Sharon Harmon doesn’t take her work home with her.

“They come with me,” she says, tilting her monitor to show me her dog, Sea, a 7-year-old German shepherd napping quietly behind her desk at the Oregon Humane Society during a Zoom interview.

Harmon has served as OHS’ president since 1989, after working for the Oregon Zoo and the Portland Audubon Society, and starting as a kennel cleaner for the Marin Humane Society in Novato, Calif. When Harmon spoke with Oregon Business in November, the organization was wrapping a landmark year. In March OHS announced a merger with Willamette Humane Society in Salem, effective in July. In October the organization opened a Community Veterinary Hospital on its Portland campus.

Oregon Humane Society’s Northeast Portland campus.  Photos by Jason E. Kaplan

“Either one of those events would have been in the category of really, really monumental efforts for the year, but we did both,” Harmon says.

The latter is part of an expansion campaign OHS is calling the New Road Ahead, which Harmon says has been in the works since 2013. It includes the construction of a forensic lab for animal-cruelty investigations as well as dedicated space for animals who need behavior rehabilitation. OHS estimates the total cost at $39.5 million and has set aside $3.5 million from the organization’s reserve account — with a fundraising target for the remaining $36 million. (The organization’s annual operating budget in 2022 was $21 million, almost all either from program revenue or private funding, Harmon says, though the Willamette merger has led to some contracts with Polk County.)

The new forensics lab.

The New Road Ahead campaign’s backers include the American Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which granted $1.75 million for the project and, in 2021, awarded OHS with its highest honor, the Henry Bergh Award, at its Humane Awards Luncheon.

“The depth of Oregon Humane Society’s programs goes far beyond animal sheltering, including dedicated work in behavior rehabilitation, veterinary education, government relations, animal crime forensics, disaster response, and free and low-cost services for underserved pet owners,” Matt Bershadker, the ASPCA’s president and CEO, said in a statement to Oregon Business. “Oregon Humane Society has repeatedly demonstrated their deep commitment to protecting vulnerable and victimized animals across the country by anticipating what animals, owners and communities will need in the future, and taking new directions to meet those needs effectively and decisively.”

OHS was founded in 1868, making it one of the oldest animal-welfare organizations in the United States. The Portland shelter is also large enough that its capacity consistently exceeds the number of homeless pets in the metro area.

“For the Portland metro area, we’ve done such a great job in our community of spaying and neutering pets, and not allowing animals to reproduce, that we have very low cat overpopulation — and almost nonexistent dog overpopulation,” Harmon says. Of the 12,000 animals OHS took in in 2019, 9,000 came from other shelters.

That includes pets from shelters elsewhere in the state, including rural communities with less robust shelter systems — but also pets from out of state. In July authorities discovered a massive facility in Virginia where 4,000 beagles were being bred for research purposes; 150 of those dogs were flown to Oregon. OHS took in 80 of the dogs, with 70 others going to shelters around the state.

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While the beagle-rescue operation was the subject of national media coverage, OHS also regularly assists with large-scale rescues closer to home: Harmon notes that in September the organization rescued nearly 100 cats from a Polk County home and 38 Alaskan malamutes from an “overwhelmed breeder” in Oakridge. The same week, the organization was dispatched to help save nine horses and four cows discovered during an Oregon City drug bust; all the animals were in a state of severe neglect.

“How do we have the capacity? We have a tremendous volunteer force. We also have this beautiful facility that was built in 2000 that has a lot of capacity to flex,” Harmon says. “Our dog kennels can handle one dog or they can handle 10 cats. Our emergency animal shelter is really designed for the odd animals that come in like fighting cocks and parrots and guinea pigs, so we can flex to those spaces. But really, it’s the volunteers that make it happen and the staff that rise to the occasion to say yes to any animal in need. And then we have this fabulous community that says, ‘Yeah, we want to help. You got any beagles? We’re going to line up 10 deep out your door to adopt them.’”

Due to that combination of capacity and community interest, OHS has a remarkably high recovery rate. It’s not a no-kill shelter, but it does not euthanize animals for space reasons and often keeps animals for months at a time while they wait for new homes; according to OHS’ website, 97.8% of the 7,204 animals taken in by the organization in 2020 were saved. The organization’s adoption rate is also consistently three to four times above the national average and is one of the highest in the nation.

It was also that combination of circumstances that prompted the Willamette Humane Society merger, Harmon says.

The two organizations had been discussing a merger for a few years, but it was never the right time; after COVID hit, it became necessary. The Salem shelter had reduced its hours to two days a week, with adoptions by appointment only. OHS’ Portland shelter went appointment-only during the initial stages of the pandemic but remained open seven days a week. Now both shelters are under the umbrella of one organization, have one set of operating hours and have increased starting pay from $13 an hour to $17.80 an hour when the merger became effective in July.

One of the cornerstones of the New Road Ahead campaign is an effort to improve animal-cruelty and neglect investigations. That includes the construction of an Animal Crimes Forensic Center, set to be fully operational by the end of 2022. Until its construction, animal necropsies had to be performed in the existing animal hospital, and all the animals had to be moved. The organization is also fundraising to improve the sophistication of its investigations, so it can use equipment like CT scans to determine more precisely the extent of injury or disease present in an abused or neglected animal.

Agency support specialist and evidence tech Lila Obeng with Sharon Harmon in the new forensics lab at OHS.

OHS’ track record of advocacy for animal welfare includes the 2019 passage of legislation streamlining enforcement and licensure of animal-rescue operations and a 2017 law protecting Good Samaritans from liability if they rescue an animal from a car parked in hot weather.

