Winners were announced today in the 2023 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Companies, an annual feature of The International Business Awards®, the world's only international, all-encompassing business awards program, now in its 20th year.

The worldwide, public vote was conducted from mid-August through 15 September, with the highest number of votes deciding the People's Choice winners in a variety of industries. More than 96,000 votes were cast. All Stevie Award winners in the Company/Organization of the Year categories in this year's International Business Awards (IBA) were eligible to be included in the vote.

Winners of the crystal People's Choice Stevie Awards will be honored during the IBAs' awards banquet on Friday, 13 October at the Rome Cavalieri, a Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Rome, Italy. Tickets for the event are now on sale. The winners of peer-adjudicated Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards - selected from more than 3,700 nominations received from organizations in more than 61 nations - will also be recognized during the ceremony.

The winners of the 2023 People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies are:

Advertising, Marketing & PR: Otter PR
Apparel, Fashion & Beauty: Desiderate
Banking: Ziraat Participation Bank
Business or Professional Services: TaskUs
Computer Hardware & Services: AGM Infra Solutions - USA
Computer Software: MYBUSYBEE INC
Consumer Products & Services: Jasmine Norris Photography
Diversified Services: Purpol Marketing
Electronics: Dr. Phone Fix
Energy & Utilities: YEDAŞ
Financial Services: NJMPF
Food & Beverage: Empire Eagle Food Co., Ltd.
Health Products & Services: Golden Hour
Insurance: Thai Life Insurance Plc.
Manufacturing: Health Focus Manufacturers
Materials & Construction: ACE Consulting Company
Media & Entertainment: The Biz Dojo Inc.
Non-Profit or Government: Megaworld Foundation
Other Industries: ContractPodAI
Real Estate: AyalaLand Logistics Holdings Corp.
Telecommunications: Ooredoo Group
Transportation: Angkasa Pura Logistic

Entries for The 21st (2024) International Business Awards will be accepted starting in February. More information is available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, have announced the winners of six Grand (“best in show”) Stevie Award trophies in The 2023 (20^th Annual) International Business Awards®, the world’s leading business awards competition.

Nominees in the 2023 IBAs were not able to apply for Grand Stevie Awards directly. Winners were determined by a points system based on the total number of awards won in the IBAs with a Gold Stevie win counting for three points, a Silver Stevie win for two points, and a Bronze Stevie win for 1.5 points, as well as having the highest average score in selected categories.

This year’s Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners in The International Business Awards were announced on 14 August. They and the winners of the Grand Stevies announced today will be recognized during an awards gala in Rome, Italy on 13 October.

Winners of the 2023 Grand Stevie Awards are:

Highest-rated Nomination of the Year
A nomination entitled “Danie Wspolnych Chwil - Food for Shared Moments,” submitted on behalf of Fundacja Biedronki, a Warsaw, Poland-based non-profit, by agency Great Minds sp. z o.o., received an average score of 9.60/10. The nomination is a Gold Stevie winner for Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Community Engagement.

Highest-rated New Product Nomination of the Year
There is a tie for the highest-rated new product or service nomination of the year, and both nominations with average scores of 9.0/10 will be awarded Grand Stevie Awards:

• The Dubai Digital Authority, United Arab Emirates, for “04 (The unified government suggestions and complaints system),” Gold Stevie winner for Digital Process Automation Solution.
• EY Global Services Limited, of Secaucus, New Jersey USA, for “EY Fabric,” winner of the Gold Stevie for Artificial Intelligence/ Machine Learning Solution.

Most Honored Marketing Agency of the Year
HeyMo® The Experience Design Company, of Istanbul, Turkey, won the marketing agency Grand Stevie this year with 21.5 award points earned for Stevie wins in a variety of Event categories.

Most Honored Public Relations Agency of the YearWith 26.5 award points earned for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevies won on behalf of a number of clients, LLYC of Madrid, Spain has won this particular Grand Stevie for the fifth year in a row.

Organization of the Year
IBM Corporation, worldwide, earned the top prize this year with 45.5 award points earned for achievements, projects, team, and individuals around the globe.  While IBM has earned top-honor Grand Stevies in other competitions, this is the first such honor for them in the IBAs.

