Business

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County announced Valerie Sheares Ashby will serve as its new president starting Aug. 1, becoming the first female to fill this role at the university. Ashby, who currently serves as the dean of Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, received her appointment as UMBC’s sixth chief executive from the University System of Maryland Board of Regents. She will take over for Freeman A. Hrabowski III, who is retiring from the university after 30 years as president.

The next step in the Ever Forward saga is one that officials have wanted to avoid from the beginning: container removal. The 1,095-foot cargo ship has been stuck in the Chesapeake Bay off the coast of Pasadena since missing a turn March 13 and running aground in shallow waters. A week later, two clamshell dredges began digging up the mud that surrounded the ship’s hull and then twice last week, Tuesday and Wednesday, at least five tugboats pushed and pulled on the ship, hoping to free it. Those tries were unsuccessful.

Gaithersburg’s Adaptive Phage Therapeutics Inc. has raised another $20 million in funding, less than a year after securing nearly $41 million to advance its therapy for superbugs. The new funding brings the Series B total to $61 million, allowing the company to accelerate clinical trials for two programs: prosthetic joint infection and diabetic foot osteomyelitis, in which soft tissue infections can spread to the bone and require amputation.

The bulk of the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation’s work involves lending money to local businesses and helping them flourish. But, when the pandemic hit and federal and state money started funneling into the county, the quasi-governmental organization had an added mission: distributing funding to businesses most in need. AAEDC’s work delivering nearly $33 million in grants to businesses was critical in getting the county economy through the recession brought on by COVID-19 and keeping unemployment rates from skyrocketing, Anne Arundel County Executive Steuart Pittman said.

The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on Tuesday appointed Mark C. Hanson, the former head of the San Francisco Orchestra and a leader one musician described as “a giant in the industry,” as its next president and CEO. Hanson, 48, who already has lead two orchestras larger than the BSO, will begin his new job April 21. He succeeds Peter Kjome, who announced his resignation as the BSO’s president and CEO in the spring of 2021. His contract expired at the end of January.

Medical cannabis has grown into a $600-million-a-year industry in Maryland since the first pre-rolled joint was sold legally in 2017, but Black Baltimoreans are largely left out. Baltimore, which is 62% Black, has 10 dispensaries. Some are locally owned. Others are owned by multistate corporations. None have majority Black ownership. And only one dispensary is located in a Black neighborhood. Now, Maryland is poised to legalize adult-use cannabis, meaning more dispensaries, more jobs and more money.

Rebecca Alban Hoffberger is tied to the train tracks in the old-timey photograph used as an invitation to the American Visionary Art Museum’s gala last fall. A locomotive belching black smoke and emblazoned with the word “retirement” is barreling down the tracks. The train’s cowcatcher resembles a set of giant metal teeth, as if Hoffberger’s retirement from the American Visionary Art Museum, which she incorporated 33 years ago, threatens to chomp her to bits.