Your Business

Published Aug 6, 2012 at 6:00 pm (Updated Aug 6, 2012)

COMPANY NEWS

VAK Environmental Solution and APS Design and Testing, a pair of engineering startups, have signed as tenants with LSU’s Louisiana Business & Technology Center. LBTC will provide business counseling, mentoring and technical resources needed for success, as well as links to the community. VAK, owned by Victoria and Willie Day, provides advanced environmental remediation products and services. APS, founded by its president, Sergio Aviles, will occupy a chemistry lab in the LBTC to provide geotechnical on-site engineering, design and testing on construction materials, environmental waste management and soil conditions and composition.

Charles McInnis Jr., president of McInnis Tyner, and Bobby Adams, president of Integra Insurance, this week announced a strategic partnership between the two agencies.�The partnership expands the reach of the businesses from southeast Texas to New Orleans.

Lofton Security Service announced it has expanded its services to include private investigation. Lofton Security’s Private Investigation division will provide clients with investigatory law services in civil and domestic cases as well as insurance fraud. The division will provide services in general investigations, family law investigations, background searches, process services, surveillance, locate services, and vehicle background reports. The Private Investigation division is licensed in Louisiana and Texas.

St. Elizabeth Hospital has become the first hospital in Louisiana to perform a minimal-incision vertical sleeve gastrectomy. Dr. Andrew Hargroder performed the surgery July 17. There are currently fewer than 15 bariatric surgeons using the “spider” technology nationwide. Spider has been used by surgeons to perform other procedures; however, this marks the first time it has been used in Louisiana to perform a vertical sleeve procedure.

Express Scripts and Walgreens announced a multiyear agreement with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Louisiana, allowing Walgreens again to be a part of the Express Scripts network. Beginning Sept. 15, Blue Cross and HMO Louisiana members with Express Scripts pharmacy benefits can use Walgreens as a network provider.

Venture Technologies announced it has achieved the Cisco Cloud Builder designation within the Cisco Cloud Partner Program. This designation recognizes Venture Technologies’ competencies to sell and implement Cisco end-to-end cloud solutions for any customer. As a Cisco-designated Cloud Builder Partner, Venture has met the required competencies across all cloud infrastructure components.

Entrepreneur Lou DeAngelo has announced the new Louis DeAngelo Gallery will open its doors Aug. 14, The gallery will feature artwork by DeAngelo and other local artists as well as sculptures. Custom framing will also be available. The gallery is located at 16645 Highland Road, Suite F.

ACCREDITATIONS/CERTIFICATIONS

Jason Boudreaux and Jennifer Fowler recently completed the technology coaching certification course by Wendy Kennedy at Purdue University. The duo, both of whom serve as business consultants at the LSU Louisiana Business & Technology Center, completed the course in June. According to LBTC Executive Director Charles D’Agostino, Boudreaux and Fowler will be working with engineers, scientists and researchers from LSU, Southern University, Pennington, LSU Veterinary Medicine and LSU Emerging Technology Center, as well as local engineers, industry researchers and other technology entrepreneurs. The program will cover developing the “idea” and taking it to the marketplace in the most cost-effective and efficient manner.

Mike Bannister, vice president at Regions Bank overseeing south Louisiana operations, is among 160 bankers who received diplomas on June 1 fom the Graduate School of Banking at LSU. This three-year program provides courses covering all aspects of banking, economics and related subjects. Students traveled from twenty states and Mexico to participate in this session. Sponsored by 15 southern state bankers associations in cooperation with the Division of Continuing Education at LSU, the banking school requires attendance on campus for three years.

The American Society of Association Executives has announced that Dianna Braud, director of national programs for the Alliance Safety Council, has earned the certified association executive credential. The CAE is the highest professional credential in the association industry. Less than 5% of all association professionals have earned the CAE. The ASC (formerly the Safety Council of the Louisiana Capital Area) is a 54-year-old nonprofit, member-driven association providing online and instructor-led safety training and related services for our community.

