Media Coverage

Jobs which mostly consist of repetitive tasks, like data entry clerks and typists, may be the most likely to be automated, said Parul Jain, an associate professor of professional practice with the finance and economics department at Rutgers Business School.

https://www.business.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/19-fastest-declining-jobs-parul-jain-nj.com.pdf

Alcohol sales provide some of the highest profit margins in the food service industry, and that’s especially true for fine dining restaurants that are trying to push the envelope, according to Morris Davis, an economist and academic director at the Center for Real Estate Studies at the Rutgers Business School.

“If you want experimental chefs trying new types of cuisine, those experimental chefs have to make money somehow,” Davis said. “If you remove the alcohol, then you have to make money via the food. That leads to fewer experimental restaurants because the food is more expensive.”

https://www.business.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/long-pour-morris-davis-nj.com-sm.pdf

"America’s Obsession with Equity: When Merit Trumps Race." Interview with Heather Mac Donald at the Harvard Club, New York City, April 19, 2023

"Mark Castelino, professor at Rutgers University. I'm an Indian, and my country was ruled for 200 years by the white man from across the seas. In 1947 we got our independence. As a people and as a nation, we refused to look back but decided to forge ahead. Today three of my countrymen, who went to the same university I went to, run three of the largest companies in the world: Microsoft, Google, and IBM. Another two Indians became governors of two Southern States in this country, and another Indian is now prime minister of Britain. The quickest, now my advice to Harvard University and The New York Times: stop this narrative about race. Okay. It doesn't help the people you're trying to help. Take the message from the Indians who made it on merit, not on race."

In one study, [How to Reconnect for Maximum Impact, Jorge Walter, Daniel Z. Levin, and J. Keith Murnighan, February 23, 2016] executives who were told to seek advice from a dormant tie felt anxious beforehand, yet 90 percent of them reported afterward that the experience was enjoyable — and fun.

Rutgers University-New Brunswick ranked #13 among the Top 20 Public Colleges for Accounting Salaries.
These graduates earn higher pay than the median graduate in accounting.

A delegation from Rutgers University in the United States of America on April 11, 2023 visited University of Botswana as part of strengthening relations in different areas of engineering, business, global health, research, training, students and staff exchanges.

The delegation comprised Vice President for Global Affairs, Professor Eric Garfunkel, Assistant Vice President for Global Affairs, Ms Ji-Yeung Jan, Director Rutgers Global Health Institute, Professor Richard Marlink, Vice Dean for Innovation and Strategy, Rutgers Business School, Professor Can Uslay, Rutgers Business School Assistant Dean International Programmes, Professor Dietrich Tschnanz, Rutgers School of Engineering Interim Dean, Professor Alberto Cuitino.

Schools such as Harvard also attract impressive gifts because of the cachet of being affiliated with the Ivy League, said Joanne Ciulla, director of the Institute for Ethical Leadership at Rutgers Business School in New Jersey.

“In either case, they may think having their name on a building at Harvard is more prestigious than a state school or local community college, even though the money may make a greater difference to those institutions and their students,” Ciulla said.

Ciulla said it’s important that Griffin’s Harvard donation is unrestricted, meaning university officials can use the funds as they see fit. She added that being a financial supporter of DeSantis does not mean Griffin personally holds all of the same views.

“There is a utilitarian justification in that,” Ciulla said. “He’s giving to the kind of school that looks into issues of race and looks into issues of rights. He’s not giving to the business school. He’s giving to the arts and sciences, which is significant and somewhat pays for the sins of DeSantis.”

Colleges in and around New York City tend to function as channels for students to take internships and then full-time jobs at banks, private equity shops, hedge funds or other financial firms, says Matt Sigelman, president of Burning Glass.

“There’s real benefits to being around the epicenter of that sector,” he says.

Bharat Sarath, a professor with the Accounting & Information Systems Department at Rutgers Business School, thinks some people set too high of a bar for certified audits.

