The Post and Courier Greenville

GREENVILLE, S.C.— Christian Groomes, a Senior Sales Manager with Lima One Capital, has been named a Top Emerging Star by Scotsman Guide.
The Top Emerging Star honor goes to exceptional loan originators under the age of 40 who tripled their production volume in the past year. Groomes was also named a Top Originator for 2022 by Scotsman Guide, a leading publication in the mortgage industry.
An Upstate native and Clemson graduate and football player, Groomes has been an originator with Lima One since 2018.
About Lima One Capital
Since its inception in 2010, Lima One Capital has been recognized as the nation’s premier lender for real estate investors and has funded over $7 billion in business purpose real estate loans. With a reach across 46 states, Lima One operates as a capital partner for both real estate investors and brokers by financing residential investment strategies including fix and flips, rental, new construction, and multifamily. For more information, visit limaone.com.

Eleven students had the opportunity to learn ballet at Phillis Wheatley Community Center over the summer. Instructors from International Ballet provided two free ballet classes per week at the center for seven weeks.

The introductory classes focused on ballet conditioning and fundamentals and culminated in a performance for families and members of the community on July 27. The classes were open to youth ages 8 – 12 years old, and no prior experience was required.

“We so appreciate the partnership with International Ballet Academy. Because of their support and expertise, eleven young people had the opportunity to try something new and challenge themselves,” said Randy Jackson, executive director of Phillis Wheatley Community Center.

Performing Arts have long been a program focus for the center. Phillis Wheatley hosted the classes in the newly-renovated performing arts practice room and the performance on the gymnasium stage.

The classes were funded by a grant from the South Carolina Arts Commission (SCAC) that supported activities to expand student access to arts education opportunities, complement standards-based arts instruction aligned with school curriculum, and address South Carolina’s 2017 College and Career Ready Standards for Visual and Performing Arts Proficiency.

“We are so grateful for the support we received to begin this outreach program because it helps the children and the community at large. Exposure to ballet can open a whole new world to children and they immediately feel the benefits of focus, hard work, attention to detail, and pride as they start to feel and see the results of their work,” said Sarah Shoemaker, executive director of International Ballet. “Other benefits come from listening to beautiful classical music and being in community with others who share the experience with them.”

Each class was 1.5 hours long and was taught by International Ballet faculty member Lydia Sanders with assistance from International Ballet alumna Sophia Brown. In addition to the classes, the SCAC grant funded new ballet shoes, dance bags, and yoga mats for every student to keep.

Jackson and Shoemaker say they are exploring ways to make lessons available at the center throughout the year.

“We look forward to continuing to provide unique opportunities to youth in our community,” said Jackson.

“Phillis Wheatley has been an amazing partner, and we want to be able to keep the program running year-round and free to interested students,” said Shoemaker.

About International Ballet
Based in Greer, International Ballet is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization with the mission to inspire joy and success through professional ballet training and performances. In the 23-24 year, IB will train students ages 3-adult, present free “Storytime Ballets” for children in partnership with Greenville County Library System and produce The Nutracker and Swan Lake accompanied by the Greenville Symphony Orchestra at the Peace Center. Learn more at internationalballetsc.org.

About Phillis Wheatley Community Center
The Phillis Wheatley Community Center provides a wide variety of services and programs to youth, adults and seniors in Upstate South Carolina. Founded in 1919 by Hattie Logan Duckett, the center has been serving the community for more than a century. Learn more at philliswheatleysc.org.

GREENVILLE, S.C. – A little more than two scores of tickets are left for South Carolina Women’s Executive Luncheon, and if that wasn’t enough to get you to buy a ticket, all attendees will get a complimentary box of Girl Scout Cookies.
The South Carolina Women’s Executive Luncheon will be held on Monday, August 28th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Greenville Convention Center, 1 Exposition Drive, Greenville. Go to www.womenconfidencebuilders.com to learn more. Tickets cost $75, and can be purchased here.
The event is hosted by Women Confidence Builders, a non-profit organization that offers events, mentoring, speaking, and consulting services with the goal of uplifting women in business across the region, said Christi Powell, the president of Women Confidence Builders and the Women Business Enterprise Lead for 84 Lumber.
The event includes networking and shopping portion from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m., and then the speakers and luncheon follows. The highlight of the event is a discussion with Susann Tedrick and Bertina Ceccarelli moderated by Powell. Their book Innovating for Diversity: Lessons from Top Companies Achieving Business Success through Inclusivity reframes the DEI discussion and moves it beyond a human resources issue.
Tedrick is fiercely committed to increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion in the tech industry through education, mentoring, and advocacy. Tedrick performs community service work for several nonprofits, including serving as chair of the Advancing Tech Talent and Diversity Executive Council for CompTIA and coalition member for NPower’s Command Shift initiative, one of the most successful nonprofits in North America committed to helping young adults and military-connected individuals launch tech careers. Tedrick also is the author of the critically acclaimed Women of Color in Tech, and host of Wiley’s Diversity in Tech webinar series.
As the CEO of NPower, Ceccarelli vies to break down barriers to social and economic mobility. She is endlessly inspired by the life journeys of NPower alumni, and by the forward-looking corporate employers who see brilliance whereas others see limitations. Under her leadership, NPower has grown its budget five-fold in the last six years and today serves more than 2,000 individuals annually.
BMW is the title sponsor for the event, and Carolina Power is the presenting sponsor. Hugs & Hustle is the woman business owned presenting sponsor, while Hill Electric is the Student and Inclusion Sponsor; the Greenville Chamber of Commerce is the Community Sponsor; Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. is the Book Sponsor; Assured Partners is Inclusion Sponsor and Aline Capital, OP Source, Brasfield & Gorrie, and AFF are Supporting Sponsors. This event is being held in conjunction with the BMW Supplier Diversity Conference.
In addition, Women Confidence Builders will be presenting scholarships to 10 students from Anderson Career Technology Center and Spartanburg Academic Movement and giving awards to members of the Skilled Trades Alliance.
About Women Confidence Builders:
Founded in 2021, the mission of Women Confidence Builders is to educate, mentor, disciple, and empower all women while building confidence and creating inclusivity. They believe that by investing in the next generation of female leaders, we can create a brighter, more equitable future for all.
Learn more at www.womenconfidencebuilders.com follow them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

GREENVILLE, S.C. – The nonprofit dedicated to strengthening the Upstate’s vibrant Jewish community has hired community leader Courtney Tessler to be its CEO – a first for the 76-year-old organization.
The Greenville Jewish Federation works tirelessly to support educational programs, social services, cultural events, and advocacy efforts that promote Jewish values, heritage, and unity, said Elizabeth Lapidus, the board president.
People of the Jewish faith have lived in the region since at least 1794, when a man named Eleazar Elizar was named postmaster for Greenville’s predecessor village of Pleasantburg. Over the generations, they have become an important part of the fabric of the Upstate community. As the Federation grows to meet the needs of a changing Upstate, the board decided it was time to chart a new path forward.
That led to hiring Tessler as CEO, whose goal will be to elevate the Federation’s impact and foster collaboration among community members, organizations, and partners, Lapidus said. Tessler has served on the Federation board since 2015.
“This is an exciting time for our organization as we reorganize how we function to better serve our community,” Lapidus said. “Courtney brings an amazing amount of energy, experience, and leadership to this post.
With an extensive background in organizational leadership, nonprofit service and a passion for her Jewish community, Tessler has already started the tasks of planning new events and programs and creating community partnerships. She sees her short-term goal as creating lasting change through growth for the organization.

“My goal is to help build a sustainable framework for the organization so future CEOs and future boards can continue the work successfully long-term,” Tessler said. “By transitioning to a professionally led organization and expanding its leadership team, the Federation aims to elevate its ability to meet the evolving needs of the community, drive sustainable growth, foster unity, and ensure a vibrant Jewish future for generations to come.”
About the Greenville Jewish Federation:
The Greenville Jewish Federation is a dynamic organization dedicated to serving and strengthening the Jewish community in Greenville and neighboring counties. With a rich history of philanthropy and community building, the Federation works tirelessly to support educational programs, social services, cultural events, and advocacy efforts that promote Jewish values, heritage, and unity.
To learn more about the Greenville Jewish Federation’s initiatives and upcoming programs, visit www.jewishgreenville.org.

