by Jamie Logan and Bryan Roche
We’re in the depths of winter in Maine, but that hasn’t stopped our Icons from making moves and growing their businesses. Let’s see what they’ve been up to since our last update…
Emerging Icon Noah Bissell and his brother Peter were featured on NEWSCENTER Maine’s “207″. The pair has run the wildly successful Bissell Brothers Brewing in Portland since 2013, and the business has grown so popular that they have since opened a second location in their Piscataquis County hometown of Milo. Check out the piece to learn more.
Nine non-profits across the state will be beneficiaries of donations from Norway Savings Bank. Icon Patricia Weigel, president and CEO of Norway Savings Bank, announced in December that the bank will be giving away $100,000 to benefit organizations in Oxford, Androscoggin, Cumberland, York and Sagadahoc counties. Kudos to Patricia and her entire team!
Emerging Icon Kelly Brewer has been promoted to Vice President of Telecommunications for Tilson Technologies. She first joined the company in 2011, and quickly began moving up the ranks. According to a press release from Tilson, Brewer will “oversee more than 360 employees in 17 states where Tilson has offices across the country” in her new role. Congratulations, Kelly!
Portland’s East Bayside neighborhood has a new spot to enjoy craft beer. Austin Street Brewery, owned by Emerging Icon Will Fisher, opened their second location at 115 Fox Street in December. The new East Bayside location will include a brewery as well as a tasting room. Austin Street Brewery’s Industrial Way location will remain open as well.
Landry/French construction, co-founded by Icon Kevin French, has expanded south to New Hampshire. By opening a New Hampshire office, Landry/French will be able to better serve the clients it already has in New Hampshire as well as continue their impressive overall growth. Congratulations to the Landry/French team!
Icon Shannon Kinney is celebrating ten years of success with Dream Local Digital, her Rockland-based digital media company. Though she had a successful career in Silicon Valley, Kinney missed Maine and her family and opted to move back to her home state to start Dream Local. Ten years on, Kinney heads up a team of dozens in strategizing and executing digital media solutions for companies throughout the country.
The good news continues for Kinney and Dream Local as the agency “has raised $725,000 and hired a chief revenue officer to help grow its business,” reports Whit Richardson of Maine Startups Insider. In the piece, Kinney mentions that the agency has been able to scale rapidly due to the development of a proprietary agency management platform called “ResultsBuilder.” Kinney adds, “[Dream Local] has been built to scale since the beginning. It’s my third nationally scaled startup serving both small and medium-sized businesses and media companies alike.”
Icon Rich Brooks, founder and president of flyte new media, recently appeared on Maine Public’s Maine Calling as a part of a panel discussion about the recent scandals impacting Facebook. The conversation centered around “issues of privacy and election interference and whether [Facebook] may be headed the way of MySpace.” Brooks was joined by Amanda O’Brien, organizer of Social Media Breakfast Maine, and Judith Rosenbaum, assistant professor of communication and journalism at the University of Maine.