An internationally recognized speaker and advocate for the Hispanic community, José C. Feliciano Sr. is chairman and co-founder of the Cleveland Hispanic Roundtable and an unrelenting champion for social justice. He was a partner at BakerHostetler for 32 years and is the recipient of the National Diversity Council’s Multicultural Leadership Award, three hall of fame awards, the American Bar Association (ABA) Spirit of Excellence Award for leadership in diversity and equity, and numerous other professional and public service distinctions.

An Early Calling to Advocate and Lead

Mr. Feliciano’s family heritage and childhood experiences gave substantive sway to the career path he would follow and the kind of man he would become. “I consider myself tri-cultural,” says Mr. Feliciano – Puerto Rican, American and Irish. Born in Puerto Rico, José Feliciano moved with his family to Cleveland’s west side when he was two years old.

His affinity for the Irish started at St. Patrick Catholic Church on the near west side and blossomed when he met and married a John Carroll University classmate. The story goes that Mary Colleen’s father sent her to the Jesuit college hoping she’d marry a nice Irish Catholic lad. “After she met me, she went home and told her dad she got two out of three.” The pair wedded, had a son, José Jr. (later married to Kellyann), and two daughters, Rebecca and Marisa. Rebecca, ironically, married an Irish Catholic boy, Paul McAvinchey, whom she met while attending graduate school in Dublin.

Before St. Patrick’s, the young Feliciano attended kindergarten and part of first grade at a Cleveland public school. Years later, when his wife taught at that same school, she discovered that her husband had been tracked “EMR” (educable mentally retarded) because he didn’t understand English. “That’s how I developed a sensitivity to language issues and became a proponent of bilingual education,” Mr. Feliciano says.

In the fifth grade, Mr. Feliciano served as an altar boy, acquiescing to the nuances of the Latin Mass. Because he lived across from the church, he was assigned 6:30 a.m. service. “I served more 6:30 Masses than any altar boy in the history of that parish,” he recalls. His work ethic was seeded there.

During his freshman year of college, Mr. Feliciano worked at the Spanish American Community, Ohio’s longest-operating Hispanic/Latino social services agency. “I helped find jobs for Hispanic kids,” he says. He was struck by the barriers that people had to overcome. “As a result of that experience, I wanted to be a social worker.” While his career ambitions evolved, Mr. Feliciano’s fervent commitment to helping underserved populations was unwavering.

Steadfast Devotion to Public Service and the Practice of Law

Mr. Feliciano earned his JD from Cleveland State University College of Law (1975) and later, his EMBA at Cleveland State University. He interned at the Legal Aid Society of Cleveland. “These were the problems of the poor.… The demand was so great that I would come home and there would be people waiting for me at my house because they couldn’t get in at the office. There was an extraordinary need for Spanish-speaking services.”

As a full-time attorney at Legal Aid, Mr. Feliciano had the opportunity to try a jury trial and wanted more. He shifted to the Cuyahoga County Public Defender’s Office “doing street crimes … robberies, rapes, burglaries … a couple of murder cases.… I loved the idea of getting up in front of a jury and presenting the case … there’s nothing quite like it.”

“I remember the first time I tried a jury trial alone. I was representing a young African American who had been charged with aggravated burglary, which has a very significant penalty, seven to 25 years in prison, and it dawned on me that I was the only thing that stood between that kid and prison.… The enormity of the whole thing struck me.” As a result, Mr. Feliciano developed an early sense of responsibility and independence. “I could hardly wait to go to bed,” he says, “so I could get up and go to work.”

In 1980, at age 29, Mr. Feliciano was appointed Chief Prosecuting Attorney by then-Mayor George Voinovich. He was the first Hispanic to hold a major public office in Cleveland. Mr. Feliciano acknowledges the inherent politics in the court system but focused his energy on truth and responsibility. “I instituted law reform management and law reform programs into the system … developed a mediation program that diverted 15,000 cases out of the system and solved them.” His award-winning program was recognized by the Cleveland Foundation and the American Bar Association and influenced law reform on a national level. When he left office, more than half of the 20 lawyers on staff were African American and Hispanic. In 1983, he was named Public Administrator of the Year. In 1984, at the age of 34, he was named one of the 10 Outstanding Young Men in America, an honor given for community service and leadership – and also bestowed on John and Robert Kennedy, Henry Kissinger and Elvis Presley.

Mr. Feliciano served in 1984-85 as a White House Fellow under President Ronald Reagan. He was one of 12 selected from a pool of 1,300 applicants. As a Fellow, Mr. Feliciano represented the U.S. government in 18 countries throughout Central America, the Caribbean and Africa and was specifically assigned to evaluate the Caribbean Basin Initiative at the Department of Agriculture. The experience was extraordinary,” he recalls. And it had its perks. “I was born in the hills of Puerto Rico and I got to sit in the presidential box at the Kennedy Center.” He notes, however, “The objective of the White House Fellowship is to give people an experience at the highest policy level of the federal government and then go back and do something in their communities.” Mr. Feliciano also was inspired in his community service work by having had opportunities to meet seven U.S. presidents.

Si, Se Puede

Because of his illustrious early-career experiences, many people didn’t understand Mr. Feliciano’s shift to corporate law. “I told them I had three main reasons; their ages were 1, 3, and 5. Plus, (Baker Hostetler leadership) understood my commitment on civic engagement. They said, ‘We want you to keep doing it.’ They always gave me a lot of freedom. They knew what my interest was … raising my hand for my peeps. The Hispanic Roundtable’s motto is to serve and empower. That’s what I try to do.”

Mr. Feliciano is a founding member of the Ohio Hispanic Bar Association, a former president of the Cleveland Metropolitan Bar Association and a former member of the Board of Governors of the American Bar Association. He has been elected five times nationally to the House of Delegates. He has also served on the ABA’s Standing Committee on Federal Judiciary, where he participated in the due diligence review of Justice Sonia Sotomayor. He has chaired the Attorney Advisory Committee for the U.S. Northern District of Ohio.

In his capacity as a member of the Rule of Law Initiative of the ABA, Mr. Feliciano served recently as an instructor to prosecutors in the Justice Sector Support Program in Peru, as the country migrates from an inquisitorial justice system to the adversarial justice system. The initiative is chaired by former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer and operates in 55 countries.

Mr. Feliciano serves on the Board of Trustees of Cleveland Clinic and is a Leader-in-Residence at Cleveland State University College of Law. He is a former board member of the Greater Cleveland Partnership, Commission on Economic Inclusion, Council on World Affairs, American Red Cross, Case Western Reserve University School of Law (chair of Visiting Committee), Cleveland Ballet, the National Conference for Community and Justice, John Carroll University, United Way of Greater Cleveland and WVIZ public television. Elected in 1985 to the American College of Trial Lawyers, he has been listed in Who’s Who in American Law, Ohio, Super Lawyers, and Super Lawyers in Business for Corporate Counsel Directory and Fortune 1000 Decision Makers.

A man of faith, Mr. Feliciano is “staying open to finding a ministry to Jesus Christ, a way to help people at the right time.” He fervently believes that “the Bible is God’s thoughts, God’s words, and they mean something.”

“You just can’t quit,” is something he tries to instill in his grandchildren – Ciaran, Aoibhe and Mateo – and the young baseball players he coaches. “It’s Sisyphus,” he says. “You push the rock up a little bit, it comes back down. You push it up even further.… You fall down seven times, you get up eight times.… You can’t get discouraged. Or, as they might say in Puerto Rico, si, se puede. Yes, we can.”

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As president of Cleveland City Council under five mayors (1974-1989) and a member of council for 26 years, George Lawrence Forbes has left an enduring imprint on the city he’s called home since 1953. His unapologetic priority always has been to advance Cleveland’s African American community. Retired from the practice of law, he is co-founder of the law firm Forbes, Fields & Associates, formerly known as Rogers, Horton & Forbes, which was, upon its founding in 1971, the largest minority-owned law firm in Ohio. He served as the Cleveland NAACP president for 13 years, the longest tenure in the city’s history. (Typical terms are two years.)

Nurtured and Duty-Bound to Promote Social Change

“I got it from a Black woman … my mama,” Mr. Forbes says of his character and ambition. “She had an eighth-grade education, but she believed that you should go to school and church. She instilled within us the concept of right and wrong, doing what’s right, and taking care of your family.”

The youngest of eight children, George Forbes grew up in the segregated city of Memphis, Tennessee, exposed to racial injustice from an early age. His mother, Elnora, and grandmother Eliza, “who lived across the street and was cut from the same tree,” instilled in him the importance of an education and working toward a future with broad options.

“I never forgot it and I always appreciated it,” Mr. Forbes says. “We were influenced by Black teachers who insisted that there was a better way of life. They encouraged us to get an education and to leave (the South) and go north where we had a better chance … so we didn’t have to be farmers and road workers.”

He tells the story of his youngest sister, the ninth Forbes child. Catherine Juanita Forbes would be 90 years old today if she were still alive. Her baby clothes and shoes are mounted and framed in Mr. Forbes’ home. Catherine died in a hospital before her first birthday. “My baby sister was buried in a cemetery in Memphis.… That cemetery was torn up. White folks went in and built a school for white kids. This is a cemetery for Black people. My sister was buried there, and the officials in Memphis decided that they would build a white school. So, there’s no grave for my sister. We preserved her clothes. That’s all that’s left of her. When I die … my kids (will) put those clothes in my casket so that she will have a final resting place.”

George moved from Memphis to Cleveland as a teen in 1950, where he lived with his older brother, Cleoford “Zeke” Forbes. After serving two years in the Marine Corps, Mr. Forbes enrolled in Baldwin-Wallace College (now Baldwin Wallace University). He earned his Juris Doctor in 1961 from Cleveland-Marshall (now Cleveland State University) College of Law.

A Visionary and Fervent Activist for Cleveland’s Black Community

While his eyes were at one time on the pulpit, Mr. Forbes will playfully admit his foul mouth kept him from choosing pastoring as a profession. Becoming a politician was not top of mind during his college years either, Mr. Forbes says. He chose law school so he could support his family – wife Mary and daughters Helen, Mildred (“Mimi”) and Lauren – and serve his community. Over time, he was inspired to pursue a political path as his older brother, Zeke, had done.

“I became a precinct committeeman and was involved in the ward’s Democratic Club.” In 1963, Mr. Forbes won the office of city councilman in Ward 27. Asked why he thought he won the seat, Mr. Forbes chuckled. “I was good.”

His legal background and reputation for advancing Black neighbors and colleagues were important to voters, he says. Also, “I was young and progressive, advocating that we (as Blacks) should be able to participate in the whole community.” He opened his original law practice on St. Clair Avenue in the Glenville neighborhood where he lived. In 1971, Mr. Forbes with colleagues opened Rogers, Horton & Forbes which later became Forbes, Fields & Associates Co. L.P.A.

Mr. Forbes was one of 10 African Americans in the 30-member council and later became the first Black council president. His leadership was instrumental during pivotal moments in Cleveland’s history. In 1967, as chairman of Operation Registration, a voter registration program targeting African American neighborhoods, he helped elect Carl B. Stokes, the first African American mayor of a major U.S. city.

“I was a Black official in a majority-white organization and I knew that I couldn’t get much done by just hollering ‘Black power,’” Mr. Forbes recalls. “I came to recognize that if you want to be treated right, you must treat other people right.” He understood that to make meaningful progress, it would take “a combination of Black and white people coming together.”

A Student and Agent of Change

In his civic service, Mr. Forbes enjoyed the rare distinction of serving under five mayors: Ralph Locher, Carl B. Stokes, Ralph Perk, Dennis Kucinich and George Voinovich. With those administrations, he helped advance African Americans’ economic status; balanced the city’s budget, bringing the city out of default; was instrumental in deciding to merge the city-owned Cleveland Transit System (CTS) with the new Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority (GCRTA); and influenced the formation of Cleveland’s Emergency Management System (EMS). Minority contractors have him to thank for passing one of the nation’s most comprehensive laws requiring the city to set aside a fixed percentage – 33%– of the city’s contracts for women and minorities.

New citywide housing, including Lexington Village, Nouvelle Espoir, Forest Hills Commons, University Circle’s Triangle, Riverfront Condominiums and Warehouse District apartments, was developed under his watch, along with recreational facilities Lonnie Burton, Forest Hills swimming pool and Camp Cleveland, later renamed Camp George L. Forbes.

The nationally renowned Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and several commercial and retail developments, including the Galleria, New East Side Market, Westown and Tower City complex, are other projects that brought jobs and improved Cleveland’s economy during Mr. Forbes’ tenure. And changing the skyline were the 45-story BP America building (now 200 Public Square) and Key Tower with its 57 floors.