The organization also employs its own animal-welfare enforcement officers, though they are licensed by the state.

Harmon stresses that strong animal-cruelty laws — and investigations of animal cruelty — are important not just for their own sake but because crimes against animals are so often connected to crimes against humans. That’s particularly true in domestic violence situations.

Forensics coordinator Samantha Lee with a new forensic CT scanner

“In Oregon we’ve linked human interpersonal violence cases with animal cruelty,” Harmon says. “One is a second offense to the other, and the penalties ratchet up because of that connection. It’s the same behavior. It’s just a different victim. And Oregon statutes recognize that.”

Veterinarian Dr. Betsy Golden, discussing a cat X-ray with Sharon Harmon in OHS’ new Community Veterinary Hospital

OHS’ other big development this year — the October opening of the veterinary hospital — was a long overdue development. The number of pet owners is increasing and saw a particular upward spike in the first year of the pandemic; veterinary clinics have subsequently reported burnout, staffing shortages and a lack of ability to serve new patients who need routine care.

That problem is not limited to the pandemic, Harmon stresses, and isn’t likely to go away in the coming years.

“I couldn’t think of a better time to open a large veterinary practice than today,” Harmon says.

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But the community clinic was born in response to a need that had been building for longer: the need for accessible care for lower-income pet owners who need low- or no-cost care.

There are other programs for low-income pet owners, including angel funds at nonprofit clinics like DoveLewis Emergency Animal Hospital and mobile wellness clinics that offer routine care like vaccinations.

“The model that we developed was taking the best practices from a number of hospitals to do it well, and then taking it to the next level,” Harmon says. The clinic will also serve as a teaching site for students in Oregon State University’s Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine.

Harmon says she doesn’t struggle with the temptation common to shelter staff and volunteers: to bring all the animals home.

“I don’t need to be an animal caretaker. And in fact, with the demand for animals here at the shelter — I would have to get in line to get a pet,” Harmon says. Harmon drew criticism in 2017 for a Facebook post about purchasing a dog from a breeder but says she now has just one dog. Sea, she says, was the subject of an animal-neglect investigation; her previous owners loved her, but the dog had complex medical needs they simply couldn’t afford to address.

“I spent a lot of money getting her fixed. [Her previous owners] loved her; they trained her. She’s good with kids. She loves cats,” Harmon says. “I took her to a black-tie ball [last week], and we walked up to every guest and she said hi to them. When I went up on stage, she fell asleep on the stage. I mean, she’s great. They loved her, but they had to give her up or face criminal charges. They had to because they couldn’t afford veterinary care.”

That’s why the clinic exists, she says.

“That’s what that hospital is about — so dogs like her stay with the people that love them. So dogs like her live long, happy lives, and they’re healthy.”

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Dan Wieden, one of the two founders of the storied Portland advertising agency Wieden+Kennedy, died Friday at age 77.

Wieden co-founded Wieden+Kennedy with David Kennedy in 1982, with just one client: a local shoe company called Nike. In 1988 he coined the slogan that became synonymous with Nike and is one of the best-known slogans in the history of advertising: “Just Do It.”

Prior to founding the agency, Wieden graduated from University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication and worked for the paper company Georgia-Pacific, then based in Portland, in its marketing department. He was fired from that job, according to Wieden+Kennedy, but later went to work for the advertising agency McCann Erickson, once again creating ads for Georgia-Pacific. There he met David Kennedy.

Following Georgia-Pacific’s relocation to Atlanta and the closure of McCann Erickson, Wieden and Kennedy went to work for the William Cain agency, working together on a lumber company account — and a campaign for Nike. They founded Wieden+Kennedy on April Fool’s Day in 1982.

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Three years later, the company created an ad for Honda Elite scooters, edited like a French New Wave film and featuring Lou Reed zipping around New York’s Lower East side. Prior to that, W+K had only handled small accounts for Nike. But once the agency demonstrated it could create memorable ads with an undeniable patina of cool, Nike shifted all of its business to W+K.

In 1987 W+K launched another famous TV spot: one featuring the Beatles’ “Revolution.” Nike paid $800,000 for rights to use the song. The ad drew sharp criticism from some corners, but it was also hugely popular, The Oregonian reports.

“One of Dan’s great lines, part of his ethos, was that if you’re going to do something memorable and worthwhile, it should have an edge,” Scott Bedbury, who joined Nike that year as its advertising director, told The Oregonian. “But if it has an edge, someone will get cut. So be it, as long as it’s authentic and true.”

In The Oregonian‘s story about Wieden’s passing, Karl Lieberman, the agency’s current chief creative officer, compared Wieden to Saturday Night Live creator and longtime producer Lorne Michaels.

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“The reason it lasted so long was that he didn’t build an ad agency, he built a culture,” Lieberman said, adding that W+K is “a place that in a lot of ways reflects him.”

Wieden never formally retired from W+K, but he stepped into a chairman role and away from “active agency life” in 2015, according to the agency.

David Kennedy died last October at 82.

W+K is based in Portland’s Pearl district but has offices in Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, London, Shanghai, India and São Paulo.

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On July 1, Oregon became the third state in the nation to allow a human body to be composted after death, following Washington and Colorado. The new allowance has already brought a human composting company to the state, and represents a growing trend toward sustainability in the death care industry.

Distinct from traditional burial or cremation, human composting reduces all human remains, including bones, into a cubic yard of useable soil using a specialized mulching pod. The resulting soil can be used in a garden or donated to conservation efforts.

Oregonians looking to turn their remains into compost soil can now turn to Earth, a Washington-based human composting company that opened its first funeral home in Portland this month.

