ALBANY — Capital Region native, and persons with disabilities activist, John Robinson, CEO of Our Ability, with collaboration from Syracuse University iSchool and BlueGranite, Inc., has developed a chatbot to help persons with disabilities update their professional profiles to gain access to jobs that are better suited to their abilities, called Jobs Ability. The website launched last month. 

According to a report by the U.S. Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2019, only 19.3 percent of persons with disabilities were employed. These statistics have increased since the pandemic. However, a report by Accenture, found that if the number of people with disabilities in the labor force grew just 1 percent, the nation’s gross domestic product could expand by as much as $25 billion. 

“Before the development of our chatbot, certain professional networking sites would enable you to create a button to let potential employers know that the applicant has a disability,” said John Robinson, CEO of Our Ability, “but I wanted people to be able to build their profiles based on abilities, as a pathway to employment through technology.” 

An alumnus of Syracuse University, Robinson knew that the iSchool had the same passion to execute his idea. The iSchool is home to the iConsult Collaborative at Syracuse University, an experiential learning program that deploys teams of student volunteers to provide community partners with transformative information technology. Art Thomas, the iSchool’s Associate Dean for Career Services and Experiential Learning and Director of the iConsult Collaborative, first met with Robinson in the summer of 2018 to plan how to engage an iConsult team in designing the technical solution for his idea. 

BlueGranite, Inc., is the engine that created the digital path from Robinson’s idea to the iSchool’s technology. 

The process is driven by artificial intelligence; it’s a chatbot on the front end of the site enabling users to build a profile towards employment. It will ask all of the normal questions about history and preferences, but then also ask about skills and disabilities for those who are more disabled. It becomes more than just a profile; it’s the culmination of hundreds of skill questions to ensure that someone is considered as more than just a work history. 

To learn more about Our Ability and Jobs Ability, visit www.ourability.com.

SARATOGA SPRINGS —Saratoga Bariatric Surgery and Weight-Loss Program, a service of Saratoga Hospital, has once again been awarded the Blue Distinction Center designation as part of the Blue Distinction Specialty Care program.

The designation, from BlueShield of Northeastern New York, is reserved for nationally accredited bariatric surgery programs that meet rigorous, objective standards for quality of care, patient safety and outcomes.

“Our Blue Distinction status is a source of pride for everyone on our team,” said Dmitri V. Baranov, MD, PhD, FACS, Medical Director of Saratoga Bariatric Surgery and Weight-Loss Program. “Even more important is the message our Blue Distinction designation delivers to our patients—that they can count on us for the highest quality care and the best possible outcomes throughout their weight-loss journey.”

Bariatric surgeries are among the most common elective surgeries in the U.S.—and the most effective treatment for severely obese patients. These procedures allow patients to achieve substantial, sustained weight loss. That, in turn, can improve or resolve serious obesity-related conditions, such as type 2 diabetes.

For more information about the Blue Distinction program and a list of designated facilities, visit www.bcbs.com/bluedistinction.

CLIFTON PARK — A local attorney and a retired chief information security officer for NY State have joined forces to form a new company aimed at protecting small and medium-sized local businesses from cyber-attacks. 

“What I tell people all the time is that it’s not if you’re going to be hacked, it’s when you’re going to be hacked,” says Rick Cobello, who along with Jacqueline Goralczyk have formed Global Cybersecurity Solutions.       

“There are a lot of large businesses that have cyber security programs. But if you’re a small business or a medium business with under 100 employees, if you get hacked or you get information taken, most likely you’re done, because you don’t have the resources to withstand something like that. What we do is offer those same services that the large companies get to smaller companies, but not for the large company price,” he says. 

Originally from Niagara Falls, Cobello relocated to this region in 1974. “I helped start the high school hockey team and I was the first technology director for the Saratoga School District. That was at the beginning of Apple computers. It was rudimentary at best,” says Cobello, who has more than 30 years of experience in enterprise technology and security solutions in a career that includes local and state governments to Fortune 500 companies. He is also professor of Supply Chains and Cyber Security program at Albany Law. 

A focus on data privacy and cybersecurity by partner Jacqueline Goralczyk, Esq., stems from her legal practice in banking and real estate. Goralczyk got her start at the law firm of Ianniello Anderson, P.C. in Clifton Park, where she worked closely with the partners and administration to grow and enhance their focus on security and privacy. 