In 1989, Mr. Forbes’ last year as council president, he won a property tax abatement for the then-LTV Steel, which, in addition to saving 6,500 jobs, returned $13.2 million in disputed property taxes to the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. He also was on the team that established the 21st District Congressional Caucus, an organization that improved race relations within the Ohio Democratic Party.

Reflecting on what matters most, Mr. Forbes says it’s Martin Luther King, Jr. “All over the country, if you find an MLK Drive, it will be in the Black community,” Mr. Forbes shares. “I decided we were not going to do that…. I said, we are going to name East Boulevard, MLK Drive, and if you travel it, you find that it goes through the park, through the institutions out on the far east side through a progressive neighborhood. We had to fight to do that.”

Mr. Forbes acknowledges that Cleveland’s growth and successes during his active work and political career occurred with the help of many people. He especially credits mentors Charles Carr, James Davis and Mercedes Cotner for guiding him throughout his service journey.

“Charlie Carr. Very few people knew who he was. He was one of the original Black councilmen who said, ‘You’ve got to take care of Black people.’ He was there 20 years, but because of racism, he could never do it. He always pushed for Black people. Then when I got to be president, he said, ‘You must … see to it that they share in the glories and the things that they deserve,’” Mr. Forbes says.

“James ‘Jim’ Davis … was the presiding officer at Squire Sanders & Dempsey, the biggest law firm in the city at that time. He said, ‘You must make sure that Cleveland is taken care of.’ It wasn’t Black people only. You must make sure that you take care of the whole town. When you take care of the whole city, Black folks will be taken care of.”

Finally, his “great friend and co-leader” Mercedes Cotner served as the clerk of council. “Wise beyond her years,” offers Mr. Forbes. “She made sure that as we sat there every day that what I did was right. She wasn’t a racist. It was hard for her some days because she was a white lady dealing with this crazy Black man. But she advocated that you must do what’s right and take care of all the people.”

The lessons his mentors imparted are why, Mr. Forbes says, “I’m going to accept [the Cleveland Heritage Award] on behalf of those three people.”

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Ted Ginn Sr. is a nationally celebrated coach and leader with an abundance of compassion and respect for Cleveland’s inner-city youth. For more than 40 years, Coach Ginn has guided the lives and careers of young Black men in our city, first as an in-school security guard and volunteer football and track coach at his alma mater, Glenville High School; then, as a full-time salaried coach at Glenville; and finally, as founder and executive director of Ginn Academy, a public high school for at-risk boys. In 2008, Coach Ginn was featured in an Emmy-nominated documentary, “Winning Lives: The Story of Ted Ginn Sr.” His good works have earned the spotlight of ESPN, CBS, Sports Illustrated, The New York Times and The Boston Globe, among others.

Losses and Lessons in His Young Life Shaped His Values

Ted Ginn was raised by his grandparents in segregated Franklinton, Louisiana, until his mother won a custody battle that landed him in Cleveland at the age of 11.

“I was a little country boy,” he says, “always dreaming.” His grandmother and grandfather were devoted Christians and made an impression on him from a young age. “Everything I did was a sin,” he says with a chuckle. “I was mischievous … always creating things to do.” One Sunday after church services (just steps from his grandparents’ home), “The older people (were) on the porch talking … I came up from the woods and told my grandma, ‘I don’t feel good.’ You know what my grandma told me? ‘God is going to get you for killing frogs on a Sunday.’” He later learned he had measles. “She didn’t tell me that until I got a little older. She used it as a learning tool. Everything always goes back to how I was raised.”

The young Ginn made his first football from an empty milk carton. “We put rocks in it and we had a milk carton football. We’d play at recess.… I was the CEO of all that.” He also recalls doing a lot of cotton-picking and tending his cucumber patch as a youngster. “I sold my cucumbers. I was an entrepreneur then.”

A year after he moved north, his grandmother died of a broken heart, he says. He struggled with the transition and the loss. “But as I got older, I understood. They had to get me out of the South. It probably was the best thing that happened for me.” Eight years later, his mother passed; she’d had struggles of her own. Though just 19, Ted Ginn was permitted to remain in the two-family house he’d been living in. “I was paying the light bill, gas bill, rent.… Tragedy motivated me.” While working as a security guard and helping out with coaching at Glenville, he worked nights as a machinist, making airplane parts. “I never wanted to be hungry or homeless. I tell people sometimes that it took God taking my grandma and mother away for me to be successful. That’s how I see it.”

Ginn was named head coach at Glenville in 1997. Two years later, Glenville became the first Cleveland public high school to qualify for the state playoffs in football. The team went on to win 10 league championships under Coach Ginn, who led them to the state championship in 2022. In 2006, he was recruited to coach the U.S. Army All-American Bowl game.

“I think God gave me the assignment,” Coach Ginn says of his legendary coaching career. He is well known for raising money to take his football players, as well as kids from other schools, on college tours because he believed recruiters were overlooking them. During his tenure, Glenville’s football program has produced many college and NFL stars, including Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback Troy Smith, former Browns Pro Bowl safety Donte Whitner, and New Orleans Saints cornerback and four-time Pro Bowler Marshon Lattimore. To date, coach Ginn has assisted student athletes with 300 scholarships to attend college (more than 100 of those for NCAA Division I schools) and sent 30 alumni to the NFL.

It Was Never About Football

Coach Ginn is grateful for the people who stepped up in his own life … neighbors, teachers and coaches. “My (high school football) coach pulled me in (after his mom died) and said, ‘Come here and show this boy how to snap the ball.’ I just obeyed. Then, I figured it out that he was going to make me coach. He’s going to make me stay close to him to keep me from going astray. Because he knew my world. That’s how I got into coaching. I didn’t ask. I was told to do it.”

Over time, he came to realize the impact he could have on children. “They thought I was the cool guy and I could motivate them to become somebody. I didn’t want anyone to have to live like I lived. God gave me that vision. It’s not about the sport,” he insists. “It’s about the influence you can have.… The power of mentoring is so strong. Football is a table. Track is a table. Ginn Academy is a table … where you can get information and you can give direction. That’s all. It’s a table.

“Every day, I’m in a war,” he laments. He expects his teachers to fight alongside him … “with consistency and love. We’re living in dangerous times. I’m fighting with kids every day not to blow their money.… I call that the pinhole in the cup. (Teachers and coaches) fill the cup up, but then a boy has to go home,” Coach Ginn explains. “His mama might be on crack. He probably doesn’t have anything to eat. Once he walks out this door and down St. Clair, he sees boarded-up homes, he sees (broken) glass, he sees people standing on the corner.… And you’re telling me, I can be something? His mama tells him, ‘Stay home (from school). Babysit the kid while I go try to work this job to get us some money.’ That’s real. You can’t blame them for where they came from or what somebody else didn’t do.”

All We Need Is Love

“It was necessary,” Coach Ginn says of his school for at-risk boys. Ginn Academy enrollment is approaching 400, up from 150 in 2007 when it opened. Graduates have earned over $2.7 million in college scholarships. At Ginn Academy, every student has an individual life plan. The goal is to address the specific needs of each student.

Always, his students and their families have understood that Coach Ginn would be there for them 24-7-365, often (particularly in the old days) welcoming them into his home – with full support and involvement from Jeanette Ginn, his wife of almost 40 years. “I had a kid stay in my house when I was 19,” he shares. “I took care of him. He was a 16-year-old alcoholic.”

Coach Ginn says of his Ginn Academy students, “They didn’t come here to play football. They didn’t come here to play sports. Do you know why they came here? (They came with the) hope we can make something out of them. And they know they’re going to be loved.”

Ted Ginn Jr., was a national champion in high hurdles on Glenville’s track and field team, and his senior year at Glenville he was named USA Today National Defensive Player of the Year for high school football. He went on to play wide receiver and kick returner at The Ohio State University and had a successful NFL career. “But the most important thing,” according to his dad, “is that he’s an example of hope for others.”

“I’ve got to keep working. I have to try to make the world a better place for my kids and grandkids. As long as I keep doing this and I know that God’s got me, I have hope.” One such hope is a Ginn Academy for girls. He’s hard at work on that now.

Through the Ginn Foundation, Coach Ginn provides salaries for youth support staff at Ginn Academy, college scholarships, college tours for Ohio high school football players, bereavement assistance, food drives, rent and utility assistance, and travel expense for college visits.

Coach Ginn is a former board member of what is now the Greater Collinwood Development Corporation, the YMCA and the National Association for the Education of African American Children with Learning Disabilities. Recently, he was inducted into the National Federation of State High School Associations Hall of Fame. In 2014, he was given the keys to the city in recognition of his community impact. In 2006, a portion of a Cleveland street was renamed Ted Ginn Sr. Avenue.

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Arriving in Cleveland in 1974, Stephen Hoffman moved his way up the ranks of the Jewish Federation of Cleveland over a 44-year period, retiring in 2018 as president, a post he held for 35 years. He continues to serve Cleveland and the Jewish community as chairman of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation. He also remains a persistent attendant to social justice, his faith community and the Jewish value of Kol Yisrael arevim zeh ba’zeh – all Jews are responsible for each other.

Shouldering Responsibility from a Young Age

Mr. Hoffman’s life appears to have followed a divine plan. He grew up in Philadelphia, largely influenced by his parents, his maternal grandparents and a Jewish youth organization that, Mr. Hoffman reflects, “unknowingly … shaped my career path.” That youth organization was BBYO (originally known as the B’nai B’rith Youth Organization).

During his senior year in high school, he was elected co-president of the Philadelphia division of BBYO, heading up the boys’ division, which had more than 800 members in approximately 20 chapters throughout the city. A serendipitous departure of the organization’s two professional staff members presented an extraordinary opportunity for the young Hoffman and his cohort at the B’nai B’rith Girls (BBG) group, which had about 1,200 members and 40 chapters at that time. The national office appointed a supervisor to monitor the high schoolers remotely, but “essentially what happened is that my co-president and I ran the organization as kids for a year and went far beyond what any previous occupants of those jobs ever did,” Mr. Hoffman reflects. “We ran conventions … including taking over a hotel in Atlantic City one long weekend.… We even ended the year in a surplus.”

While attending Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, he worked at the summer camp program as a librarian and taught a BBYO leadership course. He also became highly active in the Jewish student organization, helping to “build it up from a very rudimentary organization to a very extensive organization,” he says. “Before I got there, there was no Jewish studies program. And when I left, there was a full-time Jewish studies professor. I helped advocate for that and raise funds to establish the chair for it.”

While he was deliberating whether he wanted to pursue further education in clinical psychology or law near the end of his senior year, Mr. Hoffman received a call from someone he had met at camp who told him about a scholarship opportunity for a new field of study being developed by the Council of Jewish Federations.

“In our world, your synagogue was the place where you were active in Jewish life … at least for my parents. We didn’t know what a Jewish federation was, but he said to me, ‘Basically, you’ll get paid to do what you’ve been doing as a kid.’’’ Liking what he heard, he jumped on a train to New York to interview for a spot in the program and secured a full ride, plus a loan for living expenses. At the conclusion of the program, he had simultaneously earned a master’s degree in social work from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in Jewish studies from Baltimore Hebrew University.

A Humble, Impactful Leader for His People

“When I graduated, I was recruited by a number of places,” Mr. Hoffman says, “but I chose Cleveland on the advice of people in the field.… Cleveland was (and remains) one of the most important Jewish federations in the United States. Our reputation is worldwide.”

The Jewish Federation of Cleveland is unlike other federations, Mr. Hoffman explains, in that, “In Cleveland, they did cross training in community planning, fundraising, community relations … and they had a history of promoting from within,” so Mr. Hoffman stayed longer than he intended After a year in community relations, he was transferred to social planning and fundraising, where he was later named director of social planning.

He became president in 1983 at the age of 32.

As president, Mr. Hoffman encouraged the opening of the first group home for developmentally disabled Jewish adults; led the effort to resettle thousands of Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union in Greater Cleveland; created the Public Education Initiative in partnership with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District; launched the Employment Related Supports Program to aid individuals who lost jobs during the Great Recession; assisted with the creation of Global Cleveland to attract more people to the area; was a partner in the formation of the Cleveland Chesed Center, which helps struggling families in the Cleveland Heights community; and much more.

“I had a tremendously good experience,” Mr. Hoffman says, attributing his success to two factors. First, the federation has a robust lay volunteer program. “We learned a lot from our volunteer leaders, and they will say that they learned a lot from us (the professional staff). There’s tremendous mutual respect … and pure transparency. And all the major leaders in Israel knew our volunteers. Our volunteer leaders were successful businesspeople and professionals and were well known nationally.” Secondly, he says, “I had a vision of what the organization should look like. I also got some help. I’m a big believer in bringing in other, smarter people.”

