
Follow the Leader
Nonprofits achieve success when they reflect what their community looks like
When Latino kids grow up not seeing doctors, cops or college professors that look like them, they begin to think that those are not viable career choices: Those are jobs for other people. It is hard to encourage anyone to go into those professions when they don’t know people already in them.

Make Philanthropy an All-Employee Event
Business philanthropy offers an excellent marketing and employee engagement tool
It’s important for business owners to work with their financial planners to develop plans that align with their passions, and how they can achieve their company’s philanthropic goals. Some strategies include:

Close to Home
Capital Region Family Business Center’s executive director on how family businesses can learn from one another
Since 2007, the nonprofit Capital Region Family Business Center has worked to help family-run businesses solve some of the unique challenges facing their companies. The organization recently took another step toward that goal by hiring Stella Premo as its first full-time, paid executive director. We talked to her about the ups and downs of running a family business.

Reflections From a First-Timer
Getting to the Golden 1 Center on opening night
I was getting more hesitant as the hours passed. Would I run into unsavory people? How crowded are we talking? And, being inherently conservative, I wondered about the cost.
I’m talking about my decision to take light rail for the first time … and doing so alone.

Untying The Traffic Knot
The effort to keep the Sacramento Kings in town showed what a community can do when everyone rallies around a cause. Now that the Golden 1 Center is opening and fans are coming downtown to enjoy the Kings, it’s bringing many people together again — perhaps too closely.

Dilemma of the Month: Terminated for Breaking Company Policy
I was recently let go from a job due to accessing information on our system that I had been taught was allowed. HIPAA guidelines show no issue with getting this information because it was requested. I did break a policy (that I was unaware of), and the company did not wish to discuss the matter further.

The Ball is in His Court
Sacramento State’s athletic director on the trials and tribulations of his sports program
These days, college athletics is as much about big business as competition on the field. We recently sat down with Sacramento State Athletic Director Bill Macriss to talk about the challenges small programs face as they try to compete with the behemoths of big-time college sports.

Meet Some of Sacramento’s Food Policy Champs
These women are changing state and local rules for the better
Sacramento is full of people growing, preparing and eating food, but what about the people trying to change the rules — at the local and state level — to make those steps along the food chain better, fairer and greener?

Youth Sports Should be a Kid’s Game
It has often been said that there is no better place to teach character than on the playing field, where sports can instill the life lessons that prepare young people for success. The most common lessons in sports concern resilience, teamwork, competitiveness, discipline, leadership and how to overcome fear and other adversity.

Dilemma of the Month: Unrealistic Performance Goals
Is perfection really all that unreasonable of a request?
I was fired for not meeting 100 percent or higher of my performance goals. I feel these goals are unattainable. People are fired if they are at 99 percent. Is an employer allowed to set those types of goals?