Meet Lebanon County's most influential business leaders for 2023

The Lebanon Daily News sought to highlight local business leaders who have a big impact in the county. You won't agree with every pick, and that's to be expected. We consciously made some unexpected choices to highlight some emerging community leaders rather than household names.

These lists are in no way comprehensive. We encourage debate and feedback!

Methodology: We crowd-sourced potential nominees and asked community members for their suggestions. We then undertook the daunting task of narrowing each list down to the top eight.

Guadalupe Barba and Sergio Uraga

When Guadalupe Barba and her husband Sergio Uraga came to the Lebanon area, they wanted to bring Mexican culture into the city. Since opening La Placita de Lebanon as a grocery store 18 years ago, the business has slowly grown into a restaurant that produces fresh, authentic dishes for customers.

Now located at 922 Cumberland St., Barba said their business remains a success because of both the flavors they provide and the people who continue to come back with others to enjoy their food.

"I think it's a place to stay together," Barba said. "The people talk with other friends. It's usually the people between tables know each other and they talk."

Mexico consists of 32 states, and the flavors and ingredients tend to differ from state to state. Barba said on the north side people eat more flour tortillas, and on the south side of Mexico people tend to eat more corn tortillas. The goal is to offer as many of those flavor varieties that they can tor residents.

Residents can come multiple times a week for lunch at La Placita de Lebanon, and Uraga said it's because of the authentic flavors and ingredients of a Mexican home-cooked meal.

"You have a couple Mexican restaurants close to here, and it's good, but the people feel the taste for homemade food," Uraga said.

The second floor of the Cumberland Street restaurant is used as a community center for outreach for the Lebanon Hispanic community. Called Juntos de Lebanon, the organization has provided residents everything from reading lessons to COVID-19 vaccine shots during the height of the pandemic.

"We try to get involved in our community because we need to support each other," Barba said. "We know different businesses here, we know different owners ... it's to share the information that we have."

The owners of La Placita de Lebanon said they owe their continued success for the past 18 years to the community, which they hope to continue to serve for many years to come.

"To keep a business for many years is difficult," Uraga said. "We are here because of the customers' support. We have really good customers, and we try to give them the best service possible."

Kasey Daley

It's been almost a year since Kasey Daley and her fiancée Ratha San opened the doors of City Watch Coffee.

"It's just always been a dream to be able to be a part of something bigger than working for someone else." she said. "Not that there's anything wrong with that, but we just wanted to bring something for the community."

The 1501 East Cumberland St. coffee shop provides a variety of drinks that include lattes, frappes, cappuccinos, Boba Teas and, of course, coffee. The shop also provides a variety of sandwiches for breakfast and lunch, along with their own City Watch brand of coffee.

Daley said City Watch Coffee was created to be "a place for the family," where parents getting their coffee run could also have a choice of drinks for their kids.

"I feel like our place is more relaxed," she said. "You don't have to be in a rush here. You don't have to walk in the door and know exactly what you want. We can help you with that."

Prior to being a small business owner, Daley was a shy and reserved person, something she says one cannot be when opening a business. Behind the scenes, she is wearing multiple hats to make her business a success.

"I'm the business owner, but I'm still here over 40 hours a week," she said. "I'm still placing orders, picking up orders, doing social media. I'm my own marketer. ... So I've learned to take things as they come."

Daley said it's a good feeling to bring something like City Watch to the community. But she's learned that if something goes wrong, it does not have to be the end of the world.

"You can't give up," she said. "One bad day, one bad week, it doesn't determine the future of your business."

Jonathan Byler

Jonathan Byler, CEO of Byler Holdings, deals in golf course management, construction materials, entertainment and real estate development in Pennsylvania, Maryland and Delaware.

In 2014, when Byler Holdings was officially formed as the management group combining family and partnered businesses, Lebanon was chosen as its headquarters because of existing golf projects and is now the largest concentration of its businesses.

Byler said that Lebanon is a great place for opportunity and, considering its rapid growth, he sees a lot of opportunity to bring new things to Lebanon that haven't been developed as quickly as in other areas of the state.

In Lebanon County, Byler Holdings operates three golf courses, a concrete plant and is actively developing the 450-acre project Cornwall Properties and the 150-acre the mixed use project, North Cornwall Commons.

Both of those projects will continue to be developed for the next 10 to 15 or more years, Byler said, with and interested focus on bringing walkable, desirable, mixed-use areas to Lebanon County.

While that style of development is something that Byler sees as new to the county, he believes it's something that people are looking for.

"Certainly, we want to be good developers and good neighbors and do things that are hopefully a benefit to the county," Byler said.