“These six best-of-show Grand Stevie winners embody the breadth and quality of nominations we welcomed to the IBAs in 2023,” said Maggie Miller, president of the Stevie Awards. “As businesses navigate the ever-evolving landscape of innovation and success, the judges were greatly impressed by the remarkable ingenuity, resourcefulness, and adeptness with which these Stevie winners have advanced their enterprises over the past two years. We look forward to celebrating Grand Stevie Award winners at the gala in October.”

The International Business Awards feature a wide variety of categories to recognize achievement in every facet of work life, including management awards, new product awards, marketing awards, PR awards, customer service awards, website awards, and more.

Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award placements in the 2023 IBAs were determined by the average scores of more than 300 professionals worldwide in the three-month judging process. Winners were selected from more than 3,700 nominations submitted by organizations in 61 nations.

The nomination process for the 2024 IBAs will open in February. For more information about The International Business Awards, including a complete list of all Stevie Award winners in the 2023 competition, visit www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

3,700 Nominations Were Submitted from Organizations in 61 Nations

High-achieving organizations and executives around the world have been recognized as Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie® Award winners in The 20th Annual International Business Awards®, the world's only international, all-encompassing business awards program.

Winners were selected from more than 3,700 nominations submitted by organizations in 61 nations.

A complete list of all 2023 Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners by category is available at www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

More than 230 executives worldwide participated on 11 juries to determine the Stevie winners.

The top winner of Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards is IBM of Armonk, NY USA with 21. Other winners of multiple Stevie Awards include HALKBANK, Istanbul, Turkey (20), Viettel Group, Hanoi, Vietnam (17), Telkom Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia (17), Ayala Land, Inc., Makati City, Philippines (16), DHL Express, worldwide (14), A.S. Watson Group, Hong Kong (12), Tata Consultancy Services, worldwide (11), LLYC, Madrid, Spain (10), OPET, Istanbul, Turkey (10), HeyMo® The Experience Design Company, Istanbul, Turkey (9), Uniomedia Communications, Budapest, Hungary (9), AD Ports Group, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (8), FPT Software, Hanoi, Vietnam (8), Akbank T.A.Ş, Istanbul, Turkey (7), Cisco Systems, San Jose, CA USA (7), Maersk, Montreal, Canada (7), Everise, Plantation, FL USA (6), Ernst & Young, worldwide (6), Globe Telecom Inc., Taguig City, Philippines (6), Green Door Co, Sydney, Australia (6), nupco, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (6), Philip Morris International, Lausanne, Switzerland (6), TriNet, Dublin, CA USA (6), WNS, Mumbai, India (6), ZER, Istanbul, Turkey (6), Canadian Tire Corporation, Toronto, Canada (5), Cathay United Bank, Taipei, Taiwan (5), Enerjisa Üretim, Istanbul, Turkey (5), Lounge Group, Budapest, Hungary (5), PJ Lhuillier, Inc. | Makati City, Philippines (5), Purpol Marketing, Chippenham, Wiltshire (5), Megaworld Foundation, Inc., Taguig City, Philippines (5), Zimat Consultores, Mexico City, Mexico (5).

Halkbank, pioneering the development of the Turkish banking sector for 83 years, has won eight Gold Stevie Awards, more than any other organization.

All organizations worldwide are eligible to compete in the IBAs, and may submit nominations in a wide range of categories for achievement in management, marketing, public relations, customer service, human resources, new products and services, technology, web sites, apps, events, and more. 

The awards will be presented during a gala event in Rome, Italy on October 13, 2023.

Stevie-winner Talenya (a Paycor company) offers the world's first AI-powered, fully-automated talent sourcing platform. Launched in 2016, Talenya was created in answer to the difficulties recruiters and talent sourcers experience in finding qualified, diverse talent in a competitive candidate market. The industry runs on time-consuming keyword search and one-by-one messaging to potential candidates.

Talenya is the first and only provider of AI technology that automates the sourcing process from search through engagement. It uses machine learning to gauge recruiters’ needs and preferences for each search, and then automatically reaches out to candidates over several channels to ask them to interview for the job opening. It also finds diverse candidates with 98% accuracy and helps level the playing field for underrepresented talent. Talenya is committed to social responsibility and creating a workforce that uplifts people of all identities equitably.

