[See image gallery at delawarebusinessnow.com]
Applied Bank names Sears to board
Applied Bank, Wilmington, announced the appointment of Fred C. Sears II to Applied Bank’s Board of Directors.
Sears recently retired from the Delaware Community Foundation where he served as President and CEO for thirteen years. Through his work with the Foundation, he encouraged individuals, businesses and organizations to engage in long-term charitable giving to improve the statewide community for years to come. Sears served as a community leader in the greater Wilmington area and with organizations throughout Delaware for over 45 years.
Before taking on the leadership of the Community Foundation, he had a 38-year career in banking, most recently as president of Commerce Bank/Delaware. Early in his banking career, he took time out to serve as Finance Director, Director of Commerce for the City of Wilmington and Director of the Port of Wilmington. He was elected to City Council from 1976 through 1984 and has remained politically active.
He has served as an officer or board member for more than forty community nonprofit organizations. In addition to his role at Applied Bank, Sears currently serves as a director of the Christiana Care, Delaware State Port Corporation, Fraunhofer USA Delaware, the Rodel Foundation, the Wilmington Housing Partnership, the Wilmington Land Bank Commission, and the Beau Biden Foundation. He also serves as a member of the State Council for Development and the Nemours Health and Prevention Services Advisory Board.
He is a Delaware native who has always lived in the Wilmington area. He has undergraduate and graduate degrees in Business Administration from the University of Delaware.
Taggart joins Artisans’ Bank
Artisans’ Bank announced that Patrick W. Taggart has joined the Bank’s Commercial Banking Division as Vice President, Commercial Relationship Manager – New Castle County.
Taggart will be responsible for growing the Bank’s commercial loan portfolio within the communities of New Castle County. His office will be located at the Bank’s headquarters; Red Clay Center at Little Falls, west of Wilmington.
Taggart brings with him 15 years of commercial lending and banking experience. His areas of experience include commercial lending, credit analysis, business development, and relationship management. Taggart’s expertise includes SBA, Healthcare, C&I and Commercial Real Estate lending. He has also trained junior lenders and market personnel on the underwriting and credit decision process.
Taggart received a Bachelor of Science degree with a concentration in accounting and a Master of Business Administration degree from Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ. n.
Connolly Gallagher additions
Connolly Gallagher announced that David S. Conway has joined the firm as of counsel, and Kyle Evans Gay and Daniel R. Stanek have joined the firm as associates.
David S. Conway joined Connolly Gallagher as of counsel in February from the Wilmington office of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP. Conway advises clients on a wide variety of commercial and corporate matters. He provides counsel on fiduciary duties and corporate governance issues, business start-up formations and choice of entity, domestic and international commercial contracts, financing transactions, stockholder and member relations and disputes, mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, private equity transactions, stock issuances, recapitalizations, and other matters regarding Delaware corporations, limited liability companies, and general and limited partnerships.
He has represented public and private companies and private equity sponsors in connection with mergers, joint ventures, minority investments, the purchase and sale of securities, assets and business units, rights offerings, registration statements, proxy statements, disclosure issues and other securities law matters.
From 2001 through 2006, Conway served as in-house general counsel to Access Group, Inc., a non-profit student loan company. In that capacity, he was fully accountable for the company’s legal, compliance, internal audit and internal control activities. He advised the board of directors and all levels of staff on all relevant areas of law, including intellectual property, higher education, privacy laws, debt collection, credit reporting, advertising and lending. He also negotiated and coordinated the company’s financing and securitization agreements, along with a wide variety of other vendor and customer agreements.
Conway received his B.S. in Commerce with Distinction from the University of Virginia in 1991 and his J.D. cum laude from Cornell Law School in 1996. He is admitted to practice in both Delaware and Pennsylvania, and has spent the bulk of his legal career in Delaware. He has practiced with Richards, Layton & Finger, PA and Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP.
Kyle Evans Gay joined Connolly Gallagher as an associate in April from the Wilmington office of Morris James LLP. Gay focuses her practice on corporate and commercial litigation and government law, and has experience in appellate practice and complex commercial litigation cases. She is admitted to practice in Delaware and Pennsylvania. Before joining Connolly Gallagher, She served as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Paul R. Wallace on the Superior Court of the State of Delaware. She was also a former Deputy Attorney General in the Appeals Division of the Delaware Department of Justice.
