Lakewood Public Library is starting its “Meet the Author” series this spring with Ron Ciancutti, the purchasing manager for the Cleveland Metropolitan Park District, who is also a columnist and blogger for Parks and Rec Business magazine. On Tuesday, March 31, Ron will share a newly published collection of his articles, called A Step Ahead: the Collected Essays, along with the stories that inspired his writing at the Lakewood Public Library’s Main Auditorium at 7 p.m.  

Ron’s focus is on common sense and simplifying the challenges we meet in daily life.  The new book is culled from Ron’s musings of the past five years or so, on topics ranging from business and work relationships to family and fond nostalgia for lessons learned along his way.  Ron’s writing mirrors his basic statement, “Keeping life simple and focusing on what’s real includes all the things we all have access to right now but neglect to appreciate.  Anything less is a betrayal of everything you ever learned.”

Ron Ciancutti has been working for the Cleveland Metroparks since 1985. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from Bowling Green State University and an MBA from Baldwin Wallace College, where he graduated with honors in 1993. Ron has been published in national periodicals such as Prentice Hall’s Purchasing Management Bulletin, and as a private consultant in 2000, he wrote a purchasing manual for the East Cleveland City School System.  A later version of that manual received a patent in 2001. Ron’s creation of “plain speaking” programs to increase minority business enterprise participation led to his being the recipient of Governor Taft’s 2002 Minority Business Recognition Award. 

Ron is much more than a successful businessman, however. He is a family man with deep roots in Lakewood and the Cleveland area. He admires Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words: “For any American who had the great and priceless privilege of being raised in a small town there always remain with him nostalgic memories… And the older he grows the more he senses what he owed to the simple honesty and neighborliness, the integrity that he saw all around him in those days.” 

When Ron began writing his articles for Parks and Rec Business, he saw a correlation between his business experiences and the “folksy, simple upbringing” he enjoyed in small town Berea, Ohio. The more he focused his indelible childhood impressions on the business and personal aspects of his life and reflected that relatedness in his articles, the more he saw requests for permission to reprint his articles coming in from around the country.  “The more simple and honest the message, the greater the response.”  Ron realized that he had a larger audience, and with the encouragement of his editor, he began to compile the “fan favorite” essays, along with introductions and segues and some new material that would become A Step Ahead. 

At his Lakewood Public Library appearance, copies of A Step Ahead: Collected Essays will be available for purchase and signing. The Lakewood Library has several circulating copies of the book as well, available for those wishing to familiarize themselves with Ron’s words before the evening of March 31st. This program is free and open to the public; all those willing to embrace what really resonates within them are invited to join Ron Ciancutti at the Lakewood Library for a lively exchange of ideas.