“Since part of the roots of this company have come out of the law firm, the strategy we’re going to identify is risk. So, it’s not just: you need new computers, or you need hardware, technology. It’s going to be you have these risks that you need to satisfy because your business is vulnerable. Here are your risks and here’s how you can fix them,” Cobello says. 

The process includes evaluating informational, physical and technological security for small and medium sized businesses, deciding what needs to be remediated and creating a plan. Businesses also receive a cyber security playbook. “That will outline what we did, how we did it and what they need to do in the future.” 

For more information go to: globalcybersecuritysolutionsllc.com. 

With every New Year, the Saratoga County Chamber of Commerce thanks the outgoing volunteer Chair of the Board for their service to our Chamber and the community. We then simultaneously recognize and celebrate the new volunteer Chair who takes on this role. So today, I want to thank Kevin Hedley, of Hedley and Company, for his extraordinary leadership in 2020. I also want to recognize Skip Carlson, of the Saratoga Casino Hotel, who is now the Chair of the Chamber’s Board, a leadership role that will span all of 2021.

I’d like to think that Skip Carlson’s year will be simpler than Kevin Hedley’s. I suspect we all hope that 2021 will be better than 2020. I, for one, believe that 2020 might have been the Chamber’s finest hour. When faced with a pandemic, we moved immediately to help everyone ­— members and non-member. We joined forces with Discover Saratoga, the DBA, Prosperity Partnership and the City Center to help everyone. We relentlessly communicated via email and social media to share the most important local information we had about loans, reopening protocols, special promotions, health metrics, and how everyone could help save our locals.

Looking forward, Skip Carlson asked the 27 volunteers who will serve on the Chamber’s Board of Directors to take a brief survey. We asked these leaders that represent small and large businesses, nonprofits and educational institutions, to rate what we had done in 2020 and to suggest what new initiatives should be added for this year. From this survey, we developed this list of five goals to help guide our work this year:

1. Get as many Saratoga County residents vaccinated as possible. This may seems like a strange goal for a predominantly business focused organization. The reality, however, is that until we achieve some form of herd immunity that many of our local businesses will remain closed or substantially restricted. We started work right after New Year’s on this goal. First, we were a visible and vocal advocate for local vaccination sites across Saratoga County and for a mass vaccination site at the Saratoga Springs City Center. To get people vaccinated, we need local sites and a place in Saratoga where we can do them in bulk. Second, we will soon announce a new partnership to help people celebrate getting the vaccination shot and hopefully inspiring others to follow their lead.

2. Relentless communication to share timely, locally focused, useful information to those in our email database and those who follow us on social media. Last year under Kevin Hedley’s leadership, there were times where we sent an email every day to everyone in our database. Nearly 500,000 people opened one or more of our emails in 2020. The number of emails opened — which means they were read — was ten times higher than in 2019. You know an email is valuable if the email open rate is high. Our open rate skyrocketed in 2020.

3. Promote. Promote Promote. We’re going to continue to promote locally all businesses and nonprofits in Saratoga County as long as they need help. We’re going to expand our promotion of all of the Villages, Towns, and Cities across Saratoga County and beyond. We’ll also ready to promote Saratoga County as a great place to visit, to live, to work as well as to start, grow or expand your business.

4. SAVE OUR LOCALS – This campaign has worked. Look us up on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn. We’re promoting locally owned businesses via social media every day. In any given week on Facebook alone, we’re doing 75 to 100 individual posts. We’re boosting many of them to expand the reach to even more prospective customers or clients. Local businesses that need more than just promotion can also access free small business counseling via SCORE. You can also call or email the Chamber to share whatever it is you need or to ask any question. We’ll do our best to respond with the best information or ideas we have.

5. Personal, impactful outreach. In 2020, we delivered recovery kits filled with PPE as businesses reopened. We distributed posters this past year that said “Stronger Together” and pumpkins etched with our Save Our Locals logo. We continue to distribute posters reminding people to “Mask Up.” As employees at local businesses and nonprofits get vaccinated, we will be distributing posters that will say #IGotTheShot. We hope you will see these everywhere. It will be a sign that we are all stronger together and that healthier more prosperous days are ahead of us.

