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The Stevie Awards for Women in Business are open to all organizations worldwide, and recognize the achievements of women executives, entrepreneurs, and the organizations they run.
Entries for the 2024 awards will open in May. For more information visit the Stevie Awards website.
The typical entrepreneur enjoys the roller coaster ride of business. The highs, the lows. Far from being a deterrent, market realities are a challenge in which they excel. For them, achievement is measured through improved margins, better cash flow or an increase in market share And not in peer approval But there is one night, one event where even the most laser focused executive pauses to appreciate accomplishments and hopes to hear their name called.
Award winner:It is such an honor to be here in this room with so many powerful females and a privilege that I do not take lightly.
Speaker 3:An entrepreneur doesn't get where they are without an amazing team, so so I wanna make sure I thank my team and the wonderful women that support me that are here.
Speaker 4:Winning this TV is a huge and amazing validation and recognition globally.
Katy Davis:On November 10, 2023, in New York City, the best of the best assembled to listen for their name and to play their part in recognizing outstanding work in several areas of business. Around since 2002 the Stevie Awards have become highly coveted because they're conferred for achievement in business to organizations and individuals in more than 90 nations. But only a select few win each year. I'm Katie Davis. And today, it is my honor to introduce to you this year's class of Stevie winners and to explore what winning award means to them personally, professionally, and for their company.
Katy Davis:You'll hear what's led them to this prestigious moment and we'll also share what you can do to be among these ranks.
Speaker 5:I thought, you know, I'm a student of business, I have an MBA, I know that, you know, there are many millions of people who go to work every day doing honorable things, doing, you know, notable things, and everybody's sort of targeted the same brush right now. Why is there an Oscars for business?
Katy Davis:This is Stevie Awards founder, Michael Gallagher.
Speaker 5:You know, we don't recognize the achievements of businesses. We recognize achievement in the workplace because we don't recognize just businesses. We recognize NGOs and nonprofits and people who work for government organizations. It's really about a celebration of work achievement, not business achievement. If you're not familiar with the Stevie Awards, we run national and international business awards programs around the world, including the American Business Awards, International Business Awards, Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Middle East and North Africa Stevie Awards, the German Stevie Awards, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, which is an HR awards program, and the Stevie Awards for sales and customer service.
Speaker 5:That's 8, I think. And we're starting a 9th one next year, the Stevie Awards for Technology Excellence. One of the things that distinguishes the Stevie Awards programs is that most of our winners are not house household name organizations. They're small and medium enterprises are still building their brands. We have lots of different categories because, you know, every organization is different.
Speaker 5:Every organization participates in awards programs for different reasons, and lots of organizations don't participate. They had you know, there are Ethos is that we don't seek outside recognition, but we have categories for individuals, for entire companies, for teams within companies, and, you know, and that's the way it should be because every organization, again, enters for different reasons.
Katy Davis:But who is given the difficult job of choosing the winners?
Speaker 5:You know, each year, all told, across our 8 programs, we have more than a 1000 people around the world to participate in the judging process. In any given program, it's anywhere from a 100 to 350 judges. Many judges will judge multiple of our programs because they really enjoy the process. They like reading all these case studies of achievement in different industries and different disciplines, you know, from Fortune 500 companies right down to the small startups. About half of our judges every year fill out a form to apply to be a judge on our website.
Speaker 5:And if we, you know, we evaluate their background, if we accept them, we put them in the in the queue to be a judge. Half of our invitees, we always invite past judges who did what we asked them to do to be judges again. And we always invite the prior year's winners in a particular program to be the next year's judges.
Katy Davis:One of the many things that makes the Stevie Awards so special is their celebration of inspiring women. The Stevie Awards for women in business are the world's premier business awards for female entrepreneurs, executives, employees and the organisations they run We caught up with some of this year's winners at the glamorous New York Awards Night
Speaker 6:A 2023 Gold Stevie Award for best female entrepreneur among business service organizations with 112500 employees goes to Jennifer Smith. She's the founder and the CEO of Everything Podcast of Vancouver, Canada.
Speaker 7:Thank you so much, and thanks for allowing me the moment to bring up my incredible family. They're the reason I'm standing here tonight, my daughter Alexandra and her twin brother Noah, my 15 year old Joshua, and my beautiful wife of 29 years, Donna. I just wanted to say, I started my company as a podcast media production company, and it's to give a voice to these incredible women in this room. It's to celebrate diversity and embrace our differential, as far as, you know what? We all have incredible voices.
Speaker 7:And they're powerful, they're strong, they're big, they're bold.
Speaker 8:My name is Jessica Herkland, and, my company is Einstein Solutions Consulting. And I won the gold in achieving an organizational recovery.
Speaker 9:That is awesome. And how does it feel to win tonight?
Speaker 8:It's a little surreal. That's probably why I feel like I have
Speaker 4:just zero idea what to say.
Speaker 8:But this is this is like a lifetime of work, and belief of a the system and process of things that I made up in my brain, my neurodivergent brain that I'm very proud of, and just kind of followed my instincts and built a company that was able to move the needle and make change in meaningful ways.
Speaker 9:That's awesome. And could you tell us your brand story?
Speaker 8:Yeah. So Einstein Solutions is my consulting company, and what we do is we solve real problems. We manage psychological orientations to readopt change and actually influence organizations, but it really is paying homage to my, fellow genius slash crazy person, Albert Einstein. There's so much about our brains that I didn't know were so similar until getting into this creative and critical thinking mode. And that's it really is a nod to you could have ADHD in the most amazing ways and still do absolutely anything that you want.
