YSU Williamson College to Honor 4 Outstanding Alumni

YOUNGSTOWN – Four alumni of the Warren P. Williamson College of Business Administration will be honored Oct. 14 at a reception in Williamson Hall on the Youngstown State University campus.

This year’s Outstanding Alumni Award honorees are Sue Stricklin, BSBA (1984), senior vice president of marketing at Simon Roofing; Henry Gomez, BA (2003), senior politics reporter at NBC News; Eric Pittman, MBA (2021), program division director at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration; and Corey Patrick, BSBA (2016), director of entrepreneurial services program at the Youngstown Business Incubator.

Throughout her long career, Stricklin has worked for two local companies – the former Home Savings and Simon Roofing – where she built marketing departments from the ground up at both. Stricklin maintains a high level of involvement within the non-profit sector and community organizations, serving on many local boards of directors. She held the position of board president at both Goodwill Industries and Potential Development School for Students with Autism, where she currently serves as chair of the board.

Gomez’ campaign coverage is featured across NBC’s online and TV platforms. He previously was a political reporter at BuzzFeed News. Gomez got his start in journalism at The Jambar, where he served as editor-in-chief, and at the Tribune-Chronicle in Warren. His later work at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland won awards for exposing corruption and dysfunction in local government. He serves as an adviser to the Ohio Local News Initiative, a nonprofit newsroom startup debuting in Cleveland this year.

Pittman received his undergraduate degree in Pharmacy and Radiation Physics from Purdue University. He started his career as an investigator for the US FDA. and was the lead investigator on the largest mass seizure of food stuffs in addition to having multiple other large civil and criminal actions. Pittman won the FDA Supervisor of the Year in 2010 and later became the director of the new Food and Feed Program Operations Branch. In 2015, he was named director for the Division of Food and Feed Program Operations and Inspections, overseeing both foreign and domestic food inspections. In 2018 he became a program division director for Bioresearch Monitoring. He is the delegate to the OECD in Paris, where he works with governments around the world to harmonize good laboratory practices and support mutual acceptance of data..

Finally, Patrick joined YBI in 2016 as one of the inaugural Monus Entrepreneurship Fellow, and eventually joined YBI full time. He currently splits time between Youngstown and Indianapolis, leading YBI’s signature program, the EVOLVE Technology Entrepreneurship Program, along with Decorate, an upscale home decor boutique in downtown Indianapolis. Patrick serves locally on the board and as president of The Walnut Grove in Canfield, is an adviser of the St. Joseph’s Church “Celebrate” Program, is the director of marketing for the Sigma Tau Gamma Fraternity – Beta Gamma Chapter Alumni Association, and is a content creator for the Cleveland Plus block. He also maintains Cube Digital, his own digital marketing company.

The reception begins at 6 p.m. with awards at 7 p.m. Reservations can be made at http://www.ysu.edu/alumnireservation with a cost of $50.

The 2022 Outstanding Alumni Awards are sponsored by 898 Marketing; HD Davis CPAs, LLC; PNC Bank; Simon Roofing; Dr. Ronald and Judity Volpe; YBI; Payroll Pros, LLC; SSB CPAs; Stifel; Jocelyne Kollay Linsalata; Sherman Creative Promotions; and Hunter-Stevens Land Title Agency LTD.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.