20 Under 40, but more Jewy

The week before last the Cleveland Jewish News did a feature story called "On the Rise*," which was about 20 "young, dynamic individuals who are getting noticed in the business world."

My first thought was that this would be great. It's important for local success stories to get attention, both in the Jewish community and in Northeast Ohio. I read the first biography about an impressive 35-year-old woman who works in nano-technology and teaches at Case Western. Although they really didn't go into how she's an up-and-comer in NEO business, she clearly had a list of impressive accomplishments.

The next person was the was the 40-year-old sports director for the local Fox affiliate station. The paper did present a brief history of his history in sports reporting, but as far as "getting noticed in the business world," I thought you had to be in business for that to happen.

The rest of the feature is a roller-coaster of seemingly appropriate and surprising individuals - more surprising because there appears to be nothing extraordinary about them, than surprising that they were doing amazing things. I certainly don't mean to impugn anyone who was featured, as I'm sure they're perfectly good and successful people, but as far as setting an example in business models or entrepreneurship, either the article did a piss-poor job of explaining that, or the individuals simply aren't doing that.

It's unfortunate that in a town for nearly 80,000 Jews, they couldn't find 20 individuals under the age of 40 who were really doing extraordinary things. Perhaps those individuals are out there, but they weren't in this story.


*Although I linked to the archived article here, the online version is ordered very differently then the print version; the reason for this is a mystery.