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Wednesday, November 13, 2013
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Landscaping company agrees to be acquired in $1.6B deal n
Brickman has 10,000 employees nationwide BY
KEVIN JAMES SHAY STAFF WRITER
DAN GROSS/THE GAZETTE
WILL Interactive employees (from left) Vallery Linn, production manager and producer; Chris Stezin, senior writer; and Skip Schwink, writer and director, in the company’s Potomac offices.
interview process HELPING VETS LEARN THE
Simulation demonstrates interactions and consequences n
BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Military veterans returning to the workplace have a new tool to help them succeed. On Monday — Veterans Day — WILL Interactive, a Potomac company, launched “Reinventing Michael Banks,” an interactive online video designed to help veterans and human resource professionals understand each other better. “We need to build a bridge between the human resource community and the veterans
community,” said Sharon Sloane, co-founder of WILL Interactive. “[Vets] don’t always know how to express themselves well and interviewers do not always know how to draw them out.” The Web-based tutorial shows the frustrations that veterans sometimes face in applying for jobs. It lets them make choices during a simulated interview and experience the consequences of their decisions. It was developed in collaboration with the Coming Home Project, a nonprofit that provides holistic services for veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan and for their families. Michael Banks is a fictitious character whose actions and responses are based on interviews with returning veterans.
“It is heavily focused on young veterans who are coming back and having a hard time,” Sloane said. It is the result of WILL Interactive’s Simulate a Better World Challenge, a search for a societal issue that could be addressed by the company’s behavior modification methodology, Sloane said. The company was formed in 1994 as World Institute of Leadership and Learning, according to Sloane. In 1998, after receiving a patent, it became World Institute of Leadership and Learning, doing business as WILL Interactive, reflecting its software. The company has created more than 800
Citizens group will hear presentations Wednesday on proposals BY
PEGGY MCEWAN STAFF WRITER
Two Potomac properties with plans for change will be on the agenda when the West Montgomery County Citizens Association meets Wednesday. They are the Potomac Tennis Club on Potomac Tennis Lane and
the Hare Krishna Temple on Oaklyn Drive. Representatives from both have contacted the citizens group to alert the group of the hope of future changes and each will share their vision at the 7:15 p.m. meeting at the Potomac Community Center, 11315 Falls Road. Neither of the property owners have submitted plans to the Maryland-National Capital Park and Planning Commission, but Ginny Barnes, president of the citizens group, said it is important for the group to know early about
proposed changes. “We provide a forum for the public to learn about and ask questions regarding the development review process, any far reaching impacts to neighborhoods and compliance with the Potomac Subregion Master Plan,” she wrote in the association’s November newsletter. Ananda Bloch, community president of the International Society of Krishna Consciousness, said her group would like to build a new, larger temple and increase the number of resident staff from
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Montgomery County’s affordable housing advocates discuss how the zoning rewrite can further objectives.
Clarksburg football returns to the playoffs for the first time since 2008.
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Teacher: MSA tests a waste of time, money Hundreds sign her petition, but state officials say exams will go on n
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See VETS, Page A-10
LINDSAY A. POWERS STAFF WRITER
16 to 20 or 30 on the 12-acre site. “We are in the very, very preliminary stage,” she said. “Finances and planning take time. We hope it will happen in the next five to 10 years.” She said her group will present its plans at the citizens group meeting because the association has asked to be kept informed. “We want to make sure our neighbors can share their concerns,” she said. Helen Marshall, owner of the
A petition started by a Montgomery County Public Schools teacher calling for the state not to administer the Maryland School Assessment tests this school year has gained hundreds of signatures from around the state. Tiferet Ani, a social studies teacher in the Quince Orchard cluster, said that with the county — and state — implementing the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers test and no longer looking to the MSA tests to track student progress, she thinks it is a waste of time and resources to administer the annual test to elementary and middle school students this year. PARCC, which aligns with the Common Core State Standards, will be fully implemented in the school system next school year. As of Tuesday afternoon, 600 people had signed the Moveon.org petition titled “Cancel the MSA.” Ani, who is in her seventh year of teaching in the school system, said she has administered the test four
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Tennis club, temple signal property changes n
The Brickman Group has agreed to be bought by global investment firm KKR & Co. for $1.6 billion in a move made to position the Rockville commercial landscaping company for further growth, executives said Monday. The deal is a strict ownership change that will retain the headquarters of Brickman — one of the nation’s largest landscaping companies — in Rockville, said LaNella Hooper-Williams, a Brickman spokeswoman. Los Angeles private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners is now privately held Brickman’s largest investor, acquiring a majority stake in 2007 for $847 million. “It will be business as usual,” Hooper-Williams said. Brickman was founded in 1939 in the Chicago area by Theodore W. Brickman Sr., a horticulturist for the Chicago Park District. His son, Theodore “Dick” Brickman Jr., joined the family business in 1954, and the company started opening branches on the East Coast in the 1970s. Scott Brickman of Potomac, Dick Brickman’s son,
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