SARATOGA SPRINGS — After 42 years of helping his patients recover from aches and pains, physical therapist Anthony DeMatteo has retired from the practice he founded – Saratoga Physical Therapy Associates – to focus on family and fun. 

DeMatteo leaves the practice in the hands of his long-time partners, Michael Cudahy, PT, in Saratoga Springs, and Matthew O’Neil, PT, in Malta, as well as other clinicians and staff associated with SPTA who work in both locations. 

DeMatteo established the first private PT practice outside the hospital in Saratoga and has been such an icon in the field that people would refer to “going to Tony” as a synonym for “going to PT.” 

A city of Saratoga Springs native who graduated from Saratoga Springs High School in 1974, DeMatteo, who will be 65 years old this year, played many sports as a student. He learned about PT the hard way, as a young patient, after serious baseball and football injuries. “I enjoyed helping people, I enjoyed sports, and I was thinking about a career, so I knew from the time I was in high school that I wanted to be a physical therapist,” he recalls, citing the time he broke his hip playing baseball, which put him in the hospital for several weeks, as a turning point.

For now, he’s going to get vaccinated and continue to work per diem for SPTA, and, in fact, has found a reason to go into the office every day since his official retirement, the last day of 2020. “I can’t wait to get back to life like it was pre-pandemic,” he says. “Meanwhile, I suggest that people don’t let their guard down, find safe ways to stay busy, and stay strong.” 

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Stewart’s Shops have acquired the assets of Red-Kap, which include eight convenience stores, four car washes and their fuel distribution to more than 75 dealers.

Stewart’s Shops will maintain the branding of the Mobil, Citgo, and Sunoco stations and will convert two of the Red-Kap locations into traditional Stewart’s Shops. The remaining six locations will become ‘Stewart’s Express’ shops. These smaller shops will have limited product offerings and will not serve hand-scooped ice cream. 

 “Stewart’s Shops has always respected and admired the integrity of the family-owned Red-Kap organization. This is primarily a fuel distribution transaction, and we look forward to extending our support to the distributor and dealer network,” Stewart’s Shops president Gary Dake said in a statement.

The eight convenience stores are located in Albany, Baldwinsville, Berne, Hudson, Rensselaer, Saratoga Springs, Castleton, and Loudonville and are already undergoing conversions into Stewart’s Shops and ‘Stewart’s Express’ locations and will be completed in 2021. 

Founded in 1945, Stewart’s Shops is an employee and family-owned convenience store chain based in Saratoga Springs, with over 345 Stewart’s Shops located in 31 counties across upstate New York and southern Vermont. 

SARATOGA SPRINGS ­­— The Downtowner, a reimagined mid-century motor lodge located on Broadway is closed for the winter to undergo extensive exterior renovations and an interior refresh. 

Saratoga-based architecture and design company, Phinney Design Group, will lead the $1.5 million exterior renovation project while Massachusetts-based creative studio Elder & Ash enhances the interiors. 

Since reopening after a redesign in 2018, The Downtowner has been operated by Lark Hotels, a hotel brand and operating company with properties on both the East and West Coasts. The Downtowner anticipates reopening in 2021.

 “In our view, there’s no better location, from which to experience all that Saratoga Springs has to offer than the corner of Broadway and Division streets, which is essentially the 50-yard line of Broadway,” said Lark Hotels CEO, Peter Twachtman, in a statement.  “We look forward to revealing the hotel’s new look, and reopening our doors to locals and visitors in the spring.”

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Dr. Zachary Criswell, a fellowship-trained foot and ankle surgeon, has joined Saratoga Hospital Medical Group – Surgical Podiatry.

 Criswell comes to Saratoga Hospital from Rutgers New Jersey Medical School, where he was a clinical instructor in the Department of Medicine. He also was an attending physician at Bergen New Bridge Medical Center, a Rutgers clinical affiliate in Paramus, NJ.

Criswell earned his Doctor of Podiatric Medicine degree from Temple University School of Podiatric Medicine in Pennsylvania and completed an internship and residency at University Hospital in New Jersey. He went on to complete a surgical fellowship, with an emphasis on lower extremity sports medicine and arthroscopy, at Palo Alto Medical Foundation in California. Criswell is board certified by the American Board of Podiatric Medicine. He sees patients at Saratoga Hospital Medical Offices – Wilton Mall. 

