Last year, Lehigh Valley Style saluted its very first Influential Men of the Year: neighborhood leaders, businessmen and creative contributors to the community around us. But the work to make the Lehigh Valley a more dynamic and inclusive place continues, and there are many more stories to be told. Meet six men who are making a difference, in and out of the public eye.
Max Weintraub
President & CEO of the Allentown Art Museum
Max Weintraub can pinpoint the exact moment when he realized there was something special about the Allentown Art Museum. It was 2015, and Weintraub had braved a bus ride in a nasty snowstorm from his native New York City to attend the opening of an exhibition at the museum. “I thought the place would be empty but in fact the place was packed, and it was a raucous, wonderful evening,” he says. “That experience stuck with me.” That was his first time in the Lehigh Valley, but it certainly wouldn’t be his last. In 2020, he was named president and CEO of the art museum.
Weintraub has more than two decades of experience in both curatorial and educational aspects of museum operation. And, as someone who grew up running around the galleries of New York City, he has a keen understanding of the transformative role that art can play for an individual and for a community. The Allentown Art Museum, he says, has a permanent collection that “punches above its weight class” and world-class objects and treasures that belie a museum of its size, and one of his top priorities is making sure everyone has the opportunity to enjoy it. In August of last year, the museum announced it was doing away with admission fees for good, removing one of the major barriers keeping potential gallery-goers on the outside in Allentown, where, according to Weintraub, a quarter of families live below the poverty line.
Another challenge: keeping the museum relevant to the masses and making changes when necessary. During Weintraub’s tenure, the museum has secured a number of grants, including a $700,000 state grant announced in November that’s being used to make improvements to the historic Kress Gallery. Around the same time, the museum introduced “Sensory Saturdays,” when light and sound environments are tempered for a more inviting experience for those with sensory sensitivities. It’s another example of how the museum is constantly striving to meet the needs of the community. “That’s a nice little milestone for this museum and I love being a part of that,” Weintraub says.
Weintraub is married to Abby Reilly, who hails from Colorado. They have a daughter who visited the Allentown Art Museum several times before her first birthday. “Rembrandt is her favorite painting,” he says.
Michael Johnson
President of LeTip Lehigh Valley, co-owner of Lehigh Valley Legends
Michael Johnson is a busy guy, but ask him to find time for a community benefit or a speech in front of a group of impressionable young people, and he’s all in. Although he says he considers himself blessed in his career and business endeavors, true fulfillment comes from how he spends his time off the clock. “The one thing I’ve always wanted to do more was give back,” Johnson says.
Johnson and his younger brother were raised by a single mom who worked 16 hours a day to support the family in Evansville, Indiana. Life wasn’t always easy. “I had to work for everything I had,” he says. “My first job was when I was 13 years of age.” At 16, he joined the Army National Guard, where he learned how to strip and wax the barracks’ floors, a skill that would come in handy later.
A job with General Electric brought him to the Lehigh Valley nearly three decades ago, and he’s been here ever since. He left GE when they wanted him to relocate again, but by then he had a business of his own, recently rebranded as J&J Floor and Commercial Cleaning. He credits the marketing group LeTip with helping him grow his company over the years, and now he pays it forward as president of the local chapter, promoting diversity and inclusion among local businesspeople.
Johnson, who lives in Macungie with his wife, Jessica, is also eager to talk about the work he’s doing as co-owner of the Lehigh Valley Legends basketball team, which was formed in 2019, but more recently has been coming into its own. “Already we’re making an impact in the Valley, and that has me more excited than anything,” Johnson says. And that impact is being felt off the court; the team has spearheaded events for breast cancer awareness, Meals on Wheels and local schools, just to name a few.
The idea of being a role model is something Johnson takes very seriously, especially as the father to a 16-year-old daughter. But his message is one he hopes will resonate with all young people, or really anyone chasing success in the face of adversity. Says Johnson: “You don’t have to come from an influential family or come from money, because I didn’t.”
