Chair of the Board
*Cynthia Peterson
Brigham and Women's/Mass General Health Care Center
Past Chair of the Board
*Brian Johnson
Chair-Elect
*Alisia St. Florian
Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane
Treasurer
*Jim Kivlehan
Blue Hills Bank
General Counsel
*Thomas Flaherty
Bacon Flaherty LLC
President/CEO
*Thomas O'Rourke
NVCC
Previous Past Chair
*Dana Bottorff
G.T. Reilly & Company
Shawn Alexander
Universal Technical Institute
Kim Bassett
Norwood Hospital
Todd J. Chipman, MST, CPA
John T. Chipman & Co., CPAs
Susan Cwieka
New Pond Village
*James Donellon
Gray, Gray & Gray, LLP
*Robert Ferrini
McGowanPRO
Jim Forrest
Steve Forrest
CertainTeed
Rhonda Kale
Bank of Canton
Paul Kouri
Keller Williams
*Nancy Levine
Residential Mortgage Services
Jon Levy
American Holt Corporation
Mark LoVuolo
Liberty Mutual Insurance
Najwa Murphy
Fairfield Inn & Suites
*Member of the Executive Committee
|
|
Welcome
New Members!
Hayden Cassidy
|
Norwood Hospital named recipient of
Healthgrades 2018 Patient Safety Excellence Award
Norwood Hospital announced that it is a recipient of the Healthgrades 2018 Patient Safety
Excellence Award™, a designation that recognizes superior performance of hospitals that have prevented the occurrence of serious, potentially avoidable complications for patients during hospital stays. The distinction places Norwood Hospitalamong the top 10% of all short-term acute care hospitals reporting patient safety data for its excellent performance as evaluated by
Healthgrades
, the leading online resource for comprehensive information about physicians and hospitals.
"Norwood Hospital is committed to making patient safety our foremost priority," said Kim Bassett, President of Norwood Hospital. "We are extremely proud to be recognized again for the outstanding and safe care we provide to our patients. Thank you to our entire team for their steadfast effort; we are very pleased to have been recognized 6 times in the last 8 years. "
Norwood Hospital Recognizes Doctors' Day
In the spirit of giving and to honor and thank physicians on National Doctors' Day, Norwood Hospital made donations to several local Substance Abuse Coalitions. Pictured here, Norwood Hospital presents donations to the Canton Alliance Against Substance Abuse and Impact Norwood Coalition to help support the important work their coalitions do in the communities to prevent and combat substance abuse and addiction. Coalitions in Dedham, Foxboro, Franklin, Walpole, and Sharon also received donations in honor of the Norwood Hospital Medical Staff.
|
Aide of the Year Awarded to New Outlook Homecare
New Outlook Homecare's caregiver, Rachel Constant, has been awarded Aide of the Year through the
Home Care Alliance of Massachusetts
. The award ceremony will take place on Tuesday, June 19th at the Granite Links Golf Club in Quincy, MA. Congratulations to Rachel on this well-deserved award.
Rachel grew up in Haiti and has been in the USA for the past seven years. She has been a Home Health Aide with New Outlook Homecare for over six years. She first got interested in the homecare industry in Haiti after taking care of her dying grandma. That experience stuck with her and made her want to work with the elderly as a profession. Rachel believes that working with New Outlook Homecare is the best decision a person can make. "It's a great company" and it has given her the opportunity to care and love the elderly on a daily basis.
Pearly Evans, owner of New Outlook Homecare, says that Rachel is "one in a million." "There is no one like her." "She's one of my best aides."
|
|
 |
|
|
Help us Grow at our
Member Recruitment Breakfast
|
Thank you to all who completed our recent membership survey! It's been a while since we've taken the collective pulse of the Chamber membership and we are very pleased that we had more than 100 responses to the questionnaire. The Chamber's Branding Task Force is currently reviewing the results which will help inform our programming, initiatives and future branding efforts. There is a great deal of information that you all provided which will ensure that we are meeting your needs as local businesses.
We were particularly pleased to see that when asked to rat
e the likelihood 
of referring another business to the Chamber on a scale, members responded with an average answer of 6.1 out of 7.
So now we'd like to ask you to act on that. Our Membership Committee led by Rob Ferrini, McGowanPro, is hosting a Member Recruitment Breakfast on Friday, June 15 at Little Bird Events in Norwood.
The price of admission for members is free, provided you bring a non-member with you. You and your guest will be treated to breakfast and have the opportunity to meet other members and learn about the benefits of Chamber membership.
There is no obligation for prospective members to join. If they decide the Chamber is not for them, that's fine. However, we will offer a number of incentives to those who do decide to join us and we will have several drawings for those who attend with a guest.
