Columbus CEO - June 2020 issue by The Columbus Dispatch/Dispatch Magazines

Wardrobe Therapy Executive styling firm gets a new investor. Page 18

Podcast pioneer Todd Cochrane built a national player in Blubrry.

Flowers & Bread Big changes coming for Clintonville tastemaker.

Page 8

Page 32

June 2020

Ranunculus at Sunny Meadows Flower Farm

Despite the pandemic, local flower farms found ways to flourish. Page 26

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Contents

Wine anemone at Sunny Meadows Flower Farm

It hasn’t been a silent spring on Central Ohio farms even in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. A number of intrepid flower growing enterprises in the region have changed their business models on the fly to bring a splash of spring color to our homes and work spaces.

Departments

In-Depth

05 Editor’s Notes

53 Business law

Hexion: When finding a way to give back makes a crisis less scary.

69 Leaderboards

Lindsay Karas Stencel brings her enthusiasm and flair to Thompson Hine’s early stage/emerging firms practice.

Central Ohio temporary employment agencies

72 Office Space Carlile Patchen & Murphy moves into its Grandview Yard digs from former offices in the Discovery District.

june 2020 Cover photo by

Rob Hardin June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Advertising Section

Insider 62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289 Columbus, Ohio 43216 Phone: 614-540-8900 • Fax: 614-461-8746

ColumbusCEO.com

VOLUME 29 / NUMBER 6 Columbus Site Manager

Alan D. Miller

Publisher/General Manager

Ray Paprocki

Associate Publisher/Advertising Director

Rheta Gallagher Editorial EDITOR

Katy Smith

07 Breakdown

Smart Columbus

Small signs of recovery are showing up. Has the worst passed?

08 Profile: Todd Cochrane The podcasting pioneer has built a company based on business savvy, connectivity and yes, plenty of talk.

(Inserted after page 36)

14 Tech Talk NecoTech takes to the road to make better use of recycled plastics.

CONTRIBUTING EDITOR

18 Spotlight: Small Business

Design & Production

Wardrobe Therapy helps execs solve the problem of what to wear.

Jeff Bell

PRODUCTION/DESIGN DIRECTOR

Craig Rusnak ART DIRECTOR

Yogesh Chaudhary Digital EDITOR

Julanne Hohbach ASSISTANT DIGITAL EDITOR

Brittany Moseley Custom Content PROJECT MANAGER

Emma Frankart Henterley Photography PHOTO EDITOR

Tim Johnson Associate photo editor

Rob Hardin

In just four years, Smart Columbus has made major strides toward meeting its goal of improving the quality of life in the region through better mobility options.

20 Spotlight: Nonprofit Pharmacy shifts gears to get meds to underserved patients during crisis.

22 Spotlight: Innovation Aware is in the right place at the right time for online collaboration technology.

24 Spotlight: Commercial Real Estate Business Resource Guide

New Albany’s business park growth is driven by a public-private partnership that truly works.

Advertising ADVERTISING Manager

Susan Kendall

CLASSIFIED SALES

Terri Tribbie, Telana Veil, Amy Vidrick Digital Specialist

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SALES ASSISTANT

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SUBSCRIPTIONS

Local organizations offer their expertise on organizational change management, selecting an attorney as a business partner, on-site and online college opportunities, and navigating the new workplace.

Page 59

LETTERS: letters@columbusceo.com PRESS RELEASES

Columbus CEO (ISSN 1085-911X) is published monthly by Gannett. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © Gannett Co., Inc. 2020, all rights reserved. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited. Publisher assumes no responsibility for return of unsolicited materials. Known address of publication is 62 E. Broad St., Columbus, Ohio 43215. Periodicals postage paid at Columbus, Ohio, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Senzd address changes to Columbus CEO, 62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289, Columbus, OH 43216.

DO JU

Photo by Rob Hardin

C o r r e c t i o n

Michael Schoedinger, president of Schoedinger Funeral and Cremation Service, is the cousin of Randy Schoedinger, the company’s CEO. A story in the May issue mischaracterized the familial relationship.

Roundtable Employee benefits expert Jay Hazelbaker of TAH Benefits provides insight on how companies are addressing the many employee issues raised by the Covid-19 pandemic. Page 65

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Editor’s Notes * ksmith@ColumbusCEO.com

Signs more change is on the way

Courtesy Hexion

exion Inc. is one of those companies quietly doing substantial business from a home base in Columbus, with headquarters and about 250 Ohio employees at 180 E. Broad St. Downtown. The $3.4 billion chemical manufacturer has 46 worldwide locations and 4,000 employees. Yet it never had a sign outside its offices here until about a month ago. The changes Hexion has navigated in recent years are major. It underwent bankruptcy restructuring in 2019, emerging with new owners, a new board and a much lighter debt burden. This year, as the coronavirus pandemic surfaced in the United States, its CEO Craig Rogerson came down with symptoms of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel version of the virus. He went on leave March 30 and later tested positive for the virus, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. “After treatment, subsequent tests have returned negative, but Mr. Rogerson remains under medical care as he recovers,” the April 30 filing said. As of May 21 as this magazine went to press, he remained on leave in Florida, where he has a winter home, the company said. “He is getting care and improving,” says acting CEO George Knight, the company’s CFO since 2015. One thing that did not change in Hexion’s restructuring was its management. “We have a very seasoned senior leadership team,” says Knight, who has been with Hexion and its predecessors for 23 years. “We’ve been together a long time. Everybody really stepped up and has been very supportive of me and the company. We’re all doing what we can to get through this.” Something many of us have been doing to get through the past two months is helping others who may not be faring as well during the crisis. Hexion’s been doing that as well, re-

Hexion’s corporate headquarters at 180 E. Broad St. has its sign out front for the first time since the company was formed in 2005 in a merger of four companies. purposing some of its mixers to make hand sanitizer with isopropyl alcohol and glycerin. “In this time there’s a lot of things we can’t control, so to do something like this gives associates something to rally around and feel good about,” Knight says. Hexion’s business has not been hit as hard as many others because it is deemed essential in most countries where it operates. The maker of resins and coatings for the automotive, durable goods and other industries has continued operating its global plants, which don’t require a dense population of workers, and is beginning to plan for what a return to its Columbus HQ will look like, “the big thing being to make sure people feel comfortable returning,” Knight says. Many offices will be reconfigured, we’ll be wearing masks, and use of common areas could be scheduled to avoid crowding. Some companies will stagger attendance for the same purpose. Those who are able may continue working from home all summer. Speaking of summer, I hope you’ll find this issue a breath of fresh air, as

I do—the weight of this Editor’s Note aside. Giant bouquets of flowers, closets bursting with colorful apparel, and podcasts that delight listeners with smart voices from, well, anywhere—that’s what we’re turning to. Please enjoy not taking everything so seriously for an hour or two.

Katy Smith, Editor June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Breakdown Compiled by katy smith + Infographic by Yogesh Chaudhary

Columbus MSA Initial and continuing claims

Hope the worst has passed Slivers of hope that the economic devastation caused by Covid-19 was easing began to appear in early May, when initial and continuing unemployment claims as a percentage of the 2019 average labor force started falling. Meanwhile, in a report released May 15, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia said forecasters predicted a faster recovery than some had anticipated starting in the third quarter and continuing into Q2 of next year. “But of course nobody really knows because we just don’t have the numbers yet,” says Columbus economist Bill LaFayette, owner of Regionomics, noting that the University of Michigan’s consumer confidence index looked abysmal. “The unemployment numbers are small, tiny green shoots of recovery, and it’s very easy to oversell that. The numbers themselves are really awful numbers that we have never seen before, which kind of goes without saying.” Sources: Ohio Labor Market Information Bureau, Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor and Regionomics LLC

136,667

126,328

8,967 3/14 3/21 3/28 4/4 4/11 4/18 4/25 5/2 5/9

Ohio Initial and continuing claims

869,924

796,023

75,756 3/14 3/21 3/28 4/4 4/11 4/18 4/25 5/2 5/9

U.S. Initial and continuing claims

24,628,152 23,757,496

2,228,688

3/14 3/21 3/28 4/4 4/11 4/18 4/25 5/2 5/9

June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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profile By Steve Wartenberg

Todd Cochrane Founder and CEO

Blubrry Podcasting Age: 55 In position since: 2005 Previous: 25 years in U.S. Navy as a senior chief and aviation electronic technician Education: Bachelor’s degree in

professional aeronautics from EmbryRiddle Aeronautics University, 2011

Resides: Splits time between Worthington, Quincy, Michigan, and Hawaii Family: Wife, Shoko, and four children,

Natalie, Anna, Ray and Chris

Podcasting pioneer Todd Cochrane was hosting podcasts back when barely anyone knew what they were. His company, Blubrry, continues to dominate the space.

n interesting genesis story can liven up an interview and keep listeners engaged, says podcasting pioneer Todd Cochrane. So the founder and CEO of Worthington-based Blubrry Podcasting—the second-largest podcasting service and hosting site in the U.S., according to its own research—asks guests on the three shows he hosts or co-hosts why and how they began

podcasting. “The stories are amazing,” Cochrane says, “and range from self-therapy to a business idea to a way to talk to their friends and turn it into a business.” But here’s the thing: Cochrane’s own creation story with Blubrry is pretty compelling, which may play into why he’s all about the genesis story. His combines a life-changing back injury and the end of a 25-year career in the U.S. Navy with his pioneering, hall-of-fame worthy efforts in a new medium. Plus, the rather unique way Cochrane recruited the people who helped him build an industry leader.

‘I know how to talk’ Cochrane, 55, joined the Navy soon after high school, and spent the next two-plus decades as an aviation electronic technician on P-3 Orion antisubmarine and maritime surveillance aircraft. “I got to know a lot of stuff in the intelligence space that I can’t talk about,” he says. He suffered a broken back in an off-duty swimming-pool accident during a deployment to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf in June 2004. “I was a 3-percenter and was lucky to walk out of that hospital,” Cochrane says, adding his doctors told him 97 percent of the people who suffered this type of injury, a burst compression fracture, became paralyzed. He was grounded, and eventually reassigned to a base in Waco, Texas, where he helped oversee aircraft modifications. While in Waco, armored up in a clamshell brace to protect his stillhealing, surgically repaired back, he discovered the world of podcasts. Already a bit of a techie, Cochrane decided, “I know how to talk.” He bought an inexpensive microphone and began recording the Geek News Central podcast in October 2004. “When I went home to Hawaii, I told my wife (Shoko) this was what I was doing,” he says. Her response: “What’s a podcast?” Followed by: “You have two years to make this work financially.” Cut Shoko some slack. It was 2004 and very few people had heard of

podcasting back then. Nobody was making money creating audio conversations, interviews and stories that had to be downloaded from an MP3 onto your computer using a Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feed, a process not quite as simple as the name suggests. But Cochrane soon became one of the first to monetize the fledgling field of podcasting.

Going with GoDaddy Geek News Central attracted a following, including a book publisher and a domain-name company. Wiley Publishing asked Cochrane in late 2004 to author what eventually became Podcasting: The Do-It-Yourself Guide, the first podcasting book. Scottsdale, Arizona-based GoDaddy, which today is a $3 billion internet domain registrar and web hosting company that trades on the New York Stock Exchange, came calling in late 2005

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and offered to advertise on Geek News Central. It was already the world’s largest web registrar. The affiliation was a beginning. “The podcasting space was quite pure then, and making money from it was not something you did,” Cochrane says, adding he lost a lot of listeners after he talked about his

I was a 3-percenter and was lucky to walk out of that hospital. People who suffered this type of injury, a burst compression fracture, became paralyzed.

book on a show. Nevertheless, the dam had burst. GoDaddy asked Cochrane if he knew other podcasters interested in paid sponsorship, and a new business was born: a podcasting advertising agency that morphed into a podcast hosting and services company—Blubrry. “On my podcast (after GoDaddy asked about other podcasters), I said I’m looking for a lawyer, an MBA, a graphics guy and a programmer to start a company,” Cochrane says. Anyone interested could join a teleconference scheduled for the following week. About 10 curious folks called in. Determined to separate the wheat from the chaff, “I said, if you don’t have $10,000 to invest in a podcasting company, hang up. I heard click, click, click and was worried nobody was left.” A few brave souls were still listening, including lawyer Barry Krantz and Brian Yuhnke, a graphics and cre-

ative guy. Yuhnke recruited his friend, programmer Angelo Mandato. “I said this is probably a good idea,” says Mandato, who jumped in and is now Blubrry’s chief information officer. “I started developing the backend for the podcast feed.” The four founders all held down full-time jobs and worked on Blubrry in their off hours. Cochrane was still in the Navy, and he and Shoko had three young children. “I was working 16-hour days and getting up at four in the morning to make calls because of the time difference in Hawaii,” he says of the hectic, early years of Blubrry. The first business plan was to connect potential advertisers with podcasters by creating a tech podcasting network of shows and take a 30-percent cut of the advertising buy. But first, Mandato had to develop the software that would accurately track the number of downloads a podcast June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Photos courtesy Todd Cochrane

Todd Cochrane

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Q&A

Todd Cochrane talks about finding talent, what Columbus offers podcasters and how he’d react if he was approached by someone wanting to buy his company.

Why has podcasting taken off? We continue to see an expansion of the space because it’s so easy to get connected. You can listen in the gym, in the car or on mass transit. I have someone in Antarctica who listens to my show when he walks along the ice shelf. On an airplane, you don’t have to be connected to Wi-fi to listen like you do with YouTube. Is Columbus a podcasting hub? There are a good number of podcasters here. There’s a monthly meetup [hosted by the Ohio Podcasters, and supported by Blubrry] and we get 15 to 40 people, and that’s just a small percentage of the podcasters [in the area]. Is it easy to find good tech people and programmers here in Columbus? The challenge is we have all these big-name companies here, all fighting for the same top people coming out of Ohio State [University] and the other [local] colleges. That’s why we have a really good internship program. We just hired a developer who was here as an intern. While people in the podcasting business know about Blubrry, you don’t seem to have a strong local presence. Not a lot of Central Ohio residents know you’re here. That’s probably true. We’re a global company [but] we don’t have people coming through our door asking for services. Everything’s online. Now that received. Until this point, it was more of a guessing game than an exact science, and potential advertisers weren’t interested in guesses. “People were trying to game the system and inflate their numbers,” Cochrane says, adding bots were the most common method of deception. “We learned all the tricks.” And no, Cochrane and the fellow founders don’t have something against the letter E. “The actual name of the corporation is RawVoice, and Blubrry is a property,” Cochrane explains. “Our tag back then was ‘fresh organic media.’ ” With the emergence of Apple’s iPod in 2001 and the tech giant’s propensity to protect the name,

I’m here [at the Worthington office] on a more regular basis, I will get more involved in the community. Any good corporate citizen should get involved and give back. What’s the key for a podcaster? In the end, it’s all about listeners. If a podcaster has more listeners, they’re more inclined not to quit doing their show and to remain a [Blubrry] customer. So, whatever we can do to help podcasters grow their audience, we’ll do. The focus is on making shows easier to find on a Google search, so you can [type in keywords on Google] and then when you scroll down, you may find a podcast on that topic with a time hack of when they talk about it. You can now use your smart home devices, like Alexa, or even Siri, and say ‘play this podcast,’ and as long as it’s phonetically correct, it will play the latest episode of that podcast. What if a company offered you millions to purchase Blubrry? Sold! There are all kinds of ways to structure an acquisition, and we’d want to make sure the company that acquired us was a good fit, that they understood our goals and the value we put on supporting independent podcasters. It would have to be a culture fit. Then what would you do? Maybe I’d start a new company. It would have to be something that was fun. “there was some discussion if the word podcasting would even survive,” Cochrane says. The Blubrry founders decided to use the “fresh organic media” theme and came up with Blubrry. “Back then, in the dotcom days, people were using a lot of weird names with no vowels,” Cochrane says. “We own a bunch of sub-domain names, like raspbrry.”