Gay graduated with Honors from Brown University in 2008 and earned her J.D. in 2012 from Boston University School of Law, where she served on the Public Interest Law Journal and was awarded a Post-Graduate Public Interest Fellowship. She is a member of the Rodney Inn of Court and the American Bar Association and serves on the leadership of the Women and the Law Section and the Young Lawyers Section of the Delaware State Bar Association. She volunteers with the District of Delaware Federal Civil Panel and as a guardian ad litem with the Office of the Child Advocate.
Daniel R. Stanek joined Connolly Gallagher in May as an associate in its Trusts & Estates Practice Group. He focuses his practice on trust and estate planning and administration. In addition to advising fiduciaries, Stanek helps clients plan for the preservation and transfer of their assets in a cost-effective and tax-efficient manner. He is admitted to practice in Pennsylvania. Before joining Connolly Gallagher, he served as the Vice President and Senior Consultant for a boutique firm providing family office and private foundation consulting services to ultra-high-net-worth individuals. He has also worked with KPMG’s Global Transfer Pricing Services group, helping large, multi-national corporations organize and manage their operations.
A 2007 graduate of Cornell University’s Dyson School of Business, Stanek obtained his J.D. in 2012 and his L.L.M. in Taxation, with a certificate in estate planning, in 2015, both from the Temple University Beasley School of Law. He dedicates time to supporting charitable organizations and mentoring area youth.
SolDel names chef
Coastal chef Andrew Feeley is now at Bluecoast Seafood Grill in North Bethany Beach. Bluecoast is the original restaurant in the SoDel Concepts group, which currently has nine restaurants.
A 2006 graduate of The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College in Philadelphia, Feeley has worked at some of Delaware’s most celebrated establishments, including the Hotel du Pont and Domaine Hudson, both in Wilmington, and Nage and Eden in Rehoboth Beach. He also worked at Deux Cheminees, a landmark French restaurant in Philadelphia, which was owned by the late Fritz Blank.
Feeley, a Wilmington native and a graduate of Salesianum High School, has been working at the beach for some time.
Christiana Care nursing head named
Richard G. Cuming, Ed.D., MSN, RN, CNOR, NEA-BC, has been named Chief Nurse Executive at Christiana Care Health System. He begins on August 1.
Cuming joins Christiana Care from the Philadelphia-based Einstein Healthcare Network where he served as chief nurse executive and vice president for Health Care Services.
At Einstein, Cuming oversaw the operations and strategic direction of nursing services, perioperative and emergency services at Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia, Einstein Medical Center Elkins Park, MossRehab, Einstein Center One and Willowcrest, a skilled nursing center. He collaborated on nursing practice and standards for Einstein physicians.
Prior to joining Einstein in 2014, Cuming served as a nursing executive for operations management in the Performance Management and Innovation Department at Tenet Healthcare Corporation. He also served as senior vice president and chief nursing executive at the Jackson Health System in Miami.
This fall, Cuming will be inducted as a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. AAN Fellows are the most accomplished leaders in nursing education, management, practice and research.
Cuming is board-certified as an Advanced Nurse Executive by the American Nurses Credentialing Center and board-certified in perioperative nursing. He sits on the editorial board of the AORN Journal of the Association of Perioperative Registered Nurses, where he served on the national board of directors and is a member of several professional organizations including the American Nurses Association and the American Organization of Nurse Executives.
Cuming is a 2015 alumnus of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Executive Nurse Fellowship Program. He earned his diploma of collegial studies in nursing at John Abbott College in Montreal, his bachelor of science in nursing from the University of Ottawa, his master of science in nursing at the University of Miami and his doctorate in adult education and human resource development with a minor in advanced nursing administration from Florida International University.
Beebe Healthcare names directors
The Beebe Healthcare Board of Directors announced that Michael Meoli and Eric Sugrue have recently joined the Board.
Meoli has been a McDonald’s franchisee for 22 years. He owns and operates 14 restaurants and employs approximately 800 crew members, managers and mid-level supervisors and office personnel.
He is a board member of the Rehoboth/Dewey Chamber of Commerce and a board member of the Downstate Advisory Board for WSFS Bank. He was appointed to the National McDonalds System Economics Team.
Meoli has a Bachelor of Science degree in Hotel/Restaurant Management from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, WV.
Sugrue is president and managing partner of the Big Fish Restaurant Group, which is comprised of 10 restaurants, as well as catering and wholesale businesses. He serves on the board of the Delaware Restaurant Association and is a member of the Rehoboth Beach Yacht and County Club.
Sugrue has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Delaware.