NYKA PHELPS has recently joined Unity House of Cayuga County, Inc. as the new director of the PROSperity outpatient mental-health program. In her new role, which she began in July, Phelps is responsible for direct clinical oversight and monitoring of all operations for Unity House’s Personalized Recovery Oriented Services (PROS) program, located at 146 North St. in Auburn. She supervises six employees while managing budgetary components; program goals, policies, and procedures of PROS; and the HCBS/CORE peer-empowerment programs that the agency administers. Phelps holds a master’s degree in social work from Syracuse University and is a licensed master social worker and licensed clinical social worker. She most recently was a psychiatric social worker at an inpatient unit at St. Joseph’s Health in Syracuse. Previously, she worked in family- and school-based psychiatry and therapy in Oswego County. Unity House of Cayuga County is a nonprofit that provides transitional and permanent housing, respite, rehabilitative, and employment services for individuals with mental illness, developmental disabilities, and/or substance use disorders from which they are recovering. The agency says it serves more than 1,000 adults a day in seven Central New York counties.

VONN READ, who has been serving as associate head coach of the Syracuse University women’s basketball team, will serve as acting head coach for the 2021-22 basketball season. The decision follows the resignation of former head coach Quentin Hillsman as an external law firm investigates his conduct. Read — who first joined the Syracuse staff prior to the 2011-12 season — was promoted from assistant coach to associate head coach in October 2013. Previously, Read served as assistant coach at University at Albany and University of Kentucky. He has also held various positions with the United States Basketball League’s Dodge City Legend, the San Antonio Silver Stars, the Orlando Magic, the Charlotte Sting, the Orlando Miracle, and the Phoenix Mercury. Read began his coaching career as an assistant at Spelman College in 1997. Prior to entering the coaching ranks, Read served in the U.S. Army from 1989-93 at Fort Drum near Watertown and at Fort Lee, Virginia. A native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Read graduated with a bachelor’s degree in political science from Clark Atlanta in 1997, where he was a member of the tennis team. 

JEFFREY RICHARDS has joined the Digital Aviation Solutions (DAS)  team at Thales Group as an air-traffic management (ATM) operations expert. A former air-traffic controller for the FAA for nearly 30 years, Richards will leverage his experience as part of Thales’ Syracuse DAS team supporting several key initiatives to facilitate the integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) into the national airspace. He has served in several leadership and advisory roles for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA).

JEFF BEYER has joined Thales’ DAS team as a project-design authority, where he serves as a technical lead analyzing customer needs and designing solutions to meet customer requirements. Beyer is a systems engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the aviation industry, designing, developing, integrating, and testing ATM systems. Beyer has both a master’s and bachelor’s degree of science in electrical engineering from Michigan Technological University. Thales’ DAS team, based in Syracuse, is working toward the accelerated deployment of safe UAS operations into the national airspace.