McGlinchey Stafford PLLC is expanding into Tennessee with a Nashville office.

This office is the firm’s 14th nationwide and the seventh new office opened by the firm in nine years.

Serving McGlinchey Stafford’s clients from the Nashville office is an initial team of attorneys experienced in appellate law, class action defense, commercial litigation, consumer financial services litigation, insurance defense and coverage, and products liability litigation: Shaun K. Ramey, who recently joined McGlinchey Stafford as a member; member John T. Rouse, who also practices in McGlinchey Stafford’s Jackson, Mississippi, office; and associate Jessica B. Spade, who assists clients from both the Nashville and Birmingham, Alabama, offices.

McGlinchey Stafford’s Nashville office focuses on representing clients in all areas of litigation and commercial practice, mirroring the firm’s existing capabilities in its other offices.

McGlinchey Stafford’s 170 attorneys are based in 14 offices in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, DC.

$3.5M grant to reduce youth homelessness

Nashville has received a significant government grant to help end youth homelessness.

The $3.5 million grant is from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program, supporting a wide range of housing interventions including rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, transitional housing and host homes.

Nashville was one of 11 communities awarded funding last week.

“No child, teenager or young adult should have to live on the streets,” says David Briley, Nashville mayor. “With a solid foundation of housing, services, planning and data, we can end youth homelessness, and this grant will help us do it. “Thank you to HUD, the Metro Homeless Impact Division, MDHA, Oasis Center and the 22 local partners who worked on the application.”

MDHA applied for the grant in April 2018 in collaboration with Metro Homeless Impact Division and 22 other partners including the Oasis Center, Metro Nashville Public Schools, Tennessee Department of Children Services, the Youth Action Board, and the Metro Juvenile Justice Center.

Kindful joins with Foundation Group

Nashville-based Kindful, which provides donor management software to thousands of nonprofits, has announced a partnership with Foundation Group.

Organizations that sign up for Foundation Group’s SureStart program will have a year of Kindful’s donor management platform included with the purchase.

“We’re very excited to be able to work with organizations at such an early stage,” says Kindful’s CEO Jeremy L. Bolls. “We understand that managing donors can be overwhelming and time consuming for all sizes of nonprofits.

“Our aim is to help these early nonprofits manage their donors more easily and build the right foundations to support them as their needs grow and become more complex. This will allow them to focus on their mission and make a greater impact”

Over the last 22 years, Foundation Group has helped over 16,000 nonprofits to successfully form and obtain 501(c)(3) status. The team specializes in nonprofit formation, IRS tax-exemption, and state fundraising compliance, helping nonprofit leaders make better decisions, reduce risk, and grow their organizations.

33-story JW Marriott Nashville now open

The JW Marriott Nashville, with its 33-story glass tower as the latest edition to the city’s skyline, is now open.

The luxury hotel features 533 guestrooms including 37 luxurious suites, a rooftop pool, a full-service Spa by JW, more than 50,000 square feet of indoor event space and a 13,000-square-foot outdoor event lawn.

The hotel also includes chef and restaurateur Michael Mina’s first Nashville outpost of Bourbon Steak.

The modern glass tower, designed by architecture firm Arquitectonica, offers views and draws inspiration from the nearby Cumberland River and its symbolic place in Nashville’s history.

“We are beyond excited and proud to welcome JW Marriott Nashville to our vibrant city,’’ Nashville Mayor David Briley says.

“The work that the Turnberry and Marriott teams have done truly signifies a turning point for Nashville in the luxury space, and we look forward to welcoming visitors from all over the globe to our beloved city to enjoy a true taste of Southern hospitality,”

The contemporary interiors, led by award-winning design firm Stonehill Taylor, exude a masculine aesthetic with rich color schemes and subtle nods to the city’s industrial past.

Direct selling firm picks Nashville for launch

Tomorrow’s Leaf, LLC, a new direct selling company, announces it will conduct its first product offering, SkinSanity, in Nashville.

The product will be sold direct to consumers via a network of independent consultants. This distribution system will allow individuals who are looking to earn extra money or build a home-based business to do so by selling ethical, top-shelf professional grade skin care products.

SkinSanity features products that are vegan, non-GMO, silicon-free, gluten-free, and cruelty-free. The prebiotic Clear Skin Systems include patent-pending Prebiotic Activ Technology, which has been clinically proven to suppress 99.9 percent of specific acne-causing bacteria in 30 seconds.

The line also contains a Youth Restore and Essentials Systems, which helps to enhance healthy skin microflora and dermal longevity.

SkinSanityproducts are not for sale to retailers, online marketplaces, or television shopping; Tomorrow’s Leafconsultants are and will be the sole distributors.

ORNL, Vanderbilt scientists join forces

Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Vanderbilt researchers are teaming to study complex cellular processes to tackle some of the most pressing problems in biology. Participants are combining their expertise in biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computation to explore transformative, interdisciplinary ways to study complex cellular processes.

“ORNL and Vanderbilt researchers have complementary strengths,” says Padma Raghavan, vice provost for research at Vanderbilt. “By creating opportunities like this for our teams to tackle critical problems in biological sciences together, we can enable breakthroughs that could not happen otherwise.”

Faculty from Vanderbilt University’s School of Medicine, School of Engineering and College of Arts and Science have met with ORNL directors and team leaders to present collaborative project ideas on topics ranging from intracellular protein structure and function to single-cell kinetics and cell-population dynamics.

Vanderbilt Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and ORNL liaison Carlos F. Lopez, and Moody Altamimi, director of research excellence at the national laboratory, organized the meeting where the scientists discussed opportunities to combine ORNL’s scientific, analytical and computational capabilities with Vanderbilt’s cell biology expertise to explore uncharted areas. Scientists are now designing experiments and planning next steps.

American Hometown buys Florida paper

Nashville-based media company American Hometown Publishing Inc. has bought the Osceola News-Gazette newspaper, based in Kissimmee, Florida, from Lakeway Publishers Inc.

“We continue to focus on acquiring free-distribution hyperlocal news products in growing destination markets and the Osceola News-Gazette is an ideal addition to our portfolio,” says CEO Brad Dennison. “We see a wonderful opportunity to build engaging print and digital products, and a large audience in central Florida.”

The Osceola News-Gazette publishes twice weekly and is delivered to about 40,000 homes.

Since October 2017, AHP has acquired three media properties and launched a hyperlocal news product in Nashville called Rover.