APPOINTMENTS/MEMBERSHIPS

The Louisiana Funeral Directors Association has announced the 2012-2013 slate of officers and directors, including the association’s first woman president, Nicole Charlet Wilcher. She is a licensed funeral director at Charlet Funeral Home in Clinton. Before earning her funeral director’s license, she graduated from Louisiana Tech with a degree in accounting.

Michael Clarke has been named president/COO of The Camelot Club. Clarke was The Camelot Club general manager in the early 1990s, when the club was owned by Club Corporation of America. The club is now owned by Tom Tanner. Clarke has more than 30 years of private club management experience.

Richard “Rick” Shaw has been named to the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative Research Board. The associate dean of the School of the Coast and Environment and a professor in the Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at LSU, Shaw was nominated by the state of Louisiana and appointed by the Gulf of Mexico Alliance to fill a vacant seat on the research board. The GoMRI Research Board is an independent body that administers BP’s 10-year, $500 million commitment to independent research into the effects of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

AWARDS/HONORS

State Sen. Sharon Weston Broome, D-Baton Rouge, has been honored as an inductee into the Minority Media Telecom Council’s Hall of Fame. MMTC is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media, telecommunications, and broadband industries. Broome, current Senate President Pro Tempore, was recognized for her dedication to advancing diversity and building coalitions on critical civil rights issues in media and telecommunications.

BREC’s Magnolia Mound Plantation was honored recently by the National Recreation and Park Association with the Dorothy Mullen Arts and Humanities Award for its Cajun Music Day festival. The National Association of County Parks and Recreation Officials honored longtime BREC community partner Jim Bernhard with the Outstanding Contributor Award. BREC approved an agreement with The Baton Rouge Basketball and Volleyball Association to build, staff and operate a large, air-conditioned gym at Perkins Road Community Park in large part through Bernhard’s efforts.

Edward Jones financial adviser Todd Hymel recently received the TNT Client Development Award for his outstanding service efforts over the past year. Hymel was one of only 738 of the firm’s more than 12,000 financial advisers to receive the award. The award derives its name from firm legends who in the 1950s traveled from Tuesday through Thursday each week, becoming known as “TNT” brokers.

Glenn Sumners, director of the LSU Center for Internal Auditing and the U.J. LeGrange Endowed Professor in Accounting, was recently given an honor by the Institute of Internal Auditors. During the IIA International Conference in Boston, the institute renamed the CIA Student Highest Achievement Award after Sumners. Sumners was the driving force behind the establishment of the student award.

Rheumatologist Dr. Stephen Lindsey of Ochsner was named the Volunteer Health Corps’ Bon Coeur award recipient. The Volunteer Health Corps’ Bon Coeur or Good Heart award is not given every year and is only awarded to someone in recognition for outstanding volunteer efforts to address or solve a serious health care access issue. Lindsey was recognized because of his efforts to create a rheumatology clinic every other Wednesday night at the Volunteer Health Corps Clinic facility to provide rheumatology services to those without access to them.

PUBLIC SECTOR

Southern University recently held a “Space Day,” and astronaut Bernard Harris gave a presentation to middle-school students about space travel, at the ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp on the Southern campus. Campers who created and designed durable spacesuit swatches using household items that mimic protective materials. Teams tested the strength of their samples using an “impact tester.”

Yejun Wu, an assistant professor in the school of library and information at LSU, puts the pieces together of the impact of the Gulf of Mexico Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill.

His lab has created a first edition of an online topic map, available at http://topicmap.lsu.edu/, that brings together information from a wide range of research fields including biological science, chemistry, coastal and environmental science, engineering, political science,mass communication studies and many other disciplines in order to promote collaboration and big picture understanding of technological disasters. The topic map is composed of three major levels: concepts or topics, associations or relationships, and the information sources for these concepts and associations.

LSU’s College of Engineering placed in the 8% among 348 U.S. schools for number of degrees awarded according to the newly released 2012 edition of Profiles of Engineering & Engineering Technology Colleges, published by the American Society of Engineering Education. ASEE annually publishes the leading data on engineering colleges in the United States.