“This is a question that creates so much confusion in non-auditors that the audit profession has given it a name – ‘The Expectations Gap,’” he explained. “The typical audit report on a client-firm’s financial statement states that the auditor has checked the information provided by the client using procedures that are known as Generally Accepted Audit Standards and have found that the presentation corresponds with the format that is known as Generally Accepted Accounting Practices. The difference in expectations is that non-specialists believe that an audited report is an outcome where the financial statement has no errors, whereas auditors view it as a document that has been examined using a process.”

The New Jersey Jewish Business Alliance hosted its Economic Development Forum last month at St. Peter’s University Sky Room in Jersey City. Participants from many industries met to talk about how businesses survive and thrive in the current economy.

David Rosenberg, NJJBA’s founder and executive director, welcomed the guests, sponsors, and presenters, and Gary Minkoff, a Rutgers Business School professor, was the moderator.

"Berkshire is a well-diversified business so there is no doubt that they are dealing with the supply chain disruptions and increase in wholesale prices that have impacted many firms. However, several Berkshire firms tend to have pricing power, so it may be able to deal with inflation better than many other firms."

"Buffett has often expounded on the virtues of See's Candies and their ability to raise prices over time. Nebraska Furniture Mart, GEICO, and Berkshire Hathaway Energy are among the lowest cost producers in their industries, so they should be able to raise prices without losing their customer base."

Rutgers Office for Research hosted the Women on the Cutting Edge Conference, bringing together speakers from across the New Jersey research ecosystem to discuss the importance of female representation in research, scholarship, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

The event included three speaker sessions and a panel discussion. The speakers included associate professor of Professional Practice in the Management & Global Business Department at the Rutgers Business School Jeana Wirtenberg, PhD, Vice President of Medical Communications at Bristol Myers Squibb and Principal Officer of the Association for Women in Science Monica Mody, PhD, and Board Certified OB/GYN and member of the New Jersey Black Women Physicians Association Toni Otway, MD.

Last year, as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress granted nearly $80 billion of additional funding to the IRS to combat taxpayer noncompliance. Then-nominee for IRS commissioner, Daniel Werfel, explicitly pledged not to expand tax audits on businesses and households making less than $400,000 per year.

But House Republicans, unconvinced by Werfel’s assurances and putatively seeking to protect middle- and low-income taxpayers, recently passed a legislative bill to repeal the additional IRS funding. And as the run-up to the presidential election in 2024 gathers steam, the general public should anticipate that many pundits and those in the media will routinely attack the IRS and, by extension, the Biden administration for policing taxpayers along the economic spectrum.

According to a new article [Revisiting the Tax Treatment of Alimony] by Professors Tessa Davis, Amy Soled and Jay Soled, the new law—which actually isn’t as new as it seems—actually does reflect good tax policy. The authors begin by reminding us that from 1913 to 1942, courts had concluded that alimony should be taxed only once, and it should be taxed to the alimony payer, who was presumed to be the husband. The authors argue that the early rules were grounded in a “paternalistic attitude toward women and wives,” and the assumption that “[w]omen require protection, which is the responsibility of men.” Nevertheless, it is notable that in the early years of the income tax, the taxation of alimony looked a lot like it does today.

This Article provides an accessible primer to the taxation of alimony, and it offers a fun case study about how changing attitudes about gender roles and family dynamics have influenced tax law over time. I recommend this article to anyone interested in individual income taxation, families and tax law, gender and tax law, tax compliance, or tax reform.

Revisiting the Tax Treatment of Alimony
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4388779

The New Jersey Jewish Business Alliance hosted its Economic Development Forum on March 1, 2023 at St. Peter’s University Skyroom in Jersey City. Participants from varying industries converged to discover how businesses survive and thrive in the current economy. With a constantly changing economic climate and unpredictable future, the importance of this forum was profound. The forum was well attended, beneficial to all and a true success.