The podcast explosion Cochrane describes the growth of podcasting as “a steady climb with a few inflection points.” A huge increase in interest came in 2005, when

Apple introduced iTunes. Overnight, it became easy to download a podcast. Ricky Gervais and Adam Carolla created podcasts that attracted millions of listeners and big bucks from advertisers. Marc Maron began interviewing comedians. Smartphones made listening to podcasts even easier, and the incredible success of the Serial podcast in 2014 introduced the medium to a mainstream audience. The age of the podcast had begun. Mandato became Blubrry’s first fulltime employee in 2007. Because he lived in Columbus, that’s where Blubrry set up shop, first in Dublin and now Worthington, where nine of its 20 employees work now. “It was still a risk,” Mandato says of leaving his job as a programmer with Groveport’s United McGill Corp. “And for three years I was making a lot less than I had been making.” The other founders worked remotely from wherever they lived. Cochrane retired from the Navy in 2007 and remained in Hawaii. He didn’t take a Blubrry paycheck until a couple of years ago, he says, adding he lived off his GoDaddy sponsorship deal. “Todd is a fierce advocate for podcasting and the principles it was built on,” says Dan Franks, president of Podcast Movement, a national organization that promotes podcasting, holds conferences and created a Podcasting Hall of Fame in 2015. Cochrane was a member of the inaugural class of inductees. The podcasting principles he tries to uphold are that anyone and everyone should be able to host a podcast, and entry should be simple and relatively inexpensive. “He’s super passionate about this, and [he] makes sure to stand up for the independent podcaster,” Franks says. By 2010, Cochrane noticed a change in the podcasting world. Shows hosted by celebrities were sucking up a growing percentage of the listeners and advertising dollars.

The podcasting space was quite pure then, and making money from it was not something you did.

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“I told the team it looked like the advertisers were moving away from the smaller shows,” he says. Blubrry adjusted and became more of a podcasting host and services company and less of a podcasting advertising agency. Libsyn.com and Blubrry were two of the early leaders in this area and remain the two largest

The team of Blubrry Podcasting

podcast hosting companies; they’re essentially the WordPress of podcasting, giving people the platform and tools to self-publish. There are about 850,000 podcasts out there now, according to Blubrry statistics. Cochrane declined to divulge how many podcasts Blubrry hosts, or the company’s annual

revenue, only saying it’s between $2 million and $5 million. Blubrry has about 80,000 customers who pay a monthly fee for hosting services, a statistics package, or their PowerPress apps that enable users to link podcasts to WordPress. Customers can choose one or more of these services. “They work hard to be customer friendly and make it easy to get into podcasting,” says Gary Monti, one of the organizers of the Ohio Podcasters monthly meetup. Blubrry fees range from $12 to $80 a month for an independent podcaster depending on the services they receive. It starts at $100 a month for companies and organizations that require more services, storage and bandwidth.

Growing chorus Business is up 50 percent at Blubrry during the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown, as more people are listening to and producing podcasts, Cochrane says. “Existing podcasters are doing a second show as they have extra time, and a huge number of brand new entrants are jumping

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in. And, corporate clients refining their podcast strategies with a huge uptick in private, internal podcasting inquiries.” Cochrane hunkered down in his Michigan home during the lockdown, recording podcasts from his in-home studio as the Blubrry team in Columbus began working from home. Cochrane still does Geek News Central and is up to more than 1,400 episodes. GoDaddy is still a sponsor, making theirs the longest continuous podcast-sponsor affiliation. He also cohosts the New Media Show with Rob Greenlee, a vice president at Libsyn (yes, the competition!), and he hosts Blubrry’s Podcast Insider. “We go back to the early days,” says Greenlee, adding his first podcast was part of Cochrane’s original tech podcasting network. “Todd has always taken an outspoken role and fought for protecting the values and culture of the medium—and making sure [the ability to create podcasts] is open to all.” Cochrane recently moved to Quincy, Michigan, and now divides his time between Hawaii, Columbus and

Quincy. This makes him an expert not only on podcasting, but also jet lag and sleep deprivation. “He really likes to get the ideas going,” Mandato says of Cochrane. “He has a military background and doesn’t like when things are late. And things are commonly late in the tech development environment.” Cochrane describes his management style as the opposite of micromanaging. “I like to empower people,” he says. “And surround myself with

We wanted people to think outside the box. I wanted someone to come into my office and say, ‘I have an idea.’ Then, we’d run it through the wringer and see if had merit.

people who know how to do their job better than I do.” A lot of this leadership philosophy comes from Cochrane’s years in the Navy, which included liaison duty with Boeing and Lockheed Martin. “We wanted people to think outside the box,” he says. “I wanted someone to come into my office and say, ‘I have an idea.’ Then, we’d run it through the wringer and see if had merit.” He brought the same philosophy to podcasting and Blubrry, and he encourages employees to come up with new ideas—and to challenge what’s already in place. Cochrane, Blubrry and podcasting have come a long way in 15 years, and this industry pioneer sees continued, steady growth. “Five years ago, if someone asked me what I did, and I told them I was in podcasting, they’d say ‘what’s a podcast?’ ” Cochrane says. “Now, when I tell people I’m in podcasting, they ask the name of the show.” And then download it onto their smartphone. Steve Wartenberg is a freelance writer.

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Tech talk

NecoTech

By Cynthia Bent Findlay

NecoTech aims to give plastic new life in roads Entrepreneur who’s been waiting more than a decade for his technology to take off says now is the time.

ome call the proliferation of plastics in our environment a crisis. For Steve Flaherty, it’s an opportunity to act on an idea he’s been tuning up for years. The concept is to use waste plastics in asphalts in novel ways. Flaherty conceived the business model for what is now called NecoPlastics while earning an MBA from the University of Louisville in 2009. “At the time, it wasn’t sexy

The ByBlock

enough,” he says ruefully. Despite the fact that Flaherty and his team won accolades in a slew of industry competitions, no one, he says, thought plastic waste was a big enough problem for people to get over the hump of adapting its use. So Flaherty moved on, working in the infrastructure industry to expand his network until the time was right. Last year, China stopped accepting plastic waste from the United States, the issue hit the news big time, and Flaherty says it became obvious his time was now. He launched NecoTech LLC and a refined NecoPlastics brand. Flaherty is aiming at converting waste plastics into an aggregate to replace stone in asphalts and concrete, which, he says, can make a stronger, lighter, more durable infrastructure—not to mention create a large domestic market for increasingly

Cyber threats increase with remote work Covail, which is the new name for Columbus Collaboratory, recently held a Q&A with Central Ohio cybersecurity experts to help companies address weaknesses sparked by the rise of work-from-home over the past few months. Kevin Jackson, chief information security officer for tech consultant Vernovis, and Covail’s Troy Vennon and Jeff Schmidt shared tips that went

beyond the norm. They pointed out, for instance, ongoing threats from the need to run work devices on home networks along with school-connected ones as home schooling may continue through summer. The risk isn’t just that we’re all working from home on hastily constructed networks. The sharks really are circling because they smell weakness.

The three experts noted an uptick in “whale hunting”— the targeting of higher-level execs—and fallout from the Zoom bombs as hacked credentials make their way onto the dark web. The No. 1 advice there: Have employees change passwords, especially where they may have been used across multiple sites and accounts.

70 S. Sandusky St., Suite 210, Delaware 43015 necoplastics.com Business: Developer of sustainable infrastructure solutions. CEO: Steve Flaherty Employees: None Launch: January 2019 Investment: $120,000 including self-funding and grants

Steve Flaherty Photos courtesy Necotech

troubling plastic waste. The technology behind NecoPlastics is flexible and evolving. Recently, the company, which does not yet have any employees, won a development grant from the U.S. Air Force to develop a patching system for aviation applications. “Hot Patch On Demand” will be tested at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base over a 90-day period ending in June. Success there would lead to a $500,000 Phase II pilot and potentially entry into huge military and commercial markets. The opportunities to change the market are huge, Flaherty says, with shortages of sand for the concrete industry. Flaherty estimates an obtainable market of $63.3 million, which could divert 476 million plastic bottles from landfills. NecoTech also is partnering with other startups, including ByFusion, a California company producing cinder blocks with plastic waste aggregates called ByBlocks. NecoTech will be facilitating an Ohio showroom, testing facility and waste recovery feedstock network this year. Cynthia Bent Findlay is a freelance writer.

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Trust Matters

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BB bu tru

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Heartland Bank BBB Trust Score Case Study The financial crisis a decade ago painted the banking industry in a poor light and forced Heartland Bank to find a way to build trust inside the bank so that it would spread out to its customers and the community.

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spotlight By Bob Vitale + Photo by rob hardin

Small Business

What to wear Wardrobe Therapy brings panache to busy execs’ attire.

hen Elizabeth Bean Smith started Wardrobe Therapy in August 2006, people had an easy reference for what they thought her fashion consulting firm was all about. “It was the time of What Not to Wear,” she says, referring to the former cable makeover show. “Everybody was like, ‘OK, you’re like ‘What Not to Wear.’ Which we were and we weren’t. It gave that commonality so people could at least identify with the service. But we weren’t like that. We don’t dive into your wardrobe and say get rid of everything. I can’t imagine doing that.” Wardrobe Therapy wasn’t made for reality TV. Instead, Smith says, it’s designed for reality. The service for women and men—its clients include executives, creative professionals and

“We all have different ways we showcase who we are and how we tell our story to the world.” Elizabeth Bean Smith, founder, Wardrobe Therapy

Wardrobe Therapy P.O. Box 21754, Columbus 43221 wardrobetherapyllc.com

Business: Fashion and wardrobe consulting,

styling and personal shopping services for women and men.

Founder: Elizabeth Bean Smith Employees: 5

Elizabeth Bean Smith stay-at-home parents—offers wardrobe consulting and personal shopping, typically through two or three sessions per season. Stylists help organize newly purchased and existing clothing into app-based “look books” for clients’ easy reference. They also can help plan and pack for business trips and vacations. The idea isn’t to impose stylists’ tastes onto clients, Smith says. The relationship starts off by learning about a client’s own taste and style, lifestyle, budget, and likes and dislikes. Shopping for most people doesn’t involve a wardrobe overhaul but the addition of a few new pieces. Stylists, whose fees are based on their experience, don’t receive commissions from stores. “A lot of our clients want to have ease of a wardrobe,” Smith says.

“Many of them are getting on and off flights throughout the month. They want things they can mix and match effectively and easily. They don’t want 100 different shoes with 100 different jackets.” Smith’s first jobs in fashion were with Express, where she started as a visual coordinator after earning degrees from Bowling Green State University and the Fashion Institute of Technology. “I loved my work there, but it was hard. I was young, and I was really burned out. I traveled a lot. I didn’t really know people outside of the corporate office.” After a year managing a boutique in Columbus and working as a freelance stylist, Smith went into business with Wardrobe Therapy. Former Express colleagues let her try out styling ideas and processes with them.

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“My background was in styling and fashion, so I felt really confident doing that, but I knew I didn’t want to have a store,” Smith says. “I wanted to be able to work with real men and women and put what I was doing on mannequins [at Express] to life, put it on a real body.” Smith started Wardrobe Therapy with a partner but has led the business on her own since its second year. In December, she took on a new partner and investor in Katie Wolfe Lloyd, vice president of civic affairs for Dispatch Printing Co., the former owner of Columbus CEO. Wolfe Lloyd has been a Wardrobe Therapy client, and Smith styled photoshoots for the former Capital Style magazine, where Wolfe Lloyd served as publisher. “I totally believe in the business model, and I believe in Elizabeth,” Wolfe Lloyd says. Among the partners’ plans for the company: pitching Wardrobe Therapy’s services as a wellness perk for companies to offer their employees. Audrey Tuckerman, a private wealth manager in Columbus, is a longtime Wardrobe Therapy client who describes her personal style like many in the business world: conservative and professional. Among the benefits of working with Smith that she places at the top of her list is the time she saves in a morning routine that also includes working out and meditating. But Tuckerman also appreciates Smith’s knack of pushing her a little bit outside her comfort zone, getting her to consider fashion choices she might bypass on her own. Smith finds most of Wardrobe Therapy’s clients enjoy fashion—“it’s like if you go to a gym and you hire a trainer; you enjoy working out and want to know the right way to work out”—but welcome help in expanding their style. The old idea of the corporate “uniform” is out, Smith says. People have room to express their style within the bounds of professional dress. “The idea is not to take away individuality. The idea is to make individuality a positive,” Smith says. “We all have different ways we showcase who we are and how we tell our story to the world. When you feel good about what you’re putting on, others can see it, too.”

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Bob Vitale is a freelance writer. June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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spotlight By Laurie Allen + Photo by Rob hardin

Nonprofit

Expanding access Pharmacy nimbly adjusts model to help vulnerable people get their medications.

ince its inception 10 years ago, the Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio has adhered to its mission of providing affordable pharmacy services to Franklin’s County’s most vulnerable citizens. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit home, the agency had to upend its business model in support of that mission. The pharmacy provider has seen surging demand and challenging restrictions. “We did things quickly, and I felt like we were innovating in our space, making really positive changes and continuing to work the problem,” says Executive Director Jennifer Seifert. Charitable Pharmacy serves lowincome, uninsured and underinsured

Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio 200 E. Livingston Ave., Columbus 43215 charitablepharmacy.org Mission: To provide affordable pharmacy

services and coordinate access to health care for people who are vulnerable.

Executive director: Jennifer Seifert Employees: 12 Revenue: $1.6 million (2019) Funding sources: United Way of Central

Ohio, Franklin County, local health systems, city of Columbus, Columbus Foundation, local businesses

Jennifer Seifert Franklin County residents who likely would go without prescription medications because they can’t afford them; the average patient is 60 years old and takes eight medications. The pharmacy receives medicine from wholesalers, pharmaceutical and charitable distributors, and in 10 years has filled more than 500,000 prescriptions with a wholesale value of almost $50 million. In March, the pharmacy closed its doors to the public, set up curbside pickup and dispensed 60-day supplies rather than 30. The pharmacy stopped accepting new

patients for about three weeks and, with support from the United Way of Central Ohio, added two staff members to meet surging volume. Between March 12 and April 12, the value of dispensed prescriptions skyrocketed to almost $2.4 million, a 330 percent increase over the same time period last year. The number of prescriptions dispensed by the pharmacy increased to 6,955 from 5,024. Moving forward, Seifert and her team look to keep some of the new practices while remaining a community hub for the underserved

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“In a heartbreaking way, I think we’re going to be looking at how pandemics and public health crises affect underserved patients. We are going to examine our patient population as it relates to access and disparities in a new way.” Jennifer Seifert, executive director, Charitable Pharmacy of Central Ohio

and vulnerable. They hope to extend 60-day supplies, which originally required approval from the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. Space will be reconfigured at the pharmacy housed in the Livingston United Methodist Church in downtown Columbus. “We often had a full pharmacy with up to 16 people, including volunteers, and a full waiting room serving up to 70 patients each day, so how we use our building space and time becomes really important,” Seifert says. “We are most passionate about one-on-one care … many clients come to get out of their

houses. Our waiting area is very lively, and our building is very welcoming. A lot of people are lonely.” The pharmacy plans to open a second location this year in a former market in South Linden, where it will share space with the All People’s Fresh Market, which has its main location on Parsons Avenue. “We’re really excited at the opportunity to address diet and health,” Seifert says. “People’s vulnerabilities cross over.” Of the current crisis, she says, “In a heartbreaking way, I think we’re going to be looking at how pandemics and public health crises affect underserved patients. We are going to examine our patient population as it relates to access and disparities in a new way that I think will add to our message and to people paying attention to our message: That everyone deserves access to their medication.” The United Way has funded the pharmacy since its inception, providing $30,000 during the Covid-19 crisis for staffing and supplies. CEO Lisa Courtice says the pandemic has stricken many of its funded organizations. Of 89 that responded to an April 3-7 survey, within the first month of the pandemic, many had eliminated a significant part of their workforce, and more than an estimated $8 million in revenue was lost due to canceled fundraising events, among other economic impacts. Courtice says going forward, “We will have to re-evaluate and prioritize … and basic needs will be No. 1. Providing medication to those who cannot afford it is a basic need.”

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Laurie Allen is a freelance writer. June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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spotlight By Cynthia Bent Findlay + Photo by Rob hardin

Innovation

Knowledge is power Columbus startup Aware is benefiting from the rise of online collaboration analytics and security.

AJ Auld

t’s hard to imagine a company more in the right place at the right time than Aware. Startups’ market opportunities do, of course, change as they mature, but few rocket through revolutions like the shift to remote work in the time of Covid-19. Aware, which began life as Wiretap, launched in 2017 providing security and regulatory compliance for chat-based collaboration platforms like Slack. But as the company’s artificial intelligence-based technologies attracted clients, they also liked Aware’s ability to analyze network chatter, informing them of internal culture shifts. The focus was on compliance tools in the beginning, says Matt Pasternack, Aware’s chief product officer. What large enterprises needed first to use collaboration tools like Slack and Facebook at Work—which many pre-

Aware

111 Liberty St., Suite 102, Columbus 43215 Awarehq.com Business: Governance, compliance and

sentiment monitoring for online collaboration platforms.