Speaker 8:In fact, I think it's a competitive advantage.
Speaker 9:How do you think the Stevie Award will help your career or your company in the future?
Speaker 8:Yeah. I think it just positions organizational recovery. It there's there's a method to the madness. And on the other And is there anything in particular that's happened over the course of your life?
Speaker 9:Absolutely. And is there anything in particular that's happened over the course of your life that you feel has brought you to this pivotal moment of winning a Stevie?
Speaker 8:Yeah. I'm like, okay. Where do I start? How do I have much time? It is, an 11 year old right over here whose name is Charlotte and a 16 year old that's right behind me, the same as Jackson.
Speaker 8:These 2, there's been many pivotal moments, but none that has ever reinforced my value of integrity more than the 2 of them have. And by following my heart heart and doing what's right and having 2 people who believe in me and motivation to make them proud, that's,
Award winner:there's I feel like there's pivotal moments in my
Speaker 8:life every day that put me in the right direction.
Katy Davis:Jessica Kirkland The awards also provide a platform for some incredible environmental organisations such as Ocean Rescue Alliance International, a non profit that designs infrastructure for marine conservation. Here's Shelby Thomas from the organisation
Speaker 4:So far I've been actually nominated for 5 so it's been crazy but we I won the thought leader of the year for a nonprofit and then he got organization of the year for a silver nonprofit as well.
Speaker 9:Amazing. How does it feel to win at least one award so far tonight?
Speaker 4:It's really incredible. And what's really even more incredible is just being surrounded by so many leaders and women in this industry. It's definitely hard. And as a female founder and being young, we think we've all had our struggles. So it's just pretty empowering to walk into a room and just feel the the energy of these very strong, intelligent women.
Speaker 9:Absolutely. Could you tell me a little bit about your company's, genesis?
Speaker 4:Yeah. So initially started the organization when I was in my PhD program really out of the need to scale marine restoration like coral reef restoration, more rapidly. And so we started designing artificial infrastructure as a way to create a a faster, easier, and safer way to outside corals. And that manifested into designing artificial reefs at scale, that create habitat, provide coastal protection, and also create underwater dive sites that can connect communities together.
Speaker 9:It's amazing. And how do you feel that the award that you won tonight is gonna help your career and also your profit, DeMarine?
Speaker 4:I would say it really is gonna help bring a different voice to the ocean and bring conservation. I think a lot of people don't realize how much of a resource our ocean is, not only to us living on this planet, but also the blue economy. Many people's livelihoods around the world is supported by ocean environments and marine ecosystems. And so we really wanna be able to use this as a platform to advocate innovation in the space, but also ways to support each other. You don't have to be a marine conservationist or a scientist to actually make an impact on the environment or the oceans.
Speaker 4:And so really just enabling this as
Speaker 8:a further platform to share. A 100%.
Speaker 9:Is there anything in particular that you feel has brought you to this pivotal moment in your life
Speaker 8:and in your career?
Speaker 4:You know, I'd say certainly following my heart. There's something that I say, often it's I call it the 3 p's, which is passion, purpose, and perseverance. And I believe people can be very passionate about many things. And so I believe in really exploring your passions. And through doing that, you can find your purpose and persevere through situations.
Speaker 4:When you really have your heart in something, it's very magnetic in terms of energy. And I think that that's part of the pivotal path that's led me to where I am is just through following my heart and what I love.
Katy Davis:There are just too many incredible businesswomen to feature in this episode, but we had to squeeze in Christie Sheehy from Cielight Technologies Here she is making her very powerful acceptance
Speaker 3:speech. About 1 in 6 people worldwide will have a neurological disease. And so that means pretty much everyone here in this room probably knows someone who has a neurological condition. It's been our mission here at C Lite to be able to bring solutions that can help to predict and monitor both neurological disease as well as eye health. And it's been an honor to spin my technology out of UC Berkeley, my dissertation work there, and be able to create a product that I hope will be able to help millions of people, including your families.
Speaker 3:An entrepreneur doesn't get where they are without an amazing team, so I wanna make sure I thank my team and the wonderful women that support me that are here as well.
Katy Davis:If you're feeling inspired to nominate an incredible organization or business leader, Michael can help.
Speaker 5:I would say to any anybody who's listening about, you know, why they should enter, I'm not gonna say why you should enter. We do have lots of categories and, you know, it depends on what your organization or ethos is, you know. Why do you look for recognition? When a fortune 500 company enters one of our awards programs, they're not looking to build their brand, their build is their brand is also, you know, already worldwide known. What they're looking for is they're looking for recognition for a team, you know, maybe it's a customer service team or an HR team within the organization.
Speaker 5:We get a lot of those kinds of entries from world famous organizations, from smaller organizations still building their brand, they recognize that it may be winning a Stevie Award can help them build their brand and burnish or burnish their, you know, their burgeoning brand. You know, so we respect that every organization is different and has different needs.
Speaker 9:So So
Katy Davis:what's the future looking like for the Stevie Awards?
Speaker 5:In October this year, we added categories related to generative AI. We added in the Stevie Awards Women of Business. I don't think we added them this year. We may have added 1 or 2, but I know we had them last year. A lot of diversity and inclusion categories related to race and to gender and to equal pay.
Katy Davis:So many exciting developments ahead. For any more information about the awards or to hear more from this year's winners, just visit Stevie Awards dotcom. I'm Katie Davis. Thanks for listening, and good luck.
Speaker 5:Another Everything Podcasts production. Visit everythingpodcast.com. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast.