A key component of the Cleveland Plan for Transforming Schools is helping families choose the right school. Neighborhood ambassadors are charged with informing the community about school choices.

JumpStart's inaugural Startup Scaleup offered talks, networking and resources in a day-long event at Gordon Square.

Mel McGee has been a computer programmer and teacher for the past 20 years. Now, as CEO of We Can Code IT, McGee and community outreach director Shana Mysko are holding coding boot camps that are targeted at getting women and minorities careers in IT fields. The boot camps are held in their new offices at LaunchHouse.

“There will be one million unfilled jobs in IT by 2020,” explains McGee. “It’s a very in-demand industry and it continue to grow. Our whole economy is becoming IT based. There’s such a lack of diversity in IT. Employers would like to have more diversity.”
 
We Can Code IT held its first boot camp in March, and has partnered with several area employers, such as Hyland Software and OEConnection, to place its graduates in jobs. The next part-time coding boot camp starts this Saturday, June 20. The class meets Saturdays and Sundays from 8am-4pm for five months.
 
The cost of the program is $10,000, but women and minorities are eligible for a $1,000 grant. Starting with the upcoming session, We Can Code IT is testing a program where students don’t pay the tuition until they get a job.
 
“We’re trying to make it very appealing,” says McGee. “We have bent over backwards to make this doable for our students, who are coming from jobs where they are underemployed and unemployed. So we are offering an option where we don’t get paid until they get a job. We’re putting our money where our mouth is.”
 
We Can Code IT is also offering a free one-hour program, Programming Experience, on Thursday, June 18 at 7pm at LaunchHouse to learn about an IT career. Register through Meetup.
 
Registration for the part-time boot camp ends Thursday, June 18. Click here to apply for the program. The next full-time boot camp starts September 8.

Mike Kister likes to look out for the little guy. As a veteran entrepreneur – having started four internet service, e-commerce and web companies – Kister’s latest venture, Acceleration Systems, offers faster internet speeds and enhanced bandwidth on a subscription basis to small companies that previously couldn’t afford such services.

With Acceleration Systems’ cloud-based tools, customers can see download speeds 10 times faster and uploads 17 times faster than a regular internet connection. “That’s a pretty dramatic kind of improvement,” Kister, president and CEO, says.
 
“Bandwidth optimization has been around for a while, but it’s only available in Fortune 1000 companies for the past decade,” says Kister. “With our cloud-based monthly subscription, now bandwidth optimization is affordable to small businesses.”
 
Kister and his team have been working on their technology for two years and filed patents in January 2013. A year ago, the group had its first working prototype. “We then went on a fundraising tour and two weeks later we were fully funded,” he says. “We took the prototype and had a working model in eight months.”
 
The company headquarters are in Northfield, just three miles from Kister’s home. Acceleration Systems also has offices in Philadelphia, R&D offices in Lexington, Kentucky and four sales offices throughout the eastern United States. The company recently hired two additional engineers to its team of 18.
 
“We’ll get them up to speed and then hire a couple of more,” says Kister of their recent hiring. “We’re just growing like gangbusters right now. We’re scrambling to keep up with demand. It’s a lot of fun.”  
 
Kister envisions Acceleration Systems’ software will eventually be in all sorts of computer devices. “Ultimately, this technology will be embedded in your cable modem, embedded in your smart phone,” he says. “We have additional twists we put on the problem – businesses with multiple locations can tie together through private cloud services.”

 

When students head to college, they expect to received four years of learning and, hopefully, to graduate with a career plan and a good job lined up. But Tom Roulston noticed a disturbing discrepancy. “Seventy percent of seniors really don’t know what they want to do when they graduate,” he says. “And 50 percent are unemployed or underemployed when they graduate.”
 
So Roulston created Trust Navigator, a multi-tiered program that supplements the book smarts taught in colleges with some networking, life lessons and guidance to prepare students for successful careers. Trust Navigator will work with colleges to provide the “real world” component of education.
 
“We have created a platform with schools that allows you to take a lot of different tests, identify interests, passions, strengths and weaknesses,” Roulston explains. “We’ve archived interviews with hundreds of thousands of individuals, asking them ‘what do you do, how did you get started, how much money did you make when you started and what was your career path?’”
 
The Trust Navigator program has four components. First, students take classes in addition to their academic work, that teach “real world” lessons. “There are classes that supplement academic work – life skills, communication skills, financial literacy, how to buy healthcare insurance, networking and communications,”
 
Second, Trust Navigator offers experiential learning, with events that re-engage alumni with the campus. The third component involves an online form to partner students with different organizations and identify career interests.
 
The fourth tier focuses on success coaching and testing and surveys to identify career paths. “Someone who will sit with these students every month and ask them what courses they are taking,” says Roulston.
 
