The Rockland Economic Development Corp. has named Saint Dominic’s Home, a nonprofit human services agency in Blauvelt, the 2007 Service Provider of the Year.

Judith Kydon, the executive director of Saint Dominic’s, accepted the award at a luncheon earlier this month.

Saint Dominic’s provides services for more than 2,000 people and families in the Lower Hudson Valley and New York City. The organization specializes in helping people with developmental disabilities and social disadvantages.

The Second Wind Advisory Group Inc., a South Salem consulting company that specializes in sales and sales management training, has received the Rising Star international award from the Sandler Sales Institute in Seattle. The company was one of five recipients of the award, which recognizes franchises that generate the most revenue in a 60-day period.

The Pepsi Bottling Group, the world’s largest manufacturer, seller and distributor of Pepsi-Cola beverages, has received a 2007 Green Power Leadership award from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency.

The Somers-based bottler purchased Renewable Energy Certificates that represent 100 percent of the company’s electricity needs. Pepsi Bottling Group is fourth on the EPA’s Top 25 Green Power list.

The company is also taking other steps to focus on its environmental impact, including managing its truck routes to decrease emissions and reducing the weight of its Aquafina water bottles.

The bottles weigh 14 percent to 22 percent less than they did three years ago. That move is saving 35 millions pounds of plastic a year.

PBG is one of 17 companies honored by the EPA for their commitment to green power.

Purchase-based PepsiCo, which owns a 40 percent stake in Pepsi Bottling Group, was also recognized as a “Green Power Partner of the Year.� PepsiCo ranks first on the EPA’s Green Power list.

The Pepsi Bottling Group, the world’s largest manufacturer, seller and distributor of Pepsi-Cola beverages, has received a 2007 Green Power Leadership award from the U.S Environmental Protection Agency. The Somers-based bottler purchased Renewable Energy Certificates that represent 100 percent of the company’s electricity needs. Pepsi Bottling Group is fourth on the EPA’s Top 25 Green Power list. The company is also taking other steps to focus on its environmental impact, including managing its truck routes to decrease emissions and reducing the weight of its Aquafina water bottles. The bottles weigh 14 percent to 22 percent less than they did three years ago. That move is saving 35 millions pounds of plastic a year. PBG is one of 17 companies honored by the EPA for their commitment to green power. Purchase-basedd PepsiCo, which owns a 40 percent stake in Pepsi Bottling Group, was also recognized as a “Green Power Partner of the Year.� PepsiCo ranks first on the EPA’s Green Power list.

Pace Law School will present its Distinguished Service Award to two members of the Westchester legal community at its 13th annual Leadership Awards dinner Thursday at the Rye Town Hilton in Rye Brook.

Pace will honor Noah J. Hanft, general counsel and corporate secretary at Purchase-based MasterCard Worldwide; and Janet A. Johnson, a Pace professor of law and former Pace Law School dean who lives in Briarcliff Manor.

The New York Business Hall of Fame is accepting nominations of New York state companies and business leaders through Jan. 31 for its second annual hall of fame induction.

Nominations can be made online the Hall of Fame’s Web site (www.newyorkbhof.com). There are nine categories, including business leaders from small, medium and large size businesses; companies of various sizes; nonprofit organizations; and corporate volunteers.

Nominations cost $50 each. For more information, including nominee qualifications, go to www.newyorkbhof.com or call Ron Dresner at 800-990-6685.

Noah J. Hanft, general counsel and corporate secretary for MasterCard Worldwide in Purchase, and Pace Law School Professor Janet A. Johnson will receive the Distinguished Service Award at the law school’s 13th annual Leadership Awards Dinner on Nov. 1, at the Rye Town Hilton in Rye Brook.

PepsiCo Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Indra K. Nooyi will receive the Greenwich Library’s Peterson Business Award at the library’s annual award dinner at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Greenwich, Conn., in March.

South Salem teen Laura Côté, one of just 30 young businesspeople competing in a national entrepreneurship contest, made it to top 10 semifinals but wasn’t among the top 3 winners. Côté, 18, took her idea for a child-friendly haircutting business to the second annual Smith Barney/NFTE National Youth Entrepreneurship Challenge event in New York City on Wednesday. Côté travels to her clients’ homes to cut their children’s hair in a familiar setting. She started Happy Cutz after taking cosmetology at the Putnam-Northern Westchester Board of Cooperative Educational Services in Yorktown. The winner of the competition, who will receive $10,000 to expand her business or pay for higher education, was a young woman named Warda Ali from San Jose, Calif. She presented a business plan for Sure Shot Cricket Gear, an online business specializing in selling cricket equipment.