In the past year, Talenya has been recognized several times for its commitment to social responsibility. Vation Ventures acknowledged Talenya in its “Tech For Good” quarterly report for its machine learning functionality, which recognize diverse profiles with 98% accuracy and allow users to boost participation of varying underrepresented identities in their search results without sacrificing quality, and while avoiding the potential for unconscious bias. In this way, Talenya is helping to build a more equitable and inclusive workforce and helping recruiters meet diversity KPIs.

Talenya is committed to creating a more equal world with its Diversity AI, and it tries to live by these same values in its own employee base. Talenya widens the pool of potential diverse candidates by searching and engaging on a multitude of channels automatically, tapping a database of 1.5 billion profiles across the internet.

While many tools can increase a recruiter’s access beyond LinkedIn, none have as large a pool as Talenya. The Sourcing AI scours the internet not only on LinkedIn but on sites like Github, StackOverflow, and a range of others which may not be as obvious. Given the difficulty of finding diverse candidates in general, the wider pool allows for many more identities to be included in every search.

In addition, Talenya software predicts diverse talent at 98% accuracy. It is the first software to find diverse profiles by inferring skills often left off profiles by people of underrepresented groups. Other recruitment tools may allow searchers to filter by identity, but Talenya is the only solution that uses AI to understand and predict a candidate’s identity based on their skills and experience—and to understand that these candidates usually underplay their qualifications which makes them harder to find in Boolean search.

Since Winning Their Stevie Award
In the past 12 months, Talenya has grown to become a leader in a newly created category—automatic talent sourcing. Major brands around the world, such as Xerox, Logitech, and Marvell, have adopted Talenya’s technology to double their interview pipeline. 

Talenya is taking on the herculean mission of developing AI algorithms that can think and operate like a human recruiter in sourcing and engaging with talent. They will continue with efforts to perfect their platform and deliver more qualified and diverse applicants to jobs processed. 

Recently, they have been focused on enhancing the algorithms as well as the user interface that allow recruiters to “train” the software on their preferences and priorities, so that the software can find and fetch high-quality talent to interview. Talenya’s talent database is now the biggest available today and continues to climb beyond 1.5 billion profiles.

Talenya won a Bronze Stevie Award for Most Innovative Tech Company of the Year Among Organizations With Up to 100 Employees in The 2022 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards? 

Established in 2010 by a Euro-Filipino team to help foreign companies tap into the rich Philippine talent pool, Eastvantage has since grown and now provides business solutions to global companies. It enables offshore operations from its locations in the Philippines, India, Bulgaria, and Vietnam.
The management team brings a wealth of global insights and local knowledge in the areas of digital transformation, customer experience, and business support. Combining expertise with a hands-on approach to managing client relationships, Eastvantage aims to make outsourcing simple and seamless.

Eastvantage has grown steadily through the years until 2018 when the company realized it needed to strengthen its operations for it to be able to cope with the heightened requirements of its clients and the market as a whole. Thus, later that year, the company brought in Kamal Asarpota, a seasoned executive with a successful track record of delivering financial and business results with global organizations in the ITES/BPM Industry.

Supported by top management, Kamal began promoting an engaged and empowered team culture. In 2019, the company strengthened its core by improving operational efficiencies and getting the right people. The strategy established Eastvantage as a reliable partner, validated by seamless business continuity during the pandemic lockdowns.

When the pandemic struck the Philippines in early 2020, Eastvantage immediately put measures in place to minimize the impact on the company’s gains from the previous years and garnered a Silver Stevie Award for its COVID-19 response efforts.

The company continued strengthening its operations and sales team throughout 2020 and 2021. It reinforced its #everybodysells 360°+ business development cycle strategy, which covers pre-sales to operations. The strategy involves not only the sales and marketing teams but the whole operations support team, including HR, recruitment, IT, finance, and administration.

This, together with the entry of a seasoned investor in 2021 who brought in a deep understanding of scaling service operations, incentivized internal stakeholders to be aligned with company growth goals. Further, the company expanded its IT Managed Services.

