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I have recently been connected to people who were interested in how U.S. states spend their money on Medicaid. Medicaid is a state and federally funded program that is administered by the states in accordance with U.S. federal guidelines, and as such is an important – and expensive – program for the well-being of citizens. Medicaid is a small part of the healthcare ecosystem and a rapidly growing part of the operations research (O.R.) and analytics practice. Practically every issue of this magazine, as well as its companion – OR/MS Today – includes articles on healthcare. Specifically, Medicaid “…provides health coverage to millions of Americans, including eligible low-income adults, children, pregnant women, elderly adults and people with disabilities. Medicaid is administered by states, according to federal requirements. The program is funded jointly by states and the federal government” [1]. As we frequently recall, this is the five-minute analyst, not the five-year dissertation, and it is important to scope an issue to have an interesting discussion in approximately 700 words. In that spirit, we are asking one question: Do states achieve advantages via “economies of scale”? A priori, we would think that larger states would have lower per capita spending. Let’s explore that assumption. We use data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (www.kff.org) retrieved Feb. 15, 2018. This data does not include administrative costs of the program, which can be significant but are more difficult to quantify for a variety of reasons. In any event, they are not easily distilled from Internet searches [2]. Our expectation is that states with a larger number of enrollees should have lower costs than states with fewer enrollees because of economies of scale. After obtaining the data, we plot it as shown in Figure 1. Figure 1: Enrollment vs. total spending, both scaled by millions. Smoothing is done via LOESS as implemented in r ggplot2::geom_smooth(). This plot leads us to believe that there is a linear relationship between the number of enrollees and the total costs. Applying ordinary linear regression, we see that this is indeed the case, with more than 96 percent of the total variability in a state’s expenditure explained by the number of enrollees, and each enrollee costing approximately $7,300 per year (p-value is zero). There is substantial variation within the states; for example, the most expensive state on a per-enrollee basis is Minnesota, which pays $10,600 per recipient. The least expensive state is Florida, which pays $5,033 per recipient. In general, there is not a strong trend between the number of enrollees and the per capita cost, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2: Per-enrollee cost for Medicaid as a function of the number of enrollees by state. The outlier to the right in both this and the previous chart is the state of California, which has nearly twice as many enrollees (12 million) as the next closest state, New York (6 million). Beyond considering the cost per enrollee, we can also think about the cost per citizen, which changes the calculus significantly, as shown in Figure 3. Figure 3: Per capita (total) expenditure on Medicaid. California, with the largest expenditure and most enrollees, diffuses its costs over a large population; Washington, D.C., has the highest per capita costs. Utah has the lowest per capita costs. Population data from the U.S. Census Bureau (https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2017/demo/popest/state-total.html#tables). Finally, we address one (of potentially many) confounding variables: the so-called “Medicaid expansion.” As part of the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid has been made open in some states to those at 128 percent of the federal poverty level [3]. To understand the impact of this change in policy, we color code the bar chart and order the bars to be descending. The resulting chart is shown in Figure 4. Figure 4: Per capita costs of Medicaid broken out by those states that have adopted expanded Medicaid (“Adopted”) vs. those that have not. This chart suggests a difference in per capita spending – as we would expect – between the two programs. In conclusion, we hoped that we have piqued some of our fellow practitioners’ interest at the intersection of policy, data and healthcare. Medicaid, like all health programs, is important because it directly impacts the lives, livelihoods and well-being of people in every state. Harrison Schramm (Harrison.schramm@gmail.com), CAP, PStat, is a principal operations research analyst at CANA Advisors, LLC, and a member of INFORMS. The author would like to thank Verbus Counts who first introduced him to this topic. References & Notes https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/index.html These are, of course, Internet searches done by me. If you find the data and are the first person to send it to me, I’ll owe you a Coke. https://www.kff.org/health-reform/state-indicator/state-activity-around-expanding-medicaid-under-the-affordable-care-act #data #healthcare #medicade #states #spending #medicare #federal #HarrisonSchramm

