29 Clevelanders We Love

Ronnie Dunn Professor of Urban Studies, Cleveland State University – “Rarely do we talk about it, or our public officials acknowledge it,” says Ronnie Dunn. “It” is probably one of the dirtiest words in the American English lexicon. “It” is race. Dunn, a veteran, professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University and Cleveland native, has spent a lifetime studying race. His knowledge is encyclopedic — names, events, dates, figures, he recalls it all. He’ll finish your sentence, especially if you’re quoting someone else. “Cleveland and the Greater Cleveland region, this Metropolitan Statistical Area, is one of the most racially segregated in the country,” he says. “We consistently are. You always hear them talk about our diversity. Yes, there is ethnic diversity, but we are still racially isolated. We live in segregated communities.” It was Dunn’s research on racial discrimination in traffic stops that prompted the city to install traffic cameras. “I recommended cameras because they provide an objective means of determining who was violating traffic laws,” Dunn said in 2013. By this point, Dunn had been researching discrimination in ticketing in Cleveland for 20 years. He literally wrote the book on it. To Dunn’s dismay, 21 of 26 stationary cameras were installed on the eastside, where the city’s population of African Americans is most concentrated. It was Dunn and James Hardiman, at the time the legal director of the Ohio ACLU and chair of Legal Redress for the Ohio NAACP, who helped mobilize African American leaders to write the Department of Justice following the 2012 chase in which 137 shots were fired into the vehicle of Timothy Russell and Melisa Williams. The DOJ answered their call and spent nearly two years investigating the Cleveland Police Department, the second time the federal department had examined the city’s law enforcement in 10 years. “The thing that is really striking about [the D.O.J.’s report] is that they only mentioned race once,” Dunn says. That mention was on page 49 of a 58-page report. “It’s really a shame that these issues are allowed to persist when you consider the history of this city, particularly the racial-political history. [Cleveland] was the first major American city to elect an African American mayor with Carl Stokes in 1967, having had three African American mayors, and black leaders at the highest levels of municipal government.” Despite Dunn’s calm demeanor and edifying ways, years of work studying the history and modern incarnations of racial discrimination have taken their toll on his worldview. “I’m less optimistic now that we’ll see the substantive reforms come out of this process as I initially thought,” he says. He has not been deterred, however. And his work continues, including consulting on reforms of the city’s citizen complaint of police officers review process. It’s an area on which he’s focused recent studies, and an area the federal monitor in charge of the city’s consent decree with the Justice Department found fault. For instance: Cleveland has more than 300 citizen review complaints still open. A fifth of those are from two years ago. “We must believe things can get better or they won’t,” Dunn says. “Although it might not seem that way, I do maintain a sense of hope and optimism in spite of the evidence to the contrary. And truthfully, it is my students and young people of today’s openness to differences and diversity that gives me hope for the future.” – Tucker Kelly

Stefan Was Owner, Porco Lounge & Tiki Room – Three years ago a guy with zero restaurant experience decided to open a bar in a habitually vacant building a half mile from civilization. To say the odds were stacked against him is an understatement of grand proportions. But that bar — Porco Lounge & Tiki Room — is approaching a million dollars in annual sales, a testament to the vision, passion and dedication of owner Stefan Was. “I was confident that it could be something, but my biggest insecurity laid in not knowing the business,” Was recalls. “But we had a passion for tiki and we wanted to help spread what we loved about the quality and lifestyle of having an awesome experience. People will get it, if you give it.” At a time when craft cocktail bars — lounges — were popping up across town, Was went down a connected but divergent path. His bar would serve craft cocktails every bit as complex as those mixed in posh clubs but, unlike most of those haunts, Porco would be a blast. “We take the pretention out of it — not just the cocktails but the whole experience,” says Was. “Our bartenders are wearing Hawaiian shirts, we’re listening to fun music, we’re having fun. If anybody is having more fun at work than we do, I want that job.” But don’t mistake Was for the ditzy social director of the S.S. Tiki. Step inside the fantastical world of Porco and you’d be hard-pressed to identify the owner, who either is in the kitchen making tacos, bussing tables in an apron, or otherwise supporting his staff in any way possible. Was is the anti-celebrity owner, a trait that makes him the best kind of owner. “I don’t like to be an interesting guy; this whole thing is very uncomfortable for me,” he says of being selected for inclusion in this issue. “I’m humbled and I’m happy, but I don’t like celebrity and recognition. When you start swinging your owner dick around, the business and the experience becomes about you and not the guest.” When Team Porco was invited down to the South Beach Wine and Food Festival to compete in the Art of Tiki Cocktail Showdown, Was did the unthinkable: He shut down Porco for an entire weekend and brought the whole crew with him, paying the way of 18 staffers as a thank you for hard work. “My philosophy has always been: my staff, my customers and my products all go before me. If I do all of those things right, the rest just falls into place.” When money does roll in — Was calls Porco “the house that Painkillers built” — it doesn’t go to fine threads and fancy rims; it goes right back into the business. Every visit to Porco reveals some physical improvement, whether it’s the towering backbar, the picturesque urban patio, or the colorful new hand-drawn menu. But even those decisions are not solely management’s to make. “We do everything by committee here,” he says. “I gear the money to the staff and around their opinions. I don’t say this lightly, but we have the best in the business. With their talent, these guys could be making way more money in a nightclub. What they get to keep here is their soul.” So how is all of this success weighing on the shoulders of the reluctant big wheel? “I’ve literally been proud with tears,” he says. “When it stops being like that I’ll look at myself and ask what am I doing wrong.” – Douglas Trattner

Youssa Ben Barber – When he was just 15 years old, Youssa Ben’s family and friends and neighbors knew the best place to get their hair cut wasn’t up at the corner barbershop, it was at Ben’s house. More specifically, it was in Ben’s mother’s basement, where he began chopping hair partly because of his little brother. “I picked it up because of him,” Ben says. “I didn’t want him looking raggity going to school, wanted to keep him well groomed. It just kind of went from there.” From there meant a word of mouth-sort of business that led everyone to the basement in Westpark and a future as a professional barber, even if his mom might have initially hoped her son would be a doctor or lawyer. But she saw her son making money and staying out of trouble, so he got her blessing. Ben is 33 years old now and has spun through barbershops across Cleveland after getting his license about five years ago after finishing up at the All-State Barber College in Ohio City. There was Santana’s barbershop and then Frank’s, a shop downtown that shut down after police came looking for one of the owners on drug charges. “Yeah, I guess there was some drug money or laundering,” says Ben. No matter. By then Ben had pretty much figured out how to network and market himself, and though he works out of the B Loft Barbershop down in the Flats near Stonebridge, more often than not he’s at his clients’ homes making house calls to some names you definitely know. “I started off with the social media, Instagram and whatnot, and I jumped on early and pretty much figured out how to network,” Ben says. “The first person I was trying to get was Swish.” The first celebrity or athlete, he means. And Swish, of course, is J.R. Smith of the Cavs. “He hit me up for a haircut when he came to town,” he says, and thus Ben was introduced into the small network of folks taking care of Cavs and Browns players, the kind of work that has you keeping a travel pack with all your tools in the car and making odd-hour arrivals at their houses to keep them looking good. “I’ve done Channing Frye, Kyrie once, Joe Haden once, a few of the Browns players,” he says, including onetime Brown Phil Taylor. He’s basically working straight by appointment these days and trying to continue to grow his network. But chopping up Joe Haden can’t be the same thing as cutting your little brother’s hair in a basement, right? The skills and experience are there, but the singular opportunity to do so and, however slightest the possibility, maybe screw it up. How nerve wracking. Ben laughs when the idea is brought up. First of all, he’s really good. And second of all, when you’re that good, you know how to fix things so no one ever knows anything was wrong in the first place. “Once you get to a certain point in the barbering game,” he says, “you might mess up but there’s always a way to fix it. To understand hair, how it looks and how you cut it a certain way, if you accidentally put a line in a fade, for example, there are ways to fade it right back out.” What’s Ben up to when he’s not cutting hair? Well, first, “I’m always cutting hair,” he says. “I’m up at 7 a.m. and I leave for work and I do housecalls after that and then I crash.” He’s been working for the privilege of doing so for a decade and a half now. “The only thing, I think, that people don’t understand — they think I just started when I went to school four years ago and then started doing amazing shit. What they don’t understand is I’ve been doing it for 16 years now. It’s been a lot of hard work, countless hours of haircuts, pulling 12-hour days in my mom’s basement. I just wasn’t going to stop.” – Vince Grzegorek