The panel, moderated by Gary Minkoff, professor at Rutgers Business School, discussed key points to assist small businesses to achieve expansion and profitability in these challenging times.

“There’s this impression that these folks know what good sports are. So if they’re investing in it, they must know something I don’t know, so I want to check this out,” said Lisa Kaplowitz, assistant professor at the Rutgers Business School and executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business.

“You’re also investing in the marketing, of telling that ‘why’ to get that fanbase. And then it becomes this virtuous cycle where you’re going to make money off of it,” she said.

“That 25-basis point interest rate hike had to happen,” said Farrokh Langdana, professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School. “What happens with inflation is if the Fed had not raised interest rates the signal would have been ‘OK, the soft landing is done. The Fed’s not going to tap the brakes anymore.’ We would have been off to the races, people would be like ‘Alright, time to go revenge travel, revenge eating out.’ All kinds of consumption spending would happen.”

“It does nothing for the banks,” Farrokh Langdana, a fi nance and economics professor atRutgers Business School, said of the Fed’s Wednesday rate increase.

In the United States specifically, one study of the expansion of broadband access between 1999 and 2007 estimates that ubiquitous broadband access within a county would increase that county’s employment rate by 1.8 percentage points compared with no broadband access (Atasoy 2013). And when the COVID-19 pandemic prevented many Americans from participating in in-person work and school, new online technologies enabled people to continue learning and working.

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"I think for New York City, $100,000 would make you pretty poor," Parul Jain, an associate professor of finance and economics at Rutgers Business School, told FOX 5 New York.

Jain noted said many of the factors that eat up an individual's money include housing, transportation, and taxes, while food costs have also increased everywhere.

"$100,000 doesn't go very far, as far as New York City, in particular, is concerned," Jain said. "They will be forced to share and to live more like grad students than professionals."

She said in addition to high taxes and housing costs, inflation is taking a considerable chunk out of our budget.

"The same basket of goods about a year ago cost $350 less per month."

Watch video: https://www.fox5ny.com/video/1197528

It remains to be seen in terms of how many more banks crumble, but in general, I would say that you know the policymakers are taking prompt action. It may cause some contagion which means that, you know, a lot of banks are going to come under heavier scrutiny, and the sector is going to suffer as a result, but in general, we don't expect that this is going to be a major financial crisis.

“I think most of our spending patterns are emotional related,” said Kristina Durante, a social psychologist and marketing professor at Rutgers University.

That can make us handle our money in different ways: “One of them is that when you’re stressed you save money, and one of them is that when you’re stressed you spend money,” she said.

But COVID stress didn’t just make us spend more — it made us spend differently.

“You know the pandemic really did focus us, tuned us into the here and the now,” said Durante. “That’s one thing that threats in the environment do. They sort of cut off our future vision.”

When should drivers purchase only the minimum Liability Insurance required by their state? "The decision is very personal, and it may depend on your budget, but risk assessment should come into play," said Professor Quevedo. "On a personal level, I would not. If you have the money to increase your limits and fall into the high-risk categories, you should most definitely play it safe, otherwise, stick to the minimum."

In a study in 2017, Mason Ameri, a professor at Rutgers University, and his co-authors sent resumes with identical characteristics, except some disclosed a disability of either Asperger’s Syndrome or spinal cord injury. Those resumes received 26% fewer calls for an interview than resumes that did not include a disability. And those with a job often do not get the support they need. Only about half received an accommodation for their disability, even though reasonable ones are required under ADA and significantly raise the chance of retention.

When asked what he wants readers to take away from the book, Young answered, "I want readers to enjoy the story, but ask questions as to what made the civilizations act in a certain way. I want the readers to come in contact with their own fears, and conquer them."

C.W. Young is a professor at Rutgers Business School where he focuses teaching business ethics and writing on topics of law, economics, and ethics. He has published in peer reviewed journals, as well as in multiple periodical magazines.

