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Most Intriguing People: Incubator's Barb Ewing
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- From the start, Barb Ewing has had a huge appetite for work. More important, over her career, she has developed a talent for doing the right thing and doing it right. Ewing admits to being involved in only one setback, a twisted tale related later in this article.
After graduating from Kent State University with a degree in American studies, she spent a year as a substitute teacher before applying for a job at the Better Business Bureau of the Mahoning Valley. After eight years there, she spent another eight at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber, then eight more years on the staff of U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, D-13 Ohio. Today she is chief operating officer of the Youngstown Business Incubator.
As a girl, Ewing pitched in on the family farm outside of Salem and today lives on her own farm with Chris Gorence not that far from where she grew up. Growing up, she played in the corncrib, helped raise the livestock – cattle, pigs and chickens – and picked fruit, strawberries, rhubarb, blackberries and raspberries.
Ewing reads widely, both fiction and nonfiction, and prides herself for “learning how to distinguish books that matter and those that don’t.” For enjoyment, “I love literature,” a love developed from her English classes at Salem High School. Her favorite authors are Mark Twain – “I read everything of his I could in one fell swoop” – Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James.
On her daily commute to downtown Youngstown, “I listen to a lot of books on tape,” she says.
Ewing took four years of Spanish from “la Senora Schulte” at Salem High and continued studying that language at Kent State. “It was the first time I was exposed to another culture,” she says, not fully appreciating how the vistas opened to her would later pay dividends.
Jim Cossler, CEO of the business incubator, was president of the BBB in the early 1980s when he interviewed Ewing for a job there. “We were small, under-resourced and hadn’t automated,” Cossler recalls. “There was something about her interview,” he says about trusting his instincts, “that I knew she’d be excellent.”
“Jim was willing to hire me,” Ewing says, despite her lack of a background in business. “Being educated served me well.”
She quickly became “my right-hand person,” Cossler says, a status she kept when she followed him to the Regional Chamber and resumed when she left Ryan’s staff to become COO of the incubator.
At first, Ewing answered phones, took questions from residents unhappy about their purchases or how a store treated the customer and learned how the BBB tries to resolve disputes. “I loved doing research,” Ewing says.
At night she took classes in business administration and accounting at Youngstown State University.
Cossler promoted her to office manager and together they increased the company membership roster. “We wanted to increase market penetration,” he relates, “and we had to give companies a reason to join.” That entailed providing services businesses would find useful as Cossler and Ewing built the BBB services division.
“We dramatically increased membership,” Cossler says. “It was one of the high points of my career.”
The BBB success in adding members did not go unnoticed and John Moliterno, then president of the Regional Chamber, reached out to Cossler to work for the chamber as senior vice president of corporate services.
“I told John [that] I didn’t do this alone,” Cossler says. “We’re a package deal.”
So Ewing followed Cossler to the chamber, replicating much of what they had done together at the BBB. “We built up that division, Cossler says, “For eight years we worked hand-in-hand. Barb and I have had one of the most successful business relationships in the Valley.”
After the man who headed government affairs at the chamber left, Ewing sought to transfer there and succeed him. “It was the best thing I ever did,” she remarks. She reported to Reid Dulberger, executive vice president of the chamber and today CEO of the economic development corporation for Memphis and Shelby County, Tenn., EDGE.
“Reid was a great boss,” Ewing remembers. “He taught me to think strategically. He taught me to play chess, to be thinking three moves ahead.”
Dulberger’s memories of working with Ewing are equally warm. “She was the hidden gem in Jim’s coming to the chamber,” he says. In Ewing, he and Tom Humphries, president of the chamber, saw someone, “A) very intelligent; B) she gets things done; and C) there’s a feisty streak in her that allows her to work with other folks effectively. She has the confidence to work with people whose title is much higher than hers.”
After Cossler left the chamber, Dulberger recruited her as an economic development specialist but “she turned it down.”
Ewing “really was a talent,” Dulberger continues, “and as we looked to expand, we needed someone more attuned to public affairs and public policy.” Ewing’s background and temperament recommended her.
Most of her time was devoted to working with the Mahoning Valley delegation to Columbus, Ewing says.
In her efforts to achieve the chamber’s economic development agenda, Ewing started at the top. “I was just going to call on the highest official regardless of the jurisdiction,” she says.
