security. Law firms qualify, although Jerjian reports that they are often clients of Regis, which offers a service similar to Kiwi Offices but with a receptionist and other limited accoutrements.

But as companies investigate their needs moving forward, there will be some changes.

Some big changes. Bill Luff is the founder of CRE Visions, a commercial real estate

consulting firm. He looks at the coming market as being impacted by the pandemic not just in terms of space but also in terms of design and other features that will attempt to help provide a healthier environment for workers.

Luff believes that even if a company wants to cut its in-office workforce by 20 percent, it may need the same amount of square footage, because it will provide more room per worker, as a lingering effect of the social distancing protocols and understanding of how viruses spread through transmission of particles through speaking, coughing, sneezing. etc. If a business allotted 175 square feet per person before, that number may swell to 220 in the future.

As offices are reconfigured for new tenants, rehabbed by owners or constructed from the ground up, the idea of “healthy buildings” will grow. HVAC systems will be designed to whisk away air and to keep a good flow. More lighting systems will respond to motion, rather than touch. There could be elevators that don’t stop at multiple floors and focus on transferring a smaller number of riders to one or two floors at a time, with minimal button-touching. The goal is to give businesses and their clients a greater sense of security and the understanding that they are getting space that will help foster productivity without any health detriments.

“Developers are focusing on more healthy buildings,” Luff says. “One of the prominent builders has been saying it has the healthiest building in town.

“Technology utilization will grow like never before. Owners and their tenants will be looking for convenience and health in all things.”

AND THEN THERE IS RETAIL.

A variety of factors, not the least of which is the ever-growing boom in online shopping, has caused retail businesses to change their focuses, and in some cases, close. Some malls have recast themselves as town centers, with mixed-use personalities that include residential, office, open space, restaurant and shopping options for those in the area.

“Retail is a big question mark,” Luff says. “It was a big question mark before the pandemic.

With the shift from brick-and-mortar stores to technology, it’s a real crapshoot. People think they know what’s going to work, but they don’t know what’s going to work.”

One of the problems retailers face is getting people to return to their sites for future purchases. For instance, clothing stores may attract a customer a couple of times, but once that person gets a feel for style, inventory and fit, he or she may feel comfortable enough to migrate online.

Jerjian believes retail “has been in trouble since the death of malls.” And that terminal condition is due to a narrowing of the possible tenant categories. Experiential products and chain restaurants can’t fill all the space.

And who is waiting to grab any open area?

Companies like Amazon. And if a landlord happens to have a property that can handle the loading and unloading of materials onto trucks, it has no problem finding tenants.

“Anything with a dock is killing it,” Mayock says. “If the building is dry, has a roof, can bring a tractor-trailer in and can break down palettes into smaller amounts for home delivery, it’s going to be popular.”

So, like so many difficult times throughout the American economic history, there will be winners and losers because of the pandemic.

When it comes to real estate, expect a shakeup, but as always, businesses will be looking for opportunities in the form of greater technology, lower rents (in the short run) and better location. It may take some time, but eventually, the market should adjust and rebound.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a major disruption—provided the pandemic ends in 2021,” Luff says.

That’s a completely different story. n 31

PROFILE

ON THE

Dominic J. Valentino III, DO, FCCP, FACOI

FRONT LINE

BY JAN L. APPLE

32

IN MARCH 2020,

as the COVID-19 pandemic surged throughout the tri-state region, Dominic J. Valentino III, DO, FCCP, FACOI, sprang into action. Board-certified in internal medicine, critical care, pulmonary and sleep medicine, Valentino was needed on the front lines. Before the pandemic, a good deal of his time was spent in outpatient and inpatient pulmonary and sleep medicine, with about one week a month in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) at a large health care system in Delaware.

With the explosive growth of the ICU population from late March through late May, most of Valentino’s responsibilities were diverted to treating patients with COVID. “We ramped up focus in the ICU,” Valentino explained, giving credit to the health care system’s ability to step up and react to the sudden changes. “We had very strong medical leadership that was inclusive of our thoughts. We adapted models to care for patients in a way that made sense and utilized the rapidly evolving science around it.”

He and his colleagues examined what was happening in Europe and China as well as Seattle, Washington—the first area in the United States to treat COVID patients—to prepare as best as possible.

And while many in the region were confined to their homes in lockdown mode, confused and afraid of the unfolding, surreal scenario that felt like a science fiction movie in real-time, fear was never an emotion that this seasoned physician experienced. “This is what I do,” said Valentino. “It’s what I signed up for.” In fact, Valentino knew—since he was in high school—that he wanted to be a doctor. “When I was a kid, I was sick a lot with asthma,” shared Valentino. “I had doctors who were really good role models.”

In addition, the South Jersey resident always liked to think things through, to solve problems. A career in medicine seemed like a natural calling.

“I was never afraid,” said the 47-year-old physician who described the pandemic’s arrival as a tidal wave. “I made a conscious decision when this started that I wasn’t going to approach this with fear but rather with respect.”

In truth, Valentino elaborated, as a critical care physician, he and his colleagues had been training and preparing for something like this for years. At the time of the Ebola outbreak in 2014, he underwent specialized training.

33

“ I approach COVID topics in a way that is non-political and based on science and evidence as it is evolving.”

Valentino, who previously directed an ICU in Delaware County, Pennsylvania for a decade, is also a clinical associate professor of medicine at Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine and a clinical adjunct assistant professor of medicine at Drexel University College of Medicine.

A PHILADELPHIA NATIVE

and the married father of three boys, Valentino was fully aware that a pandemic of this nature could occur. “It was always something on the radar,” he said. “You never know what it’s going to be or how.” Even though we are living in uncertain times, Valentino chooses to focus on moving forward. He described his mindset throughout the height of the crisis as “a reassurance that we were rowing in the right direction.”

The last six months or so have also been about sharing scientific facts and assuaging fears. Back in March, Valentino couldn’t

34

help but observe the mixed messages and misinformation spreading on social media as well as large-scale media outlets. So, the writer/ communicator in him kicked in. Valentino always enjoyed writing and was a dual major in Biology and English as an undergraduate at LaSalle University. One day in late March, he sat down and wrote a post on his Facebook page (Dom Val). It was written from his personal perspective and experience managing COVID patients. He intended to share updated medical information, clear up misinformation and debunk myths and inaccuracies. “It was a way to use social media for something useful,” said Valentino. “I approach COVID topics in a way that is non-political and based on science and evidence as it is evolving.”

What he never expected was the enormity of responses and feedback. “People told me how helpful the posts were,” recalled Valentino, who then named them “From the Trenches.”

He continues to share medical information and updates about every other week. Today,

Valentino

“From the Trenches” has over 5,000 followers.

Clearly, an unintended outcome.

With such overwhelmingly positive feedback from family, friends and the general public, Valentino’s presence on social media was no secret. It was then that Harris Cohen, M.D., a Philadelphia area family medicine primary care physician, reached out suggesting they collaborate to launch a podcast. The two had never met but had mutual friends and colleagues. The idea was to choose COVID-19 related topics impacting the community and answer the ever-growing pool of questions and concerns. At first, Valentino was hesitant to partake in any type of broadcast. “I didn’t want to be just another talking head,” he said. But after thinking it through, he decided it could prove an invaluable resource.

“Between Two Docs” was initially broadcast in May on a weekly basis in video format on Facebook and as a podcast on Facebook and iTunes. As the number of COVID-19 cases declined in the region, the 30-minute program changed to about once every three weeks. “The content includes news updates and interviews with people from all walks of life on how COVID has affected them,” said Valentino.

