Luis Pedraja

Richard Lessard, president of Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, has been chosen to chair the Higher Education Consortium of Central Massachusetts, effective July 1.

The Power 50 may not necessarily hold the most power in the region, but they are the people who most effectively wielded their power to have an outsized influence on the economy and the community within the last year.

To help you navigate the ins and outs of the region's business community, WBJ has compiled a list for its Economic Forecast edition of 22 people who will have an outsized role in shaping those trends.

Efforts are underway from Central Massachusetts legislators on both sides of the political aisle to lessen the burden for borrowers.

When the professionals who would become WBJ’s 2021 Business Leaders of the Year started their years anew in January 2020, they could have had no idea the past 15 months would end up like they did. Yet, each of them in their own way, found a path for their organizations to thrive.

As the nation reels in the wake of a violent and deadly mob breaking into the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday in response to President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election, leadership in and around the Central Mass. business community condemned the violence and called for healing.

Some freshmen at Worcester Polytechnic Institute will spend the fall living at a hotel just off campus. Clark University and Framingham State University have plans in place to isolate students in their dorms while awaiting coronavirus test results.

Several area college presidents, including Marty Meehan of UMass, Javier Cevallos of Framingham State and Luis Pedraja of Quinsigamond Community College fiercely condemned this week a new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy that would require non-immigrant international students to leave the country if their fall semester classes transition entirely online.

It wasn’t long ago CEOs were notably absent from such societal debates. For decades, business heads were advised not to talk about hot-button issues such as religion or politics.

Central Massachusetts colleges and universities face a variety of pressures in the coming year, with shifting enrollment trends to new leadership to the need to impress incoming students.