Embracing the Tradition of Tikkun Olam

As chairman of the Mandel Foundation, he championed major philanthropic investments, including a $50 million grant to The Cleveland Orchestra to bolster its financial position and establish the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Opera and Humanities Festival; an $18 million grant to DigitalC to focus on building an equitable digital future in Cleveland; approximately $15 million to support nonprofits challenged by the COVID-19 pandemic; and a combined $29 million to connect Clevelanders to enhance area waterfronts.

Mr. Hoffman and his wife, Amy, also personally support many Cleveland community organizations.

“I thought Amy was amazing within the first two minutes we met,” Mr. Hoffman says. She was “busy” the first three times he asked if she’d meet him for coffee, but “it was worth it.”. The couple has two daughters, two sons-in-law and four grandchildren—two boys and two girls.

Mr. Hoffman serves on the boards of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic, The Cleveland Orchestra and Parkwood Corporation. He also is member of the board of governors of the Jewish Agency for Israel and a member of the executive committee of The Jewish People Policy Institute, co-founder and former co-chair of Secure Community Network, and a former board member of the David and Inez Myers Foundation and United Way of Greater Cleveland. While serving on the President’s Visitor Committee at Case Western Reserve University, Mr. Hoffman connected the university with The Temple-Tifereth Israel and Tamar and Milton Maltz to create the Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center.

“Mort Mandel, who was a friend and mentor, frequently talked about raising the bar,” Mr. Hoffman says. “So while we have a very effective, well-organized Jewish community, that doesn’t mean we can’t raise the bar on engagement and outreach … encouraging people to participate in the life of our community, both as donors, but also for their own self-actualization, religiously or culturally or however they choose to identify Jewishly.”

In 1987, Mr. Hoffman visited the former Soviet Union, where he encountered teachers and students of the Hebrew language meeting in secret; he returned to Cleveland with renewed resolve to promote Jewish education and Hebrew language literacy for people of all ages and backgrounds.

““We can do a better job of educating our children,” he says. “We have to figure out how to do a better job … given the kind of environment that they are in today with social media and competing interests.”

Mr. Hoffman reflects on a traditional Jewish saying. “‘A person who saves another person saves the whole world.’ Tikkun olam, which means perfecting the world,” he says. “When you engage in philanthropy, when you engage in volunteer work, when you engage in helping your neighbor, you’re participating in that work of tikkun olam.”

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Sister Judith Ann Karam is a nationally recognized leader in health care, tirelessly advocating for homeless and uninsured people and championing the rehabilitative needs of recovering alcoholics. A member of the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine for 59 years, she has served four different terms as its congregational leader and continues to serve in this capacity. She also is chair of the Public Juridic Person for the Sisters of Charity Health System and served as the system’s president and CEO from 1998 to 2013. Earlier, she served as president and CEO of what is now Cleveland Clinic Mercy Hospital in Canton; St. Vincent Charity in Cleveland; and president and vice president of what is now University Hospitals St. John Medical Center in Westlake.

Attributing Her Life’s Work to God’s Providence

“I was born to Lebanese immigrants,” Sister Judith Ann shares. “My mother died of leukemia when I was 7 years old. My brother was 3. The loss was significant, but people came … people came to help, people came to care, people came to love.… That was the community we experienced.” Her father did the best he could, commuting every day from their home in Lakewood to the restaurant he owned in downtown Cleveland. He remarried years later, but in the interim, “I had a lot of big sister stuff,” she says. “But I loved doing it. We went to my dad’s restaurant a lot, especially on weekends. We used to take chairs from the restaurant to Euclid Avenue to sit and watch the parades.” While attending St. John Cantius High School (now Cleveland Central Catholic), she would take a bus to the restaurant after school and help her father.

“My mother’s best friend was Aunt Mary,” Sister Judith Ann reflects. “I’m so grateful for her role as a mother figure in my life. Aunt Mary encouraged me to think about a part-time job when I was a teenager.” As director of volunteers at St. Vincent Charity Hospital, Mary learned of a job in the pharmacy. “Well, it was providential,” Sister Judith Ann remembers. “I started at St. Vincent’s in 1962 as a pharmacy technician while I was still in high school!” It proved a rich cultural and growth experience. One of the pharmacy employees was married to a Methodist minister, she says. “In addition to Catholics, we also had an Orthodox Jew and Christians.… I got to experience diversity at such a young age … and the giftedness of many, many people. My wonderful work community gave me a Bible when I entered the convent in 1964 with all of their signatures.”

“I’m a workaholic,” she admits, giggling. “All our sisters and everybody else will tell you that.” Sister Judith Ann attributes this trait to the responsibility she took on after losing her mom. Additionally, she says, after her mother died, she wanted to find ways to stay close to her, “which really cultivated my spirituality.” At the pharmacy, she met Sister Mariel. The two closed the pharmacy together many nights. “Sister Mariel and I would talk about religious life … and reflect and pray.” Sister Judith Ann entered the convent in 1964 after she graduated from high school. “The main thing that attracted me to the convent was a life of prayer, community and service … being able to give service to others … or in AA terms, loving service to others. Sister Mariel was my sponsor in becoming a sister.”

Upon completing her initial training to become a nun, Sister Judith Ann was asked what kind of mission of service she would want the Congregation to consider for her. “It was natural to suggest pharmacist or perhaps a nurse in Rosary Hall (the addiction treatment center at St. Vincent).” But the decision belonged to her congregation, and its choice was pharmacy. “I thought, please, dear God, help me get through the five years of chemistry.… It was a challenge, but I got through it.”

It took some time for her father to embrace her decision to enter the convent. “My dad was so angry and upset,” she remembers. “In the vow ceremony, I was given by the bishop a variation of my mother’s name. My dad couldn’t handle it emotionally. He walked out.” Over time, he understood and respected her calling. “Every visiting Sunday, he used to bring Lebanese food to the convent for everybody. He loved our sisters.”

An Uncommon Bond

As a pharmacy tech, Sister Judith Ann delivered medications to Rosary Hall. “I met Sister Ignatia Gavin, who did heroic work with the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous at our hospital in Akron, Ohio,” she reminisces, pointing to a framed photo and books she displays in her office. “I remember the first time I went to Rosary Hall, I thought, ‘What is this place?’ It was so different than the other nursing units. And then I saw some friends who ate at my dad’s restaurant,” she says, not hiding her amusement. “I knew they were thinking, ‘What is she doing here?’ When I give this talk in AA circles, they laugh … but I really believe it was providential … a sensitivity that I have to the alcoholic, to the treatment of the alcoholic, the recovery of the alcoholic. Alcoholism is not a curable disease.… You’re always in recovery, always working … to maintain sobriety. Later, when I went into health administration, I always had responsibilities for the departments that treated alcoholics.”

Sister Judith Ann is one of a select group of Class A trustees elected to the General Service Board of Alcoholics Anonymous of Canada and the United States. As Class A, she is a nonalcoholic trustee and a participant on the board. “In 2015, I stood up at the Georgia Dome (at the International Convention of Alcoholics Anonymous) with thousands and thousands of people … receiving the 35 millionth copy of the Big Book from AA to the Sisters of Charity of St. Augustine, the religious congregation of Sister Ignatia Gavin.” She was humbled.

Leading Positive Change in Communities

“When I began working at St. Vincent’s as a full-time pharmacist, I was given the opportunity to start a new clinical program,” Sister Judith Ann says. “Drs. Bishop, Tank and Suresky, neurosurgeons on staff, incorporated the clinical pharmacist onto their team. It was the first clinical pharmacy program in a hospital in the city of Cleveland. “

She also developed new joint venture hospitals, formed health care partnerships, started a nursing home serving 22 Catholic religious congregations and forged a business partnership with Nashville-based, for-profit Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation and became a member of its board. “That was unheard of at that time,” she says. “In fact, we were under significant scrutiny. Now, everyone’s doing it because of the changes in health care today. With the collaboration with Columbia/HCA, we received 50% of the value of the acute care hospitals … and that money enabled us to form three Sisters of Charity Foundations (the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Canton, Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland and Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina).” In January 2006, the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland joined with the Saint Ann Foundation to form a single organization focused on reducing health and education disparities all over Cleveland. Together, the foundations invest more than $10 million annually. The Sisters of Charity Foundation formed Promise Neighborhood, which is focused on the Central neighborhood with Promise Ambassadors to strengthen the quality of life of the residents. Another major initiative works at ending homelessness in Cleveland.

Sister Judith Ann, a 1986 graduate of Leadership Cleveland, is bolstered by the friendships and collaborations stemming from that experience. While president and CEO of the Sisters of Charity Health System, Sister Judith Ann was chosen to serve on the Cuyahoga County Executive’s panel of medical industry and business leaders that oversaw the Cleveland Medical Mart and Convention Center project. She is the recipient of many honors, including the Award for Excellence from Health Legacy of Cleveland; a Humanitarian Award from the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio; distinguished alumni awards from The Ohio State University, Ursuline College and Walsh University; and the Distinguished Service Award from the Ohio Hospital Association (OHA). Inducted into the OHA Health Care Hall of Fame in 2018 for being a tireless advocate for compassionate, quality care and the preservation of human dignity, Sister Judith Ann is a Life fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, a former board member and chair of the Catholic Health Association of the United States and former board member of the American Red Cross (Cleveland Chapter), the Center for Health Affairs, Greater Cleveland Partnership and University Hospitals Health System, among others. Still, she maintains, “I have gained more than I have given in so many ways.”

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Alex Johnson’s vision for accessible community-college education is rooted in his Concord, N.C., childhood.

His grandmother, who cared for him while his parents worked, ingrained in him the importance of schooling and enrolled him in church activities, which provided a sense of continuity and “great lessons of hope and commitment,” according to Johnson. Growing up in the segregated South deeply impacted Johnson. Later in life, he was determined to provide equal opportunities to Black students and others facing discrimination.

His early years planted the seeds of what would become a lifelong commitment to “promoting access to and equality in education, developing students’ leadership skills and promoting community outreach initiatives so there is the intersection of civic engagement with educational delivery.”

Johnson was appointed in 2013 as the fourth president of Cuyahoga Community College. Soon after, his leadership began to be recognized locally and nationally. Tri-C administrators and faculty describe him as mission-driven, approachable and personable. Some of his major accomplishments include:

• Dramatically increasing Tri-C’s graduation rate from 4.5% in 2013 to 25% in 2021, exceeding national averages.
• Increasing financial giving to support student scholarship and personal needs from $39 million to more than $100 million.
• Gaining public support for a $227 million capital bond issue in 2017, spurring the biggest reconstruction in the college’s history. Projects funded through this effort include the Western Campus STEM Center; the Westshore Campus Liberal Arts and Technology Building; The Public Safety Simulated Scenario Village at the Western Campus; and the Advanced Technology Training Center at the Metropolitan Campus – all of which received the LEED certification for sustainable design and construction.
• Creating career paths and educational opportunities through the development of Access Centers.
• Successfully navigating the college through the COVID-19 pandemic by restructuring classes for an online environment while maintaining a sense of community and continuity for students through weekly virtual town hall meetings.
• Twice receiving the Aspen Institute’s Aspen Prize Top 150, considered the signature recognition for high achievement and performance among American community colleges. Tri-C was the only Ohio school that was named to a newly released Top 150 list.
• Helping Tri-C’s Nursing, Creative Arts, Public Safety, Hospitality Management, Information Technology and Manufacturing programs becoming recognized as Centers of Excellence.
• Inspiring Tri-C’s selection as an intermediary for the Workforce Connect Healthcare Sector Partnership.

Johnson is the author of several books, including his most recent, 2021’s “Capturing Change,” which trains leaders how to handle difficult circumstances such as natural disasters and financial crises in new ways.

Prior to leading Tri-C, Dr. Johnson served as the President of the Community College of Allegheny County in Pittsburgh (2008-2013); Chancellor of Delgado Community College in New Orleans (2003-2008) as well as President of Tri-C’s Metropolitan Campus (1993-2003).

During his nine-year tenure as President of Tri-C’s Metropolitan campus, he secured a $10 million donation – the largest in the college’s history—to create The Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Humanities Center and established a permanent endowment to support the center and its initiatives.

According to American Council on Education President Ted Mitchell, “Alex Johnson is an inspirational and innovative leader who has expanded access to higher education and increased the opportunity for social and economic mobility for hundreds of thousands of students at Cuyahoga County Community College and the other institutions he has served so well.”