“We’ve been getting over 4 to 5,000 views per week.” Viewers submit questions prior to each program. Recent programs featured a panel of teachers with thoughts on back to school issues and an interview with a social worker/ psychotherapist.

Admittedly, we are still living in a pandemic.

Yet, noted Valentino, we’ve come a long way since March. And if we compare this historic pandemic to the Spanish flu of 1918, Valentino is quick to point out that we have significant advances in medical and scientific technology that did not exist a century ago.

IN THE EARLY WEEKS OF

COVID-19, Valentino said mortality rates in the ICU at most major health care systems were upwards of 65 to 80 percent. Today, the rate is about 25 to 35 percent. “The well of knowledge is growing deeper,” he said. And in recent weeks, there have been a number of new testing methods and treatment modalities.

Although there is no cure for COVID-19, Valentino said treatment options are better at the outpatient level and a variety of new therapies—such as the steroid Dexamethasone—are being introduced earlier in the disease. Medical professionals have become more successful with intervention and preventing cases from escalating to critical care.

Contrary to popular belief, Valentino doesn’t necessarily think that this fall’s flu season will be as bad as many are predicting.

“We are doing so much more now than we ever did,” said Valentino, citing examples of social distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene and heightened sanitizing and prevention measures. He also isn’t convinced that there will be a second wave of COVID-19.

“It’s certainly a possibility, which we prepare for, but not a given,” he said.

People have asked whether COVID-19 will mutate. “It already has shown the ability to mutate,” said Valentino, adding that he believes the virus will likely stay with us in the future but doesn’t think it will cause catastrophic illness as it did when it first appeared.

Valentino elaborated: “Coronaviruses have been around for many years and will continue to be here. They’re naturally occurring in the environment; there are five or six strains that cause the common cold.”

The significant progress with vaccine trials has given Valentino reason for hope and reassurance. “There are about four or five vaccine trials worldwide now in Phase 3,” he said. “The fear factor will be diminished once we have a vaccine.”

Some have called the pandemic lifechanging and feel things will never return to “normal.” Valentino acknowledges that COVID-19 has altered our lives on multiple levels. Yet, he believes that when a vaccine is available – schools, businesses, professional sports, etc. will get back to some semblance of normalcy, albeit one that may be different than what existed in the past. “We’re still going to need to use what we learned in the last few months,” said Valentino, hoping people will be mindful that applied science will better prepare us for the future while minimizing fear and uncertainty. n 36

Photo Philadelphia Eagles

NOBODY

BY JON MARKS

T

here will be no one throwing snowballs at Santa Claus during Eagles’ games this season, barring a dramatic change of circumstances.

Or, for that matter, at the latest Jimmy Johnson replacement on the Cowboys’ bench, Mike McCarthy.

And no unsuspecting opposing player will be cheered as he lies motionless on the ground the way Michael Irvin was back in 1999, an injury that effectively ended his Hall of Fame career.

Then again, there won’t be any of those E-AG-L-E-S! chants reverberating around Lincoln Financial Field, serving as a rallying cry for the home team.

Nor will there be the kind of individual salutes like “Duuuuuce!” when former star 38

running back Duce Staley, now assistant head coach and official team video narrator was on the loose two decades ago.

Yes, those sounds of silence will certainly be different when the Birds take the field in 2020.

And you can be sure they know it.

“It’s going to be kind of eerie when you step out into a stadium right at kickoff because the crowd, the energy, the electricity in the stadium is something that we all feed off of,” said Doug Pederson, himself once the object of fan derision before he discovered the magic formula that brought Philadelphia its first Super Bowl in 2018. This is part of our game, part of our sport.

“It’s the emotion of playing football, playing a gladiator-type sport where there’s a lot of collisions and guys get excited for that. They

get energized for that.

“It’s just a natural feeling to have the fans.”

Of course, nothing seems natural these days.

So, despite pleading with City officials to modify their policy against large public gatherings, the Linc will remain shut to the public for now.

“We have been trying very, very hard to come up with solutions that are safe and innovative in time for the beginning of the season,” said owner Jeffrey Lurie shortly after learning those efforts had been in vain. “We’ve had a lot of really creative and constructive conversations with the State and the City. That continues on a daily and weekly basis.

“The first thing is we love our fans and we know we’ve got a big home field advantage.

We even have an away field advantage in places like Washington, Los Angeles, Miami.”

Y HOME Indeed, Eagles fans are notorious for taking their midnight green and white act on the road, often being boisterous enough to somewhat mute the home team. But that won’t be a factor this season, either, though some teams will allow a percentage of fans into their buildings.

Whatever home-field “advantage” that may constitute it won’t come close to matching what it’s been like when visiting teams would come to town. “The Philly fans are a different breed,” said former Cowboy Hall of Famer Emmitt Smith in 1992. “The fans in Washington get on us, the fans in New York get on us, but not like Philly.

“I mean, they’re yelling stuff at us while we’re still on the bus.”

Sadly, not in 2020, which may give Carson Wentz a reprieve if he throws a couple of

interceptions or fumbles the ball away like he did in their disastrous 27-17 come-from-ahead opening game collapse in Washington, but will still require an adjustment. “It would be really weird, I’ll tell you that,” Wentz told NBC Sports Philadelphia back in May, long before that seeming fantasy became a reality. “We’re hoping and praying that’s not the case.

“Because we feel we have the best fans in football and we have quite the home-field advantage when we play in front of them.

“So hopefully they’ll be right out there with us this fall.”

Well, they will, sort of. The Eagles, just as the Phillies did, are offering fans a chance to have game day likenesses of themselves in the form of cutouts. For a hundred bucks, your painted green face and No. 20 Brian Dawkins’

jersey might be right on the 50-yard line at the Linc, which might seem like a good deal until you realize the Phils only charged $40 to their faithful fans.

The good thing is all proceeds go to charity.

The bad thing is, even with piped-in noise and other technological theatrics it simply won’t be the same.

“The team that’s able to kind of create its own energy, bring its own juice, is going to be the team that probably has more success,” predicted Wentz’s favorite target, tight end Zach Ertz. “because normally it’s so easy to feed off the crowd.

“There’s no one else to bring it. We’ve got to bring it ourselves.”

While they’re at it maybe they can even bring their own snowballs, too. n 39

Dianna Russini ESPN’s NFL reporter and host has never done things the easy way.

Instead, she has done them the right way.

BY MARK ECKEL

It’s how the little girl who grew up in Bergen County, NJ by way of the Bronx, chasing fire trucks and police cars when she wasn’t rooting for the Yankees or Giants, made her way to ESPN. Russini ran just over an eight-minute mile when she was in kindergarten, broke records every time she ran and never enjoyed it.

“It’s funny, of all the sports I played I was always a naturally good runner,’’ the four-sport athlete at Old Tappan High School said. “But I hate running. That was the problem. When I was in kindergarten I broke the school record for the fastest mile. I ran an eight-minute, 16-second mile. People were like, ‘What the heck!’ Obviously, it was a God-given talent. My parents and teachers were like, ‘Just keep running.’ And I kept breaking all these records. And I hated running. I still hate running.’’

40

Photo by Karen Goldschmidt

41

Photo by Phil Ellsworth / ESPN Images

‘‘

My family never really understood what I was trying to do.

Eventually, my parents figured it out that I wanted to do more.’’

In high school, Russini played soccer, basketball, softball and painstakingly ran track her last two years. She had Division I college scholarship offers for both basketball and track. So, of course, she decided to walk on to play soccer at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

42

“Full scholarships, too,’’ she said. “Don’t remind my father; he’s still mad about it.

