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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More Than a Dish

This…

Is the Real Trish

By Greg Paeth

About noon on a Friday not too long ago, Channel 19 news anchor Tricia Macke had pulled on disposable plastic gloves, wrapped herself in a white apron and taken a position on the business side of the cafeteria line at Ruth Moyer Elementary School in Ft. Thomas, where parents are expected to volunteer for lunchroom duty at least once a month.
On this particular day, hundreds of Ruth Moyer pupils disclosed to Macke – on the record — whether they wanted carrots, bananas, apple cobbler or the seedless red grapes that bulged up from a colander that appeared to contain the entire annual production of a small village in Chile.
Based on her careful observations as about 250 pupils in the kindergarten through the fifth grade filed past, Macke felt confident to report that Ft. Thomas kids preferred grapes by a wide margin over the other options that were available on this particular Friday. Read the rest of this entry…

Chris Mack

The New Steward of a Xavier Tradition

By Josh Katzowitz

The office is clean. The work space is organized. The family portraits sit on an end table a few feet away.
It’s the framed photo on the wall hanging over the desk of Xavier basketball coach Chris Mack that is most striking, though. And the picture placement makes perfect sense when you’ve heard over and over again about the school’s mission, about how the athletic administration considers basketball and academics intertwined like a double helix in its DNA.
The photo shows David West – who, after Byron Larkin, might be the greatest player Xavier has produced – in his graduation robe and mortarboard. He’s receiving his diploma at a graduation ceremony six years ago, and he’s smiling widely.
The picture symbolizes best how the Xavier basketball program sees itself and what it wants others to see. A man who was a dominant – and feared – player on whatever basketball court he played. A multimillionaire NBA All-Star who spent all four year of his apprenticeship off Victory Parkway. A man who actually graduated from the school that he loved. Read the rest of this entry…

He’s Confident and Determined

But Still Learning from Van Morrison

By Hal McCoy

The fire in his eyes glowed behind a pair of glasses, threatening to send the napkin on the plate in front of him into flames. Dusty Baker was talking about losing—about how he hates to lose, abhors it—despises it.

“My daughter, Natosha, once asked me, ‘Daddy, why do you always have to win?’” Baker said, staring at the napkin as if it might burst into flames at any moment. “I never let my kids win at anything.” Read the rest of this entry…