SOMEONE YOU SHOULD KNOW
Willax creates Web site for young business leaders
by PATRICK J. NAGY

Paul A. Willax

Toward the end of every semester that Paul A. Willax taught management classes at the University at Buffalo, his students would always ask how to use what they learned in school in the real world. The Clarence resident, now retired from UB, has an innovative answer.

Willax, a former East Amherst resident, is the creator of BrainFoodToGo.com, an audio podcasting service intended to help people in their 20s who are trying to build careers in the business world. The site offers various free audio programs Willax calls Podzz that can be played on cell phones, MP3 players and iPods.

The programs offer "Brain- Food" strategies, such as working up to chief executive officer of a company, owning a business, managing a student loan and building a 401K retirement plan. There's also a section for eager inventors.

Willax hopes people who visit the Web site can learn personal performance and leadership skills.

"I want young people to make use of the knowledge and be successful at every level," said Willax. "This site will hopefully allow them to advance to different levels of business."

Willax wants alumni associations, professional membership organizations, newspapers, radio stations and chambers of commerce to act as host Web sites for posting the BrainFood programs free to the public.

BrainFoodToGo is an extension of Electromedia Technologies Corporation, a business Willax founded in 1963 whose main purpose has been to provide audio and video communication technology to various business groups. Willax said Electromedia Technologies Corporation was the first to create a personal finance audiocassette for members of the Professional Hockey Players Association and was the originator behind the family money management vignettes for "P.M. Magazine," a nationally syndicated TV show.

Willax is also chairman of Center for Business Ownership. The center, which he has chaired since 1989, produces seminars, publications and DVDs for business owners.

Willax has also been involved with a number of businesses throughout his career. He was founder, owner and director of Ingram-Micro, a wholesaler of computer software with $31 billion in sales, from 1978 to 1985, and owned the Kazoo Co. from 1972 to 1985. He was also publisher of Suburban Woman, a regional weekly newspaper in the Amherst and Ken-Ton areas, from 1976 to 1979. He was also chairman of the board, CEO and principal shareholder of Empire of America Bank, now M&T, from 1967 to 1989.

Willax taught at UB for 42 years, retiring in 2003. In 1987, he chaired the school's Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership, a program designed to assist the increase of regional development. The program started with an enrollment of 40. Seven hundred people have graduated from the program.

"I remember sitting with the dean and asking him, 'How do you create jobs in Buffalo?'" said Willax, who is a CEL honorary board member. "We decided that it's not by attracting the big companies to come but to start something here."

He was also executive director of UB's University Technology Incubator, a 40,000-square-foot building that allows aspiring entrepreneurs a place to create new technology-based businesses.

An award-winning writer, Willax has written a biweekly nationally syndicated newspaper column on entrepreneurship called "Brass Tacks Tips" since 1993.

He was also a founder and director of the Erie County Industrial Development Agency and in the 1960s was director of research and education and an economist for the Buffalo Chamber of Commerce.

In his spare time, Willax served in the New York Army National Guard for 50 years, retiring on May 21 as major general. He enlisted as a private in Feb. 1957. He served the U.S. Department of Defense during the Gulf War as chairman of the New York State Committee for Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve.

"Our job was to work with employers to help them understand what the guard means and what benefits and laws are required for people who were in it," said Willax.

Willax said his time in the Army National Guard allowed him to "live and work with people you never would have lived or worked with otherwise."

"You also learned how to take responsibility of yourself and for other people," he added.

For more information about BrainFoodToGo.com, e-mail willax@brainfoodtogo.com.