“That’s been a trend in my life though, I never pick the easy way. I got offered for basketball and track from many schools. Soccer was the only sport I didn’t get an offer for, but

I loved it the most. I wanted to play it. And you don’t just walk on to George Mason, but I did.’’

And again it wasn’t easy, but the NFL Countdown and NFL Live host wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

“The coach said to me ‘I’m going to be honest with you, you’re too scrawny, you’re not good enough, your skillset stinks. We recruit the top women in the country.’ I asked him to just give me a shot,’’ Russini remembered. “I made the team but at the end of the season he said, ‘Look, I really like your attitude. You were a great example for the other freshmen who were really good, but lazy. And I used you as an example of what hard work is, but you’re just not good. I’m going to have to cut you.’ I asked again, what do I have to do. He said I had to gain 25 pounds and my skillset had to get better. I told him to give me the spring season to do it. My teammates really helped me. We trained every day, hit the weight room, worked on drills and that spring I was the leading scorer. He gave me a scholarship.’’

efore she shocked the women’s soccer world at GMU, Russini grew up in the same vicinity as future NFL linebacker Brian Cushing and future NFL tight end Greg Olson. Another infamous character from her town was Jeffrey Maier, the 12-year-

B

Photo by Allen Kee / ESPN Images

Russini on the set of SportsCenter Special: Fantasy Football Rankings

old who had a big part in helping the Yankees win Game 1 of the 1996 ALCS on the way to a World Series title.

Maier’s part in a Derek Jeter home run was fine with Russini, who grew up in a Yankees household.

“I had no choice,’’ she said. “We were from the Bronx originally. So I grew up right near Yankee Stadium. We were always about baseball. We were huge baseball fans and that sort of became our obsession. I was probably in 6-7-8th grade when the Yankees went on that World Series run. I remember my brother Michael begging my parents to let us sleep at the stadium, so we could get up early and get tickets. They let him go, but they didn’t let me go and I was so upset.’’

Russini’s family—her brother, younger sister Nicole, parents Camille and Rick and even grandmother Lorraine—was always behind her from being the youngest reporter ever at WNBC in New York to Seattle to Connecticut to Washington D.C. and eventually to the Sports Leader. Even if they never quite knew what to expect from her.

“My family never really understood what I was trying to do,’’ she said. “My father is a plumber; my mother is a nurse; my brother is a plumber; my sister is a teacher. I was raised to work hard, then get married and have a family.

43

Photo by Joe Faraoni / ESPN Images

Russini on the ESPYS Magazine Heroes Party red carpet

Eventually, my parents figured it out that I wanted to do more.’’

Russini didn’t get married until this past September, eight months after her 37th birthday. So she got to do more. And she’s done it rather well.

“She’s a rising star,’’ Sal Paolantonio, her colleague at ESPN, said about her. “She’s a great reporter with great sources. She is thought very highly of at ESPN.’’ Russini landed at ESPN from Washington D.C. where she was the sports anchor at WRC, the NBC affiliate. But it goes further back than that, much further back.

“My parents tell stories about me as a little girl chasing fire trucks and police cars,’’ she says with a laugh. “I loved being a messenger.

That’s what I enjoyed. I loved telling stories to everyone. As I got older and sports became such a gigantic part of my life I needed to step away from it and challenge myself.’’

S

o after being the sideline reporter for the George Mason men’s basketball team the year before they made that historic Final Four run (she also left D.C. the year before the Caps won the Stanley Cup and two years before the Nats won the World Series) Russini began her news career.

“I had success in news,’’ she said. “But I realized very quickly you can’t determine what you love. You can’t choose it. In between news 44

Photo by Scott Clarke / ESPN Images

‘‘

I wanted to stick with sports, I just needed to get better and I wanted to get back East.

The West Coast wasn’t for me.”

stories and interviews I would have sports talk radio on, talking to everyone about the Yankees, or Giants or whatever. I realized my head wasn’t in news. So my grandmother actually pushed me over the edge. She said she watched me on TV, but she didn’t see her granddaughter. ‘I don’t know who that person is,’ she said. I knew what she meant, because I was pretending to be something I wasn’t. I switched to sports and started my career over at 27.’’

46

Dianna Russini on the sideline during a Monday Night Football game in 2019.

Russini’s sports career began across the country in Seattle with Comcast Northwest.

“I had never been further west than Pittsburgh,’’ she said.

A

Jersey girl in the Pacific Northwest is change enough; this was also a switch from hard news in New York to the Seahawks and Mariners. Frasier Crane may have done all right going from Boston to Seattle, but Russini struggled.

“When I switched to sports I had to learn the culture,’’ she said. “I was terrible in Seattle, but I learned a lot. It was a big market to be in to not have any experience in sports. It was hard.’’

Would she want it any other way? Of course not.

“I wanted to stick with sports, I just needed to get better and I wanted to get back East. The West Coast wasn’t for me,’’ Russini said.

She moved back home, without a job. “I’m living with my parents at 28,’’ she said. An old e-mail she came across led to a job at the NBC affiliate in Hartford, Connecticut where she split time between news and sports.

As luck, or fate, would have it the news director from WRC in Washington was taking his daughter to visit Harvard and stopped for the night in Connecticut where he saw Russini on TV. He called the next day and asked if he could hire her to work in the nation’s capital.

“I was going to be covering the Redskins and I didn’t know anything about football,’’ Russini said.

She took the job anyway and was the number three anchor for about a minute. The number one sports anchor left for a job at NFL Network and the number two guy didn’t want to be number one.

“I’m number one now and I can’t name one player on the team,’’ Russini said.

Again, it’s never easy. She didn’t hide her lack of knowledge from the players and coaches or try to fool them into thinking she knew more than she did. Instead, she used them to learn the game and quickly became the No. 1 sports anchor in the D.C. area.

It wasn’t long after that ESPN came calling.

“Everyone thinks I went to Washington to get to ESPN,’’ she said. “That wasn’t it at all.

I loved Washington. I loved the people there.

I was close to George Mason. But a friend told me you only get one or two of these moves in your life. ESPN, The Today Show, Good Morning America doesn’t call you; you call them. So answer the phone.’’

That might have been the easiest thing she’s ever done. n 47

Photos courtesy Lisa Ertz

Football Mom

Eagles tight end Zach Ertz with his mom Lisa (center), and wife Julie

BY SAM CARCHIDI

Lisa Ertz has become a safety advocate for football players – trying to protect them from head injuries 48

Back when her boys played football —one is still competing and is a key member of the Philadelphia Eagles—Lisa Ertz used to place both hands over her eyes and peek through her fingers when there was an on-the-field collision.

“I always say, I watch games through my finger goggles,” Ertz, whose son, Zach, is a star tight end with the Eagles, said in an interview just before the NFL season started. “It’s never easy, but you know your kids are really loving it out there, and I want other moms to say, ‘This isn’t my first choice, but he loves it and, boy, do I feel a lot safer.’”

Ertz is all about football safety, which is why she has become a spokesperson for Defend Your Head, a Chester Springs, Pa., company that makes a helmet cover called ProTech that protects players from head injuries. Nationally, about 300 teams are using them, including a dozen youth and high school programs in the Philadelphia area.

“Our focus,” Ertz said, “is to get every single high school team in Philadelphia wearing ProTechs.” n n n n n

Zach Ertz is the oldest of Lisa’s four sons. One of her other sons, Shane, had a promising football career cut short by several concussions when he was in high school. The last one brought an ambulance onto the football field to take him to the hospital after he was knocked out cold while playing a game in California.

That led to Lisa Ertz to become a safety advocate for football players of all ages— specifically, trying to protect them from head injuries.