We started our women’s Influencers list at ROI-NJ for two reasons:

To recognize a segment of the business community that too often has been overlooked;
To prove to the leaders that be that there are so many women who are deserving to be in your C-suite and on your boards.
Here’s the thing: The 10 women above are just part of a much larger group that we are recognizing this year.

Then, there’s this: We’re confident that there is a list of women exponentially larger than who we are recognizing today that are equally deserving.

Yes, recognition comes in many ways. It’s time for more people to recognize not only that the future is female, but the future is now.

Lisa Kaplowitz, a top professor who co-founded and heads the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, which is creating the next generation of leaders.

Mini MBA programs are typically offered in a variety of formats—both online and in-person. And they’re usually less time consuming than their traditional counterpart. “It becomes a stepping stone in someone’s journey,” Peter Methot, associate dean of executive education at Rutgers Business School, says. “In its inception, it was meant to be a shorter version of a traditional MBA program.”

“We’re going to make sure the supply chain for America begins in America,” Biden promised.

Leaders the world over are making similar promises. Are they going to be able to deliver, or will they spend a lot of money for meh results?

Alok Baveja, a professor of supply chain management at Rutgers Business School, weighed in with some perspective about what might and might not be possible.


“Regarding supply chains beginning in America — I don’t think we can take this statement literally,” he told the Washington Examiner.

Baveja issued this caution because, “In a literal sense, supply chains begin with raw materials, and I don’t think the U.S. will or can be the provider of a majority of the raw materials” since these “come from all over the world, including China, Africa, and Latin America, and I don’t see that changing.”

He offered a “more viable explanation of this statement,” which is that America “will diversify sourcing and manufacturing and control the supply chains’ critical, value-added components domestically.”

Baveja predicted that America “will continue to be the world's largest and most diverse engine of consumption” and suggested Biden believes “access to our market has to be leveraged strategically to align the supply chains for our country’s strategic objectives.”

“Our investigation breaks new ground by showing how even undetected dishonesty harms negotiators,” study co-author Alex Van Zant, a researcher at Rutgers University, explained in a press release. “It leads negotiators to feel guilty, undermines their satisfaction and reduces their interest in continuing a relationship with counterparts. Considering dishonesty’s psychological and relational costs, living with the costs of dishonesty might be psychologically more challenging than forgoing its benefits.”

According to the highly-competitive Poets & Quants Best Undergraduate Business Schools 2023 ranking report released 3/1/2023, RBS – New Brunswick was ranked No. 40 in the country; making RBS the No. 16 public business school in the U.S. and No. 7 in the Big Ten, ahead of many elite schools such as Carnegie Mellon, U. Arizona, William & Mary, Michigan State, and many others. RBS – Newark was also ranked competitively at No. 69 in the country and the No. 29 public business school in this comprehensive study of the nation’s top business schools.

According to Poets & Quants, the ranked business schools, “are at the leading edge of business education, delivering a learning experience that transforms students’ sense of who they are and what they can do in the world.” Poets & Quants also noted that, “in fact, the ranked schools in this report reflect the top 12% of the more than 840 business schools accredited by AACSB International, the main accrediting body for business education.” The data collected in the rankings seeks to measure, “the quality and diversity of students enrolling in a program; the ability of a B-school to nurture, challenge, and grow those young minds; and how the market and world’s top employers respond to those graduates when leaving the school.”

Labor provisions are increasingly becoming standard features of contemporary free trade agreements.1 Their inclusion has several drivers, including, for example, concerns about unfair wage competition, human rights, and growing demands from consumers and citizens for goods made in ways that do not violate the conscience or implicate oneself in human rights abuses.