Joshua Spaulding

Spaulding Sole Savers originally began as a paratransit service before the Pandemic hit it's peak in 2020. Founder Joshua Spaulding had a repair that he was unable to fix because of lack of funds.

"At that moment, I had to make a decision if we were going to keep driving or if we were going to do more," he said. "That's when it hit me, it's time to start tapping in and doing all of the things that I have in mind of who I am and why."

Spaulding Sole Savers 2.0, as Joshua calls it, provides wellness coaching for Lebanon residents. The company provides sports performance and body building training and calisthenics sessions for residents.

"We're in the gym two days a week right now with our clients," Spaulding said. "We're at the playground every Friday at 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. training high school and middle school kids to be better basketball players. But more importantly, to be better people."

The organization also provides wellness speaking engagements and local outreach for the Lebanon city community.

Sole Savers just held its third annual Back to School block party, providing basketball tournaments and hair cuts for students. In June, members worked with 30 Lebanon School District students to organize a ride out around the city in response to a triple homicide that occurred in May.

"We work with children, preventing them from entering the system," he said. "Children who are in the streets, getting in trouble ... we're working with them firsthand."

Spaulding has worked on events with WellSpan, UPMC, Summit Health, SARCC and the South 6th Street playground organizers. Spaulding is also a member of the Lebanon School District board of directors.

"We have a lot planned for 2024," he said. "We have new partnerships coming. The narrative has changed, but remember it's always a sole saving day."

Rafael & Maribel Torres

Rafael and Maribel Torres, founders of the WEPA Empowerment Center, have been working to build their nonprofit since 2018. In mid-August, they officially opened the first phase of their 9th Street location at the former Elks Building.

A non-profit organization, WEPA helps not only to train, but to place community members into local businesses, having a direct impact on Lebanon's business community as a whole.

The center, which currently offers employment services, will evolve into a place where community members can come for resources of all kinds, including English language education, GED preparation, financial literacy and jobs training for all kinds of work.

While their building and dreams are large, the couple started their journey with the simple goal of bettering their community.

Coming home from her former job as a family involvement social worker at Lebanon School District, Maribel would vent to Rafael about the problems that community had, about how those from all walks of life were facing the same issues.

"I would do home visits. I could see where our students lived and how our families were struggling," she said.

Eventually, venting wasn’t enough, and the two started to put their heads together on what they could do to contribute to the community.

In 2020, the two officially formed a nonprofit organization and began to look for resources to get their own physical location, leading to what today the empowerment center.

Their overall goal with the center is to see that every community member, as well as the community at large, can become the best version of themselves.

Part of building what they have now involved also legitimizing themselves with the community. Continued promises of help from other organizations had eroded the trust the community had for nonprofits, especially in the Spanish-speaking community, Maribel said.

“There were already two strikes against us. So, we had to prove that yes, we are here,” Maribel said. “We are going to see this thing through, with a lot of help. Thank God we were able to open our doors. When people saw when we said we were going to do something and it got done, that trust was rebuilt.”

As the organization continues to meet its goals and the word of their offerings begins to spread, Rafael hopes that other organizations will begin to take note of what they're doing and follow suit.

Austin Wagoner

The fourth generation owner of Seltzer's Meats, Austin Wagoner took over the business from his uncle at the end of 2019 after spending several years in the finance world at JP Morgan.

After his uncle made the announcement that he was planning to retire, Austin decided to give it a shot for two years to see how he and his family, moving back to Pennsylvania, liked it.

Accounting for seasonality, Seltzer's employs 70-75 people, some of whom have been with the company for multiple generations of owners, or are children and grandchildren of previous employees.

"Six months in and I was just, I was fulfilled like I hadn't been in years," he said. "I just had a fire inside of me that I forgotten that I had."

Since taking over the family business, Wagoner has been committed to maintaining the 121 year legacy of Seltzer's Smokehouse meats, while taking the company into its next steps so it can be around for another four generations.

But Seltzer's commitment to the community goes beyond keeping the Lebanon legacy brand in business and being a good employer.

Donating a bologna for Lebanon City's annual new years' eve Bologna drop, providing thousands of slices of bologna for the largest ever Lebanon Bologna Sandwich, as well as working with local nonprofits like Lebanon County Christian Ministries, Wagoner believes that taking care of the community that has supported the business, is just as important as carrying the legacy of Seltzer's.

"About 80% of our volume is sold within 100 miles of here. Even though we're a nationwide distribution business, you know we're in all 48 continental states, it's very regional. It is very regional, so for us, we want to make sure we're doing good in our own backyard."

This article originally appeared on Lebanon Daily News: Meet Lebanon County Pa.'s 2023 most influential business leaders