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Helping Students Inside the Classroom – and Beyond

By Marie Elium
January 10, 2017

Jimmy Malone is a name dropper for all the right reasons.

He remembers the names of the nearly 200 students he’s helped put through college, along with the mentors and professionals he’s introduced to many of them.

Malone makes a good living talking on the radio, but it’s the conversations he has outside the station that are life-changing. Just ask Destiny Kaznoch, Briana Miller and James Maher. All three will be graduating next spring from college, a path made available largely through Malone’s scholarships and his enthusiastic encouragement.

For these students, the money is important, but they’ll tell you Malone is the key to their success. He’s a welcome and vital part of the package.

RADIO PERSONALITY, MENTOR

Jimmy Malone is part of the top-rated Cleveland morning radio team Nolan, Malone and Kullik at Majic 105.7. From 5:30 to 10 each morning, Malone has free-ranging exchanges with co-hosts Mark Nolan and Chip Kullik, and show producer Tracey Carroll about local and national events, goofy people (his Knuckleheads in the News is a listener favorite), politics and favorite diners, to name a few.

For someone who values education, Malone’s own was completed in fits and starts. Raised in the Glenville area of Cleveland, he attended Cleveland State University, Morehouse College and eventually Ohio University, where he graduated with a degree in interpersonal communications. He wanted to be a lawyer but quickly found other interests that didn’t involve law school.

Malone, 62, put those communication skills to use in clubs throughout the region as a standup comic. He caught the attention of popular Cleveland radio personality John Lanigan, who in 1985 asked him to do the Knuckleheads in the News skit for his WMJI show. Listeners loved it. He joined the station full time six years later.

Co-hosting a top radio show put Malone in contact with many of Northeast Ohio’s civic, sports and business leaders.

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Food for Change – Green City Growers and the Women Who Helps Bring Hope to Struggling Neighborhoods

By Marie Elium
January 8, 2017

Know this about India Pierce Lee — she’s a hugger. Her generous embrace comes with a quick warning. Then, suddenly, you’re in a hug – and in a part of her world.

For Lee, 60, her world is one with big ideas in a relatively confined area — several struggling inner-city Cleveland neighborhoods. She works with a team of corporate heavyweights, public sector groups, community organizations, foodies, bankers and almost anyone else who can inject a positive influence in places that are distressed and careworn.

She presents an interesting dichotomy — a dynamo who juggles dozens of projects and ideas at a time while being entirely present when talking one-on-one. It’s a quality that comes in handy with her work at The Cleveland Foundation and its many interests aimed at bolstering neighborhoods with high unemployment, dilapidated housing and — until recently — waning hope.

PRACTICAL PROJECTS FOR  MAXIMUM IMPACT

Like many large cities, Cleveland’s most impoverished neighborhoods are located around some of its most prominent institutions. The Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University have well-deserved reputations as first-rate institutions. Yet, until just over a decade ago, their influence was underutilized in the areas closest to them.

A challenge for Lee and others she has worked with was to figure out the best way to buoy these neighborhoods and their residents. Central to this is The Cleveland Foundation, a nonprofit group that links donors with worthy projects throughout the city. The foundation uses its substantial endowment and connections to support a myriad of programs. Lee is the foundation’s Program Director for Neighborhoods, Housing, and Community Development.

“We used maps to show vacant properties and poor building conditions in the neighborhoods, and the Clinic, Case and UH were all within a 1.5 mile radius,” Lee says. “These neighborhoods basically were declining.

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Keep Moving with Jack from the Cleveland Marathon

By Mike Murray
January 7, 2017

Nothing can slow down Jack Staph, who recently turned 70. Staph, executive director of the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon and a business/corporate lawyer with a private practice in Pepper Pike, hasn’t run in two years.

Although he endures issues with both knees (including missing cartilage), it doesn’t mean he won’t one day navigate a hiking trail to a mountain peak or enter a marathon walking category.

“It’s hard to say I’m only going for a walk,” Jack says. He still sneaks in a run at times for a few seconds. “When I see an incline, I push it as much as I can, and I may run to a telephone pole.”

Jack relishes any opportunity to be outside in the sun and even when it rains while he walks with his umbrella. He also enjoys all the responsibilities that come with overseeing the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon.

TAKING ON THE RACE

He bought the rights to the event in 2002, turning it into a year-round family business. His son Ralph helps run operations. The marathon and related events attract 40,000 runners, volunteers and fans. He’s always busy with race details and looking after elite athletes.

Staph, in fact, ran the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon only one time in 1978 – when the event began as the Revco Cleveland Marathon. He was general counsel for Revco, which asked him to take the helm the next year.

Over the years, however, Staph managed to run seven other marathons in West Palm Beach, Buffalo and Erie. He credits world-famous long distance runner Frank Shorter for inspiring him in the 70s when the running movement took off.

“Anyone who does something positive for others motivates me,” he says. “It’s not so much what they did but how they went about doing it.”

For now, Jack plans to continue leading the Rite Aid Cleveland Marathon and to see how he can challenge his body and his mind.

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A Fresh Start With An Old Product – Tom Lix, owner of Cleveland Whiskey, takes a shot at the bourbon business and discovers how a detour can lead to a new venture

By Marie Elium
January 7, 2017

You could say Tom Lix reinvented the whiskey business — and himself — thanks in part to a stint in the Navy and a 70s sitcom.

Fueled by endless cups of black coffee, Lix, 64, is an energetic booster for his growing Cleveland Whiskey company. He’s understandably enthusiastic about his distillery, housed in the MAGNET business on East 25th St., creating a label that’s available from New England to Georgia, to Europe and now into Japan.

With his growing business, Lix seems to be headed in one direction — forward. He’s embracing the adventure, in fact, seems to revel in it. Lix may have landed in Cleveland through an unexpected yet all-too-familiar family situation, but his business success has been deliberate and thoughtful. He saw an opportunity, created a solution and dove in.

EARLY ADVENTURES, LATER SUCCESS

Before Lix’s latest incarnation, he spent time fighting forest fires in Alaska as a teenager and went to Penn State. As a student activist he protested for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. He bounced around and kept his eyes open.

Whiskey entered his life when he joined the Navy, where he served for six years. He learned distilling basics from a chief petty officer who fashioned a still in the galley of the Navy ship Lix was assigned. He tucked the knowledge in the back of his mind.

Lix ended back in college, picking up degrees in biology and chemistry before heading to Boston University where he earned a doctorate in marketing. A born entrepreneur, Lix owned or operated software, technology and other companies, creating a host of successful enterprises that had nothing to do with bourbon making but everything to do with business acumen.

Then a family crisis intervened. His mother, MaryAnn, was diagnosed with dementia and Alzheimer’s and needed care.

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