Trust Navigator is a “pay-to-play” program that Roulston says will alleviate the problem of college grads with tons of debt and no job, as well as encourage alumni to be more involved with their alma maters. “Large gift giving has increased over the years, but annual fund participation has dropped pretty dramatically,” says Roulston of alumni support. “More and more kids aren’t finding jobs right away, don’t have money and blame the colleges. There’s $1.3 trillion in student debt.”
 
Roulston closed his investment research business last year to focus on Trust Navigator. He plans to be in five to 10 colleges of varying sizes this fall.

Saidah Farrell has always enjoyed baking with her two daughters. While cupcakes were their favorite confection to make, the three always used a box mix. But when Farrell lost her job as a help desk manager almost six years ago, she decided it was time for a career change. “When you lose your job, what are you going to do,” she asks. “You either find another job or go back to school.” Farrell decided to go back to school.
 
In 2010 Farrell enrolled at Cuyahoga Community College to earn her associate of applied business degree in hospitality management with a concentration in culinary arts. This weekend will be the grand opening of Olivia Rose Community Bake Shop at 16832 Chagrin Boulevard in Shaker Heights. Farrell runs the bakery with the help of her two daughters, Olivia, 12, and Rose, 16.
 
“The oldest works on the cupcakes and croissants, while the younger one does the cookies,” Farrell explains. “I went back to school and then I saw my 16-year-old making croissants from scratch. You never realize how much they pay attention of you.”

Farrell received a lot of help to make her vision a reality. She went through ECDI for help securing loans get things off the ground.  “I started off needing nearly $20,000 but if you don’t have collateral, it’s hard to get a loan, she says. “ECDI got me $15,000 in loans through the SBA, the City of Shaker Heights and Cuyahoga County.”

Farrell has been marketing her bakery mostly through Facebook and has already gotten a lot of support from the community. Word has gotten out about her macaroons – especially her maple bacon macaroons. Other goodies include croissants, cookies, eclairs and cinnamon rolls. All of her creations use natural ingredients.

Farrell, who taught baking before opening her shop, plans to offer baking workshops, classes and kids' baking parties at the shop. She also welcomes other area bakers to bake and sell at her shop. Eventually, she plans to exhibit the works of local artists on a regular basis.

The grand opening runs Friday, June 12 through Sunday, June 14 with the ribbon cutting on Saturday.

Seventeen companies in various stages of development pitched their causes to about 30 local investors last Thursday, June 4 at MAGNET’s ProtoTech: Invest at the Metropolitan at The 9. All of the companies are in significant fund-raising mode.

“It was a good event, it was a lot of fun,” says Dave Crain, executive director of the Incubator at MAGNET and ProtoTech organizer. “I don’t think people realized how many great startups are in the region. There were 17 presenters and not a dud in the group.”
 
Crain traveled to other entrepreneurial hubs around the country to research “investment summits,” or pitch events geared toward attracting investors. ProtoTech: Invest, was the first event of its kind in the state, Crain says. “No one is really doing it in Ohio, statewide,” he says. “Great entrepreneurial regions do these all the time.”
 
In fact, Crain says he will consider hosting ProtoTech: Invest a couple of times a year, based on feedback he heard from investors in attendance. “There are lots of great opportunities, lot of great companies, but we need more money in the region,” he says. “I would tell the investors, when we do this next time, call all your friends on the coasts.”
 
While investors on the East and West coasts have started to take notice of Cleveland’s entrepreneurial scene. “I do think it’s changing,” Crain says. “The coasts have a much more developed ecosystem out there.”
 
But Crain enjoyed hearing about the progress of many of the startups presenting on Thursday, such as Rick Pollack’s 3-D printer manufacturer MakerGear. “I know Rick, but I never realized they are the number-one rated company on Amazon,” Crain says. “They’re asking for money to fund their growth. It’s fun to hear how much they’ve grown. There’s a breadth of opportunity here, from life sciences to products.”

Startup Scaleup, a daylong event on June 17th, will offer resources, networking -- and ice cream -- for Cleveland’s startup businesses.

 Last summer, Jenny Bendis Goe, artist and owner of Jewelry by Jenny, was touring Coventry with Angie Hetrick, director of the Coventry Village Special Improvement District. Goe, who has lived in the area for her entire life, was heartbroken by the amount of vacant shops at the top of the hill.

So, Goe made it her mission to transform the vacancies to thriving storefronts, starting with her own. She contacted landlord Lewis Zipkin in August, and after some persistence and a business plan, Zipkin agreed to lease Goe former Phoenix Coffee space.  
 
In January Goe opened In the 216, a store that features not only Goe’s artwork but the word of nearly 60 other local artists.
 
