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by Christy Heitger-Ewing When the pandemic first hit, we all wondered what was happening and how it would all unfold. It was quite an unsettling time, to say the least, so most people weren’t out job hunting or job hopping. David Taylor, however, was compelled to take a leap of faith after meeting a regional…

by Christy Heitger-Ewing When I was a kid, a backyard party consisted of hot dogs served on fancy plastic plates, some colorful balloons lining the deck, and perhaps a run through a sprinkler to cool off. Boy, how times have changed! These days you can throw an intimate party or a huge bash that will…

by Christy Heitger-Ewing Although Karen Shaulis and her husband, Joe, opened Tad’s Westfield Shoppes in January 2019, Karen didn’t begin working there regularly until the pandemic when she was laid off from her job. As it turns out, getting laid off was the best thing that ever happened as she found her true calling in…

Dreams have a way of ebbing & flowing, shifting & evolving, and, in some cases, growing & flourishing. Such was the case for Brandon Baltz, who as a kid had planned to pursue a livelihood that was somehow connected to sports. He watched his father, an NFL official, be called every four-letter name under the…

Some people like to do their own taxes while others prefer to hand the task over to professionals. If you don’t have complicated returns and are just filing your and “I could pay a professional to mow my lawn. They would do a better job and save me some time, but I don’t because I…

With more than a decade of public finance experience under his belt, in 2019 Oscar Gutierrez founded Bondry Consulting, the only minority-owned and veteran-owned municipal advisory firm in the state. “Individuals have financial advisors. We are ultimately the financial advisors to the municipal entities,” says Gutierrez. “That’s where the term ‘municipal advisor’ comes from.” Before…

Last year, the Westfield Chamber of Commerce was in search of just the right banking partner. They wanted to select a partner who was as committed as they were engaged to community members and impacted the community at large. Therefore, they held an extensive RFP process in which they looked at Chamber members who had…