Last week, Saratoga Hospital was designated a Center of Excellence for Antimicrobial Stewardship, in recognition of its best practices in prescribing antimicrobials and fighting drug resistance. It is the first in the region—and one of 109 organizations nationwide—to earn this designation from the Infectious Diseases Society of America. 

Saratoga Hospital Saratoga Hospital recently completed a $5 million expansion of its central sterile processing department to accommodate significant growth in complex surgical procedures at the hospital and its Saratoga Surgery Center in Wilton.

The renovations increased the central sterile processing space by about 80% and added the latest disinfection and sterilization equipment.

BALLSTON SPA ­— Nourish Designs, an appropriately named small business which calls Ballston Spa its home, creates apparel and gift items featuring original hand-drawn mandala designs by Betsy Phelps Seplowitz.  Every purchase made through Nourish provides meals for kids through the Regional Food Bank of Northeast New York. 

Last fall, Nourish designed custom mandalas featuring Scotty paws and Scotty dogs – the school mascot – for each of the elementary schools in the Ballston Spa Central School District.  Nourish designed spirit-wear collections for each of the four schools in a partnering with a local silk-screening business. 

“I was a stay-at-home mom for about 10 years, figuring what my next move would be and it just kind of happened. I started drawing and doodling, started drawing mandalas. People were responding positively to them and thought I should do something positive with this,” says Seplowitz who grew up in Hoosick and eventually made her way to Ballston Spa. 

“I’ve always been fascinated with patterns in nature. They’re all around us and a mandala, a circle with repetitive patterns, just spoke to me as my form of meditation,” she says. 

A few years ago, Seplowitz had been asked to help with a new Backpack Program at her kids’ elementary school. Seplowitz has two children who are in the Ballston Spa School District.  “I had no idea what it was,” she says. She learned the program helped kids who don’t have reliable access to food over the weekends. 

“There is a program organized by the Food Bank that supplies non-perishable, easy to make food which can be discreetly distributed in backpacks to children so they aren’t without food over the weekend.  The school just needed some volunteers to go down to the foodbank and pick up the food. I’ve been doing it ever since,” she says. 

Nourish works with the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York and provides funding specifically to programs which serve children.  One such program is the BackPack Program which provides weekly food to school-aged children who otherwise may not have sufficient access to nourishing meals.

Her website – nourishdesigns.com – features dozens of wearable products for sale featuring the mandala design, and each purchase provides nourishing meals to kids in need. The meals provided to date number more than 25,000, Seplowitz says. 

For more information on how these mandalas are feeding kids, or to see the current line of available products in the online store, visit www.nourishdesigns.com

SARATOGA SPRINGS — Saratoga’s long-standing popular Parting Glass pub will live to fight another day, after receiving a much-needed financial boost from Dave Portnoy’s Barstool Sports. Portnoy launched an online fundraising drive to assist small business owners in need of help due to the impacts of COVID. The fund has thus far raised more than $23 million and has supported more than 120 businesses. 

“Safe to say that 2021 has not gotten off to the best start. That’s why a phone call today from Joan Desadora, owner of the Parting Glass Pub, made my day and my year so far,” Saratoga County Chamber President Todd Shimkus reported in a social media posting. “Thanks to David Portnoy – El Presidente with Barstool Sports this local business will be saved. I smiled during our phone conversation. Joan was so excited. She wants everyone to be hopeful. There are people out there who want to help. I’m still smiling now. She was so happy. We are so happy. The Parting Glass is an institution in Saratoga Springs.”

The Parting Glass, which is located on Lake Avenue,  was formerly known as the “Royal Spring Tavern,” and first opened a century ago as a full bar that served Italian food and thin crust pizza – a local favorite. In 1981, the property was purchased by Joan Desadora and family and established as The Parting Glass — Saratoga’s Original Irish Pub and Restaurant, expanding its space into the back room where live music takes the stage. 

According to NewsChannel 13, the Parting Glass’ 81-year-old owner Joan Desadora was designing “we’re closing” signs when she got the call from Barstool founder Dave Portnoy that they’ve committed about $200,000 to help the restaurant stay in business through the pandemic.