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Sonoma Raceway Hosts Pacific Gas and Electric Military Career Day
What do the military and NASCAR have in common?
Military careers, military lifestyle, and NASCAR are all about high performance. Military candidates and military spouses have the core competencies and values employers need for their best performance. The transition from military to civilian life is still not always easy, so Sentinels of Freedom – a nationwide 501(c)(3) nonprofit – works to ease the process for severely wounded and injured veterans as they pursue higher education and find career-focused employment. Many companies need diverse candidates who are agile leaders with mechanical, technical, and processing skills – qualities that veterans possess and can contribute to the workplace.
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What:
To highlight PG&E’s 1,000 Careers Project and its commitment to hire 1,000 veterans by 2023, PG&E has joined forces with Sentinels of Freedom and Sonoma Raceway to invite you to participate in the 3rd annual Military Career Day event. The day will feature workshops, panel presentations and a job fair. The event will focus on translating the skill sets for military members transitioning to the job market, and will include information on non-traditional careers for disabled veterans.
Who:
Open to all active, guard, reserve, veterans and military spouses.
Where:
Sonoma Raceway, 29355 Arnold Dr., Sonoma, CA
When:
Friday, June 23, 2017
10am – 11:50am – Job Fair & Workshop
Noon – 12:20pm – Jesse Iwuji Q&A (NASCAR driver and active duty Lieutenant in the US Navy serving as a Surface Warfare Officer)
12:30 – 1:00pm – Leadership Panel
This event will take place as part of the Toyota/Save Mart 350 Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series event weekend at Sonoma Raceway.
For questions please email: MilitaryandDiversityTalentOutreach@PGE.com
Redwood Credit Union Races to Support Local Nonprofits
Redwood Credit Union (RCU) employees contributed over $45,000 to local nonprofits by sponsoring, fundraising, and participating in Human Race events in Sonoma, Marin, and Mendocino Counties. More than 100 volunteers, including employees, family, and friends, walked or ran in the Sonoma and Mendocino County races, which took place on Saturday, May 6th, 2017, while RCU’s Marin and Napa county branch locations raised funds for local nonprofits through the Bay Area Human Race, which took place at the Marin County Fairgrounds on May 13th, 2017. The Human Race events are put on by the local volunteer centers in each county.
Human Race participants in all four counties collected pledges and raised money for local nonprofits of their choice. At the Sonoma and Mendocino County Human Race events, RCU’s mascot, Reddy the Redwood, posed for photos and offered moral support to walkers and runners.
“RCU supports numerous fundraising events throughout the year, but the Human Race is special in that it allows our staff to raise funds for whichever nonprofit they are truly passionate about,” said Mishel Kaufman, senior vice president of risk management and team captain for RCU’s Human Race efforts. “There is such strong support throughout the community for the Human Race and we’re always excited to be a part of that.”
Redwood Credit Union is an active supporter of the communities it serves, through sponsorships, fundraising and volunteering. In 2016, RCU employees and officials collectively volunteered more than 4,100 hours at community events.
About Redwood Credit Union
Founded in 1950, Redwood Credit Union is a full-service financial institution providing personal and business banking to consumers and businesses in the North Bay and San Francisco. RCU offers complete financial services including checking and savings accounts, auto and home loans, credit cards, online and mobile banking, business services, commercial and SBA lending, wealth management, investment and financial planning services, and more. The Credit Union also offers insurance and discount auto sales through their wholly-owned subsidiary. RCU is over $3.5 billion in assets and serves over 285,000 Members with full-service branches from San Francisco to Ukiah, more than 30,000 fee-free network ATMs nationwide, and convenient, free online and mobile banking. For more information, call 1 (800) 479-7928, visit www.redwoodcu.org, or follow RCU on Facebook at facebook.com/redwoodcu and Twitter at @Redwoodcu for regular news and updates.
Redwood Credit Union Voted Best Credit Union
Redwood Credit Union (RCU) was named “Best Credit Union” in the Marin Independent Journal’s first annual Readers’ Choice Awards celebration held at the newspaper’s headquarters in San Rafael on May 3rd and featured in a special 2017 Readers’ Choice Awards issue.
“We’re honored to be named ‘Best Credit Union’ by readers of the Marin Independent Journal—it’s always rewarding to be recognized, but especially when it’s directly from the people and communities we serve,” said Brett Martinez, RCU president and CEO. “With a growing membership and three locations in Marin County, we’re looking forward to even further helping Marin residents, businesses, and the community succeed,” Martinez added.
With $3.5 billion in assets, RCU is one of the largest of nearly 6,000 credit unions nationwide. Serving over 285,000 members, RCU has 19 North Bay and San Francisco locations, including its newest branch at 695 E. Blithedale Ave. in Mill Valley’s Alto Plaza shopping center. Additional Marin County branches are located at 209 Third Street in San Rafael’s Montecito Plaza Shopping Center, and 1010 Grant Avenue in Novato.
One of the many ways RCU gives back to the Marin community is through a special relationship with Marin’s nonprofit SchoolsRule. Every time Marin residents use their RCU credit or debit card, RCU makes a donation to SchoolsRule Marin, which funds arts, health, technology, and literacy programs for all public school students in Marin County.