Less attention has been paid, however, to the business and policy case for trade-based labor standards as a tool to improve supply chain resilience and disruption. This piece briefly surveys the justifications for labor provisions in trade agreements, describes some of the components and institutions negotiated into The United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) labor chapter, and offers some arguments for why addressing labor issues in trade agreements through state-to-state and state-to-firm mechanisms, as the USMCA does, is part of increasing supply chain resilience and reducing risk.

View the recorded conversation held by the Brookings Institution to release their “second annual flagship report of its USMCA initiative.” Professor Kolben participated in the second panel at 1:15:00.

https://www.ntd.com/usmca-building-more-integrated-resilient-and-secure-north-american-supply-chains-a-brookings-conversation_904282.html

Rutgers Business School Assistant Professor of Professional Practice Gary Minkoff, founder of several start-ups, said the lucrative American market is attractive to Israeli companies. Their cutting-edge technology and start-ups are looking for “a soft landing” such as with a university. Rutgers and Tel Aviv universities have also signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate as part of the Innovation and Technology Hub under construction in New Brunswick.

Mr. Ramaswamy is brilliant, articulate and passionate, with ideas to move this country forward. But his time has not yet come. It will. Run for some other public office first, build your ties with the party, become a successful governor and then run for president. He would be seasoned by then and hard to defeat.

Mark Castelino
Mahwah, NJ

The Clement A. Price Institute invites you to join us in-person or virtually for the third in the Urgent Conversations Toward Just Ecological Futures Series, “Voicing Eco Distresses: A Conversation on Place-Based Approaches to Research and Partnerships in New Jersey.”

Roundtable speakers include:

Kevin Lyons, Associate Professor of Professional Practice,  Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick, Co-Director of the Office of Climate Action, Associate Director of the Rutgers Energy Institute and Director of the Rutgers Business School Public Private Community Partnership Program

During the Covid-19 pandemic, millions of US workers lost their jobs, and company lockdowns forced the adoption of telecommuting especially for those in white-collar work. This unprecedented growth of telework may have lasting effects on employers’ acceptance of remote work as an accommodation for people with disabilities.

Telework can be particularly valuable for people with mobility problems or other conditions that require workplace flexibility, and may enable their job retention and help reduce disability-related economic and workplace disparities. However, telework is not feasible for many service and blue-collar jobs that must be performed in person—jobs in which people with disabilities are concentrated and that were especially hard-hit amid the pandemic.

We explore the relationship between disability and telework during the pandemic using US Census Bureau data from the annual American Community Survey and the monthly Current Population Survey.

Mason Ameri, Douglas Kruse, So Ri Park, Yana Rodgers, Lisa Schur

When the Rutgers Center for Supply Chain Management was launched more than a decade ago, “it was built on a combination of academic rigor and input from industry,” according to John Impellizzeri, a Rutgers Business School assistant professor of supply chain management and director of the center. “That combination, which includes a focus on areas like robotics, artificial intelligence and blockchain is important, especially in supply chain management.”

“Our Center for Supply Chain Management has an opportunity to make a meaningful impact on New Jersey’s economy and strengthen the diverse business community through this project,” noted Lei Lei, the dean of Rutgers Business School. “We look forward to the results that will come from this powerful collaboration with government and private business.”

There are many paths to a career in supply chain – and many opportunities that may follow as well. Working in supply chain provides students and professionals alike with the opportunity to develop an operational mindset and develop a project management orientation.

Joseph Agresta is an Assistant Professor Professional Practice and the Interim Director M.S Program Healthcare Analytics and Intelligence at Rutgers Business School. In this interview he is joined by two former Rutgers students. Nikki Gaboff just finished her final semester in the Healthcare Analytics and Intelligence program, and Haley Carlsen is a Specialist in Global Site Services and Procurement Governance at Merck and a graduate of Rutgers.

In this interview, Joseph, Nikki, and Haley tell host Scott Luton how being part of the supply chain program at Rutgers has positioned them for professional success:

• Current topics like the chip shortage, energy shortages, and the shift to working from home

• The combined importance of industry experience and academic instruction to advancing

• Why relationships remain critical to any individual’s and any company’s ability to perform

Podcast, video, and transcript available.