These measures enabled the company to grow its existing business simultaneously with new business acquisitions, at an increased win rate of 19% compared to 5% in 2020. By the end of 2021, the company:

• had an accounts portfolio of 50 clients, a 70%+ increase from 29 clients in 2020;
• grew its headcount by 70%+, from 473 full-time employees to 815;
• exceeded its EBITDA target;
• closed the year at a 12% revenue growth; and
• earned the highest annual income in its 11 years of operations.

Eastvantage has not only survived the threats to general business stability brought about by the pandemic, but it has evidently also outgrown the startup phase. Now in the expansion stage of the business, the company has opened up additional delivery centers in the Philippines, India, Bulgaria, and Vietnam. Further, it now has a US-based Business Strategy Advisor for its diversification in North America.

The growth is expected to continue, as Eastvantage is bent on seizing opportunities by continually evolving in line with market demand. The higher focus on complex and digital services is one of the initiatives in this direction and is expected to contribute high value to the business. The direction is to further expand globally and be the Managed IT Services partner of choice.

Eastvantage won a Gold Stevie Award for Achievement in Sales or Revenue Generation in The 2022 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards?

Nominations will now be accepted through 13 July

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of The International Business Awards®, announced today that the final entry deadline for the 2023 (20th annual) edition of the awards has been extended through 13 July. The original final entry deadline was 14 June.

The International Business Awards are widely considered to be the world's premier business awards competition. In 2022 the competition attracted more than 3,700 nominations from organizations in more than 70 nations.

All individuals and organizations worldwide—public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large and small—may submit nominations to The International Business Awards. Entry details are available at http://www.stevieawards.com/IBA.

“By popular request, we decided to extend the entry period to allow organizations more time to prepare and submit nominations,” said Stevie Awards President Maggie Miller. No additional late fees will be assessed for nominations submitted after the original final deadline.

Juries featuring more than 200 executives will determine the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie-winning nominations that will be announced on 14 August.

The International Business Awards recognize achievement in every facet of the workplace. Category types include:

• Management Awards 
• Sustainability Awards
• Entrepreneur of the Year Awards
• Company of the Year Awards
• Customer Service Awards 
• Human Resources Awards 
• Technology Awards
• Marketing Awards 
• New Product Awards 
• Public Relations Awards 
• Web Site, App, Event, Video, and other media awards
• Social Media Awards
• Thought Leadership Awards

There are many new and revised features of The International Business Awards for 2023:

• There's an entirely new group of five categories to recognize achievement in Sustainability.  Each of the five categories is split into six geographic sub-categories.
• There are new categories sprinkled throughout many of the category groups, especially in the categories for Achievement, Events, Marketing, Mobile Site & App, New Products & Services, Public Relations, , and Websites.
• The category group formerly known as Information Technology has been renamed Technology to better reflect that all types of technology-related achievements are welcome to be nominated in these categories.

Request your 2023 Entry Kit

Healthcare Consultancy Group (HCG) is a global leader in medical communications, comprising eight interconnected agencies with distinct personalities and complementary skills.

Incorporated in 1987, their agencies craft scientific evidence into medical stories that shape decisions and drive medicine. They aim to accelerate the understanding and acceptance of pharmaceutical clients’ medicines, getting the medicines closer to the patients who need them.

In their 30+ years of experience, they have helped bring transformational medicines to billions of patients worldwide in areas such as COVID-19, oncology, and CAR-T therapy. 

Their company culture is designed to generate a “thought arena,” driving future thinking, collaboration, and communication excellence. Since 1987, the company has grown to 900+ in global staff, now supporting over 70 pharma and biotech companies.

Employee Value Proposition
The HCG employee value proposition is “Come for the work. Stay for the culture. Have an impact.” With the advent of what many call “The Great Resignation,”  2021 presented a new challenge: How to become an agency everyone wants to work for? 

HCG engaged their staff consultants to gather insights that could translate into actionable change to strengthen the employee value proposition:

Come for the work — Placing talent at the heart of their business strategy meant overhauling their website to host a new talent campaign “The Wonderland of Medical Communications,” which reintroduces their fusion working model and highlights all available resources. 

