Meet Chuck Keiper

A Leader We Count On

In the early 1980s Chuck was a co-founder and vice president of the Ravenna Development Corporation. Chuck helped move Portage County from a community that received very little federal and state grant monies to a flagship community setting the curve on innovative and successful community development programming. Along the way Portage County communities and programs received millions of dollars they might not have otherwise received.

This background spurred Chuck to earn a Master’s Degree in Business Administration from Kent State University. One of his first professional accomplishments was writing the actual grants and loans for the Garrettsville Boardwalk. He was awarded status as an Economic Development Finance Professional from the National Development Council.

And during all that time he worked. He wrote small business start up grants, worked on numerous downtown revitalization projects, authored homeownership and home repair programs, gathered up federal and state monies for crime prevention, senior centers, parks, sewer and water plants, business expansions, and others too numerous to count. Day after day Portage County was making progress and day after day Chuck Keiper was becoming an important reason why.

In the late 1980s Chuck focused his impressive skills on issues affecting senior citizens when he went to work for the Area Agency on Aging (serving Portage, Summit, Stark and Wayne counties). He was part of a team dedicated to creating, funding and helping seniors access numerous healthcare support systems.

Many programs he helped create or improve, such as Care Coordination and PASSPORT, are still considered models in the senior healthcare industry and are still providing area seniors with the ability to stay in their own homes and out of nursing homes. Chuck learned about the day to day challenges facing so many of our seniors and he also learned that many of our problems are best dealt with on a regional basis, a philosophy he has become well known for within our region.

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