Crain's Cleveland Business, June 17, 2024

Still no sign when rec sales may begin

y

Ohio on June 7 o cially opened up applications for dual-use cannabis licenses that will permit existing medical marijuana dispensaries to conduct non-medical sales with adults aged 21 and older.

As Jim Canepa, superintendent for the Ohio Division of Cannabis Control, detailed in an April interview with Crain’s, the expectation is that these licenses can be awarded in relatively short order and that rec sales could begin later this month.

at is not guaranteed, however, because of many factors at play.

“ e (DCC) will review and process the applications roughly in the order that they have been received. Our focus up to this point has been to make

dual-use applications available to medical permit holders by (the June 7) deadline as stated in the voter-approved initiated statute,” said DCC spokesperson James Crawford.

“As for what happens after that, it is too early to say how quickly dual-use permits will be turned around,” he added.

“ at is due to a number of factors, including: whether the applicant les a complete application; when inspection requirements are met; (and) when point-of-sale integration is completed, which will be necessary at each dual-use facility to ensure sales are properly distinguishing between medical and non-medical sales at check out, as well as taking into account the excise tax that will be part of non-medical sales.”

See LICENSES on Page 29

Cleveland-area homes among most overvalued Applications open for dual-use weed licenses

City ranks 12th on list of overpriced markets

A new report echoes the ongoing story of rising home prices across the Cleveland area, ranking Cleveland among the top 15 overpriced markets.

According to research from the Beracha and Johnson Housing Market Ranking, Cleveland ranks 12th among the top 100 markets in the U.S., with houses selling at a 33.3% premium over the expected average price.

In the research, Eli Beracha, associate professor and depart-

ment chair of the Hollo School of Real Estate at Florida International University, and Ken H. Johnson, associate dean of graduate programs at Florida Atlantic University, found that homeowners in metro Cleveland are paying a premium for homes when compared with historical averages.

e report uses the U.S. Census Bureau de nition of the Cleveland metro area which includes Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Ashtabula counties.

e data is compiled from the

See HOMES on Page 29

Crain’s is honoring women across Northeast Ohio for their outstanding work, leadership and impact on their communities. is year’s class represents the best of the region. PAGE 9

B Jeremy Nobile

yB Alexandra Golden

Canepa

From bad vacation to thriving vocation

Campsite 360 aims to give campers more control and campground owners a better way to market

yB Joe Scalzo

If T.J. Ammond’s life were an infomercial, his “ ere’s got to be a better way!” moment came four years ago when he, his wife, Jen, and three young daughters booked a Labor Day getaway at a local campsite.

Because the company's online booking software didn't allow them to choose their exact site, they were blindly placed in a spot worse than Gen Z’s taste in eyeglass frames.

“It was a very cramped spot within a eld to park," he said. "We would have preferred any of the other campsites. It got us thinking, 'Why within the RV park industry is there not a way to know what site you're reserving?'

"From then on, we got to work."

e Ammonds bought a 360degree camera and founded Campsite 360, a company designed to give campers more control over the selection process and give campground owners a better way to market their park.

Initially, it was designed to be a side hustle, something that would complement T.J.’s (pro table, but dull) job doing sales and consulting for Northeast Ohio security integration clients and Jen’s (stable, but draining) job as a fth-grade teacher.

But as their digital skills improved and Campsite 360 started attracting out-of-state clients, the Ammonds started to think, “Maybe this is more than a side hustle?”

Two summers ago, they decided to nd out.

Just before Memorial Day in 2022, T.J. and Jen did a test run, spending 50 days inside a 300square foot RV with three kids under 8, two dogs and a dream. When they got back to Northeast Ohio in early July, Jen turned to T.J. and said, “I don’t want a house.”

“She was like, ‘ e only reason we’re back is to mow the yard and we want to leave again,’” Ammond said. “ at day, she was on the phone with realtors to come look at the house and she was ready to list it (that month) and I was like, ‘I’m not ready for this.’”

By the end of July, they were showing the house.

ey’ve lived in an RV ever since.

“Jen didn’t want to stay home

with kids for two or three years while I traveled and we knew, based on what we’d already seen, there was more demand for it,” Ammond said. “So we decided we’ll take a year and go see what else we could sell and we fell in love with the lifestyle.

“After the rst year, we were like, ‘We’re not quitting.’”

As the name suggests, Campsite 360’s services include 360degree photos of all a campsite’s sites and amenities, as well as high-resolution still photography and interactive maps. e Ammonds also can integrate reservation data into their tours, allowing customers to see the exact campsite or cabin available and book that site through the tour.

eir website boasts 34 clients from 15 states — and it continues to grow.

“ ey’re just more in-depth and better for the customer,” said Haley Carter, whose family owns the Mt. Gilead, Ohio, KOA. “ ese other companies, they just take you on a basic tour of the road but they won’t tell you the site you’re looking at. It’s literally like going down Google Street View. (Campsite 360) will give you the exact site.

“ at's been great for us because it helps cut down on all the phone calls. It gets exhausting when everyone is asking, ‘Is there a tree

there? Is it going to have shade? Is it big enough to t a car and a camper?’ To shut them all up, we just say, ‘Hey, here’s the link. Look at the site.’ It gives them peace of mind and they can say, ‘OK, this is a good t for me.’”

e other di erentiator? Customer service. Because Campsite 360 is a small, family-run company, she doesn’t have to deal with a di erent person every time she needs something.

“T.J. has been super exible with coming out and scheduling new shoots when we get upgrades,” she said. “He understands exactly what we want and the pricing has been awesome.”

While T.J.’s sales background helped with the customer service side of the business, he had to learn all the technical stu (photography, coding, blogging) on the y, usually by watching YouTube videos and guring it out on the y.

Interestingly, he credits his dyslexia for his success.

“I’ve always had to gure out how to accomplish things through school on my own,” he said. “I taught myself basic coding so I can understand what my development teams do. A.I. helps a ton, too. I’m able to code all my own demos before I hand it over to a developer to show them what I want to do and I’ll have code, but I’ve never coded

Vinnie Cimino ‘honored’ to represent Northeast Ohio at James Beard Awards

yB Jack Grieve

Vinnie Cimino, the chef at Cordelia on East 4th Street, will return to Cleveland without a James Beard award. He was up for the Best Chef Great Lakes award, but the accolade ultimately went to Hajime Sato, chef and owner of Sozai sushi restaurant in Clawson, Mich. But the trip was about more than just any one award for Cimino.

e acclaiemd chef told Crain’s before the ceremony he felt he had already won, even if he would not end up winning the award. "I get to work with some of my best friends every day," he said. "I get to cook some amazing food. I get to meet amazing people. We support so many di erent local farms. We create genuine hospitality, and I think that is more important than anything else."

Cimino was the sole James Beard nominee from Cleveland. "I am just completely humbled and honored to be able to represent our city, to represent Northeast Ohio in general," he said.

Jose Salazar of Mita’s from Cincinnati was also up for the Great Lakes award. Other nominees were Sujan Sarkar of Indienne and Jenner Tomaska of Esmé, both in Chicago. e James Beard Awards are akin

lot of work for those parks because our product tends to look better than our competitors. Some parks, they’ll hire the local real estate guy and he’ll put a couple pictures together and throw it up on their website. We do a lot more than that. We lmed one in Flagsta in January and we added falling snow to it. It’s little details like that the ownership likes because it helps bring more people to their park.”

Because their living space is so small, the Ammonds spend about 80% of their time outdoors. ey’ve gotten used to doing 6 a.m. workouts in front of groggy campers and holding business meetings inside of tents.

in my life. And the developer will be like, ‘ at’s way better than what we had tentatively put together.’ All they have to do is a little code cleaning.”

Campsite 360 also bene ted from exquisite timing. When the Ammonds founded the business in October of 2020, the world was on pandemic-related lockdown and RV culture was ourishing. RV sales and occupancy rates are starting to trail o , but industry revenue is still well above where it was in 2019 — the last “normal” year — and Campsite 360’s services are more important now, since owners need to do more marketing to attract customers.

Millennials, in particular, are warming to the RV life and they seek out places that o er amenities like Wi-Fi, equipment rentals (like bikes and kayaks) and bathrooms that don’t require nose plugs and a tetanus shot.

Consequently, investment rms are scooping up family-owned RV parks and investing in repairs and amenities, all with the goal of boosting short-term revenues, then selling them o in three to ve years. One resort in Hilton Head had a lazy river, pickleball, a giant playground, a restaurant and a golf course.

“ ey’re building vacation destinations,” Ammond said. “We do a

to the Oscars of the restaurant world. Being named a James Beard nalist — and winning — often brings restaurants national recognition and new customers. Cimino said that’s already been the case. "We de nitely have seen an increase in business."

e awards, hosted in Chicago on June 10, are a glitzy, black-tie a air, for which general admission tickets cost $575. More than 1,500 people attended the red-carpeted evening. Chicago has played host to the Beard Awards annually since 2015, save for a pan-

“When people hear what we’re doing, they’re either like, ‘I wish I could do that’ or ‘I don’t know that I like my family that much,’” T.J. said, laughing. ere’s also a third group: people attracted to the lifestyle, but who couldn’t cope with the uncertainty.

“I was just talking to a guy who was like, ‘I’d love to start a business, but I like that every two weeks, my paycheck comes,’ ” Ammond said. “So I think people who do it tend to be more entrepreneurial because you're out seeking something and you're not tied down to an o ce.”

It’s not a perfect life. eir health care deductible is larger than the GDP of Liechtenstein. ey have to wear “Hello, My Name Is …” stickers when they visit friends and family in Ohio. Oh, and when one of their dogs started having seizures in their RV, they had to drive an hour to nd a veterinarian.

“ at was a little traumatizing for our kids,” T.J. said.

But they’re also living out their dream in places like “Kick Back Ranch” and “Spacious Skies” and “Fancy Gap,” a nice change of pace from extolling the wonders of security integration or teaching decimals to tweens.

“Eventually I'm sure we'll settle down," T.J. said. "We just don't have a plan for it yet.”

No worries. eir current plan is working just ne.

Four years ago, a bad vacation led the Ammonds to pick up a 360-degree camera. Now, they're seeing America from every angle. Not a bad 180.

demic interruption. e city is set to host them through 2027. Cimino and Cordelia have made a splash in Cleveland’s restaurant scene. Cordelia was named Cleveland Magazine’s 2023 Best New Restaurant and was among Tasting Table’s 22 Best New Restaurants in the U.S. in 2022. e restaurant describes itself as featuring "heritage-rich recipes and cocktails inspired by the farmer’s bounty and generations past, reimagined and showcased in new ways."

Campsite 360 founders Jennifer and T.J. Ammond prepare for a photo shoot at the Big Horn Mountains KOA in Sheridan, Wyoming. CONTRIBUTED

Cimino

GENESIS

Social media plays outsized role in city’s popularity with visitors

is now done through social media and it works best when it comes from locals.”

About a decade ago, Destination Cleveland asked residents if they would recommend their city to others as a place to visit. Only 34% said they would.

Fast forward to the most recent survey, conducted in 2022, and more than three-fourths of Clevelanders who were asked the same question said they would recommend visitors come here.

“We spent a lot of time concentrating on getting that rst abysmally low number, but it has changed and changed rapidly,” explains David Gilbert, president and CEO of Destination Cleveland. “Cleveland actually over-performs its peers now at about 80%. While that is great, we need to do something with it.”

Having a large percentage of Clevelanders say they would recommend the city as a destination is crucial now that so many travelers rely on word-of-mouth recommendations via social media to help decide and plan an outof-town trip, Gilbert told attendees at the group’s annual meeting on Tuesday, June 11.

At the event, held at Cleveland’s Superior Arts district headquarters of CrossCountry Mortgage, Gilbert highlighted the work his sta is doing to leverage growing local positivity.

For instance, he said 77% of Cleveland visitors reported to a third-party research group they were satis ed or very satis ed with their overall experience, surpassing a goal of 65%.

“Our Destination Cleveland social messaging does really well, and we do create a whole bunch of our own content, but we have found that it is critical to have locals promote what they love best about their community,” Gilbert said. “When we look at how people gather their information to consider where they may travel, it

Last fall, Destination Cleveland, looking to leverage the city’s growing positivity, gathered more than 500 residents to help them do what they were already doing: highlight what they love about Cleveland as part of the organization's Local Advocate Group. e program does not dictate what these high-pro le social media locals say or post, but it provides the tools and up-to-date information to go out and promote the city.

“ e messaging has to be authentic because followers only want to be connected to people they trust,” Gilbert said.

ose travelers rely more on social media platforms, including TikTok, to use as a travel guide.

ey search posts in which locals talk about the hidden gems of a city - the stu , Gilbert said, that's not necessarily on a traditional travel site.

Both the Local Advocate Group and the Cleveland Talent Alliance’s Ambassador program — an initiative to attract former visitors to work and live here — rely on the good words of the city’s growing, younger demographic.

e group’s research shows that the younger someone is, the more likely they are to consider a Cleveland visit. Since 2021, the percentage of younger workers from peer markets saying they were willing to move to Cleveland for a job has risen to 42% from 34%.

e bulk of Cleveland Destination’s overall advertising is targeted to that younger audience, where, Gilbert said, the group can get the biggest bang for its buck.

e organization earlier this year took a chance on running its rst national ad in about a decade. Destination Cleveland’s “Dog’s Day O ” debuted during

the 2024 Puppy Bowl. Gilbert said research found the ad campaign was more e ective than the industry standard for those exposed to the messaging. is is a big year for Cleveland, which had its best month for hotel stays in April, a result of the city being in the path of the total solar eclipse and hosting the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Women's Final Four.

In 2024 alone, Cleveland will host a total of 18 national sporting events, including the Pan Am Masters Games and WWE's SummerSlam. The following year, the city is set to host 15 national sporting events, including the first two rounds of the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

More good news on the meetings and conventions front: e city saw a 29% increase in room nights booked in 2023, building on a 21% increase in 2022, helped by a new phenomenon dubbed "bleisure travel" — people traveling both for business and leisure on the same trip.

Gilbert recognizes this new trend and said Destination Cleveland is focused on attracting meetings and conventions that facilitate coming to the city a day or two before, staying a day or two after, and bringing their families with them.

“We're in a highly competitive industry, and our organization is funded by the same hotel bed tax as every single one of our competitors across the country. We are all trying to do the same thing, and we are all trying to take a bigger share of the visitor dollar,” Gilbert said.

He added, “What Destination Cleveland has to do is to continue to be very research and data driven to best understand the customer and market and, quite frankly, be more bold and creative than our peers."

yB Kim Palmer

Cleveland Destination’s Local Advocate Group brought residents together to discuss what they love about the city. | DESTINATION CLEVELAND

At Cleveland State University, we offer programs designed to fit your schedule, lifestyle, and experience level. Whether you are interested in an MBA, a graduate degree program, or a continuing education class, we have the perfect option for you.

Our dedicated Graduate Business Advisors are here to work with you, helping you choose the program that best aligns with your career aspirations. Your experience here will set you apart from the rest.

MONTE AHUJA COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

Bratenahl property keeps historical elements with modernized touch

rooms also were remodeled, and a pool was added to the property.

Less than 10 miles from downtown Cleveland sits a Gilded Age estate enveloped by trees with Lake Erie right in the backyard.

is lakeside Bratenahl property has Cleveland history and lore dating back to the rst owner, Jay Collins Morse, a partner of Pickands Mather & Co., and his wife, Seville Samantha Hanna Morse.

e four-story, 21,140-squarefoot brick colonial and Tudor-style property at 12725 Lakeshore Blvd. was originally built in the early 1900s and sits on 3.5 acres. e property — dubbed "Moyenage,” French for "of or related to Medieval times" — was put on the market May 28 for $6,990,000.

e listing agent is Nick Zawitz of e Agency Cleveland, who claimed the mansion is the most expensive property currently on the market in Northeast Ohio.

e main property has eight beds, eight full baths and three half-baths, and still sits on its original footprint.

e home is currently owned by Figurati Construction Group LLC, which purchased the property in March 2023 for $1,950,000.

e owner wanted to modernize the property, due to many features being original to the home, Zawitz said. For how big the house is, “it takes a lot of guts” for someone to come in and renovate and modernize it, he said.

He said the plumbing was original and some was crushed because of the age of it and the tree roots involved. e plumbing in the yard was cast iron and corroded.

“So he wanted to try to keep the history, yet modernize the entire property,” Zawitz said. “And I think he did a really good job doing that.”

In addition to the new plumbing, renovations include a new roof, new heating, ventilation and air conditioning and having to bring in new power from the street — which required a new cable to be laid to the house. e bath-

e current owner still made sure to keep the history intact, because “a lot of that stu you just can't recreate,” Zawitz said. is includes the lions seen on the stairs and the original door hinges.

e rst oor includes the family room, grand dining room and kitchen. French doors open to the outdoor kitchen and pool deck. All eight of the bedrooms are located on the second oor.

e third oor and lower level have been turned into entertaining spaces. e original ballroom is now a game room and home theater.

e lower level is fully nished with a walk-up egress and functions as a “private playground,” according to the listing. ere is a billiards room, blackjack area, bar with a wine cellar, tasting room, and tness center with a sauna. “It’s keeping the history integrity, yet with a modern twist,” Zawitz said.

In addition to the main home, the original gatehouse, located at the front of the property, was restored into a guest cottage.

at space includes two bedrooms and one full bath. Additionally, a kitchen and living space make this property possible to serve as an in-law suite or a rental property.

According to the Case Western Reserve University Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, in January 1928, George Martin, the president of Sherwin-Williams Co., and his wife, Emma Regina Rehberg, bought the property from the Morses.

In September 1947, James H. Rand III, president of Rand Development Co., and his wife purchased the property. In 1985, Dr. Kenneth Spano and his wife, Christine, purchased the property and had it registered with the Ohio Historic Inventory.

Most recently, the property was home to the former executive director of Cleveland Clinic Innovations, Peter O’Neill, and his wife, Maureen.

yB Alexandra Golden

The property at 12725 Lakeshore Blvd., with two seating areas inside, was put on the market for $6,990,000. | PHOTOS BY CARA MILLER

Left: One of the eight bedrooms in the property with an attached bathroom. Right: A two-bedroom cottage that was the original gate house.

Private Travel Made Easy!

Restructured Joann Inc. names ve-member board, interim CEO

yB Scott Suttell

Fabric and crafts retailer Joann Inc. of Hudson is starting to stitch together a new leadership team, both in the executive suite and at the board level.

e company, which in April completed an expedited bankruptcy reorganization and emerged as a private company, on Friday, June 7, announced it has named an interim CEO: Michael Prendergast, a managing director in Alvarez & Marsal’s Consumer and Retail Group. Joann in a statement called Prendergast "an experienced executive who has helped companies transform successfully and has served as an interim leader for other retailers." It said a search for a permanent CEO is underway.

Joann also announced the ve members of its reconstituted board of directors: Mary Campbell, Joe Hartsig, Darrell Horn, Michelle Israel and Bill Wall. It said that the group "brings deep experience in business and retail to the organization and will o er valuable guidance and support" to senior leadership.

Horn, who has the title of interim chairman of the board, said in a statement, "We are honored to join what is truly a new Joann, and we look forward to supporting the company and its leadership team in its mission to inspire creativity."

Meanwhile, Chris DiTullio and Scott Sekella, who served as co-leads of the Interim O ce of the CEO since May 2023 and led the company through the reorganization, will be chief customer o cer and chief nancial o cer, respectively. ose were their titles before they stepped into the Interim O ce of the CEO roles.

He added, "On behalf of the board, we’d like to thank Chris and Scott for their extraordinary leadership through the past year, which has brought the company to its strongest nancial foundation in many years. We are con dent Michael’s expertise in retail will help the company continue its positive momentum while we commence a search for the new President & CEO, and we look forward to a bright future for this unique brand.”

Joann said Prendergast, the interim CEO, "brings over 20 years

of leadership experience from the fashion and consumer products industries." It said he has "a proven track record working across all major retail segments including wholesale, retail, and e-commerce and is an expert in the successful operation of processes throughout the supply chain (from product concept design through delivery to customer). He has extensive experience in merchandising, sourcing, marketing, sales force optimization and customer retention." ( is announcement has more detail on the backgrounds of Prendergast and the new board members.)

