Young Professional Summit
Following its major success last year, the Greater Hudson Valley Young Professional Summit is making a comeback.
The conference-style event is set to be held on the SUNY New Paltz campus on May 23. With its more humble inauguration taking place at the Newburgh Brewing Company last year, Hudson Valley Pattern for Progress and the Hudson Valley Network for Young Professionals are looking to take advantage of the larger venue by offering more options to attendees.
While still in development, this year’s summit features more speakers and programs than its predecessor. Some include a talk from “The Millennial’s Guide to the Universe: How to Live the New International Dream” author Natalie Elisha Gold, a panel on women in the Hudson Valley, programs on doing business in the Hudson Valley and inclusivity in a hyper-politicized world, and a workshop on resumes and job searching. According to Nicholas Mauro, Marist’s recruitment and workforce development manager, some of these programs will occur concurrently, giving each individual who attends a more tailored experience.
“You can go pick and choose what you want to see, do, and hear from,” he said. “It’s not just going to be everyone in a room listening to the same speakers all night.”
Last year’s summit sold out in about two weeks with 150 attendees.
Mauro said the idea for the summit came about back in 2016 during a conversation about what developmental tools were available to young professionals. While claiming that plenty of professional programming existed at the time, there was opportunity for different counties to work together.
“The summit is designed to create a lot of energy and enthusiasm,” he said. “Ultimately, we’d like to impact the future of the region by way of the workforce and job creation. We have a responsibility to do more. We can take the future into our own hands and do some things that are gonna make a difference.”
Ticket sales began on April 1 on the summit’s Facebook page.
HV Startup Fund Investments
The Hudson Valley Startup Fund (HVSF) recently invested a total of $475,000 in Hudson Valley startups. This total was spread across three companies: $250,000 in Orto Foods, $200,000 in Simplecast, and $25,000 in uSTADIUM.
Orto Foods is based in Congers and produces its products in Mexico. Co-founded by Xin and Melissa Coella Wang in 2015, the brand has focused on popularizing healthy snack alternatives made from a Mexican-grown root vegetable called “Jicama.”
Simplecast is a Kingston-based podcasting platform designed to let podcasters publish and distribute their work. It hopes to build on the podcasting market in the same way Youtube has built on the video market—by simplifying the way content creators self-publish. This is HVSF’s second investment in Simplecast — the first was made in December 2017.
Left to Right: Xin Wang and Melissa Colella-Wang, Co-founders of Orto Foods, Tony DiMarco, Johnny LeHane, and Paul Hakim, Founding Managers of HV Startup Fund.
uSTADIUM is a Westchester County-based social platform for sports fans offering data mining and statistical analysis. HVSF has made three prior investments in uSTADIUM with the first being made in June 2017.
HVSF is a member-managed seed capital fund that launched in 2016 to support companies based in the Hudson Valley. It’s currently comprised of 65 investors, most of which are local business and community leaders.
Applications for funding or to join HVSF can be filed through its website.
Burke Rehabilitation Center
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A new rehabilitation facility has opened its doors on the Cornwall campus of Montefiore St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital.
Partnered with fellow Montefiore Health System member Burke Rehabilitation Hospital, the facility opened in early February as part of campus-wide renovations. Its official ribbon cutting was held on March 25.
The facility will offer a range of rehabilitative services: physical, occupational, and speech therapies, as well as cardiac and pulmonary rehabilitation. According to Katie Dabroski, Vice President of marketing, public, and community relations at St. Luke’s, plans are already in place to expand on these services. By eventually incorporating cognitive medicine and a memory clinic, patients can usually find what they need in one place.
“The new rehabilitation facility allows patients to seek their rehabilitation services in one convenient location, providing not only ease of access but also continuity of care across services,” Dabroski said. “This filled a gap in the intensity of the type of services previously offered.”