Tyrone Russell
Co-founder & CEO of Faces International
2022 was a big year for Tyrone Russell. It was the 10th anniversary of the founding of Faces International, the marketing, advertising and development company he co-founded. And, in November of last year, Faces was honored with the Lehigh Valley Chamber of Commerce’s Impact Award, which recognizes organizations that are driving positive impact in the communities they serve. “When we started, we said our goal is to always keep the community at the center of the work we do, and nothing has changed,” says Russell.
For Russell, a native of San Diego, California, his initial impression of the Lehigh Valley was not a love-at-first-sight situation. He was unsure if there was enough life left in what appeared to him to be an old steel town. And it probably didn’t help that, at the time of those early visits, he was an athlete from Colgate University, coming into town to take on rival Lehigh University. Ironically, it was a job with Lehigh that brought him to the region for good a few years later, and now Russell is all about the Valley.
Russell has a long history in diversity, equity and inclusion work. One of his jobs at Lehigh University was director of multicultural affairs. He also served as coordinator of racial and ethnic justice at Community Action Committee of the Lehigh Valley. As CEO of Faces International, he heads an organization that helps businesses see the importance of creating a workspace that is welcoming to all. One of the services Faces offers is bias training, which Russell says has exploded in popularity in recent years. “Back in the day you could say, ‘come to work, shut up and get the job done.’ Now people are like, ‘no, I want to come to a place that appreciates me and respects me, and I’ll work even harder.’”
Russell, who is married to his wife, Ingrid, and has three daughters (“I’m a girl dad,” he says proudly) also credits Faces’ co-owners—Kevin Greene, Darryl Addison and Brandon Morris—with the company’s ongoing success. Last year, Faces gave out $100,000 in grant money, including $50,000 to Allentown’s James Lawson Freedom School to boost its summer literacy program. And Russell expects that outreach to continue.
Westley Morris
Motivational speaker and Maxwell certified coach
Westley Morris probably shouldn’t be alive, let alone a successful business owner and family man. Morris says his childhood in the Lehigh Valley was plagued by adversity—divorce, drugs, violence, crime—and he started using drugs and alcohol as a coping mechanism when he was 12 years old. “I didn’t know how to process my emotions,” says Morris. Three years later, he had notched his first DUI before he was legally permitted to drive. More underage drinking offenses followed. By the time he was 19 years old, Morris had lost his driver’s license for 22 years. He hit rock bottom in the year 2011, when Morris says he was a heroin addict living on the streets of North Philadelphia, selling bottles of water for one dollar. “It was the lowest I’d ever been in my entire life.” Morris says. “An animalistic way of living.”
It took his mother finding him about to stick a needle in his arm for him to change his ways. “The pain in her eyes was more than I could handle,” Morris says. “And I dropped to my knees and I prayed like I’ve never prayed before in my life. It was the most humble prayer, and it was, ‘please God, help me.’” And so, Morris began to claw his way back from the brink. Eventually, he moved back to the Lehigh Valley to help manage his family’s business, Saucon Valley Massage Therapy in Hellertown. He was living in Allentown at the time and rode his bike eight miles back and forth every workday. According to Morris, he was able to grow the business over a thousand percent during the following five years.
Morris realizes now that changing his mindset was just as important as changing his physical surroundings in vanquishing the demons that were hot on his heels for so many years. “I never wanted to take a look in the accountability mirror,” says Morris. “Always wanting to blame everything else as to why my life was unsuccessful.” It’s one of the tenets of his mentoring philosophy, which he brings to schools, businesses and individuals as a motivational speaker and John Maxwell certified coach. He’s also husband to Daria, and father to an 11-year-old daughter.
Michael Fauerbach
Creator of Never Again Studio
It takes guts to pursue a personal passion. The Lehigh Valley is lucky that Michael Fauerbach is a gutsy guy. What started as a small business venture more than a decade ago has morphed into a multimedia enterprise that aims to give other entrepreneurs a place to grow their brands while also serving as a community resource.