A Joann spokesperson said in an email on June 7 that company o cials were not available for an interview.

e company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings with its nearly 830 store locations in 49 states open, and its 18,000-plus employees retained.

e expedited restructuring process took about six weeks.

e new Joann is a private company owned by creditorsthe company’s nancial stakeholders and industry parties.

e restructuring cuts Joann's debt in half, to about $555 million from more than $1 billion.

Homeownership costs in U.S. have jumped 26% since pandemic began

yB Jennifer Epstein, Bloomberg

e cost of owning a home in the U.S. has increased 26% since 2020, as expenses including taxes, insurance and utilities all soared during a period of high ination across the economy.

e average annual outlay for owning and maintaining a typical single-family home — not including mortgage payments — totaled $18,118 in March, the personalnance website Bankrate found. at works out to $1,510 a month, roughly $300 more than four years earlier, when pandemic lockdowns began.

e calculation is based on Red n’s March median sales price of $436,291.

“It was really eye-opening to see just how much it costs to maintain a home,” said Je Ostrowski, an analyst at Bankrate. “Until you own a house, it doesn’t dawn on you how much money you’re throwing into the house every month and year.”

In its analysis, Bankrate factored in property taxes, home insurance, energy costs, internet and cable bills, and 2% of the sales price for maintenance — expenses many buyers tend to underestimate.

Home maintenance accounted for the largest share of ownership costs in Bankrate’s ndings, so

states where purchase prices rose dramatically through the pandemic saw bigger percentage jumps in overall outlays. Property levies were the second-largest piece of the equation in high-tax states such as New Jersey and Connecticut. In others, energy bills came in second.   e past four years of in ation dealt the biggest blow to homeowners in Utah, where expenses surged 44%. Idaho was next at 39%, followed by Hawaii at 38%. Alaska and Texas saw the smallest increases, with costs rising 14%. Annual tallies varied widely, from $11,559 in Kentucky to $29,015 in Hawaii, with a typical single-family home price of $993,000.

In Ohio, those costs are $12,975 in 2024, up from $10,585 in 2020, an increase of 23% (or $2,390). All of those numbers are below the national average. Ohio ranks 40th in terms of 2024 costs and the percent increase ranks in the lower third, tied with Maryland, Virginia and Iowa.

Ostrowski said the totals in some cases may be overstated, especially for owners of newly built homes that don’t need repairs, but that they’re still helpful for buyers to keep in mind.

“It’s certainly better to be overprepared and have some extra money sitting in a high-yield savings account,” he said, “as opposed to under-prepared and scrambling.”

Prendergast

For years, Crain’s has recognized Women of Note, honoring women across Northeast Ohio for their outstanding work, leadership and impact on their communities. And in 2024, just as in years past, our new list feels like it’s the best yet, representing many backgrounds and industries, from the arts to health care. Whether it’s heading up a major expansion of a cultural institution or helping lead the revitalization of Cleveland’s waterfronts, this year’s class — once again — represents the best of our region.

Photography by Ken Blaze

Maria Bennett

Founder, president and CEO, SPR Therapeutics

Apain-free existence is a baseline expectation for most people, but disease and injury can make su ering a constant presence. Yet, agony is not inevitable, thanks to a medical device cocreated by Cleveland entrepreneur Maria Bennett.  Bennett is founder, president and CEO of SPR erapeutics, a 260-employee company with ofces in Cleveland, Minneapolis and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In February, the health care technology enterprise secured $85 million to nance expansion of its SPRINT PNS System, a non-opioid, minimally invasive pain treatment option.

SPRINT PNS provides relief from chronic discomfort, particularly for patients with shoulder, knee, back or post-operative pain. Unlike a pacemaker or other permanent implant, the SPRINT system is an externally worn nerve stimulator. A tiny wire placed next to the in amed nerve emits a mild electric pulse, blocking pain signals before they reach the brain, Bennett said.

e FDA-approved device is utilized for knee and lower back discomfort, although SPR erapeutics is also seeing improved results in individuals with neck issues and chronic headaches. Patients use the system for 60 days, experiences they often share during board meetings, Bennett said.

“I’m compelled by these stories,” she said. “People are sleeping better and getting back to work, or are just able to be active. Just really compelling results for

Carrie Carpenter

Senior vice president, regional director of community philanthropy and engagement, Huntington Bank

Apassion for Cleveland has guided virtually every aspect of Carrie Carpenter’s career.

“I’ve just always felt this need to help others,” Carpenter said. “I would be shirking my responsibilities if I didn’t.”

After some di erent jobs in communications and government a airs, Carpenter took a job in the mid-aughts with Citizens Bank, managing its charitable foundation that brought her home from a job in New York with Children’s Rights Inc.

“When I moved out to New York, that is when child poverty rankings came out with Cleveland at the top of the list,” Carpenter said. “I had such guilt. I had left (the Centers for Families and Children) in Cleveland and didn’t have that opportunity to have a direct impact on my own personal community.”

Carpenter remained busy with local boards, including the Cleveland Public eatre and the Cleveland Foundation, where she was appointed in 2015 and remains involved.

people who may have been in pain for decades. For us, it’s why we do what we do.”

SPR erapeutics is currently in 45 U.S. markets, a number set to grow as more people pursue pain management without a permanent implant or opioid addiction risk. Hospitals comprise about half of the company’s clientele, a portfolio that also includes orthopedic practices and pain management surgery centers.

Michelle McDonald, vice president of marketing with SPR erapeutics, works with Bennett on strategic messaging around branding and engagement. McDonald said Bennett is a thoughtful leader who has a ne-tuned business sense that still manages to keep patients top-of-mind.

“Maria always keeps a patientrst focus in all she does,” McDonald said in an email. “She is one of the very best leaders I have ever had the opportunity to work with, and I feel very fortunate to be a part of the team and organization she has built.”

Despite SPR erapeutics’ expanding user base, reimbursement from commercial insurers remains a sticking point for the company’s technology. Clearing this hurdle is very much worth the result, Bennett added.

“I was told it would be hard to build a company and board of directors because of my age and gender,” she said. “I can’t do anything about either one of those, but I can put forward a good technology that people are excited about.”

— Douglas J. Guth

But as state markets under her purview with Citizens ballooned to seven, she felt like she was losing some of that Cleveland focus.

After 11 years with Citizens, Carpenter jumped at a job opening for leading the Gordon Square Arts District — which also

happens to be where she lives — as president and executive director.

But with an upfront commitment to work with the nonpro t for a just a couple years, it wasn’t long before the corporate world came knocking once again.

Cleveland over the years — and her drive to support and mentor others around her — as authentic and inspiring.

“I’ve just always felt this need to help others. I would be shirking my responsibilities if I didn’t.”

Carpenter was recruited to Huntington Bank in 2019, where she leads the bank’s charitable e orts as regional director of community philanthropy and engagement, a position that lets her continue to focus on Northeast Ohio.

A couple programs she’s helped bring into fruition there include the bank’s Hunger to Help endeavor, which features a partnership with the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, and Huntington’s Entrepreneur in Residence program, which provides help to small businesses and focuses in part on artists, women and minorities.

“I like to be creative and come up with signature initiatives that address community needs,” Carpenter said.  ose who know Carpenter tend to see her commitment to

“She walks the walk,” said Lillian Kuri, CEO of the Cleveland Foundation. “She is a connector of people, and she cares about and lifts everyone up. Carrie is representative of the whole package of a leader, both in her work and how she gives of her personal time civically.”

When not working or volunteering, Carpenter likes to experience the world through travel and cooking: if she’s looking to impress, you might get to try her red wine-braised short ribs or miso-glazed cod.

When mentoring, Carpenter advises others to nd the condence to speak their minds and to be real, genuine and “not transactional” in relationships because, she said, “I know how it is to be treated as a transaction sometimes.”

“You should build relationships with people because you genuinely like them and are interested in what they’re doing,” Carpenter said. “Don’t treat them like you wanted something from the get-go.”

— Jeremy Nobile

Emily Campbell

President and CEO, The Center for Community Solutions

Emily Campbell is a numbers person, which is a good thing because numbers are all over her work as president and CEO at e Center for Community Solutions.

e nonpro t, nonpartisan think tank focused on the health and human services sector in Ohio produces studies and data analyses that support nonpro ts, foundations and government agencies in making policy decisions.

It’s serious work, consistent with the seriousness of purpose Campbell has displayed since joining the organization nearly 17 years ago. In that time, Campbell said she’s had “just about every job you could have” at the Center, and last December, she was named to the top post, succeeding John Corlett.

Campbell grew up in Pennsylvania but came to Ohio for college after winning a national history competition in high school and earning a full ride to Case Western Reserve University. At the school, she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and international studies and a master’s degree in political science.

Although Campbell describes

herself as “a generalist,” and the Center produces work on a variety of topics, she has done extensive research and writing on the causes and consequences of poverty. Media organizations including e New York Times, e Economist and NPR have sought out her expertise on the subject.

Poverty remains a dominant issue in Cleveland, the country’s second-poorest big city. “ ese aren’t problems that emerged overnight. ... We’ve gotten used to it and complacent in it,” Campbell said. “ ere are too many people (in Cleveland) living in poverty, and it doesn’t have to be this way.”

She does, though, see “an enormous amount of hope” in the region’s ability to address poverty, starting with the capabilities of a philanthropic sector “that would be the envy of almost any city.”

Another passion for Campbell is women’s health, and she’s a member of Cuyahoga County’s newly created Women’s Health Commission, which aims to improve access to health care for women throughout the county. “ ere’s a real sense of urgency to make an

impact right away,” she said. Sabrina Roberts, a senior adviser to Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne, said sophisticated analysis of data on public health, policy and other serious subjects “is really what drives things” for Campbell and the sta at the Center for Community Solutions.

Campbell is “a numbers person, and a really good one,” Roberts said. “She’s a translator. She makes them (numbers) make sense. She knows how to tie (data) together and inform good policy.” She said Campbell’s long career at the Center “has served her well. is is a person who’s focused and passionate about everything she does.”

Campbell and her husband have two elementary school-age children, so they stick close to home most of the time. But they are “wanderers,” she said, and recently enjoyed a trip to Ireland, thanks to Cleveland’s new direct air service to Dublin. And a long-term hobby is sewing, which Campbell says she nds creative and relaxing, and does “a lot.” One favorite project: a cushion for a built-in window seat.

