Mahmoud Mansi is the Founder of HR Revolution Middle East Magazine – the media partner for the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards. As a professional, Mahmoud has worked in management consulting, auditing, education, training and development, project management, community development and sustainability, arts and culture, event management, business journalism, and media management.

Mahmoud is a global public speaker. He has traveled and spoken at conferences in Nigeria, Sudan, India, Saudi Arabia, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, and Egypt. He has spoken eight times at TEDx, in addition to speaking at global human resources conferences such as SHRM TECH, ATD Middle East & HRSE.

He is the author of “Sustaining a 360° Agile Workplace: A Millennial Perspective” in addition to eight other books in entrepreneurship, social sciences, literature, gender, and culture dialogue.

As an activist, Mahmoud Mansi has won several awards such as the “Sea of Words Literary Award 2010” from the Anna Lindh Foundation in Spain, the “Culture Shift Award 2013” from Egypt’s British Council, and the “Brand Ambassador Award 2018” from His Excellency Dr. Rashid Al Leem, Alleem Knowledge Center in UAE.

Besides participating as a Stevie Awards judge, Mahmoud Mansi has been acting as a brand ambassador to encourage more organizations and professionals to join the Stevie Awards either as nominees or jury members. He has published more than 30 articles in HR Revolution Middle East Magazine, in addition to being featured in Dostor Newspaper in Egypt, received an honorable mention at the university he works at; The Arab Academy, for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport, and was interviewed on Egypt’s National T.V. speaking about the award, judging process and sharing case studies from award-winning entries.

Connect with Mahmoud Mansi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mahmoud-mansi-hr-philosopher-014b0a121/?originalSubdomain=ae

The Stevie Awards asked Mahmoud a few questions about his judging experience:

The Stevie Awards: Mahmoud, as someone who has various experiences in judging, what makes The Stevie® Awards distinctive?

Mahmoud Mansi: I believe the Stevie® Awards is simply a pioneer for various reasons and I am enthusiastic to share in-depth details.

1-Geographic & Demographic Outreach: The Stevie® Awards embraces, promotes, and welcomes diversity, business innovation, and excellence with a wide range of geographic and demographic outreach through its various awards: Middle East & North Africa Stevie® Awards, Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards, German Stevie® Awards, The American Business Awards®, International Business Awards®, Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service, and Stevie® Awards for Women in Business.

2-Diversity in Categories: The Stevie® Awards has a group of specialized categories for corporate, NGOs, governments, start-ups, and individuals, which encourages all different market segments to apply in what they think is their competitive advantage from products and projects to best practices in management. Also, the categories are annually updated according to new trends and market development.

3-Easy Entry Access: Interested individuals fill out the “Request an Entry Kit” form from the website, and will receive an email which contains all details regarding the categories, eligibility, and entry process. Also, unlike most trending awards, there is no entry fee to the Middle East & North Africa Stevie® Awards which encourages the business community in all its sectors to participate.

4-Great Customer Support & Guidance: There is a Stevie® Awards professional team dedicated to guiding nominees towards applying in the category that best suits their points of strength and this team provides support throughout the process if needed.

5-Accurate Judging Process: Nominees should feel secure as they are in good hands. The Stevie® Awards assure that the jury members are experts and professionals in their industry, in addition to having the judging process monitored and audited to assure quality and resilience. Another important point is that nominees can attach extra files to their main submission to emphasize on their application with further evidence and supporting documents.

The Stevie Awards: You have been judging the Stevie® Awards for three years now in a row, why do you find interesting in the experience?

Mahmoud Mansi: With each round, I feel enthusiasm and passion for discovering something new. I am always curious about the evolution of humanity and it is well reflected in innovation contests and awards. It is like reading the news to know what’s new in the business, only that these news updates are explicit to the Stevie® Awards Jury. Although each judge can review a minimum of 20 entries I always enjoy challenging myself to go the extra mile. I am looking forward to participating as a jury member in the upcoming years and discovering what further the evolution of humanity would bring to us.