Stay for the culture — HCG sought to create more value for existing employees by developing The Employee Engagement Council; building talent retention programs like the Personal Discovery program; and creating innovation initiatives like SWARM profilers to uncover the “inner innovator” in all employees.

They strengthened their commitment to Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI), driven by a DEI Council through education initiatives like the DEI University, which includes three training modules and discussion points on inclusive mindset, unconscious bias, and antiracism; sponsorship programs: an initiative to elevate 25 midlevel diverse employees through intentional mentorship and action planning; and partnerships with five DEI- certified recruitment firms.

Have an impact — They continue to empower staff through industry-leading “Collective Intelligence” thought leadership initiatives. They recently started the HCG Disparities and Inequities Council to ensure a more equitable distribution of healthcare. They also restarted the Work with a Purpose initiative, allowing staff to directly engage with patients who have had access to transformational medicines.

Since Winning Their Stevie Awards
HCG continues to foster a healthy work culture through the expansion of successful employee-focused initiatives and the introduction of new or refreshed programs.

With their talent campaign “The Wonderland of Medical Communications,” HCG increased their global footprint that now spans the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Australia.

Since submission, a brand-new companywide intranet, consciously designed and organized to align with the three distinct categories determined by the employee value proposition was launched. The intranet, entitled “StartHere,” houses over 900 assets that are fully available to all staff. Planned expansion upon StartHere is planned to focus on the connectivity of staff.

HCG has built a now annual workshop, known as FUTURUM, is a forward-looking think-tank initiative, bringing together the collective intelligence of HCG leadership expertise to research, prioritize, and take action against key trends in the coming year spanning pharma, medicine, technology, and society, which impact HCG and medical communications.

In addition to the SWARM Innovation Profiler, which aids individuals in gaining insight into their own strengths as an innovator, they have deployed the SWARM Innovation Culture Assessment. This assessment measures the degree to which your organization supports the eight innovation talents in its people and the maturity of your innovation system. 

They also re-introduced HCG’s LEAD (Learn, Engage, Act, Develop) program, which provides a forum for emerging leaders to interact with and learn from current leaders across the broader HCG organization, gain valuable insight from those leaders and guest speakers, engage in addressing relevant HCG challenges, and create connections with colleagues from across all the HCG companies. The program was held in person and allowed attendees to dedicate two full days to their development.

Healthcare Consultancy Group won a Bronze Stevie Award for Employer of the Year – Advertising, Marketing, & Public Relations in the 2022 Stevie® Awards for Great Employers.

Interested in entering the 2023 Stevie® Awards for Great Employers?

Stevie-winner Adani Group is an Indian multinational conglomerate headquartered in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India, founded by Shri Gautam Adani in 1988.

Adani envisions training the youth of India and making them capable enough to earn their daily bread with self-respect and pride, resulting in the establishment of their Gold Stevie^® Award-winning Adani Skill Development Centre (ASDC).

The ASDC was registered on May 16, 2016, as a section 8 not-for-profit company to focus on skill development activities to contribute toward nation-building by bridging the skill gap demand & supply, in line with the Government of India’s Skill India Mission.

Adani Skill Development Center 
ASDC started its operations pan-India in 2016 with the project “SAKSHAM,” which has reached more than 100,000 beneficiaries. The program helps to teach parents, communities, and employers about gender equality, equal opportunities, and economic empowerment for females, as gender equality is embedded in all the courses. 

“SAKSHAM” means “capable” and is an ideology of the ASDC to enable the youth of India to become more capable of achieving their goals by becoming skilled professionals. This ideology has no borders and boundaries. SAKSHAM is working to bring world-class skills development training to India through partnerships with various corporations and other organizations.

The environment is designed to encourage young girls and boys to take up training and employment opportunities to build a well-trained, skilled workforce. ASDC aims to help India's youth achieve their goals by turning them into skilled professionals.

It is an initiative to provide disadvantaged youth, especially those who have been deprived of mainstream education, with essential life and market-oriented vocational skills. This not only helps them to access decent employment but also gives them the independence to be themselves.