— Scott Suttell

CONGRATULATIONS

Congratulations Deb Janik, Senior Vice President of Business Development in Cleveland, for being honored as one of Crain’s 2024 Women of Note.

Thank you for empowering, inspiring and leading the way!

Shelly Cayette-Weston

Executive vice president and chief commercial of cer, Cleveland Cavaliers

Unless the Cavaliers are making a long playo run, June is typically a time where Shelly CayetteWeston can get a little bit of breathing room.

“It’s not like there’s free time,” she said, laughing, “but there is some breathing room.”

Instead, her last few weeks in Cleveland have been split between her duties as the Cavs’ executive vice president and chief commercial ocer and trying to arrange a new life in Charlotte, where she will soon become the president of business operations for the NBA’s Hornets.

“I’m working on schools and houses and doing dual worlds,” said Cayette-Weston, who has two daughters under the age of 5 with her husband, Aron. “It’s de nitely busy.”

And it’s de nitely bittersweet.

e New Orleans native arrived in Cleveland 12 years ago as the vice president of partnership marketing and strategy and quickly climbed the ranks, helping the Cavs become one of the topperforming revenue franchises in the NBA over the last decade.

She oversaw all aspects of growth, new business development, innovation and retention of corporate partners, as well as ticket sales and services, for the Cavaliers and others.

“One of our ‘isms’ is ‘You’ll see it when you believe it,’ ” CayetteWeston said. “A lot of organizations don’t run on that aspect. We’re tasked with creating a vision and a plan and a strategy and seeing those things come to life.”

In January 2022, she became the rst Black woman to hold the COO role with an NBA team — and she eventually outgrew that position, too. In Charlotte, she’ll oversee the day-to-day business operations for all of Hornet Sports & Entertainment’s properties, including the Hornets, Greensboro Swarm, Hornets Venom GT and Spectrum Center.

“It’s been great to see Shelly continue to grow and evolve over the years, and now she’s ready to take that next step and run an organization,” said Len Komoroski, who stepped down as the CEO of the Cavaliers, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse and Rock Entertainment

Group (REG) in 2022 but still serves as a senior adviser for REG. “Shelly is an inspired leader, someone who has a great vision for where she’s going and what she’s trying to accomplish. And she’s able to impart that to her team, and elevate her team by galvanizing that group to achieve at higher levels.”

Cayette-Weston has tried to do more than drive revenue in Cleveland. She has tried to drive change, whether that’s through the Cavs’ youth sports outreach or through civic engagement.

“I’m just incredibly thankful for the opportunity to call Cleveland home for the past 12 years,” she said. “Cleveland has so much to o er. It’s a hidden gem and I’m so happy my path brought me here. I’ll always be a Cleveland supporter and I’m forever thankful for the leadership of Dan Gilbert and his wife Jennifer and for Nic (Barlage, the Cavs’ CEO) and everyone in the Cavs’ organization. I’m not successful on my own, but because of the people who have allowed me to grow and learn. I’m thankful for all of them.”

— Joe Scalzo

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Celina Cunanan

Chief

diversity, equity and belonging of cer, University Hospitals

Being the daughter of two immigrants in the OBGYN eld, Celina Cunanan joked that she went into the “family business of birthing babies and caring for women,” when she became a certi ed nurse midwife. at line of work was something Cunanan was passionate about, but she did not know in what capacity until she took a break before medical school to work as a patient care technician.

She was oated on the labor and delivery unit where she found certi ed nurse midwives. at is when she realized that she wanted to be there to help women in their transition to motherhood, and to care for women and families throughout their lifespan.

“I choose to be a wife and mother and that is de nitely the most ful lling thing that I do in my life, hands down,” Cunanan

Becoming an advocate is what led her down the path of DEI, she said. She became the director of community impact, enquiry, diversity and inclusion in 2021 and was appointed chief diversity, equity and belonging o cer in September 2022.

“It was a big change for her because she now is assuming a systemwide leadership role and was moving away from her clinical comfort zone — being a nurse midwife — to taking on social determinants of health and disparities and inequities on a system level,” said Dr. Dan Simon, president of academic and external a airs and chief scienti c ofcer for the University Hospitals Health System.

e role was an opportunity to align who she was, what she believes in and how she lives her life with her work.

“Sometimes the lines get blurred because my work is not just my work, it is what I truly be-

“Sometimes the lines get blurred because my work is not just my work, it is what I truly believe in in my heart. … So, the things I commit myself to have to be in line with who I am as a person and what I believe in.”

said. “I accomplished a lot in my career and I continue to do that but it’s powered by the fact that — especially in the DEI space — I’m trying to make the world a better place for them, that I’m trying to make things better for our family. And so, I can do that in my own little sphere of the world at UH.”

Cunanan has become an advocate for maternal health and infant mortality, especially for Black mothers and children, and has spoken about the e ects of bias and racism in health care.

In 2018, Cunanan was one of ve women to create the nonpro t Babies Need Boxes Ohio, which provided free baby boxes and supplies to help decrease infant mortality.

lieve in in my heart,” Cunanan said. “… So, the things I commit myself to have to be in line with who I am as a person and what I believe in.”

With workforce shortages and organizations focusing on immediate hires, Cunanan said she is proud of UH’s youth pipeline programs that expose children to the medical eld and give them the chance to see someone who looks like them in the eld.

“If health care is our number one industry in town and we’re not doing anything to tap into the youth at an early age to get them excited about health care careers, then we’re missing the boat,” Cunanan said.

— Alexandra Golden

Elaine Eisner

Principal, Eisner Gohn Group

Elaine Eisner and Scott Gohn’s lives changed after the birth of their child, but not in the way they had anticipated. eir daughter, Alana, was diagnosed with microcephaly and, later, HUWE1 syndrome.

As Eisner and Gohn researched the providers, treatments and services Alana needed, they realized there wasn’t a central resource that could help them navigate caregiving for someone with special needs. At the time, Eisner was on the board of the National Council of Jewish Women Cleveland (NCJW/Cleveland), which was looking to develop a signature project.

“And so, LiveSpecial.com was born out of our frustration and the need in the community,” Eisner said.

LiveSpecial.com started as a website and has since expanded to an annual print publication and events.

Christine Lobas, founder and CEO of Studiothink, was the branding company that developed the name LiveSpecial.com.

A longtime friend, Lobas said working on the project let her see rsthand how passionate Eisner is about the special needs community.

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“She understands it from not only an empathetic position but somebody who’s living it on a day-to-day basis,” Lobas said. “ at has had a great impact on the organization.”

NCJW/Cleveland continues to support and sta LiveSpecial.com.

Eisner and Gohn are still involved, and Alana, now 15, has developed a fan base among readers who have followed her journey over the years. But Eisner has taken a step back from the day-to-day work

with LiveSocial.com to pursue other e orts.

“I feel like it is so well taken care of and launched in the right place that we have the opportunity now to move on to do other things in the community, which is important as well,” Eisner says. She is currently board chair of the Community Fund Ohio, where she oversees one of the nation’s largest pooled special needs trusts.

Eisner also nds immense fulllment in the business she and her husband co-founded, the Eisner Gohn Group, during the Great Recession. Eisner uses her past experiences and education as a lawyer and nancial adviser to assist families and businesses with insurance solutions, focusing on life, long-term care, disability and income planning.

Eisner was elected to the 2024 Agent Advisory Council of New York Life, one of the carriers that the Eisner Gohn Group is a liated with, and is a member of the Nautilus Group. In 2023 and 2022, she was named to the Forbes Top Financial Security Professionals Best-in-State list for her work with New York Life.

“I think what attracts people to her is her practicality and approachability,” Lobas said. “She’s very real in every area of her life. She is giving, open and truly cares. She’s an easy person to talk with and an incredible professional here in Northeast Ohio.”

rough it all, Eisner is passionate about educating others on their nancial well-being and helping her daughter thrive.

“My goal is to help Alana be the best Alana that Alana can be,” Eisner said.

— Nicole Stempak

Deb Janik

Senior vice president of business development, Bedrock

Aconversation with Deb Janik cycles back and forth from her love of Cleveland and its rich history to the shape of its future with the ease a 30-year career in public service and civic jobs brings.

Moreover, those steps led to her current role at Bedrock’s Cleveland o ce. As senior vice president of business development, she is part of Cavs owner Dan Gilbert’s team to revitalize the Cuyahoga River on the barren, cli -like valley on the Huron Road side of the Terminal Tower complex. Bedrock has a key part of the Bibb administration’s Shore-to-Core-to-Shore plan to revitalize the lakefront, the riverfront and the city in between because of its vast holdings and scale as a major Cleveland realty developer.

“I’m just part of a well-oiled machine,” Janik said.

Yvette Ittu, president and CEO of the Cleveland Development Advisors and former colleague at the Greater Cleveland Partnership, said, “Deb has a talent for taking complex pieces of a puzzle and tting them together in a way that helps drive major initiatives,

like the Riverfront Development project.”

Most recently, Janik served as senior vice president for business growth and development services at GCP. Previous roles included chief of sta and chief development o cer for former Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell and positions at Neighborhood Progress Inc., KeyBank and the Cuyahoga County Port Authority.

“It all started with the Cleveland Sinking Fund Division,” Janik said. She landed a sta job in the unit of the city’s nance department at the Voinovich administration in the late 1980s.

At the time, the city was working its way out of default. at meant she dealt often with bond lawyers at top law rms and Wall Streeters as the city worked its way back into the bond market. She went on to work for two more Cleveland mayors.

“Mayor Michael White showed me what it was he loved most about Cleveland: the people,” Janik said.

At GCP she worked with CEOs from companies like Eaton and SherwinWilliams Co. and absorbed how they approach leadership, especial-

ly from Beth Mooney, retired chairman and CEO of KeyBank.

Janik said she is mindful that in her career, she “bene ted from the women who preceded me,” and she broke open business leadership roles for women.

Today, Janik is on the private side of the table. However, she notes she considers Bedrock e orts with government and civic types more like “working at a round table.”

e Broadview Heights native and her family now live in Rocky River. However, she’s eagerly awaiting a chance to move downtown after her daughter, 16, goes to college. Janik’s dedication to Cleveland is rivaled only by her dedication to serving as a mentor to young people. Janik prizes a meeting with the late George Voinovich as he ended his run as governor.