“It becomes a stepping stone in someone’s journey,” explains Peter Methot, associate dean of executive education and assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers University’s Rutgers Business School. “In its inception, it was meant to be a shorter version of a traditional MBA program.”

Rutgers, which began offering a mini MBA credential 15 years ago, has a program with 10 distinct learning modules. This credential is offered in three different formats: an accelerated one-week, in-person version, an online asynchronous model that takes 12 weeks to complete, and a virtual, live format that is offered in several durations.

With the accelerated program, students take part in two modules per day over five consecutive days. In the 12-week online model, Methot says students are advised to participate in one module per week, then take two weeks for the program’s project and final exam. The virtual live format features synchronous, live learning via Zoom.

Most Rutgers learners participate in the 12-week online model.

“It becomes a stepping stone in someone’s journey,” says Peter Methot, associate dean of executive education and assistant professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School at Rutgers University. “Initially it was meant to be a shorter version of a traditional MBA program.”

Rutgers, which began offering a mini MBA degree 15 years ago, has a curriculum with 10 distinct learning modules. This title is offered in three different formats: an accelerated one-week in-person version, an asynchronous online model that takes 12 weeks to complete, and a live virtual format offered in multiple durations.

John M. Longo, a professor at Rutgers Business School and chief investment officer at Beacon Trust, wrote in an email that the increased shares in Grab represent a long-term growth opportunity.

“Grab is akin to the Uber of Southeast Asia, outside of China. It operates in a big market, but the company is currently not profitable. It has $6.5 billion in cash on its balance sheet so it should be able to fund the near-term losses until the company becomes profitable,” Longo wrote.

Longo also noted that Grab is based in an emerging market, which he wrote could have contributed to HMC’s decision to purchase more stocks in the company.

“Emerging market (EM) stocks were among the biggest losers in 2022 and are trading at depressed valuations so HMC’s addition of Grab may be also a play on a rebound in EM,” he said.

Arash Azadegan, associate professor in the department of supply chain management at Rutgers, says the supply-chain management program trend started about 10 years ago, after companies decided they couldn't do everything in-house and decided to recruit suppliers, especially cheap suppliers in emerging economies such as India, China and Brazil. Now, says Azadegan, his students go on to a host of different careers under the supply chain umbrella, including procurement, supplier development engineering, management, supply chain analysis, or supply risk management.

Azadegan says supply risk management is a growing component of this field. At Rutgers, which offers an MBA concentration in supply chain management, as well as an online Master of Science in Supply Chain Management, Azadegan emphasizes dealing with risk in his classes. For example, he runs a mock emergency scenario in one of his classes where students come to an office on 8 a.m. on Monday to find out there was a big explosion at their suppliers' facility. The students realize they are not going to get their parts on time and chaos erupts across the supply network.

“I put them in this class so they can decide what to do, and they take functional roles, and discuss in teams how to fix the issue,” Azadegan says. “Should they go help the supplier, or find another supplier?” he added.

“Even if I'm very good at managing my own risks within my organization, it could be that my suppliers are not so risk-aware. If I'm manufacturing a food product, it could be that my risk comes from up-stream because my suppliers aren't clean enough. People need to pay close attention to suppliers.”

Why do banks offer 0% credit cards?

The 0% cards are often a "teaser rate" designed to get people to sign up for the card. The banks know that some people who sign up will not pay their balance in full when the 0% period ends. The interest rate will then often be in the teens or higher for those that do not pay off their balance in full.

Are 0% credit cards a trap?

I would not call them a trap. They are a good deal if the consumer has the income and discipline to pay off the balance in full each month. It is akin to an interest-free loan for 6 to 12 months. Those who cannot pay off their balance in full each month are better off seeking a lower interest rate credit card or simply using a debit card until they build the cash reserves to pay their bill in full each month.