Last Thursday, May 28, Goe officially held a grand opening for In the 216 – offering more than 200 guests food, drinks and a look at some of the works for sale at the store.  “There are 58 small businesses represented here,” says Goe. “I have works from $2 to $3,000.”
 
Goe decided to postpone the grand opening until she had her bearings and the weather improved. “It was a little nerve wracking when we first opened up, but all of the Coventry veterans are right, it’s gotten increasingly better,” she says. “I feel like Coventry is just the perfect place for this. Business has doubled, if not tripled since we first opened.”
 
Bodega Coventry next door served food at the grand opening, and encouraged guests to come have a drink on the patio, while burlesque star Bella Sin welcomed people on the street. The event was a success, with both familiar faces and strangers in attendance. “It was fantastic, it was wonderful,” Goe says.
 
In addition to her husband, Steve, Goe has two of the artists helping her out in the store, and just had two high school seniors interested in pursuing art perform their senior projects at In the 216.
 
Now Goe is moving ahead with the next part of her vision for the empty space on Coventry. “I’d really like to see exhibits in the [former] Strickland’s Custard space,” she says. “Not just for artists. I hope anything we do will encourage businesses to open in the empty spaces.”  Goe has a few artists in mind who would like to exhibit in the space. She is talking to Zipkin about her plans to implement exhibits or studios in the area.

The issue of concussions among both professional and student athletes is a hot topic these days. But repetitive brain injuries – how to detect, prevent and treat concussions – are also a concern among people in virtually every walk of life.

So on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 23 and 24, national scientists, engineers, clinicians and researchers will gather at the Global Center for Health Innovation to brainstorm and share their ideas at Concussion: A National Challenge.
 
The event, ,sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., Case Western Reserve University, MetroHealth and Taipei Medical University, among others, will focus on medical advances in concussion detection, prevention and treatment in areas such as athletics, auto accidents and military personnel.
 
“This is bringing people together who don’t normally attend the same meetings for a frank discussion of what we need to do,” says Jay Alberts, director of the Cleveland Clinic Concussion Center and one of the event’s speakers. “It’s unique to have people from the automotive industry, sports and military. All of these groups are concerned about concussions and mild to moderate brain injury. We will take the best practices from each group to address what the fundamental practices are.”
 
The public is invited to join the discussions and presentations. “You don’t have to be a trained specialist or an engineer to be a part of the talks,” stresses Alberts. “Parents and coaches are encouraged to attend. They will ask questions that will force people on the panel and the speakers to think about it differently. It’s always important to get the patient perspective to understand the fundamental problems and the questions that need to be answered.”
 
 
The symposium is free, but registration is required. 

While on spring break in 2013 from his junior year at Ohio University, Seth Miller and three of his friends were killing time in the car on their way to Florida. “My buddy and I were freestyling on the way down to spring break,” he recalls. “It was pretty terrible, but they were hilarious. I knew people would enjoy doing it.”
 
Miller, now 22, then spent the next two years developing his app concept – pick from a curated rap beat, freestyle over it and send it to friends in a one-minute message. The Lakewood resident presented RapChat at Startup Weekend Athens and won $1,000. Miller officially launched RapChat for iPhones in June 2014.
 
The app targets 16-24 year olds and spans gender and racial lines. RapChat is available for iPhone free download in the iTunes App Store.
 
“In December we ramped up and started going like crazy, like a rocket ship,” says Miller. Today, RapChat has already seen 410,000 downloads and 4 million raps sent in 2015. There’s no shortage of beats to choose from either. “We haven’t had to do much recently,” Miller brags. “Producers submit beats and we pick out the best ones. We curate new beats once a week.”
 
The app features beats from more than 20 artists such as Cal Scruby and Matt Houston. The company has plans to add bigger producers as time goes soon and has plans to release a beat by ASAP Ty Beats, a member of the ASAP Mob and producer of ASAP Rocky’s hits “Purple Swag” and “Peso.”
 
When the app hit 300,000 downloads last year, Miller decided to quit his job and focus on RapChat full time. The company now has 10 team members – all located throughout the Midwest. One of the other three original founders, Brandon Logan, is still with RapChat.

Right now, the company is not focusing on revenue. Miller takes freelance jobs to pay the bills. But he says they already have some "major brands" interested in partnering with RapChat when the time is right.

When the Incubator at MAGNET launched ProtoTech last year, the event was a pitch competition for product-based start-ups competing for $25,000 in prize money. This year, organizers have shifted focus a bit with ProtoTech: INVEST – a networking and pitch event that is all about investment in growing companies.
 