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Haley Morris, head of communications & government affairs at Earth, tells Oregon Business the expansion into Oregon was natural, considering the state’s progressive track record on ecological funeral options.

“I think Oregon is a real leader when it comes to making policy around this issue. State representative Pam Marsh has been an instrumental and a real champion of this work,” Morris tells Oregon Business. “This new law in Oregon is something that other states can look to if they’re looking for leadership and guidance on how to make this possible in their state.”

Tom Harries, Earth’s CEO and co-founder, wrote in an email to Oregon Business that his company has seen a 70% increase in overall inquiries since the law came into effect, and is already working with its first Oregon clients. Earth’s composting process costs $4,950 today, nearly half the cost of the average Oregon funeral service, according to the World Population Review.

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In March of this year, the CEO of Return Home, another a Washington-based human composting company, told KOIN 6 News he hopes to expand into Oregon in 2023. 

Amercian’s interest in traditional casket funerals is waning. In 2020, 56% of Americans who died chose cremation over a casket funeral, a 23% increase from 2006, according to the Cremation Association of North America.

Rachel Essig, executive director River View Cemetery. Credit: River View Cemetery

According to Rachel Essig, executive director of River View Cemetery in Portland and board member of the Green Burial Council, eco-friendly burial options are rising quickly to take a bite out of the traditional funeral model. She says millennial and Generation Z customers are driving the trend.

“We have a generation of Greta Thunbergs coming up who are extremely concerned about the environment. The death care industry will have to get its act together if they want to keep up with them,” Essig tells Oregon Business.

Essig describes her company as being the “old kids on the block” when it comes to green funerals. River View has offered natural burials — where a deceased person’s remains are put into the earth without casket or embalming — to clients since 2009. Essig says the process now accounts for one-third of her business.

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Essig says current trends mean River View must continue to innovate. When her company’s crematory oven broke down this year, she decided to offer alkaline hydrolysis (also referred to as water burial or aquamation) options for clients, instead of buying another emissions-heavy incinerator. The process dissolves a body using alkali, is a quicker means of disposal than natural burial — and produces 90% less emissions than traditional cremation.

Essig has no plans to offer human composting to families, but she said that could change if demand for the process grows.

Keith Crawford, co-founder of Solace, a carbon-neutral, low-cost crematorium service based in Portland, says he doesn’t see human composting, natural burial, and other forms of eco-funerals as being in competition with one another. Like the plant-based food industry, he views the eco-funeral model as competing with the larger, less environmentally conscious business model.

“I think what [human composting] represents is a push towards doing things differently from the traditional model that was held by funeral homes for decades,” says Crawford. “We represent part of that push as well, just not just in the same way.”

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Solace purchases carbon offsets to mitigate the emissions generated by its cremation process, and is certified as carbon-neutral by Carbonfund.org, a global sustainability nonprofit that certifies companies with a net-zero carbon footprint. Crawford agrees with Essig that says the arrival of human composting represents a much wider eco-friendly shift in the death care industry. One which funeral homes could all potentially have to adopt to satisfy demand moving forward.

“Body composting is brand new, and people are still getting comfortable with the idea, but it’s definitely going to become more and more popular with time and exposure,” says Crawford. “There’s a lot of good new energy in the space — really interesting innovation happening at the end of life in the industry at large, and not just in what to do with the body.”

He says customers are demanding more eco-conscious end-of-life options beyond how to dispose of human remains. He says biodegradable urns —as well as digital obituaries and online memorials — are also gaining traction as customers want their last act on earth to leave the planet unharmed.

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Far from being direct competitors, Crawford says that the next stage of the green funeral movement is partnerships between companies that specializes in greening different aspects of the end-of-life process.

“We’re in touch with a lot of these companies and are looking at partnerships with some of those guys, which is encouraging. This is an experience literally everyone must go through at some point in their lives, and it hasn’t really changed or evolved in a long, long time.”

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In 2016 a couple of Elisabeth Kramer’s friends asked her to help plan their wedding.

At the time, Kramer was an editor at ParentMap, a Seattle-based parenting magazine. But she developed relationships with wedding vendors and her one-off gig became a side hustle, then a full-time job. Kramer was inspired in part by the fact that wedding planning was often lopsided, with women telling her things like, “I feel so behind, and I don’t want to do all these things.” Kramer’s LinkedIn profile describes her as “a journalist turned wedding planner who’s fighting the Wedding Industrial Complex.” Helping couples prioritize what they actually wanted to do with their weddings — along with setting realistic budgets and asserting boundaries with family members and guests — was Kramer’s forte.

Then 2020 rolled around. After the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Kramer found herself sifting through a confusing and ever-shifting morass of public health guidance and government mandates pertaining to gatherings — indoor and outdoor— and masking. None of the Oregon Health Authority’s published guidelines addressed weddings specifically, so Kramer took it upon herself to determine which regulations could and couldn’t apply in her industry and published her findings on her website. When regulations changed, Kramer made immediate updates, emerging as a resource both for engaged couples and for wedding vendors looking to keep their businesses afloat amid confusing guidance.

As this issue went into production, a federal court had just struck down the mandate requiring masks on public transportation, including airplanes — and Oregon’s mask mandates were in the rearview as well. Oregon Business spoke with Kramer about what the summer wedding season looks like as restrictions continue to shift.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How has the last year been?

I think it was more challenging than 2020. As a wedding planner, in 2020 it was in some ways a clearer equation. We had fewer options to gather because we didn’t have a vaccine. We didn’t have a lot of the tools that we have now. In 2021 we had more options: We had an effective vaccine and we had masks — we had all the things that we’ve used. In some ways, it made the picture more complicated, because now we had choices.

