Here’s To

Jonah Cohen of Farmington Hills recently won top honors in the Music Teachers National Association (MTNA) Senior Composition Competition finals. He is a composer, pianist and cellist. His compositions tend to revolve around his fascinations with space, time, motion and stagnation, and how they are relevant in the here and now. Jonah has received recognition from the National Young Arts Foundation, National Young Composers Challenge, Foundation for Modern Music and many others. In 2022, performances of his music will be featured by the Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra, Akropolis Reed Quintet and others.

Neil Weissman, managing director-investments of Wells Fargo Advisors in Ann Arbor, has been recognized on the 2022 Best-In-State Wealth Advisors list by Forbes. This accolade represents a list of professionals that come to work with one goal on their minds — helping their clients succeed. Neil has more than 13 years of experience in the financial services industry.

Robert

Schefman is a finalist in the sixth triennial Outwin Boochever Completion for 2022. The exhibition opened to the public at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., on April 30. He is a featured artist locally at the David Klein Gallery.

Sen. Jeremy Moss

(D-Southfield) was recently awarded a 2022 Legislator of the Year Award from the Michigan Townships Association (MTA) for his support of township government. Moss is serving his first term representing the 11th State Senate District in southern Oakland County. He was the youngest-ever elected official in Southfield city history. The Ritchie Boys, America’s Secret Intelligence Unit in World War II, will receive the 2022 Elie Wiesel Award at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s National Tribute Dinner. A local man, Guy Stern, was one of that group. The Ritchie Boys, included many Jewish refugees from Nazism and was instrumental to the Allied victory.

Alan Reinstein

submitted a paper, “Belding Party Store Lottery Fraud: Detecting Lottery Fraud,” which earned the Best Paper Award at the 2022 Western Region Meeting of the American Accounting Association, held recently in Long Beach, Calif.

We can’t help when your child draws on the wall.

But we can help you save for college.

BIRMINGHAM

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continued from page 42 member says team-building events have been a core offering of their business since 2014, but that the need significantly ramped up during COVID-19. TreeRunner Adventure Parks, which operates four aerial adventure parks (three in Michigan and one in North Carolina), offers a safe and socially distanced outdoor activity that lends itself well to the pandemic and current times.

“We’ve built it up and grown it more since COVID-19,” Fishman explains, “because we saw the inherent benefit to a lot of office spaces and overall work dynamics.”

So, how exactly do team-building events in a forested aerial adventure park setting work? There are two ways to go about it, Fishman says.

The first offering is a traditional team-building event where employees do fun and challenging ground activities that Fishman says help boost confidence and create new bonds. After the one-hour ground activity, employees have a chance to climb in the trees and connect with nature — a respite from the challenges of working in an office and other daily work stressors.

A second offering is known as team development, where one of TreeRunner Adventure Parks’ staff members works one-on-one with a group of employees on various exercises specific to the goals of that group, like improving trust. One way to improve trust, Fishman describes, is to do blindfolded ground exercises that rely on the guidance of others.

“One staff member will be blindfolded going through an obstacle with another person helping them through it audibly,” he explains.

Jeremy Fishman

TEAM-BUILDING CAN WORK FOR ALL BUSINESSES

All types of businesses and industries can benefit from team-building events, Fishman says. So far, TreeRunner Adventure Parks has seen a wide range of customers, from engineers to medical offices to Chrysler. The parks “really blow people away,” he explains. “They’re amazed at how wide-open and how large they are. You’re really in with nature.”

One team-building event in particular stands out to Fishman as a success story. Fifteen engineers from an engineering company who had previously only worked remotely and never met in person visited this past fall. “You could see an incredible and very quick shift in their team,” he says. “We had them play a name game right off the start, to really recognize one another and break down a barrier that they had in the relationship since working together.”

After booking a team-building event with TreeRunner Adventure Parks, businesses have a chance to create specific programming for the goals of the experience. They can choose to focus on communication, problem-solving or other goals as the core of their event. “Once we have that information, we can create a plan of action that our staff will work on with you to enact the changes that you’re hoping to see,” Fishman describes.

Even after COVID-19, Fishman says TreeRunner Adventure Parks has no plans to discontinue team-building events, and that there will always be a need.

“We foresee team-building becoming more of a core part of our year-round business,” he explains, noting that events peak in warmer, summer months. “We can do this in the winter at the office space and try to elicit similar responses, even if it’s snowing outside.”

Companies can improve trust and communication with team-building events. Employees love the out-in-nature setting at TreeRunner.