Reed Kandalaft’s career in the hotel industry has taken him to a number of sunny, warm-weather locales. Think Florida or Hawaii.
Welcome to Boston, Reed.
Kandalaft moved to the area recently to oversee the launch of the new 215-room Four Seasons Hotel and affiliated condos, and to manage the Back Bay property as its general manager after it opens next spring. He previously had a similar role for the company, opening and managing the Four Seasons at The Surf Club in Miami.
The opening is still months away, but Kandalaft (pictured) is already busy recruiting to fill the hotel’s 250 job openings — top executives, then midlevel managers, then the hourly staff.
Kandalaft said he jumped at the opportunity to move to Boston (despite the notorious winters). He cited the quality of life, the schools, the culture, the sports and food scenes. “There’s just so much happening in this city,” he said.
Dick Friedman, chief executive of hotel developer Carpenter & Co., said he was impressed with Kandalaft’s career in the Four Seasons group. “He did an excellent job opening the Miami hotel, and I knew him from that,” Friedman said. “He’s off to a good start [here].”
One unusual job requirement: Kandalaft should be comfortable with the developer living on the premises. Friedman said he plans to live in a condo in the 61-story tower, known as One Dalton. He did the same thing with the Charles Hotel that he developed near Harvard Square, keeping a place in the Charles for roughly two decades after it opened in 1986.
“You have to have a manager who can tolerate you living on the property,” Friedman said. “Reed knows what he’s in for.”
Kandalaft was born in Damascus but his family moved around when he was young, including to the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. He attended Florida State University as an undergrad, and it was there that he fell in love with the hospitality industry, working the graveyard shift at a nearby hotel, making $5 an hour.
Fall has arrived, and so has the nippy weather. But Kandalaft said he doesn’t mind.
“Being in this business, where you move around, you adapt easily, you become really resilient,” Kandalaft said. “[And] a glass of wine helps every once in a while.” — JON CHESTO
Green Line to get individual attention
The Green Line is going to get a lot of attention from the MBTA in the next few years, with ambitious plans aimed at vastly increasing capacity and speeding up service with new vehicles and big infrastructure changes
So rather than attack the issue piecemeal, the transit agency has hired someone to oversee the whole thing. Angel Pena began work this fall as the chief of the agency’s Green Line transformation, a catch-all term for several projects including buying new high-capacity vehicles, replacing signal systems, and making track changes that will allow those big vehicles to function on the nation’s oldest subway line.
“It is a time for transformation. The Green Line was the first subway in the country. It has been serving the commuters of Greater Boston for over 100 years,” Pena said at a public meeting last week. “It is slower and more crowded than it should be. . . . These are all challenges, but they also represent a great opportunity.”
Pena is a veteran of another American subway system undergoing major rehab work in recent years, joining the T after several years in leadership positions at the Metropolitan Area Transit Authority in Washington, D.C. — ADAM VACCARO
Book remembers a quiet tech giant
Glenn Rifkin finally got the opportunity to author that business book he always wanted to write.
As a reporter and then an editor at Computerworld in the 1980s, Rifkin quickly came to admire Patrick McGovern, the legendary CEO of the magazine’s parent company, International Data Group. After leaving that publication in 1990 to strike out on his own as a journalist and book author, Rifkin worked closely with McGovern for several years, crafting articles and speeches for him. Rifkin knew McGovern and his management style would make a great book subject someday.
“I would always say to Pat, ‘When are we going to do your book?’ ” Rifkin said. “He would always laugh and say, ‘I’m not ready yet. There’s still too much to do.’ ”
McGovern’s son, Patrick McGovern III, approached Rifkin two years ago with the idea of exploring his father’s legacy in a book. Rifkin jumped at the chance. “Future Forward,” published earlier this fall by McGraw Hill Education, is the result.
“He belongs up there with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, but he didn’t have that personality where he was looking to stand up in front of cameras and become a celebrity in the industry,” Rifkin said. “In my mind, there was a story to be told.”
Like many media companies, IDG has been shifting its emphasis to digital readership, away from print publications. McGovern, one of the first publishing moguls to recognize the need for this shift, died in 2014, and the company was sold from a family trust a few years later to a Chinese venture.
But McGovern’s leadership lessons endure: Rifkin’s book sums up 10 of them, with interesting anecdotes about Framingham-based IDG’s colorful history sprinkled throughout. McGovern was an unassuming billionaire who believed that empowering his employees was crucial to his success. Rifkin said McGovern, known by many at IDG as “Uncle Pat,” believed you could run an organization based on kindness and compassion. Phrases in the chapter titles reflect this: “Identify the Warriors,” “Encourage the Entrepreneurs,” “Never Stop Cheering Them On.”
Rifkin starts the book with one of his favorite anecdotes: how McGovern would travel the United States visiting some 5,000 employees, greeting them individually, and handing them holiday cards and Christmas bonuses.
“It took him weeks to get around the country to make this happen,” Rifkin said. “People were blown away by that.” — JON CHESTO
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