Project Impact and Expansion
Thus far, the program has impacted over 100,000 young adults by equipping them with livelihood skills, thereby making ASDC the fastest-growing skill development company in India. Interestingly, 60% of the total trained youth are females.

ASDC has since launched additional programs, including:

• Special Project for FISHERMEN community in Kutch district of Gujarat state, which provides assured placement in nearby industry after training to the highly isolated community of the area.

• Special Project for Prisoners of Jail in Gujarat State, which provides basic digital literacy training to soon-to-be-released prisoners to help them integrate into the digital world after release.
• Training offerings for technological advancement in Welding, Crane Operation, Electrical Wiring & Heavy Motor Vehicle programs by introducing Mixed reality (Augmented + Virtual) -based simulator training.
• Four new training centers in India created the presence of Saksham in 11 states, enabling an overall annual training capacity of 30,000+.

ASDC is one of the biggest non-government-funded training partners in India to provide training in employable skill domains and providing livelihood opportunities to the upskilled youth of the Nation. 

They have now started to offer diplomas, postgraduate diplomas, and certificate programs affiliated with State Government recognized universities in skill development. They also provide experience-based learning opportunities through On Job Training (OJT), Exposure Visits, and Project work in almost all the courses to ensure that the Skill Gap is appropriately addressed. 

Adani Skill Development Centre won a Gold Stevie Award for Organization of the Year among Medium-sized Non-Profit or Government Organizations in The 2022 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards?

Friska Wirya is the powerhouse behind Stevie-winner Fresh by Friska, a change management consulting, facilitation, and personal development service for executives, teams, and large businesses.

Friska guides complex organizations through the people side of change; she has helped industry-leading organizations shift tribulation into transformation.

Friska is the former Head of Change at the biggest gold miner in the Southern Hemisphere, leading digital transformation changes to achieve US$170m annual savings, skyrocket innovation and improve safety. She infiltrated a digital-first culture across four countries to create a solid foundation to drive the adoption of new and emerging technologies, achieving recognition such as the Most Innovative Hard Hat Company from Apple and various industry awards.

Before this, she was the Global Change Lead for multi-million dollar projects spanning technology, structure, process, and people, impacting +23,000 at Tier 1 engineering firm Worley. She brought the digital future of policing to life for the world’s single-largest policing jurisdiction.

Friska started her own business after leaving her corporate job in the mining, oil & gas, and engineering industries on the precipice of the global pandemic. As COVID-19 spread, restrictions came out fast, borders closed, and Friska’s pipeline was eliminated in the blink of an eye – organizations were not investing in change management, ironically when they needed it the most. Friska invested time in the online space to develop her virtual brand.

In response to the COVID curveball, Friska offered workshops to the public she’d previously only offered in-house and even welcomed big brands like Salesforce and Microsoft on board as clients. She spoke at Microsoft’s first D&I event in Asia and at conferences such as The Future of Mining, Female Influencers in Tech, and Women in Construction and Engineering.

Friska was then engaged by the #1 university in Australia, The University of Melbourne, to pivot rapidly to a fully remote campus, impacting 65,000 students and 15,000 staff while maintaining operational efficiency and blitz-scaling programs to aid student financial and mental health during the global pandemic.

With a speedy turnaround, Friska’s team created a country-first digital portal for students to remain connected to their lecturers, lesson materials, access COVID-19 safety information, financial support information, and mental health resources. This portal also connected university departments and had them working together in ways they had never done before. The results were astounding:

• Transitioned to a fully remote campus in five business days
• Built a one-of-a-kind connection portal where everyone may have been physically distanced - but in heart and mind closer than ever
• Held virtual open days—the University of Melbourne had a two-week Open Day event. The first visual open day saw more than 40,000 people registering from around the world. People could take a virtual tour, join a sample lecture, ask questions, and network with other students.
• 300+ live events over six separate days
• ~45k event registrations and ~14k platform registrations

Friska’s work made students feel supported and empowered the university to adapt and continue to operate. The scale and speed at which the COVID response was executed make it noteworthy. During this process, there was zero downtime. 

