Business Briefs | July 2016

By Naperville Magazine
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Appointments:

Kristen Ziman has been appointed as Aurora’s new police chief. Ziman, a 25-year veteran Aurora police commander, is the city’s first female police chief and succeeds Greg Thomas who retired last November. Ziman will oversee a force of roughly 300 officers. Born and raised in Aurora, she spent 25 years with the department starting out as a 17-year-old police cadet in 1991 and became a sworn officer in 1994. She became sergeant in 2003, promoted to lieutenant in 2008 and to commander of the patrol division in 2010. Ziman serves on the boards of the Aurora YWCA and Breaking Free.

Lea Q. Lisowski, a board certified family medicine physician, has joined Edward Medical Group’s (EMG) office in Naperville. Lisowski received her medical degree from St. Luke’s College of Medicine—William H. Quasha Memorial, Philippines. She completed her internship and residency at Cook County-Loyola-Provident Family Medicine Residency Program in Chicago. She is a member of the American Academy of Family Physicians and Illinois Academy of Family Physicians, and speaks Tagalog, Spanish and English. EMG is a primary care practice of Edward-Elmhurst Health and has more than 70 board certified family practice, internal medicine and specialty physicians who treat patients of all ages.

Professional services firm Sikich LLP elected Chris Geier as the new managing partner and CEO. Geier is partner-in-charge of the firm’s advisory services and investment banking practice and a member of the executive board. He will assume the new role on January 1, 2017. As managing partner and CEO, Geier will oversee the firm’s strategic and financial planning and guide future growth, including mergers and acquisitions across the accounting, technology and advisory service areas. Geier joined Sikich in 2008. He has held C-level operating roles at both private and publicly traded companies and has more than 20 years of experience in mergers and acquisitions and capital raising transactions across multiple industries. Geier graduated with a degree in criminal justice from Washington State University and earned his MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Retired Vice Admiral Ann Rondeau will officially start her new role as president of the College of DuPage starting July 1. The sixth president in the school’s 49-year history, Rondeau has served more than 26 years in military and education roles. Most recently, she was a consultant and partner with IBM Watson Group. The College conducted a nationwide search to fill the position. Rondeau is a past president of the National Defense University, a consortium of five colleges and nine research centers in Washington, D.C. Rondeau has experience in significant military roles, including serving as Deputy Commander of the U.S. Transportation Command in Illinois, Pentagon Director/Chief of Staff for the U.S. Navy Staff, Commander of the Navy Personnel Development Command in Virginia, Commander of the Naval Service Training Command at Great Lakes, Ill., Pacific Fleet Staff Chief of Staff in Hawaii, Commanding Officer of Naval Support Activity in Tennessee and other staff and commanding responsibilities with policy, support and student service. Rondeau will be taking over from Acting Interim President Joseph E. Collins, who was appointed by the Board of Trustees to serve in the position beginning April 30, 2015.

Edward Hospital has promoted Sanjeeb Khatua to vice president, Physician Network and Population Health. Khatua, a board certified family medicine physician, has been providing primary care services at Edward Medical Group offices in Plainfield since 2010. He’ll stop seeing patients when he begins his new duties on July 1. Khatua will report to Bill Kottmann, who will become President and CEO of Edward on July 1. Kottmann is taking over for Pam Davis, System CEO, Edward-Elmhurst Health, who will focus on system-wide strategies. Khatua, who earned his MBA from Loyola University Chicago, received his medical degree from the Medical University of Silesia in Poland and completed his residency at Adventist Hinsdale Hospital.