Think about all of the businesses that you deal with in your business or personal life and consider whether there are some who could benefit from the Chamber. You'll be doing them a service by exposing them to what the Chamber has to offer.
Most importantly, you'll be helping to strengthen the Chamber by aiding in its continued growth and vitality.
You can find all the details of the breakfast meeting here. If you would like to send an invitation to a prospective member, you can find one here.
We hope to see you there!
Tom
O'Rourke
President and CEO
|
|
Business Groups Chime in on Education Regs
|
In comments submitted on Friday, May 18th, the Neponset Valley Chamber of Commerce along with the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and nine other business organizations commended the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education for including informa
 tion about school performance and student opportunities beyond test scores, while continuing to prioritize measurable student achievement.
We expressed concern, however, that the regulations be clarified to better define proposed new categories for classifying school and district performance as well as indicators for determining targets that schools will have to meet. Our objective is a fair and valid system for holding schools accountable and accurately informing our community about school performance.
|
|
Bi-County Collaborative Opens in Walpole
|
Bi-County Collaborative celebrated the opening of their new Regional Education Center in Walpole recently with a Ribbon Cutting attended by area officials, students and the Chamber.
|
|
What is REN? Check Out Our Video
|
|
Looking to expand your network? Check out our Referral Exchange Networks (REN).
REN 1 meets every other Tuesday at 7:45 am
REN 3 meets the 2nd and 4th Thursday at 8:00 am
REN 7W meets the 2nd and 4th Wednesday at 7:45 am
President: Eric Douglas 617-785-3727
REN 10 meets every Tuesday at 7:45 am
President: David Nicholson 781-255-1101
|
|
What is Web Accessibility?
And are You Compliant?
|
Guest Column submitted by Mike McKenna. Mike is the founder of shotgunflat, inc., a web design and development company in Middleboro, MA and is part of shotgunflat's Web Accessibility Team. He can be reached at accessibility.shotgunflat.com or mm@shotgunflat.com.
WHAT IS WEB ACCESSIBILITY?
The concept of web accessibility, at its most basic level, is pretty straightforward: taking a few extra steps and considerations in the
development process will allow users with vision, hearing, dexterity, and other physical challenges to access web content like the rest of the population.
Websites are generally planned, designed, and built for the 80% of the population that has what would be considered typical vision, dexterity, and hearing. That is to say, most web designers and developers create websites that work for the majority of the web's users-but not for
everyone.
This leaves up to 20% of the population unable to access the web like they need to.
Years ago, standards were developed and introduced in order to help this 20% access information online with the use of tools like screen readers, assistive browser plugins, and video captioning. Web developers simply need to follow some basic programming rules for these tools to work properly on a given site. Unfortunately, almost nobody does this-and the end result is that the vast majority of websites have real, current accessibility issues.
WHY MIGHT THIS BE AN ISSUE FOR MY BUSINESS?
Recent developments in the way Federal courts view the Americans with Disabilities Act has left a number of businesses caught off-guard and scrambling to ensure that they are a compliant with web accessibility rules-without fully understanding what needs to be done to alleviate the problem.
A decision in late 2017 by a Federal judge in Florida, ruling in favor of a visually-impaired user who could not properly access a grocer's website, has paved the way for similar lawsuits across the country. At the moment, there are over 850 cases pending in Federal courts regarding this issue.*
|
|
Click image above to view
|
This month's spotlight is on the Hampton Inn & Suites, Boston/Stoughton. Click above to hear what Beth Cook and Angie Peitler have to say about their newly opened hotel located at 449 Page Street in Stoughton!
Norwood Video is located within the Chamber office and Darryn Carroll would love to hear from Chamber members regarding complimentary video projects for the Chamber. Reach out to Darryn at
darryn@norwoodvideo.com
or call 781-686-5293.
|
|
Save the Date: Golf Tournament July 30
|
 The good weather is finally here and it's time to dust off your golf clubs. The Chamber is pleased to announce that our annual Golf Outing will take place at
Blue Hill Country Club
on Monday, July 30th.
The event includes a shotgun start at 12:00 pm followed by a delicious dinner, awards and silent auction.
Sponsored by:
|
Member Benefit of the Month:
Save on Office Supplies with Staples
|
As a member of the NVCC your business is eligible for exclusive saving on all your office supplies through our partnership with Staples Business Advantage.
To find out what you could be saving just
click here.
|
|
U.S. Census Deadline June 12
|
The Economic Census deadline is June 12th
Response is required by law
If you received the Economic Census, your response is required by law and due on Tuesday, June 12th. Use the link below to get help with your response.
Why should companies respond?
To contribute to a wealth of valuable data - and sometimes surprising insights - that can help grow their business.
Economic statistics from the Census Bureau are free and available online - to help guide business decisions and policy making.
|
|
|