For weddings, something that people often forget is it was very hard to track what was legal. Nobody necessarily wanted to take accountability for something that was really fluid and challenging. It’s still very complicated.

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During the pandemic, you emerged as the person who was keeping track of what was legal, as far as what would affect the wedding industry. How did that happen?

I worked as a journalist for the first five years of my career, so I know how to identify credible sources and I know how to track government documents. There was a level of accountability that was really important to me in this work, because there was a lot of misinformation. I saw a story and I found need among clients and other vendors. So I did what I did when I was working in newspapers, and I wrote a story about it. Did I know in May 2020 that I would track that story for two years — and I still do track that story — and update it somewhere between 30 and 40 times? Did I know I would have a list of hundreds of people following that, because they couldn’t find that information elsewhere? No, no idea. But that’s what happened.

Was it other vendors that have come to you, or was it couples who approached you to figure out what’s going to work for them?

For the legal stuff, a lot of times it has been vendors. Very understandably, couples look at their vendor team and they say, “Well, we don’t know. We don’t know what’s legal. Don’t you know?” They don’t say it from a place of malice. They just assume we know. But any wedding vendor will tell you, “I’m a wedding vendor. I’m not an epidemiologist.” That kind of passing the buck has been really challenging, because who’s accountable? I’ve also definitely heard from couples. I’ve had some really beautiful, honest conversations with couples, both in Oregon and nationally, around health and safe boundaries. I just had an email a few weeks ago with the question, “How do I pick between my ER doctor fiancé and my two bridesmaids who are choosing not to be vaccinated and who could get vaccinated?” I’m having lots of conversations like that.

I have heard from tons of vendors — typically in Oregon — that are like, “Your articles are the only way I knew when [restrictions] changed.” It sounds very grandiose when I say it, but I’m really glad to help. It helped me.

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As you said, in the beginning, like in 2020, things were pretty clear. In 2021, when vaccines came out, a lot of us were optimistic. But then of course, that ended up being a much more complicated scenario. What’s the general mood now?

It’s important to note that in 2020 weddings were still happening. My infamous story is that in 2020 a couple threatened to sue me. They said, “Hey, we’re going to do this no matter what,” even though I had informed them that, legally, at that time you needed to wear masks to gather. They said no, and I said, “This isn’t for me then.” I think that’s important context. I was in a position — and this is very much my privilege — where I could walk away from clients, even when it was a huge financial loss for my company. I was in a place where I could do it because I live in a two-income household and my food and my housing are not dependent on my income alone. Lots of vendors could not do that and had to do illegal things, because what else were they going to do?

In the wedding industry, we say engagement season is usually between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day. And there’s been a lot of buzz about 2022 being a boom year for weddings. And in January there was a lot of appetite, a lot of leads. But we were also dealing with omicron and trying to figure out what that would look like. As case counts and hospitalizations have gone down this spring, I find that, understandably, folks are more hesitant to talk about COVID. I think we are all tired of talking about it. But is that a good thing or a bad thing? I continue to have a lot of conversations about this: Are you telling your guests and your vendors what they’re getting into if they come to your wedding in person, so they can make choices and can consent to that situation? Right now in Oregon, there’s no legal forcing function to have these conversations.

I’m personally optimistic that this summer will be more joyful, with less death and disease, because people are vaccinated, because we have a lot of tools to use. But I think there’s still a lot of uncertainty.

Are there trends that have emerged in the last couple of years that you see continuing into the future? And are there trends that you think will probably sort of dissipate? What are you seeing so far?

I wish I had a cute answer, like, “Mason jars and fairy lights are here forever.” Optimistic Beth wants to tell you that the trend is boundaries. Planning a wedding has always been an exercise in boundary setting, although we don’t talk about that part a lot. When I hear from couples that they are requiring everyone at their wedding to be fully vaccinated, that’s a boundary that they’re setting. I want to see more of that, because I think it has so many beautiful effects for all of wedding planning — and for entire marriages. It’s that communication with your partner and the people in your life that make your relationship what it is.

Vendors, I think by necessity, have had to get even better at communicating their boundaries. The half-hearted joke I tell now is that I used to tell my clients, “I’ll do anything for wedding clients, including bury a body,” until I realized that that body could be my husband’s. If I went to work, and I brought COVID home and he got sick, I mean, come on. I could never forgive myself. I’ve had to personally get a lot clearer about what I am willing to do and not do. That is not always an easy match in the service industry. It’s in the title: We’re here to serve, and the customer’s always right. A lot of these stories we tell ourselves can be very damaging, and can really take for granted people’s labor, their safety, their families.

I’m seeing that push and pull a lot this summer. Optimistically, I want to think that the good thing is that we’re going to have safer, more joyful events — and safer not just from COVID. I want to think we’re getting there. This transitional phase we’re in right now, it’s not always easy, because I think people are not used to that level of conversation, particularly from people they’ve hired. I’m interested to see where that goes.

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What are your general thoughts on the near future of your industry?

I feel like this has been so much doom and gloom — but I still love weddings. One of the most challenging things has been that a wedding has all these behaviors that were the exact ways that we give each other COVID: hugging and kissing and eating and dancing and singing and just being close with other people. These things that I myself have been craving, they’re all there at a wedding, and that’s what makes it special. What a joy that we can go back to that. I want to remind people that if we’re going to go to all that expense and all that time and all those boundary-setting conversations, that’s why it’s worth it. It’s much easier to feel that joy when we also feel safe.

