Business people
Cheryl Pick Sommer, who owns Kaune’s Neighborhood Market on Old Santa Fe Trail, recently became chairman of the board of the National Grocers Association, a 1,400-member trade group that represents independent grocery operators.
Sommer expects to spend the next two years working with the board’s volunteer leadership and the association’s staff based in Arlington, Va., where it serves as the industry’s voice in Washington, D.C.
The association says its member businesses, which are “community focused” and not publicly traded, account for nearly 1 percent of the nation’s overall economy and are responsible for generating $131 billion in annual sales, with 944,000 jobs, $30 billion in wages and $27 billion in taxes.
Sommer, a nonpracticing lawyer, has owned Kaune’s since 2003. The business traces its roots to the H.S. Kaune & Co. grocery store opened in 1896 by Henry Kaune soon after he moved to Santa Fe from Illinois, where he ran a flour mill. The last member of the Kaune family to own what in 1950 became known as Kaune’s Foodtown was Julie Ann Kaune, who sold the business in 1983 to Jim and Pamela Downey, who later sold it to Sommer, who gave the store a complete overhaul in 2013.
Sommer, who opens the store’s doors and sidewalks throughout the year to local nonprofits, said, “Santa Fe has been our home for more than 120 years, so we look for new ways every year to embrace all the people and organizations that make our town so special.”
Antonio “Tony” Redondo last week took over as head of Los Alamos National Laboratory’s tech transfer division, the Richard P. Feynman Center for Innovation. Named after the Manhattan Project physicist, the Feynman Center helps to transition science and technology created at the laboratory to the private sector.
Redondo is the former Theoretical Division leader and a senior scientist in the Theory, Simulation and Computation Directorate. In his 35 years at Los Alamos, he has served as principal investigator for several projects, including Soft Matter Mechanical, Rheological and Stability Properties, funded by Procter & Gamble; Metal Corrosion, funded by Chevron; Sustainable Materials, funded by Procter & Gamble; and Crystallization of Sugar, funded by Mars Inc.
“Tony’s background has given him firsthand experience building effective partnerships between industry and external sponsors, and program and line organizations — skills that will serve him well as director of the Feynman Center,” said Nancy Jo Nicholas, principal associate director for Global Security, which oversees the Feynman Center.
Redondo replaced David Pesiri, who has been director of the Feynman Center since 2011. Pesiri moved into the director’s office to help manage the upcoming management and operation contract change. In addition to leading the Feynman Center, he was a team leader for business development for five years. Prior to joining Los Alamos, he was a successful entrepreneur, helping to create and lead several technology companies. Pesiri has more than a decade of management experience at the laboratory.
Litigator Benjamin E. Thomas, who spent much of his childhood in Santa Fe, graduating in the mid-1990s from Capital High School, has been elected president and chief executive officer of Sutin, Thayer & Browne, one of New Mexico’s largest law firms.
He replaced Jay D. Rosenblum, president and CEO since 2000, who on Jan. 1 became the firm’s chairman of the board of directors and resumed his corporate law practice full time.
Thomas, 40, joined Sutin, Thayer & Browne in 2003, practicing primarily in commercial litigation with a focus on employment law and banking/financial law. In his 15 years at the firm, Thomas has held successively more responsible positions, including chairing internal committees and working up to board of directors placement and board officer elections.
Currently, Thomas practices primarily in employment and banking/financial law in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. He also is a legal instructor for the Western States School of Banking. He is regularly featured in several distinguished international lawyer referral directories: Chambers USA, Best Lawyers in America, Benchmark Litigation and Super Lawyers, and he holds the highest peer review rating available from Martin dale Hub bell: AV Preeminent.
Thomas has served and supported a number of community groups in his career and is active on the boards of directors of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque and Storehouse New Mexico, the state’s largest food pantry.
Kadimah Levanah, who heads the family-owned Santa Fe Oxygen and Healing Bar, was among 20 entrepreneurs and businesses across the state recently recognized as star clients of the New Mexico Small Business Development Center Network.
Her 25-employee operation in downtown Santa Fe also has been honored as the Woman-Owned Business of the Year by the Santa Fe Chamber of Commerce.
A news release said the Santa Fe Oxygen and Healing Bar, started four years ago with just $3,000, is “part of a movement of experiential tourism businesses that is contributing to the city’s tourism growth.” In addition to services such as spa treatments at an upstairs location called Sanctuary on West San Francisco Street, a second nearby location called Apothecary allows people to sip non-alcoholic drinks and sample vegetarian fusion food.
Also honored as a business development center star client was The Feasting Place, a restaurant at Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo where owner Norma Naranjo welcomes visitors into her home “to experience a pueblo feast meal, a hands-on horno baking class and a traditional cultural experience,” an announcement said.
Naranjo, a Navy veteran, retired from a job as a social worker in 1999 and started a catering business. She has been working with the Española Small Business Development Center for the past 17 years.