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