Expansion Plans:

Naperville-based Sikich LLP is expanding into northeast Ohio with the acquisition of Brockman, Coats, Gedelian & Co., BCG Systems, Inc. and BCG Wealth Advisors, LLC (BCG & Co.). With annual revenues of more than $18 million, BCG & Co. represents the largest ever corporate acquisition for Sikich. Headquartered in Akron, Ohio, BCG & Co. offers audit and assurance, tax, technology and wealth management services. BCG & Co. staff will continue to work out of the firm’s existing offices in Akron and Atlanta, Georgia. Founded in 1986 as a certified public accounting and consulting firm, BCG & Co. serves companies across industries, including manufacturing and distribution, construction and real estate, and nonprofit. The firm has also expanded its service offerings to include wealth management and technology. In addition to its presence in Ohio, BCG & Co. has an additional technology office in Atlanta, which will continue to operate under Sikich. The acquisition of BCG & Co. comes on the heels of Sikich’s acquisitions in 2015 of the business of Altico Advisors, a technology firm based near Boston, and the audit, accounting and tax practice of Jannsen + Company, a firm based near Milwaukee.

Downers Grove based DuPage Medical Group, the largest independent multi-specialty physician group in the Chicago area, has acquired Pronger Smith Medical Care, a physician group that serves patients in Will and Cook counties. Terms of the transaction were not made public. With nearly 40 physicians across 20 medical specialties, Pronger Smith has locations in Tinley Park, Blue Island and New Lenox. The physician-owned-and-directed group has been in practice since 1947. Both groups cited a commonality between their practice philosophies and service goals, which made this acquisition a right-fit strategy for Pronger Smith, while allowing DMG’s footprint to expand farther in the southern suburbs. For decades, both groups have offered primary and specialty care services that meet a number of medical needs, including state-of-the-art, full-service diagnostic imaging capabilities, and outpatient procedure facilities.

Awards:

Omar Sandoval, IT manager for the Naperville Park District, was recognized by the Naperville Jaycees for his volunteerism. Sandoval, who joined the park district in 2008, was given the 2016 Distinguished Service Award for Public Employee at the Jaycees’ 38th annual Distinguished Service Awards on April 28. The Jaycees recognized Sandoval for helping with community events and projects, such as 2015 Healing Field, Last Fling, Bike Bald Spinathon and TEDxNaperville. In his current role as IT manager Sandoval manages the technology needs of the Park District’s 16 satellite facilities and enthusiastically brings new ideas to the table to better serve the community, such as the District’s first mobile app released in late April 2016. Sandoval is a 2014 graduate of the Naperville Area Chamber of Commerce Leadership Institute and has since become co-chair of the Leadership Institute’s alumni committee, organizing ongoing events for Institute alumni. Seven other individuals were also honored for outstanding service to the community.

Elmhurst Hospital

Edward Hospital

Edward Hospital, in Naperville, and Elmhurst Hospital, part of the Edward-Elmhurst Health system, each earned an “A” in the Leapfrog Group’s Spring 2016 Hospital Safety Scores, which assign letter grades to hospitals nationwide and provide the most complete picture of patient safety in the U.S. healthcare system. Of the 2,571 hospitals issued a Hospital Safety Score, Edward and Elmhurst are two of 798 that earned an A. Elmhurst Hospital was also recognized as one of 153 hospitals to earn the “Straight A since 2013” designation for receiving an A grade the last three years of the Hospital Safety Scores. The Hospital Safety Score uses 30 measures of publicly available hospital safety data to assign grades to U.S. hospitals twice a year. The grades represent a hospital’s overall capacity to keep patients safe from preventable harm, such as errors, injuries, accidents and infections. The Hospital Safety Score is calculated by top patient safety experts, peer-reviewed, fully transparent and free to the public. For the first time, the Hospital Safety Score includes five measures of patient-reported experience with the hospital as well as two of the most common infections, C. diff and MRSA.

Naperville is named the wealthiest large city in the Midwest with at least 65,000 residents in a ranking by personal finance website NerdWallet. The city topped the ranking in the Midwest and was No. 19 in the nation with a median household income of $104,419 and a median home price of $364,300. NerdWallet rated cities based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, Zillow Research and credit bureau Experian. Bolingbrook, Schaumburg, Aurora and Elgin also made the top 20.