It is with great fondness and respect we say farewell and congratulations to an amazing CANA team member. Bill Vinyard, a Principal Operations Research Analyst with CANA Advisors since 2014, is retiring. Bill has been with CANA for just over four years after a career that spanned 32 years with the Federal government and included 25 years on active military duty with the Marine Corps. Bill joined CANA in June of 2014, and after initially supporting research for a prepositioning exercise cost estimation model, Bill became the lead operations research analyst on the USMC Enterprise Ground Equipment Management Group (EGEM) program - supporting the USMC EGEM Fusion Center. Bill’s data expertise, in-depth knowledge of USMC logistics, and operations analysis talent that he applied in support of the EGEM program required him to use this full "tool set" that he developed and honed over his career. Bill’s persistent efforts, hard work, and press to consistently provide quality answers using the best data and quantitative analysis continued to bolster his already stellar reputation as the "go to” analyst within the USMC logistics community. Bill’s passion to use the myriad data sources available to the USMC, to use the right data for the analysis problem, and high attention to developing robust analysis led to many cases where new information was provided to all levels of the USMC community including the Commandant of the Marine Corps and the Marine Requirements Oversight Council (three-star level board). Bill and his wife of over thirty years will be busy keeping track of their growing tribe throughout their retirement - their extended family of children and grandchildren. Further, true to his OR roots, Bill plans to focus on developing open source operations research methods-based tools for analysts to use within different operating environments. Bill has had an amazing career. His passion for data, analytics, the Marine Corps, and doing analysis the right way has been the hallmark of his career. We have been truly blessed having Bill as part of our CANA Team, and we know that we will stay connected with Bill both professionally and personally throughout his retirement years. We wish Bill and his wife “fair winds and following seas.” ~ Team CANA Sea Fever BY JOHN MASEFIELD I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky, And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by; And the wheel’s kick and the wind’s song and the white sail’s shaking, And a grey mist on the sea’s face, and a grey dawn breaking. I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying. I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life, To the gull’s way and the whale’s way where the wind’s like a whetted knife; And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover, And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick’s over. #BillVinyard #CANAAdvisors #USMC #EGEM

On April 9th CANA Advisors held part two of our webinar series on Working Virtually. Part two is an interactive panel discussion on working remotely. We’ll be joined by several of our partners and clients for an exciting discussion on collaborative remote work. Over the past few weeks, most organizations have made the switch to working from home, a major transition for many employees. Our inboxes and news feeds have been flooded with articles on how to master the world of remote work. As an organization that was built to operate remotely and has been operating in this context for over twelve years, CANA Advisors is no stranger to the world of working “virtually” as we like to say. Building a vibrant, virtual professional community is more important than ever before. We want to hear about your experience working remotely and answer any questions you may have. If you would like to attend the webinar you can sign up here DID YOU MISS ANY OF THE LIVE WORKING VIRTUALLY WEBINARS? Don't worry if you missed any of our Working Virtually series you can watch them all here: https://www.canallc.com/working-virtually-series or listen to the podcast versions of any of the webinar here: https://www.canallc.com/podcast JOIN THE ONGOING CONVERSATION Building a vibrant, virtual professional community is more important than ever before. We want to hear about your experience working remotely and answer any questions you may have. Join in the conversation now on the CANA Connect Forum. #teamCANA #workingfromhome #workingvirtual #virtualoffice #onlinemeeting #CANAwebinars