GREENVILLE, S.C. – For the past three years, a group of skilled former medical care leaders have heard almost weekly stories from friends, neighbors and former co-workers about their dissatisfaction with the state of healthcare in South Carolina.
Whether it be complaints about wait times to see a specialist; requests to help interpret test results received via email or advice on managing burnout and fatigue, these stories resonated with this group.
They began to research what was causing this malaise, and realized it wasn’t the system in place, but the lack of connectivity between the various cogs in the medical care wheel.
Using their 150 years of combined leadership in creating healthcare solutions for South Carolina citizens, coupled with having gained new perspectives working on different ventures, they have formed a company with the goal of creating guideways for a stronger medical care environment across the country.
Integral Leaders in Health is a public benefit corporation, which is a for-profit corporation intended to support the betterment of communities at large and operate in a responsible and sustainable manner. The group plans to start by addressing the current healthcare crisis in South Carolina – progressive replacement of patient well-being as the primary purpose of the medical care environment. Their goal is to focus on medical care, which goes beyond access and quality of healthcare and squarely looks at balancing the patient-doctor relationship.
“We are fortunate to live in a state with great doctors, hospitals and universities. But the medical care environment, in which they each play an important role, has become unbalanced,” said Dr. Spence Taylor, the founder and CEO of Integral Leaders in Health. “Our mission is to balance all of the components of medical care so everyone is supported and patient well-being is the priority.”
Integral Leaders in Health brings together a diverse group of experienced medical and governmental affairs experts.
Taylor was the first physician to be named president of the Greenville Health System (GHS, now part of Prisma Health), a health system, which at the time, had nearly $3 billion in annual operating revenue, eight hospitals, 1,600 beds, 2,000 employed providers, 16,000 employees and an emerging academic health center.
The leadership team includes Dr. Jerry Youkey, the Founding Dean Emeritus of the University of South Carolina School of Medicine Greenville, prior USC Associate Provost for Health Sciences – Greenville, and previous GHS Executive Vice President; Cortney Easterling, Deputy Chief of Staff at GHS where she provided strategic counsel on message development, leadership engagement, executive and board communications, and community outreach to the president; and Howell Clyborne, who was Vice President of Community and Government Affairs and Chief of Staff for GHS, a former president of the Greenville Health Authority and was Director of the Office of Revenue and Fiscal Affairs for the State of South Carolina.
Many of the stories they have heard in the past few years share common threads, Youkey said. People don’t feel connected in the medical care world. The once altruistic profession of healing the sick because it was the right thing to do has transformed into a completely corporate structure and purpose. People show up at a clinic and meet with a virtual doctor. Their results are texted to them by a machine. The focus is on third party metrics as opposed to what is best for the individual patient.
“The airline industry model has become the healthcare model,” Youkey said.
“People are treated like commodities to be moved around.”
The use of the word “integral” in the company name is key, Clyborne said. Almost 20% of the nation’s gross domestic product is committed to healthcare, yet patient and doctor dissatisfaction is more than 70%,” according to a June Harris Poll.
“We plan to use our experience to create real integral’ solutions,” Clyborne said. “We are leveraging our abilities and skills to help the system work for everyone.”
Integral Leaders in Health will be working with companies, governmental agencies and associations across the healthcare spectrum with a focus on creating ways to improve the medical care environment, Easterling said.
Services include:
Training Seminars: They can coach leadership and management teams on the best way to navigate the changing medical care environment. Integral Leaders in Health’s team has authored hundreds of articles on leadership and done thousands of hours of training.
Speaking Engagements: With more than 150 years combined experience, Integral Leaders in Health can energize, educate and unify any leadership team. They can share real examples and answers to problems in the world of medical care as they have done nationally as guest lecturers and keynote speakers.
Strategy Solutions: They can create roadmaps to eliminate bureaucratic mandates and red tape by tapping into their decades of experience at all levels of South Carolina government. They will help find ways to promote efficiency to make sure patients and staff don’t feel like cogs in a machine.
Connections: They create results when it comes to building bridges between disciplines by providing access and expertise on governmental relations.
Communications: They can coordinate messaging and materials to help create support for medical care changes and initiatives by using the knowledge they have developed on hundreds of campaigns both large and small.
“It’s time to restore patient well-being by achieving shared goals developed by those who need to be making medical decisions — patients and doctors,” Taylor said.
About Integral Leaders in Health:
Integral Leaders in Health’s mission aims to revolutionize medical care into a balanced environment that meets the needs of the individual patient by focusing on their outcomes. They can educate, inform and catalyze measurable change through targeted strategic campaigns. Learn more at www.integralleadersinhealth.com