“He said to me, ‘ is is one of my kids,’ ” she recalled, a product of the late U.S. senator’s e orts to prepare talented young people for public service. Today, she said, “I’m thrilled when I see someone I helped along the way thriving and contributing.”

— Stan Bullard

Charmaine Rice

Senior vice president — global learning, development and diversity, AmTrust Financial

Charmaine Rice was a bright-eyed, recent Wright State University graduate when she realized helping others along their professional trajectory would be a tting career path for herself.

“I was sitting in a six-week management training course at Ohio Savings Bank, and there was this woman who was facilitating that training,” Rice recalled. “We were not being spoon-fed information for eight hours a day. Instead, we were doing case studies and slowly building up our knowledge to the point where we could be con dent that, even if we didn’t know the answer, we could nd an answer. … It astounded me. I just appreciated being able to support people with feeling more comfortable that they have the skills and abilities to do their job e ectively.”

Today, Rice leads a 12-person team responsible for overseeing the learning and development of AmTrust Financial Services’ nearly 8,000 employees. She was hired initially in 2020 to oversee diversity and inclusion for the global insurance company but “kept sticking” her nose into learning and development while championing cultural competence.

“For many of us, the workplace is the rst time we are in an environment with folks who are very di erent than ourselves, communicate di erently, have di erent observances, di erent values, di erent world views,” she said. “So, part of learning to work and be successful at your job can be less about the technical skill and more about the relational skills.”

Rice spent most of her elementary years at a U.S. Air Force base in Germany where her father was stationed, though a brief move to to the Keesler Air

Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, exposed the sixth-grader to racism from her classmates.

Rice said the family returned to Germany 18 months later, where they lived until she was 16 and a nal reassignment landed her father at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton.

At AmTrust, Rice is proud of the work she’s done “to create a culture that really ampli es employees as individuals, as well as part of the community.” Under her watch, the company has launched an executive diversity council, seven di erent “employee networks,” including groups focused on abilities, families, military service and multiculturalism, and an internal career development tool that helps employees personalize their professional paths.

“Of course, I can’t take credit for these things alone,” she said. “I have an amazing team.”

She puts her development skills to work outside of the ofce, as well, from her longtime partnership with the nonpro t Heart to Heart organization in Akron to the 2019 establishment of Cleveland-based Rekindle Fellowship, which she co-founded with Matt Fieldman.

Rekindle is a program that brings leaders from the Black and Jewish communities together for meaningful dialogue and collaborative action. With 116 graduates to date, the program is expanding to Akron this summer.

Fieldman said Rice’s “superpower” is her ability “to get people to shed all those layers of identity and just connect as human beings.”

“We need more leaders like Charmaine who can connect authentically person-to-person and create safe spaces to have real conversations,” he said.

— Judy Stringer

Councilwoman, Cleveland City Council

When Jasmin Santana took o ce in 2018, she was the rst — and continues to be — the only Latina City Council member in Cleveland history.

“I was working and advocating in the community, and I realized that we — my neighbors and Latinos — were being left out of so many conversations,” Santana said. “I took the risk because the ward didn’t have representation.”

Santana, a single, working mom, decided to take the leap into politics because she wanted to both represent and be a representative of the neighborhood where she grew up.

“Normally, I’m a very behind the scenes. I don’t know if it’s a cultural thing, but it is drilled into you to be humble, so when I won, it was very surreal,” she said.

At rst, Santana said, it was like drinking from a re hose for the former community advocate, but she was able to quickly nd her footing because there was so much that needed to be done.

“I grew up with all of these social determinants of health that everyone is talking about right

now,” Santana said. “We have a lot of chronic disease in our area, but even at MetroHealth, it was di cult to get an interpreter or bilingual signage.”

As a council member, she went about tackling the lack of bilingual documentation and services provided by the city, while also working her way up to a leadership role as council majority whip.

Reversing years of disinvestment in her ward’s Clark-Fulton, Stockyards and parts of Brooklyn Centre and Tremont neighborhoods, one of her crowning achievements was securing $1.5 million in federal funding for the CentroVilla25 project.

e $12 million, 32,500-squarefoot building will eventually include a Latino grocery, retail, entertainment and o ce space and is set to become the cultural and economic development epicenter for the community.

Her successes are even more impressive when seen through the lens of her other responsibilities, said Jenice Contreras, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Michele Scott Taylor

President, College Now Greater Cleveland

As a rst-generation college graduate, Michele Scott Taylor knows rst-hand how profoundly accomplishment can change a family’s trajectory.

Scott Taylor’s children are highperforming post-secondary students as well — one graduated from West Point, while another received a full ride from Ohio State University.

Yet, the warm glow of achievement should not be relegated to the happy few, said Scott Taylor, president of College Now Greater Cleveland, a college access organization that o ers workshops, mentoring and other resources to aspiring Northeast Ohio scholars.

“ e goal is to increase educational attainment,” said Scott Taylor, who was named College Now president in December after 13 years as chief programs o cer.

“We want more people in our community to gain the credits they need, both to ful ll their life’s purpose and to drive economic growth in the region.”

College Now has grown nearly tenfold over Scott Taylor’s tenure, a footprint covering 33,000 middle and high school students in 80 schools, including all high schools in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District.

from Kent State University. “ ere are lots of systemic barriers for people of color and lowincome students,” she said. “Race, socioeconomic status and education levels are all linked, so we can’t silo them. ere are families hiring private tutors for SATs, but our kids can’t do that.”

Many students under College Now’s guidance are simply not informed about the diverse career paths that a degree can unlock, Scott Taylor added. Considering at least 42% of jobs will require a bachelor’s or other universitybased degree by 2031 — per data from the Georgetown University Center on Education and Workforce — College Now primarily is focused on enrollment, persistence and completion.

“ e vision is having more people with credits and degrees, plus exposing students to what’s available,” Scott Taylor said. “Careerwise, these kids don’t know what’s happening in the buildings downtown.”

Santana, who was raised by a single mother, was raising two teenagers herself when she was rst elected to council.

“You sacri ce a lot when you choose to become a public servant,” Contreras said. “As a mother and the rst Latina, there was added pressure from the community and a di erent layer of expectations, not just to be responsive to her ward, but to also represent the Latino community in the city.”

Contreras said her friend’s previous grassroots work — promoting health, nutrition and breast cancer education at Metro and creating SEEDS, a women’s empowerment and development program — is why she is so successful with her constituents.

She brings an ability to listen and care about the residents — mothers needing formula or immigrant families looking for housing — who come to her o ce.

“She is really an e ective leader and a great role model who will get more and more of our community to follow the calling to run for o ce,” Contreras added.

— Kim Palmer

Fueling this maturation are community-based programs like Xplore, which exposes students to campus life, along with potential areas of academic interest. Navigating learners through the complicated tangle of nancial aid is another key facet of College Now’s mission. e rising cost of post-secondary education makes these services especially vital for populations already facing obstacles to success, said Scott Taylor, who holds a doctorate in higher education from the University of Pittsburgh, as well as a master’s

Scott Taylor’s leadership has been instrumental to College Now’s remarkable growth, said CEO Lee Friedman, who brought the newly minted president into the organization over a decade ago. (Friedman in May announced she will retire from the position at the end of the year.)

“I knew Michele was the right person for the job because of the depth and breadth of her knowledge,” Friedman said. “She’s been creative in her programming, and has an amazing go-getter spirit.”

Scott Taylor takes pride in helping rewrite her own family’s history — bringing that powerful feeling to others continues to be a driving force, she said.

“We don’t have to be beholden to barriers that keep us from living our best life,” Scott Taylor said. — Douglas J. Guth

Jasmin Santana

Airica Steed

President and CEO, MetroHealth

MetroHealth’s Dr. Airica Steed is no stranger to shattering glass ceilings.

As the rst woman, person of color and nurse to serve as the public health care system’s president and CEO, Steed has a bold vision of MetroHealth being a global model for health equity.

“It really inspired me further to widen up the front doors for others to really follow and also demonstrated to me that, yes, I am standing on the shoulders of my ancestors and those that really paved the road for me to accomplish that,” Steed said.

She became MetroHealth’s president and CEO in December 2022. She previously served as executive vice president and system chief operating o cer at Sinai Chicago Health System and president of Mount Sinai and Sinai Children’s Hospital. She also held positions as senior vice president, operations at Presence Health and chief experience and administrative ofcer at University of Illinois Health System.

A fourth-generation nurse, Steed said she always knew she would pursue a career in health care. Nursing was the calling in her household, she said, and it opened her up to possibilities in the health care space.

Steed’s journey in the industry

was also driven by hardship. Her mother died at age 46 due to unfortunate health care outcomes. Both of her grandmothers and her younger sister died of breast cancer. ese experiences inspired Steed’s path in health care. She credits her success to her ability to overcome tremendous adversity.

At MetroHealth, Steed’s vision is to eradicate health care disparities and lift up the health and wealth of communities. e goal is to zero out the death gap, she said, and keep the community well and out of the hospital. Her commitment to making health care equitable for all is strong, said Deborah Read, partner at ompson Hine LLP.

“She’s advocating strongly for the achievement of health equity,” Read said. “ at is really to be commended. Her goal is to make sure that every person, and it’s a very inclusive concept, anybody who is seeking health care has access to quality health care.”

Steed has a doctorate of education in leadership from Olivet Nazarene University, a master of business administration from Governors State University and a bachelor’s in nursing from Rush University.

Her advice for those looking to succeed in health care or business is to “embrace the power of learning how to be comfortable being

uncomfortable” and to put oneself in challenging circumstances, as it will help develop resiliency. She also encourages people to surround themselves with others who inspire and motivate them and “help to tool you with the ability to

shatter that perpetual glass ceiling and shatter the concrete underneath it.”

As for her personal goals, Steed said the sky is the limit.

“Now that the perpetual ceiling has now been shattered, I have

SVP, Senior

boundless possibilities for what the future holds,” she said. “I’m looking to wrap myself arm-in-arm with the community at-large to gure out the next step and gure out what is next for us collectively.”  — Paige Bennett

Elizabeth Voudouris

President and CEO, Business Volunteers Unlimited

Elizabeth Voudouris has worn just about every hat at Business Volunteers Unlimited.