Ali McClain, Director, Summer of Sisterhood, West Side Community House – “I put myself in three boxes,” says Ali McClain from the conference room of the West Side Community House, where she runs a summer camp for girls. “I’m a poet. I’m a youth advocate. And then I’m also an arts coordinator.” In that third box, McClain co-founded the local artists’ collective, Acerbic. She describes it as a youth-focused group that champions artists of color with installations and programming throughout the city. Its work has been featured at Slavic Village’s Rooms to Let Program for two years running. “The first year, we had been talking about the idea of feeling out of place. And we wanted our audience to feel what we feel, especially as artists of color in Cleveland’s arts scene. And so we turned the basement into a prison.” Right now, McClain’s in her “Ms. Ali” box, running the Summer of Sisterhood program she designed when she started working at the West Side Community House. After college, the Euclid native spent a few years in Michigan before returning home. At the moment, she’s taking a short break to talk to Scene while the 41 10- to 18-year-old girls participating in the camp are upstairs watching a movie. She’s got her camp T-shirt on too. It’s gray with a silhouette of a black girl in the center. On Aug. 5, the camp will conclude with a blow-out performance at Tri-C, featuring original music performed by the campers. One year, the girls performed for a United Methodist Church national conference in Louisville where the keynote speaker was Hillary Clinton. “It’s always incredible to see these girls,” McClain says. “Many of them have no experience in performance, but it always comes together and it’s always powerful.” Though the content of the campers’ work tends to be, in McClain’s words, “girl-empowerment focused,” this year they’re talking about the national climate: about police brutality and about guns. “They’re trying to create music that addresses that stuff, but also offers some kind of solution, and then remembering that because there’s so much badness, this should be a good. If Eric Garner was, ‘I Can’t Breathe,’ what can I do? Can I show the world that I am beautiful and brave and brilliant? At the same time, we have to realize that we are living in a really ugly time.” That’s part of why McClain has fused her work to include both art and advocacy. “For me, it just comes naturally,” she says. “Art should do something. It should move people. It should be teaching people and it should be helping people discover who they are. Art is activism.” In the fall, McClain will return to the Northeast Ohio MFA program, where she’ll soon receive a degree in poetry. (She’s already received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English from the University of Toledo.) And if her schedule wasn’t full enough, McClain is working on a book of poetry. She also has work forthcoming in Belt Magazine’s Race Anthology, and one of her poems recently won a prize from the Academy of American Poets. “Yeah,” McClain admits, glancing at her watch, “I guess I’ve got a lot going on.” – Sam Allard

Erin Huber Founder, Drink Local. Drink Tap. – When we caught up with Erin Huber, she had just landed in Tanzania and was waiting to take a 9-hour bus ride to continue her trek to Uganda. The Northeast Ohio native and Detroit-Shoreway resident was once again on a journey to Africa, one that really began some seven years ago. “My first few weeks of graduate school at Cleveland State’s College of Urban Affairs, I was paired up with a man that would change my life forever – Dr. Nicholas Zingale,” Huber says. “At the same time, Mayor Jackson held the first Sustainable Cleveland summit in 2009 and all of a sudden, my water life truly began.” That water life became Drink Local. Drink Tap., an organization Huber founded with an initial mission to encourage people to reduce plastic pollution and reconnect with tap and local water, but one that has grown since then, including work in Uganda to educate and provide sustainable access to safe water. It all comes at a time when water has become a national and international focus point, from droughts in California to algae growth on the Great Lakes to lead-tainted water in major American cities. And that’s just in the United States. “I think it’s important to understand the problems of today do not end at borders, especially with water,” says Huber. “It’s all connected. The work is hard, rewarding and challenging, but I truly hope our work is no longer needed someday.” Years ago, a small workshop was a sort of genesis for the idea. There was a summit and a bunch of people broke out into groups. Water was one of the topics. A group of 50 suddenly became a group of 10. “We realized it would be hard to talk about big algae blooms and invasive species and lakefront development and combined sewer overflows if people weren’t thinking about the water they put in their body everyday,” says Huber. So Drink Local. Drink Tap. was born, but the mission quickly seemed narrow. “We adopted Edgewater state park [at the time] and joined forces with other groups who were caring for the park on a monthly basis,” she says. “Then teachers started hearing our message and wanted their students to learn about pollution and water.” Subsequently, Huber started the Wavemaker Program, which works within schools to help educate youths on all issues pertaining to water. During one classroom session, she met a teacher from Uganda who told Huber there were 700 kids without water in her village. “That’s when I knew I could tie it all together,” Huber says. She went to Africa, along with her friend Laura Blake, to try and learn about the situation firsthand. They teamed up with another friend, Tom Kondilas, to make a documentary about the children and the water and the village. “The things I saw that first trip…,” Huber says, “I can never unsee.” Since then, they’ve become a registered NGO in Uganda and are headquartered in Hingetown as a non-profit. It’s a natural progression stemming from her compassion and drive – she started her first organization, Covering Cleveland, at just 18 years old. That program helped provide blankets, food and conversation to Cleveland’s homeless population. “When I was a teenager, I got so overwhelmed with the world’s problems – I peaceful protested drilling in the Arctic, for animal rights – but I finally decided to go to college and try to tie the many things I cared about together and make a career out of it.” While taking night classes at Tri-C, before CSU, she talked with Nina Turner, a mentor Huber says might not have any idea the sort of impact she made on her, about her future. “My father, who passed away when I was 12, taught us to root for the underdog, to speak up for things and people that couldn’t speak for themselves,” Huber says. “And I recognized, in part from my father’s passing, that environmental and pollution issues had so much injustice tied to them. I also realized my passion for water, which as we all know, is life.” – Vince Grzegorek

John Stahl Owner, LeanDog – Ken Blaze A few days before Scene meets up with Jon Stahl on the roof of his office-boat on Lake Erie, he was crawling beneath a cemetery in Erie, Pennsylvania, eating spiders and trying to locate a geocache item. This is not an unusual weekend story for the adventurous Cleveland businessman. Here on the boat, Stahl runs LeanDog, a software design company that accomplishes much more than that tagline would suggest. His active-living mindset translates into how he runs his company. Stahl takes us on a spin through the office, where engineers and designers work in open-office environments and invent new solutions to recognized problems, all while sitting atop the lovely waters of Lake Erie. At a time when Northeast Ohio is striving to re-engage the waterfront, or at least engage it in ways the city hasn’t in decades past, the floating office is something of a novelty but also a firm step in the right direction. As an employee at Nationwide Insurance a while back, Stahl began researching Agile, Lean working habits, a movement of high-performance work that mirrors startups. His studies influenced Nationwide, and the workflow grew into a passion. Employees tend to be happier — and thus granted more freedoms, like, say, access to jetskis when the workday allows — and the company tends to be more innovative and successful. Not a bad path to travel. LeanDog is just one facet of Stahl’s story, though. You might remember his name from the Cleveland Skylift project that was bandied about town a few years ago, the project that would have ski lift-type cars transporting people from, for example, the Flats to FirstEnergy Stadium. Like many ideas floated at City Hall in the past few years, the RNC kind of sidelined this one. But Stahl says that the Skylift will return to the local discourse in time, and he’s been fine-tuning the project. And yet that still is just one singular part of the story. Here’s where Stahl’s work is really going to shine: Rock the Lake, a new waterfront unity organization that will guide residents and visitors to everything that Cleveland’s lake and riverfront have to offer (recreation, dining, sightseeing: 64 “attractions” in all). Once a month, Stahl would host a happy hour on his boat that brought together developers and leaders from Geis Cos., Cleveland Metroparks, Cumberland and elsewhere to talk about big ideas like this: the Skylift, Rock the Lake and beyond. In that way, Stahl and the group took the city’s penchant for talking about the water to doing something about it. Each stakeholder ponied up $5,000 to form the Lakefront Collaborative. (The group’s next project will loop in the sewer district to tackle water pollution issues.) “Most cities that have a waterfront have a separate brand for their waterfront,” Stahl says. “Riverlife Pittsburgh, Navy Pier, and you could go on. We just didn’t have that individual brand for our water sites … And we love the river, but our Great Lake is our asset.” The Lakefront Collaborative plans to give its work to Destination Cleveland, furthering the local network. “There’s an energy, having a lot of people moving downtown and living downtown,” Stahl says. “When I hang out with my developer friends — the Geises and Paces — it’s not only young, it’s the older people who live in the suburbs and want a walkable lifestyle. It’s an amazing time to be in Cleveland.” – Eric Sandy

Omar Humphrey Dancer, Verb Ballets – Before he came to Cleveland for the 2015 International Association of Blacks in Dance conference, Omar Humphrey didn’t even know Verb Ballets existed. He grew up in Dallas; he graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in modern dance earlier in that year; he’d done tours in Austria; he’d spent time living in New York. So when it came to his audition and the offers her received after the conference, Verb was something new to consider, in more ways than one. “I had a unique process. I saw Verb perform during the conference, and it was the host company for the conference. And I had about eight offers but mainly for modern dance,” he says after rehearsal one weekday morning in July. “I decided, if I want to do this thing called dance, I should really stretch my ballet skills.” At Oklahoma, he’d been in the modern rep and ballet companies, but he’d never pushed himself when it came to ballet, at least not in the classical sense. Now, at the age of 23, he’s in his second season with Verb. “I’ve grown a lot,” he says. “I dove into it.” Verb Ballets is a contemporary ballet company located on the east side. Not only do the members of the company, who come from prestigious schools all across the country, perform, they also train and teach youth groups. It makes for a grueling and busy, but rewarding, weekly schedule. There’s class from 10 to 11:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. Rehearsal from noon to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Weekend performances. And a teaching schedule from about 4 to 8:30 p.m. every Monday through Friday. For Humphrey, he’s teaching various talent and age levels, working out the students’ steps in technique classes, few of which are actually ballet. “In addition to teaching modern jazz, I also teach at two gymnastic schools.” “It’s grueling,” says Humphrey ” but pure magic.” The pinnacle of that magic comes onstage. “It’s joyful,” he says, to put it simply. “It’s a high incomparable to anything else. Your heart is racing, the lights are shining, and once you walk off the stage, you ask yourself what the hell just happened. You don’t even remember until something knocks you out of that dreamlike world. You try to get it in the studio but there’s nothing like being on stage. All your endorphins are just running wild.” Over the past year, there have been many standouts, but for Humphrey, the production of Peter Pan was perhaps the most meaningful professionally and personally. “I got to work with a choreographer named Pamela Pribisco,” he says. “She’s inspired me so much since I’ve been here — artistically, socially, in a business sense. She’s inspired me to differentiate personal from business when it comes to being an artist. She reminds me when you’re in front of a room, the people will react to how you act. So if you want them to have a specific reaction, you have to act that way. She’s taught me so much. You’re an employee first and you do the work you’re paid to do. And try not to beat yourself up; you are trying to be as expressive and vulnerable as you can, and sometimes that comes off in social situations too.” That’s a lot from one production, and Humphrey speaks in monologues, which is not surprising given his profession. While he asks a co-worker to double check the spelling of Pribisco’s last name — he wants to make sure she gets a shout out — he talks about the rest of his life, which mainly fall into the category of things he can do in his house. He loves Cleveland, but, “I’m a homebody. I like to hang out with my cat. I’m a huge cook. I crochet. I’m a homebody.” – Vince Grzegorek

