The Nashville Financial Empowerment Center is expanding to meet the growing financial needs of Davidson County residents as a part of Nashville’s coordinated COVID-19 response.

The Financial Empowerment Center now offers services entirely virtually and is adding additional staff to meet demand, made possible by a grant from the Cities for Financial Empowerment – a national organization that helps cities across the U.S. embed financial empowerment programs within their local governments.

“The COVID-19 public health crisis has strained finances for many Nashvillians,” Mayor John Cooper says. “If you have questions about how to manage your budget during this time of historic challenge, or if you just want an objective review of your financial picture, do not hesitate to reach out to the Financial Empowerment Center for help. This service is free to all residents of Nashville and Davidson County”

A partnership between United Way of Greater Nashville and the Mayor’s Office since 2013, the Financial Empowerment Center has offered free, one-on-one professional financial counseling to help clients manage bills, work through debt, establish and improve credit, create a budget, open a bank account and save for the future – available via phone or video.

In seven years, 8,000 Nashville clients have decreased their debt by $15.3 million dollars and increased their savings by $3 million.

Information: fec.nashville.gov or 615 748-3620.

MetroCenter property sells for $7.1 million

The Ambrose Printing Company facility in MetroCenter has been sold for 7.1 million to Nashville-based Dore Frog LLC.

Southeast Venture principal Michael Finucane handled the sale. The buyer was represented by Charlie Gibson of Cushman and Wakefield.

The property was originally built in 1977 by Ambrose Printing when the company made the decision to expand and move from Printers Alley on Fourth Avenue. The 77,457-square-foot building sits on 5.04 acres of land located at 210 Cumberland Bend. It is the fourth property on Cumberland Bend to sell in the last year.

Southeast Venture has been active in MetroCenter since 2007 when it bought the remaining 70 undeveloped acres. Since 2007, the company has sold close to 100 acres of land and more than half a million square feet of improved property in MetroCenter.

Logo Brands buys drinkware lines

Franklin-based Logo Brands, a manufacturer of officially licensed sports and other organization’s productors, has struck a deal to acquire the Boelter Brands drinkware and Topperscot lines.

Logo’s products include collegiate, NFL, MLB, NHL, NBA, MLS and NASCAR. Products include chairs, canopies and tents, coolers, totes, stadium blankets and other branded tailgating gear.

Boelter Brands is the sports licensed products division of The Boelter Companies, based in Milwaukee. The Boelter Companies will continue as a design, equipment, supply and fulfillment business serving the food and beverage markets.

This is Logo Brands’ first foray into drinkware and holiday items, which will include wine and beer glasses, ceramic mugs, plastic cups, flasks, stainless steel water bottles, mascot inflatables, and seasonal ornaments.

Current drinkware inventory and incoming orders will transition to Logo Brands’ Tennessee headquarters over the next few months.

Warehouse operations will be expanded in anticipation of taking over all decorating, shipping and processing of glassware orders in 2021.

New designs and product lines also are in the works.

The MLC partners with Vistex

The Mechanical Licensing Collective, based in Nashville, has announced a partnership with Vistex.

The collaboration will help to successfully enhance Vistex Inc’s Music Maestro software package to enable users to participate in The MLC’s Data Quality Initiative.

The MLC’s Data Quality Initiative provides a streamlined way for music publishers, administrators and ex-U.S. collective management organizations to compare their musical works’ data with The MLC’s data and receive reports highlighting the discrepancies between the two sets of data so they can easily identify and correct those discrepancies.

Nashville Capital Network invests in ModifyHealth

ModifyHealth, a provider of gut-friendly, Low-FODMAP and gluten-free meals, has closed on $2 million in Series A funding led by Nashville Capital Network.

The partnership with NCN will support ModifyHealth’s continued growth of its category-leading ‘food as medicine’ solutions and further expansion of its nationwide operations to deliver meaningful patient outcomes.

Recommended by GI providers and dietitians alike, ModifyHealth’s home-delivered meals, dietitian support, and digital health solutions deliver evidenced-based treatments for GI conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, SIBO and celiac disease.

Nashville Capital Network manages over $75 million in capital and is composed of more than 100 professional investors and 4 captive funds. ModifyHealth represents NCN’s 50th investment in the U.S.

Pinnacle No. 4 spot for millennials to work

Nashville’s Pinnacle Financial Partners is among the top five companies in the country for millennials to work.

The firm climbed to the No. 4 spot on the list of Best Workplaces for millennials from Fortune magazine and Great Place to Work, rising from No. 12 on the same list in 2019.

In February, both groups named Pinnacle the overall No. 14 Best Company to Work For in the United States.

Rankings for this list reflect feedback representing more than 4.9 million employees at Great Place to Work-Certified organizations.

Parallon among best employers for women

Nashville-based Parallon, an affiliate of HCA Healthcare and provider of revenue cycle management services, has again been named one of America’s Best Employers for Women 2020 in a collaboration between Forbes and market research firm Statista.

Women make up 88% of Parallon’s workforce and 74% of its collective management team.

The Forbes and Statista annual ranking surveyed 75,000 Americans, including 45,000 women, working for businesses that employ more than 1,000 workers, about their employer’s culture, opportunities for career development, image, working conditions, salary and wages and diversity.

In addition to enhanced training programs, specific initiatives at Parallon include:

• Expanding the role of its chief diversity officer, Sherri Neal, who now leads a 16-person team responsible for advancing diversity, inclusion, equity and cultural competence initiatives across HCA Healthcare

• Establishing an Executive Diversity and Inclusion Council

• Hosting special listening sessions and enterprisewide town halls to provide further opportunities for colleagues to share their voice

• Launching a Colleague Networks program, including a Women’s Network, to provide opportunities for HCA Healthcare colleagues to convene around shared commonalities or experiences.

• Increasing visibility of the BRAVE (Bold, Relevant, Authentic, Valuable and Educational) Conversations program, which provides colleagues an opportunity to discuss complex topics and share fears, hopes and challenges, through a safe, immersive and transforming dialogue experience.

• Establishing a match program to enhance donations made by HCA Healthcare colleagues to organizations supporting racial justice and addressing health equity for communities of color. OneOncology enters California market

Nashville’s OneOncology, a national partnership of independent oncology practices, has announced Los Angeles Cancer Network is joining the platform as the oncology network expands into California.

LACN has 18 providers who care for patients at nine locations throughout the greater Los Angeles area. The independently owned practice treats more than 2,500 patients annually along the continuum of cancer care from screening and diagnosis to cutting-edge therapies and clinical trials to survivorship or end-of-life care.

Nashville Biosciences, Genuity Science partner

Nashville Biosciences and Genuity Science have made an agreement to enable target and biomarker discovery, validation and drug development, as a part of Genuity Science’s prioritized disease research, in partnership with biopharma.

Nashville Biosciences is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vanderbilt University Medical Center that leverages one of the world’s largest and highest quality clinico-genomic repositories to advance life science R&D.

Genuity is a U.S.-headquartered contract genomics and data-sourcing, -analytics and -insights organization.

The Nashville company was created to facilitate commercial R&D uses of VUMC’s comprehensive and growing BioVU biorepository.