David Ostrander SUBMITTED PHOTO
Nancy Garrabrants SUBMITTED PHOTO
NORTHAMPTON — Bankruptcy attorney David W. Ostrander spoke last month at a luncheon for the bankruptcy and real estate sections of the Hampden County Bar Association.
Ostrander spoke about a Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee’s perspective on “short sales,” where the value of the real estate is less than the mortgage amount. He outlined the options available to homeowners in this situation.
Ostrander has practiced bankruptcy law in Northampton for over 23 years and has been a bankruptcy trustee since 1997. He is board certified in business and consumer bankruptcy law by the American Board of Certification.
AMHERST — Nancy L. Garrabrants is now a director at The Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation.
Garrabrants is the former associate dean of the Center for Agriculture at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds an associate degree in floriculture from the SUNY at Cobleskill, and a bachelor’s degree in vocational education and master’s degree in plant and soil sciences, both from UMass. She lives in Amherst.
AMHERST — Andrew McCallum, computer science professor and director of the Center for Data Science in the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s College of Information and Computer Sciences, has been named a fellow by the Association for Computing Machinery for “contributions to machine learning with structured data and innovations in scientific communication.”
He is the 12th CICS faculty member to be honored with the distinction.
McCallum joined the UMass faculty in 2003. His work has been published in over 250 papers and has received over 50,000 citations. He was named the founding director of the UMass Amherst Center for Data Science in 2015.
NORTHAMPTON — Lisa Palumbo, a real estate agent in the Valley since March 2005, joined Delap Real Estate Nov. 20 and will work as a buyer’s and seller’s agent, covering Hampshire, Franklin and Hampden counties.
A resident of Northampton for 25 years, Palumbo most recently worked at the Coldwell Banker office in Northampton from 2006–2017. In the past year, she sold over $15 million in real estate transactions in the tri-county region.
In 2017, Palumbo was ranked among the Top 10 Realtors for sales in Hampshire County. From 2006-2017, she has been presented annually with the President’s Platinum and Gold Awards from the Realtor Association of the Pioneer Valley in recognition of superior sales and service.
Before working as a realtor, Palumbo was a music teacher at Granby High School in Connecticut and White Brook Middle School in Easthampton. She holds a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from Colgate University and a master’s degree in music and music education from Columbia University.
Palumbo lives in Florence with her husband and daughter. She is a musician and singer/songwriter.
PITTSFIELD — The United States Small Business Administration recognized Berkshire Bank, with a location in South Hadley, as the “Top SBA Lender to Veterans” for fiscal 2017 in Massachusetts.
The administration reported that Massachusetts’ small business owners received 2,549 loans supporting over $351 million in fiscal 2017 through its business loan programs.
AMHERST — The Family Business Center of Pioneer Valley welcomes PeoplesBank to its team of experts.
The center is a learning organization of over 60 member companies, providing opportunities for improvement since 1994.
For more information about FBCPV, see fambizpv.com or call Ira Bryck at 413-835-0810.
The inaugural New England Digital Marketing Summit will be held Feb. 20 in Manchester, New Hampshire. The summit is intended to fill a critical niche in local professional education for marketers and business owners.
Newspapers of New England, which owns the Gazette, said the conference will tap into the high level of technology and marketing and expertise in New Hampshire.
The summit features two tracks, with sessions covering a range of digital marketing tools, tactics, and advanced techniques. The sessions will focus on knowledge that participants, whether business owners or marketing professionals, can use immediately to improve their marketing efforts.
An opening panel discussion open to all attendees will cover the most critical trends in digital marketing and features leaders from some of the regions most successful marketing companies.
Registration for the one-day event, which includes lunch and refreshments, is early-bird priced at $199 up to Jan. 15, 2018, and $249 after that.
To register, or see a list of speakers, sessions and session times, and advisory board members, visit https://www.nedigitalmarketingsummit.com.
