CenterState CEO announces businesses of the year winners
Updated Apr 29, 2021;
Syracuse, N.Y. CenterState CEO announced the winners of this year’s Business of the Year awards during its annual meeting, which was held virtually on Thursday.
The awards recognize outstanding achievements of regional businesses and organizations in five categories. This year’s winners are:
Category: More than 50 employees
Winner: Quadrant Biosciences Inc.
With its academic research partners, it developed diagnostics and surveillance tools to aid in the detection of Covid-19 in individuals and communities across the U.S. In 2020, it gained national recognition for co-developing a saliva test for Covid-19.
Leadership view of CNY: Quality of life, natural beauty, cultural amenities, bountiful higher education
Updated Dec 29, 2020;
Posted Dec 29, 2020
Downtown Syracuse shines on a night in November. The former St. John the Evangelist Church, now the Samaritan Center, is in the foreground. The State Tower Building rises in the center background.File photo/Dennis Nett
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During seven years of weekly interviews about leadership with more than 300 leaders in Upstate New York, I usually ask about the region’s attributes. I pose questions like: What do you see as Upstate’s strengths? Why have you chosen to live and work here? What would you tell naysayers who don’t see opportunity here and only complain that problems are overwhelming?
By Deborah Jeanne Sergeant
Me’Shae Rolling wants minority-owned businesses to have equal representation in the American’s economy.
In September, she became executive director of Upstate Minority Economic Alliance (UMEA) in Syracuse, an organization that serves as a minority chamber of commerce to promote the economic power of minority-owned businesses. She personally understands the challenges of beginning a new business.
She transitioned into business ownership while still working a day job in events planning. Now she operates Financial Literacy, which offers classes on financial empowerment, and is a franchisee of Event Prep, which provides event planning to clients nationwide.
Mary Alice Smothers, mother of Syracuse’s Near West Side, dies at 67
Updated Dec 12, 2020;
Posted Dec 12, 2020
Mary Alice Smothers, left, and close friend Marilyn Higgins, share a laugh in this undated photo. Smothers, 67, a tireless advocate of the Near West Side, died Sunday, according to friends.
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SYRACUSE, N.Y. – Mary Alice Smothers died Sunday, leaving the Near West Side without a champion who always saw the neighborhood differently from most.
Where others saw a low-income neighborhood full of problems, she saw a diverse and tight-knit community with limitless potential. She spent several decades helping others see that, too, according to those who worked with her for more than a decade and, as a result, came to love her as a mother or friend.
We stand together in expressing serious concern with the Trump administration s vaccine distribution plan. While we are encouraged by recent reports regarding the vaccines efficacy, there is urgent work to be done to ensure vaccination efforts are both expeditious and fair.
Governors need federal funding in order to execute comprehensive distribution plans to guarantee that all communities have access to the vaccine. The Association of State and Territorial Health Officials estimates that a comprehensive vaccine distribution program would cost approximately $8 billion. To date, the Trump Administration has administered a mere $200 million to the states.
Without adequate funding, distribution will not be equitable. COVID-19 has laid bare chronic health disparities in our country that led communities of color to suffer disproportionately from this virus. Communities of color disproportionately suffer from pre-existing conditions, such as asthma, obesity and hyp