ZELIENOPLE — Jack Cohen learned about hospitality and public service working with his grandmother in Pittsburgh.

Now, Cohen's the executive director for the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau, which has grown greatly under his leadership.

Cohen, 56, grew up in Highland Park and Stanton Heights, helping his grandmother with her catering and restaurant business.

While he liked working with his grandmother, he was not that enthused with school. But after graduating from high school, his mother told Cohen that he had to continue on in his education.

“She made me go to the Community College of Allegheny County. At first, I wasn't real happy, but then I found they had a hospitality and food curriculum and thought, ‘I know about that. That'll be easy,'” he said.

Instead of easy, Cohen found his career path.

“I had this one professor, my mentor, really, Ed Brown. He had retired from Penn State (University) and wanted me to go on for another two years, but I was ready to go to work,” Cohen said.

He got jobs in Pittsburgh hotels and then as a restaurant manager for Wendy's.

“I was making about $162 per paycheck, and in 1976 that was a lot of money, but I was working about 120 hours a week, and that was like $3 an hour. I had to find something else,” Cohen said.

When interviewing for the Wendy's job, Cohen traveled to Columbus, Ohio, to meet the chain's founder, Dave Thomas.

“I had to run the original store for a couple of days, and Dave came in and looked everything over, nodding, and then asked me if we had scraped the gum off the underside of the tables.

“I hadn't. We used to do that once a week, but Wendy's did it everyday. I was like, ‘Oh no,' but Dave just grabbed me by the neck and gave me noogies saying I had done a good job,” Cohen said.

The need for a larger salary saw Cohen and his wife, Janine, who is also from the Pittsburgh area, move to New Jersey so Cohen could work as a franchise trainer. After several years, they found out their first child was on the way.

“We both went into work and quit. It was time to come home and be around family. With a child coming, that was important to us,” Cohen said.

They settled in Cranberry Township, which is far enough away from Pittsburgh to have his mother say she would bring food with her when she visited. Cohen got a job as a regional director of operations for Chuckie Cheese restaurants overseeing more than 700 employees.

“I was doing well, but I wanted something for myself, so in 1994, I opened Safari Sam's with about 40 employees,” he said.

As the owner of the games and party space in 2002, Cohen was asked to join the county's new tourism board.

When the original executive director died unexpectedly, Cohen was asked to step in.

“I'd had Safari Sam's for 10 years and sold it, and decided to take the job,” he said. “A lot of businesses in Butler County are like mom-and-pop operations and I know how to work with those people. I know what they're going through.”

As for the bureau's growth over the past nine years, Cohen said most of the success stems from having the right people on the bureau's staff.

“I'm sort of the idea guy, but the staff works to keep me and everything else straight and moving forward. They are the ones with the organizational skills and we're all very lucky to have them,” Cohen said.

One of those ideas is the upcoming Bantam Jeep Festival, Aug. 12 to 14, at the Butler Fair Grounds.

“There's a lot of untold stories in Butler County. The heritage of the Jeep is one of them, but maybe its just that people here are so used to the county's history that it takes someone who didn't grow up with it to see some of the interesting stories,” Cohen said.

Even while working on the Jeep festival, the scheduled 2013 Fireworks International convention and the day-to-day tourism office business, Cohen and his staff are continually on the lookout for new ways to attract visitors to the county.

The newest idea is factory tours.

“You know about the farm tours we have, which are very popular,” Cohen said. “Well, we've been working with the Manufacturing Consortium to come up with factory tours as a part of economic tourism, bring other businesses in to see what we have and how it works with hopes of attracting new businesses.”

The bureau was just awarded a nonprofit status for a new educational arm to have students trained in tourism industry jobs such as culinary, hospitality and marketing.

“Both Butler County Community College and Slippery Rock University have established programs that we hope to help expand and train the next generation of tourism workers,” Cohen said.

<B>Age: </B>56<B>Address: </B>Cranberry Township<B>Family: </B>Wife, Janine; three adult children; Blue the cat<B>Employment: </B>Executive director of the Butler County Tourism and Convention Bureau<B>Education: </B>Associate degree from Community College of Allegheny County<B>Interests:</B> Golf, travel, family<B>Quote: </B>“I'm sort of the idea guy, but the staff works to keep me and everything else straight and moving forward. They are the ones with the organizational skills and we're all very lucky to have them.”<B><I><U></B></U></I>