Renaissance man. A true visionary. Illustrative. Incredibly entrepreneurial. Not a one-trick pony. These phrases have been used to describe Ken Tomaszewski, CEO of KJT Group, by three colleagues who have known him for over 10 years. “Scrappy” is the description ...
Read More »‘Scrappy’ CEO wins praise from colleagues at KJT Group
Once a high-flyer at Chase, John McKenna gets closer to the soil at Tompkins 
Earlier in his career in banking, John McKenna was living the life. Following five years with Citibank in Rochester, he became an investment banker with what’s now known as JP Morgan Chase and worked at the largest bank in the ...
Tagged with: Bank One Citibank Jim Fulmer John McKenna JP Morgan Chase Livingston Associates Scott Ingalls Tompkins Bank of Castile
Read More »Manny Marcano Jr. leads tight-knit family of employees at EMA Design Automation 
Manny Marcano Jr. is nothing if not fearless. It’s a quality that is rooted in his eight years in the U.S. Air Force and the dozens of times he jumped out of airplanes as a paratrooper. “I say it’s 59 ...
Read More »Birmingham keeps focus on Western NY as head of Five Star Bank 
You can plan for what may happen in life, but you can’t really plan life itself. Life just happens, as Five Star Bank president and CEO Martin K. Birmingham can attest. Take, for instance, how he met his wife, ...
Read More »Chief lawyer at UR returns to private practice at the top of her game 
Gail M. Norris, former vice president and general counsel at the University of Rochester, is entering a new phase of her career. In November, Norris, 61, retired from her position at the region’s largest employer and moved to the law ...
Read More »New leader of divinity school developing visionary ideas for change 
Angela Sims arrived at an interesting time for Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. She started work just a few weeks before the school moved out of its Hogwarts-like campus following a decision to sell the property to a developer. On Aug. ...
Tagged with: Angela Sims Colgate Rochester Crozier Divinity School marine corps Navy Saint Paul Theology School womanism
Read More »Romell’s creative career at YMCA reaches peak with new Pittsford facility 
The YMCA of Greater Rochester Inc. touches pretty much every square inch of the city and suburbs. Thousands of people flock to the nonprofit’s 17 locations each day, and that number continues to grow as the agency increasingly caters ...
Read More »Roger Brandt leaves banking, discovers passion for affordable housing 
Considering his father, his maternal grandfather and an uncle all chose the banking industry as a vocation, it was pretty much a given that Roger Brandt Jr. would uphold family tradition when he finished college. Working for a bank was ...
Read More »Laurie Broccolo builds landscaping business with eye on environment 
Laurie Broccolo isn’t the type to shy away from a challenge. In fact, she chases them. In 2011—21 years into her business, Broccolo Tree & Lawn Care—Broccolo was bored. As CEO and co-owner of a successful landscaping company, it’s hard ...
Read More »Young brings rural and legislative know-how to new Center of Excellence 
Catharine Young didn’t change much about her living situation when she became head of the new Center of Excellence in Geneva last March. Young had spent 20 years on the road, commuting between her home in Olean and Albany, where ...
Tagged with: agriculture Bill Strassburg Catharine Young Cornell Agritech Cornell Tech Farm Grow-NY Joseph Giglio NYS Center of Excellence for Food and Agriculture wegmans
Read More »Mary Balme guides Hearing, Speech Center out of difficult times 
There may have been a bit of serendipity, or kismet or fate involved when Mary Balme came out of semi-retirement for a stint at Rochester Hearing and Speech Center. She had only planned to be there a few months to ...
Read More »For Cotrupe, it’s family first, and clients are just like family 
When she received an offer to join Partners + Napier, Courtney Cotrupe was between jobs, having given up the life she so loved in the heart of Manhattan to return to Brighton to be closer to the family she loved ...
Read More »Carey Ann Denefrio keeps life in perspective as head of female lawyers group 
As president of the Greater Rochester Association of Women Attorneys, or GRAWA, Carey Ann Denefrio wants to provide resources to help members deal with the stress of their work. A women’s health committee has been meeting to plan spin classes, ...
Read More »At MAGIC Center, David Long balances student opportunities with professional work 
A year ago this month, David L. Long was standing at a podium showing off Rochester Institute of Technology’s newest toy – MAGIC Spell Studios, a state-of-the-art studio for creating video games, movies and all kinds of media. It would ...
Tagged with: Aaron Gordon David Long David Munson MAGIC Center MAGIC Spell Studios Optic Sky Productions Rochester Institute of Technology wegmans
Read More »New Urban League leader brings wealth of experience to multifaceted agency 
Seanelle Hawkins might well be described as a dynamo. Equal parts gutsy and tenacious, Hawkins grew up being reminded that she had something that others did not. “My father told me that I had a fire that lived inside of ...
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