The Rockland Business Association signs up its 1,000 member this afternoon, reports the organization’s President and Chief Executive Officer Al Samuels.

Member 1,000 is the Old 76 House, a Tappan restaurant housed in a historic 17th tavern.

The RBA has nearly tripled its membership during the seven years that Samuels has been at the helm of the organization, which has its offices at the
Blue Hill office complex in Pearl River.

Samuels attributed the rise to a three-pronged approach that includes attracting members from outside the county and the establishment of subsidiary groups within the RBA.

The organization also broadened its mission beyond being a business-networking group, Samuels said.

“Public policy and economic development became primary focus,� he said. “And I think that has attracted a lot of the membership.�

The RBA, the county’s chamber of commerce, reached its 1,000-member goal just a month after celebrating its 40th year in business.

Empire City at Yonkers Raceway will be honored by New York state’s Office of Vocational and Educational Services for Individuals with Disabilities in a ceremony Oct. 9 at the Doral Arrowwood in Rye Brook. October is National Disability Employment Awareness Month. While 75 businesses are receiving regional awards across New York, Empire City is just one of four businesses receiving statewide awards.

J.D. Power and Associates has ranked Verizon Wireless highest in the Northeast based on having fewer reported problems with initial connections, echoes and voice distortion. Verizon Wireless has regional headquarters in Orangeburg. The results were from the J.D. Power and Associates 2007 Wireless Call Quality Performance Study — Volume 2 released last week. The study, in its fifth year, found that call-quality problems have continued to decline nationwide.

The Sept. 7 deadline for nominations for the sixth annual Rockland County Forty Under 40 Program is closing in.
Organized by The Journal News and Rockland Economic Development Corp., the program honors 40 Rockland County individuals who are under the age of 40 and making their mark on the county through their commitment to growth, development, professional excellence and the community at large.

Any county resident who works in Rockland and is under the age of 40, as of Dec. 31, 2007, is eligible for nomination. Individuals may nominate themselves or be nominated by a peer, client, employer, college, family member, or any other organization. Self-nominations must be accompanied by a letter of recommendation.

To learn more about the program or to submit a nomination, go to www.redc.org and click on Forty Under 40 2007. Note: Prior recipients cannot be nominated. A list of past recipients is available on the Web site. Questions can be directed to Liz Cranston, director of marketing and communications at REDC, at 845-735-7040 or lizc@redc.org.

Eileen Fisher Inc., an Irvington-based fashion designer and retailer, has been named one of the 50 Best Small & Medium Companies to Work for in America for the fourth year in a row. The list was announced by Society for Human Resource Management and selected and ranked by the Great Place to Work Institute. The results were based on a randomly distributed employee opinion survey that included questions about workplace cultures.

Armonk-based IBM Corp.’s Blue Gene/L has kept its No. 1 spot on a respected ranking of the world’s fastest supercomputers for the fourth year in a row. IBM computers made up 42 percent of the computational power on the TOP500 Supercomputer Sites list, compiled by scientists in Tennessee and Germany and published today.

IBM has six of the world’s top 10 systems, including four Blue Gene supercomputers. Blue Gene/L, installed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, is capable of 280.6 trillion calculations per second.

This year, two new IBM Blue Gene supercomputers entered the top 10: New York Blue, at the New York Center for Computational Science in Stony Brook; and the Blue Gene system at the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy.

IBM’s Blue Gene system in Yorktown Heights at the Watson research lab is also in the top 10 and can perform 91.29 trillion calculations per second. The entire list can be viewed at www.top500.org.

A financial services company in White Plains and an auto dealership in Mount Kisco are among the nation’s top black-owned businesses, according to Black Enterprise magazine.
The magazine lists Paradigm Asset Management Co. LLC, an employee-owned company that specializes in domestic equity, as the 14th top grossing company and Mount Kisco Chevrolet Cadillac as the 48th. Paradigm had $1 billion in assets under management.
Paradigm, founded in 1990 by chief executive James E. Francis, was also 14th on last year’s list. The auto dealership was 43rd last year.

Adrian Quinn, listed by the magazine as the chief executive of the auto dealership, was not at the business and could not be reached for comment. A message left for Francis was not immediately returned.

To make the list a company must be at least 51 percent black owned.

The magazine also announced its third annual list of the 40 best companies in the country for diversity and named four Westchester County companies: Pepsi Bottling Group Inc. of Somers, PepsiCo Inc. of Purchase, IBM Corp. of Armonk and Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. of White Plains.