Until last year, she had been president of the Vicis Foundation, which promoted and funded safer football equipment, including a helmet that gave slightly upon impact. Vicis, a startup

49

company based in Seattle, had developed a pricey, technologically advanced helmet that Ertz called “beautiful.”

“Sadly, Vicis is no longer in business,” she said, noting it went through bankruptcy and closed its doors last December. “They engineered the most beautiful piece of technology of a helmet available.”

She paused.

“The first time I saw the helmet, I literally cried because I could (imagine) Zach’s head in the helmet and it was clear that the technology would reduce the effect of an impact,” she said.

“It was extremely well done; however, just like when a medicine first comes out, it’s extremely expensive because of all the research that goes into it. So this beautiful Vicis helmet and technology cost was $1,500 per helmet when it first came out. Their market was the NFL in the beginning. They brought me on as sort of a ‘mom mouthpiece’ to use my voice to talk about safety.”

The problem: The helmets’ high cost made it virtually impossible for school districts to afford, let alone high school players.

“So I was named the head of their foundation and tasked with raising money to buy these helmets for the schools we focus on for our [Ertz Family] Foundation—basically North Philly and West Philly,” she said.

50

Zach and Julie Ertz founded the Ertz Family Foundation

She has since become involved with Defend Your Head, a startup company that is gaining momentum.

“It’s become a personal passion of mine,” she said. “As a mom of four sons, a mom

who believes that football can be a lifeline to opportunities, we need to make it as safe as possible.”

At Defend Your Head, Ertz serves as director of safety alliance. According to the company, approximately 9,000 ProTech helmet covers are being used.

“I work for them as a mom with deep experience,” she said. “Four sons. Single mom.

My boys all played football. I sat on many, many, many bleachers. So I’m a passionate voice of what Defend Your Head is doing.”

Lisa’s primary focus is the Ertz Family Foundation (EFF), which was founded by Zach and his wife, Julie, a dominant defender on the U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team. As EFF’s executive director, Lisa is charged with delivering the foundation’s mission, which is currently focused on making sure innercity children have access to football fields— American football and globally—and helping them find opportunities beyond the field.

“I moved to Philly last year to work with the foundation. I love doing it,” said Ertz, a former California resident. And, also, to “make sure I never missed a home game, and here we are, all missing home games” because of the coronavirus.

She is just as enamored with her position at Defend Your Head and its ProTech shell

that provides an absorbable outer later for the helmet. The shell snaps into the helmet. It’s being used by high schools and more than twenty Division I colleges, and the NFL is doing testing on it, Ertz said.

“Our focus,” she said, “is on high schools.”

Over the years, football players have been getting concussed at all levels, sprouting countless lawsuits. According to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, between 1.7 million and three million sports and recreational-related concussions occur each year. Around 300,000 occur in football, UPMC said.

Vicis, the since-closed company, tried hard to reduce the numbers.

“Vicis was the first company to say, ‘Hold on here. We need to design a helmet that is made to replicate a car bumper, where the bumper absorbs a majority of the impact,’” Ertz said.

“They took that technology and designed a football helmet to basically absorb the energy of the hits before it got to the brain, so the brain wasn’t shaking as much.”

Defend Your Head’s advanced technology offers a less-expensive alternative. The helmet covers cost about $100 apiece.

“We have on-the-field data with Penn State that shows the force of the hit can be absorbed up to 70 percent,” Ertz said of the polyurethane product’s success.

A three-year independent study conducted by Penn State showed that ProTech was a primary factor in reducing traumatic head impact to the Nittany Lions players who were tested.

Penn State’s research team used ProTech’s soft-shell technology with helmet sensors to monitor collision impact. Defend Your Head said there was a 72 percent reduction per player each week in high-intensity impacts to the head. n n n n n

Ertz is “absolutely” convinced that her son, Shane, would not have suffered a concussion in a high school football game if he was wearing the ProTech atop his helmet.

“It would have absolutely absorbed the hit,” she said, adding she believes her son was wearing a helmet that did not fit him properly, which she said is a rather common issue among high school teams.

As for her “other” passion, Ertz said the foundation her son and daughter-in-law have put together is designed to help inner-city youths.

Football is a “lifeline to kids” around the country, and many of them “don’t have access to other sports because they don’t have the funds,” she said. “Their parents can’t afford to put them on a pay-to-play soccer team or a pay-to-play 52

Turning sports into pay-to-play has really, really negatively affected the ability for kids in the inner city to play. n n n n n baseball showcase team. Turning sports into pay-to-play has really, really negatively affected the ability for kids in the inner city to play. And it many cases [sports] is all they have, so our focus has always been, ‘How do we take football and that crucial lifeline it gives?’—and I’m not talking about you ending up going to Stanford and ending up in the pros. That’s what Zach has done and it’s nothing short of incredible.

“It’s just not that,” she added. “It’s the relationships you build in high schools; it’s the mentors you had in high school. It’s all the amazing things in football that go away for a lot of kids in the inner city because they don’t have the money. They don’t have the funded programs. So our focus with the foundation is the keep football in the inner city and be a vibrant part of their lives, and my part with Defend Your Head is my own, personal momto-mom thing with a product that is affordable, and we’ll actually help you afford it if we can.”

The Ertz Family Foundation and the Eagles replaced all the football equipment—worth $10,000—that was stolen from Kensington’s High’s shed in 2018. The EFF has funded several flag football teams in North Philadelphia, and it is working on a project called Beyond the Field that is helping high school players get tutors and teaching them about opportunities beyond football.

In addition, the foundation is working with ten North Philadelphia high schools that had football taken away because of the coronavirus and creating a program that will have as many as 150 participants.

Running the foundation and being an advocate for football players’ safety has given Ertz an extremely busy work week.

She isn’t complaining.

“I think I’m doing what I was put in the world to do, really take the messaging [from Zach and Julie] and run through the wall with it,” Ertz said in mid-September. “It’s been wonderful.” n

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Kid

Photos courtesy A Kid Again

It’s All About Being a

To every child – I dream of a world where you can laugh, dance, sing, learn, live in peace and be happy.

– Malala Yousafzai Youngest Nobel Peace Prize recipient

BY MOLLY GOLUBCOW 54

It’s so simple… a kid just wants to be a kid—laugh, play, and explore. However, for children living with life-threatening illnesses, fun gets overshadowed by the condition and its associated treatments and limitations. Doctors are powerful disease-fighters, but some days, a sick child needs a superhero to fly in and save the day. For the last 25 years, A Kid Again has been kapowing away the daily grind for kids diagnosed with serious illnesses.

By providing cost-free, year-round fun-filled events called Adventures, A Kid Again puts much-needed smiles on the faces of sick children and their families at amusement parks, zoos, aquariums, sporting events, and other venues.

The founders of A Kid Again, all too familiar with how a child’s illness can impact a family, looked to find a way to give sickness a “time out.”

Greater Philadelphia Executive Director Rachel Lippoff delivering smiles with Adventures in a Box.

In 1995, the founders of A Kid Again, all too familiar with how a child’s illness can impact a family, looked to find a way to give sickness a “time out.” They wanted families to make happy memories, enjoy their time together, and just have some good old-fashioned fun.

A Kid Again also is “condition agnostic”— meaning they serve children with any lifethreatening illness as opposed to organizations that help children suffering from a specific illness. Currently, the organization has five chapters across the country—the latest being the Greater Philadelphia Chapter that covers New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New York, and Maryland.

Rachel Lippoff, Executive Director of the Greater Philadelphia Chapter, feels honored to serve families raising children with life-threatening conditions. Although the organization is relatively new to the area, the positive results are already in.