She was pleasantly surprised at how accessible legislators and bureaucrats in Columbus were. “I never had a negative experience, she says, as she “spent a lot of my time achieving consensus and lining up support” for projects to benefit the Valley, including keeping the General Motors complex in Lordstown up and running.
Herman Maass, then the general manager of that complex, was an ally and he taught her the importance of “speaking with one voice [in Columbus]. … I got the sense that we were being taken seriously for the first time in a long time.”
Her one setback was the chamber’s campaign, Grow Mahoning Valley, that sought to unite the business and labor communities behind increased property taxes in Mahoning and Trumbull counties in support of the Western Reserve Port Authority and funding its economic development initiatives. Former U.S. Rep. James Traficant came out for it at first, Ewing says, then changed his mind, leading to its defeat at the polls.
“Barb was the glue that brought it together and held it together,” Dulberger says.
Even before 2002, the chamber’s Humphries saw a bright future for a young state senator from Trumbull County and supported Tim Ryan’s campaign that year to replace Traficant in the U.S. House.
After Ryan defeated fields that included Traficant and Tom Sawyer of Akron, Humphries encouraged Ryan to place Ewing on his staff.
“I was happy at the chamber,” Ewing says, but she saw an opportunity to continue as an advocate for economic development as a member of Ryan’s staff.
Where Dulberger was cerebral and organized, she found Ryan intelligent, well-read and seemingly chaotic. “I was so used to working with Reid,” she says, that it was a shock to adjust to Ryan’s approach in analyzing situations. “I learned from Tim how not to strategize.
“When Tim called a meeting,” Ewing remembers, “he just wanted to talk to [those affected by a problem]. They [the meetings] turned out to be incredibly productive” albeit rarely brief. “From Tim I learned how to communicate [with all the stakeholders] and that ambiguity is sometimes OK.”
From time to time, Ewing found herself correcting people who credited her with writing Ryan’s speeches. “He didn’t need me to write his speeches,’ she says. “He is probably the best best-read person I know.”
Calling her “the complete package,” Ryan praises Ewing’s intelligence. “She’s a good blend of having a strong intellect, street smarts, the ability to strategize and then implement tactics to move economic development along.”
Part of Ewing’s ability to work with so many divergent or competing points of view could result from her earning a master’s degree online in counseling. It took her four years at Capelli University, Ewing says, including a one-year internship in psychological counseling.
Ryan credits Ewing “as the driving force behind our TechBelt Initiative, which pulled Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Akron along with Youngstown together back in 2007.”
After Ryan’s first four terms, Washington was a much-changed capital and the two major parties were further apart than ever. “Politics had become so uncivil and the Republicans [in control of the House] took away earmarks, the part of my job I loved best.”
So when Cossler approached her about becoming COO, she was ready to move on. They had stayed in touch throughout and Cossler supported Ryan’s Tech Belt initiative. “Tim has been our champion,” the CEO of the incubator says, and a major factor in its success.
Physically, the move simply means she works on the first floor of the business incubator instead of upstairs in the congressman’s Youngstown office.
In her role as COO, she feels “engaged with all 50 companies,” she says. “Twenty percent of the time, I’m a sounding board or mentor.”
While it not uncommon for Ewing to put in 50-hour weeks at the incubator, she makes sure it doesn’t make her one-dimensional.
While she’s an advocate for business and the resurgence of manufacturing, Ewing is an equally passionate “environmentalist. I’m open to alternative ways of thinking,” she says. “The world is not black-and-white.”
She meditates every day, “love[s] to run outside” in good weather and her goal is to run four miles nonstop. In inclement weather you’ll see her on a treadmill instead. “I’m a dedicated exercise fanatic,” she states. Moreover, “I like to cook when I have time.”
In caring for four horses on her farm (although she concedes that her companion, Chris, does more than his share tending them), she finds she no longer has the time to ride them as much as she once did.
Besides her horses, Ewing has two hives of honeybees, recently building “a windbreak to go around them. I couldn’t have done it without Chris,” she says,
Fulfilling as her career has been, Ewing hopes one day to establish her own psychological counseling practice. “It’s something I still hope to do,” she says, “to make sense out of life.”
EDITOR'S NOTE: This story first appeared in the January print edition of The Business Journal. Watch this site for profiles of three more people our publication finds "2013's Most Intriguing People."
CLICK TO WATCH video version of this story, which appeared on the Jan. 14th edition of the DailyBUZZ webcast.
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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