To come up with the diversity list, the magazine surveyed executives at large publicly traded companies about the suppliers they use, the makeup of their senior management team, their workers and general activities.

Dr. Amy E. Newburger, a dermatologist from Scarsdale, has been elected president of the Westchester County Medical Society, a 210-year-old organization. Newburger is the founder of Dermatology Consultants of Westchester, a six-physician practice in Scarsdale village.

The Rockland Business Women’s Network has announced that members Marilyn Davis and Nancy Passow are this year’s recipients of the networking group’s two annual awards.

Davis, partner at the Davis & Davis law-firm in New City, has won RBWN’s award for Woman of the Year; and Nancy Passow, owner of Write For You in New Jersey of Englewood, N.J., will receive the RBWN Service Award to the 130-member organization.

Davis and Passow will be presented their awards at RBWN’s annual awards dinner June 14 at Nyack Seaport in Nyack.

Tickets for the dinner are $75 and are available through June 10 by calling Lizanne Fiorentino at 845-357-3312.

For a second year in a row, a Westchester business woman is among the winners in the Make Mine a $Million Business competition, held last weekend in Atlanta.

Sharon Brown, owner of Pleasantville-based Selona (www.selonabeauty.com), a line of skin-care products sold at high-end spas, resorts and boutiques worldwide, was among eight winners in the latest round of the periodic competition, in which business owners present their business plans to judges.

Brown, who’s business is just two years old, said she expects Selona to cross the million-dollar threshold in late 2008.

The Hartsdale resident said her business has benefitted from unique circumstances that have helped promote her line, not the least of which is being included in gift bags given to attendees of the 2006 Grammy Awards.

As a winner of the “Make Mine� competition, Brown will receive a business-growth package including a $45,000 loan from Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence, a non-profit provider of online business loans and resources for women, and a $50,000 credit line from American Express Co.’s OPEN small-business unit.

In addition, Brown will receive marketing and mentoring to aid her in growing Selona into a million-dollar enterprise.

About 200 women business owners submitted applications to compete in Altanta, of which 14 were chosen, spokesman Alex Della Rocca said. Additional contests are planned for later this year, including one in October at Pace University in Manhattan.

Last year, Lynne Lambert founder of New York City Subway Line, a Chappaqua-based business that designs subway-themed clothing items, and Elizabeth Perelstein, founder of School Choice International, a White Plains company that helps workers who are relocating overseas to find schools for their children, were among 20 women entrepreneurs who won the New York City contest.

The Make Mine a $Million Business competition was started by Count Me In for Women’s Economic Independence with support from American Express.

When Denise D’Amico joined the Make-A-Wish Foundation of the Hudson Valley nine years ago in an clerical job, the nonprofit organization was granting 48 wishes a year to sick children. Today, Make-A-Wish is granting 140 wishes and D’Amico has risen in the ranks to oversee two full-time wish coordinators in her role as director of program services. The initiative and measurable success of the 32-year-old Tarrytown resident is what landed her on this year’s “Rising Stars Forty Under Forty Awards� list from the The Business Council of Westchester, said Stacey Cohen, president of Co-Communications Inc. of Mount Kisco and a member of the award steering committee.

The awards are given each year to outstanding people under age 40 who work in Westchester County. This year’s list includes people who work in a wide array of sectors, including education, financial services, law, media and real estate. Cohen, who was an under-40 go-getter herself when she founded her public relations firm in 1997, said the winners are a “strong, smart, resourceful group of individuals.� “They are the movers and shakers in Westchester County business,� she said.

D’Amico, who volunteered at Make-A-Wish in college, said her job is a calling as well as a profession.
The most memorable wish she helped grant was for a teenager who wanted to meet the Yankees, but couldn’t get to the ballfield because he was bedridden. “It motivated him to gain strength and get out of bed for the first time in six months. He called us from the dugout and said, ‘Thank you for my wish. It saved my life,’� D’Amico said. Although he wasn’t expected to survive, the young man is in college today.

D’Amico said each wish costs an average of $7,000 to grant and she hopes the award’s attention will bring sponsors to her organization so more kids can be helped. “I put in a lot of time and hard work because it’s so important to me for each child to be granted a wish who is eligible to receive one. To be recognized for that is like granting a wish for me,� she said.