CEO: Jeff Schumann Employees: 40 Revenue: Would not disclose Investment to date: $15 m

Jeff Schumann

viously did not allow employees to do—were controls, a way to comply with HIPAA or financial regulations, for example. Aware’s products also ferret out sexual harassment and protect corporate intellectual property. The company counts Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Facebook and Slack as partners, giving it powerful reach. “If not everyone is using it, there’s not a lot of value in analytics,” Pasternack says. Aware’s AI reads large-scale sentiment across platforms, allowing the company to track and respond to employee reactions

to events and corporate policies in real time. “The [April 2019] rebrand spoke more to the end vision when we started the company,” says Jeff Schumann, CEO and co-founder. “It covers the risks we mitigate with this data set and the insight we can derive from collaboration tools.” Then came Covid-19. As the entire global economy shifted to remote work, Aware was ready. The power of its Spotlight analytics became evident for organizations seeing fear of the virus, and then sometimes of the organization’s own

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umann

response plans, within their employee base. Aware made the product free through the month of May. It’s one thing, Schumann notes, for an organization to see that there’s more activity on collaboration platforms. It’s another thing to understand what it’s about and whether it’s indicating toxic sentiments. Schumann says if Aware continues on its present trajectory, the company will grow to more than 100 employees

“The U.S. has actually been a little behind in terms of collaboration at a large corporate level. COVID rapidly accelerated [adoption], and I expect more traction than we’ve ever seen.” Jeff Schumann, CEO and co-founder, Aware

through next year, more than double today’s 40. Even pre-coronavirus, he says, year-over-year growth since Aware’s launch has been between 100 and 300 percent. The company now serves an impressive list of organizations including GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Sun Life Financial. Research and advisory firm Gartner named the company a 2018 “Cool Vendor in Unified Communications and Collaboration Technologies.” “We’re what Gartner refers to as a category buster. We created our own new category, really, focusing on creating insights from this collaboration world and managing risk in it,” says Greg Moran, Aware’s chief operating officer. Schumann expects the company’s U.S. business to grow—it’s currently about half domestic, half global. “The U.S. has actually been a little behind in terms of collaboration at a large corporate level. Covid-19 rapidly accelerated decisions or reprioritized this tooling for their environments, and I expect more traction than we’ve ever seen,” he says.

Dispatch

ATTRACTIONS

Schumann says a fundraising round is in the works. That will involve more support from the Ohio Innovation Fund, which co-led Aware’s series A round in 2017. Aware is one of the fund’s three largest investments of the 20 in its portfolio, says Bill Baumel, managing director. “It’s one we’re putting quite a bit of horsepower behind, for a couple of reasons,” he says. “The team is a big part of it.” He says Schumann, who Facebook tried to lure to run its own enterprise technology group, is an impressive and visionary founder who has put together an enviable and passionate team worth betting on. Also, he says, Aware has a market advantage that will be near impossible to catch. “That AI engine is trained on billions of conversations,” Baumel says. “These inventions are only as good as the data they’re run through and trained on. It would be difficult to catch up in terms of their ability in security compliance.” Cynthia Bent Findlay is a freelance writer.

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spotlight By Laura Newpoff Bill Ebbing, president, New Albany Co.

Commercial Real Estate

Expansion wave

ew Albany, mid-1990s. The affluent suburb was nine years into development under a master plan that was the vision of Les Wexner and partner Jack Kessler. For years, retail magnate Wexner had purchased land with a dream of building a community in the spirit of the iconic towns you’d see in rural England. At the time, a stately country club, just four years old, was the focal point. Surrounding it were Georgianstyle homes and the community’s signature white fencing. North of the country club sat thousands of acres—a sea of corn— that would become the New Albany International Business Park, developed by Wexner’s New Albany Co. and the city of New Albany. To the south, the Route 161 expressway was under construction and there were no interchanges to help people easily move about the city. It was hardly an ideal scenario for impressing a site selection committee. Bill Ebbing, president of New Albany Co., learned in 1996 that Discover Financial Services was looking to build an operations center and Ohio was in the mix. He had nothing to sell the company other than a vision. On a rainy summer day, his team, along with then-mayor Colleen Briscoe, tried to do just that. “We got everybody into four-wheelers and trucks and drove them out to the site,” Ebbing says. “The only way you can get a Fortune 100 company like Discover to make a commitment like this is by laying out a vision that reflects the strong public-private

Photo of Bill Ebbing courtesy Jennifer Grimm/others courtesy New Albany Co.

New Albany International Business Park tenant roster just keeps growing.

“If you don’t have the infrastructure in place, you’re going to lose out. New Albany has always been strong with that.” Bill Ebbing, president, New Albany Co. partnership and showing that there is a real master plan in place. It was a rainy, awful day in terms of weather, but the result was beautiful.” Discover launched the park with a $72 million, 325,000-square-foot center. Today, the park has 12 million square feet through $5 billion in private investment and is home to businesses including Amazon Web Services, Facebook and Bath & Body Works. Discover later would build a $70 million, 97,000-square-foot addition and be part of an expansion of the park involving 24 projects representing 5.3 million square feet and an

investment of $2.9 billion. Companies continue to build on 1,200 acres remaining at the 5,000-acre park. “It reinforces the city of New Albany’s role as a strong partner, not just in terms of economic development and master planning, but also being proactive about installing the necessary infrastructure before it’s needed,” Ebbing says. “A lot of places just don’t see the importance of that. Companies come to us and need to be in the ground tomorrow. If you don’t have the infrastructure in place, you’re going to lose out.” Kenny McDonald, president and chief economic officer at One Columbus, says having this kind of business park makes his job of luring companies to the region easier. “There’s a proven ability to do the projects,” he says. “Everything comes together in terms of the city council, development staff, the mayor and the city staff, plus the great relationships with the New Albany Co. and the construction and permitting teams.

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park expansions

Total sq ft/investment They’re all able to come together to work through difficult issues in short order to make the projects happen.”

Who’s building what Shovel-ready sites, a robust fiber optic network, triple-feed electric capabilities and a fast-track permitting system have been key to making expansion decisions easy for businesses. VanTrust Real Estate purchased 33 acres for two speculative warehouses. Construction has started on “Innovation I,” a 253,000-square-foot building that is expected to be completed by December. Its first building there is occupied by Hims Inc., a digital health care company. Axium Plastics is undergoing its third expansion with a $4.7 million, 100,000-square-foot building that will be complete this summer, giving the company 650 jobs there. Alene Candles in June will open a $30 million, 280,000-square-foot expansion that will add 58 jobs.

Sq ft

Investment

195,000 180,000 152,000 157,000 150,000 500,000 500,000 500,000 97,000 60,000 67,500 178,000 42,100 90,000 98,000 100,000 59,000 60,000 280,000 75,000 70,000 250,000 70,000 1,368,000 5.3 m

Anomatic has plans for a $68 million, 250,000-square-foot expansion that will add 140 jobs. Rod Harl, president of Milford, New Hampshire-based Alene, says the company considered multiple states before settling on New Albany. “We’ve known the people there for 10 years now, and that’s enabled us to move much more quickly than in other jurisdictions,” Harl says. “There’s a level of trust and confidence in both the business community and the town staff that’s allowed us to move at a fraction of the time it would be if we were in a more traditional timeline where you didn’t know the people as well.” Andy Weeks, VanTrust’s executive vice president in Columbus, says he expects the developer will continue to look for opportunities in New Albany. “They have made substantial investments in physical infrastructure,” he says. “Second, the mindset (of city officials) is very pro-development. They understand the benefits that new

$39 m $39 m $300 m $300 m $300 m $500 m $187.5 m $187.5 m $70 m $10 m $5 m $75 m $5.6 m $3.1 m $7.2 m $4.7 m $16 m $3.8 m $30 m $5 m $12.5 m $68 m $8 m $731 m $2.9 b

Date opened

2016 2019 2017 2018 TBD 2021 TBD TBD 2013 2010 2018 2020 2019 2013 2016 2020 2015 2017 2020 2017 2015 TBD 2016 2001-18

development provides in terms of jobs and tax revenue.”

What’s next? The business park was designed with clusters—beauty, information technology, high-tech manufacturing, logistics and health care. That diversification has the park well-positioned to weather the economic storm created by Covid-19, sources say. Jennifer Chrysler, New Albany’s director of community development, is in the midst of a master plan update to guide how the remaining land will be developed. “We’ll analyze our clusters and make sure we don’t have any gaps,” she says. “The combination of technology and the pandemic may open us up to industries we haven’t really thought of yet. We’re eager to understand how we can position ourselves to take advantage of that opportunity.” Laura Newpoff is a freelance writer. June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Source: City of New Albany

Projects beyond initial building

AEP Transmission Bldg I (Ex. II) AEP Transmission Bldg II (Ex. III) AWS II AWS III AWS IV FB III FB IV FB V Discover Data Center Justice Aetna American Regent II Bob Evans–Foods Axium Plastics II Axium Plastics III Axium Plastics IV KDC-One–Phase II Amcor Phase II Alene Phase II Bocchi Phase II Anomatic Phase II Anomatic Phase III Vee Pak Phase II Abercrombie & Fitch

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Local flower farmers are finding new ways to reach customers who want to bring beautiful blooms home even as international floral markets shutter. Spring doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t care about any pandemic. By Amy Braunschweiger â&#x20AC;˘ Photos by Rob Hardin

Sunny Meadows Flower Farm

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After being stuck at home for weeks, visiting Sunny Meadows Flower Farm is sheer relief. The air smells of mud and vegetation, with undertones of floral. The sun is warm, and two dogs are lounging in front of the garage, one of whom wants to be your best friend. Then there are the flowers, rows and rows of them in brilliant pinks, oranges and reds. They grow inside one of the seven greenhouses and two hoop houses necessary to protect early blooms from Ohio’s finicky spring weather. It’s the week before Mother’s Day—the busiest weekend of the year for many in the flower

business—and all seven of the farm’s employees are harvesting flowers like mad, while wearing masks and standing six feet apart. The Columbus farm, owned by Gretel and Steve Adams, grows tens of thousands of flowers across multiple fields. Right now, the star flower of the spring is in bloom—the ranunculus, whose rows of impossibly close petals lead people to mistake it for a rose. The Adams grow it in multitudes of colors, including a vampiric red-black. Already harvested are tulips with gigantic buds that resemble Venus fly traps—“it looks like it could eat you,” an employee says—but that will open to reveal delicately fringed yellow and orange petals. Poppies with crepe paper-like petals sit in buckets next to a flower that literally shimmers, its pinky-white petals reflecting the light.

All of these flowers will be shipped out, quite possibly to someone’s mom, by the weekend, the Adamses hope.

Industry collapse When the coronavirus pandemic unfurled in early March, Ohio’s flower farmers didn’t know what to expect. As local farmers started harvesting their earliest spring blooms, global flower sales, a multibillion dollar industry, were tanking due to the coronavirus. Blame closed borders, canceled weddings, shuttered florists’ shops, the list goes on. The end result: From the Netherlands to India, images emerged of heaping piles of unsold flowers, bulldozed. The waste could make you cry. Today’s flower industry is a feat

Steve and Gretel Adams at Sunny Meadows Flower Farm

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of industrialization. Typically, 80 percent of cut flowers sold in the U.S. are grown internationally, primarily in Colombia and Ecuador, according to the Society of American Florists. Flowers harvested in South America are boxed up, loaded into refrigerated vans, driven to airports, loaded onto refrigerated jets, and flown to Miami. From there, flowers are distributed across the country to wholesalers, who sell them to local florists. And the 20 percent of flowers grown in the U.S.? More than three-fourths of them come from California. The crash in flower sales this spring devastated these large-scale flower farms serving big markets. But that doesn’t mean all demand for flowers disappeared, or that sales completely stopped. It turns out, people spending nearly

every hour of every day at home really want a cheerful flower arrangement in their kitchen, or a bouquet to brighten what is now their combo dining roomoffice-school room. And the Central Ohio flower farmers who could quickly reach these potential buyers— either by pivoting their distribution models or by re-engaging current local customers—are seeing steady sales in this Covid-19 spring. Buying locally grown flowers has already been a growing trend, mirroring the burgeoning slow food movement that brought Columbus farm-to-table restaurants serving local arugula and free-range chicken. It attracts people who worry about their carbon footprint and who want to support local businesses, says Los Angeles-based Debra Prinzing, who founded Slow Flowers, an online directory of American and Canadian flower growers with 700 members. “People want to buy from someone they know, and these farmers know how to tell their stories on social media and put their face behind the flowers,” she says. Accordingly, the number of U.S. cut flower producers with sales of $100,000 or more jumped 20 percent to 532 farms in 2018 from 444 in 2015, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This, of course, excludes many smaller farms. Yet even with their growing popularity, operating in the face of a pandemic has been challenging for many Central Ohio flower farmers.

Internet sales blossom Sunny Meadows entered the Covid-19 spring with dread. Weddings were canceled and wholesalers closed, which accounted for 50 percent of the southeast Franklin County farm’s 2019 annual revenue of $716,000. The Adamses slashed their expenses, turning off the greenhouse heaters and laying off staff. They worried they’d have to close the farm, thinking agriculture exemptions to the shutdown order pertained only to farms producing food. But after spending days on the phone with lawyers and the state Department of Agriculture, they learned Ohio had created an exemption for horticulture, under which they’d still need to keep operations to a minimum.

The Adamses had another worry, too. Last year, Gretel developed Lyme disease, leaving her exhausted and immuno-compromised and placing her at high-risk of developing a severe case of Covid-19 should she contract it. Keeping people—and the virus— away from the farm was essential. Accordingly, they decided to keep their farm stand closed. In early April, “we had three guys that remained, and they were coming in seven days a week just trying to pick tulips and keep the farm afloat,” Gretel says. They had 45,000 tulips in the ground, but unfortunately tulips have a low profit margin, as they grow from more-expensive bulbs as opposed to seeds. The Adamses needed new ways to reach potential buyers, and fast. They already had an online store to sell dahlia tubers during winter. They decided to put all their product online. “We were lucky,” Gretel says. “We know a lot of farms that don’t have a website and were not set up for online sales. Because we had that platform, it made us more ready to make the necessary pivot to make [sales] happen.” Sunny Meadows already shipped to florists; they decided to spend the money and ship to retail customers as well. The Adamses brainstormed new ways to sell flowers online. For florists, they created a “grower’s choice box,” filled with whatever their skeleton crew could harvest, but all in the same color. They didn’t have time to give florists anything more specific. For retail customers, they created a “spring at your door” package, shipping a box of flowers a week for six weeks. They grew peonies for weddings, but as the wedding business disappeared, they created a four-week peony subscription as well. Their fast changes worked. “New subscriptions made up for the orders—weddings, showers, graduations— we normally have during the spring,” Gretel says. But it wasn’t easy. “I felt like every day was a week. Why am I so tired, it’s Wednesday?” Gretel says. Slowly, beginning with Easter orders for churches placed by florists, and then leading into Mother’s Day, the Adamses saw their business revive. The couple built Sunny Meadows June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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selling flowers through farmers markets and grocery stores. And in late April, farmers markets came back into play. But so far this year, Sunny Meadows only sells through Worthington Farmers Market, which is now a drivethrough. While other farmers markets are also practicing social distancing, the Adamses consider Worthington’s the safest because customers pay over the phone, and volunteers work their booth. So far, every week, all of their allotted bouquets sold out. Grocery store sales with Giant Eagle’s Market Districts have bounced back, too. In the early weeks of the pandemic, overwhelmed grocery stores focused on keeping basic items in stock. “They shut down the whole floral department,” Gretel says. That hurt, also because it was a two-year process of meetings and sales pitches to get their product into Giant Eagle. Now, Sunny Meadows is delivering to local Market Districts on Fridays, and they use social media to direct customers there. They recently began delivering twice weekly to the Grandview and Kingsdale stores because they “were selling out of our flowers within hours.” On May 2, Sunny Meadows learned it had received a Paycheck Protection Program stimulus loan. The Adamses quickly rehired workers, bringing the employee count up to seven. More workers were slated to start later in the month. Everything came together on Mother’s Day. True, they ended up $300 below projected sales. But that’s “not bad compared to what we thought was going to happen when Covid started,” Gretel says. Especially keeping in mind the extra supplies they bought to ship flowers. Sunny Meadows has also been doing more direct-to-florist sales, as the wholesalers that florists depend on are closed. “It made local flowers more important in the whole scheme of things,” Gretel says.

