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Connect to the Best 2026
January / February 2026
Rainbows, Folio and Our Lab
For this year’s Connect to the Best awards, we asked the winners to answer eight of our 25 questions. So we decided to do the same, but double. Because we never shy away from a challenge. For this year’s Connect to the Best awards, we asked the winners to answer eight of our 25 questions. So we decided to do the same, but double. Because we never shy away from a challenge.
What’s one thing your customers don’t know you do behind the scenes? When you line the magazines up from the beginning, the spines of each issue make a rainbow (with an exception here or there). We’re now on our fourth rainbow.
What’s something you’ve gotten better at every year? Reading each other’s minds. Seriously. It’s a little creepy.
What’s something you do that seems small but makes a huge difference? We fact check every story.
Tell us about your favorite local spot. Impossible. You’re all our favorites!
What northern Westchester business do you secretly (or not so secretly) love? It’s not really a secret. We love Mouth to Hand Learning Center, which teaches nonspeaking people how to communicate through spelling. (Technically, we love all the nonprofits we work with, but M2H holds a special place in our hearts.)
If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing instead? Working as a freelance journalist and designer and partnering together on projects. Just like we did prior to this venture.
What’s the best advice you ever received? Think of our business as a lab and treat everything we do as an experiment.
How do you celebrate a big win? After we put an issue to bed, we go out for a celebratory drink. Unfortunately, this gets postponed when we close an issue after 9 p.m. and nothing is open!
Describe your business in three words. We only need two: Wildly brilliant.
What’s the funniest customer request you’ve ever received? “You should put me on the cover.” (Two local celebrities whose identities we will protect.)
What’s your business’s unofficial motto? Try to do less and then accidentally do three times more.
What’s something your business does differently than anyone else? We’re not pay-for-play, which has gained us the respect of residents and businesses. People & businesses choose to work with us because they want to be associated with a high-quality, reputable publication that people actually read, many cover-to-cover.
What’s the smallest detail your customers notice—or that you hope they notice? Folio! He’s our AI-created robot mascot, and we hide him in every issue.
What’s the one thing your business couldn’t function without? Good taste. 😉
What’s the unsung hero of your business? Google Workspace.
What is something you wish more people knew about you and/or your business? We’re more than a magazine; we’re a media company. One of our specialties is custom videos for businesses and nonprofits. We’re storytellers, and this is another way we tell stories.
Modernizing An Ancient Art
Of Service
Finding Her Palate
Stuffies, Sparkles and a Party in the Playroom
Connect to the Best Judges 2026 – Jennifer Wege
Connect to the Best Judges 2026 – Marialisa Zywotchenko
Ones To Watch 2026 – Bedford Books, Bedford
Connect to the Best Judges 2026 – Courtney Walker
Connect to the Best Judges 2026 – Jessica Watts
Connect to the Best Judges 2026 – Jason Kadlec
Connect to the Best Judges 2026 – Marc Lowenstein