The Stevie Awards: Why is it important for organizations to apply for business awards?

Mahmoud Mansi: Innovative organizations deserve to be well-recognized. It is the right of its customers and employees to know that their provider or their employer is unique in the market. However, contests and awards provide other advantages besides recognition and branding, such as healthy competition, benchmarking, promoting innovation and teamwork within the organization, and receiving constructive feedback from the judges who are experts in the industry in order to develop further.

The Stevie Awards: Can you share with us some tips for those who want to enter the Stevie Awards?

Mahmoud Mansi: I believe organizations and individuals need to consider several points as they apply for the Stevie® Awards. As a judge, I have noticed that sometimes there is a gap between innovative ideas and well-written proposals. Some entries are exceptionally innovative but are not well written and well presented, and other entries might have less innovative ideas however they are well organized and neat. As jury members, we focus on both. Indeed the Stevie® Awards promote innovation, yet as professionals and experts, we need to witness how this innovation has turned into a tangible outcome.

Here are some points that have to be considered when preparing for the award: innovative initiative, clear business case and objectives, impact on community and stakeholders, teamwork and engagement throughout the project implementation, change management, proposal writing style, project timeline, and efficiency, the return on investments, and the journey itself preferably documented with testimonials, pictures, and videos. Another important angle to consider throughout the proposal is the usage and reliability of data analytics tools including statistics, illustrations, and ratios in revealing results, in addition to having the proposal reviewed and edited by all relevant project leaders and stakeholders before submitting the final version to the Stevie Awards.

The Stevie Awards: What are the benefits of being a judge, and how do you apply to become one?

Mahmoud Mansi: Being selected or nominated to become a jury committee member is an honorable and distinctive position. It does not only reflect one’s expertise in a certain profession, but it also reflects that this person has high ethical standards and is well-recognized and trusted among his/her community.

Here are some benefits of being a judge at the Stevie® Awards:-

• Self-Development & Awareness; learning about best practices in the industry and learning the new market trends and direction.
• Recognition; during the judging process, the jury members get recognized on the Stevie® Awards website and by receiving a hardcopy judge certificate.
• Profile; judging is a unique experience and it is added to one’s professional profile as an achievement.
• Award Ceremony; all jury members are welcomed to attend the award ceremony, enjoy a spectacular night, socialize with award winners and other judges, and see the outcome of their work.
• Win the Judges’ Lottery! $500 is randomly offered to two judges, from all those who score 30+ entries, plus two additional prizes of $1,000 to two judges, from all those who rate at least 60 nominations. The prizes change from year to year and between Stevie Awards competitions.
• Receiving invitations for future judging opportunities.

For those who are having plans to judge at the Stevie® Awards, the following link has the details: https://stevieawards.com/you-be-judge , and make sure your LinkedIn profile is updated and it reflects your experience and competitive edge. Writing and publishing some articles on your profile is recommended.

The Stevie Awards: How can you develop yourself in order to remain a competent judge?

Mahmoud Mansi: I always try to become a competent judge by keeping pace with the new market trends and best practices by continuously working on consulting projects, reading books from iconic figures in the industry, watching TED Talks, getting enrolled in certification programs and workshops, attending conferences, in addition to reading opinion articles in blogs, interviews with industry leaders and academic papers. Besides working on developing my knowledge and experience, a judge is also an auditor, project manager, and business coach.

The Stevie Awards: What would you like to say to those who are not shortlisted or selected as award winners?

Mahmoud Mansi: Every organization that seeks development and works towards providing better services and quality products to its customers and smarter management systems to its employees, with a sustainable and environmentally friendly approach, is indeed a winner in the eyes of all its stakeholders. the Stevie® Awards will either grant an organization the chance to be recognized or provide tips that support the organization to further develop, and these are actually two different types of awards; recognition and development!

Another point to keep in mind is that many organizations can win the award title “today”, but true winners are the agile organizations that are able to sustain their initiatives and assure that they remain impactful on the business, employees, customers and the community.

The Stevie® Awards, organizers of the world’s premier business awards programs, today announced the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie winners in The 20th American Business Awards®.

