Working: Syracuse

Meet Sean Williamson, a butcher for Liehs and Steigerwald on Grant Boulevard. Williamson didn't set out to be a butcher. In fact, it took years of college as an art major and thousands of tuition dollars before he decided to pursue something with more immediate, tangible results. That desire led him to his job making sausage for a specialty butcher shop, a position he's held for almost a decade. Williamson's job description includes being the butcher, manager, and general everyman at Liehs and Steigerwald, which has served Syracuse's Northside community for more than 80 years.

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Meet Zheadric Barbra, Assistant Superintendent of School Reform at Syracuse City School District. Barbra is responsible for the improvement of Syracuse's 37 public schools. He credits his mother, who raised him and his four brothers by herself while working manual-labor jobs and depending on food stamps, as the source of much of his determination and his belief in education. He says she raised him and his brothers with this central philosophy: "There's no other option than what you have in front of you. You can't not do well. There's no other option." She also instilled in him the belief that education serves as the cornerstone of a good life. Barbara has applied these lessons to his own education, career, and experience with fatherhood, and he tries to pass along these beliefs to the students whose educational experience he oversees.

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Meet Mirvat Essi Sande, owner and sole hairstylist of Salon 515, which sits in the heart of Westcott Nation, an eclectic neighborhood known for attracting students, young professionals, artists, and activists. Inside, the salon resembles an apartment, which Sande designed to create the sense that clients were entering her home, and the conversations flow freely. Whether it's a restaurant recommendation, the president's latest tweet, or an escape destination for her or her client's next vacation, Sande enjoys and encourages conversation. Two additional businesses — Munjed's and Mom's Diner — on that three-block stretch, are also owned by relatives of Essi Sande, who moved from Jordan to the neighborhood with her 10 siblings in 1968.

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Meet printing press operator Robert Glahn, who works for Eastwood Litho, which is based in Lyncourt on the city's Northside. Founded in 1946 by Justin F. Mohr, a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II, Eastwood Litho has served the Syracuse area for more than 70 years and is now owned by grandsons of the founder. For the last three years, Glahn has been in charge of running the company's two Heidelberg printing presses. He works as a frontender and is responsible for all of the technical tweaks and artistic judgments that inform the end product. The color balance, saturation, and sharpness of the ink on the paper all fall on him. Now 53, Glahn's been doing this job since high school. He serves as the mechanic who enjoys tinkering with the machines when they break and the artist who controls every aspect of the graphic output.

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