How do you measure the impact of a superman?
Numbers might count out children guided to college, concerts staged in a historic venue, acres of woodlands preserved or farmers lifeted from poverty, but Susquehanna Style’s local super men of 2014 see bigger pictures. All have turned their entrepreneurial spirits toward good and would measure their impact in betterment and in the ripple effects their efforts send out among families, communities and even the world.
Sean Kenny, York
image courtesy Donovan Roberts Witmer
Sean Kenny had no music management experience when he founded CapLive to book acts for York’s Capitol Theatre. But five years later, he can sum up his philosophy neatly.
“If you’re pleasing the fans and you’re pleasing the artists, the only thing you need to do is get them in here,” he says.
Kenny was speaking from the Capitol auditorium, an appropriate representation of his impact on York’s music scene. But he could just as well have been at a preserved farm, or the York Central Market, or a York County Planning Commission meeting. Since graduating from York College of Pennsylvania in 2002, the Phoenixville native has played a key role in many aspects of York’s revival.
The idea of bringing musicians to the Capitol, the older but lesser-known half of downtown York’s Strand-Capitol Performing Arts Center, emerged around 2008. The venue, built in 1906, was used only for film showings back then. Kenny wondered, why not music?
“I was seeing people from York at concerts in Philadelphia and D.C., so I knew there was a lot of interest in music,” he says.
As the youngest member of the Strand-Capitol board, “and by far the poorest, too,” he rallied support for attracting the “diverse singer-songwriter, career-oriented artist” to the gilded venue with perfect acoustics.
“Most of the venues that were this size, of 500 people or less, were pretty much dumps,” he says.
From Dawes to Deer Tick, Kenny signs artists who aren’t “flavor of the month.” Hoots and Hellmouth made its fifth appearance in November 2013, and within days, Kenny was inquiring about a 2014 date.
“It’s bringing people in who could be back here in 20 years,” he says. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be people who are filling stadiums in a couple years. If you constantly try to do that, you’re never gonna get anywhere. Like Hoots and Hellmouth, you start small, treat them well, and always bring them back, and everybody wins in the end.”
Just as CapLive was launching, Kenny also became executive director of the Farm & Natural Lands Trust of York County. With his board, he has attracted major donations, built an endowment and inaugurated fundraisers that spotlight York’s natural assets.
Land preservation prevents sprawl, spurs urban redevelopment and encourages the production of local foods, all essential to York’s revitalized downtown.
“One of the things I really enjoyed about York when I first came here was hopping on the rail-trail and being able to unplug, going from busy downtown to the middle of this beautiful scenery,” says Kenny. His love of the outdoors is, perhaps, rivaled by his love of vintage cowboy shirts, many made by Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors, crafter of clothes for such icons as Roy Rogers, Ronald Reagan, John Wayne and Elvis Presley.
Kenny has seen his hometown of Phoenixville become rejuvenated. Does his work in York fit into that statewide pattern of revitalizing the old downtowns?
“There are so many people that make that up,” says Kenny. “I like to think I play a part in it.”
Don Larson, Lancaster
image courtesy Don Larson
Don Larson has always been an adventurer, flying hot-air balloons when he wasn’t working in the corporate world. But when The Hershey Co. sent him to Africa to oversee construction of a factory, it sparked a pursuit that even his hot-air ballooning self could never have envisioned.
“I saw pretty significant poverty,” he says now. “When you see something like that, it affects you. I guess I like challenges. There’s a world of hurt out there, so I had to see if I could do something.”
Larson was speaking by Skype from Mozambique, his home since moving there from central Pennsylvania in 2010. He is the founder of Sunshine Nut Co., a for-profit company with the mission of alleviating poverty, built on a business model crafted after a year of careful thought and study. Now, Sunshine Nut Co. cashews are heading to shelves in South African and U.S. grocers. If the model works, Larson hopes to take it worldwide.