“Last year it was a pitch event for really early stage companies,” says Dave Crain, the Incubator at MAGNET executive director. “This year we’re more about connections and networking than it is of a contest. It’s for presenters who are looking for $500,000 to $2 million in investments.”
 
There will be pitches, but in a less formal setting without voting or prize money at ProtoTech: INVEST. Fifteen to 20 technology based start-ups with a focus on products will showcase their companies to investors at the event. “It’s an opportunity to get the right people in the room to make connections, network and find funding,” says Crain, adding that ProtoTech: INVEST is the next step in pitch competitions.
 
“It’s just a part of the evolution, part of maturity,” Crain says. “There will always be pitch competitions, there always should be pitch competitions. We’re just building a pipeline. This is the next level of maturity as these companies grow up.”
 
Crain says the shift came in response to feedback from both sides involved in start-up fundraising. “What I’m really hearing from both the start-ups and investors is while Ohio has made a lot of progress, no one is doing this locally – this is something successful ventures cities are doing.”
 
Some of the companies already registered are Cleveland Whiskey, Vadxx, Biolectrics and Everykey.
 
ProtoTech: INVEST will be held at the Metropolitan at the 9 on Thursday, June 4. Registration and pitches will be from 2pm to 5pm; dinner and networking at 5pm. Presenters can register here; investors can register here.

Thirty years ago, Carol Emeruwa began searching for an alternative to the standard chocolate chip cookie to put in a care packages to her daughter at college. “I was looking around for something, but she didn’t like chocolate chip cookies,” Emeruwa recalls. So she started fooling around with different recipes and developed a ginger cookie made with natural ingredients and three kinds of ginger.  “She moved to New York after college and I still sent those cookies.”

Then Emeruwa was downsized from her accounting job two years ago. New job prospects looked bleak. “My daughter said, ‘do something you enjoy doing,’” Emeruwa says. So she decided to devote her time to baking and crated Red Head Artisanal Ginger Cookies in December of 2014.  She sells gift boxes and subscriptions through the Red Head website and AHAlife. Prices start at $24 for a dozen cookies. Emeruwa now has a two-pack of cookies that she plans to distribute to area stores.
 
The business has taken off. Emeruwa now offers five different flavors of ginger cookies that she bakes in the Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen. “It’s really exciting down there,” she says. “It’s a great place to learn and taste other people’s products. There’s a great atmosphere down there.”
 
Emeruwa says she thinks she’s found her true calling. “I want to spend all my time building the business,” she says. “This is something I really enjoy doing. Now we’re working on new flavors, more savory items, and I’m tinkering with bacon.”  Emeruwa recently recruited 15 customers to taste her new flavors, and she still sends the new flavors to her daughter.

Since 1965 Pier W in Lakewood has been a seafood destination for special occasions. On May 11 the restaurant will mark its 50^th anniversary and it seems there is no shortage of memories shared at the iconic dinner spot on Lake Erie.

“We’re 50 years and still going strong,” says general manager Mark Kawada. “We’re having some of the best years of the restaurant’s history and it’s great to be a part of it, and great to hear the stories.” Only a handful of area restaurants have the bragging rights to 50 years in business, he says.
 
Kawada recalls a man who recently came in for brunch and brought in a Polaroid photo of himself and his prom date from 30 years ago. “That happens all the time here,” he says.
 
Although the world has changed in 50 years, Pier W has kept up with the times while maintaining its commitment to fresh seafood in a beautiful setting. “Back then we didn’t have social media or a ton of websites that review you,” he says. “And people have a fascination with food now. When times were tough and most people pulled back, we didn’t pull back. We have to stay true to who we are and what we make.”
 
What they make is fish that is handled only seven times or less before cooking – the average restaurant serves seafood that has been handled an average of 100 times before it is served – by sourcing its fish from places like Copper River Salmon in Alaska or tuna overnighted three times a week from Hawaii.
 
“We get fish in almost every day and when we say we get all of our fish in whole, we get it quicker and we get it fresher,” Kawada explains. “We have whole cooler with running water and we cut all of our own fish. It does make a difference.”
 
Executive chef Regan Reik is an expert in sustainable seafood, building relationships directly with the fishermen who fish responsibly. The same practices hold true for Pier W’s meat and chicken.
 
The commitment to quality is what has kept Pier W going for five decades. “How we evolved, even in slow times, is we’ll spend the time and money to do it right, because it’s the best,” Kawada says. The restaurant closed for a year about 10 years ago for a $4 million remodel.
 
Yes, a lot of practices have remained the same. “We have the same bouillabaisse recipe we made 50 years ago,” Kawada says. “A lot of things are old school, the same way we did it 50 years ago.”
 
A new generation of regulars come to Pier W every day, as well as folks who have been coming for the past 50 years.