Dr. Johnson’s leadership extends deep into the community. He serves on more than a dozen local boards. He led a citywide commemoration of Carl and Louis Stokes; co-chaired the selection committee for the Cleveland Community Police Commission; and supported the creation of Tri-C’s Stand for Racial Justice Alliance. In February 2021, he took a lead role in national efforts to close equity gaps and accelerate student success as the chair of the Achieving the Dream (ATD) Board of Directors.

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Thanks to an elementary school teacher who encouraged him to audition, Milton Maltz was cast in the title role of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” the first triumph in an iconic career that spanned from stage to radio to television to broadcast business icon.

He began his career as a child actor on radio dramas originating in Chicago. He also appeared in television broadcasts during that medium’s infancy. He later went on to write, produce, and direct. He is especially known for “The Fight for Freedom,” an acclaimed series of radio programs that chronicled the struggle to create the nation of Israel. Maltz wrote, produced, and directed the series.

With courage, business acumen and creative thinking, Maltz transformed a single, small radio station into Malrite Communications Group, Inc., one of the most successful radio and television companies in history with stations stretching from New York to Los Angeles. He founded Malrite Communications in 1956 and served as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer until selling the radio portion of the company to The Walt Disney Co. and the TV holdings to Raycom Media in 1998.

A respected and active member of the broadcast industry and a member of its Hall of Fame, Maltz created the National Association of Broadcasters’ Task Force for Free TV, served on its Political Action Committee, and was a Director of the Radio Advertising Bureau and Vice-Chairman of the Independent Television Association.

Maltz and his wife, Tamar, moved to Northeast Ohio in the early 1970s when he purchased two radio stations: WHK-AM and WMMS-FM. He turned WMMS into Malrite’s flagship station. Under his leadership, the station adopted its iconic buzzard insignia and was named the best rock station in the America.

Since their arrival in Cleveland, the Maltzes have made an indelible impact on Northeast Ohio with their philanthropic activity and deep commitment to arts, culture, and education. They have given tens of millions of dollars to Jewish and non-Jewish arts, medical, cultural, and civic organizations in Cleveland and across the United States.

At 5 years of age, Maltz faced hate for the first time — an experience that was indelibly etched in his mind. While walking home from school, he was attacked and beaten by other children simply because he was Jewish.

Later in life, Maltz turned the hate and anti-Semitism he encountered into something extraordinary: the founding of the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage. It is much more than a stirring building and collection. The Maltzes wanted to address hate through education, and for over 13 years, the museum

has offered $100,000 “Stop the Hate” scholarships as part of a contest encouraging young people to write essays about hate and tolerance while simultaneously earning money for college. Maltz also created the annual Maltz Heritage Award through the museum to honor individuals whose leadership, vision, and humanity have changed Northeast Ohio for the better and to build bridges of understanding with those of other religions, races, cultures, and ethnic backgrounds.

Maltz was instrumental in bringing the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to Cleveland.

“The New York board members didn’t want it here,” Maltz recalls. “We owned a station that was a rock station in New York and many of those guys on the board would come to me to have their talent played on our air. And I would say, ‘Look I can’t force you, but how are you going to vote for the home of the Rock Hall?’ That’s all it took.”

In 1997, the Maltzes founded the Maltz Family Foundation to focus on their major charitable interests. Institutions and organizations supported by the foundation include the Cleveland Orchestra, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Case Western Reserve University’s performance center, the Lieber Institute for Brain Development at John Hopkins Hospital, the Cleveland Play House, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, the Anti-Defamation League, the State of Israel Bonds, the Cleveland Clinic Foundation and the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute.

Maltz was instrumental in the creation of the acclaimed International Spy Museum, in Washington. He currently serves on the Board of the Central Intelligence Agency Officers Memorial Foundation.

Still going strong in his 90s, Maltz completed a new book in 2021, “Passion for Broadcasting: Stories of My Life,” a memoir that spans his from child radio actor to today.

The Maltzes have been married for 71 years.

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In April 2002, Joan E. Southgate, then 73 years old, was out on her daily “stay healthy” walk along East Boulevard in Cleveland when her thoughts turned to slavery.

“Suddenly I was stunned by something I had always known,” she remembers, “American slave families walked hundreds and hundreds of miles running to freedom. Who were those amazing people? How could they do it? Did they take children and small babies slung across their hips? What did they do? How did they do it? Families in flight! Even the children had to be brave. And some, perhaps many, found help through the Underground Railroad.”

She then heard the whisper from an ancestor, a command:

“Walk.”

Soon after, starting in the small town of Ripley, Ohio, on the Ohio River, Southgate started on what would become a 519-mile walk retracing a path of the Underground Railroad – north to Cleveland, east into Pennsylvania, then New York and across the border into Canada to Harriet Tubman’s church in St. Catharines, Ontario.

Along the way, she visited Underground Railroad sites, gave presentations at schools, and slept in the homes of welcoming strangers — her own “safe houses” — all to “honor and praise the freedom seekers and the conductors who helped them.”

Southgate, who enjoyed a fulfilling 30-year career as a social worker before her iconic walk, then began on another life calling: establishing Restore Cleveland Hope, a grassroots nonprofit dedicated to telling the story of Cleveland’s role in the Underground Railroad (the city was called “Station Hope” by 19th century freedom seekers) and preserving one of its stops: the historic Cozad-Bates House.

“This piece of history belongs to all of us,” Southgate says. “We’re all freedom seekers.”

“I want all children to know the truth, strength, creativity, and courage the slaves had … it should be taught as curriculum in every school.”

An educator at heart, Southgate had a desire to create a place to learn about Cleveland’s crucial role in the Underground Railroad, and she was able to secure the historic Cozad-Bates House in University Circle for the project. The Cozad-Bates House was the only pre-Civil War home still standing in University

Circle and the Cozad family were well-known abolitionists who helped run the Cleveland-area Underground Railroad – one of the last stops before slaves entered Canada to freedom.

The home was scheduled to be demolished for a parking garage, but through Southgate’s energy and activism, the building was saved. The now-restored house, located at Mayfield Road and East 115th Street, is home of the Underground Railroad Education and Resource Center, which features a robust schedule of programs and events.

Southgate co-authored a book, “In their Path: A Grandmother’s 519-Mile Underground Railroad Walk,” which highlights her 519-mile journey.

Cleveland Public Theater produced a play titled “The Absolutely Amazing and True Adventures of Ms. Joan Evelyn Southgate” with performances in April and May 2022. The 100-minute, one-act play touches on many aspects of her life.

Now in her 90s, Southgate – who’s also a poet, mother of four and grandmother of nine – is still actively fulfilling her dream of being an educator and ensuring that important parts of American history, such as the Underground Railroad, are taught to children and explained in a way that instills a sense of pride in the fight for equality for all.

Southgate says that even though her walk has ended, her mission continues.

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As a youngster, Dick Bogomolny studied violin under the Cleveland Orchestra’s principal second violinist. He later served as concertmaster of the Harvard University Orchestra and principal violist of the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra.

“In junior high, I set some goals. I wanted to play the violin, I wanted to play football and I wanted to get good grades,” he says. He accomplished all three. Upon the death of his father, however, the young Mr. Bogomolny felt responsibility to return home to run the family business with his mother – also an accomplished violinist.

He attended college at night while operating the Eagle Ice Cream Company, later graduating from Western Reserve University and Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. He was admitted to the Ohio Bar in 1961, though was destined to become a business entrepreneur.

Under Mr. Bogomolny’s leadership, Eagle Ice Cream Company became the largest and most modern ice cream manufacturing facility in Northeast Ohio. Fisher Foods, Inc. purchased the company in 1968 and installed Mr. Bogomolny in key leadership positions. In 1972, he left Fisher Foods and joined supermarket magnate and “second father” Julius Kravitz in the purchase of Pick-N-Pay. In 1975, at the age of 40, he became president and CEO.

Two years later, Pick-N-Pay Supermarkets merged with the much bigger First National Stores (operating under the name Finast) to become one of the largest supermarket chains in the country. In 1978, after the death of Mr. Kravitz, Mr. Bogomolny assumed the additional role of chairman.

Mr. Bogomolny sold controlling interest in First National to Royal Ahold NV in 1986. With support of city leaders, he built and operated seven new superstores in Cleveland’s inner city – and hired neighborhood residents to work in them.

“Most of our customers could walk to the stores, but we also provided buses where needed,” notes Mr. Bogomolny. “I remember women looking at the stores and saying things like, ‘We don’t believe someone would do this for us.’” At the time of Mr. Bogomolny’s retirement five years later, his nine-state chain had 300 stores, close to $2.5 billion in sales, and approximately 14,000 employees, he recalls. In May of 1992, Mr. Bogomolny became the first American to be elected to the supervisory board (board of directors) of Royal Ahold NV.

Mr. Bogomolny has devoted much of his time, talent and resources to humanitarian causes, at one time serving on 22 nonprofit boards. He is particularly gratified to have been a founding member and advisor to the Northern Ohio Foodbank.

As founding chairman of The Negev Foundation, Mr. Bogomolny helped finance agricultural research in Ramat Negev, Israel. and later introduced advanced crop growing technology to the Hopi Native American tribe in Arizona.

Emeritus chairman, former chairman and former president of the Musical Arts Association/The Cleveland Orchestra, Mr. Bogomolny served on the steering committee that raised $115 million for the organization and provided the lead gift. Under his leadership, The Cleveland Orchestra collaborated with a group of seven major arts and education organizations to create the Violins of Hope – Cleveland project.

Mr. Bogomolny is a former vice chairman of the Mt. Sinai Health Care Foundation; emeritus trustee, Jewish Federation of Cleveland; chair emeritus of the Cleveland Institute of Music; and former chairman of the Northern Ohio Regional Board of the Anti-Defamation League. He is a life member the ADL national executive committee.

He has been honored for his civic leadership and community service by the then Jewish Community Federation, Chamber Music America, the Jewish National Fund, and the Oheb Zedek Cedar Sinai Synagogue, among other organizations.

Mr. Bogomolny and his wife, Patricia M. Kozerefski, reside in Gates Mills. The couple adopted a daughter from China and are parents to three sons from his previous marriage. They have seven grandchildren and three great grandchildren.

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Margot James Copeland grew up in Petersburg, Virginia, the only child of a Baptist minister and an 8th-grade math teacher. The retired chair and CEO of KeyBank Foundation credits her success and her “conviction for community and education” to her family, her hometown and to the hard-fought changes brought about by the Civil Rights Movement.

Ms. Copeland attended Hampton University in Virginia, majoring in physics at the HBCU and becoming a National Science Foundation scholar. Ms. Copeland earned a master’s degree in educational research and statistics from The Ohio State University, where she is recognized as an Esteemed Alumna.

Her career began at Xerox Corporation and advanced to roles of increasing responsibility at Polaroid Corporation, AmeriTrust Bank and Picker International (now Philips). Ms. Copeland’s passion for community service was supported by each of her employers.

She joined the Junior League of Cleveland – a rarity for Black women at the time – and later became the organization’s first Black president. In 1991, she was accepted into Leadership Cleveland. From class member, she became the program’s executive director. She had served in that role for nearly a decade when she was recruited to lead the Greater Cleveland Roundtable, which created a robust diversity consulting and training practice. Additionally, the Cleveland Council of Economic Inclusion was founded under her leadership, and remains a force today for advancing diversity, equity and inclusion throughout Northeast Ohio.

In late 2001, Ms. Copeland joined the KeyBank Foundation, which had a 15-state footprint from Maine to Alaska. “During her tenure, she led the strategic investment of more than 85,000 grants exceeding $700 million and the transformation of the KeyBank Foundation from a charitable giving department into a nationally recognized philanthropic investment organization.

In 2014, Ms. Copeland became the second person ever to be honored with the Community Impact Award from American Banker, a recognition she refers to as “prized.”

Ms. Copeland says, however, that her “proudest moment was when Cleveland was awarded a Say Yes to Education chapter.” As a national board member, she helped bring attention to the community’s application and guided it through the competitive process.

In 2010, Ms. Copeland was elected national president of The Links, Incorporated, an organization of women devoted to strengthening African American communities. In that role, she was invited to the White House for President Barack Obama’s signing of the My Brother’s Keeper initiative and delivered remarks on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. During Ms. Copeland’s presidency, The Links awarded $4 million in scholarships and program grants, including a $1 million donation to the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Currently, Ms. Copeland serves on the board of trustees for Cleveland Clinic, The Cleveland Orchestra, the Port of Cleveland, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum and AARP National. She also was the co-vice chair of the Cleveland Bi-Centennial Commission and served on the boards of the Great Lakes Science Center, Playhouse Square Foundation, Philanthropy Ohio, University Hospitals Health System and myriad other organizations.

Appointed by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, she recently concluded nine years with the Kent State University Board of Trustees.

Ms. Copeland lives in Shaker Heights and is the mother of three adult children.