Rafael “El Alcalde” Hernandez-Brito, Bilingual Announcer, Spanish Voice of the Cleveland Cavaliers – “People think Hispanics only love soccer,” says a laughing, smiling Rafael Hernandez-Brito, by way of introducing his career. Hernandez-Brito, also known affectionately as Rafa El Alcalde — “The Mayor” in English, a name he received from a colleague — has been the Spanish voice of every professional sport under the sun and stadium lights: soccer, boxing, mixed-martial arts, bowling, golf, hockey, football, basketball. “From the beginning I didn’t want to marry myself to one sport,” he says. “I’ll call any game, in any language.” Before he became the Spanish voice of the Cavaliers two years ago, El Alcalde covered the ’05 World Series when the White Sox defeated the Astros. He covered the Super Bowl in 2008 when Eli Manning and the Giants ended Tom Brady and the Patriots’ perfect season. He has covered the last five World Cups. This year he covered the Cavaliers’ historic win over an equally historic Warriors team in the Finals. “If you go to the movies and watch the Cavaliers’ 2015/2016 season and you see the ending, you’ll come out and say, ‘C’mon. Did that really happen?'” Only seven NBA teams bring their Spanish-speaking sportscasters on road trips: the Mavericks, Rockets, Spurs, Heat, Magic, Lakers (TV only), and, of course, the Cavaliers. Once he came to Cleveland, Brito became the first and only Spanish-language sportscaster to cover the finals of the holy trinity of professional sports: the MLB, the NFL and the NBA. His fascinating path to the microphone has been equal parts serendipity, talent, and deviation from the script. “At first, I wanted to build jet engines,” he says with a shrug. “Don’t ask me why.” He received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Boston University, but, because of his status as a permanent resident, his options were limited. He’d always been a sports fan and, further, always an active consumer and student of how games were broadcast. So, Brito went back to school for broadcasting. His first announcing job came for the St. John’s University’s men’s basketball the day of graduation. A month into his first gig, by what he says was pure luck, Brito found himself at a black tie dinner sitting and chatting with Muhammad Ali. After sports casting for St. John’s, the New Jersey Nets, and covering boxing matches in Las Vegas in Spanish, he and a colleague joined a broadcasting company that eventually merged with Univision. He spent 12 years with the company acting as its director of sports and Spanish voice of the NFL for the majority of his tenure. Since then, El Alcalde’s story mirrors that of Lebron James. Both of their paths led them far from home to Miami, then to Cleveland at the beginning of the 2014-2015 season. For both men, the past two years have come to define their careers. “It is the biggest moment of my 20-year broadcasting career, not only because of what it means personally but also because of what it means to all Cavs fans in Cleveland, Northeast Ohio and everywhere,” he says. Uncharacteristically lowering his voice for a second, Brito says, “I ran into someone who had gone to the cemetery the day before the parade to celebrate with his father, because his father passed away and never got a chance to see the Cavaliers win a championship. Cleveland has a champion now.” Yes, we certainly do. – Tucker Kelly

Tim Tramble Executive Director, Burten, Bell, Carr Development, Inc. – Because he’s only 45 years old, it should come as a shock that Tim Tramble has been the executive director of Burten, Bell, Carr Development, Inc. for 16 years. It’s the community development corporation in Kinsman, ground zero of Cleveland’s “forgotten triangle” on the eastside, and Tramble has devoted his life to its resuscitation. “Back when I started,” he tells Scene, “I didn’t even have a computer at my desk.” The choreographer of Kinsman’s recovery is short and slim, and he speaks of community development as the stuff of personal vocation. “There’s a lot of blight in this city,” he says from Bridgeport Cafe, the neighborhood coffee shop, culinary learning center and fast-food alternative next to BBC on Kinsman Road and East 72nd Street. “But redeveloping these neighborhoods would solve so many of our problems. A lot of the dysfunction would subside. Economic integration is the key, and if we work together and commit ourselves to it, it can happen.” Tramble was a teen parent living on East 89th and Quincy, but that didn’t make him put his life on hold. He’s been striving to be a model neighbor since he was a young man. “When I came back home after freshman year of college and saw Cleveland through the eyes of a visitor for the first time, I recognized things that needed changing,” he says. “I hadn’t seen it before because I was born in it — the tall grass, the litter. When I was a kid, a blighted home was just a club house. An abandoned lot was just a shortcut.” Tramble was a science major, but he knew he wanted to utilize his education to help the community in some capacity. After a job with an environmental engineering firm in Willoughby, he landed a position with Cleveland’s health department. There, he performed home inspections to identify lead hazards. After finding a particularly dangerous block, where three children had been poisoned, he worked with Union-Miles Development Corporation to abate as many homes as they could. “When I saw the rehabilitation of that street,” Tramble says, “I knew that this is what I wanted to do.” In terms of upcoming projects, Tramble says he’s most excited about a community radio station, 95.9 FM. “I want it to be the WCPN for the African-American community,” Tramble says. “There will be something for everyone.” In addition to his work in the neighborhood, Tramble has been active in the various groups contributing to Cleveland’s police reform. First, he was tapped to serve on the selection panel that assembled the Cleveland Community Police Commission and now he serves on the Monitoring Team’s committee for community engagement. “One of the pillars of the consent decree is making sure it’s an all-inclusive process,” Tramble says. “But a lot of people don’t understand who all these groups are. The Police Commission? The Monitor? The DOJ? The city? What are their roles? There are so many pieces and parts to this. And if you’re looking in from the outside, it’s like a blur. So we try to be educators and give people a Consent Decree 101.” Back when the city was analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of various proposals from firms that wanted to serve as the Monitor, one of the weaknesses of the ultimate winner, the Police Assessment Resource Center — “Matthew Barge is a guru, by the way,” says Tramble, of the Monitor himself — was that PARC didn’t have many locals on its proposed team. Enter Tim Tramble. They couldn’t have found a better candidate. – Sam Allard

Kelly Novak Director of Education and Outreach, Planned Parenthood Greater Ohio – Before she worked for Planned Parenthood, Kelly Novak was a patient. In fact, after her very first visit to a clinic, she knew she was destined to be a part of this organization: “In the rear-view mirror I saw the logo on the side of the building. I decided right then and there that I was gonna work for Planned Parenthood because this is how people should be treated.” The atmosphere surrounding her job and the organization’s place in state and national politics has grown increasingly contentious in recent years, but Novak is more determined than ever. “What I hope to see is the continued destigmatization of all things sexual and reproductive health,” she says. “It is ridiculous the vast difference in language, in protocol, in ethos around everything sexual and reproductive health [compared to other areas of health].” This means working across all areas of life for the patients and all areas of Ohio, and beyond. What does that mean in practical terms? In her time working with Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, Novak has led the department through myriad educational programs throughout 68 of Ohio’s 88 counties. That involves a dozen currently active programs including providing free HIV testing, STI education, birth control information, as well as programs like PREP (Personal Responsibility and Education Program) and Healthy Moms, Healthy Babies, which works to address the high infant mortality rate in Ohio by aiding pregnant women and new mothers in their travels through various stages of motherhood. It all started with a grant making her department the exclusive provider of comprehensive sex education for the Cleveland school district. It included STI and birth control information, as well as education on healthy relationships and consent. Training peer health educators at high schools in Cleveland and other cities across Ohio is another aspect of Novak’s work, placing the students themselves in the role of educator. Novak remembers one woman in particular, when asked about her favorite experiences on the job. The woman had just left a rehab facility and was working to stay clean. “She was so young and she had been through a lot — more than most of us will go through in a life,” Novak says. “She just looked at me and said, ‘This was the only place I knew I could come and be honest about my life and not be judged.’ I think about her every single day.” The memories are proud even in moments of great distress. The state of Ohio recently voted to defund Planned Parenthood across the state — the organization is currently in the middle of a lawsuit against the action — and Novak had a moment when she saw all of the services the organization provides listed in the official complaint. It struck her: “Just seeing one after the other, after the other, it was a great moment to step back and say, ‘Wow. This is really what we do. We really serve all these tens of thousands of people.'” Sexual health isn’t the only topic on which Novak is educating the community; she’s also a certified yoga instructor. With several regular classes each week, she’s been teaching in Cleveland for more than six years: “I have a couple regular gigs; it keeps me sane and accountable,” she says. She recently collaborated with an organization called ZenWorks Yoga that works to host yoga and mindfulness exercises for underserved children and families; they seek out yoga teachers from the area and host donation-based sessions in order to raise money and get the community involved. “My grandma asked me one day, sort of bewildered, ‘How do these two things relate to each other?'” Novak says. “Both tie to my core belief that we should all be in charge of ourselves and we should all be a whole person. Both of these aspects of my life address that in different ways.” – Cecilia Ellis

