I have a facination with Peter B. Lewis. I don’t really know what kind of person he is. But I do know that he is a major contributor to the arts, has a Frank Gehry building named after him and majorly innovated Progressive Insurance. Adding to this is that it isn’t easy to find a great deal of information about the man on the internet. It makes him all the more interesting. I’ll post items I find of him here as they come along. Here are some items to start with:
ZoomInfo Search: peter lewis
Source: insurance
Net Worth: $1.2 bil
Home State: Ohio
Marital Status: divorced , 3 children
Princeton University, Bachelor of Arts / Science
Princeton graduate serves as president and chief executive of insurance outfit Progressive Corp. Passionate philanthropist, supports Princeton, Case Western U. and the Guggenheim.
Mr. Lewis is a philanthropist and arts patron with an extensive personal collection. His culture-oriented philanthropies include the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Princeton University (all of which he serves as a trustee), the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, and the Cleveland Institute of Art. He has also endowed a scholarship for the Skowhegan School of Art.
There’s more than that but I’ll post some additional findings later.
Happy Birthday Vincent!
Vincent van Gogh was born in Groot Zundert, The Netherlands on 30 March 1853.
A couple things interest me in particular about van Gogh. First, his painting style was highly criticized because he painted in short strokes that didn’t always connect with one another. This actually proved valuable over the long term because his canvases could shrink and expand without cracking the paint. Secondly, I wasn’t always a big van Gogh fan. But over the recent years I have come to love his use of light. He does remarkable things with shimmering, bright light sources. That alone makes him outstanding, if you ask me.
Check out some of the sites put up in his honor:
Google Search: vincent van gogh
After well over a year, I have finally gotten a new desk. I apparently have an affinity for complication in my life. I can’t just go buy a desk. I have to make it some big project. My desk project was initially going to be a concrete desk. But the ramifications of building anything in concrete are pretty significant. So instead, I went with something that represented the space in which we work. I tried to create something that was old, industrial and also new. I bought a couple barn doors to use as the base. Then, I took two old saw horses that my grandfather built and used them the legs. From there I bought some glass block to make a transition and riser for the glass top which represents the current age of the work world. And so, voila! Here’s my desk:
Andy Birol is a local business consultant. I read a recent article of his admonishing the youth of our country. He takes the parent role and groups, I imagine, generation X and Y collectively. He describes them as entitled and not grasping the obvious. He seems to take pleasure in making everyone younger than him feel like children.
This article is wrong on many levels. Let’s run down them.
1. Cool Cleveland caters to the youth of our city and it gives them Andy Birol to chastise them.
2. The youth are the people who are going to be running this country when the boomers retire. They need to be treated much better.
3. The work world is different than it was when Andy entered it 26 or so years ago. Corporations don’t take care of their employees any more and workers return the favor. Each will gladly screw the other to get ahead. If you want committed, enthusiastic employees think of them as volunteers.
4. Andy’s recommendations are actually fine. He, for whatever reason, wants to slam his audience first. It’s a sure way to breed resentment instead of interest.
5. I had a young person who just entered the workforce recite this same type of crap. This person was happy to condemn her peers and herself. I don’t really know why. Maybe she’s trying to look for some sort of acceptance. Every minority has this type of person. Here’s some basic life strategy… never abandon your group in hopes of aligning yourself with another group – both will distrust and resent you.
6. Come on people! Stop blaming everyone else. If you feel the need to look down your nose at someone, just look inward. There is always plenty there to work on. When you look outward, look for what is right and focus on that.
7. Stand up for yourself. Be yourself. If no one hires you, start your own company and create an environment where you would want to go to work.
8. Don’t let the Andy Birol’s push you around.
9. Be proud of who you are.
10. The world is going to get better for the workers. You are going to be in control soon. It will happen sooner if every time someone like Birol tries to make you feel inferior, you immediately turn around and tell him why you would rather be a starving artist than work for some bull headed boss in a crappy office, why you try to protect your wait staff from a jerk patron that can’t scrape together a tip for somebody who could really use the money, and why you are resentful of being trained by someone who thinks more of his car than he does of you.
Stop treating people badly who aren’t like you. It’s exactly what is wrong with this world.
Here is Andy’s Article
http://www.andybirol.com/
The City of Akron, Ohio, as covered by Leader Publications
Local business development workshops offered in Akron. I mostly just wanted a place to keep this link to remember to look into this more. But maybe it’s something you would be interested in too.