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Beth Mooney graduated Phi Beta Kappa and summa cum laude from the University of Texas. She was repeatedly asked by prospective employers how fast she could type. “My first job in banking was as a secretary,” she says. “And let’s just say I wasn’t really very good at my entry-level job. I knew banks had management-training programs and I kept thinking, ‘Why can’t I do that?’”

Early on, while pursuing her MBA from Southern Methodist University, Ms. Mooney laid the groundwork that would serve her well over the span of her career. By the time she was 30, she had become the youngest senior vice president of the largest bank in Texas. She went on to become president, Bank One (Ohio) in 1999 before taking executive positions at Tennessee and North Louisiana Banking Group, AmSouth Bancorp (now Regions Financial Corp), and Key Community Bank. By 2011 she was chair and CEO of KeyCorp.

When Ms. Mooney began her career, there was not a lot of diversity in management and leadership in the banking industry. “One thing I always say is, ‘when you walk into a room and you’re the only woman … sit down and act like you belong. And never lead with your differences; always seek the common ground.’ I felt it was not just my opportunity to fit in, but my obligation, in the best sense of the word, to square my shoulders and take my seat at the table.”

Ms. Mooney retired from KeyCorp (and primary subsidiary KeyBank) in 2020. She holds the distinction of being the first female CEO of a Top 20 U.S. bank and was named the Most Powerful Woman in Banking in 2013, 2014 and 2015 and ultimately Banker of the Year in 2017 by American Banker. She is credited with leading KeyCorp through an economic crisis that crushed its competitors. Through an ambitious acquisition, she increased KeyCorp’s size by 40%, making it the 13th largest bank in the U.S., and nearly doubling the value of its stock.

Ms. Mooney embraced and enhanced the Key4Women initiative that lends money to women-owned businesses, offers financial advice, and fosters networking and mentoring opportunities. She also increased KeyBank’s Business Boost & Build Program by securing a $24 million grant for JumpStart Inc. The program transforms neighborhoods through support of small businesses and job creation.

KeyCorp is the only national bank with 10 “outstanding” ratings under the Community Reinvestment Act. “This measures our products, services to and impacts on minorities and underserved parts of our communities,” Ms. Mooney explains. “In 2016, we announced a $16.5 billion, five-year commitment to affordable housing, home lending, and small business start-ups for the underserved. It was transformative philanthropy at a time no one was doing it.”

Ms. Mooney is chair of Cleveland Clinic Board of Directors and has served in leadership roles for the Cleveland Orchestra/Musical Arts Association, Greater Cleveland Partnership, ideastream, Cleveland Neighborhood Progress, Say Yes to Education and United Way of Greater Cleveland, among myriad other local nonprofits. In addition, she is on two national nonprofit boards and is a trustee of The Brookings Institute and The Conference Board.

In addition to her philanthropy and continued leadership in the community, Ms. Mooney serves on three for-profit boards – Accenture, AT&T and The Ford Motor Company.

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Margaret Wong traveled from Hong Kong to the U.S. in August 1969 at the height of the Vietnam conflict. She and her younger sister each carried two suitcases and student visas that allowed them to enroll at an all-girls’ Catholic junior college in Iowa. The sisters then attended Western Illinois University. Ms. Wong followed that with law school at the State University of New York Buffalo.

Despite her newly-minted status as a lawyer, finding work – and keeping it – was a struggle. “There were many forces at work. I was foreign born. A woman. Asian. Employers at the time were not eager to hire women, let alone Asian women. So eventually I hung out my own shingle, renting an office with one desk.”

It was a good move. Today Margaret W. Wong & Associates, LLC, has more than 60 employees working in nine offices in eight states. Ms. Wong is founder and managing partner of the award-winning immigration and nationality law firm.

But that hasn’t been Ms. Wong’s only business venture. In the early 1980s, Ms. Wong and her family opened Pearl of the Orient restaurant “to fill the void of really good Chinese food.” Everyone in the family worked there, herself included. After a few successful years in Shaker Heights, she helped her brother open a second restaurant in Rocky River; that popular location closed in the summer of 2021 after more than 35 years.

Ms. Wong also assisted her husband, Kam Hon Chan, with his thriving pharmacy business.

Over the years, the firm has had a number of precedent-setting cases, and in the past year had several cases before the United States Supreme Court.

“The fight for social justice is long,” she says. “The enjoyable part is knowing you are fighting for a just cause … and when it’s finally recognized as such, you can celebrate.”

Ms. Wong points out that the Cleveland Asian community started in the late 1800s, so she considers herself a relative newcomer. “But both my job and family have made me a senior statesperson, both locally and nationally,” she acknowledges. With that comes responsibility.

Ms. Wong has volunteered her time and resources to diverse organizations, including American Immigration Lawyers Association, Asian American Bar Association of Ohio, Case Western Reserve University School of Law, Cleveland Public Library Foundation, Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio and the University at Buffalo, where Ms. Wong has endowed 15 scholarships and co-chaired a successful $30 million capital campaign. She also created a $100,000 scholarship at Cuyahoga Community College (from which she received an honorary degree) and in 2011 established the Margaret W. Wong Endowed Forum on Foreign Born Individuals of Distinction at the City Club of Cleveland. She is a life member of both the Eighth Judicial District Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Ms. Wong and Mr. Chan, who died in 2014, have two adult children, Steven and Allison. Ms. Wong’s children work in her law firm, along with her sister and her sister’s sons.

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Born in Rochester, New York, Thomas W. Adler moved to Shaker Heights with his family in 1952 at age 12. Severe early childhood asthma caused him to miss a lot of school and fall behind academically. “As a result, I suffered from low self-esteem when I was young,” he recalls. But that all began to change when he was introduced to swimming at a summer camp and he excelled at it.

Once in high school he set Shaker pool and District records. That experience gave him confidence and helped get him get accepted into the University of Wisconsin. It was also at Shaker Heights High School that he met his wife of 57 years, Joanie. They married shortly after graduation from college. The two have three children and two grandchildren.

“The rough start as a kid was probably a source of some of the drive I had later,” Mr. Adler says. “I think I had to prove to myself that I could accomplish things of my own.” He also was highly motivated by his parents, particularly his father, a leader in the men’s apparel industry.

By his mid-30s, Mr. Adler was Chairman of the Executive Committee of a large Cleveland commercial real estate firm. At age 38, he co-founded his own company that specialized in selling investment-grade properties to pension funds. When the firm was bought in 1986 by San Francisco-based Grubb & Ellis, he was invited to serve on the management committee and start a new national division. At age 50, he left and founded a consulting firm, Cleveland Real Estate Partners.

Mr. Adler sold his interest in that company to his younger partners and became a full-time volunteer and philanthropist by the age of 60. In 1999, he helped start what is now known as Playhouse Square Real Estate Services. In 2006, he became Board Chair of Playhouse Square Foundation. His work at Playhouse Square, pro bono from the start, led Mr. Adler to get involved with Cleveland State University, which would later move its Theatre and Dance program, as well as its School of Film and Media Arts, to Playhouse Square. As a trustee of CSU, Mr. Adler helped lead the school’s first campaign, which raised over $100 million, and has been instrumental in the successful effort to engage the business community more with CSU.

Mr. Adler also is heavily involved in the American Jewish Committee (Life Trustee), the Jewish Federation of Cleveland (Trustee Emeritus and recipient of its Eisenman Award), the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio (Life Director and recipient of its Humanitarian Award), United Way of Greater Cleveland (Director and recipient of its Volunteer of the Year Award), University Hospitals (Director), Downtown Cleveland Alliance (Director Emeritus), Shaker Heights and its schools, and more.

In 2015 Mr. Adler was named one of the most connected powerbrokers in Northeast Ohio by Crain’s Cleveland Business.

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As a child, Jeanette Grasselli Brown grew up reading the Popular Mechanics magazines that her father would leave around the house. The two would “spend hours looking up at the black sky, trying to challenge each other with what the stars could be.” Her father was not surprised when young Jenny Gecsy gravitated toward a STEM curriculum and career – decades before STEM was part of the national conversation. Her mother, on the other hand, needed time to get used to the idea.

“Women’s careers, then, were most often in nursing, teaching or administrative work,” Dr. Grasselli Brown allows. “My mother thought I would go the usual route of being a mother and homemaker – which was highly respected and wonderful, and I aspired to that as well – but I certainly never thought there would be a conflict between being a scientist and having a home and being close to family and friends.”

The only daughter of Hungarian Catholic immigrants, Dr. Grasselli Brown grew up in Cleveland’s Hungarian neighborhood near Buckeye Road.

After graduation from John Adams High School, she attended Ohio University, where she graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1950. She holds a master’s degree from what is now Case Western Reserve University and has been awarded 13 honorary doctorate degrees and an executive management certification from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Grasselli Brown’s career with BP and predecessor The Standard Oil Company (Ohio) spanned nearly 40 years. She worked first in various research positions before moving into management.

She retired as director of corporate research, analytical and environmental sciences in 1989.

“I loved my research career, but I realized by moving into management I could help other women and other people around me,” she says. She was often the only woman in management meetings, which were composed of 80 of the global company’s top executives.

Within her field, Dr. Grasselli Brown is known as one of the foremost contributors to infrared and Raman spectroscopy – techniques used to identify molecular structure and ultimately solve a variety of complex problems.

She has authored 80 articles for scientific journals; writing, editing or co-editing nine books; launched a professional journal; served as the national president of the Society for Applied Spectroscopy; and routinely participated in scientific discussions across the country and the globe. These efforts have brought her innumerable awards, honors and distinctions.

Dr. Grasselli Brown served on the Ohio Board of Regents for 13 years, including two years as chair. Post-retirement, she also served on the boards of directors of six corporations and has been actively involved in more than 25 nonprofit organizations, including her current service on the boards of the Musical Arts Association/Cleveland Orchestra, Cleveland Clinic Foundation, Cleveland Hungarian Development Panel, and Phi Beta Kappa Society (Cleveland Association). She was founding chair of the research committee at Holden Arboretum and is a founding board member of the Great Lakes Museum Science Center.

One of Dr. Grasselli Brown’s priorities today is the Cleveland Water Alliance. She founded the organization in 2013 and heads its board.

Dr. Grasselli Brown is married to Dr. Glenn R. Brown and has two stepchildren and three grandchildren.

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A native of Watertown, New York, Toby Cosgrove was a self-described average student. He graduated from Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts before going onto medical school – the only one of 13 he applied to that accepted him – at the University of Virginia School of Medicine in Charlottesville.

Residency training was interrupted by the Vietnam War. Dr. Cosgrove worked in a hospital in Da Nang and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his work as chief of the U.S. Air Force Casualty Staging Flight; at age 28, he and his small team evacuated more than 22,000 wounded.

After returning to the States, Dr. Cosgrove completed his clinical training at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Children’s Hospital and Brook General Hospital in London.

Diagnosed with dyslexia in his 30s, Dr. Cosgrove says he chose surgery over other professions because it relied less on reading and writing and more on his dexterity. In a cardiac surgery career that spanned nearly 30 years, he earned an international reputation for expertise in valve repair.

Fourteen years after joining the Cleveland Clinic, Dr. Cosgrove in 1989 was named chairman of the Department of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery. After being named Cleveland Clinic President and CEO in 2004, succeeding Floyd “Fred” Loop, MD, Dr. Cosgrove stepped away from his surgical practice.

During Dr. Cosgrove’s tenure (2004-2017), the number of physician-scientists nearly doubled, from 1,800 to 3,400; patient visits increased from 2.8 to 7.1 million; the number of caregivers soared to 52,000; research funding grew to $260 million; and new construction was prolific.

“One of the reasons Cleveland Clinic is a success is because it’s in Cleveland,” Dr. Cosgrove says.

“Cleveland is a good filter. People are not coming here to go to the beach or to ski. They’re coming here to work,” he says. “So, when you recruit someone here, they are coming to participate.” And then “they inevitably fall in love with the city.”

One such recruit was Tom Mihaljevic, MD, who joined the hospital system the same year Dr. Cosgrove became CEO. In his first “State of the Clinic” address, Dr. Mihaljevic credited his successor with leading the Cleveland Clinic to astonishing heights, noting that in 2017 alone, Cleveland Clinic ran one of the largest graduate medical education and training programs; opened the $276 million, 377,000-square-foot Taussig Cancer Center; built new rehabilitation centers and urgent care facilities; logged thousands of telemedicine visits; and continued to increase its uncompensated care and community activity.

Author of a book (“The Cleveland Clinic Way”) and nearly 450 journal articles and book chapters, Dr. Cosgrove has filed 30 patents for surgical innovations. In July 2018 he was named executive adviser to Google’s Healthcare & Life Sciences team.