Over the past few weeks, most organizations have made the switch to working from home, a major transition for many employees. Our inboxes and news feeds have been flooded with articles on how to master the world of remote work. As an organization that was built to operate remotely and has been operating in this context for over twelve years, CANA Advisors is no stranger to the world of working “virtually” as we like to say. On April 2nd, CANA Advisors invites you to join us for part one of our webinar series on Working Virtually. During the webinar CANA team members will talk about maintaining a remote culture, the tools and techniques for successful execution, and how we put it all together in practice. Building a vibrant, virtual professional community is more important than ever before. We want to hear about your experience working remotely and answer any questions you may have. If you would like to watch the recorded version of this Webinar you can catch it at https://www.canallc.com/working-virtually-series or listen to the podcast version at https://www.canallc.com/podcast STAY ENGAGED WITH CANA And while you are at it why not sign up for our CANA Connection Newsletter, or maybe join our new CANA Connection Community forum to carry on the conversation. #teamCANA #workingfromhome #workingvirtual #virtualoffice #onlinemeeting #CANAwebinars

Team CANA's Chief Analytics Officer and Senior Vice President of Analytics Operations, Norm Reitter, was present on the fantastic INFORMS podcast -"Resoundingly Human"- this week. Norm was featured in an interview called,"Helping businesses up their O.R. and analytics game, featuring Norman Reitter" during the podcast. ...Organizations around the world, big and small, in nearly every industry, are implementing operations research and analytics to improve their business operations. But how can an organization tell how well it is using O.R. and analytics? With the INFORMS Analytics Maturity Model!... To listen to the interview in its entirety follow this link https://pubsonline.informs.org/do/10.1287/orms.2019.05.25p/full/ If you would like to catch up on all the various news, articles and podcasts INFORMS has to offer head over to their ORMS Today website. The INFORMS team does a great job of turning around their podcasts very quickly for posting on their site, and the entire archive of the ORMS Today podcasts can be found over at https://pubsonline.informs.org/magazine/orms-today/podcasts. If you are interested in having a member of Team CANA talk on one of your podcasts or are looking for expert insight into the worlds of big data, analytics, logistics or operations feel free to contact us at ecranston@canallc.com To learn more about the Analytics Capability Evaluation program, contact Norm Reitter at nreitter@canallc.com #informs #resoundinglyhuman #podcast #analytics #OperationsResearch #NormReitter

CANA Advisors is unique in many ways. Two of them are the variety of exciting analytics application areas and the focus on collaborating with the broader analytics community. The 2019 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, WA, from October 20-22 provides an excellent venue for CANA to showcase these qualities. Monday, October 21 Track: SpORts Session: MB-69 Location: S-Seneca CANA's Director of Analytics Capabilities, Walt DeGrange, is presenting "Does Sports Analytics Work: Part Three." This multi-year analysis uses machine learning, k-means clustering, to answer the question of if analytics is making a difference in the four professional major sports leagues in the United States. The big announcement this year is that this effort is going open source. Tuesday, October 22 Track: Data Mining Session: TA34 Location: CC-Room 603 CANA analyst Jerome Dixon briefing his Ph.D. research in a presentation titled "Predicting Bone Marrow Transplant Clinic Staffing Requirements from Historical Patient Data." Track: Developing Analytics Talent and Culture Session: TA10 Location: CC-Room 213 "Using the INFORMS Analytics Capability Evaluation (ACE) to Support Organizational Change and Improvements." This brief presents CANA's Senior Vice President Analytics Operations and Chief Analytics Officer Norm Reitter's vision for increasing the use of the ACE. The session also uses examples of how organizations have used the ACE to shape their analytical capabilities. The presentation also reviews CANA ACE results performed over the past five years at a variety of government, commercial, and professional sports organizations. Wednesday, October 23 Track: Military and Security Session: WB-31 Location: CC-Room 6B Walt will present, "Why Won't They Use My Model? Difficulties in Implementing Optimal Scheduling Models." The presentation is an overview of a chapter of a book being released in March (Handbook of Military and Defense Operations Research). This brief reflects on why math and modeling are much easier than the implementation of a model. Even if the model saves hours a day and millions of dollars a year. If you are planning on attending the 2019 INFORMS Annual Meeting in Seattle, and want to learn how CANA is collaborating and sharing, then plan on attending one of our presentations. We will also be sharing our conference experiences through social media. We look forward to seeing you in person or engaging online! #INFORMS #analytics #CANAACE #sports #OperationsResearch #meeting

