Current News

Vermont Business Magazine Fundraising efforts for this year’s LACiNg Up For Cancer walk, an event that benefits Lamoille Area Cancer Network (LACN), is at $187,029 with more expected to trickle in over the next several weeks. Kathy Demars, Event Chair, expressed her appreciation to the many teams, businesses and individuals who supported this year’s walk stating, “We live in a very generous community, a community that understands the importance of helping others."

Vermont Business Magazine The Center for Women and Enterprise (CWE) and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Supplier Diversity Office (SDO) have partnered to streamline the SDO certification process for women-owned businesses. This agreement applies to companies certified as Women’s Business Enterprises (WBE) by the Women's Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) in the region covered by the Center for Women & Enterprise, which includes: Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont and the northern CT counties of Litchfield, Hartford, Tolland, and Windham.

Currently, 275 MA-based WBE companies are WBENC certified out of 425 total WBENC certified businesses in the region.

Vermont Business Magazine As part of Vermont’s statewide public health initiative 3-4-50, Mt Ascutney Hospital and Health Center (MAHHC) is teaming up with local schools to cultivate an early interest in healthy behaviors among children and their families. MAHHC representatives are making a series of visits to area schools to encourage healthy choices, most recently at Hartland Elementary School in Hartland, Vermont.

Vermont Business Magazine A talk about women’s heart health by Dartmouth-Hitchcock’s Dr Bina Ahmed, an interventional cardiologist, drew 120 people to the Taconic Hotel on Wednesday evening. During the talk, Dr Ahmed revealed differences in heart disease in men and women, including the ways it is commonly treated. She revealed three heart diagnoses that occur mostly or only in women.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont's congressioinal delegation issued the following statements on President Trump’s press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki today.

Vermont Business Magazine More than 250 Vermont schools have applied for funding to make security upgrades to their facilities. The state will award $4 million in grants by this fall to help schools strengthen security, using guidance from a statewide safety assessment conducted earlier this year. Governor Phil Scott ordered the assessments after an alleged school shooting plot was uncovered and averted in Fair Haven in February.

Vermont Business Magazine Vermont Secretary of State Jim Condos was sworn in today as the President of the National Association of Secretaries of State (NASS), at their summer conference in Philadelphia. NASS is the nation's oldest, non-partisan professional organization for state officials. Condos will serve the one year-term ending July 2019.

As a member of NASS, Secretary Condos has been very active in promoting voter participation and election cybersecurity. He has testified before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the U.S. Senate Rules & Administration Committee on behalf of NASS to discuss what the states are doing to protect elections from cyber threats and attacks. Secretary Condos previously served on the NASS Executive Board as President-elect and Treasurer.

by Timothy McQuiston Vermont Business Magazine In a dramatic restructuring that will allow employee-owned Chroma Technology Corp in Bellows Falls to take advantage of rapidly expanding international markets, the company announced today that former IBM-GlobalFoundries leader Janette Bombardier has accepted the newly created position of Chief Engineering Officer.

Chroma CEO Paul Millman said Bombardier is a dynamic leader and manufacturing expert and licensed professional engineer. Bombardier said she is looking forward to helping to drive Chroma's worldwide growth while leading the company's engineering and technical functions. At IBM/GlobalFoundries, Bombardier was not only the company's senior site location executive; she also had a wide breadth of technical, management, leadership and continuous improvement positions.

Vermont Business Magazine Green Mountain Power is excited to announce that customers ranked GMP second highest for mid-sized utilities in the East Region in J.D. Power’s 2018 electric utility residential customer satisfaction study. GMP has achieved a high-ranking three years in a row, demonstrating a strong record of continued excellence. GMP’s results have risen every year over the past six years, showing a 20-percent increase in customer satisfaction.

Vermont Business Magazine Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) will host a live streamed town hall tonight in Washington at 7 pm to address the enormous disparity between the wealth of corporate executives and the wages and treatment of the companies’ workers. Sanders will be joined by workers from Amazon, Disney, McDonald’s, American Airlines and Walmart, and he has invited the CEO of each company to attend.

Vermont Business Magazine The Office of the Attorney General announced today that it has concluded its investigation of the Brattleboro Retreat related to allegations of improper Medicaid claims, finding no criminal misconduct. Other investigating agencies, including the United States Attorney’s Office (USAO), reached the same conclusion. The AGO’s investigation was conducted by its Medicaid Fraud and Residential Abuse Unit after receiving a referral from the Vermont State Auditor.

The AGO investigation did identify several areas of billing deficiencies that need to be corrected, but which did not result in net financial harm to the Vermont Medicaid program.

by Joyce Marcel There are beers. There are unicorns. There are unicorn beers. Less well known are unicorn breweries — they make the unicorn beers. Perhaps the best-known is Vermont's own The Alchemist, which makes Heady Topper, an unfiltered double India pale ale (IPA) with an 8 percent alcoholic kick and enough hops to make the inside of your mouth feel like someone's been playing a bass drum back there. (It has a sister IPA named Focal Banger that tastes like the whole marching band went through your mouth. On horseback.)