Real estate development and investment company Keene Development Group and Wilson Associates, one of Greenville’s largest independent real estate firms recently announced that their new estate-caliber townhome development, The McDaniel, is half-reserved after only six weeks of sales. Pre-sales of these new 3100-4100 square foot townhomes, which kicked off at an event at The Poinsett Club on June 8, have been extremely robust, evidencing pent-up demand for this first-of-its-kind real estate option.

“Because they are like nothing else available here in Greenville, we knew that demand for these incredibly luxurious city townhomes would be robust, but the response from buyers, including those already living in the city and newcomers from out-of-state, has been nothing short of astounding,” noted Wilson Associates CEO and Broker-In-Charge Sharon Wilson, whose firm is the exclusive sales partner for the development. “The feedback has been tremendous, and we expect to fill all reservations slots soon, so I encourage anyone who may be interested to act quickly.”

Located near the intersection of McDaniel and McBee Avenues, The McDaniel is modeled on the luxury townhome and urban living options in larger metropolitan areas. Catering to discerning buyers seeking an elevated downtown lifestyle, The McDaniel will marry refinement, grace and style with the best of city living, all within easy walking distance of Main Street.

Greenville-based MHK Architecture designed the 4-story townhomes, which will be constructed with a striking Parisian-inspired, gray limestone façade and include private side-by-side garages, balconies and rooftop terraces. ID Studio has curated a stunning high-end range of design choices – cabinetry, closet configurations, fixtures and finishes, flooring, etc. – that will appeal to luxury buyers of varying taste ranges to give buyers the opportunity to customize their homes while ensuring a gorgeous and cohesive look.

Construction is set to begin in early fall, with a completion targeted for late 2024.

More information about The McDaniel can be found at www.themcdaniel.com.

Greenville, S.C. – July 17, 2023 – Logisticus Group (LG), a transportation logistics, project management and technology company, recently held a ribbon cutting with the Greenville Chamber of Commerce to mark the opening of its new headquarters in Greenville. The company moved their headquarters to 1000 East North Street across from the Bon Secours Wellness Arena to accommodate its significant growth the past decade.

“The opening of our new offices on East North Street is an important milestone in LG’s history,” said Will Stephan, founder of Logisticus Group. “When we started Logisticus Group it was important for us to centrally locate ourselves within a city that welcomes and fosters business growth while also attracts top class professional talent. Greenville has helped us pave the way for success the last decade and we look forward to a bright future at our new headquarters.”

Logisticus Group is celebrating a decade in business as it has grown from five founding partners to an office of 83 employees and a satellite location in Charleston, S.C. Founded on the principles of delivering innovative and efficient logistics services, Logisticus Group has helped clients execute massive projects throughout North and South America.

“Logisticus Group is a model business for the story of Greenville and our focus on economic growth,” said Carlos Phillips President/CEO of Greenville Chamber. “Logisticus Group has found significant success in Greenville in a short amount of time. Just this past year it was named one of South Carolina’s Fastest Growing Companies. It is through businesses like LG, Greenville continues to grow.”

About Logisticus Group
Logisticus Group (LLC), a certified Minority Business Enterprise (MBE), specializes in transportation logistics, project management and technology solutions serving
projects throughout North and South America. At Logisticus Group, we believe our
processes, technology solutions, personnel and business model deliver a more predictable, controlled, efficient and expedited project. Logisticus Group is headquartered in Greenville, SC with an office in Charleston, SC. To learn more visit, www.logisticusgroup.com.