To be clear, Fauerbach himself is uncomfortable in the spotlight. “I feel like it’s awkward for me to stand out sometimes. So, of course, I chose to create a TV show,” he jokes. The first incarnation of his “Never Again” brand was an apparel company he started about 14 years ago. Fauerbach says at the time he was 28 years old and newly sober. He began a podcast as a way to distract himself and promote his company. His early guests were friends and people he knew. But then Fauerbach began reaching out to the larger community. “I started realizing how many people I could help locally or just in general by giving them a platform to showcase their business,” he says. He’s given countless Lehigh Valley denizens a turn behind the mic, everyone from graphic artists to tattoo artists to plumbers to restaurant owners.
Now, back to the aforementioned TV show: yes, “Never Again” is still an apparel brand and a podcast. But it’s also turning into something bigger—a television studio, a pop-up kitchen and even a full-fledged restaurant based in Nazareth. Fauerbach says branching out gives him the freedom to cast a wide net. He’s learning as he goes and making connections along the way. “I have some really awesome people [helping me],” he says. “I wouldn’t have kept going this far if I didn’t have so many people believing in what I was doing.”
But there have been personal sacrifices and struggles as well, including the sudden death of a good friend, and his decision to walk away from a decade of strict sobriety for what he calls a more balanced life; meaning, he’s found that indulging in alcohol in moderation works for him. Running his company, he says, is therapeutic for him. He’s chasing down his dreams. And as “Never Again” continues to grow, Fauerbach is hoping to help others do the same.
Jason Sizemore
Co-Executive Director of the Pratyush Sinha Foundation
For Jason Sizemore, pursuing one passion didn’t mean letting another one gather cobwebs. Even after this longtime teacher-turned-principal decided to get serious about his vegan cooking and catering company, he found a way to keep one foot in the classroom.
Sizemore, a native of York County, moved to the Lehigh Valley with his husband about 20 years ago. He was with the Allentown School District for 16 years, including several years as principal of Muhlenberg Elementary School. It was then that he was introduced to the idea of bringing mindfulness into the school, via the Allentown-based Pratyush Sinha Foundation. “I never found something that so quickly helped every living being in the school—not just the kids, [but] every adult in every position,” Sizemore says. “It’s just such a powerful, comforting blanket over everything in such a stressful word.”
According to Sizemore, within a year, mindfulness was being taught in every Allentown elementary school. When he made the tough decision to leave a full-time career in education, he wanted the work with the foundation to continue. “I couldn’t let go of the mindfulness piece,” Sizemore says. “That’s always why I was in education, to support kids socially and emotionally.”
Sizemore served as the foundation’s program director before stepping into a larger role as co-executive director in 2023. He says their work with the Allentown School District allows them to reach some 7,400 students, as well as their families and teachers, every year. And those students, Sizemore says, have eagerly embraced the foundation’s teaching and techniques. “They all want to share. It’s so powerful to hear,” he says. The impact is evident in ways both big and small. Sizemore reports that a student told him she used one of the breathing techniques to keep calm during a shots-fired incident at the Lehigh Valley Mall in 2020.
Butterhead Kitchen, Sizemore’s vegan cooking enterprise, is what fills the rest of his plate. It’s named after the fur baby he shares with his husband, William Sanders. It offers interactive dinner parties, small-scale catering as well as some prepared foods for sale, like vegan meats and cheeses. “It just keeps growing,” Sizemore says.
About the Exhibit
Alteronce Gumby: Dark Matter
Using shards of tempered glass, gemstones, resins and other unconventional materials, artist Alteronce Gumby creates luminous paintings that operate at the intersection of abstraction and representation. The exhibition focuses on how Gumby’s faceted, mosaic-like compositions gesture toward more fundamental questions about identity, agency and marginalization.
Locals can explore Harrisburg native Alteronce Gumby’s Dark Matter exhibition at the Allentown Art Museum through April 9, 2023.
Published as "Lehigh Valley Style's 2023 Influential Men of the Year" in the February 2023 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