Marcus Alan Ward Musician – Earlier this July, Marcus Alan Ward performed an album release show at Beachland Ballroom to celebrate the new material on Little Sunshine. The show sold out, and the album, performed in its entirety, is a highlight for the local music scene this summer. Listen: Ward is a forward-thinking guy in a town that increasingly rewards that sort of work ethic. But the music scene here can sometimes be a bit stodgier. He came up in rock bands and screamo bands when he was younger, so the “progressive pop” tag that he wears on his sleeve with this latest material presents something of a contrast, something less easily digestible. It’s even a far cry from more recent electronic music that he released under the moniker Freeze-Tag. But Ward keeps his eyes on the horizon, and he watches out for auspicious signs on his path. Ward ended up at a show in Detroit a while back, he says, watching a DJ spin funk all night. “I just remember dancing by myself all night — and I dance by myself all the time, because I like to — but I remember dancing by myself, people looking at me, and I’m like, ‘Wow, this shit is awesome,'” he tells Scene. “There was a moment when a song came on, and it was an old funk song from the 1970s, and the dude was like, ‘My name is Marcus! And I’m a Capricorn!’ That was in the song. And I’m Marcus and I’m a Capricorn. It was a moment of synergy, and I felt like I needed to be there in that moment in time.” From there, Ward took a deep dive into the funk world and began blending his new influences with older vibes like garage rock (White Stripes) and moodier post-rock stuff (Interpol). This hybridization is a motif in Ward’s creative pursuits. “I’m blessed to have parents who let me do anything I wanted,” Ward says. “And especially as an African-American, a lot of times I saw my peers and kids I grew up with be super limited because they felt they had to be a certain way or listen to a certain type of music — or live up to an image that’s been sold to us by someone from outside our culture.” Ward tried on all sorts of creative influences, and he happened to land on the guitar, which came as a Christmas gift when he was 14. (He learned the “Jingle Bells” melody that day.) And another thing: Ward cites something of an entrepreneurial spirit, even as far back as age 8 and 9 or so. He kept lizards and snakes as pets while he was growing up, and he created fascinating little worlds for them — creative terrariums — and found ways to sell them to other prospective pet owners. He really ran with that sense of ambition. “When I was able to take that guitar and create something out of thin air, that was super attractive to me,” Ward says. Everything has been a building block for this young son of Cleveland, and he’s quick to point out that there’s something larger at work here — something he wants to show this city. “‘I’ve said it before: Whenever I tell somebody that I make music, they just assume and they ask, ‘How long have you been rapping?’ That’s exactly what they ask me every time,” he says. “Being a black rock musician is very important to me, because first of all rock is my favorite genre. I think that it holds within its spirit the old world where African-Americans came from — the vibrations with gospel and blues and soul, that’s all present in rock music — and I think it needs to be preserved. I’m built to do it. “For Cleveland, it’s been hard to break through the mold of the typical black artist that makes rap music. Some publications here still write ‘hip-hop alternative artist’ or ‘hip-hop electronic artist Marcus Alan Ward does this or that…’ I see it, and it’s just crazy to me.” – Eric Sandy

Trevor Elkins Mayor, Newburgh Heights – Is Newburgh Heights’ mayor Trevor Elkins a radical? It’s worth asking of the 44-year-old politician, a man who has been mayor of the small blue-collar community just south of Cleveland since 2011, and a man who plans on being a name to know in politics for many years to come. As a member of the regional Mayors and City Managers Association, Elkins was the lone dissenting voice when that body voted to endorse the Sin Tax in 2014. Recently, as a board member for the Greater Cleveland Regional Transit Authority, Elkins was the lone nay vote when the board adopted fare hikes and service cuts this summer. He’s an outspoken advocate for his constituents, but he rejects the radical label with a chuckle. “So many of my friends are moderate Democrats, even Republican- lites,” he says, seated at a table in the ghostly quiet of the Newburgh Heights village council chambers. “And they all kind of laugh at me, but I don’t think taking a stand makes you a radical. To be honest, there were 35 mayors in that room when we voted on the Sin Tax, and I voted no, but I bet there were 10 to 15 others who felt the exact same way as I did.” So why didn’t they? “They just didn’t have the balls,” Elkins says. “It’s the path of least resistance, or at least the perception of the path of least resistance. Anyway, how can you label me a radical when I’m the speed camera nazi?” True enough. Elkins ardently defends the speed cameras, even though he knows people roll their eyes at them, and continue to roll their eyes when Elkins tells them they weren’t installed to raise money. “We have 120-some-thousand cars traveling through this community every day,” he says, “and no matter how aggressive we were, we just couldn’t control speeds. This is a safety issue. Now, do I recognize that they generate revenue? Absolutely. Do I apologize for that? No.” (Especially, Elkins says, because on I-77, where the speed limit is 60 mph, citations aren’t issued until a vehicle hits 74 mph.) Elkins isn’t from Cleveland originally, but he spent summers in Slavic Village with his dad, after his parents split up when he was a kid. “The first bar I ever drank in was right here on East 42nd,” the mayor admits with a visible twinkle in his eye. “Bar Tunek’s. I was 16 years old, and I was looking for a place to play pool.” Elkins got his start in politics early, winning a seat on the school board in his small town in upstate New York, immediately after he graduated high school. A couple years later, he worked on the campaign of a friend running for state assembly. “After that, I was hooked,” Elkins says. Elkins moved to Cleveland in ’95 and to Newburgh Heights in ’98, but didn’t get involved in the local political scene until ’03, when he ascended the ranks of the Kucinich-for-President campaign and eventually became the New Hampshire state director. He planned to run for state senate but, in 2005, the mayor of Newburgh Heights asked him to run for council. He was the top vote-getter in that election. After a stint as the village’s finance director, he was elected mayor in 2011. And he’s nowhere near done. “It’s cliched, but I’m in politics because I want to make the world a better place,” Elkins says. “And if I can make the world an even better place in a higher office, then I will explore that. Do I think my political career ends in Newburgh Heights? Probably not.” – Sam Allard

Jacqueline Greene Attorney, Friedman & Gilbert – Like many Clevelanders, Jacqueline Greene is catching her breath a little bit after the conclusion of the RNC, but just for a moment. As a coordinator for the National Lawyer’s Guild Ohio chapter, Greene worked through the convention, and will continue working beyond, to help ensure that civil rights remain protected as they intersect with politics and police. When it came to the RNC, there were a few dozen arrests, far fewer than many had expected, but there was plenty to be concerned about nonetheless. “Since 1968, the reason we’re there, at large-scale political events like the RNC, is because very frequently there are massive civil rights violations occurring,” she says. “What was interesting here was that the number of protestors seemed to have been lower than other recent nominating conventions, however, we saw a militarized police presence, a number of different agencies involved, and the types of weaponry they were carrying was a show of force. They engaged pretty strongly with the crowd and it became evident that there was some preemptive law enforcement going on — there were FBI door knocks before and during the event, there was an intimidation factor that played into the presence of protestors. It’s a chilling effect. While many people applauded the city for making it through the week relatively unscathed, we were still concerned at what we saw was a successful attempt to chill protests.” But enough about the RNC. Greene’s role there was laudable and necessary, but so too is her work with the firm of Friedman & Gilbert, where she and the team work on correctional and institutional misconduct cases that cut right to the heart of some of Cleveland’s longstanding problems. For instance, she was on the team that represented the family of Kenny Smith in their civil case against the city of Cleveland and police for Smith’s wrongful death at the hands of an officer. (The family was awarded a $5.5 million judgment by a jury, all this despite Prosecutor Tim McGinty finding the shooting to be justified.) They also work on policy issues stemming from the consent decree with the Department of Justice. It’s the sort of work that brought Greene, a Northeast Ohio native, back to Cleveland in 2014. After graduating law school in 2011, she worked in London at the International Bar Association, spent a few months in Cambodia working on the criminal defense team for Nuon Chea (a.k.a. Brother Number Two, one-time second in command to Pol Pot) — “If you deny rights to those seen as by society as the worst of the worst, that means those rights can be denied to anyone” — and worked in D.C. at the American Bar Association, among other things. But on a trip back to Cleveland she met up with noted civil rights lawyer Terry Gilbert and soon got a job offer to work at his firm. “When I was younger, I did not intend on sticking around the Greater Cleveland area,” she says. “Eventually I came to the realization that if I really wanted to be engaged in the work in a meaningful way, I needed to be at home, where I had an intimate understanding of the area and thought the work was of value. I feel really fortunate to do my job with people are passionate and compassionate at the same time. And I feel really fortunate to be in a place where the work with the people in the city makes a difference in community interests, whether individually or in a larger context.” Greene, who’s lived on the near west side off and on since 2009, otherwise enjoys the hobbies many Clevelanders do — exploring the growing food and drink scene, attending gallery openings — but can also be found at monthly salsa dances around the city. “It’s a very social dance,” she says. “You meet new people, and they teach you a little something you didn’t know.” — Vince Grzegorek

John Douglas Bouncer, Grog Shop – If you’ve been to the Grog Shop in the past 11 years, you’ve seen John Douglas. Often sporting a sleeveless T-shirt, backwards ball cap and grizzled goatee, Douglas holds court as security detail at the storied eastside music venue. The Grog Shop has gotten out ahead of a lot of big names. “We had Bruno Mars before he had a stylist,” Douglas says. “He was a really nice kid.” (He remembers the pop superstar trying to sneak some cigarettes inside the venue and having to direct him behind the curtain. “Here, I’ll join ya,” he told him.) Douglas cites a 9 Shocks Terror and Subhumans concert as the first night of his employment. “My boss at the time, she grabbed me and, ‘Just get on the stage and keep them off!’ And I found I had some aptitude for it. Everybody still talks about that show. The 9 Shocks fans set off a smoke bomb, which set off our fire alarm five seconds into the set. The band is playing, the lights are out, the sprinklers are going, and I’m pulling Steve in and out of the damn audience and I’m still blocking the audience, then they emptied the whole club, and somehow we were able to continue. People are a lot easier to deal with 11 years later. “I just take these shows one at a time,” he says. He and his co-captain Terry work together to keep the peace; they bring an attitude of calm and community to shows. “We like to be bored,” Douglas says. “I don’t enjoy tossing people. We just want things to go as they are.” And, indeed, he maintains a friendly vibe with Grog regulars and the bands who roll through town on the reg. When asked what sort of music he digs, he avers that there’s not much out there that he’s interested in. “Anybody I want to hear is dead,” Douglas says, citing Cash, Haggard, Jennings. He gets to throw out the fact that he caught those concerts to young kids showing up at the Grog. “I have to get something for being old! “I honestly don’t listen to anything now,” he says. “The radio in my car don’t work, and I kinda like the silence.” In between runs of shows at the Grog, the silence is indeed welcome. Douglas hangs out at his place in the Heights, laying low with his dog, a ferocious hunter and a loving friend. “She never really had a name. I say ‘Come on,’ and she comes,” he says. “I couldn’t imagine life without dogs.” Beyond that, Douglas, whose past includes an array of laborious blue-collar gigs, takes life one show at a time. He adopts a meditative, Zen-like approach to this work, all couched in a self-effacing Cleveland grace. – Eric Sandy

