by MakeUsWell

Don Jones is a renowned retail executive and advisor with nearly five decades of experience and achievement in the fashion, consumer products, food service, management and entertainment industries.

Don also serves on the Board of Trustees at Felician University and the boards of several public and private companies, including the New York City Investment Fund and the Trinity High School Foundation. He is the recipient of the Massachusetts Black Achiever Award and the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association Retailer of the Year, among many other accolades.

By his own account, who is Don Jones?

I am the poster child for the American dream… creating a great life for myself, my lovely wife, and our five children.

Raised by a single mother, along with his seven siblings, Don’s Kentucky origins are humble. In 1969, at the age of thirteen, he began working as a janitor at Fischer’s Men’s Shoes in Louisville. From there, he rose through the ranks of retailers such as Macy’s, Marshall Fields, IKEA, GAP, and Target to serve in chief executive positions in nearly a dozen major retail organizations.

Read more

by MakeUsWell

Cancer Screening for All Through the Power of Tears.

This is the elegantly simple mission statement of Namida Lab, Inc., founded by CEO Omid Moghadam, a new member of the MakeUsWell Network. 

Namida Lab's approach to biometric samples promises to revolutionize cancer screening by utilizing a non-invasive method—tears—to identify a wide range of pathologies earlier and at a fraction of the cost of traditional methods.

The potential for human tears as a diagnostic tool is rooted in the vast array of proteins present in them. As per a 2017 edition of the Expert Review of Proteomics, a peer-reviewed technical journal, over 2,000 proteins have been identified in human tears. 

Read more

by Mike Critelli

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview an exceptionally inspiring high school classmate of mine, Sister Mary Foley, for a newsletter that our Pioneer Class Committee publishes. As a member of the first graduating class of Bishop Kearney High School in Rochester, NY, in 1966, we proudly referred to ourselves as the "pioneer class." Coincidentally, the co-principals of our school had the surnames "Lewis," (Sister Mary Lewis), and "Clark," (Brother Joseph Clark,) which only reinforced the appropriateness of the "pioneer" metaphor.

Sister Mary Foley's career has been nothing short of outstanding. She has been a teacher, missionary, community leader, and licensed clinical social service worker, both in the US and abroad, with a three-year stint in Liberia. However, the part of her life that most deeply intrigued me was her transformation of Luke, a border collie entrusted to her care at the Academy of the Holy Angels in Demarest, NJ, in 2004. Initially, Luke was acquired to help nuns living on the campus discourage and deter geese from doing too much property damage. But Sister Mary Foley, who was passionate about helping individuals and populations who had undergone traumas, had Luke trained as a disaster stress relief dog through Therapy Dogs International.

Read more

by Mike Critelli

When we formed the MakeUsWell Network 2½ years ago, we expected collateral damage from the single-minded focus on virus containment that dominated public policy and responses of employers. But many unintended consequences occurred that we would not have predicted.

One of these is “Zoom Dysmorphia,” a condition in which a person becomes overly concerned with their appearance on video calls, often resulting in body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and other mental health issues. Symptoms may include excessive grooming and styling, constantly checking one's appearance on video calls, and avoiding video calls altogether due to fears about how one looks.

Remote work, the explosive growth of Zoom meetings and the comparably explosive growth of sites like TikTok, Snap, and Instagram, have also contributed to a significant increase in plastic surgery demand. 

Read more

by Mike Critelli

The changes in daily work routines that Covid directives abruptly introduced into employer-employee relationships were not planned in advance and were not done with consideration of whether they would contribute to emotional, career, social, or spiritual well-being. They were done for the sole purpose of virus containment.

Others can debate their effectiveness, but we are indisputably dealing with the wreckage they created in so many employment environments. 

The pandemic moreover uncovered and amplified structural and emerging workplace issues, giving employers and employees the opportunity now to reflect on what needs to change.

Reflections and recommendations, offered here, are informed by our own software-driven augmented analytics. 

Read more