"Michael Alter" is an United States/American businessman who is the president of his own company, the Alter Group, which, as of 2005 is, one of the nation's ten largest commercial real estate developers.

They have developed nearly of commercial real estate. The group won the Beyond the Box: Exceptional Industrial Projects award for its development of the Thomson Learning Distribution Center.

Alter is founder and president of City Year Chicago, whose signature program is the City Year Youth Service Corps. The goal in the program is to bring together approximately 1,000 people ranging in age from 17-24 from diverse backgrounds and put them through a full-time commitment of a year of community service, leadership development, and civic engagement where they mentor children.

Alter has a Bachelor of Arts degree in government from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Chicago. He and his wife Ellen are parents of three children. They live in Winnetka, Illinois.

In 2005, he became the principal owner and chairman of the Women's National Basketball Association/WNBA team: the Chicago Sky.

In 2009, Michael Alter was part of an investment team that purchased The New Republic, one of the nation’s oldest political and cultural magazines.

More Michael Alter on Wikipedia.

Small-business salaries are rising from the dead. That's good news for small business employees, but it may not be great news for the overall economy. Inflation is rearing its ugly head and may soon stifle economic growth.

For the little guy, it's getting harder and harder to compete with the big boys.

We'll see small businesses growing around all of this.

It was a yawner of a year for small-business growth.