Dr. Cosgrove is married to lawyer Anita Cosgrove and has two daughters.

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Art J. Falco grew up in Painesville Ohio and earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Bowling Green State University (where he also met his wife Maryann). He began his career in the accounting department of the former Diamond Shamrock Corp. (a chemical, oil and gas company) in its Fairport Harbor and Chardon offices and also worked at Natural Impressions in Painesville.

In 1985 Mr. Falco joined Playhouse Square as finance director. In 1988 he was promoted to vice president of finance and administration. Three years later, he became president and CEO of Playhouse Square. He succeeded Larry Wilker, whom he cites as a mentor who taught him the theater business.

Mr. Falco held that position until his retirement in June 2019. “I saw an organization where there was a vision beyond the renovation of some theaters … It was more about being a catalyst for the development of the neighborhood,” he says.

It was under Mr. Falco’s leadership that Playhouse Square completed the world’s largest theater restoration project and expanded its business model to include real estate development.

With 11 stages and more than 1 million guests annually, Playhouse Square is the largest performing arts center outside of New York. Its 46,000 season subscribers make up the largest Broadway series season ticket holder base in the nation and its 2,000 volunteers surpasses other arts centers.

Those who know Mr. Falco knows he is quick to spread credit and praise around for the success of Playhouse Square. It’s a combination of the staff, theater-goers, volunteers and much more, he says. “At the end of the day, it’s been knowing what customers want and satisfying their needs.”

Also important to Mr. Falco and Playhouse Square are its many productive, long-lasting partnerships with a wide range of local businesses and educational and arts organizations. “There’s so much talent in this area. That’s what I appreciate,” he says.

Through its Real Estate Services arm, Playhouse Square owns most of its theaters – as well as more than 1 million square feet of real estate. And it manages another 1.5 million square feet of space on top of that. This unique business model allows Playhouse Square to earn more than 90% of its operating budget.

“What I’ve learned is the performing arts – all art – can change lives,” he says. “And it’s not just quality of life; theater increases confidence and self-awareness, exposes the participant and the audience member to myriad subjects they might not otherwise discover, and it just helps create a better, well-rounded person.”

Mr. Falco’s role has now changed to senior advisor for special projects to Playhouse Square through its completion (expected in 2020) of The Lumen, a 34-story, 318-unit apartment tower at Euclid Avenue and East 17th Street. He also continues to serve as an adviser and in board roles for the Cleveland Restoration Society, Destination Cleveland, Downtown Cleveland Alliance and Playhouse Square District Development Corporation.

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Bob Gries followed in his father’s footsteps to attend Yale University. But the Cleveland native returned to the city after graduating in 1951 to join the May Company, which his mother’s father had built into the largest department store chain in Ohio.

“I always knew it was my job to stay here and try to make some difference as a fifth-generation Clevelander,” he says.

Mr. Gries is fiercely proud of his lineage. A paternal great-great-grandfather, Simson Thorman, was the first Jewish settler in Cleveland, arriving in the early 1830s from a small town in Bavaria. He established the city’s first synagogue and was elected to City Council.

Paternal grandfather Rabbi Moses Gries was rabbi of Cleveland’s largest Reform temple and was instrumental in the founding of numerous Jewish and community organizations. Maternal grandfather Nathan Dauby was the builder of the May Company and a leading business and philanthropic leader.

Mr. Gries’s father, businessman and philanthropist Robert Hays Gries, was one of the founders of both the Cleveland Rams and the Cleveland Browns football teams.

The younger Gries has continued his family’s rich legacy in business, sports, politics, Jewish causes and philanthropy.

In the early 1960s he started a career in venture capitalism, an industry then in its infancy.

As treasurer of Carl Stokes’s mayoral campaign in 1967, he had a front row seat to history. He continued being politically active with such notable figures as the late George Voinovich and Michael R. White.

Since age 51, Mr. Gries – author of “Aging with Attitude” – has traveled to 45 countries on all seven continents in his pursuit of physical adventures such as long-distance running, mountain climbing, biking and high-altitude hiking.

At age 89 he still serves on the boards of American Jewish Committee, Boy Scouts of America, Cleveland Play House and Vocational Guidance Services – each for 50 years and counting – and a half dozen other organizations.

Mr Gries credits much of his success to his wife Sally Gries, with whom he remains active in the philanthropic landscape of Cleveland.

All but one of the sixth generation of the Gries family live in Cleveland and are finding ways to give back to the city. Six of the seven who make up the seventh generation have grown up in Cleveland. “I hope and expect some of them will settle here and carry on the family legacy,” he says.

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For more than 50 years Carole F. Hoover has built a career that has blended civil rights, support of Northeast Ohio’s businesses, civic leadership and philanthropy.

As a student at Tennessee State University, she was at the forefront of the civil rights movement. After graduation, she became a member of the executive leadership team of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. She served alongside her father, the Rev. Dr. Odie Hoover, Jr., then the pastor of Cleveland’s Olivet Institutional Baptist Church.

Ms. Hoover joined the Greater Cleveland Growth Association — now Greater Cleveland Partnership — in 1971 to lead its efforts to support minority-owned businesses. When she rose to the position of president and CEO of the organization in 1994, she became the first African-American woman in the country to lead a major chamber of commerce.

She also has been a part of many of the region’s most significant public-private partnerships and other civic efforts. In 1979, she became vice-chair of the city’s Operations Improvement Task Force, led by then-Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich, which elevated the city out of bankruptcy. She was part of the team that made the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex project and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame and Museum a reality. She helped to co-found the Greater Cleveland Roundtable, which was absorbed into the Greater Cleveland Partnership in 2004. In 2016 she served on the Cleveland 2016 Host Committee, Inc., responsible for attracting the 2016 Republican National Convention.

As a former executive committee member of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, and part of the Free South Africa campaign that coordinated Nelson Mandela’s first U.S. visit in 1990, Ms. Hoover has been active nationally in civil rights causes. No matter the cause, organization or campaign, she always provides support quietly.

“If you are doing it for the right reasons, you don’t need any credit,” she says. “I think of the dignity of individuals, and it’s all about what you give that can make them feel good, not make them feel like a victim in need of a lifeline.”

Ms. Hoover retired from the Greater Cleveland Growth Association in 2000. Today she manages the real estate and financial investment firm HooverMilstein, a partnership she struck in 1999 with New York financier and philanthropist Howard P. Milstein. She serves on the board of directors of Cleveland Clinic and remains involved in Cleveland’s business, civic and education communities.

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Born in Meridian, Mississippi, Bracy Lewis moved to Cleveland with his parents when he was 10 years old. He was the oldest of five boys.

Mr. Lewis credits both parents for his allegiant work ethic. His father worked during the day at J&L Steel and owned and operated a gas station on East 71st Street and Carnegie Avenue.

After graduating from Fenn College (now Cleveland State University) in 1963, the first in his family to earn a degree, he began working part-time at a friend’s CPA firm, then applied for a teller position at Quincy Savings & Loan. It was during a time when other banks weren’t hiring minorities and discriminatory lending practices, or “redlining,” was understood by many to be common practice.

“The work I did at Quincy was very satisfying because most banks weren’t making loans to African Americans or to minority churches,” says Mr. Lewis, who quickly rose from teller to loan officer to assistant vice president. “I could help African Americans get houses and make loans to churches, and also go out into the community and give talks to various groups of people and educate them about financial matters.”

Mr. Lewis moved from Quincy Bank to Euclid National Bank, where he started as an assistant cashier but advanced into leadership positions, thriving through two acquisitions. After tenures at Bank One – where he rose to senior vice president – and JPMorgan Chase, he retired in 2006 after clocking in almost 40 years.

The organizations he’s served include the Cleveland Restoration Society, Cleveland State University Foundation, Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, the Jane Hunter Foundation, Karamu House, the Phillis Wheatley Association, the Music School Settlement, Music and Art at Trinity Cathedral, the former Huron Road Hospital, and the Greater Cleveland Growth Association (now part of the Greater Cleveland Partnership).

At Eliza Bryant Village, the African American-founded long-term care facility, his contributions far surpass annual donations. He built a library, provided print and audio books, and recruited a landscaper friend to overhaul the grounds. He planted trees and donated benches. He encouraged others to make significant donations as well.

He is a board member of the Lake View Cemetery Association and has worked diligently to preserve the historic heritage of the East Cleveland Township Cemetery.

“I’m busier in retirement than I was when I was working,” the 82-year-old Mr. Lewis muses.

Throughout his life, Mr. Lewis has readily offered informal mentoring, whether it was sharing his financial expertise with people in drug recovery programs or spending time in a classroom.

He has received numerous honors and accolades for his good works – most notably, the President’s Volunteer Action Award from then President Bill Clinton, the “Lifetime Achiever” award from the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation, the Ohio Humanitarian Award for Leadership from then Governor George Voinovich, and a key to the city and a park named in his honor from then Mayor Mike White.

Mr. Lewis also was appointed chairman of a task force organized by Mayor Frank G. Jackson to oversee the development and implementation of a plan for the African American Cultural Garden. He held that position from 2007 to 2012. The first of the garden’s three pavilions was dedicated in 2016.

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The great-grandson of slaves, Robert P. Madison was born in 1923 in Cleveland. His family moved to Alabama, then South Carolina, then Washington, D.C. before returning to Cleveland, where Mr. Madison graduated from East Technical High School.

Initially enrolling in the School of Architecture at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Mr. Madison left college to enlist in the military during World War II. He was a recipient of the Purple Heart and five combat ribbons.

After a brief time studying at the University of Pisa in Italy, Mr. Madison returned to the United States. He enrolled in the Cleveland School of Architecture at what is now Case Western Reserve University. He earned a bachelor’s degree in 1948 and worked briefly before enrolling at Harvard University, where he completed a master’s degree in architecture.

While teaching at Howard University in Washington, D.C., Mr. Madison was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship at L’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He came back to Cleveland and, in 1954, founded RPMI International with two of his brothers. The company would grow to become one of the largest minority-owned architectural and engineering firms in the United States.

Mr. Madison has designed hundreds of spaces around the globe, and he helped shape the Greater Cleveland community with his award-winning designs. Medical spaces, schools and churches, particularly in African American communities, has been especially gratifying for Mr. Madison. “Medical buildings were always very compelling because designing them meant creating spaces where doctors could (save) people’s lives,” he says in his memoir, Designing Victory (Act 3 Publishing, 2019).

The design contributions of Mr. Madison, who in 1974 was inducted into the prestigious College of Fellows of the American Institute of Architects (and later served as that organization’s Chairman of the Jury of Fellows), can be seen throughout Cleveland at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, the FirstEnergy Stadium, the Gill and Tommy LiPuma Center for Creative Arts at Cuyahoga Community College, the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority HealthLine, the Great Lakes Science Center, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, the Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel and the Cleveland Public Library.

His community service includes board positions with the Cleveland Opera, the Cleveland Orchestra, CWRU, and the Cleveland Museum of Art, among others. He was involved in the NAACP, Urban League, Cleveland State University and Boys & Girls Clubs. And he founded the Robert P. Madison Scholarship for Architecture for African Americans who want to study architecture.

Mr. Madison has two daughters. His wife of 63 years, Leatrice, died in 2012.

Mr. Madison retired in 2016. In 2018, Deeds Not Words, a documentary about Mr. Madison, screened at the DC Black Film Festival and Harlem International Film Festival before being shown in September to a hometown audience at the Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival.

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“I don’t know where she got the money that she gave to charity. In a home with not enough money to make it, to give money to others is a noble act,” says Mr. Mandel. “I saw that, I grew up with it. It was like breathing.”

Although he enrolled at Adelbert College (part of what became Case Western Reserve University/CWRU) after high school, Mr. Mandel dropped out in 1940 to go into business with his two brothers. He was just 19 years old when the trio purchased their uncle’s small automotive shop for $900.

Those early experiences shaped Mr. Mandel’s eventual business success and civic impact. Today, Mr. Mandel is chairman and CEO of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation and chairman and CEO of Parkwood LLC, a private trust company.

The Mandel brothers grew their storefront business into Premier Industrial Corp., a global distributor of electrical, maintenance and industrial parts. Mr. Mandel retired as the company’s chairman and CEO in 1996 when Premier was acquired by the British firm Farnell Electronics for $2.8 billion.

The accumulated wealth of the Mandel brothers over those years has supported charitable work in nearly every sector of Northeast Ohio. Recipients have included Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Neighborhood Progress and the Jewish Federation of Cleveland.