All organizations operating in the U.S.A. – large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit - are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development. More than 3,700 nominations were considered in the judging process this year by more than 240 professionals worldwide, whose average scores determined the winners.

Winners of three or more Gold Stevie Awards include:

5WPR (New York, NY), Adobe (San Jose, CA), Age of Learning (Glendale, CA), Ansys (Canonsburg, PA), Aspen Publishing (Frederick, MD), AT&T Business Multimedia Solutions (Huntington Beach, CA), Boost Payment Solutions (New York, NY), BRG Communications (Alexandria, VA), Bursali (Bursa, Turkey), Cisco (San Jose, CA), Delta Dental of Kansas (Wichita, KS), Evisort (San Mateo, CA), Experience Kissimmee (Kissimmee, FL), Forbes (Jersey City, NJ), Hearts & Science (New York, NY), Home Depot (Atlanta, GA), IBM (Armonk, NY), Jeunesse Global (Orlando, FL), MachineGenius (Holliston, MA), Denny Cherry and Associates (Oceanside, CA), Merkle (Columbia, MD), New American Funding (Tustin, CA), Pink Energy (Mooresville, NC), Qualcomm Technologies Inc. (San Diego, NC), Soleo Health (Centennial, CO), TAWANI Enterprises (Chicago, IL), Tinuiti (New York, NY), TopSpot (Houston, TX), and Wolters Kluwer (Minneapolis, MN).

Among other winners, organizations with five or more Gold, Silver, or Bronze Stevie wins include:

1903 Public Relations (Clovis, CA), ADP (Roseland, NJ), Applied Systems (University Park, IL), AutoLeap (Upton, MA), Cloudastructure, Inc. (Miami, FL), Explorium (San Francisco, CA), Fannie Mae (Washington D.C.), CarSaver (Franklin, TN), Convey Communications (Phoenix, AZ), John Hancock (Boston, MA), N-able Inc (Boston, MA), TaskUs (New Braunfels, TX), Tek Leaders Inc (Frisco, TX), The Harbinger Group (Chicago, IL), Openforce (Phoenix AZ), Syntellis Performance Solutions (New York, NY), Tata Consultancy Services (Mumbai, India), SoftPro (Raleigh, NC), and TTEC Holdings, Inc. (Englewood, CO)

For a complete list of the Stevie Award winners announced today, visit www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

Winners of six best-of-show prizes will be awarded Grand Stevie Award trophies, to be announced the week of May 9.

2022 Stevie winners will be celebrated during an awards banquet on Monday, June 13 at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. Tickets for the event are now on sale.

The categories that recognize outstanding new products and services introduced in the USA are among the most heavily subscribed in the ABAs, and every new product or service nominated in The 2022 American Business Awards is included in voting for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite New Products, a worldwide public vote. Voting opened today at http://peopleschoice.stevieawards.com and will conclude on May 27. People’s Choice Stevie winners will be announced the week of May 30 and will be honored during the June 13 awards presentations.

“We are thrilled to be able to recognize such a wide array of American organizations in The 2022 The American Business Awards. American companies have thrived in the face of hardship and have adapted to the needs of their workforce,” said Stevie Awards President, Maggie Miller. This year’s Stevie-winning nominations in The American Business Awards are testament to the commitment, passion, adaptability, and creativity of the American people. We look forward to seeing Stevie Award winners and their guests at the first in-person awards ceremony since 2019.”  

Nun heißt es Endspurt für die Nominierungsphase der 19. jährlichen The International Business Awards, dem weltweit führenden Wettbewerb für Wirtschaftsauszeichnungen, der jedes Jahr Nominierungen von Organisationen aus mehr als 70 Ländern und Territorien anzieht.

Für alle, die sich und ihr Unternehmen für einen der begehrten Awards nominieren möchten, ist noch bis zum 11. Mai Zeit, Projekte und Leistungen in mehr als 400 Kategorien einzureichen.

