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Miguel Angel Fragoso-Hernandez sets goal of medical career in Watsonville WATSONVILLE >> At Pajaro Valley High School, Miguel Angel Fragoso-Hernandez is known as Nino, or Kid, a nickname bestowed during his freshman year, when, a year younger than most students after skipping first grade, he was the smallest player on the junior varsity soccer team. But Fragoso-Hernandez, now a 17-year-old graduating senior and class valedictorian, has another title in mind: doctor. He'll take a step toward achieving his career goal when he enrolls at UC Berkeley in the fall to study biology or biochemistry. At a graduation ceremony Thursday, he plans to remind his classmates how they reached this point in their lives. "It's not like you did it on your own. Your teachers helped you. Your parents helped you all through your life," Fragoso-Hernandez said. "At the same time, (the graduates) sit here because they worked for it." Fragoso-Hernandez will speak from experience. His parents, Martin Fragoso and Julia Hernandez, emigrated from Santiago Tulantepec in Hidalgo, Mexico, to the U.S. in their teens. They were very poor, Fragoso-Hernandez said. His father scrounged from garbage cans to get enough to eat. His mother, living on a rural ranch, watched two siblings die in childhood. Here, they worked in the fields at first, but later Miguel's father became an auto mechanic and eventually bought the business from his boss. After volunteering at Freedom Elementary School, his mother was hired to supervise students at recess. As the family's income improved, they were able to move from a series of crowded garages into a three-bedroom apartment in a Holohan Road complex. Though he was only 7 at the time, Fragoso-Hernandez recalls his amazement at the space and the fact that the apartment had its own kitchen. Growing up, he watched his father work two jobs at times, and his mother devote herself to work and raising three sons. But he didn't understand what they were trying to accomplish until high school. "I thought they came to find a better life for themselves," Fragoso-Hernandez said. "I didn't realize until my sophomore year that the ultimate goal was to have a better life for their children." Though neither Fragoso nor Hernandez went to school past the sixth grade, they knew education was the key to reaching that goal, and they instilled that value in their children. Fragoso-Hernandez said math and science captured his interest at any early age. He paid attention as his older brother did his homework, and by the end of kindergarten he had mastered multiplication. He finishes high school with a 4.24 grade point average. In addition, he was a forward on the varsity soccer team for three years, and has worked as a math tutor in an after-school program for elementary students since he was 14. His father's struggles with poor health led him to decide on a medical career, either as a general practitioner or a surgeon. "I grew up seeing him with all these problems, and I wanted to be able to do something but I couldn't," he said. "I want to be able to do something for someone in the same situation." When Fragoso-Hernandez was in middle school, the family moved to Gilroy, but he and his two brothers, Eric, a sophomore at Cal State Monterey Bay, and Marco, a seventh-grader at Lakeview Middle School, elected to commute each day so they could remain in Watsonville schools. The three brothers were born in Watsonville, and Fragoso-Hernandez considers the city home. Once he earns his medical degree, he plans to return. "Without Watsonville, I wouldn't be where I am today," he said. "I want to give back to this community." Content provided by http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/education/ci_25899165/valedictorian-credits-immigrant-parents-providing-opportunity

Strawberry Commission looks at positive impact of Santa Cruz County's No. 1 crop. Watsonville >> California strawberries employ 70,000 people and contribute $3.4 billion to the state's economy each year. That's according to "Sustaining California Communities," an economic report released Tuesday by the California Strawberry Commission. The report comes as the harvest of Santa Cruz County's premier crop begins. More than 240,000 pounds were picked in the Watsonville-Salinas region during the week that ended March 15. "We want people to understand it's not just the farmers and their crews out there," said commission spokeswoman Carolyn O'Donnell. "The community is important to farmers, and farmers also realize it's important how they integrate with the community." Nearly 90 percent of U.S.-grown strawberries come from California. Watsonville-Salinas is the top producer among the state's four strawberry regions, accounting for 47 percent of the total harvest of nearly 1.8 billion pounds in 2013, according to commission statistics. The industry spends about $2 billion on wages, equipment and supplies, land and taxes, the report says. It generates another $1.4 billion indirectly through, for example, the restaurants and grocery stores that cater to agricultural workers and the police and teachers funded by the estimated $108 million the industry pays in taxes. And it's not just the berry-producing counties on the Central Coast and Southern California. Nurseries in the northern part of the state produce 2 billion plants for transplant in the strawberry fields. The industry is labor-intensive, requiring a large pool of workers to handpick berries. But mechanics, researchers, educators and forklift drivers are among the thousands who work in berry-related jobs. The report doesn't assess costs associated with the industry, such as subsidized housing for low-wage workers. O'Donnell said that would require a more comprehensive and expensive report. But she pointed to the industry's charitable giving. The report notes as an example, the $2 million in scholarships awarded by the commission to the children of farmworkers since 1994. Read the entire article here. Content provided by http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/watsonville/ci_25370176/study-strawberries-boost-ca-economy-by-3-4