Great time to start a business Some cut flower farms want help with their distribution—they’d rather spend the time farming than selling. Which is why the Ohio Cut Flower Collective, based near Mansfield, was formed. Founder Connie Homerick

Lindsey and Josh McCullough with peony buds at Red Twig Farms

never anticipated launching her business in the middle of the Covid-19 crisis. But that’s what she did when the collective opened on April 22. “I didn’t know what to expect. You’re starting a business, and then this Covid-19 crap happened, and I was like, oh my god, what are you doing? I seriously considered waiting until next year.” But she didn’t. She knew one of her flower farmers specialized in weddings, and another had a small retail shop, which was closed. “These guys are counting on me. I have to at least try,” she thought. Here’s how the collective operates: Homerick works with four local farms, including Mohican Flower Farm, Old Slate Farm in Mount Vernon, White Walnut Flowers in Worthington, and Sunny Meadows. She plans to add more farms next year. The farmers tell her what flowers they have available to sell, and Homerick puts this information on the collective’s website. Florists then order the flowers, and the

collective delivers them, taking a 30 percent commission. The first two weeks of business were slow. “Nobody was going to order flowers,” Homerick feared. “There’s no weddings, barely any funerals. I’d been reading that hospitals and nursing homes aren’t allowing flowers to be delivered.” But in their third week, heading toward Mother’s Day, that changed. She could barely keep up with orders. They sold out of nearly everything. Homerick fell for local flowers when she owned a flower shop. “Occasionally a farmer would stop in and want to sell sunflowers and a few dahlias, and I’d find it fascinating,” she says. International farms specialize in roses, carnations, gerbera daisies, and others bred to survive without water for a number of days after harvesting. She enjoyed the different colors and varieties local farmers grew, as well as the more sustainable farming practices many employed.

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The fallout from the pandemic could actually benefit Ohio farmers, she thinks. “The florists that wouldn’t traditionally source locally will almost be forced to start sourcing locally because they need the product,” she says. “It’ll bring more light to the cut flower industry in Ohio.” When it comes to making money, Homerick, who is laid off from her job as a school nurse, would be ecstatic if the collective grossed $50,000 during Ohio’s 28-week growing season. And if they hit $150,000? “I’d say, oh my god, we did it!”

Bringing spring home When florists buy from small farms, as opposed to a wholesaler or a middleman, it doesn’t matter if the supply chain falls apart, says Mike Zawislak, who together with his wife Elizabeth owns Bluegreen Gardens, a flower farm in Lancaster. “We’re

direct to consumer. And hopefully people can see us as more trustworthy and more reliable at this time because we can have direct communication with them.” Like other flower farms, Bluegreen Gardens, which generated $65,000 in revenue in 2019, works to differentiate what it grows from the flowers that come in from South America. “Our zinnias aren’t the normal colors or sizes that people will see typically or plant in their yards,” Mike says. They also grow flowers in a greater array of colors, including one of Elizabeth’s favorites, an orange-peachy colored dahlia. The farm’s dinner plate dahlias, which reach 8 to 10 inches across, are show-stoppers at weddings. Because dahlias don’t ship well—they won’t open if you harvest them in bud form, and they need to be in water—they’ve become a specialty of local growers. Then there’s the fragrance. Many of the flowers shipped from overseas

are bred to survive, not for their smell. Elizabeth is taken with sweet peas—“They smell fresh, like spring, so delicate,” she says. “It’s a very special thing.” Still, Bluegreen Gardens’ sales are down this spring, mainly because weddings drove 30 percent of its 2019 revenue. They did more than just arrange the flowers. “That’s faceto-face consultations, everything is customized to their needs, and we do set-up and tear-down at the venue,” Elizabeth says. Also, unlike last year, they haven’t held any workshops on their farm. But this past winter brought another big change for the Zawislaks— their son, James, was born, leaving Elizabeth little extra time. Accordingly, they planned to scale back this year’s wedding work, hoping to make up some of the lost revenue through their bouquet home delivery subscriptions. This year they offered two spring CSAs (the subscriptions sold directly to consumers are called CSAs, which stands for community supported agriculture) instead of one, and they doubled the number of potential members. Luckily, this plan also served the Zawislaks well when Covid-19 struck. Surprisingly, the CSAs sold out faster this year than last year, even with the extra offerings. “We thought people might be saving their money if they were out of work, or not sure about the future,” Elizabeth wrote in an email. “We have found that people are very excited about the flowers and the fact that we deliver them to their homes.” She also thinks most of her customers are still working, but just from home, and they “have the income to be able to brighten up their space.”

Solid support Known for its annual Peony Festival, which drew 7,000 people last year, Red Twig Farms grew its businesses by establishing strong relationships with loyal customers. Red Twig sells almost all its flowers to people who arrange them in vases for kitchen tables—as opposed to wholesalers, florists or brides. It’s best known for its peonies, perennials that have become throwback darlings with June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Flowers & Bread

With cafe closing, Clintonville destination rebranding and refining its mission: classes and community. By Amy Braunschweiger Clintonville’s Flowers & Bread is closing its popular cafe— but expanding workshops in floral arranging and bread baking under a new name: the Flowers & Bread Society. The cafe is small and the coffee bar, where employees worked, was only 200 square feet, says Sarah Lagrotteria, who together with Tricia Wheeler owns the business. The small space is a big challenge in the age of Covid-19. “We don’t have the ability within that space to keep people far enough apart to be safe,” Lagrotteria says. She and Wheeler plan to revamp the interior, making the floral and baking studios airier, roomier spaces where people can take workshops together while being physically distant. “We’re still working through the details,” Wheeler says. They know the old practice of sharing tools such as floral shears, mixing spoons and ingredients will be replaced by each station having its own items. Both Lagrotteria and Wheeler, who also owns the Seasoned Farmhouse cooking school just a few blocks south of Flowers & Bread on North High Street, believe these changes will help keep the business strong in the age of Covid-19. While the decision to close the cafe is recent, Lagrotteria and Wheeler had already been exploring ideas around the future of Flowers & Bread. Some of these conversations were sparked by a 2019 fellowship awarded to Lagrotteria from the Tory Burch Foundation. The fellowship brought 50 female small business owners to the foundation headquarters in New Jersey for a week of intensive workshops around running

small businesses. “At Tory Burch, they kept asking us to focus on what makes this business specific to us— so remaining true to what excites us,” Lagrotteria says. This prompted conversations between Lagrotteria and Wheeler about how teaching was at the heart of their business and about how they enjoy connecting with customers and watching people’s skills develop. Both say closing the cafe, which built a passionate following, was a difficult decision—and not only because it accounts for 30 to 40 percent of the business’ revenue. The cafe, with its way of making

time-honored traditions feel fresh and stylish and its first-quality bread, housemade butters and jams and curated selection of local goodies, brought in neighbors and numerous regulars. “So in terms of that spirit, of creating a community feel, it was one of the most important things we’ve done,” Wheeler says. They added “society” to the name as they plan to keep this vision of their business alive. “We wanted to stay a community,” she says. One way they hope to keep their cafe community intact is by offering what they call a village basket. “All the details aren’t flushed out yet,” Lagrotteria says, but in general it will be offered once a week or every other week for pickup or delivery. Items in the basket could include cafe favorites like sourdough bread or lemon lavender scones, as well as items from local farms, like eggs, honey or strawberries. While the cafe brought in a sizable

Sarah Lagrotteria works on Mother’s Day arrangements.

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chunk of revenue, it was also the costliest side of the business, and closing it means letting go of the staff. “That was certainly the hardest thing,” Lagrotteria says. Between the bakery and cafe, there were 16 to 18 part-time employees. Going forward, “It’ll probably just be Tricia and I and one main employee,” she says. About four or five workshop instructors employed on a contract basis will remain as well. Along with holding workshops, Flowers & Bread Society will continue hosting private events and leading food and flowersoriented trips to England’s Cotswolds, a rural area of Medieval villages and country gardens. Flowers & Bread did receive some money from the federal stimulus disaster program, Lagrotteria says. They own the building and are paid up on bills, Wheeler adds. When the space reopens, a date for which has not been set, Lagrotteria will bring new inspiration to her floral arranging workshops. Through her Tory Burch fellowship, she attended Tallulah Rose Flower School in Cumbria, England, which she discovered on Instagram and chose because of the school’s focus on education, not flash. Both Lagrotteria and Wheeler trained as chefs at New York’s International Culinary Center. For Lagrotteria, when it came to florals, the more she did it, the more she wanted to keep learning. “It just seemed like there had to be little techniques and formal things that I didn’t know, and I wanted to get good at them and share them with students,” she says. She attended a two-week session in Cumbria last February. “It was

extraordinary,” she says, and even included two days on the business aspects of working with flowers. Her biggest take-away? “It was surprising to me, but I love color, and I don’t think I’ve always understood that about myself.” What does this mean for the flower workshops? “I think we’re going to see more play with interesting palettes and unexpected color combinations.” Between April and October, Flowers & Bread Society buys 85 percent to 90 percent of the flowers it uses—in workshops, for events, and for the bouquets it arranges and sells— locally from farms including Sunny Meadows and Bluegreen Gardens. Lagrotteria and Wheeler love the foxglove and mauve-toned phlox from Old Slate Farm in Mount Vernon, and the lilies of the valley and peonies from White Walnut Farm in Westerville. Last year they started buying from Mohican Flower Farm, too, which is starting to grow roses to sell, a challenge in Ohio. Customers are aware of the growing season and like supporting local businesses, Lagrotteria says. “I’ll post something on Instagram and say, ‘Gorgeous tulips in from Sunny Meadows today,’ or ‘Anemones are in, they’ll be beautiful for this many weeks,’ and people respond to that sense of seasonality.” Flowers & Bread Society plans to stay closed for the foreseeable future. “We need a better idea of what’s going on, and I don’t think we know right now,” Lagrotteria says. “We’re going to err on the side of caution.” However, they plan to start delivering their village baskets in a few months, and sales of cut flower bouquets may return then as well.

their tight buds that explode into full, fragrant, round flowers in late May. Although the Licking County farm grows decorative branches like willow and started growing some other flowers, too, it chose to focus on peonies because “it was a craze,” says Lindsey McCullough, who owns the farm with her husband, Josh. Also, peonies are hardy and deer resistant. Red Twig’s loyal customer base has kept the company’s spring revenue on track with last year’s, despite the Covid disruption. But back in March, Lindsey McCullough was worried. Specifically, Red Twig’s farm store was closed because of the pandemic and they had 15,000 tulips that would soon need to be harvested and sold. McCullough gambled on the idea that people might donate the flowers. She put an offer up on Instagram—if people bought 10-stem bouquets for $10, the farm would donate them to local first responders. “Within an hour I had 100 orders,” she says. The farm delivered 1,011 bouquets to first responders, from hospital workers to police to grocery store employees. Peony sales start in January, when McCullough posts information online for pre-orders. The flowers go for between $1 and $3 a stem. Sales throughout the winter and spring were strong, she says, and most were sold by the time the stay-at-home orders hit. On Saturday, April 25, Red Twig announced its annual Peony Festival was canceled. That Sunday, they sold the last 2,000 to 3,000 available peony stems, for a total of 38,000 sold, in line with last year. This was Red Twig’s first year offering shipping, and 25 percent of those sales will leave Columbus. “And that’s all new,” McCullough says. Fully half of the orders they made will be shipped. “We always say our customers are what gets us through. They’re the ones who support our farm,” McCullough says. “Without them, we’d be like many other farms, trying to figure out new avenues.”

At the mercy of the weather Many people who grow flowers also farm vegetables and fruits as well. Steve Anderson, of Anderson Orchard in Pickerington, is known June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Photo courtesy Bluegreen Gardens

Elizabeth Zawislak at Bluegreen Gardens during a previous year.

around town as one of the first farmers to sell flowers, which he began growing in the 1990s. “We’re a good local farm. We grow apples, quince, blueberries, and pretty much any garden vegetable you can think of,” Anderson says. When he decided to plant flowers, he started with sunflowers, “because you could plant early, it wasn’t expensive, and it wasn’t a huge investment.” Every year, the farm kept selling more, says Anderson, who runs the farm with his wife and two adult children. Now, three acres of his farm are dedicated to cut flowers, while five acres go to vegetables and the rest stays fallow as an unofficial monarch sanctuary. Over the years, Anderson tried planting different types of flowers. “I looked and saw what I could grow and what I thought would be pretty. We tried a lot of things,” he says. They grew tulips, which were too expensive, but zinnias and peonies have been very popular. When it comes to flowers, Anderson focuses on quality. “Florists want cheap stuff out of Washington and Oregon for everyday, but if you have a wedding you want stuff that’s

really nice,” he says. And those better-quality flowers are grown locally, he contends. Over his years of experience, Anderson has noted various trends in selling flowers. “In good economic times, they make better money than vegetables,” he says. “This year, I’m afraid people will be looking for food more than flowers.” His flower-selling season begins in late May with peonies, which this year were seven to 10 days behind because of the unseasonably cold spring. He sells the flowers and his crops through farmers markets, and has just begun working with the Worthington and Clintonville farmers markets. He also plans to sell with the Dublin and Short North farmers markets when they open. For all flower farmers, weather is a top worry. This spring has been cold and wet, and last spring was Ohio’s wettest on record. “It’s really hurt us,” Anderson says. “We lose things every year. If you’re a small farmer, there’s never a year when you don’t lose part of your crop. And when it’s wet like that, you just lose a lot more.” That meant last year, Anderson lost 90 percent of his sunflower

crop. “We just basically did not have them,” he says. Anderson makes sure he can bounce back, though, by planting a variety of vegetables and flowers, and by not going far into debt when it comes to buying the seeds and other supplies. Not surprisingly, every farmer interviewed for this story was worried about this spring’s cold and rain. A late frost can take out peony buds, and overly wet springs bring a greater chance of disease and fungus that threaten flowers. Last spring, the repeated freezing and thawing of the ground pushed plants up and left roots exposed—and the next frost killed them. This May, farmers used fabric or plastic to cover delicate flowers not safe even inside a greenhouse. “We try to prevent everything we can,” says McCullough from Red Twig, “but you just don’t know. It’s Ohio weather. Is it too warm? Is there rain? We just won’t know.” Now, the question for many local flower farms is what happens for the rest of the summer? Across Ohio businesses are reopening, wholesalers and florists included. Mother’s Day is past. It felt like every day this spring brought some type of change, and summer may be no different. What will a summer with the coronavirus look like? What will unemployment look like? If people continue losing their jobs, will they still buy flowers? Studio Artiflora, which sells floral designs from a century-old home in Granville, never closed. Its owner, Evelyn Frolking, focuses on finding flowers locally, and her main source is Sunny Meadows. Her spring revenue is higher this year than last. “Most people are saying they’re so glad I’m operating,” she says. “Not only are they sending flowers, but they’re spending more.” “Hopefully people get flowers, realize how much joy they bring and want to have them in their houses,” Gretel Adams of Sunny Meadows says. “If you’re going to be in the house all day, you have something to brighten the space. Hopefully people will keep buying flowers for themselves.” And maybe they’ll keep buying local. Amy Braunschweiger is a freelance writer.

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Future 50

Class of 2021

NOW ACCEPTING NOMINATIONS For a second year, we're excited to honor Columbus' most creative, altruistic changemakers with a program that goes beyond awards (and doesn't set an age restriction). Future 50 is a vehicle for emerging leaders to build a better community and advance Columbus into the pivotal time ahead.

Nominations due July 31

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Pow e r o f maga z i ne s

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90%

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the highest of a l l t ime.

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m i n u t e s

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12.2

outdoor

7.3

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20-25

17.6

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time sPent reading a magazine

8.3

82% 80% 76% 71% 69% 61%

n 1-2 exposures n 5+ exposures

16.9

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9.5

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18.4

trus t the most ?

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For advertising information call Columbus Ceo at 614-540-8900 or email skendall@columbusceo.com. For your complimentary subscription to Columbus Ceo visit columbusceo.com.

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Special advertising section

Challenge Accepted How Smart Columbus Electrified the Region

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170 S. Civic Center Dr. Columbus, OH 43215 614-223-2170 • smart.columbus.gov Chief Innovation Officer, City of Columbus

Michael Stevens Smart Columbus Program Manager, City of Columbus

Mandy Bishop Project Manager, City of Columbus

Some of the Smart Columbus team with former U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx in the Smart Columbus Experience Center

Bud Braughton Vice President, Smart Cities, Columbus Partnership

Mark Patton Director, Smart Cities, Columbus Partnership

Jordan Davis Director, Marketing & Communications, Smart Columbus

Jennifer Fening Storyteller & Editor, Smart Columbus

Donna Marbury Cover photo by

Gottesman Photography All photos courtesy Smart Columbus unless otherwise noted.

62 E. Broad St., P.O. Box 1289 Columbus, Ohio 43216 614-888-4567 • columbusceo.com DMG Interim General Manager

Alan D. Miller Publisher/General Manager

Ray Paprocki Project Manager

Emma Frankart Henterly Production/Design Director

Craig Rusnak Art Director

Yogesh Chaudhary Challenge Accepted is published by GateHouse Media, LLC. All contents of this magazine are copyrighted © 2020, all rights reserved. Reproduction or use, without written permission, of editorial or graphic content in any manner is prohibited.