Lippoff explains, “We currently have over 40 families enrolled and look forward to serving hundreds more. Families with children with life-threatening conditions, aged starting at birth, can enroll, and families can stay

enrolled until the child turns 20.”

Lippoff also describes how easy it is to enroll and have “fun” with A Kid Again without having to worry about anything—parking, admission, food, and other treats. An interested family needs to submit a simple enrollment form, which can be found on their website (www.akidagain.org) to start their Adventures. In addition to fun outings eight to 12 times a year, the program becomes an outlet

where families that have a child with a lifethreatening illness can connect, support one another, and build special friendships.

As is the case with any successful endeavor, you need support from the community. To date, the Greater Philadelphia Chapter has partnered with CHOP and Nemours Alfred I. Dupont Hospital for Children to help with the enrollment process. In fact, when A Kid Again staff initially met with CHOP social workers in early 1919 to discuss their goals, within an hour the hospital asked how they could help A Kid Again move the process forward.

In addition to dedicated local partnerships with hospitals and social workers, A Kid Again also needs dedicated Adventure partners. The Greater Philadelphia Chapter works closely with local partners like The Franklin Institute where the first in-person Adventure was held in January 2020. About 20 families attended and were treated to an outing extraordinaire— including parking and food, thanks to the generosity of the Franklin Institute.

D

URING THE COVID-19 CRISIS, A Kid Again continues to support families with safe activities such as Virtual Bingo (pictured below) with prizes donated by

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Photo courtesy A Kid Again

Tom DiMarco (pictured) and his wife Ann were recently honored to receive the 2020 Outstanding Philanthropist Award by their local chapter of the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Liberty Coca-Cola—another A Kid Again local partner. Other activities during the pandemic include sending an “Adventure in a Box” to kids and their families—mini-Adventures like Family Game Night and Outdoor Gardening.

Most recently, A Kid Again partnered with Jurassic Quest where they plan to send families on a drive-thru Adventure filled with life-sized dinosaur replicas. Once COVID is conquered and it is safe to host them again, A Kid Again looks forward to going back to in-person Adventures.

Tom DiMarco, Treasurer and National Board Member believes in A Kid Again with all his heart and soul. Raised in Delaware County and a proud Villanova grad, DiMarco sees himself as the unofficial cheerleader for A Kid Again—nationally and in the Philadelphia area. He explains how much he gets out of his involvement with the organization and what it promotes. “Hope, happiness, and healing for kids who do more for you than you can ever do for them! If you get involved prepare to be inspired!”

In addition, he and his wife, Ann, pledged $1 million towards the national expansion of A Kid Again to better serve the three million kids in the country, including those in the greater Philadelphia area living with life-threatening diseases. Although the organization currently 56

supports 5,000 families across its chapters, DiMarco believes continuing to expand its reach is imperative, “We have a long way to go, but opening in Greater Philly is a great start!”

DiMarco also believes in Philadelphia and its generosity. Although he physically left the area 23 years ago, Phillies, Eagles, and cheesesteaks make up his DNA. His devotion to A Kid Again, his compassion towards children in need, and his Philadelphia roots all add up to his determination to spread the message to all in the area about A Kid Again. DiMarco sums up his hopes, “As the organization grows in the Greater Philadelphia area, there is no doubt in my mind that financial partners, Community Leaders, and volunteers will embrace A Kid Again just because of what we do.”

N ADDITION TO dedicated corporate partners in the community, A Kid Again relies on volunteers for planning, preparing, and executing Adventures as well as mentoring families and fundraising. DiMarco understands the importance of volunteers who are passionate about the cause and want to make a difference to kids and their families who just need some normalcy in their lives. DiMarco describes the high one gets when lending a hand to A Kid Again, “The moment you see the smile an Adventure brings to a child’s face,

I

“The moment you see the smile an Adventure brings to a child’s face, you can’t help but want to be involved and stay involved.” you can’t help but want to be involved and stay involved.” If DiMarco had a magic wand, he would use it to spread the message about A Kid Again at supersonic speed so more people would volunteer their time and resources.

Since A Kid Again started 25 years ago, over 200,000 children and their families have been treated to Adventures. The dedicated staff, volunteers, and corporate partners double as angels on earth by putting smiles of joy on a kid’s face. DiMarco has seen hope, happiness, and healing firsthand. He passionately explains why he believes in A Kid Again: “It’s amazing and humbling at the same time to watch kids who just want to be normal kids, and because of Adventures, they get this chance.” n

S

It’s the Seal, Dummy Sitting at a socially distancing restaurant in Sea Girt, NJ, John Schwind, 58, sports the tanned look of the avid sailor and paddle surfer that he is. But then he effortlessly applies his mask, and you discover a product that has been a driving force in his life for more than 20 years.

Schwind, CEO, Global Safety First and coinventor of the ReadiMask, has been waging war against industry inertia, explaining that safety masks have remained virtually unchanged since WWII. The first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 sparked his idea that an improved mask could help people with contaminants—dust, smoke, viruses— circulating in the air.

“I thought about all those people trying to escape from the smoke and chaos and decided there has to be a way to improve a mask that safeguards people from most contaminants,” Schwind said. His response was to invent, with a partner, the ReadiMask.

Like many inventors and entrepreneurs, he found his journey littered with obstacles.

Industry giants already entrenched, a slowmoving bureaucracy and a pandemic that of58

BY TOMISLAV S. PERIĆ

John Schwind

fered market opportunities. Add to that, any manufacturer with a sewing machine making masks, flooding the market with billions of substandard or useless masks and face coverings.

Just excuses from the guy who thinks his design is the only one in the world that actually works?

“It’s about the seal, dummy,” Schwind said, repurposing a line from political strategist James Carville. “Look at masks, and it’s obvious they cannot seal. Why do you think your glasses fog up? Leaks allow harmful particles in to invade through the mouth and nose, a perfect entry for viruses like the coronavirus.”

The ReadiMask has a medical standard adhesive that completely seals the mask to the face. The added benefit of using adhesive is it eliminates the uncomfortable straps and metal nose piece.

Schwind, a wannabe engineer with an IT background, worked on several startups while refining the ReadiMask.

His first and arguably most crucial battle was gaining N95 certification from the National Institute of Occupational Safety & Health (NIOSH). “Before coronavirus started, the public didn’t care about safety masks or ratings,” Schwind said. “Now, everyone is an expert, demanding an N95 rating.

Schwind in the ReadiMask warehouse

capture wearers (not actors) remaining immune to the pepper spray, including corrections officers in a simulated prison riot.

Schwind has shifted his marketing from solo efforts to a distributor model. “We have an impressive client list but feel that with a distributor base in our industry, we would have more opportunity to reach a broader audience,” Schwind said. “Now I’m spending time looking for distributors.

“What continues to drive me is the belief and the feedback that the ReadiMask is not only an evolutionary improvement but reliable enough to offer Americans even more protection. Unfortunately, the coronavirus proved me right, and we’ll still be here when

the next pandemic strikes.”

While Schwind appreciates ReadiMask’s “sudden” success, he recognizes that it represents a trickle of the demand instead of the expected avalanche. It leads him to the inevitable question every entrepreneur confronts: What continues to be the biggest frustration just as you begin to make headway?

“I built the better mousetrap, and I’m still trying to get wider attention for it,” Schwind said. “It has a perfect seal, government N95 approval, and the small size model fits women and children.

“If you try it on just once, you’ll understand immediately.” n

“The N95 mask is the gold standard in the mask industry, and if NIOSH didn’t certify your mask, throw it away and get one that is”, Schwind said. His irritation is evident when talking about millions of earloop KN95 Chinese imports that lack U.S. certification.

“Our masks are made in Maryland and Ohio,” he said proudly.

