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.

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.

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.  

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

We talk a lot about teamwork. Collaboration is the newit-kid in the business world. But a degree of healthy competition within a team is a good thing. The key is to balance competition with collaboration. Here are some things to keep in mind when adding a little friendly competition to your office:

While bankruptcy was a rough patch for Stockton, it is important to recognize what opportunities can grow from a city that has seen more than its fair share of challenges.