For nearly 60 years, Mr. Mandel’s civic volunteerism has helped to shape Cleveland. He served a founding role in several non-profit institutions and was a co-founder of Cleveland Tomorrow (now the Greater Cleveland Partnership), a partnership of 50 of Cleveland’s top CEOs working on economic development initiatives.

In 2013, Mr. Mandel returned to CWRU to complete his coursework. He received his bachelor’s degree in chemistry with a minor in social work.

Mr. Mandel and his wife Barbara were married for 70 years.

Mr. Mandel passed away on October 16, 2019. He was 98.
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Sam Miller worked his way through Adelbert College (Case Western Reserve University) with the help of scholarships, then earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1942 to 1946. Shortly after marrying Ruth Ratner, daughter of Leonard Ratner, Mr. Miller joined Forest City Materials, the Ratner family business, in 1947.

Now 96 and co-chairman emeritus of Forest City Realty Trust, Mr. Miller has made generosity a central part of his life and 70-year career as a result of his humble beginnings, the son of poor Eastern Europe immigrants.

Under the leadership of Mr. Miller and Albert Ratner, his brother-in-law, what began as a lumber and supply company has become a publicly-traded multi-billion dollar corporation that owns, develops and manages residential and commercial properties across the country.

Mr. Miller is widely credited with spearheading this move into home construction, and, reflecting on his career in 2007, said that he was most proud of the communities he developed in Brook Park, Parma and Parma Heights in the mid-1950s: “I made them into the fastest-growing cities in the United States for many years.”

As it grew, Forest City continued its expansion into real estate development, and today has 32 retail centers, 36 office buildings and 115 apartment buildings in its national portfolio.

For decades, Mr. Miller has been a man at the center of civic and business leadership in Northeast Ohio. He also has been an avid supporter of the Jewish community. He is a former board member and is an honorary lifetime member of the Jewish Community Federation of Cleveland, and served on the board of the Cleveland Jewish Welfare Fund. He also has extended his civic and philanthropic resources to Catholic organizations and the National Conference of Christians and Jews.

“I’m very passionate about anything I do,” Mr. Miller told Smart Business magazine in 2003. “My involvement with the Catholic church, my involvement with the state of Israel. I just don’t join organizations to get my name on the board. That is worthless, and you do a grave injustice to the organization.”

Mr. Miller has been honored with induction into the Cleveland International Hall of Fame and the Northeast Ohio Business Hall of Fame, and with lifetime achievement awards from the Catholic Diocese of Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland Peace Officers Memorial Society. He earned the Founder’s Award from the Anti-Defamation League.

The Sam H. and Maria Miller Foundation has made gifts to support causes in the areas of education, the arts, health, children, social services and Jewish and Catholic organizations. Among its major gifts include support to Cleveland Clinic, where the Maria and Sam Miller Professional Excellence Awards have been established.
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Born in Akron and the eldest of eight children, Steve Minter credits his parents, Lawrence and Dorothy Minter, and his Midwestern upbringing, for much of the good he’s been able to do for and with his neighbors.

“My dad was a very skilled laborer, and ultimately became the first African-American county superintendent appointed by the Ohio Department of Transportation,” Mr. Minter says. “He set a very good example. But I was also highly influenced by my mother.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Baldwin-Wallace College and later would complete a master’s degree in social administration from the Mandel School at Case Western Reserve University (CWRU).

During the 1970s he served as the commissioner of public welfare for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And in 1980 he assumed the role of the first undersecretary for the U.S. Department of Education during President Jimmy Carter’s administration.

Otherwise, Mr. Minter has resided and worked in and around Cleveland his entire life, beginning his career as a caseworker at the Cuyahoga County Welfare Department (dashing early hopes of becoming a high school coach), and rising to director.

In 1984, after nearly a decade as a program officer and associate director of the Cleveland Foundation, Mr. Minter became the organization’s director. He served there until his retirement in 2003.

“It’s not to say it wasn’t hard and frustrating at times,” he admits, “but to really be engaged, to help turn around the Cleveland public schools, to effectively deal with the desegregation of the schools, to make progress with early childhood education, to see Lexington Village and Beacon Place [part of the Hough neighborhood revitalization] come to fruition . . .

“I had the opportunity to be a participant. I was able to work with governors, mayors (and) county commissioners, as well as private sector officials in trying to advance Cleveland. What a privilege.”

In September 2003, he was appointed executive-in-residence and a fellow at the Center for Nonprofit Policy & Practice in the Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs at Cleveland State University. He also served as interim vice president for university advancement and executive director of the CSU Foundation.

Among his many accomplishments and honors, Mr. Minter takes joy in being the father of three accomplished daughters and, in 1991, the co-recipient of the Humanitarian Award from the Diversity Center of Northeast Ohio with his late wife, Dolores (Dolly) Minter.

Mal Mixon, the retired CEO of Invacare, is a self-described “country boy.” Raised in a rural town in Oklahoma, he grew up hunting quail. He also was a musician, taking part in piano competitions, marching with fellow trumpeters in the Oklahoma All-State Band and performing with the Fort Smith Symphony in Arkansas. A standout high school pitcher, he turned down an offer to play minor league baseball. Instead, he headed to Harvard College.

It was there that Mr. Mixon met his wife, Barbara, a Shaker Heights native and a student at nearby Wellesley College. The two were married in 1962, immediately after graduation and just before he would begin his four-year commission in the U.S. Marine Corps as a second lieutenant. Deployed to Vietnam, Mr. Mixon served as an aerial observer until his honorable discharge in 1966. He returned to Harvard and earned his MBA.

In 1968 the Mixons moved to Cleveland, where he has spent a lifetime helping other entrepreneurs. In the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Mayor Carl Stokes called upon the Harvard Business Club to help ease some of the tension and provide support to minority-run businesses. It was a call that Mixon would continue to answer throughout his life, later creating a minority fund and raised $30 million from banks and companies to help nurture budding African American entrepreneurs who lacked investors. He endowed a chair in entrepreneurial studies at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and guest-lectured there. He made a significant gift to Case Western Reserve’s “Sears think[box],” a building that houses inventors and entrepreneurs. While on the board of Cleveland Tomorrow, he helped start its venture capital firm Primus Venture Capital Inc. He also helped create BioEnterprise Corp. and launch MCM Capital Partners.

“I never did anything in my life where I didn’t want to be the best,” Mr. Mixon asserts. The desire to succeed on his own terms is what drove Mr. Mixon to pursue a leveraged buyout of Invacare in 1979 at the age of 39 – with a mere $10,000 in the bank. Then the vice president of marketing at Technicare, the Cleveland-based division of Johnson & Johnson that operated the subsidiary, Mr. Mixon raised $1.5 million and borrowed another $4.3 million. The company employed 350 people in three Ohio plants and posted annual sales of $19 million.

As Invacare’s CEO, Mr. Mixon was in tune with his customers’ needs. “I became very emotionally involved in my customers’ problems,” he says. “They wanted color and styling and they wanted to be independent.” As he learned more about his customers, Mr. Mixon got involved in their causes – personally working on, for example, the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990.

When Mr. Mixon retired in 2015, the company had more than 4,000 employees in 80 countries, with $1.7 billion in sales. Invacare had become a world leader not only in wheelchairs, but in the distribution of home health care products.

Mr. Mixon is chairman emeritus of Cleveland Clinic and was board chair at the Cleveland Institute of Music (CIM). Mr. Mixon also sat on the boards of Lamson & Sessions, The Sherwin-Williams Co. and Park-Ohio Holdings Corp.

The Mixons have two children and six grandchildren.

Mr. Mixon passed away on November 30, 2020. He was 80.

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Though Rev. Moss retired in 2008 as senior pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland, he still travels the country speaking and preaching, and he serves as the church’s pastor emeritus.

Rev. Moss earned a bachelor’s degree from Morehouse College and a Master of Divinity degree from Morehouse School of Religion Interdenominational Theological Center. He became a pastor in 1954 and would later earn his Doctor of Ministry degree from the United Theological Seminary in Dayton.

Under the leadership of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. – a close friend – Rev. Moss served as regional director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference while living in Cincinnati.

In 1975 Rev. Moss became lead pastor of Olivet, established in 1931 in Cleveland’s Fairfax neighborhood.

“The role of a church is to minister to the whole person, the whole community, without regard to religious affiliation, color or economic circumstance. The spirit of the church ought to be inclusive,” Rev. Moss says. “The church ought to be the leading institution in the community fighting for justice and liberation through love and direct action.”

Locally, Rev. Moss’ civic involvement has included board positions at the Cleveland Foundation and the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood. He also has held national board positions at his alma mater, Morehouse College, and at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

Among his many honors include the Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth Humanitarian Award at the 2007 Ohio State of the State Conference; being selected by President Barack Obama for the 25-member White House Advisory Council on Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships in 2009; and induction into the Ohio Civil Rights Hall of Fame in 2012.

Rev. Moss and his wife Edwina were married 50 years ago by Rev. King. Of the couple’s three children, a son – the Rev. Dr. Otis Moss III, who leads Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago – has followed in his father’s chosen vocation. The Mosses also have five grandchildren (one of whom is deceased) and two great-grandchildren.
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Sandra Pianalto was in fifth grade when she knew she wanted to be a public servant.

“I was learning about our American government at an early age and I found it fascinating,” says Ms. Pianalto, who immigrated to the U.S. from Italy with her parents when she was five years old. “I knew that I was passionate about public service and wanted to make a career out of it.”

After graduating from the University of Akron with a bachelor’s degree in economics, she applied for, and was accepted to, a position as a research assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

In 1993, Ms. Pianalto was named vice president and chief operating officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. She would remain there for the remainder of her 38-year career with the Federal Reserve.

As president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Ms. Pianalto developed a reputation as a leader who believed in partnering with business and civic organizations to benefit the local economy. She was at the helm of the Bank during the economic crisis of 2008, a time when she redoubled her efforts to find ways that the Federal Reserve could assist in economic recovery and growth.

In addition to her professional achievements, Ms. Pianalto is a life director of the United Way and is the first female board chair of University Hospitals.

Ms. Pianalto recalls advice she received from one of her mentors, to step outside of her comfort zone and take on more responsibilities. She gives the same advice to the next generation of young leaders: “Be willing to raise your hand for tough assignments. That’s when you reap the real rewards.”

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Dick Pogue first joined the law firm Jones, Day, Cockley & Reavis in 1957. New to Cleveland, he and his wife Pat planned to stay for a few years before moving on to a larger city. They quickly fell in love with the city and its people.

Thus began a nearly 60-year career filled with professional achievement. Mr. Pogue was largely responsible for the law firm’s expansion into international markets, which he made his mission after becoming managing partner in 1984. He currently is a full-time senior adviser at the firm, now called Jones Day.

Mr. Pogue began his extensive involvement in Northeast Ohio in 1961, shortly after becoming a partner in the firm. He played a role in many of the most meaningful civic accomplishments in Cleveland’s history. He was a principal organizer of the Regional Business Council in 1997, which was a precursor to the economic development organization Team NEO. He was chairman of the board for the Cleveland Foundation during a pivotal time in the 1980s when the Foundation took action to successfully save Playhouse Square.

Mr. Pogue’s long list of community engagement also includes roles at or board membership with the University of Akron, University Hospitals, Team NEO, Gordon Square Arts District, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Northeast Ohio Council on Higher Education (NOCHE), and Business Volunteers Unlimited, the latter of which he is a founder and chairman emeritus.

Mr. Pogue earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University and a law degree from the University of Michigan.

The Pogues, who have been married for 62 years, have three children and eight grandchildren.

“It’s a very fulfilling feeling to get involved in these civic organizations,” Mr. Pogue says. “I think leaders in this community have an obligation to be involved in the civic world. That’s one of the great things about Cleveland — it’s a sizeable city, but it’s one that’s small enough that taking on a leadership role can really make a difference.”

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Albert Ratner wasn’t sure college was the right choice for him when he completed his enlistment in the U.S. Army in 1948. Instead, he wanted to head straight into the family business, Forest City Materials, which was founded by his father Leonard Ratner, uncles Charlie and Max and aunt Fannye — four of nine children from a Polish immigrant family — as a lumber and building materials company in the 1920’s. The younger Ratner had spent his childhood helping out around the lumberyard, and felt sure that there wasn’t anything more he could learn in college.

So to encourage his son to pursue a degree, Mr. Ratner’s father identified the forestry program at Michigan State University, where his son could study lumber merchandising. He would later jokingly accuse his father of starting the school, since he had never heard of such a program. His father’s urging was successful; Mr. Ratner earned his degree in forestry, entered the family business upon graduation in 1951, and started his 66-year career at Forest City and is presently co-chairman emeritus.