Steven Caple Jr. Director, The Land – After a glitzy premiere scheduled for Aug. 3, The Land will hit local theaters, and audiences should be prepared for the illest film about Cleveland ever made. Have you heard of it? The Land chronicles the life and times of four teenage skateboarders who turn to slinging drugs to escape their dead-end lives. It’s directed by Cleveland native Steven Caple Jr. Right now, Caple’s back in town filming a music video for Ezri Walker’s latest track “Goodbye.” Walker (the actor/artist known as Ezzy) stars in the film, alongside Machine Gun Kelly, Erykah Badu, The Wire’s Michael Kenneth Williams, up-and-comers like Jorge Lendeborg Jr., who’s set to appear in Spiderman: Homecoming, and the city of Cleveland itself. “I wanted to tell a story about Cleveland,” Caple tells Scene, “because the Cleveland that you see on TV, and the urban communities you see on TV — that’s not how I grew up.” His version has all the gritty urban landscapes you’d expect — deserted warehouses, crumbling infrastructure, graffiti-vined convenience stores — but Caple says The Land isn’t just “another gritty hood film,” especially because it’s told from the perspective of kids. “And that gives it a different sort of gloss,” Caple says. “An adult sees a sad abandoned warehouse; a kid sees a playground.” Caple grew up on the playgrounds of the near-westside. He moved around a lot, but much of his youth was spent on the basketball courts of Michael J. Zone and Cudell. “It was always ball,” Caple says. (He played at John Marshall High School, too.) “But when I wasn’t playing basketball, or at school, I was making movies with my mom’s camcorder.” Some of his early hits: Scary Movie 5, Bad Boys III. “I was a huge Will Smith fan,” Caple says. When he got the opportunity to go to Baldwin-Wallace on a scholarship, he took it, even though the film program at that time was still in its infancy. “It wasn’t even a major until my junior year,” Caple recalls. But Caple’s not dissing the program. He double-majored in marketing and says he enjoyed the attention of the faculty who recognized his ambitions. Besides, he was doing post-secondary coursework at Tri-C and had access to their film equipment over the summer. Caple says he was the sort of student who, in a cinematography class, would be assigned to collect a couple of specific shots but would come back with a full short film. That work ethic, and his artistic vision centered on humanity’s “dark edge,” got him into USC’s film school — one of the country’s most highly regarded. There, he continued to grow as a writer and as an artist. In the meantime, Cleveland was blowing up as a location for Hollywood films. Caple came home to intern and be a production assistant on sets, but says the experience wasn’t all that gratifying. “I thought this was my chance,” he says. “I’m going to work in the movies. But they’d be like, ‘You can stand there and make sure no one passes the line.'” So when Caple got the opportunity to make The Land — he’d enticed investors with a short film, to prove that a movie about multi-racial skateboarding kids in an ethereally shot Rust Belt city, a city where, during snowy winters, kids practice skateboarding in basements, is actually dope — he balked at filming elsewhere. “They pushed hard for Michigan,” Caple tells Scene. “But was I really going to come here and shoot B-roll and then go back up to Michigan? I’d be like those dudes recreating New York City for Spider-Man.” Not on Caple’s watch. – Sam Allard

Somara Theodore Meteorologist, Good Morning Cleveland – Somara Theodore doesn’t think of weather forecasting in terms of simply predicting highs and lows. Rather, she’s interested in it as an applied science. And her interest in the weather actually dates back to her youth. “I saw the movie Twister and said, ‘Mom, I want to be inside the storm too,” she says one morning from the Channel 5 WEWS studios on East 30th Street and Euclid. “That was it. That and watching thunderstorms. I was always fascinated with the weather.” But because primary and secondary schools don’t offer much in the way of weather-related curriculum, she had to wait until college before getting a chance to get further education in her passion. Initially, Theodore, who attended Penn State University, struggled with the hard science she had to study. “I didn’t know how to add fractions well when I got to college,” she says. “I was at a severe disadvantage. I also had to take calculus, level one. It’s a math- and physics-based science.” While at Penn State, Somara conducted extensive fieldwork with NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The NASA project, dubbed Discovery AQ, involved testing ozone levels in Washington, D.C. During her time at Penn State, she also analyzed data related to lightning. After graduating three years ago, she took a gig at the Fox affiliate in Savannah. It was a learning experience unlike anything she’d been through. “It was scary because I had never taken a television course,” she says of the experience. “So outside of appearing on the college TV station, I had never learned how to be on TV. They just threw me in there. People misconstrue this, but meteorology is applied physics in a way. It’s an actual science, and the TV aspect is because a few of us have good personalities. I think TV fits my personality dynamic. I love the science and I still practice the science. I want to be the liaison between the science and the general public. I feel the difference I’m making every day.” On her personal website, SomaraTheodore.com, she provides a “Fashion Forecast,” a “digital closet” that provides tips on what to wear based on the weather, and something a little more than you’ll get by tuning into Good Morning Cleveland. She started the blog a few months ago. “I like getting dressed and wearing clothes,” she says. “I’m interested in different materials for the season. Fashion is a manifestation of personality.” Recently, Somara, a first-generation American, presented a TEDx Talk on her ethnic background. “It was one of the defining moments of my life because it forced me to face a reality that was very prevalent but I never evaluated because it was just the norm,” she says of her TEDx Talk. “Being a first-generation American can be interesting. We’re riding this line between worlds. I can switch and talk in my native tongue. The words I choose, like ‘bombastic,’ are ones that my grandmother used to use. They’re not just my native words either. It’s also like a time capsule. The people there now have a new lingo. Her cultural gift was encapsulated in time. I’m the essential 1950s Trinidadian. I think that’s pretty awesome. I think it’s important to highlight that we are a country that’s beautifully mixed and we have so much to learn from one another.” – Jeff Niesel

Jason Estremera Director of Business Services, Northeast Ohio Hispanic Business Center; Owner, Trunk clothing store – Jason Estremera attributes his keen fashion sensibilities to his mother. “My mom is the quirkiest lady you’ll ever meet,” says Estremera, who grew up in the Chicago suburbs. We’re talking one afternoon at Trunk, his men’s clothing store in Detroit-Shoreway. “We were the kids in the minivan being dropped off at school, and my mom was listening to Prince and Violent Femmes and the Cure. I was inspired by the sense of rebellion in not only the music but their clothing. I would emulate that. In the ’90s, shock rock and grunge was popular and so different. For someone who felt different on the inside, I thought I could use fashion and style to reflect that on the outside. My mother wore bolo ties and she kind of went through this Annie Lennox phase where she wore men’s clothes. I felt comfortable being ‘weird’ at that time.” In 2010, he moved to Cleveland with JP Morgan Chase as an assistant branch manager in the Gordon Square Arts District. He immediately fell in love with the area and put down roots, purchasing a house and contributing to the neighborhood’s economy. Just last year, he opened Trunk, a small storefront that sells used and new men’s clothing, accessories and lifestyle products. “I’ve always wanted to open a men’s clothing store,” he says adding that he grew up shopping at flea markets and secondhand stores because “you could embrace your own style without buying into an image.” It doesn’t hurt that he also earned a Bachelor’s of Science in textiles, apparel and merchandising while in Chicago. “I love the idea of dressing up a space. I didn’t want to design. I wasn’t strong at that, but give me a pile of clothes, and I can create something amazing. I love shopping. I like studying store layouts, branding and merchandising. I’m fascinated by the story that’s being told through all of that.” Being a small business owner certainly helps give him credibility with his Northeast Ohio Hispanic Business Center and Chamber of Commerce clients. The organization’s outreach and impact within the local community has increased, and Estremera hopes that the forthcoming El Mercado, a collection of Hispanic shops, will help define La Villa Hispana, an area along West 25th St., as Cleveland’s Latino epicenter. “It’s been one hell of a journey going from corporate America to a nonprofit. You have to work 50 times harder to prove yourself, but the payoff is so tremendous,” he says of working at the organization. “The Hispanic Business Center is a community of entrepreneurs who are getting started or growing. We meet at this intersection of idea and passion. There’s also a spiritual element in that you’re pushing yourself and there are these magical connections that lead to opportunities.” His ultimate goal? To promote and embrace Cleveland’s rich cultural diversity. “I’m fascinated with Cleveland because we live in a city where people are hungry for cultural exchange,” he says. “I want people to see how beautiful the diversity is here. Our Hispanic-owned businesses are creating jobs and tax revenues and persevering through the hard work that goes into being a minority in America. The work that the center has put into La Villa Hispana has provided a stage for these businesses to show Cleveland what they got. It’s about preserving the heritage of an immigrant community through creating meaningful, tangible change. It’s about showing our future leaders that they can make it past expectations.” – Jeff Niesel