Larson is an industrial engineer who earned his business credentials by managing factories, heading negotiating teams and Internet strategies, and leading construction projects. He was “the gung-ho guy climbing the corporate ladder,” but he became disillusioned about the purpose of success. When he embarked on his “spiritual journey” to turn his business skills toward good, he drew inspiration from the man whose name was on the factories he built and contracts he signed.
“The model is based on the philanthropic nature of Milton Hershey,” Larson says. “Give back to communities. Give back to the orphans. What I’m hoping to do is make a significant profit so I can make a significant dent in helping people.”
Larson built a processing factory in Mozambique meant to boost the lives of everyone it touched. Ninety percent of the company’s net distributions are split evenly among farmers, orphans and vulnerable children, and construction of new factories, to keep the concept growing.
Larson and his wife, Terri, and their youngest son left behind the trappings of wealth to settle in Mozambique. Terri was a teacher who continues to advise Mozambican schools. Larson named his company for the many connotations of sunshine: growth, light, the start of a new day.
Larson remembers the children of Milton Hershey School, who would sometimes help him put away his hot-air balloon when he landed it on school property. Today, he and Terri spend much of their time in Mozambican orphanages, their “socializing place.”
“I pulled up yesterday morning, and everyone’s running and screaming and yelling, ‘Papa Don! Papa Don!’ Then they go into a lot of Portuguese, which I’m still struggling to learn.”
Larson says he is “so happy right now.”
“I’m living the abundant life, and abundance doesn’t come from material possessions. It comes from knowing that you’re doing something that will have impact. It comes from seeing people and knowing that what you’re doing will have a dramatic change. I’m here for good. I will not quit, and it will succeed one way or another. I’m not giving up. The road is pretty promising.”
Jordan Steffy, Lancaster
Image courtesy Children Deserve a Chance Foundation
Jordan Steffy likes to talk about one of his success stories, but then, all of Steffy’s students are success stories. This particular young man was in ninth grade when he joined Steffy’s tutoring and mentoring program, Children Deserve a Chance. Now, having overcome the challenges of low expectations, the young man is the first in his family to go to college, talking regularly with Steffy about course credits and preparing financially for the future.
“He was the one we really pressed and pushed because we knew the great potential he had,” says Steffy, “and he has exceeded every expectation.”
Steffy is a Lancaster native, former University of Maryland quarterback, and founder of the Children Deserve a Chance Foundation, which is celebrating its 10 year anniversary. The program puts disadvantaged children through a rigorous “Sunrise Camp” of early-morning enrichment to test their commitment and then pairs them with tutors and mentors to guide them through school. Since its founding in 2004, 100 percent of the program’s graduates have enrolled in, and remain in, college.
Steffy credits that kind of mentorship with redirecting his life. The child of a single mother, living in a drug-infested neighborhood, he got in trouble in eighth grade, but his school principal paired him with a mentor: former NFL player Darryll Daniel, alumni of Steffy’s Conestoga Valley High School. There’s “no question” that the intervention put him on the right track, Steffy recalls.
“It’s scary to think about, quite honestly, because I see a lot of my high school classmates and even kids I went to college with who didn’t have the strong guidance, and ultimately they end up struggling. And I realize the outcome could have been very different.”
A knee injury in a car accident ended Steffy’s college sports career and made him see that “athletics are great, but they’re not sustainable. That was what really gave me the desire to come back here and preach the importance of education.”
Steffy is also an entrepreneur, seeking his MBA from Columbia University and instilling business principles into his nonprofit work. He hopes that the effects of his carefully crafted model for Children Deserve a Chance ripple outward to build a culture of high expectations around children from tough neighborhoods. For program alumni, “it’s not a ‘let’s make it and get the hell out of here’ deal,” he says.
“We believe there’s no reason they shouldn’t come back to Lancaster and be able not only to have successful careers, one that they desire, but also continue to share this message with other kids. That’s how we knew this would not be a quick fix. We are really planting the seed among the kids who are all in college to come back here, to Lancaster. Ultimately, we think that can change the culture to a culture of expectation and college graduation.”