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Eric Miles has a joke about working at Moss Adams, the 109-year-old accounting firm where he has spent much of his career.

“I’m either risk averse or I love it at Moss Adams — and it is the latter,” Miles tells Oregon Business. “It’s just been a place where you have something you’re passionate about, you go after it, and the firm supports that.”

Miles started working for the firm in 1998, shortly after graduating from college at Pacific Lutheran University in Parkland, Wash., outside of Tacoma. He left to attain a master’s in business administration at Purdue University, not thinking he would come back to Moss Adams.

He was wrong. He was recruited into the firm’s consulting division and has served in a variety of roles since, most recently as consulting managing partner. And on April 1, Miles became Moss Adams’ new chairman and CEO.

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The firm announced Miles’ selection last September. He replaces Chris Schmidt, who retired at the end of March. Schmidt had served as chairman and CEO of the firm since 2013.

“Eric’s an experienced, compassionate leader who has a proven track record of helping both the firm and our clients navigate and respond to change,” Rebecca Pomering, Moss Adams’ chief practice officer, said in a press release announcing Miles’ move into the CEO role. “His ability to foster a culture of agility in an age of constant disruption will be integral to the firm and its clients.”

It’s a challenging time to be stepping into any new leadership role, Miles says, even one in an organization whose culture he knows well.

“You can look at the pandemic, you can look at inflation, you can look at what’s going on in Ukraine. All of these issues are what we talk about with VUCA: volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous,” Adams says. “My big emphasis with the firm is getting us to better be able to deal with that type of world, because I don’t think it’s going to slow down. It’s only going to accelerate.”

Another way to put it, he adds, is that the pandemic has “compressed five years of change into a year or two.”

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So the focus for the next three years, Miles says, is to encourage staff to “get more and more sensitized to the needs of our clients.”

“Public accounting is an odd profession in a way in that we train people to be experts. In today’s world, to be an expert, you have to have a very narrow lane of knowledge and go very deep,” Miles says. “The consequence of that is, you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

But many clients’ business problems are “varied, they’re multidisciplinary,” he adds, often requiring the help of multiple experts.

Because of that, Miles says leadership is working to train people in what has been called T-shaped expertise: “You have a depth here, but at the top, you have awareness that you don’t have to have all the answers. You have to have awareness that you can bring in your team.”

That’s hard for accountants, who want to be experts, but Moss Adams also acts as a consultancy — though Miles is quick to point out that the firm doesn’t do any consulting work that doesn’t tie back significantly to its core accounting work.

Moss Adams started in Seattle but now has 25 offices, including three in Oregon: one in Portland, one in Eugene and one in Medford. (Most are situated in the western United States, but the firm’s website also notes that the company is recruiting for a “global capability center” in India.)

As of December 2020, according to data submitted to Oregon Business, the firm reported 144 certified public accountants. According to additional information from Moss Adams, the firm employs 3,676 people total and grossed $820 million in 2020.

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Miles says the firm’s clients range in size from large public corporations to small, mom-and-pop operations and include higher education institutions as well as not-for-profits.

“Our sweet spot is that middle-market company. Maybe it’s owned by private equity, but more likely it’s owned by family or an individual. So that’s our bread and butter,” Miles says.

The company serves nine “industry categories,” including food and beverage, health care, and technology — with tech being its largest single sector.

Serving a diverse range of clients also means addressing a wide variety of problems, he notes. Clients in food and beverage have workforces largely considered essential, whereas other workspaces — including Moss Adams — pivoted to remote work. For an accounting firm, that creates specific challenges, like making sure the correct tax paperwork is filed for employees living in other states.

And that shift has bled into other, more basic aspects of how companies operate and treat their team members. That’s been true within Moss Adams, where staff have had to evaluate the best ways to operate as a fully remote workforce.

“We need to make time to connect with one another, we need to be deliberate in our use of time,” Miles says. “We could fill up our days with back-to-back Zoom calls. But is that the highest and best use of our time? Are we clear on why we’re connecting?”

And clients have, similarly, expressed that they want to be more “clear and deliberate” about what they want to accomplish.

Miles lives in Northeast Portland with his wife, an assistant U.S. attorney, and 7-year-old twins. He says during the pandemic they’ve been able to “push pause” on their working lives during periods when the other is busy. For example, when his wife is in trial, he can dial back his responsibilities at Moss Adams to focus on caring for his children.

Beyond that, he says his personal life is consumed with “the normal Oregon things”: skiing, hiking and visiting family. He’s also an enthusiastic chess player and reader.

At work, he notes, the next few years will not be about hitting numeric targets but about cultivating the people who work there.

That includes diversity, equity and inclusion work that he hopes will not just be “performative activism” but “more deeply substantive, like actual change.”

“Overall, our desire is to reflect the communities, our targets are to reflect the communities we operate in. So in Oregon, our targets look different than our office in Dallas,” Miles says. He adds that the firm’s largest success has likely been with a “Form W” initiative to increase the percentage of female partners.

“If we hit a target, we move the target. I think this is a test of perseverance,” Miles adds.

And the DEI work is also part of a larger push to ensure Moss Adams is the best possible workplace in its field.

“It’s absolutely true that the more engaged our people are, the happier they are, the more equipped they are from a learning and development perspective,” Miles says. “It’s a direct correlation to how happy our clients are and how much our financial performance hits our targets. So I want to be the employer of choice for accounting types and consulting types.”

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Henry V, based in Northeast Portland, started as an event-management company — planning corporate events for clients across the country.

But the company began to pivot away from events about 10 years ago, long before the COVID-19 pandemic forced the cancellation of large in-person events and birthed a digital-events industry. Three years ago, the agency began to drill in on creative strategy, says executive creative director Haven Anderson, who joined the agency in part to bring about that shift.