Smart Is Just the Start

hen Columbus beat 77 other cities to win the U.S. Department of Transportation’s $50 million Smart City Challenge in 2016, we had a vision to improve quality of life for residents in the Columbus Region through more equitable, accessible and sustainable mobility options. Since winning the Challenge, we have leveraged more than $720 million of investment from the community toward achieving this vision. The $10 million Paul G. Allen Family Foundation grant Columbus was awarded through the Challenge has enabled us to radically decrease greenhouse gas emissions through increased electric vehicle (EV) adoption in our region. Doing so has created a halo effect of jobs, development and innovation that impacts every resident and business. Through the collective impact of 100+ organizations working in alignment with Smart Columbus, our region has emerged as a national leader and is now the fastest-growing EV market in the Midwest. And we did it the Columbus Way—by partnering with the public, private, academic and nonprofit sectors at every step. When we won the Challenge, we promised that “Smart is Just the Start.” The success stories in these pages are evidence that the foundation for cleaner, more sustainable transportation is here in

Columbus. As our region grows, we stand together in support of a goal to be carbon neutral by 2050. The foundation of the Smart Columbus Electrification Program is where we will emerge not just as a leader in electrification, but in climate. As we continue to come together to respond to the Covid-19 outbreak, the work of Smart Columbus will help to make our community stronger. Efforts through the Electrification Program to fight climate change will benefit our residents’ health. The program’s commitment to solving challenges felt by our neighbors in need will take on a renewed importance as we pursue shared prosperity. Join us as we celebrate our community through the Smart Columbus Electrification Program, knowing that the investments we’ve made today will continue to impact generations to come.

Andrew J. Ginther Mayor, City of Columbus

Alex Fischer President and CEO Columbus Partnership

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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Columbus’ Journey to Smart

s winner of the U.S. Department of Transportation’s (USDOT) 2016 Smart City Challenge, the City of Columbus was awarded $50 million in grants to accelerate human progress by testing innovative ways to reinvent transportation. “It’s in this spirit that we’re pursuing our smart city transformation and turning the Smart City Challenge win into an initiative that will improve quality of life, enhance safety, foster sustainability and drive economic development in our region,” says Michael Stevens, Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Columbus. The Challenge called on midsize cities to do more than introduce new technologies onto city streets. It called on them to boldly envision new solutions that would change the face of transportation in our cities using smart design, so that the future of transportation meets the needs of all residents. Columbus received $50 million in the form of two grants: $40 million from the USDOT and $10 million from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Public and private sector leaders came together to write Columbus’ Challenge application and committed to match the $50 million in grant funding with a $90 million Acceleration Fund—aligned investments intended to scale and sustain our city’s smart city growth. These dollars provided the seed funding for Smart Columbus—a region-wide Smart City initiative co-led by the City of Columbus and the Columbus Partnership. Today, the Acceleration Fund has grown to $720 million, transforming our region into an epi-

center of smart mobility innovation. Columbus’ unique collaboration across sectors, dubbed The Columbus Way, gave us an advantage in the Challenge, says Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin. “We talk about The Columbus Way like it is a truly altruistic expression of the city. We do partnerships The Columbus Way because it works,” Hardin says. “You stack hands, lean in, partner, share ideas and check egos, because it makes projects better. I think that those public/private partnerships are important if we want to continue to thrive in this community.”

Preparing for Regional Growth Transportation is now the leading emitter of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2016, more than 82% of commuters in the Columbus region drove to work alone in a car, and just 0.37% of vehicles sold in the sevencounty region were electric vehicles (EVs). With the region projected to grow from 2 million to 3 million residents by 2050, the city’s over-reliance on single occupancy gas cars stood to create even more traffic congestion and pollution in the city. Smart Columbus aimed to pilot and drive adoption campaigns to change this trajectory. Aligning with the vision of the $10 million Paul G. Allen Family Foundation grant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by electrifying the transportation sector, we galvanized our private

Leaders from across the Columbus community came together to craft the winning Smart City Challenge application.

“Mobility is the great equalizer of the 21st century.” Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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sector partners to jump-start our transition to a more sustainable mobility culture that prioritizes EVs and makes it easy to get to a job without a car of your own. The grant-funded Electrification Plan concluded in March 2020 with unprecedented success. Columbus has now emerged as the fastestgrowing EV market in the Midwest, despite unfavorable policy trends and national market pressures. “We are still at the beginning of our journey to becoming smart, but

Smart Columbus Playbook.com Visit for more best practices and lessons learned.

Smart Columbus has engaged with more than 100,000 residents, growing awareness of EVs and the region’s growing mobility options. there is no doubt that winning the Smart City Challenge has provided Columbus the greatest opportunity to transform,” says Mark Patton, Vice President of Smart Columbus for the Columbus Partnership.

USDOT Program Empowers Residents through Mobility Access As the $10 million Paul G. Allen Family Foundation grant program concludes, the City of Columbus will continue to execute the $40 million USDOT grant program through 2021. The grant program’s eight projects together work to improve quality of life through improved mobility for Columbus’ residents. “Throughout the program, the focus has been on people,” says Mandy Bishop, Program Manager for the City of Columbus, Smart Columbus, about the USDOT project portfolio. “The application of new technology to solve real community

challenges has the ability to improve safety and quality of life and make real and positive impacts in residents’ lives.” The Linden LEAP, a oneyear pilot that launched in February 2020, is the first daily operational self-driving shuttle piloted in a residential neighborhood in the U.S. The Pivot app enables residents and visitors to plan and pay for trips through the city across multiple modes of transportation. Six smart mobility hubs in Linden, Easton and downtown will provide several transportation options in one place. The hubs are “smart” thanks to an “IKE”

“With this invaluable opportunity comes unique challenges. But in the face of all we’ve encountered, one theme has emerged as the critical ingredient to our success: the spirit of collaboration.”

kiosk created by Orange Barrel, which provides access to Wi-Fi, emergency calling, social services, maps and the Pivot app. The Mobility Assistance for People with Cognitive Abilities app was piloted with 23 people in 2019 as a multi-sensory mobile app that enables users with cognitive disabilities to navigate transit with greater independence. As the primary research partner for Smart Columbus, The Ohio State University provided support to six of the eight USDOT projects and committed $15 million in support and research, with $2 million directly impacting USDOT projects. Faculty in the College of Medicine are leading the research work for a project designed to address Columbus’ infant mortality

rates by connecting pregnant women to reliable transportation so they may better access healthcare. Faculty from the College of Arts & Sciences are assessing the impacts of Smart Columbus on mobility, accessibility, social equity and economic development. Other Ohio State researchers are developing educational materials on the Mobility Assistance for People with Cognitive Abilities app. “We felt strongly about making a meaningful investment in the Smart Columbus collaborative initiative because innovative research that improves the health and prosperity of a community is central to Ohio State’s land-grant mission,” says Michael Papadakis, Ohio State’s Chief Financial Officer.

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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Electrifying How We Move for the Future

16,062 Columbus residents and visitors took a ride aboard the Smart Circuit, Ohio’s first self-driving shuttle.

Smart Columbus

Electrification Program Impact

Sparking Mode Shift

In three years, Columbus has increased electric vehicle (EV) adoption by 500% and emerged as the fastest-growing EV market in the Midwest through education and programs that will impact innovation and sustainability in the city for years to come. Here are some of the ways Smart Columbus has laid the foundation for a more sustainable transportation ecosystem:

Driving EV Adoption

3,263 EVs sold Highest month of regional EV sales: 2.34% from baseline 0.37%

255 public fleet EVs purchased, with 200 purchased by the City of Columbus

Trained dealers on new business models and increased EV supply

32 local dealers’ sales teams received electrification training

61% of EV models available across the country are available for sale in Columbus

Put residents behind the wheel of an EV through the Ride & Drive Roadshow

Companies now see transportation as an employee benefit

31 companies have introduced additional new transportation benefit programs, which more than 1,000 employees are using

3,500+ shared bikes and electric scooters landed in Columbus, growing and electrifying mobility options

Building a Network of Regional Charging

11,956 EV test drives completed at 120 sites

From 70 charging ports in 2016 to 900+ in 2020

85%

419

of drivers say they are likely or very likely to go electric after their test drive

charging ports installed at 63 workplaces (up from 3 workplaces with 49 charging ports in 2017)

34%

116 new residential/multi-unit development charging ports

of drivers say an EV was “for them” after their test drive

32 DC Fast AEP-powered charging ports installed

“We do partnerships The Columbus Way because it works.” Shannon Hardin, Columbus City Council President JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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Expanding EV Charging in the Columbus Region Columbus’ first downtown DC Fast chargers on Fulton Street, featuring artwork by Columbus College of Art & Design students funded by the Columbus Foundation and Paul G. Allen Family Foundation

By the end of 2020, Huntington Bank, headquartered in Columbus, will have Level 2 chargers at each of three corporate worksites and 40-60 local bank branches in the region.

ne of the first things prospective electric vehicle (EV) buyers ask is, “How do I charge?” In Columbus, that is now an easy question to answer. Beyond charging at home, charging is now conveniently available at nearly every large employer, near major highways, at Huntington Bank branches and at the city’s main attractions and destinations including The Ohio State University, the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, the Arena District, Easton Town Center, John Glenn Columbus International Airport and the Greater Columbus Convention Center. The presence of charging increases the confidence of future and current EV owners that Columbus is an easy place to own an EV. Since 2016, Smart Columbus and our partners have installed more than 900 charging ports at apartments and condominiums, public places, workplaces and for fleets throughout the seven-county Columbus region, thanks in great part to AEP Ohio. Electric companies play a vital role in

“Columbus has developed a reputation as a thought leader for smart growth and sustainability in the Midwest, and residential EV charging is an important part of that story.” Frank Sasso, President of Kaufman Development

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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Developers Use EV Charging as an Attractive Amenity

accelerating EV adoption and ensuring that the transition to EVs has a positive environmental impact. AEP Ohio has partnered with Smart Columbus since its inception, creating a $9.5 million EV charging incentive program that helped to spur the installation of EV chargers throughout the region. “We knew from the beginning that the Smart Columbus effort was a unique opportunity to work with an extensive group of partners committed to making Columbus the definitive smart city,” says Raja Sundararajan, AEP Ohio President and Chief Operating Officer. “As the local energy company, we understood the critical role we held in the success of the program. Our work with Smart Columbus has helped us to increase the number of EV charging stations; we’ll use this experience and lessons learned as we expand technologies to other areas of the state.” Beyond its EV charging program, AEP Ohio has supported Columbus’ transformation into a Smart City through innovative technologies such as smart meters, smart street lighting, micro-grids and equipment that makes the electric grid smarter, stronger and more efficient for everyone. The company’s support of clean energy, produced in Ohio, is a huge step in our effort to reduce the carbon footprint of the energy we use to power our city. In total, AEP Ohio has

aligned $185 million in investments that directly link to achieving Smart Columbus’ electrification goals.

Employers Now Offering Charging to Employees The availability of workplace charging is a considerable driver of consumer EV purchases. Since Smart Columbus started, 63 work sites have installed 419 EV charging ports in the Columbus region. Another 100 charging ports are being installed and will come online in the near future. Huntington installed 20 EV charging ports, joining AEP Ohio and Abercrombie & Fitch in offering dozens of charging ports at worksites. Alliance Data recently installed 28 EV charging ports and upgraded 20 ports to newer models. “We believe in the strength and power of public-private partnerships, and through Smart Columbus, we introduced electric vehicle charging stations at our Gateway and Easton facilities, as well as several of our branches. Our environmental management system, commitment to green buildings and other initiatives speak to our broad-based approach to environmental sustainability,” says Sue Zazon, Huntington’s Regional President for Central Ohio.

With 40% of households in the City of Columbus and surrounding suburbs classified as multi-unit dwellings (MUDs), Smart Columbus identified MUD charging as potential challenge to its EV adoption goals. In response, Smart Columbus worked closely with developers to make charging a new amenity for residents. Frank Sasso, President of Kaufman Development, says that offering no-cost EV charging to tenants is in step with the evolving transportation culture and renter expectations in the Columbus region. “We have a number of residents who own EVs, often as their primary or only vehicle. Having EV charging at the property allows them to drive less, because they no longer need to hunt for a charge elsewhere,” Sasso says. Of the eight properties Kaufman has developed in the Columbus region, five have EV charging. One was retrofitted with EV chargers and four were built with EV chargers installed during construction. Kaufman is opening a second division of its Gravity property in 2020, and as a part of a 900-vehicle parking garage, 12 EV chargers will be active when it opens, with capacity to install up to 20 chargers in the future. Many developers took advantage of both Smart Columbus’ and AEP Ohio’s residential charging incentive programs. AEP Ohio installed 54 charging ports, with an additional 26 ports going online through 2020. Kaufman Development was one of seven developers, including Casto, Champion, NEP, Pizzuti, T&R Properties and SP+, that received a rebate from Smart Columbus for residential EV charging.

Read more How your organization can create a workplace charging plan.

JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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dren’s future. For my family, driving an electric vehicle has been an easy and significant way to reduce our footprint and teach our kids that every action helps!” says Doug Ulman, President and CEO of Pelotonia.

Businesses Drive Mobility Culture Shift

mart Columbus is taking a unique approach to increasing electric vehicle (EV) adoption by partnering with the private sector to help employees choose a more sustainable way to get to work. Through innovative education and incentive programs, Smart Columbus and its employer partners are reducing congestion and emissions while also addressing equity. In late 2017, Smart Columbus launched the Acceleration Partner program to organize and rally private sector partners to a series of five commitments that would result in employees driving electric and relying less on personal vehicles. To date, 70 companies have signed on to help drive the culture change that will allow our region to grow smart. “There’s a lot of energy and excitement throughout OhioHealth when it comes to the Smart Columbus initiatives. We’ve installed more than 50 charging stations across our system, we’re piloting benefits and programs to decrease single occupancy vehicles, and we’ve added an electric vehicle to our fleet with plans for more in the near future,” says Terri W. Meldrum, Esq., Senior Vice President and General Counsel for OhioHealth. “As a healthcare organization, we see it as a win-win for everyone: decreased tailpipe emis-

sions, clearer air and engagement of our associates in making Columbus a healthier community for all of us.”

Acceleration Partner Goals and Impact 1. Empowered company leaders drove change Each of the 70 employers committed to the program assigned an executive sponsor to direct the company’s engagement in Smart Columbus and empower cross-functional teams to fulfill their organization’s program commitments. Participating companies also identified a mobility ambassador, to lead internal programming. 2. Leaders and companies went electric CEO members of the Columbus Partnership and Acceleration Partner company executives were challenged to support the initiative by buying an EV themselves. Fifty Columbus executives are now driving electric. Also, companies were offered assistance to transition corporate fleet vehicles to EVs. “I believe that it is our collective responsibility to protect the environment, and we can each make choices—both large and small—that help protect and ensure our chil-

3. Major worksites installed EV charging People are six times more likely to buy an EV if they see charging at their workplace. Increased EV charging at workplaces helped to expose thousands of residents to EVs and normalize EV culture. 4. Educated employees on smart mobility options Companies were asked to send their senior leadership and key team members through the 2017 Smart Columbus Live series to learn about the Smart Columbus initiative. In total, 1,500 residents from 350 unique organizations attended, with dozens more hosting presentations for their associates. Acceleration Partners also hosted Smart Columbus’ record-breaking Ride & Drive Roadshow, which put nearly 12,000

Employees at Huntington’s Easton campus learning about the benefits of EVs

“Benefits we created in partnership with Smart Columbus are now helping with recruiting and retention, and with making sure team members have a reliable way to work.” Shannon Tolliver, Social Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability Manager for White Castle

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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Mobility Ambassadors Make Mode Shift Real

Smart Columbus’ mobility ambassadors ensure that internal mobility benefits and education are initiated at partner companies. residents behind the wheel of an EV. More than 80% of the program’s events were held at workplaces. “Through our partnership with Smart Columbus, we have dramatically increased awareness and adoption of EVs among our associate population,” says Rob Corron, Vice President of Real Estate for Alliance Data. “Our associates have enjoyed learning through direct access to EVs during our popular Ride & Drive events, and our incentive program has driven our EV count to 35, up from only four just two-and-a-half years ago. The growth has driven us to create an EV community for establishing sharing guidelines for our free charging stations.” 5. Created new mobility benefits for employees Thirty-one companies partnered with Smart Columbus to create mobility benefit programs to help associates get to work reliably, sustainably and affordably. White Castle extended subsidized bus passes to all employees. Fahlgren Mortine reduced solo car commutes by 48% in one week through an

internal carpooling match program. Alliance Data offered rebates that helped 16 employees buy an EV through a short-term incentive program. State Auto and 20 other companies launched microtransit services for their employees. All of these programs complement and enhance programs sponsored by the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA), Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) and Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District to promote alternative mobility options. “We have always been a familyowned business where we put our team members first, and we have a lot of benefits. With mobility benefits being something different that we haven’t done before, our leadership was curious to conduct a pilot and discover the potential impact. Benefits we created in partnership with Smart Columbus are now helping with recruiting and retention, and with making sure team members have a reliable way to work,” says Shannon Tolliver, Social Responsibility and Environmental Sustainability Manager for White Castle.