As Rutgers business school professor Victor Glass explained in his 2018 paper, “One terrorist attack away from a major national blackout,” an attack on a small group of critical substations could for weeks shut down power supplies to load centers such as cities, towns and manufacturers. That type of catastrophic long-term loss of power would be far more dangerous than a simple blackout. It would cripple the U.S. economy and pose a direct threat to our national security and American lives.

What are the main factors currently driving inflation?

Inflation is a rise in the overall price level and it reflects an increase in prices across a wide variety of goods and services. Generally speaking, there are two reasons that prices can rise. The first is that the cost of producing those goods and services rises. For example, a war can interrupt the supply of oil or a pandemic can interrupt supply chains. The second is that the demand for those goods and services rises, forcing firms to source materials from non-standard suppliers and hiring extra workers (paying overtime or training costs, etc.) which increases costs and therefore causes firms to have to raise prices.

The security threat presented by quantum computers is something to be concerned about, “But we don’t need to worry immediately about it,” according to Jaideep Vaidya, a management science and information systems professor at Rutgers Business School–Newark and New Brunswick.

“Cryptography, or taking data and converting it to something that looks like gibberish, underlies all secure communication,” he said. “So everything sensitive we do on the internet such as sending credit-card information to purchase goods is protected, as indicated by the ‘https’ [Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure] that prefaces a web address. We are not quite at the point where quantum computers can crack these encryptions, but it is important to keep government and other computers secure even when large quantum computers pose a threat to RSA and other encryption. However, that won’t happen until at least a few more years.”

“I’m thrilled to join Bernel Hall and New Jersey Community Capital’s board of directors to support the organization’s mission and contribute to its dynamic and effective programs and services,” Richardson said. “There’s always more to be done to make communities in New Jersey and beyond more equitable and accessible, and I’m eager to play a role in that work on this board.”

In May 2022, the Hayti Heritage Center co-sponsored a ULI Advisory Services panel with the ULI Foundation to study the Fayetteville Street Corridor. The goal of the panel was to identify opportunities for intentionally inclusive development that would involve the community in both neighborhood planning and economic participation.

The panel was led by chair Lyneir Richardson, co-founder and CEO, Chicago TREND, and executive director, Center for Urban Entrepreneurship & Economic Development, Rutgers Business School, Newark, New Jersey.

Panel chair Richardson observed, “Change to this historic neighborhood is palpable. The market demand for opportunity is coming. There’s an urgency of the moment that requires strategic action first—from the community, the residents, Black business owners, and Black-led organizations.”

According to Kristina Durante, vice chair and professor of marketing at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, the “new normal” in the aftermath of the pandemic could partly be the reason for this.

“Valentine’s Day was a very public-facing holiday that was almost like a competition, but then during the pandemic, there was no one to send flowers to at work or school and nowhere to go out to eat,” she said. “Now it’s socially OK to not go nuts and people feel comfortable doing alternative things. The pandemic normalized Netflix and chill. Valentine’s Day isn’t on steroids anymore.”

Lyneir Richardson, executive director of CUEED, says small businesses are the backbone of the nation’s economy and supporting them is critical, especially those who have less access to connections and capital. They’re the business owners EPI was created to help.

“We recognize the role that entrepreneurs play in terms of being economic engines. They make our cities and neighborhoods more vibrant. They create jobs,’’ said Richardson. “We’re working to get 1000 diverse entrepreneurs in New Jersey the educational resources and the capital needed to grow to one million a year in annual recurring revenue.’’

Disabled people are being hired more often and making more money in the tight American labor market. Did Covid prove that remote work was possible after all? Ben Casselman, who covers economics for The Times, speaks with Nora Genster of Northwest Center, Mason Ameri of Rutgers University and others. Listen to a condensed version of their conversation here, or in full on Twitter.