Indigo Bishop Action Strategist, ioby Cleveland – Training for legal observers. Community gardens. School uniforms. A documentary film about hunger and poverty. Feminine hygiene products for underserved girls and women. Accredited CPR training. Exterior home improvements. All these projects are currently being funded in Cleveland through ioby (“In Our Backyard”), a nonprofit crowdfunding platform that brings community projects to life, in the organization’s words, “one block at a time.” In Cleveland, the on-the-ground team organizing ioby’s efforts is comprised of one woman: Indigo Bishop. She lives in Buckeye/Shaker, where ioby is also headquartered, in the renovated St. Luke’s Manor on Shaker Boulevard, and right now, she’s deciding whether to grab a cup of coffee at Dewey’s, her favorite local haunt on Shaker Square, or down at the Perfect Cup on East 116th. “They do free doughnuts on Fridays,” Bishop tells Scene, “So I may have to do that.” Bishop is a Cleveland native. She grew up on the westside — she played sports at Cudell Rec Center, where Tamir Rice was gunned down in 2014 — but moved to the Larchmere area after her first year at Laurel. “That was too long of a commute from the westside,” she jokes. She did both undergrad and graduate work at Case, studying sociology and anthropology and then social work, and then went on to work at Neighborhood Connections for almost five years doing community organizing. Ioby, she says, was a natural extension of the work she had already been doing. “I’m really about finding leaders and innovative people who not only recognize things need to change, but have the drive to make things change,” she says. With ioby, Bishop says, people are empowered to make their communities better places in the ways they see fit. “That element is super important,” Bishop says. “They have autonomy over their projects. A lot of people know about GoFundMe or other crowdfunding sites, but the big difference with ioby is that it’s a nonprofit. It’s mission-driven and all about supporting residents in communities that need extra support and resources. These communities have the drive, but if they have the right coaching and capacity-building around fundraising, along with the tech tools to mobilize resources, they can make a lot of great things happen.” Any notable upcoming projects? Scene wanted to know. “There’s one, a woman is creating a healing center where folks can come do culturally appropriate healing practices,” Bishop says. “There’s yoga, meditation, reiki, things like that, and they’re used as ways to combat social ills and the injustice of living a marginalized life. I really want that to be successful, partly because I want to go!” A community center for expectant mothers is also in the works, and that’s a particularly important resource for a community ravaged by infant mortality, where young mothers don’t have the opportunity to take classes to prepare for motherhood from and with people who look like them. Bishop says that the fundraising, thus far, has been hyper-local, and the reasons are obvious: “You get to see the community garden that you contributed to,” she says. “Or you know that your grandma will get to go to the computer lab.” Ioby started in Brooklyn, New York, in 2009 and has since raised more than $2.5 million for more than 700 projects nationwide. In Cleveland, if you have an idea for your neighborhood, Bishop says the first thing to do is go to ioby.org/idea. Every project goes a long way to improving Cleveland’s communities. “In general, I’d like to see resources and accolades going to more than just one or two neighborhoods in the city,” she says. “It’s an uphill battle, but these neighborhoods have a lot to offer that really should be highlighted.” – Sam Allard

Amy Schneider Instructor, Cleveland Yoga – With Cleveland’s burgeoning renaissance comes a natural affinity for healthy living and active lifestyles. Cleveland Yoga, in Beachwood and Cleveland’s Uptown neighborhood, has been on the forefront of the revolution, as more Northeast Ohioans adopt active living practices and seek personal improvement. The yoga studio, which includes dynamic teacher Amy Schneider, is leading the charge into the city’s new ethos. “I never really planned on being a yoga teacher,” Schneider says. “I always liked practicing yoga, and then when I graduated from college — I went to the University of Michigan — I was working in Chicago and I went to a yoga teacher training just kind of for fun, with no intention to really teach.” And so she had some Baptiste training under her belt when Cleveland Yoga came calling in 2008. (Baptiste is a style of power Vinyasa yoga.) It was a natural fit, and Schneider soon found herself on the schedule more and more often — and liking the gig more than she thought she would. “It wasn’t some big dream of being a yoga teacher,” she says with a laugh. “It was fun.” It was organic. Schneider was fortunate enough, as well, to catch something of a wave here in Northeast Ohio (and elsewhere) that saw yoga classes suddenly boasting waiting lists and studios sprinting to offer expanded services. Cleveland’s own intersection with a new generation’s healthy living was on its way. Classes sprung up east to west, morning to night, with a roster of students who represented huge swaths of Cleveland’s population. It was a big change for an activity that, not too many years earlier, was little more than a niche hobby. “It was an exciting time to be a part of that,” she says. “And also at my age, to do something like that as a job. You know, you think of a ‘job’ and you think of sitting at a desk and wearing business-casual clothes. I got to show up in yoga pants and play fun music and be a part of this business that was flourishing. And I was part of this community that was flourishing, and you could feel it. There was this energy there that was exciting. I came home at a great time when all that was happening.” By now, Schneider has mostly branched off into her own style of yoga; Baptiste was a “good foundation to grow from,” she says. Her students have really taken to her approach. And she and Cleveland Yoga have really taken to Cleveland’s new identity. Earlier this month, Schneider hosted a yoga class at FWD Day + Nightclub. “I think all of the studios are kind of branching outside their walls, doing events that grab the public’s attention,” she adds. It seems to be working quite well. But beyond the studio and beyond the city, yoga is also something that has helped lead Schneider onto her own path in life. She’ll be going back to school to accent her part-time gig as a yoga teacher and to study interior design. (Schneider previously worked for an interior designer.) Her long-term goal is to blend those two passions into one formidable and joyful career. – Eric Sandy

The Very Rev. Tracey Lind Dean, Trinity Cathedral – A stained glass sign that hangs outside Tracey Lind’s office at Trinity Cathedral simply reads, “The Dean.” The Very Rev. Lind, however, isn’t your ordinary dean, and Trinity Cathedral isn’t your average church. Rather, Lind acts more like a community liaison, and, since her arrival at Trinity in 2000, the church has been so much more than a place for services. For example, in 2014, Trinity started hosting rock and pop concerts, all with Lind’s blessing. “We’re working with [the local promoter] Elevation on a project called Cathedral Concerts and the idea is to find the intersection between sacred space and popular music,” she says one afternoon from her spacious office that looks out on Prospect Avenue. “The world is changing and the fastest changing demographic among Americans is called ‘nones,’ people with no affiliation. The concerts for us are a way to introduce people to our sacred space and allow them to experience the holy on their own terms. Some people experience the divine in contemporary music and in traditional rock ‘n’ roll and jazz and bluegrass and Americana.” She says a band like the alt-rock group Airborne Toxic Event, which played at the church last year, represents the “psalmists of today” and that the songs they write are like the psalms attributed to David in the Bible. The church even hosted Sandra Bernhard, a comedian and actress known for her lewd sense of humor. “What we say is that this is not your grandmother’s Episcopal church,” says Lind. “But there are some wonderful grandparents at this congregation. We want to move from generation to generation. We knew Sandra can be edgy and irreverent and raunchy. We wanted her to honor the fact that she’s in a house of prayer and she did. Every time she wanted to say a word that wouldn’t be acceptable, she put her middle finger in the air and I just thought it was hysterical.” The church also hosts themed masses. On Sundays, it holds an “early bird special” at 8 a.m. That service doesn’t involve much music. But at 9 a.m., a local cover band comes to the church to play the Mostly Jazz Mass, where you can hear gospel, rock and Americana. Periodically, the church will also present services featuring the music of acts such as Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and the Beatles. And for the past two years, the church has hosted a tribute to Rock Hall inductees. Before coming to Cleveland, Lind, who holds a bachelor’s degree in urban studies from the Honors College at the University of Toledo, a master’s of community planning from the University of Cincinnati and a master’s of divinity from Union Theological Seminary in New York, served as associate rector of Christ Church in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and then as rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in multi-cultural Paterson, New Jersey. That work prepped her well for the move to yet another urban environment. “It was a big, old, stone church in the middle of a very, very poor city,” she says of St. Paul’s. “We developed a community development corporation. We ran a shelter. We ran programs for commercial sex workers and did a lot of work with immigrants from all over the world. We did citizenship classes and English as a Second Language classes. We had a food pantry that was like a small supermarket.” Her intention: to literally open the church up to everyone. “The idea is that the people are on the inside of the church, but I like to say, ‘Here’s the church and here’s the steeple, open the doors and see all the people on the outside,'” she says, motioning with her hands. “I always put glass doors on the front so you can open the big beautiful wood doors, so people can see in, and we can see out. Our focus is on facing outward.” – Jeff Niesel