Another winner is 39-year-old Katonah resident Andrew Samalin, who started his own investment firm, Samalin Investment Counsel LLC of Mount Kisco, in April. A former senior vice president at Morgan Stanley and Wachovia, Samalin said his specialty is coordinating all the investments for his clients, including stock, real estate, mortgages and other investments. The firm, not yet 2 months old, already has more than $100 million in assets under management. “We basically act like the CFO (chief financial officer) for 100 well-resourced families, businesses and foundations,� Samalin said.

Greg Rand, chairman of the awards steering committee and managing partner at Prudential Rand Realty, said winning the award is like a pat on the back. Rand, a 38-year-old White Plains resident, won in 2005. “You’re working hard, and when you’re trying to make a name for yourself in your industry and you’re trying to outpace the herd, you are motivated by a lot of things. People don’t realize that recognition is a strong motivator,� he said.

The awards, which are sponsored by MasterCard Inc. and The Westchester County Business Journal, will be presented in a ceremony at MasterCard’s headquarters in Purchase on June 14.

Here is a list of winners:

Dana Barakat
Managing Partner
Creators Media Group
Age: 25

Gregory Bassuk
COO
IndexIQ Inc
Age: 35

Peter Belmont
Chief Financial Officer
C.W. Brown Inc.
Age: 39

Lori Bosio
Director of Communications
IBM
Age: 39

Anthony Costello
SVP Facilities Management & Building Operations
Westchester Medical Center
Age: 37

Denise D’Amico
Director of Program Services
The Make-A-Wish Foundation
Age: 32

Robert DiDonato
Vice President/Associate Broker
Prudential Rand Realty
Age: 39

Timothy Donohue
Senior Associate
Jones Lang LaSalle
Age: 27

JC Doornik
President and Chairman
Chiromission/Westchester Family Chiropractic & Wellness
Age: 35

Meghan French
Director, Government & Community Relations
Pace University
Age: 29

Gregg Garneau
Partner
Jones Garneau LLP
Age: 38

Andrea Grimaldi
Director, Volunteer Management & HR
American Red Cross
Age: 31

Al Gutierrez
Vice President
CB Richard Ellis
Age: 38

Jared Haines
President
Mercury Solar Systems
Age: 36

Lori Hall-Armstrong
Regional Representative, Westchester Rockland & Putnam
Office of Governor Elliott Spitzer
Age: 36

Donald Kelly
Managing Member
PRE Partners
Age: 33

Linda Kirkpatrick
Vice President, Investor Relations
MasterCard Worldwide
Age: 30

Peter Klein
Vice President
Fidelco Realty Group
Age: 37

Jason Levy
President
Trueview Services
Age: 26

William Marsillo
Partner
Boies, Schiller & Flexner LLP
Age: 35

Alicia McAuliffe-Fogarty
Founder & Executive Director
Circle of Life Camp and Center
Age: 30

Thomas McDonough
Partner
Jackson Lewis LLP
Age: 38

Mary Lynn Mitcham
Editor-in-Chief, InTown Magazine
The Journal News
Age: 35

Bill Muzzio
Vice President Architecture and Construction Services
SL Green Realty Corp.
Age: 39

Marie Orser
Financial Officer
Westfair Business Publications
Age: 35

Matthew Parisi
Partner
Bleakly Platt & Schmidt
Age: 39

David Pellon
Director of Catering
New York Hospitality Group
Age: 37

Ingrid Richards
Assistant Village Manager
Village of Briarcliff
Age: 30

Tara Rosenblum
Reporter/Anchor
News 12 Westchester
Age: 29

Lawrence Ruggieri
Associate Director
Cushman & Wakefield
Age: 34

Andrew Samalin
President/Founder
Samalin Investment Counsel LLC
Age: 39

Anthony Schembri
Partner
Clarfeld Financial Advisors
Age: 35

Rabbi David Schuck
Pelham Jewish Center
Age: 33

Dr. Amy Silverman
Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist
New York-Presbyterian Hospital
Age: 35

Nicholas Simard
President
Bridge Business & Property Brokers Inc/NMS Holdings, Inc.
Age: 28

David Simpson
Special Assistant to Mayor Amicone
The City of Yonkers
Age: 28

Simon Vukelj
Director, Pepsi Bottling Group Foundation
The Pepsi Bottling Group
Age: 37

Francesca Weissman
Vice President Business Planning & Financial Analysis
Heineken USA
Age: 32

Kim Wheatley
General Manager
The Westchester
Age: 35

Sarah Yanosy Sreedhar
Coordinator, Sanctuary Leadership Development Institute
Andrus Children’s Center
Age: 34