Next week – if the schedule doesn’t change – I will stand at the dais above the floor of the New York Stock Exchange and ring the bell that signifies the start of another trading day. This will celebrate Hagerty’s first day as a publicly...
Congratulations to everyone who was named by Traverse City Business News to the 2021 Hagerty “40Under40” list. Hurrah! Our region needs more people like you. I hope the magazine does a follow-up story on this year’s class of leaders in 20 years. I bet they’ll all...
I recently attended my first, large public event in 14 months. It seemed strange at first but it was largely outdoors—a car show in Florida. People were mingling and laughing. Sometimes within six feet of each other. Without masks. Whoa, weird. But also, wonderful. I...
"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." – Anne Frank In my early twenties, I was sure I was going to be a Russian Orthodox priest. I even earned my master’s degree in theology from Saint...
“Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” – Howard Zinn By McKeel Hagerty The trouble with big challenges is their scale. When we look at them in total, we simply do not know where to begin our work. As a colleague of mine...
One of the joys of 2020 has been driving my mom around. She is 85 and since the weather turned warm enough, I have been taking her on long drives on Old Mission Peninsula and throughout Leelanau Country in vintage cars with broad bench seats...
I have the honor of owning a 1915 Ford Model T that was delivered new that year to its first owner in Traverse City. It is painted black (the only color Ford offered back then) and it has the last of the brass radiators that...
We live in a special place – I think we all know that. I think we also know that to ensure a flourishing future our regional economy needs to remain strong and become more resilient. To me this means less seasonal dependency, more diversified industries,...
At Hagerty, we have a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program, as most corporations do. I’ve never cared for the term. It sounds cold and stiff, almost as if giving back is a moral obligation or something done out of guilt. For this reason, I don’t even...
Thanks to accelerators and investors like Boomerang Catapult and 20Fathoms, a lot of cool companies are being born in Traverse City – from names you’ve heard before like Atlas Space Operations and Promethient to SampleServ, a new environmental software company that helps geologists graph and...