Coast Guard Admiral June Ryan – Rear Adm. June E. Ryan is the top dog in the U.S. Coast Guard’s 9th District, an eight-state region that stretches from Massena, New York — right on the Canadian border — to Lake of the Woods, North Dakota, up past Duluth. Though there are several women in leadership positions in the Coast Guard, Ryan is the first woman to command the 9th District and the first woman to ascend from the enlisted ranks to flag officer. At the City Club last month, when Ryan delivered the annual State of the Great Lakes address, she was asked whether or not any limit had been imposed upon her success because she was female. “In my current position, no,” Ryan responded. “Because I’m the admiral.” The crowd immediately applauded. And mic thus dropped, she elaborated. “I think every working woman in this room could give one or two or three or 10 examples of times they’ve encountered difficult individuals … No matter where you go or what you do, you are going to have jerks, and I’ve been very fortunate that when those folks have challenged me, I’ve been able to prove them wrong with my professionalism, prove them wrong with my skills, or prove them wrong with my wit.” On a recent sunny afternoon at Cleveland’s Coast Guard station on East Ninth Street, across from the Rock Hall, Ryan tells Scene about her illustrious career with the Coast Guard. She enlisted in the Reserves in 1982, while she was a biology student at Bowling Green; she was a commanding officer on two boats (one of which, the cutter Neah Bay, was based in Cleveland); she was the military aid to President Bill Clinton for two years and, most recently, the military advisor to Jeh Johnson, the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. Now she’s back in Cleveland. “My family and I are big Food Network people,” Ryan tells Scene, “and when I got my orders, we said, ‘That’s where Michael Symon is from!’ So our first stop was Lola, and then we realized how many other great restaurants there were downtown; we very rarely go back to the same place.” Ryan lives in Lakewood with her husband and 14-year-old daughter and she says Cleveland has changed significantly since she was here 20 years ago, commanding the Neah Bay. “Back then, Cleveland was a place where you worked and then left. That was it,” she says. “Now, it’s a legitimate nighttime destination. I’ve got staff who live downtown. I can go to Heinen’s for lunch and people watch. It’s a stark difference.” One of the big issues locally, in Ryan’s world, has been the controversy over the dredging of the Cuyahoga River. Ryan rejects the idea that the Army Corps — which would like to dump dredged material in Lake Erie — are the villains, out to sabotage Northeast Ohio’s water supply. “We’re responsible for looking after the environment and also for facilitating commerce,” she says. “So it’s our job to find common ground and find the safest way to do that.” On the safety front, Ryan says one of the biggest challenges right now is simply convincing paddle craft users to wear life jackets. She says that many people just don’t recognize the hazards of being out on the water. “If you were next to a train track, would you sit there and touch the train as it went by?” she asks. “People think it’s fun to be out on a paddle craft and touch the sides of these big boats. But they could get sucked right in.” But safety is always front of mind for Ryan, especially as she and her staff prepared for the RNC. Ryan says she was impressed by the level of commitment and cooperation she saw in Cleveland — by community leaders, government officials, the nonprofits, the restaurants, the citizens. “You hear ‘whole of government’ all the time, but this was really ‘whole of community,'” she says. “Everyone, I think, wants people to come here and see Cleveland for the gem that it is.” – Sam Allard

Myra Rosario Host, Yo Soy Latino Cleveland – “Mic check: 1 … 2 … 3,” Myra Rosario says into the mic clipped onto the collar of her blue-and-white summer dress. Seated on the stage in Studio B at WKYC, she is preparing for an interview of a local non-profit for her show, Yo Soy Latino Cleveland. The guest is late and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Rosario steps off of the stage and leaves the room in search of the producer. She returns, but leaves the room again briefly to get some air. Every time the heavy, soundproof door opens, the anxious crew glances in its direction. Nervous glances give way to relief when the guest finally walks in. After a brief prep for the interview, they take their seats and the production assistant begins the countdown to taping. “5, 4, 3, 2, and …” Rosario is a natural in front of the camera, but initially didn’t want to be the host of her show. After being selected for a Civic Innovation Lab grant in 2010, and having already done consulting, promoting, writing, sales and running her website, LatinoCleveland.com, she figured one of the best ways to get her message out and actually connect with the community would be a TV show. Now, she’s the brain, heart and face of the operation. “It’s the first Hispanic American show dedicated to the local Hispanic community on a network station in the country,” Rosario says. “Not only is it owned by a Latina — I’m the sole owner — I might be the only Latina who owns a show on a network station.” Her story is an immigrant’s story — a wholly American story. Rosario began on the street level, promoting events by passing out fliers in the city’s westside Hispanic community where she grew up. The daughter of Puerto Rican immigrants who did not speak English when they arrived, and raised by a single mother, Rosario has taken serious risks and undertaken serious responsibility for herself, her family, and for her community. “You deal with some serious lows as an entrepreneur,” she says. Despite the trials of getting a media, promotional and consulting company off the ground, the entrepreneur has received a warm Cleveland welcome. “People have given me a chance,” she says in reflection. Seventy to 80 percent of her show is presented in English, and the rest in Spanish. All guests are local and Latino. It’s for them she has created this platform. And every week at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, the show and her guests are seen across Cleveland on Channel 3. (The shows can also be found on her website.) Rosario’s vision is to be an envoy from the Hispanic community and a teacher in the non-Hispanic community. “Yo Soy Latino Cleveland and LatinoCleveland.com should be a destination for non-Latinos to know all the Latino nonprofits, organizations, doctors, accountants, what’s happening in Hispanic communities, what’s going on.” With her culture lies her passion. “I know that I can never give this up,” she says. “I didn’t give all this blood, sweat, tears, time and sacrifices in relationships — all this stuff — for no reason. Ain’t no going back.” – Tucker Kelly

Veranda L’Ni, Thomas & Kenny Mucha The Tit for Tat Podcast Crew – Just about a week after Lizz Winstead, comedian and co-creator of “The Daily Show,” appeared as a guest on the Tit for Tat podcast, she was in Cleveland for the RNC and an event with Lady Parts Justice, a group of comedians and writers using their particular skillsets to fight for women’s rights. In the middle of the madness though, she took time out of her busy schedule to reconnect with the team behind Tit for Tat and take them to dinner. It’s a high compliment for the environment and conversation they’ve created in just a year with the program. “We hear all the time that this or that celebrity or figure doesn’t do podcasts, and then we get them,” says Thomas, one of the co-hosts. “And then they tweet at us or tell us afterward that they had a great time. Now we’ve got guests asking us to come to Nashville or Los Angeles to meet them in person.” The show is only 17 episodes into its short but vibrant existence. It was a team effort of sorts and a common sensibility that brought the trio together. There’s Veranda L’Ni, the tallest drag queen in Cleveland (clocking in at seven feet-tall); Thomas, the gay co-host; and then Producer Kenny, the straight foil. “I’ve known Kenny forever – we grew up together – and because a lot of radio shows used to have gay producers, we thought it’d be fun to flip the script and have a straight guy.” Thomas had also known Veranda for years, working on charity events together, and they’d talked about doing… something, for a very long time. The show, eventually, became a natural outlet for those conversations. Thomas had a background living and working in New York and some connections that meant it wouldn’t be hard to mine his friendships for reality stars and celebrity guests. The guests really were a dedicated angle from the start, and back in the summer of August 2015, when Tit for Tat launched, they’d ask and ask and get some yesses and some nos. Now, they have guests coming to them. Recently, they’ve chatted with Margaret Cho, Lisa Lamapanelli, Frank DeCaro, country singer Ty Herndon, and New York Times bestselling author Christopher Rice. If it seems like an odd mix, that’s by design. Each member of the team comes up with a dream list of sorts, and by product of their different interests and backgrounds, the roster is a mixed bag. “We try to be as diverse as possible,” says L’Ni. “We’ve had straight, gay and lesbian guests and people of all colors across the board. And knowing the conversation is coming from the perspective of a drag queen, a gay man and a straight man, we’re all chatting and bringing something different to the table. I listen to the morning shows, like Elvis Durant, and you have six people but they’re all bringing something very specific to contribute. We try to parse that out amongst ourselves so there’s a dynamic.” Though the podcast is, obviously, based in Cleveland – and Kenny makes sure local bands are featured on each episode (All Dinosaurs was on the Winstead edition) – the audience locally pales in comparison to the national and international reach. It’s a credit to and byproduct of the format and guests. “We get emails from Syria, Japan, Egypt… places where you probably could get in trouble for listening to the show. That blows my mind,” says Thomas about the audience. “And we have a big gay audience but we’re reminded that we have a straight audience that loves us too. So you might have this preconceived notion that it’s going to be EDM and club music, but then you have punk metal and then you’re reminded there are a ton of gay people who love metal. We all bring something different and so does the audience and that’s why it stays fresh.” “We just have fun,” says Kenny. “We love our Titty Tats – that’s what we call our fans – and in the process, we’ve gotten to know each other so much better and the conversations that happen, it just comes from us naturally just enjoying each other’s company.” “There are episodes where I can’t even talk because I’m laughing so hard,” Thomas chimes in. At the heart, it’s all Cleveland, no matter the reach. “Cleveland is fantastic,” says L’Ni. “There is so much diversity here and to pull all of that into the fold is amazing. I’m out and about and I get a ton of people asking about the show. Even though we don’t get a ton of local emails, there’s a ton of local feedback, and worldwide feedback too. It’s just so amazing to me. I never thought in a million years this little podcast from Cleveland would be getting this type of response.” – Vince Grzegorek

