Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business • April 2019 uNEW HIRES • Gesa Credit Union commercial loan officer Michelle Potts is now serving the Tri-Cities and surrounding area. She has 17 years of experience Michelle Potts in agricultural and commercial lending and has been with Gesa for four years. • Terra Blanca Winery and Estate Vineyard of Benton City has hired Executive Chef Jim Vande Berg, who has seven years of experience in fine dining at hotels and 13 years in waterfront Italian restaurants. Vande Berg of Richland and his team have crafted a culinary program that can accommodate private events, such as weddings, as well as overseeing the winery’s Vineyard Grill, which offers wood-fired pizzas, salads and more. • AHBL, which offers civil and structural engineering, landscape architecture and land surveying services, has three new employees at its Pasco office: Mason Mendel, a professional engineer, brings 13 years of experience in Mason Mendel civil engineering consulting. He has worked on projects spanning a broad range of civil engineering disciplines, clients and geographic areas in Ryan Sternfeld Washington. Ryan Sternfeld is a survey crew chief. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Oregon and comes to the company havRyan Krieg ing spent the past two years as a survey technician in Kennewick. Ryan Krieg is a survey technician who graduated from Washington State University in 2016. • Rosa Torres is the new finance director at Elite Construction & Development in Pasco. As a member of the management team, Torres provides strategic vision and leadership as Rosa Torres Elite continues to grow into new sectors of the construction industry. She brings more than 20 years of experience managing finances.
Most recently, she worked with Microsoft as a financial controller and senior financial manager. Before that, she served as a senior financial analyst at Starbucks, working on its supply chain. • Sage Design Group PLLC of Kennewick will add Zochil Castro to its team in May. She will be leading the residential division of the landscape architectural “designonly” firm. She is a recent graduate Zochil Castro of the landscape architectural bachelor program at Washington State
University in Pullman. • Dena Putnam-Gilchrist has joined Trios Health and as the new chief nursing officer and Chad Pew as the chief operating officer. PutnamGilchrist joined Trios in February and has more than 29 years of experiDena ence as a nurse. Putnam-Gilchrist Most recently, she worked as an interim CNO and assistant CNO at McKenzie-Willamette Medical Center in Springfield, Oregon.
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Pew joined Trios in March. Originally from Nebraska, Pew has worked for 20 years in medical facilities and was most recently interim Chad Pew CEO at a facility in Nebraska. Pew completed his undergraduate degree in biology at Chadron State College in Nebraska, as well as a medical tech degree from Hayes Pathology in Kansas and a master’s in business administration from the University of Nebraska.