In her 30-plus years with the Cleveland organization, which provides nonpro t consulting services and connects businesses with opportunities for volunteerism and nonpro t board participation, she has worked with hundreds of Northeast Ohio nonpro ts and businesses.

“I really, truly believe I’ve got the best job,” said Voudouris, who is Business Volunteers Unlimited’s president and CEO.

“Every day is challenging and di erent, and we’re helping nonpro ts do their work.”   Voudouris has been with the organization since the beginning. After earning her bachelor’s degree in history from Trinity College, she spent a few years working at a brokerage rm in Boston before returning to Northeast Ohio to pursue her

master’s degree in history at Kent State University. at’s when she was introduced to Business Volunteers Unlimited’s founding CEO.

What became Business Volunteers Unlimited couldn’t o er Voudouris a position at the time, but she was enthralled by the mission of helping nonpro ts match with trained board members. She decided to volunteer with the organization and was part of the feasibility study that created Business Volunteers Unlimited in 1993.

“It was serving as that connector between businesses and nonprofits that really appealed to me,” Voudouris said. “To be able to make those connections and help nonpro ts, that’s what I love.”

Today, Business Volunteers Unlimited boasts a sta of roughly 18 and has seen more than 4,000 members elected to nonpro t boards. In 2023, the organization served 1,062 nonpro ts, a 58% increase from the previous year,

Voudouris said. Over the years, the organization has expanded its footprint, serving businesses and nonpro ts throughout Northeast Ohio. Voudouris said developing and maintaining partnerships has allowed the organization to nd success.

Voudouris said she’s proudest of the stories of individual nonpro ts that are better positioned to ful ll their missions because Business Volunteers Unlimited. Clevelandarea nonpro t Achievement Centers for Children, she said, is able to serve 20% more clients this year compared to last year as a result of getting involved with the organization.

said she cares deeply about improving the community.

“What really makes her a good leader is her ability to keenly listen to what people are saying and to deeply weigh their feelings, their perspectives, their experiences and to really take the time to process it as best as she can to come up with meaningful responses or ways of nding collaboration or intersections for the good of the work of the organization,” McShepard said.

Voudouris said Business Volunteers Unlimited works with about 100 businesses every year, but that her vision is to increase that number. e organization’s strategic plan, she said, is to reach 500 businesses.

“I really, truly believe I’ve got the best job. Every day is challenging and different, and we’re helping nonpro ts do their work.”

Randell McShepard, vice president of public a airs and chief talent o cer at RPM International, has known Voudouris for about 30 years. He described her as enthusiastic and creative and

“Northeast Ohio, I think, has a very unique tradition of civic and community and philanthropy engagement,” she said. “I feel like Cleveland is uniquely positioned for an organization like (Business Volunteers Unlimited) to ourish.”

— Paige Bennett

Sonia Winner

President and CEO, Cleveland Museum of Natural History

For Sonia Winner, so much of her work as president and CEO of Cleveland’s Museum of Natural History is focused on making sure that the museum continues to be a pillar of the community and a source of wonderment and knowledge for every single person.

“What the founders of the museum wanted was what they called, ‘the di usion of knowledge,’ that knowledge is to be shared,” Winner said. “It’s not something that is just an academic exercise. It is something that the community needs to know.”

Winner’s been with the museum for over seven years, joining in January 2017 as the institution’s chief development o cer. But it was only a year later that she stepped into her current dual leadership roles. Her accomplishments could ll a book, but none have been as impressive as her work guiding the museum through its massive $150 million transformation project.

Not only does the free admission to that hall entice more people to visit, but it also gives them a chance to see some of the most notable items the museum has — like legendary sled dog Balto — and learn the history of Northeast Ohio. ( e rest of the museum carries recently reduced admission of $7-$10 and Free Sundays for residents of Cleveland and East Cleveland.)

“Our Visitor Hall has the eight most iconic objects of the museum and is free,” Winner said. “And every one of them tells a story of this region. And that’s really important because 80% of our 5 million objects are Ohiobased, so we wanted to detail the story of this region.”

A self-described “nerd at heart” with a life-long love of learning, Winner nds motivation from the people around her. “I love new ideas. I love to be around very smart people, which I get to do every single day in this job,” she said. “I feel like I have the best job in the world.”  Winner’s attitude shines outward, too, inspiring those around her.

“She sets a clear vision and she came to the museum with a clear vision of what was possible and what the museum could become,” says Susan Donlan, chief communications o cer for KeyBank. “I think her superpower is in bringing people along so that they can see the vision, too, and that, collectively, we’re all moving forward towards this destination of the transformation of the museum.”

Winner’s drive to make the museum accessible is a big part of her vision, and that’s most clearly re ected in the refreshed Visitor Hall, which opened to the public last fall and is free.

“It’s really something to see a leader like Sonia, able to bring people with her to paint that picture of what we can accomplish together and make them believe it’s possible,” Donlan said.

“She’s inspirational to women like me, for example. When you have to do something di cult, make di cult decisions and bring people along who maybe don’t want to make the journey or can’t make the turn — she’s never afraid to make those decisions but she does it with grace and humanity.”

— Marcus Gilmer

Savor every moment.

CRAIN’S DINING AND ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE

GERVASI VINEYARD RESORT

& SPA

1700 55th St. NE Canton, OH 44721 330-497-1000 gervasivineyard.com

Gervasi Vineyard’s culinary landscape is a fusion of elegance and rustic charm. The Bistro offers Italianinspired dishes with house made recipes, while The Crush House presents modern American cuisine paired with their exquisite wines. The Piazza provides a casual al fresco dining experience, and the Still House offers artisanal cocktails and small plates in a cozy setting. Explore a symphony of avors amidst scenic vineyard views.

24600 Detroit Rd., Westlake, OH 44145 216-201-9600 lucawest.com

Welcome to Luca West:

A ne dining restaurant offering an exquisite Northern Italian culinary experience led by awardwinning Chef Luca Sema. Our team is committed to delivering an exceptional dining experience and creating a warm and inviting atmosphere for our guests. Additionally, our rose garden patio and private event spaces offer an ideal setting for any special occasion.

LUCA WEST

MERWIN’S WHARF

1785 Merwin Avenue Cleveland, OH 44113 216-664-5696 merwinswharf.com

Nestled in the postindustrial site of Cleveland’s Flats neighborhood along the Cuyahoga River, Merwin’s Wharf offers spectacular views and connects guests to urban greenspace. Enjoy fresh, seasonal and locally-sourced menu items year round. The restaurant features a seasonal patio and reservable day-use boat slips on a rst-come, rst-serve basis. Check out the latest special events and specials at merwinswharf.com.

NEVER ORDINARY BOURBON SOCIETY

155 Treat Road, Aurora OH 44202 330-828-1782 nobscle.com

The Never Ordinary Bourbon Society [No-BS] is an exclusive, high-end bourbon and whiskey club for members to gather, share stories, enjoy cocktails and discuss conquering what’s next. Annual individual and corporate memberships to [No-BS] are available now.

PIER W

12700 Lake Ave., Winton Place, Lakewood, Ohio 44107 216-228-2250 pierw.com

Pier W is truly one of a kind, for the best Cleveland seafood. Always impressing both out-oftown visitors, business associates and locals with its unique location overlooking Lake Erie, guests enjoy elegant dining with a panoramic view of Cleveland. Featuring fresh seafood, the nest prime meats and seasonal dishes.

WOMEN-OWNED BUSINESSES CRAIN’S LIST

1 PLEASANT VALLEYCORP. 1093 Medina Road, Medina 330-239-0176/pleasantvalleycorporation.com

LAKESIDE FACILITY SERVICES GROUP 5800 Lombardo Center, Suite 205, Seven Hills 216-771-2400/lfs-group.com

6450 Rockside Woods Blvd. S, Suite 210, Independence 440-684-7218/staf ngsolutionsenterprises.com

METAL PRODUCTSINC. 29980 Lakeland Blvd., Wickliffe 440-943-7310/ump-inc.com

-

7334 Center St., Mentor 440-257-5800/homeinstead.com

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

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

16900 S. Waterloo Road, Cleveland 216-486-4000/morrisonproducts.com

1605 Commerce Drive, Stow 234-678-0337/summitbuildingservices.com

4933 NEO Parkway, Gar eld Heights 216-478-0810/uscande.com

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

INTERNATIONALINC. 1061 E. 260th St., Euclid 216-261-7310/Tylok.com

23940 Miles Road, Bedford Heights 216-475-5440/franknovak.com

May eld Road, Suite 150, Chesterland 800-778-5424/lmiweb.com

37779 Chester Road, Avon 440-389-0023/hirecruiting.com

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

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

; Barbara Faciana, co-CEOs

, president; PamelaBozsvai, vice president

, president, CEO

,

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

Informationisfromthecompanies.Tobelisted,companiesmustbeatleast51%women-owned.Crain'sdoesnotrequirethatcompaniesbecerti edaswomen-owned;companieswithcerti cationslisted werenotrequiredtoprovidedocumentation.WBENC=Women'sBusinessEnterpriseNationalCouncil;NWOBC=NationalWomenBusinessOwnersCorp.;NAWBO=NationalAssociationofWomen Business Owners; NEORSD = Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District; CMHA = Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority. 1. Full-time equivalent as of March 1, 2024. Get 52 companies, 125+ executives and more contact info in Excel. Become a Data Member: CrainsCleveland.com/data

Part of Del Webb site acquired for $4.67M

Stan Bullard

e pre-play planning is over at the former Hickory Nut Golf Course in Columbia Township as PulteGroup Inc. (NYSE: PHM) has acquired the rst half of the property. Now, it's ready to set to work on its transformation to Del Webb Hickory Greens, the second of the huge active-adult communities it has undertaken in Northeast Ohio.

Pulte teed up the action May 20, according to Lorain County land records, as it closed on the rst half of the 325-acre site on Royalton Road, just west of the western border of Strongsville, for $4.67 million.

Paul Spentho , Pulte Greater Cleveland division president, said crews will rst demolish the clubhouse and maintenance building on the site followed by land grading. It will buy the remainder of the course in the fall at a so-far undisclosed price.

Spentho , in a phone interview, described the scale of the operation as a “cascade” of steps after a year of planning and months of township and Lorain County Court of Common Pleas action for it to come together.

