The Hamilton Family Health Center has added SHEILA RAMANATHAN, D.O., to its Community Memorial Healthcare unit. She is a family medicine physician with an interest in rural medicine and women’s health. She attended Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and following her mother’s professional path, decided to attend medical school. Ramanathan graduated from the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine with her doctorate in osteopathic medicine. She completed a residency in family medicine at Samaritan Medical Center in Watertown, where she gained broad experience treating patients in the military and from rural settings.

ELIZABETH A. ALLERS has joined the law firm of Hilton Estate & Elder Law, LLC as a new attorney, providing estate planning, asset protection, Medicaid planning, guardianships, trust and estate litigation, probate, and trust administration. She graduated from Hartwick College with bachelor degrees in mathematics and political science, and a minor in geology in 2012. Allers earned her law degree from Syracuse University College of Law in 2014. She also currently holds a real estate broker’s license. DEBORAH TARASEK has joined Hilton Estate & Elder Law as a Medicaid service provider. She provides Medicaid application services, and helps clients to secure this important long-term care coverage, which can be subject to enhanced scrutiny and multiple rounds of documentation requests. She has 30 years of experience with Medicaid eligibility processes. Nursing home Medicaid has been Tarasek’s area of expertise, having been previously employed as a social welfare examiner at the Lewis County Department of Social Services. She recently retired from the Department of Social Services and now offers assistance to the community in Medicaid eligibility and applications. 

JOE PALMER has been hired as the Syracuse Crunch goaltending and video coach. Palmer, 31, joins the organization after serving as the director of hockey operations for the Cornell Big Red for three seasons following a season as a volunteer assistant coach with Cornell in 2015-16. During his time as director of hockey operations, Cornell posted a 67-26-11 record and earned three at-large bids to the NCAA tournament. Among other duties in his first season, Palmer served as a goaltending coach for the team’s three goaltenders. A native of Utica, Palmer is the founder and primary instructor of Syracuse–based Palmer Goalie Systems, where he provides personal instruction and video analysis to more than 30 area goaltenders who compete at the AAA, prep school, junior, and college levels. He also serves as goaltending consultant with Mountain Hockey Instruction and Syracuse Empire Junior Stars and is a talent evaluator for USA Hockey Festival Central New York tryout camp. As a player, Palmer appeared in more than 90 career minor-league hockey games with six different teams.

MOLLY O’DONNELL has been selected as SUNY Cortland’s new softball head coach. She replaces Julie Lenhart, who retired following the 2019 season after leading the Red Dragons for 25 seasons. O’Donnell served as Lenhart’s associate head coach during the 2018-19 school year and was an assistant coach in the program during the 2015 and 2016 seasons. O’Donnell served as an assistant coach at Division I Columbia University in 2017 and 2018. O’Donnell played four years of softball at Ithaca College, from which she graduated in 2013 with a bachelor’s degree in sport management. She went on to complete her master’s degree in sport management at Cortland in 2015.