Members of CANA Advisors will be at the upcoming MORS Emerging Techniques Forum (ETF) in force. CANA will have a booth set up if you want to visit us and find out more about CANA Advisors. In addition to learning about many new emerging techniques, CANA team members will also be helping to judge the inaugural Eugene P. Visco Prize and participating in a 90-minute brainstorming session at the ETF with the goal of identifying emerging techniques addressing challenge areas for Modeling Complex Warfare (MCW) and new ways of thinking about modeling the problem set. For more information on the MORS Emerging Techniques Fourm click here. #TEAMCANA #MORSETF2019

Director of Analytics Capabilities at CANA Advisors, Walt DeGrange recently wrote a chapter for the upcoming, "HANDBOOK OF MILITARY AND DEFENSE OPERATIONS RESEARCH" dealing with change management and implementing optimal scheduling models called “Why Won’t They Use Our Model?” in PART 2: SOFT SKILLS AND CLIENT RELATIONS. For those interested in Military and Defense Operations Research or just OR in general, here is a list of what you will find in the pages of the upcoming book... HANDBOOK OF MILITARY AND DEFENSE OPERATIONS RESEARCH edited byNatalie M. Scala & James P. Howard II TABLE OF CONTENTS PART 1: APPROACHES 1. “Modern Data Analytics for the Military Operations Researcher” Raymond R. Hill, Air Force Institute of Technology 2. “Microsoft Excel: The Universal Tool of Analysis” Joseph M. Lindquist, United States Military Academy Charles A. Sulewski, United States Military Academy 3. “Military Decision Analysis” Roger Chapman Burk, United States Military Academy 4. “Military Workforce Planning and Manpower Modeling” Nathaniel D. Bastian, United States Military Academy Andrew O. Hall, United States Military Academy 5. “Military Assessments” Lynette Arnhart, United States Army (Retired) Marvin King, United States Army 6. “Threatcasting in a Military Setting” Natalie Vanatta, United States Military Academy Brian David Johnson, Arizona State University 7. “Analytical Modeling of Stochastic Systems” Roger Chapman Burk, United States Military Academy 8. “Modern Methods for Characterization of Social Networks Through Network Models” Christine M. Schubert Kabban, Air Force Institute of Technology Fairul Mohd-Zaid, Air Force Research Laboratory Richard F. Deckro, Air Force Institute of Technology 9. “Process Optimization Through Structured Problem Solving” David M. Bernacki, United States Air Force Robert E. Hamm, Jr., United States Air Force Hung-da Wan, University of Texas at San Antonio 10. “Simulation Optimization” Shane N. Hall, OptTek Systems, Inc. Brian M. Wade, United States Army Training and Doctrine Analysis Center – Monterey Benjamin G. Thengvall, OptTek Systems, Inc. 11. “Analytical Test Planning for Defense Acquisitions” Darryl K. Ahner, Office of the Secretary of Defense Scientific Test and Analysis Techniques Center of Excellence Gina Sigler, Office of the Secretary of Defense Scientific Test and Analysis Techniques Center of Excellence PART 2: SOFT SKILLS AND CLIENT RELATIONS 12. “Why Won’t They Use Our Model?” Walt DeGrange, CANA Advisors Wilson L. Price, Université Laval 13. “From BOGSAT to Turbo Teams” F. Freeman Marvin, Innovative Decisions, Inc. PART 3: APPLICATIONS 14. “A Model for and Inventory of Cybersecurity Values: Metrics and Best Practices” Natalie M. Scala, Towson University Paul L. Goethals, United States Military Academy 15. “Applying Information Theory to Validate Commanders’ Critical Information Requirements” Mark A. C. Timms, Department of National Defence, Canada David R. Mandel, Defence Research and Development Canada Jonathan D. Nelson, University of Surrey 16. “Modeling and Inferencing of Activity Profiles of Terrorist Groups” Vasanthan Raghavan, Qualcomm, Inc. 17. “Expert COSYSMO Systems Engineering Cost Model and Risk Advisor” Raymond Madachy, Naval Postgraduate School Ricardo Valerdi, University of Arizona PART 4: PERSPECTIVES 18. “How Data Science Happens” James P. Howard, II, Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory 19. “Modernizing Military Operations Research Education” Chris Arney, United States Military Academy Michael Yankovich, United States Military Academy Krista Watts, United States Military Academy 20. “Strategic Analytics and the Future of Military Operations Research” Greg H. Parlier, North Carolina State University Officially out on March 2, 2020. Order it now at Amazon.com to reserve your copy. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1138607339?fbclid=IwAR36SUZftAJOwNwX-rPpw4TFWnKmp_nGMqSSPJkh1Vd6dzh5d49nTd1_VTM Walt DeGrange is the Director of Analytics Capabilities at CANA Advisors wdegrange@canallc.com #handbook #OperationsResearch #military #defense #WaltDeGrange #book #publication