By early next year, a seven-unit model community will be in place and the company will have 125 sites ready for homes.

e public sale of the properties will begin in April of next year. Final prices will not be set until early next year as the concern starts working with people who have shown preliminary interest in the nationally famous active-adult communities.

“We’re getting about 100 inquiries a week about the project,” Spentho said, and some 500 are on hand. “But I realize that may not be the nal buyer group, probably about 50.”

However, his team is ready for a deluge based on Pulte's experience with other Del Webb projects in the Midwest. e Del Webb development in Milford, Michigan, had 5,000 prospects in hand when it opened its doors in spring, 2023.

Spentho said the Hickory Greens project will be the rst Del Webb project in the U.S. to have three indoor pickleball courts. ose will be in a building with a small tness center that will be expanded into a 14,000square-foot clubhouse after the fall of next year.

Spentho said Pulte plans to

put the name of Jim O’Connor on the pickleball complex in homage to the company’s local planning director who died at 62 on May 21. An active outdoors person and runner, O’Connor put additional e ort into the healthy lifestyle aspects of the Del Webb project and pushed for the courts.

“He got all the parties to align so this could happen,” Spentho said of the Del Webb project, which went public last fall as Columbia Township o cials OK’d the plans. O’Connor had worked in the home building business in various roles over the last 30 years and was well known in the residential business in Northeast Ohio. A speci c cause of death has not been disclosed.

“He had great dedication to building and the company,” Spentho said. “He worked all the way to the end. He called me the day before he died to say he would not be in the next day because he was in the hospital.”

Although Pulte Cleveland will be heavily engaged in building properties on the Columbia Township project for the next several years, Spentho said the company has set the next priority for himself and Brad Piroli, Cleveland vice president of land acquisition: identify a site for a third Del Webb community in Northeast Ohio.

“We’re looking for about 100 acres,” Piroli said in a phone call, enough to produce a 350-unit Del Webb community. “We will add a community of people who arenancially stable and provide a cadre of volunteers for the area.”

At Hickory Nut, more than 100 acres will be preserved as greenery and it will include hiking, a walking path and the huge clubhouse, which will include rooms for playing cards.

“ e facilities are nice,”

Spentho said, “but the key aspect of a Del Webb project is the property manager and especially the lifestyle manager, who plans social activities for residents.

“It’s the people who create the real Del Webb opportunity. at is the calling card for the company’s concept.”

e builder is having a busy year elsewhere in the region.

Pulte is now working on selling the last 20 sites of the 465 units it planned to sell this year.

Spentho estimates Pulte will sell about 530 homes by yearend in Northeast Ohio.

Builders ready to take lead to help solve housing crunch

e increasing interest in housing as the state of Ohio struggles with a housing shortage provides builders a chance to get a wider audience than they've had in a long time.

And a Chardon home builder, Enzo Perfetto, has gained a frontrow seat as housing issues get more scrutiny since he serves as president of the Ohio Homebuilders Association, a trade group with about 4,000 members.

“ ese are things we’ve been talking about for years,” Perfetto said in a phone interview. “Now the question will be how to get all of these groups rowing in the same direction with state legislators and other government o cials.”

For the rst time in 40 years, the Ohio Senate, through a Senate Select Committee on Housing, in the spring published a report about housing issues in Ohio after holding public hearings throughout the state. Perfetto testi ed at the Cleveland meeting of the Senate Select Committee on housing last year.

“I was the 45th of 55 speakers,” Perfetto recalled. “After listening to the testimony, I walked out and thought, 'We have a lot of work to do.' ere are so many viewpoints on housing, a ordable housing, rents and property taxes. e challenge is going to be getting everyone on the same page.”

e report shows how housing production in Ohio continues to fall.

Since 2020, the state report said, 23,868 homes have been built in Ohio. From 2010 to 2019, 300,215 were built. And the state is far below the period from 1990 to 1999, when 571,897 homes were built, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

And while Ohio’s population inched up 1.9% from 2010 to 2022, it was far behind the 5% rate in neighboring Indiana and growing states such as North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas, which saw populations grow between 11% and 19%.

As a result, Perfetto is focusing

on two issues: streamlining review processes for home permits and housing developments (although those primarily fall under the control of cities, villages and townships) and taking steps to improve land availability.

“ ere have to be plans and ideas we can all work on to produce a win-win for everybody,” Peretto said. He noted that the public needs more housing and builders, both of single-family and multi-family properties, want to provide it.

e state proposed a panoply of solutions, such as grant programs to encourage municipalities to update zoning codes; more housing incentives such as tax credits for buyers; and allowing counties and cities to provide stepped-down relief from rising property taxes for elderly homeowners.

One suggestion is to broaden new brown eld programs for industrial development to housing to provide more land in cities.

Land availability is an issue Perfetto’s family-owned business, Enzoco Homes, grapples with directly. Available lots are so expensive and hard to get that his rm focuses on in ll development. It nds a house that is available for the cost of what an empty lot would be, razes it and builds on it.

“We bought a house in Beachwood for $350,000,” Perfetto said. “We tore it down and built a new one that is costing about $1.3 million. And we’re as busy as we can be.”

Beachwood, he added, can provide permits for a single home within a month. But he said he has heard horror stories from other builders in other places who have had to pursue a similar permit for more than a year.

Moreover, builders say that getting large subdivisions of more than 100 homes through local planners can take two or three years. at means builders sometimes get lots in a di erent housing market than when they proposed them, a situation underlined by the run-up of interest rates over the past two years.

Tom Charek, president of the

Northern Ohio chapter of NAIOP, which serves o ce and industrial developers, is excited about the opportunity the state and especially the city of Cleveland are putting together to provide clean, build-ready sites for realty developers and builders.

“ at can cut as much of a year o of development planning,” said Charek, the president of Welty Development of Fairlawn. “ at would be immensely helpful.”

Bo Knez, owner of Knez Homes in Concord Township, builds in Lake County, the east and west sides of Cleveland and as far out of town as Bowling Green. He read the subcommittee’s report at the request of Crain’s.

He points to building fundamentals that he is skeptical government action can do anything meaningful to relieve.

“Despite what anyone says, we don’t plan to build an expensive house,” Knez said. “If I could build a house for $175,000, I would. But that just barely gets you into a lot and foundation, and not into the nishes.”

e run-up in costs of building materials during the pandemic, the rise in interest rates and the shortage of skilled labor have all pumped up housing prices, he said.

“Our goal is not to increase prices. I’d rather build for more people at lower prices than fewer at higher prices,” Knez said.

One of the items the subcommittee report suggested was providing more funding for training for people going into the building trades.

However, multiple builders who asked not to be identi ed said they hold their breath over what is ahead. ey worry the laundry lists the state is mulling will not produce results or will lead to adverse ones, such as rent control.

For Perfetto’s part, though, he is encouraged.

“We are getting questions from the subcommittee regularly and responding to them," he said. " e volleying back and forth is just beginning. I am encouraged to see it.”

Stan Bullard

Builders’ long-standing concerns are surfacing as the housing shortage captures the attention of government of cials. STAN BULLARD

PulteGroup has aquired part of the former Hickory Nut Golf Course.

Zillow Home Value Index (ZHVI), and the areas for the top 100 were chosen by population based on the U.S. Census Bureau, Johnson told Crain’s. e information provided covers between January 2000 and April 2024.

As of April 30, 2024, the average ZHVI price was $226,398, while the expected price was $169,889.90, a premium of 33.26%.

Historically, metro Cleveland has seen a longer term fall and rise. Prices fell below the expected average as consumers began feeling the worst of the Great Recession. On Nov. 3, 2008, the average ZHVI was $134,957, virtually identical to the expected value of $134,944.2. e largest discount was marked on April 30, 2012, when the ZHVI was reported as $114,976, a -19.06% discount on the expected price of $142,051.1.

e ZHVI for the area crossed above the expected price again just ahead of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic with an average ZHVI of $159,807 — a .10% premium on the expected price of $159,654 — on Feb. 29, 2020.  It’s just the latest indicator of rising home prices in the Cleveland metro area. In March, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index showed an 8.8% increase in area home prices over March 2023, one of the biggest annual increases among the country’s biggest cities. And April data from MLS showed similar numbers for the 17-county Northeast Ohio area that the organization covers.

“One of the things that’s particularly unnerving about Cleveland home prices right now is that they are at a 33% premium which is higher than any time in our recorded … data,” Johnson said. “So that’s a little worrisome that the premium is the size that it is. And the second thing is it’s going up very rapidly. Right now, Cleveland prices are appreciating faster than they historically appreciate and in the presence of high interest rates mortgage rates, that shouldn’t be happening.”

e culprit is a familiar one: supply and demand.

“ ose prices are due to a very

Overvalued market

The metro Cleveland housing market — which includes Cuyahoga, Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Ashtabula counties — is among those that have seen an increase in actual sales prices since the housing crash of 2007.

LICENSES

From Page 1

Source: Zillow Home Value Index

simple supply and demand situation where we don’t have enough inventory,” Mike Valerino, CEO of the Akron Cleveland Association of Realtors, told Crain’s. “ ere is a huge need for greater inventory of homes coming on the market to meet the demand that we have. e demand that we have right now for housing is incredible.”

Factors for the supply issues include ongoing supply chain issues from the COVID-19 pandemic when there were higher prices for everything, including building supplies, he said.

“What we would love to see is for governments, on all three levels (local, state and federal), to get involved because real estate is such a strong piece of the economy,” Valerino said. “And we’d love to see some incentives in there to help bring down the cost of supplies so that builders can build and to help our low to moderate income buyers to be able to purchase homes because in many cases they are out of reach right now.”

Valerino suggests the need for intervention, possibly from housing entities that could provide subsidies or tax incentives for builders and suppliers in order to meet demand.

Home ownership is a “crucial part of the American dream,” Valerino notes, and people want to be able to own the home they live in.

ere’s currently a nationwide

pattern of household formation, people trying to purchase their rst homes or purchasing their rst apartment, Johnson said.

While the supply is “very short,” he said, there is an expected -.003% negative growth in population over the next 10 years within a 25 mile radius of Cleveland.

Cleveland has a “relatively stable market,” Valerino said, especially compared with major coastal cities like New York City or Los Angeles that see more price volatility.

