When Josh Aviv’s college professor at Syracuse University mentioned to his class eight years ago that electric-vehicle charging was one of the big problems that needed to be solved to help the world, the seed was planted for the start of Aviv’s company, Somerville’s SparkCharge.
But there’s no way Aviv could have imagined that his former environmental economics professor would set him on a path to the White House.
That’s exactly what happened earlier this month, when Aviv found himself standing next to President Biden at the signing ceremony for what’s known as the CHIPS legislation, a spending bill designed to spur more domestic production of microchips.
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Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo introduced Aviv as a member of “the next generation of American innovators.” Aviv then talked about his company, which employs about 50 people and offers a mobile charging system for electric cars, and the importance of domestic manufacturing. He then introduced Biden, saying “from one proud Syracuse alumnus to another, thank you for your leadership.” (Biden received his law degree from Syracuse in 1968.)
“It was an honor for us to stand there and talk to the president,” Aviv said in an interview later. “This is a transformational bill that’s going to provide a lot of jobs here in America.”
Aviv started SparkCharge in 2017 and moved to the Boston area in 2018, to participate in the Techstars Boston startup accelerator program, and subsequently decided to remain here. Aviv had talked to White House staffers about how the global chip shortage was affecting his company last year, which prompted a rep for the Biden administration to reach out when it came time to schedule this month’s signing ceremony.
SparkCharge now provides a mobile charging service through its app, Currently, in at least 10 US cities, primarily in California. He hopes to offer it in Greater Boston soon, possibly by the end of the year. He expects to add another 50 jobs within the next year to help with the growth, including at the company’s Buffalo manufacturing operation and also here at the Somerville headquarters.
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“There’s a great entrepreneurial ecosystem [here]. It’s thriving, and it’s healthy,” Aviv said. “You can find amazing talent and amazing team members here in Boston.”
Global honor for a local agency, via Singapore
When Brian Golden left his role as director of the Boston Planning & Development Agency this past spring, he didn’t realize there was still one final chapter to be written, one that involved a trip to Singapore to accept a global award on behalf of the city of Boston.
The city had been picked to be a runner-up for the Lee Kuan Yew World City Prize, an honor that is typically doled out every two years to recognize strong urban planning and public-private partnerships. A group of nominating committee members visited Boston in late 2019, to see projects such as the Bolling Building in Roxbury and the New Balance development and commuter rail stop in Brighton. But the COVID-19 pandemic significantly delayed the judging process.
Much has changed in Boston city politics since that visit. Then-mayor Martin J. Walsh left for Washington, to become labor secretary in the Biden administration. Then-city councilor Michelle Wu, a frequent BPDA critic, was elected mayor last fall. Wu made it clear she wanted her own person in the BPDA director role, and Golden was gone, eventually to be replaced by Arthur Jemison. Before Golden left, he learned Boston was one of three runners-up for the Lee Kuan Yew prize, along with the prize winner, Vienna (named after the former prime minister credited for turning Singapore into an economic powerhouse). Among the accomplishments cited in Boston’s case: the “Imagine Boston 2030″ planning effort, which drew from input from thousands of residents, and the related “Climate Ready Boston” plans to make the city’s waterfront more resilient.
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In June, Golden got the call from City Hall: The mayor can’t go to Singapore in August to accept the prize, so would he mind going instead? Golden swung back into service for the city, one last time. He reunited with former BPDA colleagues Bonnie McGilpin and Colin Donnelly on the trip, which ended Aug. 4.
“All in all, it was kind of surprising after moving on from my responsibilities to be pulled back into that, but I was grateful for the opportunity,” Golden said. “It’s a nice way to button up a decade-plus at the BPDA.”
An Irish wedding for Meehan
Before he donned a tux last month to be an usher in PR mogul George Regan’s wedding to Elizabeth Akeley in Osterville, UMass president Marty Meehan had another wedding to fit in: his own.
On July 8, Meehan tied the knot with Jennifer Maguire Hanson, director of development at Lowell General Hospital, at the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin. As opposed to the Regan nuptials, which attracted a who’s who of Boston’s political and business elite, this wedding was a decidedly low-key affair, with only about 75 people. Among those in attendance was Gerry Adams, the Irish politician and a friend of Meehan’s. The attendees at the reception included Claire Cronin, the former Massachusetts House majority leader who was appointed US ambassador to Ireland by President Biden. The couple vacationed in the West of Ireland afterward, with their four children.
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They both have strong Irish ties, with Hanson having family in the Waterford area and Meehan with relatives in Dingle. Meehan’s grandparents on his father’s side immigrated to Lowell from Ireland, and Meehan worked on Irish issues while in Congress and then in his role as UMass Lowell president and as UMass system president. Among other things, Meehan signed a student exchange agreement with Queen’s University in Belfast in 2009.
“My Irish heritage and my wife’s is something we’ve embraced,” Meehan said.
Astley didn’t let them down
When it came time for Rick Astley to recreate his famous video for his 1987 pop hit “Never Gonna Give You Up,” the British singer ended up in an unlikely place: the august halls of the Harvard Club in the Back Bay.
The reason? The marketing geniuses at California-based CSAA Insurance Group, and its ad agency Deloitte Digital, have been running ads based on various well-known songs to promote the home and auto insurance policies CSAA sells through AAA in more than 20 states (but not Massachusetts). This time around, they decided to build an ad around Astley’s best-known hit/Internet meme; the meme, of course, is known as “rickrolling,” in which unsuspecting people get e-mails or texts with links that bring them to the video, in a bait-and-switch. And they knew they needed Astley to star in the new ad.
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Astley was game. But he had two requests: don’t change the song’s words, and meet him somewhere during his US tour. Turned out, the only open day that worked for everyone was when he was in Boston on July 16, appearing at the TD Garden on a nostalgia-themed bill headlined by New Kids On The Block. CSAA hired veteran music video director Joseph Kahn to film Astley.
“We let our director know we needed to be in Boston,” said Linda Goldstein, executive vice president at CSAA. “We had one day. We had 10 hours to make it happen.”
This was the first ad to be filmed at the Harvard Club, at least in recent memory, but scenes from George Clooney’s recent film “The Tender Bar” were shot there last year. (The CSAA crew also headed out to Long Wharf for the final shoot of the day, after the concert was over.)
Goldstein said the many promises he makes to his paramour in the song — think: “never gonna run around and desert you” — fit perfectly for CSAA.
“It ended up being the perfect song,” Goldstein said, “because we didn’t have to change anything at all.”
As the one-minute version of the ad concludes, Astley is apparently watching the video of himself singing and dancing, looks up and says, about the “rickroll” phenomenon: “Is this still a thing?”
Judging from the two-million-plus views the ad has racked up on YouTube in one week since the ad’s release, it sure is.
Jon Chesto can be reached at
jo********@gl***.com
. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.
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