About Redwood Credit Union
Founded in 1950, Redwood Credit Union is a full-service financial institution providing personal and business banking to consumers and businesses in the North Bay and San Francisco. RCU offers complete financial services including checking and savings accounts, auto and home loans, credit cards, online and mobile banking, business services, commercial and SBA lending, wealth management and investment services, and more. The Credit Union also offers insurance and discount auto sales through their wholly-owned subsidiary. RCU has $3.5 billion in assets and serves over 285,000 Members with full-service branches from San Francisco to Ukiah, more than 30,000 fee-free network ATMs nationwide and convenient, free online and mobile banking. For more information, call 1 (800) 479-7928, visit www.redwoodcu.org, or follow RCU on Facebook at facebook.com/redwoodcu and Twitter at @Redwoodcu for news and updates.
Arrow Benefits Group Develops Proprietary Process That’s Bringing in More Business
At 31 years old, Andrew McNeil knows he needs to prove himself when meeting with a prospective client.
“I couldn’t just go out [and say,] ‘Here are the plans, here are the rates,’” McNeil, principal at Arrow Benefits Group in Petaluma, Calif., and a 2017 EBA Rising Star in Advising, says about prospecting. Instead, he quickly learned he needed to be different.
In the North Bay area of California where his firm is based, unemployment is at 3% and employers are struggling to attract and retain talent. McNeil saw that as an opportunity to “reverse engineer,” he says, to figure out how employers can get the people they want — and retain them.
“It’s not benefits,” he explains. “Especially in the small-group market, benefits are all the same. Employers can offer identical packages. The focus that people put on benefits needs to change; they are one piece of a bigger picture.”
The idea is that employees — particularly millennials — would rather work for a company with a culture that fits them in lieu of higher salary or better benefits. McNeil designed a survey that went out to Arrow’s three dozen team members to better understand the needs of his employees. Incorporating the results is part of the process he embraces to create change in the workplace.
Six key angles
As a result of that survey, Arrow launched Culture Insights, an innovative process through which a personalized plan is developed for employers to help them operate at their highest potential by examining the company from six key angles: purpose, mission, values, company culture, HR and employee benefits.
It’s a process that has helped McNeil win clients. “When I go out to younger decision makers and talk about our philosophy and lay out those six angles, employee benefits is the last thing,” McNeil says. “You can’t put effective benefits in place if you don’t understand the culture and have a clear mission, purpose.”
“When I talk to people, [I] can tell it is refreshing that they have not heard that before,” he adds. “Many brokers are looking to push a health plan, which isn’t wrong, that’s been our business model, but it doesn’t seem like the best way to do it.”
McNeil has been in the business for a little more than 12 years and knows that freshness has allowed him to bring these innovative ideas. “It brings a different prospective because my experiences are different than someone who has been in the business 35 years and might be 65 years old,” he says. “You go through life and have different experiences and think different ways.”
BioMarin wins FDA approval for life-changing drug for kids — with a $700,000-per-year cost
Rare disease drug developer BioMarin Pharamceutical Inc. won regulatory approval Thursday of a drug that promises to change the course of a fatal childhood neurodegenerative disease.
San Rafael-based BioMarin’s Brineura is the first drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat children with CLN2, a form of Batten disease. And patients will pay for the innovation — $702,000 a year, or $27,000 per carton every other week — though the company (NASDAQ: BMRN) said it will offer hefty discounts.
It took four years from BioMarin’s first clinical trial of the drug to FDA approval, a relatively fast timeline in an industry that says drug development generally takes 10-plus years and more than $1 billion.
As a side benefit of approval, BioMarin also will receive a rare pediatric disease priority review voucher, which it can use to cut months off the typical FDA 10-month review of another drug — or it can sell the voucher to another company. BioMarin sold a voucher in 2014 to Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. for $67.5 million.
Available in June, Brineura is an enzyme replacement therapy that slows the rate of decline in most patients with the disease, which leads to seizures, loss of sight and speech and motor skills and, eventually, death by the time children are 8-12 years old.
There are 14 known variations of Batten disease, but CLN2 is believed to be one of the most prevalent subsets of the disease. Every year, about 20 children are born in the United States with the disease; there are about 500 U.S. children overall affected by the disease.
CLN2 patients can’t make a specific enzyme that collects neuronal garbage, so neurons can’t properly recycle in the brain.
BioMarin, led by CEO Jean-Jacques Bienaimé, said the cost of the drug is due to the “innovation factor,” the small number of patients and manufacturing costs.
“Treating children with CLN2 disease requires an extraordinary amount of collaboration between families, hospitals, advocates and physicians,” Bienaimé said in a press release. “We are grateful for the partnership of all those involved and look forward to continuing to work together to make Brineura accessible to children who may benefit.”
Basin Street Properties Buys Seven Santa Rosa Buildings
Basin Street Properties has made a big expansion to its holdings of commercial property in Sonoma and Marin counties, buying seven Santa Rosa office buildings from a real estate investor and developer known for some of the area’s more prominent buildings.
Reno-based Basin Street’s Santa Rosa portfolio now exceeds 1 million square feet with the purchase of 337,360 square feet of space from Simons & Woodard. Architect Larry Simons, who turns 80 in May, has been designing and developing Sonoma County buildings for five decades.
The purchase price wasn’t disclosed.
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Who We Are
Over thirty years ago, business leaders founded the North Bay Leadership Council on a simple premise: We can accomplish more by working together. Today, the Council includes 54 leading employers in the North Bay. Our members represent a wide variety of businesses, non-profits and educational institutions, with a workforce in excess of 25,000. As business and civic leaders, our goal is to promote sound public policy, innovation and sustainability to make our region a better place to live and work. For more information: Call 707.283.0028 / E-mail info@northbayleadership.org