Springfield recycler Northstar Pulp & Paper repurposes to meet 21st century demands
Thirty years ago, when Lori Goodman Novak was a teenager, she worked in the office for the family business, Northstar Pulp & Paper, answering the phone, weighing trucks on the scale and sorting mail. Nearly two decades later, while Novak was teaching kindergarten, her half-brother, Aaron Goodman, was old enough to work at the plant as a forklift operator, before he launched his college education and a career in commercial banking. After making radical professional moves in recent decades, the two siblings – Novak is 49, and Goodman is 31 – have committed to Northstar. With their father David Goodman, they serve as the key leaders of the now-more-than-century-old business.