Posts in business
From Immigrant to Advocate

Ron Acho doesn’t really see himself as a businessman. Had he achieved his dream as a young man, he’d be heading a large grocery franchise. “I wanted to be president of A&P,” he says, only half-jokingly. Ron’s journey to the courtroom began decades earlier, when he shared a house with, among others, Mike George’s mom, and the Chaldean community in Detroit numbered only in the hundreds.

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Las Vegas Stone Carves Its Legacy

Rob Kaoud’s craft has taken him across the country and around the world, but he is rooted in the fertile soil of three generations of stone craftsmen. Kaoud’s grandfather was a hand sculptor in Jerusalem, where he sculpted stone into place on walls and other surfaces. His father took up stonework as well and moved the Palestinian Christian family from the Middle East to the United States in 1969, when the now-56-year-old Rob was a few months old.

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Demystifying AI

Artificial intelligence (AI) is no longer the stuff of science fiction. It’s here, and it’s transforming how we work, communicate, and innovate. Yet, for many, AI remains a black box: fascinating but mystifying. How does it actually work? What can it do? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we use it effectively without falling into common traps?

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What’s Next for Borrowers?

There is mixed news coming out of the real estate sector in the aftermath of COVID and the turbulence of the recent election cycle. Right now, there is good news for sellers of homes purchased before the pandemic. Super-low interest rates and government grants and programs that help buyers with down payments ushered in a real estate boom that caused housing inventories to evaporate and house prices to soar.

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Get Ready For Prime Time

Robert Esshaki and Christopher Thomas owned a piece of Clarkston history, but the Chaldean businessmen had a decision to make. Owners and operators of the beloved Rudy’s Market in downtown Clarkston since 1989, they faced the stark reality that small independent grocery stores were, as Esshaki said, “with a few exceptions, becoming a thing of the past as competitors like Amazon, Meijer, Kroger, etc., continue to expand and dominate the landscape.

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