Hi Brian -
I’m sorry we keep missing each other. I’d love to grab a coffee with you, stop by, or even just have a quick phone call (216.288.7045). I have written a couple of articles for the Lakewood Observer about some of my immediate concerns for Lakewood City Council. In addition to making sure I was dedicated and loyal to the residents of Ward 2 by being dependable, accessible, and trustworthy, I want to address the immediate concerns around our water bills skyrocketing, the loss of jobs in Lakewood, and retaining & improving on the existing green space Lakewood has available. Any time you can spare to discuss specifics, I’d gladly make sure I was available to meet.
In regards to my educational and employment background, I grew up about an hour south of here, in Wadsworth, Ohio where I graduated high school. It is here where I got my initial taste for civil service whether it was for our mock city government, Buckeye Boys State (mock Ohio government sponsored by the VFW), Model Congress, and one of the top high school debaters in the state by my senior year, 1998. I got my undergraduate degree here in Cleveland at John Carroll University. Not only did they have a stellar reputation in the Cleveland area, they had a growing debate team that was challenging the top debate programs in the country (Harvard, Dartmouth, Wake Forest, University of Michigan, Michigan State, etc). While working on my degree in Political Science and Environmental Studies, I interned with the Cuyahoga County Clean Air Conservancy and Earth Day Coalition. I got to work on the initial projects that brought the CNG (Compressed Natural Gas) busses to the RTA and wrote grants for a variety of other groups that were bringing alternative fuel vehicles to the Cleveland area in the late 90s/early 2000s.
After graduating from JCU in 2002, I moved to the Denver area to pursue a job that would bring those same CNG busses to Denver. While there, I started a masters program to become a high school teacher. If working to promote renewable mass transit was not successful, I wanted to work on a fallback plan of being a high school teacher and debate coach. While finishing my teaching certification, I had found out that my father was going to lose his leg to sarcoma cancer. It was then I decided to leave Denver, and move back to Cleveland to take care of family. It is what brought me to Lakewood almost 15 years ago. Thankfully, after a successful amputation at the left hip, he has been cancer free and has been watching his 5 grandkids born and grow up.
Once I returned to Lakewood, I struggled to find a teaching job so I decided to go the corporate route and become an adult learning specialist. I worked for a variety of banks, insurance companies, and financial institutions training staff on how to be a bank teller, financial adviser, annuity specialists, underwriters, mortgage & escrow analysis, sales agents, or a variety of other financial service roles. In addition to numerous HR, training, and recruiting certifications, I also acquired a variety of financial and life insurance licenses. I managed teams as small as two people to a team of almost 60 spread out over multiple cities and counties.
When you are in the training sector, companies tend to place you in the general Human Resources area. It was due to this relationship that I was able to get experience in the recruiting field. Companies and leaders quickly saw my ability to attract and assemble a team of highly skilled individuals, empower them to grow, and got them promoted to other areas of the company to excel. My role quickly changed to become a leader over new teams or departments that were struggling. I was able to quickly turn around teams that became the role models for other teams to emulate, including winning the 2017 Rookie of the Year at Alexander Mann Solutions because I was able to take a team that was consistently putting out quality numbers of 72% to 98.9% within 8 months. Whatever department or role I managed, I was always the subject matter expert on hiring and retaining top talent. I was routinely asked to participate in the interviewing and hiring process for roles, but I also was asked to share these hiring best practices with a variety of different companies to help them hire in areas that had historically high turnover rates.
After working in the private sector almost twenty years now, I have decided to start my own company this year, Level Up Employment LLC. We specialize in career counseling and professional writing services. While recruiting throughout the country, I quickly realized that a majority of the working age public do not know how to adequately assemble a resume, prepare for an interview, and sometimes not even know how to efficiently search for a career in avenues outside of their last role. The companies that exist out there that offer assistance with career counseling are all targeted and priced towards executive level employees. Unfortunately, that doesn’t help the recent high school or college kid get their foot in the door or help a stay at home parent reenter the workforce once their children have entered school age. My company offers these services at a tenth of the price point of our competitors while offering the same level of service. We also offer these services to small businesses, school clubs or groups, and nonprofits. With unemployment low right now, the smallest advantage could make all the difference in landing a career that could help someone struggling to get back on their feet or that young family pay for the children through college.
I feel my educational background and almost 40 years of life experience sets me apart from my opponent. I have worked in a wide variety of fields, private and public, for profit and not for profit, and have experienced what Lakewood is looking for in their City Council representative. Not only will my experience in employment services allow me to leverage what Lakewood has to offer to secure some anchor companies to replace the jobs we’ve lost in Lakewood, my consulting skills have prepared me to work with people with a wide variety of demographics. I know what it takes to get multiple stakeholders to agree on one course of action moving forward so all voices feel like they are heard while also retaining the best practices needed to implement successful change management. While my opponent will focus on his law degree in what makes him an expert in public policy, I have the life experience to know that you are going to need more than just knowledge of the law to get people to compromise and move forward on major issues.
I look forward to meeting you eventually and hopefully earning your vote this November.
Here is my LinkedIn profile if you would like to review my resume:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bpresutto/
UPDATE - Thank you for taking my call, Brian. I look forward to meeting this week.