OING THROUGH THE GOVERNMENT bureaucracy and certification forces inventors to jump through hoops, he explained. “Earning certification is lengthy, laborious and costly. We persisted for more than ten years before earning that coveted certification.”

Several recent contracts catapulted Global Safety First to the big leagues. He forged a strategic partnership with Fortune 400 company Avery Denison and the Defense Logistics Agency. He has signed deals with the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. State Department Diplomatic Security, Federal Bureau of Prisons and Boston Medical Center.

Schwind also sells his N95 mask with an integrated eye shield that is so effective, you can be hit with an entire can of pepper spray without feeling the effects. YouTube videos (ReadiMask)

G

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ADVERTISE WITH US Contact:

ken@jerseymanmagazine.com

Champions of Cheltenham

BY KURT SMITH

Steve Friedman (R) with friend and schoolmate Benjamin Netanyahu

On August 13, 2020 the U.A.E. acknowledged normalized relations with the State of Israel. It was momentous enough to interrupt wall-to-wall pandemic coverage.

It was also the type of event that foreign policy “experts” were claiming for decades wasn’t possible.

But Philadelphia attorney Steve Friedman knows Benjamin Netanyahu well enough to know that Bibi didn’t rise to the top of the Israeli government by listening to bureaucrats, who often manage to attain “expert” status without ever actually achieving anything.

The two have been friends since attending Cheltenham High together. Friedman 62

understands Netanyahu’s gift for the big picture.

“One of the great skillsets … of Prime Minister Netanyahu is in international relationships, especially in Africa,” Friedman explains. “He developed a relationship with Egypt and with Jordan. But to get a relationship with the U.A.E., it’s mind-boggling. It’s just incredible.

“There was nobody in the world who said, ‘the greatest threat to the world is Iran.’ I heard that from him in 1982. Nobody was talking about that; they weren’t talking about it 20 years ago.

“He’s always understood that, and what really has driven this tremendous change in the relationship between Israel and these

Steve Friedman is a longtime success story as a Philadelphia attorney for the Duane Morris firm.

He’s also a close personal friend of the Israeli Prime Minister and fellow Cheltenham High alumni Benjamin Netanyahu. The two share a common ability: to make a difference through people skills. countries. It’s essentially a mutual fear of Iran.

They began to realize, Israel is not the enemy.

Netanyahu is not the enemy. It’s Iran, the Ayatollahs, and their very radical views for the way life should be lived.”

Steve Friedman currently practices for the prestigious Duane Morris firm. On the company’s website, he’s listed as being a “personal and legal advisor” to Netanyahu, which he admits is a bit pretentious. He didn’t write that.

“Let’s put it this way,” he says, “We’re very close. We just talk and he’s a very smart guy, so he talks to anybody. I think he uses me because of my involvement in some things in the U.S. He’s always interested in knowing what’s going on here, and to an extent, I can help him with that.”

Friedman remembers walking with Bibi from the U.N. to the Israeli ambassador’s apartment on 85th Street. Which, incidentally, is quite a hike.

“There would be these secret service guys and state department security, and he would walk like Mr. Magoo. He ignored traffic lights, just kept walking, and I could see these guys thinking, ‘God, just don’t get killed on my watch!’”

S

o while Friedman does, in so many words, advise Netanyahu on U.S.Israeli relations, that probably isn’t the key selling point for hiring him.

More likely, you’d call on him to protect your company’s trade secrets.

He’s had a bit of experience doing so with high profile clients, including Nutrisystem during their high-flying 1990s run. A weightloss company that enabled people to eat pancakes and still lose weight inspired quite a

The Hits That Made Me A Lawyer Remember how football coaches used to refer to players incurring concussions from nasty hits as getting your bell rung?

As a high school and college football player…who shared a backfield at Cheltenham High with none other than “Mr. October” Reggie Jackson…Steve Friedman has had his bell rung a few times. It ultimately ended his football career, which he thinks was probably a good thing.

“I had one concussion in high school, as a sophomore, I must have got hit in the head. I got up and I started walking down the field. They grabbed me and put me on the bench. I’m fully conscious, but I have no idea who I am, and then as the game is still going, I started to figure it out. That was the first one, and then the other two were sophomore year. Football was my life from the age of four until about 20, and then I was done.”

He learned in his freshman year at Yale that football has a way of talking you out of playing it.

“When I was a freshman, we would scrimmage against the varsity. The senior fullback was Chuck Mercein. You run at each other pretty hard, and I had pumped up to about 208, 210, Mercein was about 235, and running into him was like running into the edge of a steel building.

“Three years later, when I was a junior, I watched him in the first two Super Bowls, as a running back for the Green Bay Packers, and said to myself, ‘Boy, was I over my head.’”

He has no regrets. “I was always very proud of it, and the good news is, [though] I had the brain concussions, presumably I can still talk and walk. Some friends joke with you, they say ‘Steve, you were really stupid until you got those brain concussions, and you got a lot better!’” few copycats, including Heinz and Jenny Craig.

“Heinz owned Weight Watchers,” Friedman recalls. “It’s been years, but my best recollection is it was triggered by a relatively high ranking employee, who left Nutrisystem

and went to Weight Watchers. The next thing you know, we see them starting to do things that seem very similar to the unique procedures that Nutrisystem had.”

A similar situation occurred with Sid

63

“Being a good trial lawyer…or being a good lawyer, period…about 98% of it is people skills.” and Jenny Craig, a case where Friedman successfully negotiated a large settlement.

“They originally had a relationship with Nutrisystem, they then went to California and waited for their non-compete to expire.

They started a company in Australia, and then they came back to California and expanded.

It was called Jenny Craig, and they started using what we thought were trade secrets to Nutrisystem.

“Shea & Gould, the New York law firm, was on the other side. Very good lawyer. We went at it and pounded each other for a while and then settled the case.

“These cases start because somebody works for Company A, begins to understand the trade secrets, has a binding agreement not to disclose them, or under common law or the law of the state where they’re living, can’t disclose them anyway. Then they go to Company B, and then Company B is starting to do things that Company A did.”

Friedman has enjoyed substantial success convincing juries over the years, enough to earn multiple speaking engagements. One is

titled “Selling Your Case to the Jury: How to Effectively Communicate the Technology Behind the Patent Dispute”.

“You have a story to tell, and it’s a narrative, and you hopefully have most of the facts that support it, and you have to convince the jury that your narrative is true and demands relief. It’s the essence of any good trial lawyer.”

F

riedman achieved an even greater milestone representing Signature Financial Group against State Street Bank in a Federal Circuit appeals court. It was technology-based litigation in the late 1990s, as the Internet was beginning to flourish.

Friedman estimates that the case had an audience approaching 500 people.

“I practiced arguments in front of panels of patent lawyers, to really pepper me with questions, to prepare me. When I walked in that courtroom, I just said, ‘We’re gonna win this.’”

The preparation turned out to be secondary in the win.

“The Chief Judge was a very senior guy in his 90’s, Giles Rich,” Friedman reflects. “He had drafted the patent amendments in 1952.

The opening question from Rich was, ‘Mr. Friedman, I see you’re not a patent lawyer, I find it interesting that you’re here.’

“I went on and on with some answer, and I said, ‘I know that you published the amendments to the patent laws of 1952, so I’m honored to be in your company.’

“It was just total bulls***! And he was so taken that everybody on my side said, ‘Oh my God, he had a twinkle in his eye!’ They said, that’s when you won the case.

“There was nothing dishonest, it was actually true, I was trying to play to his ego a little bit. Then about eight months later, we got the opinion and we won.”