While it is a “relatively stable market,” Johnson said he doesn’t expect Cleveland to have a “signi cant pricing crash” where the price or ZVHI is below the trend line/expected price. However, he does expect that Cleveland will slowly work its way back with housing prices going at for a signi cant amount of time.

“We’ve got to realize we have a housing problem on our hand,” Johnson said. “We’re probably not going to see a crash. We’re gonna see long-term a ordability, doubling up in apartments and homes where we have multigenerational living. You might leave college and continue to have roommates as opposed to getting your own apartment or home … You’re gonna see a lot of una ordable homes, una ordable areas around the country until we build more units both on the for rent side and for ownership.”

Cannabis companies have been preparing for these changes for months. Several who spoke with Crain’s in May indicated that they had processes for retail shops to sell to non-medical consumers, including enabling proper tax collection at points of sale and tweaking oor plans to allow dedicated lanes for medical patients.

ese dual-use licenses allow adult-use sales to commence ahead of regulators nalizing all rules for non-medical sales in the coming months.

In e ect, this means rec sales will be conducted subject to medical rules. As such, there won’t be any pre-rolled products available as rec sales begin, for example.

Smoking is technically not a permitted form of consumption under Ohio’s medical rules. at is why the market here has not had any pre-rolled products, like joints or cones, and all cannabis ower or oils and the like have been intended for vaporization.

Based on the licensing processing and site checks that must still happen, Crawford emphasized that “there will be no one singular day” when non-medical sales are presently expected to begin.

“We will start issuing licenses and it will be up to the retailer based on sta ng, stock and other considerations as to which day they will begin sales,” he said. “Given the foundation already laid through the Medical Marijuana Control Program, current medical permit holders positioned to apply for dual-use status who have already undergone many of the comprehensive checks are anticipated to have a much quicker turnaround for issuance of licenses over the summer.”

DCC will review applications in the order in which they have been received with applications from cultivators, processors and testing labs receiving priority to help ensure an e cient supply chain, according to DCC.

“Certi cates of operation will be issued in batches based on the order in which a complete application is received and when a licensee meets all certi cate of operation requirements,” Crawford said. “An existing location that has been operating under the medical rules will be able to convert a provisional dual-use license into a certi cate of operation relatively quickly since they have already met many of the requirements set forth in that program. Again, there will not be one singular day when sales begin.”

Staff prepare dried cannabis ower for trimming at Buckeye Relief’s cultivation and processing facility in Eastlake. BUCKEYE RELIEF

New electric truck drives City Fresh’s upcoming season

yB Dan Shingler

City Fresh, the Oberlin-based Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) organization that brings farm-fresh produce to 16 locations in and around Cleveland, will be bigger and greener this year, thanks to a big electric truck the nonpro t just bought.

Cuyahoga and Lorain counties.

“We’ve had this vehicle ordered for more than a year,” said an excited Mauser-Martinez on Friday, June 7, when the truck was still in its wrapping.

e truck is a step van similar to the type used by UPS and other delivery services.

The Oberlin-based CSA hopes to expand its service and its mission of sustainability.

Anna Kiss Mauser-Martinez, the organization's executive director, said she and her sta will use it on Tuesday, June 18, when they begin delivering all sorts of fresh fruits and vegetables — except for possibly strawberries, which we’ll get to — to the CSA’s locations in

It was made by California’s Motiv Electric Trucks. At 29 feet, it’s longer than a standard UPS truck and has a range of 200 miles — more than enough to meet City Fresh’s needs, Mauser-Martinez said. It’s also much larger than the traditional delivery truck the organization had been using.

e new truck cost $203,000, but about 60% of that is being reimbursed by the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency from its VW Diesel Mitigation Trust Fund.

Ohio received about $75 million via a 2016 federal government settlement with Volkswagen over its diesel emissions cheating scandal, and the state has been issuing millions of dollars in grants from the fund annually ever since.

In addition, Mauser-Martinez said City Fresh received grants from Cuyahoga County, the Nord and Gund foundations, and the Green Edge Fund at Oberlin College to help pay for the truck.

Now she hopes to use it to grow her program, which she said served 1,500 people last year with its subscription service for produce. City Fresh, unlike many CSAs, allows customers to go week-to-week if they prefer.

e program has tiered pricing based on income, with one level of pricing for people who don’t need a discount, a lower price for people with incomes at 200% of the

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

To place your listing, visit www.crainscleveland.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Ancora

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Ancora

LEGAL

Fisher & Phillips LLP

poverty level or less, and a lower price still for customers on SNAP, commonly known as food stamps.

A single person can get a week’s worth of fruit and vegetables for between $11 and $22 under the pricing system, while a family pays between $22 and $35 a week, Mauser-Martinez said.

e service helps people in areas where there’s a shortage of grocers and other fresh produce providers and saves participating farmers, who are often Amish, from having to transport food to farmer’s markets and potentially wasting what they don’t sell in the process.

City Fresh also gets produce from a 10-acre farm in Oberlin, where it just began training aspiring new farmers.

“We have ve farmers in our rst cohort, all women,” she said. e truck is in keeping with the

group’s overall ethos, which it also applies to its food.

“It’s all local," Mauser-Martinez said. “We’re committed to sustainability. Our farmers are using regenerative methods (such as low- or no-till cultivation and soil remediation) and it's low-impact agricultural.”

Mauser-Martinez said her organization’s produce is some of the freshest available and is brought to customers within days of being harvested. at's why she might not have any strawberries this year, though dozens of other crops are set to be delivered as usual.

Normally, June 18 would be a ne time to pick or sell fresh local strawberries, but this year’s weather was unusual.

“We had a very warm spring, so unfortunately it doesn’t look like there will be any strawberries left,” Mauser-Martinez said.

Case Western Reserve graduate commits $10M to engineering school

yB Joe Scalzo

We are happy to announce that Rachel Jerpbak has been promoted to Vice President and Director of Marketing. Rachel joined Ancora in 2016 and serves as the internal marketing agency for the rm. Her responsibilities include the creation of the rm’s marketing materials, coordination of advertising campaigns, institutional reporting and project management. She began her industry career with Ancora after earning a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Marketing from Ohio University.

We are happy to announce that Katie Ricotti has been promoted to Vice President of Client and Employee Experience. Katie joined Ancora in 2014 originally as an Executive Assistant. In this role she will oversee the development and implementation of initiatives aimed at enriching the experiences of both clients and employees, helping deliver exceptional value to clients and creating a thriving workplace. Katie earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology from Case Western Reserve University.

Benesch

Benesch

Eddy Walters

Dave Walters has joined Benesch as an Associate in the rm’s Litigation Practice Group. He focuses his practice on pre-trial, trial, and appellate advocacy in complex commercial litigation and white-collar matters. Prior to joining Benesch, Dave externed for the Hon. Benita Y. Pearson of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio.   Nicolette Eddy has joined Benesch as an Associate in the rm’s Corporate & Securities Practice Group. Prior to joining Benesch, Nicolette externed for the Hon. Judge Julee Flood at the North Carolina Court of Appeals.

Robert J. Kolansky has joined Benesch as Of Counsel in the rm’s Litigation Practice Group. He is an accomplished prosecutor with a distinguished career in both federal and state court. As an Assistant United States Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, he investigated and prosecuted individuals and conspiracies for violations of a variety of federal laws, including drug traf cking, domestic and international money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, rearms, and RICO offenses.

Fisher Phillips, an international labor and employment law rm, is pleased to announce that Sarah (“Sadie”) Moore has rejoined the rm as Of Counsel in its Cleveland of ce. Sadie brings nearly 30 years of practical solutions to legal matters and labor, employment, and business litigation faced by private and public employers in both union and non-union settings.

SERVICES

Euro ns TestOil

Case Western Reserve University’s computer and data sciences department continues to grow — and so does the support from alumnus Kevin Kranzusch.

Kranzusch, a 1990 CWRU graduate who is now a vice president at NVIDIA, is committing $10 million on top of his previous gifts to expand the department in the Case School of Engineering.

Kranzusch and his wife, Lynne Bosworth, made an initial $5 million gift in 2019 to establish the department, which was designed to position CWRU as a leader in the emerging sectors of big data and high-performance computing.

bringing in yet another professor, increasing the fellowship grants and funding student activities like student travel, student meetings and probably a lot of student pizza parties — building up that feeling of belonging in the department to make sure it’s all coming together.”

Enrollment in the department has more than doubled since 2020, said Vipin Chaudhary, the department’s chair and the rst of four Kevin J. Kranzusch Professors. In the last two years, undergraduate enrollment has grown 60% and enrollment has grown 65% overall.

Euro ns TestOil is pleased to welcome Al Yates as VP of Sales & Marketing. Al brings over 2 decades of sales experience in the lab instrumentation & analysis market with a focus on robotics/ automation. He is a proven revenue generator in all market conditions and has a strong technical aptitude with a competitive drive for sales. With a B.S. in Biology/Chemistry, he plans to leverage his scienti c and sales background to support the company’s growth goals. Al was a village trustee for 8 years.

ey gave an additional $5 million in 2021 to support two endowed professorships along with a fellowship to attract high-potential graduate students.

His latest investment will be split into four categories: a $3 million endowment fund to support faculty project startup funds, teaching needs and curriculum development; a $2 million increase in the Kranzusch Fellows Fund; $2 million to create a third endowed professorship; and $3 million to create an endowment for student success.

“Phase three is primarily about the students,” Kranzusch said in a news release. “I want to make sure the department can be sustained over time and that the students — both undergrad and grad — actually see the bene ts of it. at means

“With the surge in enrollment, the timing of the additional support could not have been better,” Chaudhary said. is fall, the department’s home, Olin Hall, will re-open after an extensive makeover — funded in part by Kranzusch — that will feature open and collaborative spaces, student lounges and a research lab. e renovated hall is near the university’s forthcoming Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Building.

“We appreciate Kevin and Lynne’s continued support for the computer and data sciences department and their commitment to student success,” CWRU President Eric W. Kaler said. “ e impact of their initial two investments on enrollment demonstrates the clear demand for expanding computer and data sciences coursework and research. is signi cant third gift will further strengthen and solidify the department’s long-term success.”

Kranzusch

CrainsCleveland.com

Thompson Hine congratulates the 2024 Women of Note honorees, who are propelling leadership forward. We recognize these powerful women whose dedication and achievements have transformed their organizations and Northeast Ohio.