There are often benefits to middle-market companies emulating their larger counterparts' risk management examples. “There is a basic risk management process, methodology that has been around for years,” said Patrick Donnelly, co-leader of U.S. broking at Aon Risk Solutions in Chicago. “But only larger companies have been able to make the investment to create the framework to go through those steps.” Carol Fox, director of strategic and enterprise risk practice for the Risk & Insurance Management Society Inc. in New York, said it's critical for midsize firms to focus on how they're embedding risk management in the organization. Here are 10 risk management lessons middle-market companies should heed in 2014: 1. Business continuity planning One of the steps many larger companies have taken that middle-market companies could benefit from is business continuity planning. “In order to have a good business continuity plan, you really need to understand your business — and that's inside and out,” said Jim Hedrick, area vice president of business continuity planning at Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. in Cincinnati. “A middle-market company may not have the bandwidth to do that,” he said. 2. Establishing a crisis plan Hand in hand with the business continuity process is establishing a crisis management plan. A crisis management plan helps drive decision-making when a crisis occurs and helps ensure that information gets to the right people. 3. Testing the crisis plan A crisis management plan alone isn't enough; it needs to be regularly tested. “To me, if you don't test your plans you might as well not have them,” Mr. Hedrick said. “Not only does it test the validity of the plan, but also it's a terrific training mechanism.” Testing the plan also helps identify “who should be in your plan and shouldn't be in your plan,” he said. “Sometimes you have people in these events who just melt down because they can't handle the stress.” 4. Managing supply chain risks While the effort can be challenging, large companies have increasingly recognized the need to identify and address supply chain risks. Middle-market companies that haven't should do so as well, experts say. Supply chain risk is “the one exposure that I believe has changed significantly since the credit crisis,” said Mark Moreland, executive vice president for strategic consulting at Lockton Cos. L.L.C. in Kansas City, Mo. In trying to squeeze costs out of their supply chains some companies have taken steps to narrow their supply chains, reduce the number of suppliers and change their risk profile in the process, something that must be addressed, he said. 5. Defining a risk appetite Mid-market companies should develop a clearly defined risk appetite. “This is the one thing that we are trying to do with all our clients and prospects: establishing a very clear risk appetite,” Mr. Moreland said. “What may happen in a middle-market organization is they believe, "We know what our risk appetite is because we aren't that large an organization,'” Ms. Fox said. But middle-market companies can find value in having that conversation, clarifying their risks and specifying how much risk they're willing to assume and how much insurance to buy. 6. Benchmarking risk management performance The process of defining a risk appetite also could help middle-market companies recognize how they might differ from companies they're benchmarking their risk management efforts against. “It allows them to benchmark on areas that are different from just insurance buying,” RIMS' Ms. Fox said. “It gives them more data points.” “Benchmarking is always something that clients are interested in. I think the real challenge is to get benchmarking that you can draw clear conclusions from,” Mr. Moreland said. “Benchmarking is one of those underrated tools that I think midsize companies can use in understanding their risk,” said Mark Moitoso, executive vice president and general manager national accounts casualty at Liberty Mutual Holding Co. Inc. in Boston. “What's really nirvana in this is it helps them establish goals.” 7. Using captives to self-insure risks As middle-market companies become more familiar with their risks and their risk appetites, they may choose to retain more risk or find risk financing alternatives and captives can be a useful tool. Middle-market companies are increasingly embracing alternative risk transfer. “The big growth is with the middle-market companies,” said Karl Huish, president of the Captive Services Division of Artex Risk Solutions Inc. in Mesa, Ariz. “These businesses are recognizing they have exactly the same sorts of risks that the larger companies have, they're just smaller in size.” Middle-market companies are starting to use captives both for risks they didn't previously insure and in financing large-deductible workers compensation, automobile liability, general liability and property programs. And the larger middle-market companies are often doing that through stand-alone captives, while smaller middle-market firms frequently opt for group captives. 8. Addressing cyber risks With cyber threats cutting across companies of all sizes, middle-market companies also are increasingly aware of the need to address those risks. When insurers first introduced cyber risk policies, many buyers questioned their value, recognizing the number of incidents that were occurring but not sure about the extent of potential damage, said Patrick Donnelly, co-leader of U.S. broking at Aon Risk Solutions in Chicago. Now nearly every company is recognizing that they have some sort of exposure. “That's extended into the middle markets more in the past 18 months or so,” Mr. Donnelly said. 9. Return-to-work efforts Middle-market companies can also benefit by following larger companies' example in adopting return-to-work programs. Such programs can produce significant workers compensation savings while allowing injured workers to participate in modified work assignments while they recover from injuries. 10. Continuing education Middle market companies always can benefit from following many large company risk managers' lead in looking for continuing education and networking opportunities through organizations like RIMS. “It's not just the courses, the workshops, the online webinars, they can benefit from but the conferences and the networking by belonging to an organization,” Ms. Fox explained. Content provided by http://www.businessinsurance.com/article/20131229/NEWS05/312299996?tags=%7C60%7C299%7C305%7C340%7C342