How powerful is a personal rapport with a judge? Judge Rich’s ruling in the case was considered not only controversial but contradictory of his own past decisions. That’s how much Rich liked Friedman. Rich’s Wikipedia page describes it thus: “Judge Rich justified his conclusion on the basis that the business method exception to patentability was abolished by the 1952 Patent Act. However, this line of reasoning is contradicted by Judge Rich himself, among others. He had earlier stated, in a law review article written not long after the passage of the Patent Act, that Section 101 of the Act denied patent protection to business methods, observing that the diaper service, ‘one of the greatest inventions of our times,’ was patent-ineligible because it was a business method.”

To simplify all of that, maybe flattery really does get you everywhere in a courtroom. Including out on the lecture circuit, where Friedman spent several years as a result of the ruling.

H

e may not have Netanyahu’s track record for public relations. Not many humans do. But like his Prime Minister friend, Friedman understands the value of storytelling and people skills, and the difference it can make.

During this interview, he even invited this writer to visit the memorial for Netanyahu’s brother with him. Yonatan Netanyahu was killed in Operation Entebbe in 1976; Friedman and Benjamin dedicated the memorial in 1982.

“Being a good trial lawyer…or being a good lawyer, period…about 98% of it is people skills, the ability to deal with people, understand people, and get them to work with you. And that’s true of life in general.

“It’s the heart of politics, it’s the heart of business, it’s the heart of everything.” n

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PROMOTION

SFA Forecasts Suburban Office Demand to Grow

By Stephen R. McCarthy Director of Investor Relations, SFA Strategic Funding Alternatives, LLC • sm@sfalts.com

SFA

is continuing to take all necessary precautions to protect our SFA team and portfolio and carry out our responsibility of stewardship for our investors, tenants, assets, and investments in this evolving landscape.

We are committed to providing high quality research and due diligence as we continue to acquire assets in the suburban office sector. The trend that we are seeing is a focus on suburban office space in what appears to be a significant reconsideration of the urban office environment. As we examine residential home purchases, there is a clear surge in homebuyers moving to the suburbs. We feel that this is a leading indicator for a suburban office uptick. Millennials, although generally doing things later in life than their parents, are still looking to purchase homes and start families. For most millennials, who make up the majority of the labor pool, the most cost-effective, and socially distant manner to achieve this goal is accomplished in the suburbs.

COVID-19 forced the majority of the workforce to adopt a work from home model overnight. This of course has been met with several challenges for employees i.e. decreased productivity, inadequate workspaces in the home, and the lack of personal connection and culture with their organization.

There were however some clear benefits for both employers and employees – commute time being reported as one of the most significant.

Suburban office buildings that provide great walkability, have local dining options, and parking are poised to capture business seeking this type of model at a significantly more attractive cost than staying put in the city.

Hub and spoke office models are emerging as a leader in the discussion for companies contemplating ways to keep their employees connected, productive, and in the office, while also addressing the benefits of reduced commute time, safety in social distancing, and reduced rents. This model generally looks like a central office headquarters in an urban area, with satellite offices in surrounding suburban areas close to the homes of the workforce. Suburban office buildings that provide great walkability, have local dining options, and parking are poised to capture business seeking this type of model at a significantly more attractive cost than staying put in the city.

Please feel free to contact me with any questions concerning investments with SFA. If you would like to schedule time to tour the properties, including our upcoming projects, please reach out to me, and I will be happy to coordinate.

S t r a t e g i c F u n d i n g A l t e r n a t iv e s • M o o r e s t ow n , N J • 8 5 6 . 4 3 7 . 6 1 9 6 • w w w. s f a l t s . c o m • w w w. s f a i nv e s t . c o m

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HERE ISN’T AN ENGLISH IDIOM to describe the time spent directly after a meal, yet before rising from the table. The time that is spent chatting, sipping the last of libations and occasionally lighting up an after-dinner smoke. In Spanish, there is a word for this universal experience and it’s called sobremesa or “over the table”.

This Latin expression is the namesake of Dunbarton Tobacco & Trust’s cigar, the Sobremesa Brulee.

In 2013, a man named Steve Saka parted ways with a large cigar manufacturer named Drew Estate. Two years later Saka founded his own tobacco company and released his premier cigar, the Sobremesa. Previous acclaim from his history in the business helped drive his new brand. Since 2015, he has released several more cigar lines with his company. In 2019, Saka revisited his champion line, and added a Connecticut named the Brulee.

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To learn more about the Legacy Club contact Ken at: 70 ken@jerseymanmagazine.com or call 856.912.4007

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71

6TH ANNUAL

6TH ANNUAL

MAN & WOMAN OF THE YEAR HONOREES JerseyMan and PhillyMan Magazines are proud to recognize those in our area who demonstrate the rare combination of business excellence and dedication to community service. These Man & Woman of the Year candidates will be honored at our 6th annual Unmasking the Legacy event, held in March 2021, where a portion of ticket proceeds will go to the winner’s designated charities.

Marla McDermott In 2015, Marla McDermott was seeking a different kind of networking group for women that supported both their personal and professional development, so she created The Walnut Club. Serving women in Philadelphia and the Main Line, The Walnut Club has become a thriving non-profit for high-achieving women seeking community, inspiration and growth through various events, workshops and mentorship programs. The club also has developed a reputation for throwing fun awards events honoring women for their leadership and community contributions.

Now, it is our honor to recognize Marla for her own accomplishments in supporting and celebrating the achievements of women.

After a nearly five year term as president, Marla passed the reins to new leadership to focus on making an even greater impact in being of service to women. Her new chapter is centered on helping women generate more money, power and freedom through her abundance mindset coaching. Since discovering the concept of “manifesting” and applying Law of Attraction mindset tools for over fifteen years, Marla’s created a life by design instead of by default. As a masterful manifester, she loves teaching others how they can achieve more by doing less, turn their BIG goals into a reality, and attract abundance into all areas of their lives, including more love. Her most popular course is called “Manifest Mr. Right, without even leaving your home”, where she teaches her magical “list writing” technique that attracted her soulmate husband to literally come ringing her doorbell. Learn more about Marla and the types of mentorship and coaching she offers at MarlaMcDermott.com.

NEW DATE

Save THE Date

Brian Propp

3.4.21

Brian is a former National Hockey League All-Star, legendary Philadelphia Flyer, former sports broadcaster, entrepreneur, business relationship and development guru and a philanthropist in his community. Brian is a loving husband and father of two and presently on the senior leadership team at Wolf Commercial Real Estate. Throughout his life, Propp has leveraged his 15-year professional sports experiences and his 30 years in the business world. Whether it is the dressing room or the boardroom, Brian continues to optimize opportunities and drives peak performance results by being the example and inspiring teams to strive for the best.

Ballroom at the Ben • Philadelphia

Marla is supporting The Walnut Club for JerseyMan/PhillyMan’s 6th Annual Unmasking the Legacy celebration event.

The awards he has won include Magee Rehab Believe Award, PSWA Most Courageous Award, Union League Philadelphia Community Award, SJ Magazine Community Award, Sports Museum HOF, and the Old Timers Bats, Balls & Pucks Award.

A 6-handicap golfer, you can find Brian on the links participating in charitable client golf events throughout the summers, helping kids and raising awareness for many social and charitable causes.

Today Brian is the Director, Strategic Relationships at Wolf Commercial Real Estate (WCRE) where he serves as a C-level brand ambassador, introducing the firm to new markets, clients, and industries.

Brian is supporting the WCRE Foundation for JerseyMan/PhillyMan’s 6th Annual Unmasking the Legacy celebration event.

A MasqueradeThemed Celebration Event 6-10 p.m.

