Feedback: November 2018

Q. What is a social “good” you align your company with, and how do you support it?

Justin Grossman

CEO
meltmedia
Sector: Digital Agency

At meltmedia, we believe social good comes in many shapes, and we have built a community that supports not just employees, but their families, friends, clients, colleagues, and community and professional organizations. As such, we host multiple annual social events where partners, children and friends are invited and celebrated as part of our employees’ lives (such as family movie night, kid-friendly Halloween parties and an annual winter holiday party). We also sponsor local causes like Phoenix Design Week and Arizona State University student workshops and hackathon, and support several organizations by donating office space to Tech Ladies, Phoenix Drupal User Group, Health Technology Forum and others for meetups and events.

Personally, I’ve become very involved inentrepreneurship, mentoring dozens of business owners through Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) and coaching startup founders through accelerator programs.

We are a people-first organization and have chosen to align our social good with the local community. We believe by supporting local we can help make a positive impact not only in the lives of our stakeholders, but also the community at large.

As CEO of meltmedia, Justin Grossman has played a key role in the vision and growth of the company. Under his leadership, meltmedia has grown to Phoenix’s No. 1 agency for Web design and app development, and has earned five consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies.

Kate Hickman

Senior Vice President, Treasury Management Sales Manager
Alliance Bank of Arizona
Sector: Banking

Lifting up our communities is important to the people of Alliance Bank of Arizona, and we live this core value in many ways to enhance the quality of life in Arizona. Alliance Bank’s efforts reach from our signature support for education to strong involvement in the arts, affordable housing, health, family services, community and economic development, animal welfare and much more.

Alliance Bank’s philanthropic work in education in Arizona is extensive and broad-based.

In 2017 alone, Alliance Bank donated $1.4 million to primarily support better educational opportunities for low-income individuals.

This May, for the third year in a row, Alliance Bank employees also helped boost financial literacy for Roadrunner Elementary School students. On Junior Achievement Day, 61 of our bankers shared important skills with more than 100 students at this Title I school in Phoenix, which serves low-income families.

We also sizably support — both in funding and employee involvement — more than 15 other Arizona education nonprofits, which include College Success Arizona, Junior Achievement, Support Our Schools AZ, Literacy Volunteers of Maricopa County and Arizona Women’s Education and Employment Inc.

Kate Hickman is senior vice president, treasury management sales manager, for Alliance Bank of Arizona,a division of Western Alliance Bank, Member FDIC, where she serves nonprofits, political and Local First Arizona clients throughout the state. She has more than 15 years of banking industry experience and joined Alliance Bank of Arizona in 2003. She has received multiple honors for her business and community achievements, recognizing her involvement as a board member with numerous organizations.

Joel Strom

CEO
Interface Force Measurement Solutions
Sector: Product Development

Interface is extremely passionate about partnering with local Arizona communities. Our company is a 50-year-old technology manufacturing business that’s been headquartered in Arizona since its founding. Because of our roots, we feel it’s essential to focus our social good initiatives right here at home. After supporting a variety of causes, we recently narrowed our focus to organizations that help children. Supporting multiple initiatives over the years, we realized our employees are most passionate about helping kids in any way possible. We want to create ample opportunity for them to do so.

Current Interface social impact programs support Arizona Foster Care, the Salvation Army and the Phoenix Children’s Hospital. Interface employees recently donated 450 backpacks full of supplies to Arizona Foster Care, in addition to supporting the Christmas Angels by hand-selecting gifts for children in need. We also provided a supporting donation for Phoenix Children’s Hospital to have kids design our Christmas cards. We were thrilled to work with these organizations and are committed in our social impact programs to helping more Arizona kids in the years to come.

Joel Strom, CEO of Interface, Inc., joined the world’s trusted leader in technology, design and manufacturing of force measurement solutions in 2015. Interface guarantees the highest quality performance of load cells, torque transducers, multi-axis sensors, wireless telemetry, instrumentation and calibration for clients who are the who’s who in aerospace, automotive and vehicle, medical devices, energy, test and measurement, and industrial manufacturing.