As participants in the Acceleration Partner program, companies select an employee to serve as a Mobility Ambassador, who acts as a crossfunctional project manager to lead internal campaigns focused on changing the commuter culture of their company. Smart Columbus provides Mobility Ambassadors with expert assistance for shifting mobility behaviors within their companies and convenes a forum for Ambassadors to share ideas and best practices. Fifty participating companies have designated a total of 60 Mobility Ambassadors to the program. “I’ve had a dedicated focus on implementing alternative mobility programming as we plan to move to our new campus in Franklinton. When considering the size of our company, our rapid growth rate, and knowing that behavior change is hard, it was important to dedicate resources to our mobility initiatives early on,” says Jenn Beck, Campus Coordinator at CoverMyMeds, who also serves as the company’s Mobility Ambassador. CoverMyMeds was among the first companies in central Ohio to launch microtransit services. Their mobility strategy now includes a variety of smart mobility services, along with education and incentives that work to encourage employees to use the services. The company’s downtown Columbus office locations have access to frequent bus lines, bike share, shared scooters, Zipcar and off-road bike trails, and some employees can participate in central Ohio’s free bus pass program, C-pass. “I am confident that our employees will continue to explore and participate in the alternative transportation options we encourage, and that this will help inspire positive change throughout the community,” Beck says.

JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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Ride & Drive event visited by Stinger of the Columbus Blue Jackets

Ride & Drives Put Residents Behind the Wheel

Test drives give people hands-on experiences with EVs and their technology.

Post-drive surveys from the Ride & Drive program show that 85% of people are likely or very likely to go electric after one of our test drives. More than 30% of drivers said “EVs are for me” after their test drive. These businesses had the highest number of Ride & Drive test drives, helping us to change mindsets toward EVs.

Top 10 Ride & Drives

Total Drives

Total Events

2,243 698 655 651 519 466 440 413 348 280 279

14 6 4 4 4 4 5 2 2 2 2

JPMorgan Chase Cardinal Health The Ohio State University Huntington Bancshares Alliance Data Columbus International Auto Show American Electric Power (AEP) L Brands CAS Nationwide Children’s Hospital Grange Insurance

esearch shows that the most impactful way to educate drivers on electric vehicles (EVs) is to put them behind the wheel. Smart Columbus’ flagship program for educating central Ohioans on EVs was a touring test drive series called the Ride & Drive Roadshow, which put 11,956 people behind the wheel and 700 more in the passenger seat. Considered the largest EV test drive program ever scaled in 24 months, we estimate the program has influenced the purchase or lease of over 950 EVs over the last two years. The Ride & Drive Roadshow was carried out over 120 events at 57 host locations, 84% of which took places at workplaces. Employers such as CAS, Cardinal Health, the City of Columbus, AEP Ohio and law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease each turned out hundreds of employees to take an EV test drive during the workday. Larger hosts held multi-day events or hosted events at multiple locations. JPMorgan Chase hosted the Ride & Drive Roadshow in conjunction with week-long mobility education events at its Polaris campus. Their weeklong annual events resulted in 2,056 employees taking a test drive—and breaking the program’s record, with 276 drives in one day. “JPMorgan Chase is focused on advancing sustainability in our operations, and our partnership with Smart Columbus is a great example of that work in action,” says Anthony Anzic, Executive Director and Columbus Site Manager at JPMorgan Chase. “Our employees bring the passion and dedication to this effort, and thanks to the resources and support from Smart Columbus, we are making significant progress in tackling mobility challenges.”

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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Changing 14% Commuter Culture

increase in ridership on COTA’s rush hour lines because of C-pass contribution

aunched in June 2018, the Downtown C-pass program enables eligible companies to offer free, unlimited transit access to employees. Downtown C-pass was launched by property owners in the Capital Crossroads Special Improvement District (CCSID) in partnership with the Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) and the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) in association with Smart Columbus.

52% of companies say C-pass boosts employee morale.

34% Driving Mobility Forward

of companies say C-pass is helping with recruitment and retention.

440+ companies enrolled, including the 50 largest companies in the eligibility area.

30,000+ More than half the eligible pool of workers are enrolled.

Increased COTA Ridership from 5% to between 10% and 14% among the eligible population.

68% of employees say they started using COTA because of C-pass.

There’s an App for that Pivot is a first-of-its-kind mobility app that makes it easier for central Ohioans to get around. The app integrates trip planning, booking, electronic ticketing and payment so residents can easily move from bus, to bike, to taxi, to ride share, to scooter and get where they need to go conveniently, affordably and safely.

Learn more about Pivot by scanning the QR code below.

Columbus is buzzing with more ways to get around than ever before. Residents have taken more than 40,000 rides on a CoGo bike in the past year, thanks to 26 new stations in the region, 13 of which are located in Columbus. SHARE, a microtransit company operating a 60-vehicle fleet focused on scheduled, reoccurring rides, was launched in 2017 by Ryan McManus after he served as Smart Columbus’ Entrepreneur in Residence. The company participated in Singularity University’s Smart City Accelerator Program to earn its first venture capital funding round and now provides mobility services to Smart Columbus Acceleration Partners including JP Morgan Chase, State Auto and CoverMyMeds, with plans to expand to Cincinnati, Cleveland and other cities across the Midwest. Nearly 3,500 shared mobility devices are now in the region, since dockless electric scooters and bikes were dropped in the city in summer of 2018. Many of the device vendors have worked closely with Smart Columbus and the City of Columbus to ensure that these devices are distributed safely and are available in all neighborhoods. As mobility vendors are permitted to bring devices to Columbus, they must agree to locate a percentage of devices in low-income neighborhoods and offer alternative payment options for people who may be unbanked. This promotes access to transportation for city residents who need it most, including those who use micro-mobility devices to get to school or work.

JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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Local Dealers Embrace the Future

lectric vehicles (EVs) are not yet produced in mass quantities by brand, and a lack of state mandates do not incentivize car companies to send EVs to Columbus. As a result, Columbus dealerships have lacked a business case to sell EVs. When the Smart Columbus Electrification Program began, Honda plug-in vehicles were not available locally. Honda, a Smart Columbus partner that has operations headquartered in the region, prioritized distributing the Honda Clarity to Columbus—and local dealers sold out. Smart Columbus’ most active allies have been the 32 local car

dealerships that have become certified “Smart Columbus Electrified Dealers” through completion of electrification-specific training, installation of charging stations, and adequate supply of EV product. “As we look into the future of mobility and transportation, we realize that we must continue to be on the forefront of change, as EV adoption is projected to increase sharply in years to come,” says Rick Ricart, President of Ricart Automotive Group. “We’re very excited for the future, and we don’t have to look too far. In the next two to three years we will see fleets of [EV] vehicles, company vehicles,

subscription vehicles, rental vehicles, rideshare vehicles and more.” Dave Gill Chevrolet put a distinct focus on selling EVs and has emerged as one of the more successful EV dealerships in the nation. “The number one thing that has helped us leverage the dealership in the community and the region is when Smart Columbus approached us,” says Matt Ringlien, Pre-owned Vehicle Sales Manager of Dave Gill Chevrolet. “Internal combustion cars are going to be around for a long, long time. But … we know the long-term future of the business is going to be based on EVs.”

Smart Columbus Electrified Dealers

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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Morgan Kauffman, CEO and Owner of Columbus Yellow Cab

The City of Columbus bought 200 EVs for its fleets.

Columbus Leads the Way in EV Fleet Adoption

lectrifying vehicle fleets is the most cost-effective way for our region to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. During the Electrification Program, 313 fleet electric vehicles (EVs) were procured by a diverse number of organizations, including Columbus Yellow Cab, the City of Columbus, The Ohio State University, the City of Dublin, Franklin County, Land Grant Brewing and the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium. Over the next five years, the EV market will expand with viable electric heavy-duty vehicles, trucks, buses and other work machinery that will change the make-up of

transportation forever. Given the region’s substantial logistics operations, significant automotive presence and experience with electrification, Columbus is well positioned to be on the forefront of EV fleet adoption in the next decade.

Columbus Yellow Cab Reinvents the Taxi Industry Columbus Yellow Cab has embraced a start-up mindset within a generations-old family business to take calculated risks that have kept the

company profitable and relevant in a rapidly changing industry. The 90-year-old company, helmed by CEO and Owner Morgan Kauffman, pushes the boundaries of technology within their framework of customer-first thinking and empowerment, where customers are the passengers but also the drivers and co-workers. “As part of the Columbus Yellow Cab growth and sustainability strategy, we have created programs committed to the common-sense use of EVs in taxi and transportation network company fleets,” Kauffman says. “Solar charging, partnerships for EV charging locations, a decentralized taxi model, a keyless entry and reservation mobile app for drivers, a mobile app for customers to summon a vehicle, and smart car washing that limits water and organic waste are just the start to create mobility value equity for everyone in Columbus.” The company plans to transition its 200-car fleet to EVs, starting with 10 Tesla Model 3s placed into operation in 2019.

“We must continue to be on the forefront of change, as EV adoption is projected to increase sharply.” rick ricart, President of Ricart Automotive Group JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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Columbus: America’s Smart Region

mart Columbus has leveraged aligned investment from regional partners to create a movement toward a more sustainable and connected future for our community. What started as $90 million of aligned investment now stands at $720 million today, which is estimated to have inspired $298 million in regional economic activity resulting in 3,900 full- and part-time jobs. “The work of Smart Columbus has been an essential part of the forward-thinking innovation happening in our region. As we all work together to realize our shared vision of becoming the most prosperous region in the United States, it’s critical that we continue to enable this innovation and have a strong focus on the mobility services of the future,” says Kenny McDonald, President and CEO of One Columbus. Smart Columbus, and the collective innovation and leadership from partners across the region, has raised the profile and brand of the Columbus

Region in an unprecedented way. The Smart Columbus Experience Center that opened in 2018 has welcomed over 30,000 visitors from more than 80 cities and 10 countries. Our community has quickly become known globally as “America’s Smart City.”

Epicenter for Autonomous Vehicle Advancement The Transportation Research Center (TRC) is the largest independent vehicle test facility in the U.S. In 2019, they expanded their facility with the opening of the SMARTCenter, a 4,500-acre autonomous and connected vehicle testing environment where auto manufacturers and technology companies from around the world can prove out their innovation in a variety of real-world scenarios. Extending from TRC in East Liberty through Marysville and into Dublin is the Beta District, which features

The Virgin Hyperloop One pod at COSI

NEXT-Generation Energy Technologies for Connected and Automated On-Road Vehicles being developed at OSU CAR, on display at CES in Las Vegas a 35-mile smart highway facilitating research and development of autonomous and connected vehicle technology. Marysville, Dublin and Columbus are advancing connected vehicle research and development by installing 179 smart signals at intersections to send safety messages to equipped vehicles on the roadway. These testing environments comprise the ultimate living laboratory for advancing transportation technologies in private and public settings. Without the strong support from the State of Ohio, none of this would be possible. In October 2019, Gov. Mike DeWine reauthorized DriveOhio as a one-stop shop for those looking to develop, test and deploy smart mobility solutions in Ohio. Created by the Ohio Department of Transportation in 2018 by an executive order under Gov. John Kasich, the initiative has been instrumental in allowing for autonomous vehicle deployments on public roads. This paved the way for Columbus to be home to Ohio’s first self-driving shuttle deployment, Smart Circuit. The success of the one-year pilot on the Scioto Mile provided valuable lessons and best practices that informed the deployment, funded by the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT), of the Linden LEAP in February 2020. Complimenting these urban deployments is another USDOT-funded, four-year initiative led by DriveOhio and TRC to develop

Smart Columbus / Columbus CEO / JUNE 2020

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and deploy automated transportation solutions focused on rural roads and highways in southeast Ohio.

OSU’s Smart Investments The Ohio State University (OSU) has been one of the most significant partners in the Smart Columbus initiative, aligning research and developing a strategy to spread the Smart City movement throughout the institution. “Ohio State’s researchers have been collecting data and developing technology in the smart mobility space for years,” says Morley Stone, Senior Vice President for Research at OSU. “And we know smart goes beyond mobility, and we are developing new partnerships and strategies for connected solutions in other sectors such as energy, agriculture and healthcare.” The Ohio State Smart Campus strategic plan provides a holistic framework that engages the campus-wide living laboratory. Once fully implemented, the plan includes mobility, health and wellness, energy,

and sustainability and teaching. The OSU Center for Automotive Research (CAR) is an interdisciplinary research center in the university’s College of Engineering and the preeminent research center in sustainable and safe mobility in the U.S., supporting more than 10 companies with automotive research in the past year. Additionally, OSU students have been deeply engaged in Smart Columbus since the beginning, working as interns and Experience Center ambassadors, taking on challenges as class projects, participating in hackathons, creating their own Smart City projects on campus, and learning about smart mobility options at the First Year Student Columbus Welcome Event.

Bringing Innovation to Life Leadership by the public sector to pilot and scale new ways of delivering services is essential to becoming a smart city. Mayor Andrew J. Ginther appointed Michael Stevens, the city’s first Chief Innovation Officer, to spearhead the implementation of the Smart City Challenge grant. The Central Ohio Transit Authority (COTA) hired visionary leader Joanna Pinkerton, who has a background in transportation innovation, as President and CEO. She has since brought on COTA’s first Chief Innovation Officer. The MidOhio Regional Planning Commission (MORPC) is leading a groundbreaking effort to position Columbus to be one of the first regions to operate a Hyperloop route. From Smart City kiosks to mobile fare payment on our buses, modern ways to experience our city are improving resident quality of life and enhancing visitor experiences. The Park-Columbus mobile app, pow-

ered by ParkMobile, rolled out in the Short North Arts District of Columbus in December 2018, allowing drivers to pay for and track their parking meter use on their smartphone. To date, the app has been downloaded 85,000 times. Parking Services plans to leverage the app in more Columbus neighborhoods within the next year. With the use of data and the power of the Smart Columbus Operating System, city departments including the Division of Parking Services are developing capabilities to more dynamically manage information and adjust policies. “We have a culture of innovation, and everything we learn will help us reduce congestion and increase mobility while preserving the uniqueness of our neighborhoods for all to enjoy,” says Robert Ferrin, Assistant Director of Parking Services.

Moving Forward Our commitment to becoming “smart” was never about one entity, one sector or any single technology. We also see this in Can’t Stop Columbus, an initiative sponsored by Smart Columbus and spearheaded from volunteers in the technology, business and nonprofit sectors, with a goal to make jobs, arts and resources more readily available to our communities as a response to the Covid-19 outbreak. The desire to become a more connected community is rooted in the belief that nextgeneration technologies and frameworks can transport our region to the future. As we anticipate adding 1 million more people to our region by 2050, our region-wide commitment to advancing what is new and next will position us to grow smart and become the most prosperous region in the U.S. Smart is just the start.