And in September, the agency announced a new name — For Good & Company — and a new focus.

The name change, too, was underway before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. But the pandemic made the change more urgent, Anderson says. He describes For Good & Company’s creative services work as “medium agnostic” and more focused on overall messaging and collaboration.

“It’s a collaboration between our partners, our clients and so the idea for us is: If you’re going to create good work, you truly have to have partnerships with your clients, you have to have an open source of collaboration with them,” Anderson says. “So we wanted to make sure that our name reflected that, and we wanted to make sure it reflected the sense of the good energy of our individual talents, the good energy of our people and how that feeds into the focus for us to do good work for our clients.”

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Those clients include Hood River Distillers, Banfield Pet Hospital, Adidas and Daimler Trucks — and Portland General Electric, with whom the agency is currently working on a campaign promoting electric-vehicle use.

Asked what’s next for the agency, Anderson says simply: “Do great work.”

“The rebrand is just a name, right? It’s a name and an identity, it’s not a brand,” Anderson says. “The brand is going to come with what we do next. So it’s putting our energy in, it’s finding opportunities, it’s working with our clients to uncover unique experiences and develop unique solutions for them. So that’s next. It’s working with our partners and working with our clients to make sure that our name is truly reflective of the work that we do.”

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When Lemonade — a cannabis dispensary in Tigard — was burglarized, it took the police four hours to respond. Afraid the perpetrators would return, the owners called Zachary Thom, co-owner of Parabellum Protections Security Company in Portland. He was there in 20 minutes, and the shop owners were not even among his clients. 

By the end of the night, they were. 

Data from the Portland Police Bureau show the city is experiencing a spike in crime similar to metropolitan areas across the country. The civil unrest in downtown Portland last summer and the increased police presence that followed has meant a slower reaction to burglaries. In response, businesses — especially cannabis dispensaries — are turning to private security firms for protection. But hiring security personnel can be expensive, and many dispensary and bar owners fear intimidating security guards could be bad for business. 

As a result, security firms are adapting. 

By training security guards as budtenders, hosts and barbacks, security companies are making private security less intimidating and more cost-efficient. 

Tobias Baker and Dylan Volpe, security guards at Parabellum Protections. Credit: Parabellum Protections.

The new generation of security companies is also projecting a less militarized approach, training guards in hand-to-hand combat and de-escalation techniques and wearing branded swag and street clothes to project a fun, friendlier image.  

Cannabis products are high-value and easy to sell illegally, making them particularly vulnerable to theft – and due to federal banking policies still deal in cash. Obtaining business insurance is also difficult for dispensaries, since national insurers will not cover cannabis companies without charging a larger premium. 

This means crimes are more frequent, and more damaging – even lethal. 

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“Demand is very high on the dispensary side of things, but the cannabis industry has been crippled at every angle. Criminals are a lot more brazen than they were before,” says Thomas Baker, who co-owns Parabellum Protections along with Thom. “The incidents downtown have caused a lot of rift between the law enforcement and the people. We don’t wear any badge and we don’t dress in a way that looks overly militant. There is a fine line you have to ride.”

The scope of Oregon’s cannabis industry crime problem came into focus on Dec. 14, 2020, when a gang of robbers shot 44-year old father Michael Arthur to death at Cured Green Dispensary in Portland. Dispensary robberies doubled in 2020, according to Jesse Bontecou, co-director of the Oregon Retailers of Cannabis Association. 

One cannabis store owner, who chose to remain anonymous, said she did not trust the police’s ability to protect her and her employees. “Police don’t take burglaries and robberies of dispensaries as seriously as they do for other businesses,” she says. 

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Just a year old, Parabellum Protections already has contracts with several Oregon dispensaries, including Cookies. The company’s personnel all have extensive martial arts experience, and do not require firearms to subdue a potential threat. Some members of the team have experience as budtenders, meaning they are able to work and serve customers when not neutralizing threats. This helps add to the company’s bottom line, offsetting the salary of a security guard, which is a cost-prohibitive to many cannabis operations. 

Like air marshals, staying undercover helps security guards fly under the radar of potential criminals, meaning a robber might very well draw their weapon on exactly the wrong person. It also means security personnel must maintain a personable demeanor to interact with customers.

“It’s not about intimidation or fear, it’s about friendliness. You have to have customer service skills to be in this industry now,” say Baker. “We don’t believe a security guard should just be a warm body.” 

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Like Parabellum, Employees of Skynet Security in Portland have martial arts experience, and include many professional fighters and jiu-jitsu practitioners. They are trained as restaurant and bar employees before they receive conventional security training. 

But violence is meant to be avoided at all costs: Skynet employees wear body cameras, and are not allowed to put hands on anyone unless the other party becomes violent.  

“It used to be a security guard who would just beat someone up and toss them outside, but those days are over. Everyone is buttoning up now,”  says Raymond Hill, owner of Skynet Security in Portland. “A lot of people have seen police and security forces misused.” 

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Hill’s company serves  bars and restaurants in Portland’s Pearl District, including Two Wrongs Bar and River Pig Saloon. For Hill, preventing incidents is the primary focus of his company.  

“If a group of guys is being rowdy, sometimes we’ll send a person with a phone camera to start recording them. That usually gets them to leave fast.” 

More undercover security could create an industry-wide effect. Criminals looking for a score will be unable to determine which businesses have security and which ones do not. As the summer crime spike continues, more companies could decide private security is worth the investment. An investment which is now more affordable when a security guard can do the work of an employee. 

