Business

Ben Jealous will become the Sierra Club’s first executive director of color in January, the grassroots environmental organization announced Monday. Jealous, the former president of the NAACP, was the Democratic nominee for Maryland governor in 2018. Since 2020, he has served as the president of People for the American Way.

Three organizations serving Marylanders received a collective $1 million from SECU MD Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the state’s largest-state chartered credit union announced at an event Thursday. Morgan State University, Sinai Hospital of Baltimore and the Maryland Food Bank will receive community impact grants over five years in memory of Donald Tynes Sr., SECU’s longest-serving board member.

Raising Cane’s, a Plano, Texas-fast casual chicken finger chain, Monday announced it will add more than 250 jobs in Maryland with the opening of two locations in March 2023. The chicken chain will open in Gambrills at 1070 MD-3 North as its second location in Maryland, joining its inaugural site in Towson, opening later this year. Later in March, the chain will open another restaurant in Westminster at 400 Englar Road.

Maryland Gov.-elect Wes Moore has stepped down from the Under Armour Inc. board. The Baltimore sportswear company announced late Friday that Moore resigned from the board effective immediately following his election win earlier this week. Moore had previously told the Baltimore Banner that if he was elected he would resign from corporate boards and put his business investments into a blind trust. With Moore’s victory over Republican Dan Cox in the general election Tuesday, Moore, who has significant business holdings, has started to make good on his promise. Moore, the former founder and CEO of the Robin Hood Foundation and a best-selling author, joined Under Armour’s board in October 2020. During his time on the board, he served as a member of the corporate governance and sustainability committee.

Phillip Slaughter left the Army after 18 years and found a job similar to one he had in uniform: behind the wheel of a truck. Instead of towing food and bullets through war zones, he hauled packages for FedEx. It wasn’t what he wanted to do. The work aggravated his post-traumatic stress disorder. It would be three years and several jobs before he landed his ideal position as a sourcing recruiter for a tech company. “I think it’s the first job that I’ve worked 10 consecutive months without quitting,” said Slaughter, 41, who lives in Clarksville, Tennessee. Slaughter is a U.S. military veteran who found a job he loves at a time when the nation is experiencing some of its lowest monthly veteran unemployment on record.

Ji Hye Kim launched her Korean restaurant Miss Kim, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, six years ago and decided not to use tips, instead offering a higher minimum wage of $14 per hour. She had felt that the tipped minimum wage was unfair and hadn’t moved upward for decades; federal “tipped minimum wage” has remained at $2.13 an hour since 1991. As someone who had worked for tips, Kim knew that any work that took away from serving tables cut into how much she made. Meanwhile, workers who worked in the kitchen had to work for the same amount on busy nights when servers netted more, despite all the workers being just as productive, she added. It was also hard to take tips and then switch to a system without them, she said.