Central Ohio is quickly becoming a model for the nation on how to use smart, 21st-century transportation to help create economic growth and expand opportunity. Rob Portman, (R-Ohio), U.S. Senator JUNE 2020 / Columbus CEO / Smart Columbus

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Thank you to our Partners For more electrification best practices for businesses, visit SmartColumbusPlaybook.com

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Business Law

Driving dreams Thompson Hine’s new early stage/emerging firms partner knows a thing or two about smashing paradigms, something startups constantly chase. By Steve Wartenberg + Photo by Rob Hardin

he first thing people notice about Lindsay Karas Stencel is her outgoing personality, brightly colored clothes and flamboyant earrings. There’s plenty of substance behind all this style, too: “She’s smart and a damn good lawyer,” says colleague David Willbrand. Willbrand, chair of Thompson

Lindsay Karas Stencel Hine’s early stage and emerging company practice, recruited Karas Stencel to run the large law firm’s Columbus office as a partner in March. In the male-dominated, business-suit-wearing world of venture capital, Karas Stencel has been a trailblazer, mastering several aspects of this entrepreneurial, highrisk, high-reward investment world. She has provided legal counsel for venture capital funds, represented startup companies looking for funding and helped create Launch New York, a Buffalo-based venture-capital development organization. Stencel is an adjunct professor at Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, and she and her husband, Chris Stencel, own CrossFit Westerville. So, yes, Karas Stencel is a bit of a high-energy overachiever and glassceiling smasher. And a well-dressed one to boot. “I’ve always been a bright soul and I think, in recent years, I’ve embraced my light and fierceness and decided I’ll be me and I don’t have to dress like everyone else,” Karas Stencel says, adding she no longer even owns a traditional

women’s business suit. “It’s important in venture capital to be authentic and true to yourself, in order to build a level of trust with the people you

Lindsay Karas Stencel Partner, Thompson Hine, early stage and emerging companies Age: 37 In position since: March 2020 Experience: Chief legal counsel and partner, NCT Ventures (2008-20); chief investment officer and fund manager, Launch New York (2016-20); adjunct professor, Ohio State University Moritz College of Law (2019-present); founder, LKS Law (2010-20). Education: Canisius College (bachelor’s in political science, international relations, urban studies, 2005); Ohio State University Moritz College of Law and Fisher College of Business (juris doctor and MBA, 2009). Resides: Westerville Family: Chris Stencel (husband) June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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work with every day. If that means huge, feather earrings or bright-purple clothes, so be it, I’m going to be me.”

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All roads led to venture capital for Karas Stencel. Her interest began as an undergraduate at Canisius College in her hometown of Buffalo and continued through law school and business school at Ohio State University, where she earned a law degree and MBA. She landed a job at NCT Ventures in 2008 before graduation. “I always liked the idea of real-world finance applied to business,” Karas Stencel says. “How do we start and grow businesses, what drives people? Venture capital is a beautiful economic vehicle.” Columbus-based NCT is an earlystage venture capital firm with three funds totaling about $76 million, Karas Stencel says. It specializes in logistics, energy, health care and artificial intelligence companies. When she began at NCT, Karas Stencel was often the only woman in the room. “I was one of the first female partners of a venture capital firm in the Midwest, that’s how bad it was,” she says, adding the number of women has increased, but not nearly enough. Less than 10 percent of the decision makers at venture capital firms are women, according to a 2019 Axios study. This is one of the reasons venture capital investment in femalefounding teams was $3.3 billion in 2019, just 2.8 percent of the total capital invested in the United States, according to PitchBook. This is up from $2.1 billion and 2.2 percent in 2017.

“Women need to say, ‘I need to be represented,’ and deserve a position as a general partner [at venture-capital funds]. And men need to say, ‘We have to have other people at the table who don’t look exactly like us.’ ” Lindsay Karas Stencel partner, Thompson Hine

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Karas Stencel, who was NCT’s chief legal counsel and a managing partner when she left last year, is determined to change these dynamics and increase the number of women decision makers and female entrepreneurs who receive venture capital. “Women need to say, ‘I need to be represented,’ and deserve a position as a general partner [at venture-capital funds],” she says. “And men need to say, ‘We have to have other people at the table who don’t look exactly like us.’ Consistent pressure over time changes all things— that’s how diamonds are made.” And women entrepreneurs need to be bolder, she says.

LKS law To apply consistent pressure, Karas Stencel created LKS Law (her initials) and Launch New York, a Buffalobased, nonprofit venture capital firm. She has rolled her work for Launch New York and her LKS practice into Thompson Hine. “Be bold. Be fearless,” she recently tweeted to encourage women entrepreneurs. “Ask for what you want and don’t act surprised when you get it.” Karas Stencel is legal counsel for Constance Borro, a Columbus School for Girls mathematics teacher and co-founder and CEO of Mastery Portfolio, an app “that allows teachers to organize their curriculum in a more comprehensive way,” Borro says. She was pointed in Karas Stencel’s direction by a mutual friend. “We interviewed a few other legal teams and Lindsay was by far the most experienced,” Borro says. “And, she really does have a passion for justice for small companies.” NCT and Karas Stencel invested in Duane Clement and his company Data Inventions, an Erie, Pennsylvaniabased startup that helps companies compile and utilize data to improve operations. “Lindsay was involved from the get-go and our relationship just took off,” Clement says. “She has so much energy and positivity and the strategy to really make things happen. And that’s all you need sometimes— one person who believes in you.” Willbrand believes in Karas Stencel. Over the years, “NCT invested in some of my clients,” he says. “Sometimes we were on the same side of the table, sometimes we were negotiat-

ing against each other. I always liked Lindsay’s personality, she has such a good energy and is a builder.” The move to Thompson Hine made sense for Karas Stencel. NCT, after raising three venture-capital funds, announced in 2019 it would not pursue another.

The VC world The biggest venture capital funds are based in New York and Silicon Valley, and “these mega-funds are not flying into Ohio to invest [only] a million dollars,” Karas Stencel says. “But there’s an immense opportunity to provide that early-stage capital here in Ohio and the Midwest.” Karas Stencel has identified characteristics that lead to success for startups: “How gritty is the team? How well do they work together and with others, including you?” she says. “We’re looking for ideas that will shape the next 10 years of industry and culture.” For example: Educational technology, or “edutech,” in which schools and teachers utilize technology for online learning. “This is something I wouldn’t have thought about even a few months ago,” Karas Stencel says. And then came the Covid-19 pandemic, the ensuing lockdown and rapid growth of this field.

Next steps Chris Stencel manages CrossFit Westerville, and his wife is a regular. Or was, until the lockdown. “I like to see people do something they didn’t think they could do,” she says of the super-competitive world of CrossFit. “That translates to all these other aspects of their lives and gives them confidence.” It also translates to the world of venture capital, where Karas Stencel’s goal is to give the leaders of well-organized and gritty startups the funds, confidence and legal and business advice they need to thrive. “I think the words you’d use to describe me are wife, dog mom, an attorney and venture capitalist. Most importantly I think I’m kind,” she says. “I try and meet people where they are and demonstrate empathy in everything I do.” Steve Wartenberg is a freelance writer.

56 ColumbusCEO l June 2020

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A Special Advertising Section

Bus in ess

Photo courtesy istock.com/sorbetto

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R es o urc e

G u i d e

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Business Resource Guide

Preparing for the New Normal? Remember the People!

By Barbari Griesse, Vice President, Advisory Services, Organizational Change Management Practice

uring the last few months, we have responded to national and state regulations aimed at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. Many individuals are feeling the impact of unemployment and fears of making ends meet, while frontline workers may be experiencing increased personal risk as they treat patients. For many, the impact is compounded by juggling the educational needs of their children while delivering on

By Shannan Simms, Ph.D.,

Vice President, Advisory Services, Organizational Change Management Practice

work responsibilities. For others, there is minimal personal impact, but a heightened feeling of uncertainty that change could come at any second. During times of change we transition from the current state, a place of comfort and familiarity, to a future state, a place of ill-defined unknowns. To get to the future, we navigate a messy middle ground of transition that is wrought with emotional reactions. Whether you are responding to rapid, forced and disruptive change

like the current pandemic, or looking at new policies, processes or technology, people will have to work differently. Too often in normal work changes, however, the people impacted by change are forgotten. We take time to do the planning of the solution and make significant investment into defining and designing the perfect application, but we forget to engage people until the grand unveiling of the solution. Often, this is where things go sideways because we, as humans, are creatures of habit. We like to know what will be expected, and even minor shifts to how we do our work can feel disruptive. As you prepare for the new normal, whatever the postCOVID-19 environment looks like, deliberately planning for how you will help the impacted people will greatly increase the likelihood of being successful. Research in organizational change management best practices indicates you’re six times more likely to achieve project results if you deliberately plan for the people side

of change (Prosci, 2018). Organizational leaders may set the direction for a change, but the people make the decision to engage and shift their behavior. As you make decisions about your new normal, take time to reflect: How will you communicate changes to help your employees be ready? How can you support and equip your managers to be the frontline and help employees be willing to change? How will you help the team learn what they need to do to be able to change? As you think about your way forward, remember: Organizations don’t change; people do. Be deliberate in planning to help your people and you’ll increase the ultimate probability of project success.

3 Things to Know • Avaap is the only Prosci-authorized training provider in the U.S. and is a thought leader in change management. We understand the people side of change and have experience helping small organizations to Fortune 500 drive success with change management. • Avaap is an industry-focused technology management and advisory services firm that partners with market-leading software such as Epic, Infor, Tableau, Workday and others. • Avaap consultants have an average of 15 years’ experience and will be an objective partner to help guide you through any organizational change, and as you transition into the new normal. For more information, call 614-796-0090 or visit

avaap.com

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Business Resource Guide

Choosing a Lawyer as a Trusted Business Partner

By Brenda Jump, Marketing Director, Isaac Wiles

hat is the value proposition of officially anointing a law firm as a trusted partner for your business? Many business owners and stakeholders debate this very question as they move through the various milestones of business expansion and change. These stakeholders must determine whether a lawyer or

law firm will solve their problems, offer unique benefits and deliver inherent value to their business. These factors are the broad definition of “value proposition” and are the criteria consumers use to make choices about products and services. Just as product companies must deliver distinguishable benefits to their end users in order to be competitive, so must law firms when providing legal services to their clients. A laundry list of specialized practice areas is just the first layer to peel back when choosing a law firm that will engage and grow with your business. Attorneys must bring something more to the table than their knowledge of the law; they must also bring the right combination of such intrinsic benefits as communication, empathy, commitment and loyalty. These qualities often make the difference between a

one-matter client and a longterm business relationship. For example, a lawyer who understands empathy will build the entire client experience by standing in the client’s shoes and asking questions like, “What information would I want to know if I was a client?” and “How frequently would I want to be updated about my case?” This enables the lawyer to provide services in a way that anticipates concerns and makes the client experience as seamless as possible. Unfortunately, many of these valuable interpersonal skills are not taught in law school, where little time is devoted to developing emotional intelligence as a component of conflict management. After law school, only fortunate graduates will land at firms with thoughtful mentors who share their mastery of relationship and client

development along with their legal capabilities. These new associates can bear witness to “how it’s done” and begin to hone these very important business-building skills. The art of developing meaningful business relationships might seem cliché, but amid the COVID-19 pandemic and the uncertainty in our economy, businesses will need legal partners who can stand beside them with superior legal expertise and highly developed soft skills. These intrinsic qualities that connect people in times of crisis will rise to the top as key attributes when choosing and staying with a trusted legal partner.

3 Things to Know • Ask the right questions in a consultation. Questions should address the specifics of legal matter(s) related to your business in addition to touching on intrinsic benefits like communication and mentoring within the firm. • Examine a firm’s culture. Look for a firm that fosters a collaborative culture with multi-generational members. This structure demonstrates the firm’s commitment to developing its people and is an indicator that intrinsic values are deemed important. • Consider points of contact and future interactions. Think about others from your organization who will be interacting with the law firm. Involve these members in the duediligence process so they can weigh in on what factors are important to them and what attributes they are looking for in a long-term legal partner. For more information, call Isaac Wiles at 614-221-2121 or visit isaacwiles.com.

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Business Resource Guide In the early days, this resulted in entire degree programs offered in factories, offices and learning centers. As technology advanced, we were able to make these same programs available online to our students. Now we serve students all over the world with more than 90 online and on-site programs designed to fit the life of a busy, working adult.

Space for Students of All Kinds at Indiana Wesleyan University By Rachel Ashley

n 1985, Indiana Wesleyan University recognized that access to higher education was difficult for a working adult learner. In response, we pioneered a philosophy that would remove barriers and create an educational learning

experience that focused on the needs of the learner more than the conventional structure of a college. Trips to a bookstore, daytime classes and degrees that could take five to 10 years were all common practice, so we decided to bring the learning experience and the learning tools as close to the learner as possible.

Student-focused education opportunities As a nonprofit institution, we are committed to providing an education that develops students in character, scholarship and leadership. Since we don’t have to focus on shareholder value, we can invest our energies more completely into loving our students and changing lives. Adult students want their learning experience to be more than transactional, and our approach recognizes this. Adults are managing life issues as well as their educational goals. Realizing this, IWU established a unique chaplaincy program that comes alongside a student when life happens outside of the classroom. We have also developed a repository of resources that supports students throughout their studies, whether they are onsite or online. Serving Our Community in Columbus With a physical presence in Columbus, Ohio, at our Columbus Education and Conference Center, we have the privilege of serving both students and the local community in our classroom spaces. Our vision is to meet educational needs wherever they exist, so we’ve designed our education and conference centers to be spaces of connection and community, serving both our students and our neighbors. Students who choose our on-site learning format enjoy the flexibility of one-night-per-

week classes at our education centers, where they can meet with faculty and classmates for a more traditional learning experience. Our centers are equipped with comfortable spaces, friendly staff and the latest technology to provide the best educational experiences possible. We also open our doors to the community for conferences, meetings and workshops; we are capable of setting up events, arranging catering and providing technical support. All 14 of our education and conference centers across Ohio, Indiana and Kentucky are uniquely equipped to serve our community. Student Resources • Technical support • Tutoring • Off-campus library services • Academic advisors • And more

3 Things to Know • We are conveniently located

in Columbus and across Ohio, including Cincinnati, Dayton and Cleveland.

• We offer degrees for students at all levels, associate through doctoral. Explore one of our newest programs: the Doctor of Business Administration (DBA). • Our education centers offer

military-friendly, affordable, high-quality education options from the largest private university in Indiana.

For more information about education opportunities at IWU, visit indwes.edu or call 866-498-4968. To reserve space, visit indwes. edu/locations or call the Columbus Education and Conference Center at 614-529-7550.

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Business Resource Guide

Navigating What’s Next: The New Workplace

By Kyla Burns, Creative Lead

he saying that “hindsight is 2020” has never rang truer. Over the past two months, businesses have quickly learned what tools and processes remain essential. Though challenging for all, this trial has proven that being adaptable makes you a survivor in the current climate. LOTH has worked diligently to spark conversations with our

clients and within our industry during the COVID-19 crisis to fully grasp how to make people feel safe and remain productive upon their inevitable return to work. Our Grandview Work Studio is just that—a working studio. We use it to experiment with new architectural, furniture and technology applications and solutions. Our teams are immersing themselves in understanding the “new normal.” Designers are trained to create based off parameters. COVID-19 is now one of those parameters, making social distancing, occupancy and cleanability a design priority. As we navigate this crisis, LOTH + Steelcase will draw on the knowledge of our diverse network of clients, thought leaders and experts to explore and understand the implications to work, workers and the workplace.

The New Conference Room: As employees gradually return to the office, those still working remotely can be virtually present at meetings via Microsoft Teams or Zoom alongside a small group of people in an enclosed conference room that has half the seating it once did to allow for more distancing. The New Agile Space: It’s almost as if Steelcase could foresee the need for their new Flex product line. Literally on the cusp of the governor’s stay-at-home order, we were introducing the range of products that adapts to space on demand. We offer solutions like easily added privacy screens, mobile whiteboard options and felt screens in varying heights, and Roam™, a mobile system that carries a Surface Hub 2 and power. The New Use of Technology: Occupancy sensors were used before COVID-19 to determine spaces that were underutilized or overbooked. Tools such as Steelcase’s Workplace Advisor may now gauge which areas of your workplace see the most traffic and therefore require

more cleaning. Many of us welcomed voice-controlled technology into our homes years ago; that same idea can be transferred to the workplace to increase touchless technology, preventing the spread of germs. LOTH + Steelcase have always encouraged clients to have flexible spaces that allow choice and control for employees. Our Workplace Consultants offer strategies for retrofitting, reconfiguring and reinventing the workplace to create offices that are as safe as possible. We share design guidelines and thought starters, as well as safety guidelines. Our team is ready to help!

3 Things to Know • Continue to design for adaptability knowing in the future, space needs will change. To retrofit for appropriate distancing, add division with screens now while still considering things like cleanability. —Paige Armacost, Sr. Healthcare Consultant

• The speed in which clients

need to pivot to succeed and remain healthy is our new challenge. There is no prescriptive solution for all; instead let’s think critically and creatively to design a flexible solution. —Julie Voss, Leader – Emerging Workplaces

• Conversations with custom-

ers have a reoccurring theme around social distancing, especially in high-density work environments. There are no simple answers, but adding division, visual cues and thoughtful traffic patterns are good places to start. —Jason Weimer, Leader – Strategic Workplaces

From left to right: Paige Armacost, Jason Weimer and Julie Voss

For more information, call 614-487-4000 or visit lothinc.com.