“Over time I have seen that that it wouldn’t have mattered what profession or occupation I had chosen, my life wouldn’t have been much different,” Mr. Ratner reflects today. “Because it wasn’t the job I was doing, it was the way I was doing the job. Whatever occupation, we are still partners in communal and family life. We live by our principals and do things that follow our beliefs.”

Mr. Ratner’s parents were his early role models who set him on a path to business success. Early on, Leonard Ratner gave his son a great deal of responsibility and included him in meetings and business decisions. “He said, I want you to make your mistakes while I’m still alive and can help,” Mr. Ratner recalls. “That set my lifestyle of working with other people. The most important thing I can do is help others empower themselves as opposed to being directed as to what they should do.”

He spent his career working alongside Sam Miller, his co-chairman emeritus, as Forest City grew from a lumber supply company to a construction company to a home improvement retailer to a real estate development company. Forest City spearheaded the redevelopment of the Halle Building, which it purchased in 1982, and Tower City, which opened in 1990. It became publicly-traded in 1960, a $8.2 billion corporation that develops, owns and manages residential and commercial properties across the country. Its national portfolio now includes 32 retail centers, 36 office buildings and 115 apartment buildings.

In his civic life, Mr. Ratner was a primary architect of Global Cleveland, an initiative launched in 2011 that seeks to attract, welcome and integrate immigrants and refugees into the Cleveland workforce and community. He is a driver of the Center for Population Dynamics. He is also a member of the Group Plan Commission, the entity that envisioned the recent revitalization of downtown public spaces and facilities such as Public Square and the Global Center for Health Innovation. Mr. Ratner has been active in the Cleveland Plan to transform the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, the revitalization of the Gordon Square Arts District, Karamu House and Ohio’s Third Frontier Advisory Board. He has also driven Forest City’s investments into the Slavic Village Restoration Project. Mr. Ratner is involved with the entire Ratner family in many philanthropies and through the Albert B. and Audrey G. Ratner Family Foundation, which has supported causes in the areas of art, education, health care, poverty, the Jewish community and the general community.

Mr. Ratner’s Jewish faith has heavily influenced his approach to leadership. Over the years, he has supported such organizations as the Jewish Federation of Cleveland, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage and the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. One philosophy that guides Mr. Ratner is the concept of tikkun olam, which translates into “repairing the world” in Hebrew. “It is a difficult challenge and it is not possible to do but it does not give us the right to desist from trying,” he says. “We cannot save the world, but we have to try.” Another Jewish tradition says: “If you save one life, it’s as if you save the world. None of us by ourselves can save a life but we can by working with the community.”

Reflecting on Cleveland’s heritage, Mr. Ratner says he’s never found another city in country that can match the dedication of its civic, business and philanthropic leaders as he sees in Cleveland. “To me it’s a community,” he says. “My mother taught my sister and me that there’s no limit to what you can get done when you don’t care who gets the credit. It’s the collectivism that makes a difference.”

Relationships are how they built Forest City’s successful business, he says, and it’s also the key to making a civic and philanthropic community impact. “When someone comes to me with a problem, the way that I resolve it is to turn to my Rolodex and call someone to help,” he says. “The truth is, I am my Rolodex.”

But any discussion of life success with Mr. Ratner starts with family. “You lead a family life, a community life and a business life,” he says his mother taught his sister and him. “Family is the single most important thing because when things are bad in your family, it’s very hard to function. If things are good with your family and other people’s families, you can have a great community. If you have a great family in a great community, you have a great business.” Mr. Ratner was married 26 years to his late wife Faye, and 37 to his current wife, Audrey. With their combined families, they have five children, 14 grandchildren and five great grandchildren.

When his children were young, his daughter Deborah once called him at work in tears that her doll had broken Deborah’s fingernail. He set aside what he was doing to take the call, and established a rule that he still follows today — whenever a member of his family calls, he always takes it. It’s a rule Deborah Ratner Salzberg and Brian Ratner still adhere to with their own families.

As he gets ready to celebrate his 90th birthday later this year, Ratner still shows up for work at his office in Terminal Tower every day, although, “I have never looked at what I was doing as work. I’m enjoying it too much,” he says. “I have a lot of good days in which good things happen, but there are no days when the things I hope to accomplish I accomplish. I have the choice of being unhappy with myself or understanding that’s what life is.”

“There’s a Jewish tradition that you stand on the shoulders of giants. It’s what comes before you that allows you to take the next step. Part of life is learning the lessons of the people who came before you and adding what you can.”

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Barbara S. Robinson’s parents, both native Clevelanders, were highly engaged citizens, as well as music and art aficionados. Her father, an accountant by profession, was a violinist and violist. “I went along and sat for my father’s rehearsals with the Cleveland Philharmonic,” Ms. Robinson says. “And he used to have many of his friends gather at our house to play chamber music. Music was just part of my life.”

Ms. Robinson began studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music at age 3 ½, eventually learning to play the violin, flute, and piano.

Both her parents were very active volunteers in the community. “My parents taught me at an early age that my ideas could be accepted.” She credits them for her reputation as a conversation leader, consensus builder and activist.

Ms. Robinson decided against pursuing a career as a professional musician. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wellesley College with degrees in philosophy and psychology. As an undergraduate, she performed as a piano soloist with the orchestras of the Boston Pops and New England Conservatory of Music. She earned her MBA from Radcliffe College, part of a of a small group of women invited to participate in the Harvard Program in Business Administration.

After college, she met and married Larry Robinson and started a family in Chicago. (The two were married for 50 years until Larry’s death in 2003.) Ms. Robinson was a business consultant to new ventures and a piano recitalist. When the young family returned to Cleveland, she left her full-time consulting work behind and began her full-time-plus volunteer career.

She became aware that in Cleveland “there wasn’t much music education available to young children in the public schools.” She knew of groups in Philadelphia and New York forming something called Young Audiences. So, she set out to bring that concept to Cleveland. Not only was she the founder and chair, she would go on to serve as vice president and assistant treasurer of the National Board of Young Audiences, Inc.

Ms. Robinson also helped bring in funding for and organizing the Cleveland Ballet. She served as chair of the Ohio Arts Council. As chair of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, she testified before Congress to prevent the National Endowment for the Arts from being abolished. She also co-chaired the Cuyahoga County Arts & Culture Action Committee to promote passage of Issue 18, aka the “cigarette tax,” in 2016 renewed as Issue 8. Her volunteer service also includes leadership positions with the Musical Arts Association (the Cleveland Orchestra’s governing board), the Cleveland Chamber Music Society, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Arts Midwest, Leadership Cleveland, University Hospitals, the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage, and more.

In 1999 Ms. Robinson was elected to sit on the Harvard Board of Overseers, which would be involved in bringing in a new president of the university.

Ms. Robinson has three children and six grandchildren.

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Jerry Sue Thornton, PhD, grew up in a small farm community in Kentucky, the daughter of a union coal miner and domestic worker. Following high school, she went to Murray State University in Murray, Kentucky, where she earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees.

“I always loved learning,” she recalled. “Teaching is what I always wanted to do. My heart is in the classroom.”

After teaching for a decade at the sixth-grade, high school and college levels, Dr. Thornton accepted several administrative roles, including dean of arts and sciences at Triton College in Illinois and president of Lakewood Community College (now Century College) in Minnesota.

“I realized I could shape policies and procedures within school districts and institutions and influence the education of many more students in a leadership role,” says Dr. Thornton, who earned her doctorate in educational administration at The University of Texas at Austin.

In 1992, Dr. Thornton moved to Northeast Ohio to accept the position as president of Cuyahoga Community College.

“I didn’t know anything about Cleveland when I was offered the position here,” she admits. “But Cleveland made me realize quickly how much I like urban environments. I like the energy of cities, the grittiness of cities, the people who reside in cities . . . I like resolving issues that matter in cities.”

Under Dr. Thornton’s leadership, Tri-C became an economic force in the region, employing more than 3,000 faculty and staff and adding more than $115 million in additional labor and non-labor income. In addition:

• Enrollment grew 40 percent – from 23,000 students on three campuses to more than 32,000 students on four campuses.
• More than 20,000 people enrolled in workforce training programs at Tri-C’s Corporate College, Unified Technology Center (now Manufacturing Technology Center), and Advanced Technology Training Center.
• Construction and renovation projects totaled $300 million. Voters supported five countywide ballot issues.
• A student scholarship endowment grew from $1.3 million to more than $38 million. Further, the college maintained the second-lowest tuition in the state, and the curriculum grew to more than 1,000 credit courses in more than 140 career and technical programs.

A year after retiring from Tri-C in 2012, Dr. Thornton founded Dream Catchers Educational Consulting Services, a company that coaches new college presidents.

Dr. Thornton has provided leadership to and supported activities of more than a dozen organizations and events in Cleveland, including the United Way of Greater Cleveland, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Playhouse Square, The MetroHealth System, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Cuyahoga Community College Foundation. She and her husband Walter Thornton enjoy taking part in Cleveland’s many cultural activities.

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“My parents were first generation Americans who struggled hard,” Sen. Voinovich says. “They underscored that as citizens of the United States we had an obligation to give back to our community.”

At Collinwood High School, Sen. Voinovich told classmates he would become mayor of Cleveland. At Ohio University, where he served as student body president before going on to law school at Ohio State University, Sen. Voinovich went one step further, announcing he would one day be governor.

By the time Sen. Voinovich campaigned to become Cleveland’s mayor, he had already served as a member of the Ohio House of Representatives (1967-1971), Cuyahoga County Auditor (1971-1976), Cuyahoga County Board of Commissions member (1977-1978) and lieutenant governor (1978-1979).

Sen. Voinovich was elected mayor in 1979, and served from 1980 to 1989. He became the first big-city mayor to incorporate public/private partnerships into municipal governance. He was an early proponent of Cleveland’s waterfront development, supporting the creation of the North Coast Harbor, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Great Lakes Science Center (Voinovich Bicentennial Park is named in his honor).

He also enticed major corporations to open downtown Cleveland offices and helped lay the groundwork for the Gateway Sports District.

“I have always said what I’m really proud about is not so much the physical infrastructure of the city but its civic and human infrastructure,” he says.

As governor of Ohio (1991-1998), and later a member of the U.S. Senate (1999-2011), Sen. Voinovich continued to promote the merits of collaboration between public agencies and the private sector, and he worked to keep a tight rein on government spending. In 1995, he was named public official of the year by the magazine GOVERNING, for his many accomplishments.

After retiring from the senate in 2011, Sen. Voinovich moved back to Collinwood, to the same home where he and his wife Janet raised their four children.

But he has not retreated from causes close to his heart, including raising awareness on the national debt and writing a book on public/private partnerships.

“I tell people that just because I’m retired doesn’t mean I should stop using what God has given me to continue making a contribution in people’s lives,” he says.

Sen. Voinovich passed away on June 12, 2016. He was 79.
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After earning a master’s degree in public administration, education and urban governance from The Ohio State University, Michael White got his first job in the administration of Columbus Mayor Tom Moody. At age 22, he was in charge of creating an urban homesteading program that sold homes for $1 to encourage families to move to and invest in the city. During his tenure, the program sold more than 70 Columbus homes.

After returning to his hometown of Cleveland in 1976, Mr. White started executing his strategy to reach City Hall, beginning with a job as an aide to then-City Council President George Forbes. Mr. White won a seat on City Council the following year, at only 27 years of age, becoming the youngest member of the council’s finance committee in the city’s history.

After a term representing the 21st district in the Ohio Senate, Mr. White launched his mayoral campaign with meager funds and a skeleton staff. On November 7, 1989, he won, beating Forbes, his former boss.

“I remember looking out at the crowd of Cleveland residents, black and white, and I remember reflecting on how many children were there,” says Mr. White of his inauguration day. “I remember how they looked at me as a symbol of what could be. It speaks to the powerful responsibility of being the kind of leader people want to follow.”

During his three terms, Mayor White presided over a comeback era for Cleveland, a time of significant downtown development such as the Gateway Sports and Entertainment Complex, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and the Great Lakes Science Center. He secured federal funds for Empowerment Zones on Cleveland’s East Side. He created the Mayoral Commission on School Governance to address the crisis in the Cleveland Metropolitan School District, which led to the appointment of a CEO to oversee its renewal. He spearheaded the project to expand Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. He helped the city to preserve the Cleveland Browns intellectual property when the team left in 1995, restoring the brand with an expansion team in 1999.

When his final term ended in 2001, Mayor White retired from public service. He and his wife of 20 years, JoAnn, live in Newcomerstown, where they operate Seven Pines Alpaca Farm, Yellow Butterfly Winery and a foundation that rescues horses and rehabilitates them for adoption.

Mayor White still spends time in Cleveland every week as program director for the Neighborhood Leadership Development Program, which is part of the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation.

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