December 2019 On behalf of CANA Advisors, we wish all a safe, relaxing holiday season and a productive, prosperous New Year full of curiosity and opportunity! We hope you enjoy reading about our team’s participation in the recent NeurIPS conference in western Canada as well as our profile of Walt DeGrange, CANA’s very own DAC! Finally, we spend some time reflecting on our CANA Foundation efforts this past year, and how we are leaning forward not only to provide solutions for our clients but also to contribute our time and focus to our communities we work and live in! Cheers to 2020! ~ Team CANA Highlights from NeurIPS 2019 in Vancouver BC NeurIPS December 2019 By Lucia Darrow This December 13,000 AI researchers descended on Vancouver, British Columbia for the 33rd Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS). This conference is the buzziest event in AI, with impressive sponsors and vendors and keynotes from the top researchers in the field. The work presented at NeurIPS represents the current state of AI research, and gives a glimpse of what to expect in the near future. Lucia Darrow and Jerome Dixon of CANA Advisors attended the conference, seeking to discover the latest trends in different areas of AI research. Approaching the conference with an operations research perspective, Lucia focused on talks in the optimization track, from convex optimization to non-convex optimization as commonly found in neural network problems. From a life sciences perspective, Jerome engaged with the wealth of talks, posters and researchers in one of the most rapidly advancing and impactful areas of AI research: computational biology and health. Here are a couple of their takeaways: Artificial Intelligence is successful in a narrow area of intelligence. Two keynote speakers Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Yoshua Bengio discussed the topic of intelligence and what changes in approach are needed to reach new levels in AI. Current methods are optimization-driven and lack flexibility. Models are trained to pass a test or meet a certain score, but don’t have the inherent attributes that make up human or animal intelligence. Aguera y Arcas argued for a shift to meta learning and evolution strategies while Bengio spoke about System 2 Intelligence, characterized by conscious reasoning and representation learning. AI researchers need to raise the bar on reproducibility of research. Human decision making is found at every step in the data science cycle, from data selection and cleaning to model and algorithm selection. In a talk titled, Veridical Data Science, Bin Yu of UC Berkeley called on researchers to focus on creating more reproducible and well-articulated research. Reinforcement Learning and Federated Learning two trending areas. A large amount of talks and papers on these two topics. Reinforcement learning, is a type of dynamic programming that trains algorithms using a system of reward and punishment. A reinforcement learning algorithm, or agent, learns by interacting with its environment. The agent receives rewards by performing correctly and penalties for performing incorrectly. The agent learns without intervention from a human by maximizing its reward and minimizing its penalty function. Federated Learning is a machine learning setting where the goal is to train a high-quality centralized model with training data distributed over a large number of clients each with unreliable and relatively slow network connections. A big use case for this is sensitive data (i.e. healthcare or HIPAA compliance). The algorithm learns on user data and then passes up the model but not the sensitive client information. Energy and natural resource use as key considerations for the future machine learning. In several talks, the growing carbon footprint of deep neural nets was stressed. Training large models requires massive amounts of energy, much of which is spent in data transfer and redundant training. The normalization of emissions reporting on publications in this area is something to look out for in the next few years, especially with tools like ML CO2 Impact developed by Mila. Bottom layer to the Big Data Stack. NeurIPS is heavy on the lower level AI algorithms from design to development. The developers of XGBoost, scikit-learn, tensorflow, and other well known algorithms in attendance and easy to meet and connect with. NeurIPS, Apache Spark AI Conference, and the Strata Big Data Conference are all highly recommended for any company or agency starting or planning to optimize their AI journey. Interested in learning more? Check out recordings of NeurIPS sessions here: https://slideslive.com/neurips. #NeurIPS2019 #teamCANA #artificialintelligence #ai TEAM CANA MEMBER SHOWCASE Walt DeGrange Director of Analytics Capabilities "Let not your mind run on what you lack as much as on what you have already." Marcus Aurelius CANA Team member Walt DeGrange has been with CANA Advisors for 5 and a half years and has over 17 years of experience in scoping, performing