“Private security looks a lot more reasonable expense when your security guard can actually help your bottom line,” says Hill. 

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Phones rang off the hook at Southern Oregon Heat and Air Conditioning in Medford during the final weekend in June as meteorological records melted across the state of Oregon. 

The company’s small crew worked around the clock to satisfy demand. Over the course of the weekend the company added 50 clients, but received 500 calls a day, turning many potential customers away.

“We had people calling in saying how miserable and how hot they were and I had to say, ‘Look, I feel horrible but our crew is working a  12-hour shift seven days a week,’” says Jesse Phillips, a scheduler at the heating and air conditioning company. “We could only do so much.” 

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During the heatwave temperatures rose to 117 degrees in some areas of the state – leaving HVAC businesses throughout the state scrambling to keep up with a sudden demand for services. 

“There wasn’t really a buildup of service orders prior to the heat wave,” says Brian Hansen, general manager of Bull Mountain Heating & Cooling in Portland. “People weren’t prepared for the temperature and there was high stress. What happened was you got this large bubble that put a lot of stress on the industry,” Hansen says. 

In Portland, only 70% of homes have some form of air conditioning, according to data form the U.S. Census Bureau. That makes Portland one of the least air-conditioned to cities in the United State — third-to-last behind Seattle and San Francisco. 

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Those with lower incomes were less likely to have AC at home, leaving many Oregonians in search of oases like cooling centers or climate-controlled – or driving to cooler parts of the state.

But not everyone was able to do so, and the results were tragic: as of Tuesday morning, public health officials  99 people across the state died of heat-related causes during the heat wave. Many, officials said, were found alone in their homes without air conditioners or fans. Hundreds of others sought emergency care as temperatures soared.

And even homes and businesses with air conditioning equipment weren’t necessarily able to get them serviced: of the five HVAC companies contacted for this article, four were no longer accepting new clients. 

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That’s because the HVAC industry, like many others, is facing a staffing shortage – leaving business owners shorthanded even as their services. 

“We try to bring as many people into the industry as possible. We pay to bring in a lot of people and pay for their schooling,” Hansen says. “There’s not a lot of hands out here.” 

Hansen says he will always take and train qualified people wanting to become HVAC technicians, but that he and his colleagues around the industry are having difficulty finding enough employees. 

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“Not a whole lot of people want to work out there in the heat,” says Phillips. “We lost one technician on our crew. Everyone in the industry is having trouble filling positions.” 

A 2019 report from the State Employment Department found that trade workers, including plumbers, truck drivers and maintenance workers were considered “difficult to fill positions,” unable to be staffed due to lack of qualified applicants.

According to Lou Long, apprenticeship administrator at Northwest Apprenticeship Services, Oregon’s trade worker shortage has been a long time coming.  

“For a long time, I wasn’t even allowed in high school career fairs. Everyone would push colleges and no one wanted to hear from apprenticeships and trade schools,” Long says. “Now all our journeymen are retiring and we don’t have anyone to fill that gap.”

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That could mean more homeowners and landlords defer or forego basic maintenance due to lack of skilled hands. 

But that trend may also be reversing, due to COVID-19 and the rising cost of college. According to a 2020 analysis by the US Department of labor, the number of citizens apprenticeships surpassed 636,000 in 2020, a 64% increase from 10 years ago. 

President Joe Biden’s administration has also signaled support for skilled trades training: the American Jobs Plan will, if enacted, allocate $48 billion for workforce training, including the creation of “one to two million new registered apprenticeships slots.”

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Apprenticeships can last up to six years, but on-the-job training and booming demand could mean a swift end for Oregon’s skilled labor shortage. 

The more lucrative trade work becomes, the more it might appeal to high school students unable or unwilling to take on large amounts of college debt. 

If the weekend’s historic heat – and climate models forecasting increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, including both extreme heat and cold – are any indication, the need for reliable heating and cooling systems is only going to more critical to Oregonians in the near future. And that means demand for skilled HVAC technicians will continue to surge. 

“If there are journeymen not working it’s their own fault,” Long says. “The demand is huge.”

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Historically, asset management has been a community affair. According to a 2015 report from McKinsey & Company Financial Services, 70% of investors were only interested in working with a financial advisor face to face, and one who was in driving distance.

Strategies for attracting clients reflected these preferences. Networking events, seminars and referral networks were the main ways of finding a financial adviser.

Like so many industries, COVID-19 has changed the financial-planning sector. According to Google, during the first six months of the coronavirus pandemic, the frequency of online searches for financial advisers increased 17% year-over-year compared to 2019.

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An updated McKinsey report from 2020 found those original preferences had nearly reversed, with 63% of clients open to working with a financial planner remotely.

As the baby boomer generation transfers wealth to their millennial children, financial advisers are staying up-to-date with online platforms to compete with trading apps that are popular with the millennials like Robinhood, as well as sites trading in cryptocurrency.

Historically low interest rates also mean financial advisers must find new ways of making clients’ money stretch out during their retirement.

One reason behind the boomer-millennial wealth transfer is a change in retirement-plan policy. A 2019 change to required minimum distributions law means retirement-fund payouts can no longer be transferred to heirs upon a client’s passing, often called “stretch” capability.

The change to the law, in addition to clients seeking to dodge estate taxes, has led to more retirees giving away their wealth while they are still alive. According to asset-management research firm Cerulli Associates, $68 trillion will move between generations over the next two decades.

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The bad news for financial advisers is that millennial clients are less loyal. According to a survey by Fidelity Investments, 53% of millennials say they would seek out a new adviser if their current adviser was not using satisfactory technology, compared with only 29% of boomers.

