In previous years, students and faculty from the Boston Arts Academy would go to a fancy hotel to attend the big annual fund-raising gala.
This year, they can just walk across the street from the high school — to the MGM Music Hall at Fenway — for the event on Oct. 17.
Concert promoter Don Law will be one of the honorees for his work in the music business. Denella Clark, president of the Boston Arts Academy Foundation, says the decision to recognize Law, an executive with concert giant Live Nation, led to two important benefits. The MGM hall is owned by Fenway Sports Group — FSG principal and Boston Globe owner John Henry is a school supporter — and operated in partnership with Live Nation. So Live Nation is making the venue available at a discounted rate, allowing the foundation to avoid the cost of a hotel ballroom, and, as it turned out, any labor issues with the ongoing hotel strike.
Plus, a good friend of Law’s agreed to perform: musician James Taylor. He’ll follow several others on stage, mostly students and alums.
Other honorees who will be recognized: choreographer Debbie Allen (dance), costume designer June Ambrose (fashion), Vertex Pharmaceuticals founder Joshua Boger and his wife Amy Boger (visual arts), author and producer Christy Cashman (TV and film), and philanthropist Katherine Chapman Stemberg (civic responsibility).
Clark said the honorees show the kinds of careers that the academy’s students can pursue and the ways they can fulfill the school’s mission to use art to change the world. She hopes to raise as much as $1.5 million at the event, the biggest annual fund-raiser for the public high school, and draw around 500 people.
It will, Clark said, be a night to remember, with a focus more on art and less on speechifying.
“Our event,” she promised, “is not another boring rubber chicken dinner.”
Keolis, Suffolk Downs, see big boost in lobbying
There’s nothing like the impending renewal of a huge state contract to prompt a company to ramp up its lobbying efforts.
Commuter rail operator Keolis Commuter Services became the second biggest corporate spender on Beacon Hill lobbying through the first six months of 2024, per newly released data from the secretary of state, tying the Suffolk Downs betting parlor ownership. Both spent $210,000 through the end of June, lagging only Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts.
In the same period last year, Keolis spent $165,000, ranking it ninth among employers (excluding trade associations). Keolis wanted to win a contract to electrify the Fairmount Line and to build the case that its contract for the entire commuter rail system should be extended. Keolis scored wins on both fronts this year. In May, the MBTA granted Keolis a one-year extension on that contract, which now runs through mid-2027, and in July, the MBTA awarded Keolis a contract to bring battery-powered trains to the Fairmount Line between Hyde Park and South Station.
When asked about the increase, a Keolis spokesperson noted that Keolis wants to leverage “the best local relationships here in Massachusetts,” given its commitment to being connected to the communities it serves, and that spending rose because Keolis hired one additional consultant, former state senator Joe Boncore of Commonwealth Counsel, in mid-2023.
Sterling Suffolk Racecourse declined to comment about why its lobbying expenses rose 62 percent from $130,000 in the first six months of 2023. Simulcasting continues at its former horse track in East Boston, and the partners still want a new brick-and-mortar sports betting location, perhaps in or near downtown Boston.
The top corporate spender again was nonprofit Blue Cross Blue Shield, which spent $264,000 through June, up from $247,000. A spokesperson said the state’s largest health insurer remains focused on advocating for its employer clients and ensuring their voices are heard, while noting that “lots of health care-related bills” were filed and debated in one of the busiest times for the sector in “many years.” No surprise, then, that the only two other corporate spenders that cleared the $200,000 mark were the state’s two biggest hospital operators: Beth Israel Lahey Health ($208,000) and Mass General Brigham ($206,000). Health care also kept Smith, Costello & Crawford busy, helping the firm stay in the No. 1 spot among lobbying shops as measured by client spending for what is shaping up to be the sixth year in a row.
After four decades of helping City Hall, Sullivan is stepping out
Few, if any, people have worked with the mayors of Boston for longer than Neil Sullivan. But every era comes to an end. And now Sullivan, executive director of the Boston Private Industry Council, is ready to write the next chapter in his long public service career.
The workforce development organization’s board on Thursday voted to appoint a committee to find Sullivan’s successor. He expects to stay until the process is complete. The PIC’s 60-plus person staff and its nearly $11 million budget address a variety of city priorities, from the mayor’s youth summer jobs program to the city’s two career centers, to wading into workforce development policy matters; its board members are appointed by the mayor.
Sullivan first announced the news via an email blast to friends in September. Then Jim Rooney, chief executive of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, surprised Sullivan by congratulating him before a 660-person crowd at a recent chamber event featuring Mayor Michelle Wu.
Sullivan got his start working for Ray Flynn on the campaign trail in 1983 and then served as Flynn’s policy director for nine years. As Flynn was preparing to leave City Hall a decade later, Sullivan walked a few blocks away to take the PIC job.
He plans to stay involved in local workforce and education issues. While he’s not sure where that will take him, he knows it means building more pipelines into the region’s booming economy. “We need to see our neighborhoods,” he said, “as the source of the talent we need to support economic growth.”
A job that sounds just like Charlie Baker
Without any professional experience in academia or athletics, Charlie Baker told the New England Council on Thursday that he never thought he would end up running the Indianapolis-based NCAA as its president.
But Baker, who did play Division I basketball at Harvard, explained that in the final months of his last term as governor in 2022, Red Sox president Sam Kennedy reached out with a proposition: check out this job description, it sure sounds like you. Distributed decision-making. Navigating seemingly endless committees. Understanding the art of compromise.
Crisscrossing the country instead of crisscrossing the state? Baker ran it by his wife, Lauren Baker.
“She read it, and she looked up at me and she said, ‘Oh ...,’” Baker said, with a dramatic pause to imply a swear word. “‘This does sound a lot like you.’”
So much for spending more time at home in Swampscott.
Mc-you-name-it
Comparable sales. Rightsizing the portfolio. Loyalty programs. Cracking the China market.
But what about the menu?
That’s what the business leaders wanted to learn about as they listened to McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski last week at the latest Boston College Chief Executives Club lunch. He held forth in a Q&A session with Bose CEO Lila Snyder, and people seemed to perk up around the topic of “menu innovation.”
Rolling out to more markets in 2025: a half-pound burger, the chain’s largest, called the Big Arch. Missing in action: salads. (”They just didn’t sell,” Kempczinski conceded.)
McPizza. McQuesadilla. McSpaghetti. You name it. McDonald’s has given it a shot. Success is Darwinian: An item needs to earn its spot alongside Egg McMuffins and Filet-o-Fish with sales numbers.
“People come up to me and say, ‘Hey, have you ever tried ...?’” Kempczinkski said. “Yes. I don’t even let them finish the sentence.”
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.