Deidre McPherson Curator of Public Programs, MOCA Cleveland; Founder, Sistah Sinema, Cleveland chapter – As a self-proclaimed museum geek, someone who collects coffee mugs and magnets from the museums that she visits, it’s little wonder that Deidre McPherson found a career that matches her passion. Since just after MOCA Cleveland opened its beautiful new home on Euclid Avenue in the Uptown neighborhood, McPherson has served as the organization’s curator of public programs, engaging the public through thoughtful programs and workshops that supplement the exhibitions that dot the galleries. “I develop and execute exhibition-related programs, performance-based experiences and culturally relevant social activities for adult audiences,” she says. But what does that actually mean, in layman’s terms? “I spend time learning about what ideas, events and experiences are trending and what we can bring to MOCA that’s innovative, collaborative, participatory, interdisciplinary and embodies our brand. On a given day, I’m managing the details of a program from booking performers, corresponding with organizational partners and working internally across departments to make sure programs are carried out smoothly.” A proud alum of Cleveland Heights High School, McPherson jumped at the chance to come back to Cleveland after studying violin on a full scholarship at Miami University in Ohio and bouncing around the United States (including the University of Maryland for her MBA, Boston and northern Virginia). And the bat signal to return home came in the form of a position in the marketing department of the Cleveland Orchestra. “Every time I came home to visit family, I realized I missed them and wanted to live near them again,” she remembers. “When I met up with friends who were living here, they showed me a Cleveland that I didn’t know growing up, a Cleveland that was fun, yet affordable. I was tired of living in the expensive D.C. area, and started to recognize I could have a quality life here in Cleveland. I have deep roots here: family, friends, networking opportunities and a love for how Cleveland has bounced back and reinvested in itself over the last 10 to 15 years.” McPherson wasn’t done putting her imprint on the city she loved so much. Four years ago, she founded the Cleveland chapter of Sistah Sinema, a monthly film series focusing on the stories of LGBT women of all minority groups. Since 2012, Sistah Sinema has screened dozens of dramas, comedies and documentaries. The screenings take place at nonprofit arts venues such as Spaces, Waterloo Arts and, of course, MOCA. “Sistah Sinema was founded in 2011 in Seattle, as a monthly film and dialogue event for queer women of color. After hearing about the events, I began talks with the founder about bringing a chapter to Cleveland. I was interested in connecting with queer women locally and interested in using film as a way to create dialogue around our unique challenges and opportunities. Events provide a much needed space for attendees to gather safely and have their voices expressed, heard, and supported. It’s pretty rare to go to a film and see a queer woman of color as a character, much less the lead character. Growing up, seeing The Women of Brewster Place, The Color Purple, or Watermelon Woman were the only onscreen images of queer women that I ever knew, and it’s important for all people to see themselves represented in mainstream media.” Needless to say, the museum geek has become an indispensable member of the Cleveland arts community; for that we say welcome back, and please don’t leave again. – Josh Usmani

Seti Martinez Owner/Operator, Seti’s Polish Boys – The outside temperature is 91 degrees Fahrenheit and Seti Martinez is standing, as he has been almost daily for 15 years, inside a metal box on wheels. That would be brutal enough, but that metal box also happens to contain a smoking-hot griddle and two bubbling deep fryers, causing the internal temps to climb well above 100 degrees. No joke: The upbeat sounds of Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” play over the sound system. Martinez, a Marine vet wounded in Vietnam, dresses in a spotless white T-shirt, camouflage pants and dark shades. He’s trim, tan and wears his silver hair closely cropped. Behind him, Marsha, his wife of 39 years, tries to keep cool by fluttering a small folding fan across her face. In the face of such challenging physical conditions, conditions exacerbated by his disability and long hours on his feet, Martinez soldiers on. “I just concentrate on what I’m doing,” he says. What he’s doing is trying to get established in his first new spot in a decade. For the past 10 years, everybody knew that Martinez and his Polish Boy truck would be parked outside Dean Supply, a restaurant supply warehouse near Cleveland’s produce terminal. But that relationship went south recently, forcing Martinez to release the parking brake and move on. “We’ve always had a long line wherever we go, but now we have to get established at this new spot,” he says. That new spot is on Lorain Avenue near West 42nd Street, a spot selected because it meets his requirements of a “good spot.” There’s foot traffic, car traffic, and plenty of homes and businesses in the area. Seti’s Polish Boys is on Facebook, but Martinez admits to being lax about updating the page. He says that after cooking all day, cleaning the rig, shopping for and restocking ingredients, social media is easily overlooked. “I know I need to let the people know where I’m gonna be,” he says. Martinez first got the idea to do a food truck after seeing one in a catalog at Dean. That was way back in 2001, a decade before the food truck revolution would invade Cleveland. “There were no food trucks around and I had no idea about them,” he says. Martinez worked with the V.A. to secure a bank loan, teaching himself how to use a computer at the library to draft a business plan and scour the marketplace for a rig. When he took possession six months later, he said Polish Boys were an obvious choice. “All the barbecue joints were doing Polish Boys because they had the slaw, the barbecue sauce, the sausages,” he says. Martinez starts with quarter-pound, all-beef hot dogs, which get a quick dunk in the deep fryer before a hot roll on the griddle. The tube steak is topped with slaw, fries and a homemade barbecue sauce. “You have to know how to work the grill, which is not that hard, but it has to be done the right way,” Martinez says between customers. “It’s not just throwing dogs on the grill; you have to know when they’re right because everything has to come out the same way all the time — nothing overcooked or undercooked, over-salted or under-salted. And you have to work the window.” Martinez, who splits his time between his weekday perch and weekend events like festivals, weddings, graduation bashes and bar mitzvahs, says his dream is to open a small restaurant. “I worked in some of the best restaurants in Cleveland, so I know how to handle myself,” he says. Does Martinez eat Polish Boys? “You know what, nobody ever asked me that! I eat chili dogs, mostly.” – Douglas Trattner

Loung Ung Author/Activist – When award-winning writers describe themselves, it’s best to step aside and listen. “I’m tiny,” says Loung Ung. “On a good day with short heels, I’m 5-foot-2, and after a lot of beers I come in at a buck-fifteen, so it’s really hard to make an impression among the people in Washington, D.C. I only have a B.A. in political science — not a Ph.D. or double Ph.D. — but what I had was passion and a desire to work and speak about the big issues of war and peace.” In 1998, Ung was working in the campaign for a Landmine Free World in Washington and senators weren’t exactly flinging open their chunky wooden doors to meet with her. So she hatched a plan to turn diaries and journals about her childhood into a book that could serve as a sort of calling card. “I started the book with the hope that maybe if I could get 15 minutes — or even five minutes — with a senator, at least I would have something to leave behind so they hopefully remember me.” That book — and Ung’s face — soon appeared on the cover of USA Today, and suddenly every door in town opened to greet her. That book is “First They Killed My Father,” which recounts Ung’s experiences as a child surviving the Cambodian genocide. Later this year, the film version of that book will be released on Netflix. It is directed by Angelina Jolie-Pitt from a script that she and Ung adapted and co-wrote. The book became the first in a trilogy of memoirs, each with a unique story to tell, stories that address big issues like war and peace, deprivation and survival, adaptation and fulfilment. “The first book is my desire to tell the story of what it takes to survive a war. That’s not as easy as saying I survived, but what does it take as a family, as an individual. It actually takes a lot of work to survive a war. For the second, the activist in me wanted to tell the story of what it takes to survive the peace after it’s declared over and the press stops writing about it. And Lulu in the Sky tells the story of what it takes to go from surviving to thriving after you’ve survived the war and landed in a peaceful place.” Spoiler alert: Ung landed in Cleveland, where she lives with husband (and college sweetheart) Mark Priemer. On top of Ung’s roles as best-selling author, human rights activist, world traveler and polyglot, she is a business owner, founding with her husband and others the Market Garden family of bars, restaurants and breweries. When she isn’t drinking beer and practicing yoga, Ung is savoring life in Cleveland. “I’ve lived in Burlington, Vermont; Portland, Maine; and Washington, D.C.; and I’ve traveled to Nepal, Paris, Germany and Asia,” Ung explains. “Cleveland is a great place. We have great museums, theaters and orchestras, and I can do it all without having to wait in three-hour lines and pay twice as much money.” Ung also appreciates the long, deep history that many families — including her husband’s — enjoy here in the Midwest. “Where I came from, having to leave my country and family, it’s nice to have family roots. As a former refugee, I really enjoy seeing that and being in that environment.” – Douglas Trattner

Lisa Malanij Pattern Maker, Fashion Designer – Detroit-Shoreway was the perfect atmosphere to foster the creativity of 29-year-old Lisa Malanij when growing up. The neighborhood, of course, looked a little different back then, in the 1980s and 1990s, before it was home to the Gordon Square Arts District. But Malanij had plenty of inspiration at home. Her paternal grandfather, Bohdan Malanij, was a painter and art teacher from the Ukraine, and her father, Paul Malanij, worked as an art director and graphic designer. For the budding designer, who was inspired by Alexander McQueen, expressing herself meant carefully choosing what to wear to school. “I always got compliments on my outfits, by the big seventh- and eighth-graders,” she says. “I was also notorious at Westside Baptist Christian School and Lutheran West High School for my alternative style. Going to private school meant certain dress codes and no fun hair colors or extreme styles. I was jealous of my public school friends who could wear whatever they wanted and color and cut their hair anyway they wanted to.” Malanij’s journey next took her to the fashion school at Kent State University, where she graduated in 2009. Sure, she’d seriously considered studying psychology and pursuing a career in the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, but her passion was fashion. So she spent time learning the industry in New York City, where she completed an internship with Soundgirl during her junior year, building up her portfolio, experimenting and working with clients. She then spent seven years post-grad working for local designers, freelancing and creating her own garments and labels — hard work that has paid off. For the past year and a half, Malanij has been the lead pattern maker at The Pattern Makers, one of the leading pattern making companies in America and the top pattern factory on Maker’s Row, an online marketplace that helps clients pair up with American-based manufacturers. Malanij works under Sean Bilovecky of Wrath Arcane, Dredgers Union, Whiskey Grade and Reverence Co. design fame. “We started in a basement, then to the back of the Whiskey Grade store office on West 25th Street and Jay Avenue with a rad see-through window so customers could watch us pattern make and design,” she says, “I had been wanting to work with him ever since I discovered Wrath Arcane my junior year of college.” In June, the company moved again to partner with FORMA MFG Apparel and Design, a new apparel factory in Beachwood. There have been ups and downs but Malanij always has her eye on what’s next. “My future goals are to establish my own brands or be a creative director of an already existing brand,” she says. “So, keep your eyes out and check back on me in a couple years. I will probably have new accomplishments under my belt.” – Bliss Davis

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