Financial planners have adapted by offering the new generation of tech-savvy wealth holders the digital tools with which they are most comfortable.

“The stock market has become mainstream thanks to millennials embracing stock trading, often in their Robinhood accounts,” says Dan Botti, asset adviser at Peregrine Asset Advisers in Portland. “Front and center of this has been software, internet and internet commerce, which are not exclusive to millennials.

Millennials have been quicker to adopt some of the more recent fintech services. In addition, millennials serve as some of the loudest proponents of the cryptocurrency boom.”

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum have gained popularity among investors for years. The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated investors’ interest in online assets. As of April 2021, more than 9,000 cryptocurrencies facilitated peer-to-peer transfers of data and value, according to CoinMarketCap, an online trading site for cryptocurrency.

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Cryptocurrency is notoriously volatile. For most financial advisers, the cryptocurrency boom means more competition from online-trading apps, rather than another place to invest. “The bottom line is: Firms need to embrace technology as more generational-wealth transfer is taking place,” says Nik Torkelson, vice president of finance and marketing at Matisse Capital in Lake Oswego.

“An easy, user-friendly online experience has also become a necessity. If you’re not investing in increasing your digital presence — whether that is your website, social media or paid advertising — you’re missing out on connecting with people who are actively searching for your services,” says Torkelson.

Appealing to the younger generation is not the industry’s only challenge. Low interest rates brought about by COVID-19 means yields and payouts are historically low. As the economy rebounds, retirees are expected to want to travel. Clients who have grown accustomed to regular cash flow from dividends will need their financial planners to offer them solutions in the short term.

“The question for financial advisers is: ‘How can I create sufficient cash flow in this low-rate environment?’” says Torkelson.

To navigate this challenge, some wealth managers have turned to closed-end funds. These are portfolios of pooled assets that raise a fixed amount of capital through the purchasing of initial public offerings. After a set amount of capital has been made, the shares are automatically listed for trade on a stock exchange.

While this means an investor will not be able to hold on to high-performing stock, the process yields consistently higher returns and a better income stream than the standard open-ended mutual funds.

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While closed-end funds lack the growth potential of open-ended funds, they may be more profitable to investors needing steady cash flow in a historically low-interest-rate environment.

As clients navigate this historic wealth transfer and prepare their savings for future emergencies, financial advisers could become essential workers in the post-pandemic economy. More changes are likely on the horizon. Millennials anticipate social security to play far less of a role in their retirement plans, according to Wells Fargo’s 2019 annual retirement study.

Annuities and brokerage accounts could become more commonplace, further increasing the demand for financial advisers who help clients secure their financial futures.

“The core purpose of financial planning is preparation. This means accounting for disasters and disruptions of all varieties,” says Botti. “The outcome of the pandemic has yielded favorable investment returns so far, but the next disruption may be less favorable. An effective plan helps overcome setbacks and continue to realistically achieve their financial goals.”

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A recent national poll of 1,200 office workers asked how they felt about working from home during the pandemic, and it found that most — 60% — were either discouraged or felt trapped.    

Another 25% of workers said they were doing well working from home but saw advantages to returning to the office. Only 20% were categorized as thriving or doing better working remotely.

The findings of the survey, conducted by The Martec Group, a market research firm, support the notion that it is justified for employers to start bringing employees back to the office after a year of working remotely.   

But the return to the workplace is also fraught with difficulties for the employer. Companies have to comply with stringent guidelines for creating safe post-pandemic workplaces, making the reopening full of pitfalls.

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Before deciding to bring workers back to the office, employers should survey their employees to gauge their readiness and need to return, says Jim Durkin, founding partner of The Martec Group.

The office-worker survey, which polled a variety of employees from different socioeconomic and demographic groups, shows workers have vastly different experiences of working from home. And the large percentage of employees who find the experience less than optimal indicates telecommuting was less common before the pandemic than previously thought.

“Almost one-third of the sample we labeled as ‘trapped employees,’” says Durkin. “They have a lot of problems working from home and would benefit from being back in the office. Not only do they miss social interaction and structure, but they are also more likely to have issues with distractions, don’t have a good home-office setup, and technology is not that great.”

But employers also need to be aware of workplace guidelines before they attempt to bring employees back. Oregon’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) implemented temporary regulations last fall that employers need to adhere to until May 1. Clay Creps, partner at Tonkon Torp law firm, says the OSHA regulations will likely be extended beyond May 1.

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Those regulations stipulate employers need to carry out safety measures, such as physical distancing, contact tracing, mandatory mask wearing, proper sanitation and ventilation, among others.

Employers have quite a bit of leeway in requiring employees to return to the office. An employer, for example, can require that employees — with certain exceptions — are vaccinated before they return to work. Companies can terminate employees who refuse the vaccine if they do not have valid reasons such as a disability or religious beliefs.

Employers can also terminate employees who refuse to come back to the office if there is no regulatory prohibition on the return to work.

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Despite these freedoms, employers will likely face a more cautious workforce, which is more likely to complain to OSHA if they think their employer is violating the rules, says Creps. He expects an upsurge in complaints to the regulatory organization.

“With the return to work, many employees are choosing to resign rather than return because they don’t feel safe yet,” says Creps. “If an employee is forced to return, that is going to be an employee who is not happy being there. They will be hyper vigilant.”  

Before vaccines are widely distributed and infection rates drop to low levels, employers are advised to be more flexible over their requirements for returning to work. After all, they do not want to lose employees who are essential to operations.

“Most businesses I talk to are clearly opting for an optional return to work,” says Creps. 

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