A few weeks ago, I gave you a glimpse at some of the stories I wrote about local business and nonprofits for the Springfield Republican’s annual, award-winning Outlook business section.

Today, I offer the final three stories on Westfield State University’s The Westfield Promise program; Northstar Pulp & Paper of Springfield; and Mike Schilling and Jordana Starr, the owners of Beerology in Northampton.

The Westfield Promise

Ramon S. Torrecilha, Westfield State University’s 20th president, moved to this country from Brazil 40 years ago, landing a job at an orchard in Washington state. He knew admission into Portland State University would change the trajectory of his life because, as he says, knowledge becomes yours. While he had no idea how to get started, Torrecilha stumbled through the mystery of the college entrance process because he knew it would take him where he wanted to go.

Torrecilha is certain that today’s high school students are equally as unprepared for college and all that enrollment entails—lacking in what he calls “cultural capital.” So, he eagerly got behind The Westfield Promise after he came on board just over two years ago. The program gives high school students in Westfield, Springfield and Holyoke—and their high populations of underrepresented, low-income and first-generation college students—a taste of the academic experience as well as general savvy.

“It’s invaluable,” Torrecilha said. “For many students—especially students of color and first-generation students—the notion of going to college is a mystery. This program helps them bridge that space between high school and college. It’s about building the student’s self-esteem and respecting his or her ability to learn.”

Beerology

Mike Schilling and Jordana Starr met in 2002 as Tufts University freshmen. Their first few dates were over Krispy Kreme Doughnuts at midnight, but they soon evolved into more elegant affairs. “We were always too old for our age,” Schilling said, noting he loved the instant gratification of mixing elaborate cocktails. “When other kids were having keg parties, we were having people over for wine and cheese.”

Belgian beer captured Schilling’s attention, and when the two married in 2010, they received a homebrew kit as a wedding present, but they had to go into a brew shop to pick up the ingredients. Once inside, they were hooked.

Schilling earned an international diploma in brewing technology from the Siebel Institute of Technology in Chicago and Doemens Akademie in Munich in 2013. Three years later, in November 2016, he and Starr opened Beerology in downtown Northampton. They’ve been feeding the craft beer movement in the Valley ever since, providing malted grains, yeast, and hops to home brewers of beer, cider, wine, and mead as well as to local brewmasters.

Northstar Pulp & Paper

Thirty years ago, when Lori Goodman Novak was a teenager, she worked in the office for the family business, Northstar Pulp & Paper, answering the phone, weighing trucks on the scale and sorting mail. Nearly two decades later, while Novak was teaching kindergarten, her half-brother, Aaron Goodman, was old enough to work at the plant as a forklift operator, before he launched his college education and commercial banking career.

After making radical professional moves in recent decades, the two siblings—Novak, 49, and Goodman, 31, have committed to Northstar. With their father David, they serve as its key leaders.

These fourth- and fifth-generation operators run a recycling business that was founded 119 years ago, in 1898, in Worcester by Hyman Goodman, David Goodman’s great-grandfather. “It’s a privilege,” Novak said, noting that one of her sons is a senior in high school and will be building pallets at Northstar for the first time this summer. Before he starts college, Sam Byrne will work alongside his grandfather, David Goodman, chief executive officer; his mother, the company president; and his uncle, Goodman, chief operating officer.

Northstar Pulp & Paper, now located in Springfield, is not your everyday recycling company. It processes and resells paper, metals and plastics, and recently added repairing and selling wooden pallets to the reuse repertoire. The work—collecting, compressing, baling, grinding, and delivery—is done by roughly 80 employees who process 20,000 tons of scrap material every single month in two warehouses that together provide 300,000 square feet of working space.

The post Education, craft beer and recycling round out Outlook list appeared first on Beetle Press.

Every year, it is my privilege to write for the Springfield Republican’s annual, award-winning Outlook business section. This year was no different.

I wrote five stories, which came out in print in February. They were focused on: MicroTek in Chicopee; Donna Haghighat of the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts; Westfield State University’s The Westfield Promise program; Northstar Pulp & Paper of Springfield; and Mike Schilling and Jordana Starr, the owners of Beerology in Northampton.

In this blog, and one that will post two weeks from today, I’ll offer excerpts from each article, along with links to those that have been uploaded to MassLive, a Republican partner.

Donna Haghighat

After Donna Haghighat’s parents were married in the 1950s, her father came to this country to find work, while her mother, 16 at the time, waited for him in Iran. Because she was a married woman, Haghighat’s grandfather didn’t think Parvaneh Haghighat needed to complete her high school education. Parvaneh won this right only after sneaking to school, getting caught and holding her own in a heated argument with her father.

Growing up in Connecticut, Haghighat heard this story many times. She heard as well that her mother did eventually earn her high school equivalency, and Haghighat watched her mother earn a bachelor’s degree at night firsthand as a teen. “I like to say that that really shaped my feminism, before I knew what feminism was,” said Haghighat, now the chief executive officer of the Women’s Fund of Western Massachusetts. “That my mother valued college was foundational for me.”

It was also inspirational. Haghighat earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., as well as a law degree from the University of Connecticut School of Law. It was her experience in law, higher education, fundraising, communications and women’s issues that positioned her as valuable asset for the Women’s Fund last summer. She took over leadership on Sept. 1, 2017, several months after the organization moved to Springfield.

MicroTek

In the early 1980s, when the doors were closing on state hospitals, three concerned residents of Hampden County were worried about the security of those being so abruptly re-introduced into mainstream communities. The trio created MicroTek so that people with intellectual and physical disabilities would have a way to earn an income.

A nonprofit with an altruistic mission, MicroTek manufactures custom cable and wire configurations for equipment used globally in the medical, scientific and security industries. Its first customer was a powerhouse tech company that needed laborers to build cable assemblies. Still a client 33 years later, that $17-billion corporation is widely known, but Phil D’Entremont, MicroTek’s current chief executive officer, can’t name it because of non-disclosure agreements. Likewise, other clients are in the Fortune 500 realm; most are smaller firms.

“They didn’t know anything about the wire and cable industry,” said D’Entremont, of the firm’s founding partners. “They went looking for the types of work the individuals could do—work using their hands. The founders hoped the business would allow these employees to live productive and meaningful lives.”

There were only a handful of employees in the early years after MicroTek opened in 1983, and most all of them had a disability. Now, the nonprofit employs 136 people, 19 of whom are disabled. It grossed $12 million in 2017 and sits on five acres of land in Chicopee; employees work in a 54,000-square-foot location that houses offices, shipping and receiving, a production and storage space, and a gathering space for staff.

The post 2018 Slate of Stories for the Republican’s Outlook Section appeared first on Beetle Press.