FOR INFORMATION CONTACT: Ken Dunek at ken@jerseymanmagazine.com or Ashley Dunek at adunek@jerseymanmagazine.com

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@PCS_AnthonyM

TECH TIME

_______________________________________________________________________________

BY ANTHONY MONGELUZO

Bitcoin: The Next Best Moneymaker?

A

DMIT IT. In the dark recesses of your mind, you hope there’s an easy—OK, somewhat easy—way to score big financially without all that hard work, the long hours and the gut-wrenching tension about “the deal.” It’s like that tip about Apple stock before it became a highflyer.

Well, relax, there’s always cryptocurrency. Like a day trader gone wild, it allows you to take a stab at the big time, without … well, there might be some risk.

One of the most frequent non-IT questions that people ask me is about Bitcoin or cryptocurrency. I dabble in it with a high degree of restraint. If you hear the term Bitcoin but are unsure of what it is and whether you should take the plunge, here are some basics.

include Coinbase, Bitstamp and Bitfinex. Don’t forget, security can be an issue. Hackers stole millions after puncturing Bitfinex security.

Is it difficult to use? It’s simple to buy, sell or send Bitcoins via apps or your computers. Just like sending digital cash.

Where do I keep my Bitcoins? You store them in a “digital wallet” that hides in the cloud or your computer. Consider it your virtual banking account. Just remember: There’s no FDIC, so if it disappears … there’s no government insurance to bail you out. (If someone hacks you, a virus wipes you out, or you accidentally delete your account, you’re SOL.) What else is the appeal? A simple word: Anonymity. All transactions are in a public ledger. But no one knows the actual seller or buyer. (This might explain its popularity among the drug-buying crowd and others involved

If you have the funds and the stomach for some risk, you might enjoy the ride.

What is Bitcoin or cryptocurrency? In 1999, Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin. (The name is a pseudonym.) Transactions are bankless. Yes, no bank involvement. You can pay for items, but most of the people who dabble do it to get wealthier by trading—because prices have skyrocketed. In its simplest form, it is a digital form of currency. (Keep in mind that in addition to Bitcoin, there are literally thousands of different types of cryptocurrencies.)

What’s its appeal? You can buy (some) merchandise and sell your bitcoins anonymously. It makes international payments inexpensive and easy, which means it bypasses international regulations. It appeals to some as a way to sidestep credit card fees. To others, it’s a trading item they hope will rise in value.

How do you use it? You can buy or sell Bitcoins through “Bitcoin exchanges,” a sort of central exchange. These vary, but popular ones 76

in nefarious activities.) Plus, it has that tinge of secrecy we all enjoy.

Does Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies) have a future? No one knows. It remains unregulated, but Japan, China and Australia are making sounds about regulation. The sticking point for governments is their inability (so far) to tax transactions, and their lack of control over the currency leaves them uncomfortable.

Should I take a stab at Bitcoin (or other cryptocurrencies)? I would offer three suggestions. First, learn as much about it as you can. There’s a mountain of information on the Internet. Second, talk to someone who has indulged. Third, and this is sage advice with any investing, ask yourself: Can I absorb the loss if I’m wiped out? I’m suggesting that you might not want to swap your retirement fund and your wife’s Roth IRA for Bitcoin trading. But if you have the funds and the stomach for some risk, you might enjoy the ride. n

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BY ROBERT KENNEDY

Cab Franc – An Undiscovered Gem

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NE OF THE MOST UNDERRATED, underappreciated, and little-known red grapes in this modern world of ours is the Cabernet Franc. Until perhaps recently. It even may have been considered a second-rate citizen since its role has mostly played out as that wee little grape hidden within the best Bordeaux blends in the world. That said, this wonderful grape is finally getting its sea legs firmly planted on the cab boat’s deck. And deservedly so. What we do know about “Cab Franc”, as it’s better known, is that it blends beautifully well with other grapes such as Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Petite Verdot and Malbec. Most of us have seen it listed on Meritage wine labels, and sometimes recognize it as Cinq Cepages, a wonderfully classic Bordeaux styled blend of five grapes. But what we may not realize is how delightful this libation is when vinified all on its own. Let’s explore its origins, flavors and what more we can expect today from Cab Franc.

One of the oldest cultivated varietals dating back to the 17th century, the Cab Franc was first found in the Loire Valley of the Basque country where Spain intersects France in the southwest corner. It is widely believed that Cardinal Richelieu, at the time, had the Cab Franc vines moved there by an abbot named Breton, and planted at the Abbey of Bourgueil. It remained under the care of Breton for many years, and thus the grape became synonymous with the name Breton. 100 years later during the 18th century, vines were planted routinely on the Right Bank of the Bordeaux appellation of Pomerol, St. Emilion and within the walls

of Fronsac. In Bordeaux, the grape became known as bouchet, meaning “black” grape. (The color of the fruit.) What may not be well known is that Cab Franc is the preceding generation to Cabernet Sauvignon. More interestingly, perhaps, is that Cab Franc sired the Cabernet Sauvignon by being crossed with Sauvignon blanc. This birth was only scientifically discovered more recently in the 1990s.

So why does Cab Franc make such a complimentary and special partner to the Cabernet Sauvignon and the Merlot grapes? What the Cab Franc grape offers is structure and complexity—a great addition to these sister grapes. Additionally, the Cab Franc’s thin skin yields more 78

moderate tannins, balanced acidity, and is lighter in color and texture than its offspring, offering florals and aromas that pair very well with the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes. The big and bold, in your face, “jammy and chewy” wines offered by the Cab Franc’s counterpart, are a match made in heaven with Cab Franc grapes.

What Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot grapes lack, Cab Franc backfills. Cab Franc has the finesse that forms a strong duet with these two and brings to the table grassy herbaceous aromas and flavors that include graphite, tobacco, pencil shavings, earthiness and fresh mint

The exceptionally pure, 100% Cab Francs rising from the Chinon region of France’s Loire Valley were little known to most of us until recently. that’s lacking in the other two grapes. As a vegetal, there’s the added green pepper on the nose that finishes with a lingering viscosity of black pepper which dances on the tongue, not found in either Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon.

With a family partnership so strong, then why vinify the Cab Franc grape on its own terms? Many reasons abound, but notably what has been recently discovered about a 100% Cab Franc is its singular ability to be paired enjoyably with comfort foods such as roasted chicken, pizza, tomato sauces, and grilled vegetables. On its own, Cab Franc is delicate and aromatic with lots of forward red fruit. Additionally, although it has always been produced as a single varietal in the Loire Valley, more countries such as the U.S. Canada, Argentina and Chile are producing more 100% Cab Franc, making it the 20th most widely planted grapes in the world.

Moreover, the exceptionally pure, 100% Cab Francs rising from the Chinon region of France’s Loire Valley were little known to most of us until recently. This caused wine drinkers to simply shy away.

And, it’s been lately discovered that the cooler appellations that include the terroir of clay and limestone make for the best Cab Francs.

Those Cab Francs produced in hotter climates will tend to drink very differently, be higher in alcohol, sweeter to the taste, and wine lovers may not have a consistently good experience. Sticking with those produced in cooler climates will definitely be a plus.

Lastly, the price points today are tilted much more favorably towards a Cab Franc than most French Bordeaux and California Cabernet Sauvignon wines, making this unblended Cab Franc extremely desirable.

So, the silent partnership between these grapes, making the Bordeaux blends some of the best nectar of the gods in the world, is not breaking up but allows this underrated grape to stand out on its own as an undiscovered gem that is well worth the investment. Next trip to the wine store, give a comparative bottle of Cab Franc a go alongside a bottle of blended Bordeaux. You just may be surprised why this gem was not on your radar much before now. n