and implementing analytic solutions. He is an Operations Research Professional with implemented analytics solutions in Government, Industry, and Academia. He is currently the Course Director for the Military Operations Research Society (MORS) Critical Skills for Analytics Professionals and a past Chairperson of the INFORMS Sports Analytics Section. Walt is also an educator and teaches online for the University of Arkansas and serves as an Executive Practicum Advisor at the NC State Poole School of Management. As a Team CANA speaker and course instructor, he contributes his experience and skills to the CANA Advisors’ Learning and Development seminars and workshops. In his role as the Director of Analytics Capabilities (DAC) at CANA Advisors, he is responsible for recruiting, training, and equipping all of CANA's analytics professionals. Walt also leads CANA's sports analytics research area and coordinates the monthly CANA Advisors Roundtable or CAR as we like to call it. The CAR provides team members with a virtual online opportunity to share tips, analytical techniques, and discuss recent project successes. If you would like to learn more about Walt and how he and CANA Advisors can take your analytics to the next level, please contact him at wdegrange@canallc.com #teamCANA #canaadvisors #waltdegrange CANA FOUNDATION Three Years and Counting! By Kenny McRostie An important part of the success and culture at CANA Advisors is the CANA Foundation. Founded in 2017, CANA Foundation is wrapping up its third full year. Based on a commitment to create positive change in the lives of people, organizations and the environment, CANA Foundation provides an avenue for the company and its employees to give back and share with others in both corporate and individual successes. Within the Foundation’s five focus areas – advancing veterans support & activities, health & wellness, civic duty & education, community planning & strategy, and environmental sustainment – CANA employees are able to give purpose to the work they do each day through giving back in areas they feel passionate and care about, with the company alongside and supporting all the way. The year 2019 saw some very impactful initiatives. From development of an app to help the Colorado Mountain Club (CMC) monitor recreational impact in the Rocky Mountains to supporting one of CANA’s team members in their involvement with a local organization that provides comprehensive services for victims of sexual assault and violent crimes, CANA Foundation provided resources that enabled CANA’s employees to give back in their communities in some pretty incredible ways. One initiative that stood out was undertaken by Kurt Eades, in an area with tremendous significance to him, Veteran Suicide Awareness. Kurt volunteered to help set up, run and clean up for the off-road fundraising event put on by Jon’s Mission for 22 to raise awareness and support for veteran suicide. A close friend of the founders of Jon’s Mission for 22, who lost their son to suicide after a long battle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Kurt served as a trail guide, videographer using CANA CDS01 Drone and his personal Jeep with a GoPro, safety, and generally anything that was asked of him. It was an incredible day of remembering, celebrating and grieving those who lost their battle with PTSD as over 250 off-roaders showed up to support the cause of veteran suicide awareness. CANA Foundation was honored to come alongside Kurt in this cause and provided paid time for a portion of the numerous hours Kurt gave to the event over a three-day period. The money raised from this event will go directly to Jon’s mission and several other organizations fighting hard to educate and help veterans, their families and those directly affected by veteran suicide. This is what CANA Foundation is all about – giving back and positively impacting people’s lives. The 2019 initiative season caps off with the Foundation’s volunteer paid time off (VPTO) “Give Back” Campaign. In its third year, this is an initiative put forth by the company to allow each CANA employee to take up to eight hours of paid time off to volunteer in their local community supporting one or more of the Foundation's five focus areas. As we transition into 2020, the Foundation continues to evolve and grow, and our hope is that the Foundation’s impact will become even more tangible and genuine to the recipients with each volunteer minute spent, each dollar donated, and each act of kindness carried out. Read more about the CANA Foundation efforts on our website. #canafoundation #givingback #canaadvisors #jonsmissionfor22 Connect with CANA Advisors at one of these upcoming events in 2020! Sign up for the CANA Connection Newsletter! CANA Advisors 7371 Atlas Walk Way Gainesville, Virginia 20155 Telephone (703) 317-7378 Facsimile (571) 248-2563 Privacy Statement | Subscribe | Unsubscribe The CANA Connection Newsletter Copyright ©2019 CANA LLC.

