MANCHESTER — In April, Howard Brodsky will be celebrated as the Greater Manchester Chamber or Commerce’s 2024 Citizen of the Year for his lifelong devotion to business leadership and making a better world.
It’s a tall order, but Brodsky continues to embrace it.
Last year, he was invited to speak at the United Nations.
In 2019, he received the Roachdale Award, chosen from a field of roughly a billion members of an international alliance of cooperatives. He was the first American to receive that honor.
Today he acts as a speaker, mentor, role model and cheerleader. And his secret may sound surprising.
“I use the word ‘love’ a lot. People don’t talk about love in business, but I do,” Brodsky said. “I process things in my head but make decisions in my heart.”
Brodsky plunged into the business world when his father, a Ukrainian refugee who started Dean’s Carpet on Elm Street, died after Brodsky turned 13. The loss defined his future.
Today Brodsky’s family consists of friends, relatives, employees, and 4,000 or so North American members of CCA Global Partners, the company he co-founded in 1984. Carpet Cooperative of America or CCA, brings advantages of scale to family enterprises and individual small businesses, including homeless shelters and child care centers.
It’s been a journey of inclusion.
Now a $14 billion company, CCA Global is the second-largest privately held company in New Hampshire and the 14th-largest cooperative in the world, embracing sectors including retail, child care, sporting goods and lighting. Its CCA for Social Good online platform operates in 33 states. Its child care business serves more than 30,000 kids in New Hampshire and close to 2 million nationwide.
Brodsky is not just a hometown boy who did well — he’s a resounding success for doing good. His achievements are breeding leadership, enterprise and empowerment in others. Roughly 90% of American businesses are family-owned, he said.
“It’s incredibly gratifying to hear our members say, ‘I wouldn’t have the life I have without you,” Brodsky said. “I felt strongly about family businesses and their meaning for America and that we don’t have a just and equal society and business should be a force for good.”
An industrial psychologist once told him, “You won’t be satisfied unless your social values align with your business values.”
“You give local businesses the same scale as a national or multinational company and they can compete every day of the week,” he said. “It’s a cooperative model that many people don’t understand.” The goal is to help family businesses grow and prosper. “We’re the great equalizer.”
Brodsky seems simultaneously busy and relaxed while in his office at the Millyard’s Jefferson Mill, with a sweeping view of the Amoskeag River rapids. The scene is invigorating, rhythmic, timeless. Behind his desk hangs a landscape of Swiss mountains with a meandering stream and an elegant bird — a gift from his son, Jeff, a journalist and oral historian who died at age 49. Together with the Nackey S. Loeb School of Communications they created the Brodsky Prize at Central High School, which awards $5,000 annually to a star New Hampshire high school student pursuing a career in journalism.
There is nothing in Brodsky’s office that doesn’t have meaning, including the framed quotes on the wall. In one, Albert Einstein extols imagination over knowhow. Another, part-meditation and part-exhortation from a poem by Max Ehrmann, implies something new each time Brodsky looks:
“Whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul ... it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.”
Brodsky’s enterprise goes way beyond the office. He’s been active for decades in Big Brothers Big Sisters of New Hampshire. And although he’s aged out of the companionship program he stays in touch with a former “little.”
He’s a benefactor to Pine Haven, a residential facility for boys with behavioral, educational or emotional difficulties. His recent venture, the nonprofit Open Arts United, brings the arts to underrepresented communities and underprivileged youth.
He is constantly thinking of new ideas, including at night, and will write them down in the morning. Next on his list: a cooperative for people who are aging at home.
“Community is so important,” Brodsky said. “People are lonely today. Relationships are critical. We’ve built communities in our city and they are the heart and soul of who we are.”
The award from the Chamber of Commerce is not static recognition. For Brodsky, the ongoing satisfaction trickles and flows from finding his life’s work and pouring his soul into it — which adds up to a life well-lived.
“My personal success comes from changing people’s lives,” he said. “That’s what gets me up every morning. That’s what makes me feel rewarded.”
