Greater Worcester

University of Massachusetts Lowell Chancellor Martin Meehan has agreed to a five-year contract to lead the UMass system as its next president with an annual base salary that escalates from $525,000 starting in July to $602,500 in the final year.

Allstate Insurance, which did not do business in Massachusetts for 25 years before returning in 2012, is expanding its Bay State market, and looking to line up a few Central Massachusetts agents and licensed sales professionals as part of those plans.

After 12 years as chief executive of Unum Group, Thomas R. Watjen retired at the insurance company's annual shareholder meeting today in Chattanooga, Tenn. Richard P. McKenney, Unum's former chief financial officer, assumed the role of CEO.

There are a lot of exciting things about starting your own business, but the isolation many entrepreneurs feel when they start out can be debilitating, said Venkat Kolluri, the chief executive of Internet advertising firm Chitika in Westborough. He remembers working alone in his home back in 2003 when he was trying to get Chitika off the ground. After the first few days, he said he started talking to himself because there was no one else to kick around ideas with. “How well can you be motivated when you're alone?” Kolluri said.

In a continued bid to expand the college's focus on nonacademic career paths, Becker College has appointed the president and CEO of the Seven Hills Foundation as the school's first Professor of Practice in Social Innovation.

Hospitals have been feeling the heat from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services since 2012, when the federal insurer — the largest single payer in the country — began penalizing hospitals with excessive readmission rates for Medicare patients.

Pharmaceutical giant AbbVie, which has operations in Worcester, is extending by another week its offer for all outstanding shares of Pharmacyclics to Friday afternoon.

Spectrum Health Systems of Worcester has been awarded a contract by the Virginia Department of Corrections to provide therapeutic community programming at three state facilities, the private, nonprofit substance abuse treatment and mental health service organization announced.

Compliance with new provisions of the Affordable Care Act were cited as factors in the first-quarter losses reported by four major Massachusetts health insurers Friday.

It's our annual list of 10 change makers from MetroWest who are making a difference in their businesses, industries and communities.