Written by Kenny McRostie This year, Memorial Day feels different. Maybe it is the times we are in, maybe it is because I am approaching the last year in my military career; the reason why doesn’t matter. More important is that we take the time today, even for a moment, to stop what we are doing and to remember the many men and women who selflessly gave their life in service to our country. As I woke up this morning, looking forward to spending the day with my family, I thought about the impact of this day. The impact to the families left behind, daily bearing the burden of loss. The impact to their brothers and sisters in arms with whom they walked in lockstep through the good times and the hard times. And finally, the impact to the citizens of our great country, the United States of America, who reap the benefits of their sacrifice. We are so fortunate to have the freedoms we enjoy in our country. I know I am blessed to be here today and grateful that I can spend the day in the safety and comfort of my home, surrounded by my loved ones. Wherever you are today and whatever you are doing, I ask one thing. Take some time today to remember our heroes. Stop what you are doing for five minutes or for an hour. Whether it is visiting the grave of a brother or sister in arms, reaching out to a family member left behind, or just reading the story of an amazing hero who died in selfless service to our country. Honor them. Remember them. Today and everyday. Happy Memorial Day from Team CANA. Kenny McRostie is Senior Operations Manager here is at CANA. You can contact him at kmcrostie@canallc.com #TeamCANA #MemorialDay #RememberOurHeroes

CANA Foundation Supports Earth Day Highway Clean Up By Liz Cranston During this COVID-19 quarantine, the days seem endless, running one into the other.  At times I find myself surprised at what day it is - when a friend mentions it's Friday and time for our virtual happy hour, I find myself rubbing my eyes, lifting my head from my computer monitor, and then standing up slowly from my desk - similar to walking out of Plato's Cave. This happened last week - it was Earth Week, and on Wednesday - which was Earth Day - a friend reached out to me and asked if I'd like to support a local highway clean up in celebration of Earth Day.  Earth Day??!!  I had no idea.  Well, there is nothing like some positive peer pressure and a flexible work schedule - I said, "heck yeah!" Within an hour, five sets of families met up at our local grocery store where we passed around bright orange garbage bags, compared each other's attempt at wearing bright clothing, and stood six feet or more away from each other. For the next 3 1/2 hours, our five small "crews" picked up trash along both sides of of our local highway, approximately 1.5 miles in Haymarket, Virginia. Luckily it was a cool, sunny, only slightly breezy spring day, and it was fabulous.  Maintaining our physical distance but certainly engaging socially, it was rewarding to help our community, to walk without restrictions outside, and most importantly, to connect with friends. A thank you to the CANA Foundation for supporting this time well spent supporting my local community and celebrating Earth Day! Remember make Earth Day everyday. "The earth is what we all have in common." ~ Wendell Berry Elizabeth Cranston, Esq. Elizabeth Cranston is the Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of CANA Advisors.  As CEO/CFO, Liz expertly manages a diverse team of professionals and oversees multiple programs spanning CANA’s various product lines. You can contact Liz through email at ecranston@canallc.com #EarthDay2020 #CANAFoundation #EarthWeek2020 #EarthDayEveryday #teamCANA

A fun filled day of art at the Richland Schools with CANA's Koa Beam! Recently the CANA Foundation and Richland Schools sponsored a day of comic book style art for students at the Richland High School and Elementary School lead by CANA's very own Lead Graphic Artist, Koa Beam. The Richland High Schools' art teacher Mrs. Martha Ringler was the driving force behind putting the event together. This event arose out of the participation that Mrs. Ringler had had taking part in a previous 'Let's Draw Spider-Man!' one day workshop that Koa had done last year at the Community Arts Center of Cambria County. That event was a fun success and she thought a similar workshop shop for her high school students would be a great opportunity for the students to learn a little about how comic book artwork is created. Mrs. Ringler's Art Club was also kind enough to provide materials for high school students to use for the day and keep. The CANA foundation was kind enough to help support Koa with time to teach the workshops for the day and spread the joy of art and creation to the Richland students. The drawing workshop idea also caught the interest of the Richland Elementary School's Art teacher Mrs. Krista Hershberger. So, the day was expanded to include doing a fun draw along at the elementary school as well. Both workshops were a success and a ton of fun. Roughly 50 students got to take part in the event day between the high school and elementary school. At the high school the students first learned about some of the basic tools a comic book artist uses along with a little history behind comic book art and artists. At which point a short poll was taken to see what character they would be drawing for the day. And the surprise winner was... Groot from the Guardians of the Galaxy! So over the next 4 hours Koa lead and instructed the students in the, penciling, composition, layout, inking and coloring of a typical comic splash page. At the elementary school things were scaled back and made a lot simpler for the younger students as they were given the opportunity to use whatever pens, crayons, pastels, or markers they wanted to do the draw-along with Koa. Once again a quick poll was taken of the students to see who the kids would like to draw. And they chose The Child (or Baby Yoda as he is better known) off of the Mandolorian on Disney+. Koa then tried to break down baby Yoda into simple shapes for the kids to follow and color in. All in all the artwork that both the high school students and the elementary students created can only be described as awesome. Beyond being a day of fun, filled with art and education, the event managed to also raise $200 to be donated to the Community Arts Center of Cambria County. CANA Advisors through it's CANA Foundation is happy to have been a part of this fun day. Again, a big thank you to the CANA Foundation and the Richland Schools Art Programs, teachers and students. You guys rock! 'Nuff Said. :) #teamCANA #CANAFoundation #RichlandRams #letsdraw Koa Beam is the Lead Graphic Artist for CANA Advisors. If you wish to get in touch with him you can email kbeam@canallc.com