The open days, and the positive feedback from these virtual events, were phenomenal. This program was the most comprehensive of its kind and a fully immersive experience. In numbers, this initiative impacted 65,000 students, 16,000 staff, and 250 vendors/consultants. It received exceptional media coverage in major newspapers. The marketing data for the virtual open days indicated that, over two weeks, over 45,000 visitors joined events from around the world, which suggests that a virtual event opened the university to more people.

Aside from keeping current students supported and extending the university’s credibility during a pandemic, this work also gave Friska’s business a chance to demonstrate her commitment to excellence and exceptional capabilities, seeing her pull off many incredible “firsts'' under challenging circumstances.

Friska has created a blueprint for change that is relevant for large workforces with central hubs where the workplace is more than just an office. Since then, she has gone on to consult for the world’s largest family-owned business in the automotive industry headquartered in the USA and enable a large Australian engineering company to implement sustainability principles across APAC.

Friska Wirya’s Fresh by Friska won a Bronze Stevie Award for Company of the Year among Small Advertising, Marketing, & Public Relations Organizations in The 2022 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards? 

Founded in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Covax Australia is a Queensland-based company that provides professional staffing solutions and high-quality workplace management strategies.

Seeing the unmet needs in the community due to lockdown restrictions and nationwide delays, co-founders Mannu Kala and Dr. Anuj Gupta decided to combine their shared expertise to help innovate pandemic solutions and manage the pandemic alongside public health officials on the local, state, and federal levels.

Covax worked with leaders to support the vaccination rollout, operationalizing a major distribution hub, and offering end-to-end COVID-19-related testing services. They also provided staffing for hard-hit residential aged care facilities and partnered with community outreach clinics at schools and parks.

In response to surging infections, Covax built pop-up testing clinics on short notice and before major holidays. They implemented solutions to clear backlogs at other testing centers and coordinated with networks of pathology testing providers. 

Throughout the pandemic, as they responded to emerging community needs, Covax Australia leaders were also managing the company’s own growth. To keep up with demand for services, they recruited and trained over 800 employees. 

As lockdown restrictions impacted small businesses and commerce, Covax Australia was able to create jobs for their community. They proactively reached out to universities to give graduates real-world experience and assisted those making career changes with transferring their skills to a new industry.

Frontline Medical Hero of the Year
Of special note, Founder & Director of Covax Australia, Dr. Anuj Gupta, was honored at The 2022 International Business Awards® with a Gold Stevie Award for Frontline Medical Hero of the Year in the COVID-19 Response Categories. 

Dr. Gupta began his medical career as an international medical student in 2005 in Townsville, Queensland, Australia. Finishing his medical training in 2019, Dr. Gupta has already established multiple practices and enterprises, some of which are among the most successful general practices in Queensland and Australia. He has since gone on to open a vaccine clinic, respiratory clinics, and drive-through clinics in Brisbane and Gold Coast.

When the COVID-19 pandemic started, Dr. Gupta served as a frontline responder in Brisbane and consistently rose to the challenge whenever the city needed him in terms of surge and pandemic response. He is also responsible for setting up the first GP Respiratory clinic in Brisbane.

In December 2020, Dr. Gupta founded Covax Australia, a staffing agency with a focus solely on pandemic management, including developing and implementing strategies to help manage aspects of the COVID-19 crisis. In coordination with the Department of Health and Queensland Health, Dr. Gupta worked tirelessly to establish frontline clinics and to organize the COVID-19 response in Australia and Queensland in particular.

Evolving for the Future
Covax Australia now provides innovative staffing solutions to diverse industry settings to suit their changing needs, in sectors including but not limited to the healthcare, hospitality, security, human resources and environmental services sectors.

They support private clients as well as state and federal governments developing and providing end-to-end solutions, supply of equipment, and surge workforce assistance. The agency endeavors to build life-long partnerships with clients, adapting and customizing their services to meet the changing needs of all businesses. 

Covax Australia won a Bronze Stevie Award for Company of the Year among Medium-size Health Products & Services Organizations, and a Bronze Stevie Award for Startup of the Year among Business Services Industries.

Dr. Anuj Gupta won a Gold Stevie Award for Frontline Medical Hero of the Year within the COVID-19 Response Categories in The 2022 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The 2023 International Business Awards?