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Virtual

Roundtable Employee benefits during the COVID-19 crisis Columbus CEO recently spoke with Jay Hazelbaker of TAH Benefits via a video conference call about working with employers on employee benefits and relations during the COVID-19 crisis. Topics ranged from new legislative actions to preparing for a return to the office. Here is an edited and condensed version of that conversation. Transcript provided by PRI Court Reporting. Moderated by Ray Paprocki, publisher/general manager, Columbus CEO Photograph courtesy TAH Benefits June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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Ray Paprocki, CEO: What has been the impact of COVID-19 on your clients, what have you seen? Jay Hazelbaker, TAH Benefits: The

biggest, I think, is probably what most people have experienced, which is the layoffs and the furloughs. Obviously, some have unfortunately had to shut their doors. We’ve been lucky, knock on wood, we haven’t had too many of those. But more than anything it’s been the layoff and the furlough and then the ability for companies to continue benefits. The [Ohio] Department of Insurance came out on March 20th, shortly

after everything happened, and really opened the door to allow employers to choose to keep people on their plans if they chose to do so. And that’s been a big thing. Then the passage of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, FFCRA, that kind of expanded FMLA, Family and Medical Leave Act. It reached down into employers under 50 that previously were not affected by FMLA. And then there’s the CARES Act, where the financial support came along. So there’s just been a whole series of things legislatively that are new. And for a lot of small and midsize companies, they don’t have full-blown HR departments to research and understand and implement all these things, and yet they’re required to abide by them the same as a large employer would be. So there’s been a lot of that to help them kind of navigate through. We’ve kind of become more like employment consultants rather than just benefits.

CEO: That feeds into the next question: What has been the impact on TAH Benefits?

Hazelbaker: We, like a lot of other

“At the same time, you also clearly have an obligation to that employee’s other coworkers to make sure they’re aware of what’s going on.” Jay Hazelbaker president, TAH Benefits, an employee-benefits provider for small and midsize organizations based in Westerville with an office in Portsmouth. tahbenefits.com

small businesses, have been working remotely. That wasn’t our setup prior to this. We have one employee who has worked remotely for about five years, so we had a little bit of a guinea pig to build our model after. But it’s really been more the kind of questions we’re getting from people and some of the guidance we’re providing. It’s not so much about the cost of benefits or what’s in the benefits package, it’s been more about how do we handle employees that have been laid off; how do we handle employees that we want to keep on our plan if there’s the inability of the employer to keep them on a plan; how do we extend their coverage or give them the option to extend coverage themselves.

CEO: What have been some of the

challenges you have had to face in trying to get up to speed?

Hazelbaker: We belong to the Na-

tional Association of Health Underwriters, which is an organization that works to keep agents informed and up to speed on some things. We’re also fortunate that we are a partner firm with

a national organization that also works to do some of that same type of activity, where it keeps us abreast of things that are going on legislatively. But a lot of it is just, I’m a little bit of a geek when it comes to the stuff, I like that side of it. I like to understand the whys and the hows and the whats of what’s going on?

CEO: Do you have a couple of examples about how you’ve helped clients through this?

Hazelbaker: A big deal is open enroll-

ments. We are accustomed to doing a lot of face-to-face. That clearly has not been the case now. Electronic benefits enrollment has really taken a rise over the course of the last couple months. We have an online benefits enrollment portal that we use that we provide the clients. So for us that’s been a big feather in our cap to be able to have a solution to help address that change in the process. The latest thing we’ve been trying to communicate to people is all new return-to-work guidelines as things start to open up. We have employees that are working remotely, and how do you maintain productivity. Employers are being required to be more flexible than ever, which is a good thing, but they can’t just leave themselves open to getting taken advantage of. Not that everybody’s out to do that, but just based on the circumstances, it would be easy to happen.

CEO: What sort of short-term advice have you been able to give clients?

Hazelbaker: There still are premium

deferrals available with a lot of the insurance carriers. They’re required by the ODI [Ohio Department of Insurance] to provide deferrals of premium for up to 60 days on most fully insured cases. The other thing in the short-term is letting them know that they can keep their employees on coverage if they want to even though they no longer qualify as full-time eligible employees. The other thing is talking to people about how to handle the return to work. That’s been something in the shortterm because you want to be careful about the social distancing, you probably are trying to phase them in, and some of the people that you thought were going to come back maybe aren’t,

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Special Advertising Section

they prefer to work from home. The other thing that has just started to come up is what happens if an employee that we call back is found to be carrying or is positive for the Coronavirus. What do we do, what’s our obligation to that employee—being sensitive to PHI, protected health information. At the same time, you also clearly have an obligation to that employee’s other coworkers to make sure they’re aware of what’s going on. So we’ve been trying to help, in the short-term, to set them up for those types of encounters.

CEO: What have the discussions been about going forward while working with COVID-19?

Hazelbaker: It’s kind of two-fold. It’s a

little early for us to be seeing it, I think, but there actually is a study published by Willis Towers Watson. It covered about 12 million employees and 800plus employers asking how they were going to respond to this. And 47 percent of those companies said they were actually going to enhance their benefit package—45 percent of them said they

were going to enhance their wellness programs. I would say that in Central Ohio that is consistent with what we’ve seen from a lot of our clients. I was really pleased to know the number of our clients who were really intent on finding a way to keep benefits in place for their employees even while they were displaced; they were really concerned. The other thing is with the expansion of FMLA under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act. I think that’s something that’s here to stay. I mean, the law only provides for that throughout the end of this year. But I think you’re starting to see that expansion where it pertains to, even in some cases if your kids have to stay home from school—that’s a permitted reason. It added a lot of paid leave. Understand, FMLA before didn’t necessarily require paid leave, it was just protected leave. This law has actually expanded it quite considerably. Now it applies to employers who have fewer than 50 employees, which was never the case before.

I think that is really going to be a lasting impact of this. I would imagine that’s going to be something that maybe not exactly in the form it’s in right now in response to COVID, but I think we’re going to see probably in labor law or other types of laws that get passed after this is behind us, hopefully. Another part of the FFCRA was that--and companies started doing this voluntarily just in response to COVID—that all the testing related to COVID started to get covered with no out-of-pocket. And then it followed that treatment was provided with no out-of-pocket. And then another enhancement was telemedicine. Now I think you’re going to see more companies start to include more of the testing, not just for COVID, but for other things as part of their wellness programs. I can’t imagine that a lot of plans are going to continue to cover treatment in full for a lot of that stuff. But I think going forward companies are finding a renewed importance in a lot of those things, because their employees value that.

TODAY'S EMPLOYERS ARE LEFT WITH AN EPIDEMIC OF QUESTIONS. TAH Benefits can help answer them. The pandemic has left employers with questions they never had to face before. When my furloughed or new employees return, what with their new healthcare coverage look like…for both them and me?

“

If I am forced to furlough or lay off my employees, what happens to their current healthcare coverage?

TAH Benefits can help. We best serve our customers by knowing how to navigate the ever-changing regulatory climate and evolving healthcare markets. TAH Benefits will keep you informed of every new factor that affects you as an employer to help you keep your employees safe, happy and committed to your business. There has never been a better time than right now to call because the rules are changing daily. Contact us today to learn more:

800-237-2333 TAHbenefits.com

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TEMPORARY EMPLOYMENT AGENCIES Ranked by 2019 Central Ohio hours billed

Agency 1 Dawson

1114 Dublin Road, Columbus 43215 614-255-1400 dawsoncareers.com

2 Acloche

1800 Watermark Drive, Suite 430, Columbus 43215 • 614-824-3700 acloche.com

2019 Central Ohio Hours Billed

2700 E. Dublin-Granville Rd. Suite 180, Columbus 43231 614-448-0255 • remedystaffing.com

6062 Huntley Road, Columbus 43229 614-436-4454 • rsrtemps.com

5 Staffmark

2844 Stelzer Road, Columbus 43219 614-475-2250 staffmark.com

6105 McNaughten Center Columbus 43232 • 614-328-9345 expresspros.com

2.1 m

13 72

Custom workforce solutions including contingent staff, direct-hire professionals, executive search, project labor, and temporary employees in a variety of industries

Interview skills, basic computer, soft skills and safety training

1.8 m

7,250 $14-$125

4 28

Logistics, manufacturing, customer service, administrative support and executive/technical recruiting

Remedy Intelligent Staffing partners with Penn Foster to offer free, career-focused online courses to all associates

1.7 m

6,000 $9.50-$40

5 30

Light industrial, warehouse, logistics, printing, construction, landscaping, ETC

Various

1.5 m

30,000 $9.50-$35

5 18

Adminstrative and clerical, accounting and finance, call center and customer service, dIstribution, light industrial, logistics, skilled trades, drivers

Yes

Todd Casler, regional vice president

1.1 m

15,876 $13.20-$234

5 25

Office services, logistics, light industrial, skilled trades and professional placement

Computer skills, safety, customer service and resume writing

Brian and Kelly Carpenter

188

1 5

Nurse practitioner, registered nurse, license practical nurse, nurses aids, health information technology, licensed social worker and other health care-related positions

$19.18-$97.50

1 4

Clerical, administrative, general office, customer service, warehouse

85,329

12,500 $26-$100

1 9

Marketing, design, retail, advertising and digital roles

Resume and portfolio review and recommendations

8,807

218 $60-$193.75

1 59

Interim leadership

Online learning programs, webinar series and educational tools and resources

301,625 128,870

10 LeaderStat 1322-B Manning Parkway Powell 43065 • 877-699-7828 leaderstat.com

$12-$70

300+

The CEO Leaderboard features selected topics each month. The September Leaderboard will feature Central Ohio logistics companies and nonprofit organizations. The deadline for inclusion in those surveys is Friday, July 17. If you want your Central Ohio company to be considered for an upcoming CEO Leaderboard, contact Columbus CEO at rwalters@columbusCEO.com. Information included in this survey was provided by companies listed and was not independently verified.

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Manager

15,000 $10.62-$85

9 Portfolio Creative 777 Goodale Blvd., Suite 300 Columbus 43212 • 614-839-4897 portfoliocreative.com

Owner

2.5 m

8 TRC Staffing Services 510 E. North Broadway Columbus 43214 • 614-229-7999 trcstaffing.com

TRAINING AVAILABLE TO TEMPORARIES

PLACEMENT SPECIALTIES Office and call center, accounting and finance, marketing and creative, warehouse and distribution, IT, legal

7 ATC Healthcare Service 1430 S. High St., Columbus 43207 614-586-1245 atchealthcare.com

FTE Employees

5 92

6 Express Employment Professionals

Lowest-Highest Hourly Rate

5,918 $11.29-$252

4 Reliable Staffing Resources

CENTRAL OHIO Offices

Interview skills, basic computer skills, business etiquette, resume advice, safety training, anti-discrimination, occupational safety and health administration

3 Remedy Intelligent Staffing

Temporaries Listed with Service

Chris and David DeCapua Jeff Miller, President

Ruch Corp. Kimberly Shoemaker, CEO

Brigitte and Kevin Mills Brenda Nolan

Rocky Gasbarro Sr. Alio Gasbarro and Rocky Gasbarro Jr.

Staffmark Group

Natalie Jordan

Ed Humeidan Julie Seese

Brenda Davidorf Bruce Johnson

Catherine Lang-Cline and Kristen Harris Catherine Lang-Cline and Kristen Harris

Eleanor Alvarez Eleanor Alvarez

na = not applicable; m = million Source: Survey of Temporary Employment Agencies Information compiled by REBECCA WALTERS

June 2020 l ColumbusCEO

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M S C

Le A (9 w

C R E

N (6 ne

C R E

N (6 n

C R

A (6 a c

Proud Platinum Sponsor

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Leslie Emery & Aaron Corr (941) 400-9710 www.beach2barn.com

Roberta “Bobbi” Lepi (740) 891-1068 blepi@ lepirealestate.com

1250 PERINE RD, ZANESVILLE, OHIO - Luxury and Privacy! Muskingum County, Ohio. 50 minutes to John Glenn International Airport. Over 273 acres of your own retreat! Great mixture of woods for hunting, pasture & farmland. Exquisite 3BR custom Hearthstone cabin with detached garage AND overhead studio apartment. Features that will be sure to please the discriminating eye. www.1250perine.com

From sand to sunsets and live oaks to acreage, Florida is calling to you. Team Beach2Barn is your Buckeye connection to your new Florida dream home and lifestyle! Our passion for hands-on service provides you a knowledgeable and trustworthy experience, before and after closing. For new construction or re-sale, we look forward to working with you.

CUTLER REAL ESTATE

Neil Mathias (614) 580-1662 neil@neilmathias.com

DEER RUN - A limited number of building lots available in this exclusive private gated community. Deer Run is a secluded, private lush wilderness in the heart of Dublin. Bring your own builder and design your dream home in one of the last centrally located communities in the city of Dublin. Acreage from 2-3+ Acres and Pricing starting at $825,000/lot. www.deerrunoh.com

4131 BRINSWORTH DR - Custom built 4BR home in Wedgewood Glen on 2/3 acre of a private wooded lot! Updated Chefs kitchen w/large island, SS appls & granite counter tops. The open floor plan & wet bar between the family room & kitchen provides the perfect space for entertaining. Huge bonus/theater room & 2nd laundry upstairs. This home has so much to offer inside & out! $730,000

CUTLER REAL ESTATE

CRT, REALTORS

Neil Mathias (614) 580-1662 neil@neilmathias.com

Taylor Miller (614) 551-2131 taylor@crtrealtors. com

11314 WINTERBERRY - This stunning 5BR 4.1 bath home is full of natural light that pours in through the many windows. 10’ ceilings & dark hdwd flrs lead you through the open floor plan & into the white chef’s kitchen w/beautiful quartz counters, lg island, SS appls & walkin pantry. $875,000. www.11314winterberrydrive.com

637 STANLEY AVENUE- In the heart of Southern Orchards. This home has been remodeled from top to bottom. It includes multiple smart-home features, SS appliances, all new electrical, plumbing, roof, siding, and more! Be a part of the downtown renaissance in this 2 BR/1.5 BA home! If you are looking for old-home character with a modern-industrial look, then look no further!

CRT, REALTORS

Amy Nitzschke (614) 477-5766 amy@crtrealtors. com

Jeremy S. Pape (614) 327-9615 jeremy@crtrealtors. com

2644 LOVE DR., COLUMBUS - 4 bedroom, 2.5 bath home is extremely special with modern decor and beautiful flooring throughout. Kitchen comes equipped w/stainless appliances, quartz counter tops and tile back-splashes. This stunning property offers its buyer one-story living w/a show stopping fully finished lower-level. In addition to the large bedroom with an egress window and half bathroom, the LL offers great entertainment space complete w/a spectacular bar.

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3928 INDIAN TRAIL, COLUMBUS - 2,300 square feet. It was built in 2016. 2 story home with first-floor master and another bedroom and full bath on the first floor. One bed and bath upstairs. 2 story great room that opens to the kitchen. Loft, 2 car garage, covered patio, fireplace, unfinished partial basement, wood floors in the main living area.

5/21/20 11:38 AM

Office Space By laura newpoff + Photos by Rob Hardin

Carlile Patchen & Murphy 950 Goodale Blvd., Suite 200, Columbus 43212 cpmlaw.com

The law firm pulled off moving its offices to Grandview Yard amid Covid-19.

Yes, that is a turkey

Plenty of personality is apparent in a partner’s new office in the firm’s Grandview Yard headquarters. It began welcoming some of its 75 employees May 4 to the new space.

Perspective shift

The firm’s new board room boasts views of the Downtown Columbus skyline. It previously had offices on East Broad Street since 1986.

Streamlined space

The firm has taken the entire 17,000-square-foot second floor of the Nationwide Realty Investors building, bringing all its staff together.

Making it personal

The Community Room showcases a portrait of founder Richard “Dick” Patchen.

Getaway

The staff break room is ready with seating, a refrigerator and microwaves.

Kitchen awaits

The café has bar-style seating and is expected to be a venue for company events, eventually. Visit columbusCEO.com for a full article on the space.

72 ColumbusCEO l June 2020

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5/21/20 11:07 AM

HAS ALWAYS BEEN OUR

BLUEPRINT We’re honored to have built a business that is celebrating 40 years. There’s only one way to have loyal clients and employees that are friends, be named a Best Place to Work and celebrate this many years in the industry:

HARD WORK & DOING THE RIGHT THING.

General Contractors

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Columbus, Ohio

www.renier.com

614-866-4580

5/21/20 11:40 AM

There is no routine cancer. Just like no two people are exactly the same, neither are their cancers. Each patient’s cancer is fueled by different, unique elements that help cancer cells develop, survive, invade and grow. That’s why researchers and oncologists at The James study the unique genetic makeup of each patient’s cancer. As they discover what drives a patient’s cancer, they develop and deliver the most advanced targeted treatments, leading to better outcomes, faster responses, fewer side effects and more hope. To learn more, visit cancer.osu.edu.

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5/21/20 11:40 AM