The Risk-Takers

Cincinnati’s Innovators and Entrepreneurs

By Craig J. Heimbuch
Photos By Felts Photography

They lay it on the line. They cash out their savings in pursuit of a dream. You only live once, right? But it is more than just the seize the day thing. It’s a burn. An ache. A vision for a product or solution, a business model that’s been formulating in the back of their head for as long as they can remember. They live with and for a purpose, not content to tend someone else’s store, they make their own way.
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Those Who Serve, Succeed

The men following live dual lives. In one, they are pillars of the business, arts and medical communities of Greater Cincinnati. They are leaders in industries as wildly divergent as orthopaedic medicine, steel piping and opera. They are names you may know or ones you may not. But in their other, more private lives, they are men who serve.

They serve institutions and individuals. They serve on boards and as volunteers. They serve with the fervent passion of a person who has made a decision – that the world can be a better place and they want to be a part of making sure it will be. Read the rest of this entry…

Giving the World a Stage

By Jeff Waddle

Mary McCullough-Hudson gives hope to all of us who have seen our careers take some unexpected twists and turns. Jokingly referring to her 30-year career at Cincinnati’s Find Arts Fund (FAF) as the result of a “failed opera career,” McCullough-Hudson has played a leading role in growing the FAF into an $11 million operation that today supports over 100 area arts organizations, making it the largest such fundraising campaign in the nation.
She briefly sang with the Cincinnati Opera after earning undergraduate and graduate degrees in Opera Performance from U.C.’s College Conservatory of Music, but she has been FAF’s president and CEO for the past 15 years following a 10-year stint as its campaign director. And, though it wasn’t exactly the opera diva career she originally envisioned, the FAF has allowed her to follow her passion for the arts in a way that has touched the lives of countless Cincinnatians. Read the rest of this entry…

CCO’s Mischa Santora is At-Home on the Stage

He’s a musical traveler who has followed his talent and his passion where they have led him – around the world. Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra Musical Director Mischa Santora has lived in Switzerland, Hungary, New York, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. His home has, for the last two decades, been wherever his pursuit has taken him; his only permanent address has been the stage. Read the rest of this entry…