CRAINSCLEVELAND.COM I JULY 31, 2023
Teach for America celebrates 10 years
After 80 years in the same space, Rivchun Jewelers finds new downtown digs
Organization has trained 500 teachers in Cleveland By Rachel Abbey McCafferty
Teach for America Ohio wants to do more than put teachers in classrooms. The nonprofit wants to help grow leaders and build community. Teach for America began more than 30 years ago, with Cleveland operations beginning in the 2012-2013 school year. Corps members are placed into classrooms as part of a two-year commitment to teaching. Those members include recent college graduates, career changers or, lately, long-term substitutes looking to enter the field full time, said Ohio executive director Jennifer Howard. Howard said she saw school inequity firsthand growing up in the suburbs of Chicago. She learned about Teach for America as a student at Ohio State University and started teaching as a corps member in Atlanta in 2004. She’s been in education ever since. Howard moved to Cleveland in 2013 and joined the local TFA chapter in 2014, taking on the role of statewide executive director a little more than a year ago. Ohio’s regional programs merged into a statewide one in 2020.
Joe Soukenik, owner of Rivchun Jewelers, examines a diamond using a loupe. The business is known for its custom pieces and hand-selected gems. | GUS CHAN
‘It just feels like time’ For 80 years, customers have journeyed to the fifth floor of a Euclid Avenue office building to visit Chas. S. Rivchun & Sons Jewelers, a family-owned business known for its one-of-kind pieces. Come November, shoppers will find the venerable downtown Cleveland retailer in a new setting. Owner Joe Soukenik plans to leave his longtime perch at the City Club Building for the glassy U.S. Bank Centre office See RIVCHUN on Page 20 tower in the heart of the theater district.
See TEACHERS on Page 20
New FirstEnergy CEO has big plans for utility
FirstEnergy’s new CEO Brian Tierney
CONTRIBUTED
By Dan Shingler
FirstEnergy Corp.’s new CEO, Brian Tierney, said he plans to get the regional electric utility in Akron prepared for a future in which even more things run on electricity by continuing to make major investments in the company’s distribution system. He also has some things he said he plans not to do, like selling the company or putting its name on any more stadiums. Tierney sat down with Crain's on Friday,
July 21, to discuss his plans, about seven weeks after he took the helm of the company and on a day FirstEnergy's Ohio repair crews were in the process of getting about 50,000 local customers back online after a bad summer storm. Before coming to FirstEnergy, Tierney was senior managing director of operations and asset management for the infrastructure fund at Blackstone, which became a major investor in the company when it bought $1 billion of FirstEnergy’s equity in late 2021.
Before he joined Blackstone, also in 2021, Tierney spent 23 years with American Electric Power in Columbus, where he was chief financial officer and executive vice president for strategy. Tierney takes over a company that has been mired in scandal in recent years, due to FirstEnergy’s admission that it paid millions in bribes to get former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder to pass the See FIRSTENERGY on Page 19
VOL. 44, NO. 28 l COPYRIGHT 2023 CRAIN COMMUNICATIONS INC. l ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The winners and finalists in Crain’s 2023 Excellence in HR Awards include an HR director who managed to double the firm’s 401(k) match, a team at a food company that achieved double-digit improvement in employee retention, and more. PAGE 8
P001_CL_20230731.indd 1
7/28/2023 12:29:59 PM