BY DAVID BLANCHETTE Where there’s a will there’s a way, and a year-old group is hoping to motivate nonprofit organizations in the Springfield area to diversify their boards. The founders of the Building Board Diversity (BBD) initiative have been meeting with and offering training for nonprofit executive directors and current board members to show them [...]
BY KAREN ACKERMAN WITTER Horace Mann hosted the “CEO Action Check Your Blind Spots” mobile tour on May 30, which was open to every staff member. The company promoted it as a continuation of its commitment to having a diverse and inclusive work environment, facilitating open and honest conversations and increasing awareness of unconscious biases. [...]
BY JANET SEITZ Shortages of care and agencies to protect children from abuse and neglect have made for plenty of recent headlines. “As we seem to keep hearing about struggles in our DCFS system every week,” said Beth Yockey, a volunteer with Safe Families for Children, a nonprofit national network of local chapters, “I think [...]
BY TOM PAVLIK Although I love a good steak, I get particularly animated over more esoteric dishes like steak tartare or roasted bone marrow. It’s the kind of food that gets me excited, but not the type of fare usually seen in the capital city. So I was excited when I first saw Nu-Voh’s food-forward [...]
By David Blanchette Much of what is recognizable in Springfield has a connection to FWAI Architects Inc., but it’s something else that gives the firm’s founder the greatest sense of pride. “Hiring good staff. We’ve fortunately always had good staff,” said Carl Fischer, who founded the firm with his wife, Kay, in 1976. “We’ve also [...]
Commercial Real Estate BOL 2018 Engineering Firms BOL 2018 (Click on links to view PDFs)
By Lisa Clemmons Stott Here’s another version of “shop local” you may not have considered: anyone can become a local developer. That’s the premise of the Incremental Development Alliance (IDA), a nonprofit consortium of people developing their own new construction or rehab projects and whose shared goal is to cultivate 1,000 other “small” developers in [...]
Phil Zinn, of Zinn Construction in Sherman, has been building homes for 15 years BY ZACHARY ROTH When Phil Zinn takes you through his offices, there are pictures of some shiny, modern homes built with the latest and greatest in homebuilding technology. And then, there are other houses, maybe without the bells and whistles, but [...]
KEB makes giving back part of its corporate culture BY JANET SEITZ For Dale Becker, the benefits of charitable giving add up, both personally and professionally. Becker is a CPA and partner with the Springfield accounting and management consulting firm Kerber, Eck, & Braeckel (KEB). Becker became involved in charitable efforts, “almost out of the [...]
The State House Inn, located at 101 E. Adams in Springfield, is undergoing a rebranding as part of a recent ownership change. General manager Jerald Harris stated that the prior owners sold the hotel on November 8, 2017. He explained that they are now owned by Packard Hospitality Group out of San Diego, California. “We’re [...]