Nachzügler:innen haben noch bis zum 15. Juni Zeit, ihre Nominierungen mit der Zahlung einer Nachgebühr nachzureichen. Informationen und Details zur Einreichung finden Sie unter www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

Wer darf teilnehmen?

Teilnehmen können alle Einzelpersonen und Organisationen weltweit - öffentlich und privat, gewinnorientiert und gemeinnützig, groß und klein - können Nominierungen für die International Business Awards einreichen. 

Die International Business Awards würdigen Leistungen in allen Bereichen der Arbeitswelt. Unter anderem mit den Marketing Awards, im Management mit den Management Awards, die Kundenbetreuung mit den Customer Service Awards , die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit mit den Public Relations Awards  und die IT mit den  Information Technology Awards. Leistungen im Bereich Produktentwicklung werden mit den New Product Awards ausgezeichnet und besondere Leistungen im Personalbereich würdigen die Kategorien für Human Resources Awards.

Eine große Auswahl an Kategorien würdigen auch herausragende Leistungen im Bereich der unternehmensbezogenen Medien und Publikationen. Beispiele hierfür sind die Awards für Website Awards, Awards für Smartphone und Tablet Apps sowie weitere Medien Awards

Eine vollständige Übersicht über die Kategorien finden Sie hier.

 Was gibt es Neues?

Die Stevie® Awards überraschen ihre Teilnehmenden mit neuen Kategorien:

Neben den neuen Unterkategorien, die in den schon bestehenden Kategorien zu finden sind, erwarten die Teilnehmenden zwei brandneue Award-Bereiche: 

Die neuen Social Media Kategorien würdigen Innovationen in den Bereichen Erstellung und Moderation von Social Media-Inhalten, Management und Marketing seit dem 1. Januar 2020. In Bereichen für zum Beispiel

• Innovativster Unternehmens-Blog
• Innovativste Facebook-Seite
• Innovativster Twitter-Feed
• Beste*r Business Influencer*in des Jahres
• Beste*r Business-Blogger*in des Jahres
• Social Media Manager*in des Jahres

können Social Media Profis ihre Nominierungen einreichen. 

Auch die Kategorie für Thought Leadership ist in diesem Jahr neu bei den International Business Awards®. In dieser Kategorie werden die Leistungen von Organisationen gewürdigt, die seit dem 1. Januar 2020 aktive Maßnahmen ergriffen haben, um ihre Führungskräfte und Mitarbeitenden als Vordenker weiterzuentwickeln und ihre Vordenkerrolle innerhalb und außerhalb der Organisation zu fördern.

Eine Übersicht über alle Neuerungen und Änderungen der International Business Awards® 2022 finden Sie hier.

Die Jury, bestehend aus mehr als 150 Führungskräften aus aller Welt ermitteln dann die Gold, Silber und Bronze Preisträger der Stevie Awards. Die Gewinnerinnen und Gewinner werden am 15. August bekannt gegeben und am 22. Oktober bei einem Gala-Bankett in Europa gefeiert, sofern die Bedingungen dies zulassen.

Möchten auch Sie die Möglichkeit nutzen, Ihren geschätzten Mitarbeitenden zu danken und sie zu ehren, Ihre Marke aufzubauen oder zu veredeln? Dann fordern Sie noch heute Ihre Teilnahmeunterlagen an, um an den beliebten internationalen Awards teilzunehmen.

 

 

 

 

Jaime Gill is a freelance communications consultant in Cambodia, splitting his time between paid work with UN agencies, using communications to respond to COVID-19, and pro-bono support to small non-profits struggling to survive the crisis.

In the last twelve months, Jaime has worked on Cambodia’s national COVID-19 vaccine communications program, invented a new safety-promoting sport, ‘Social Distance Football’, and helped a struggling arts non-profit survive by breaking a world record. The unifying factor? All were fueled by hard-hitting media coverage, his favorite method for creating a big impact with small budgets.

It’s all a long way from his first admin job, gluing photo slides onto press releases in a London PR agency in 1998. Along the way, Jaime has worked across most PR roles, becoming Head of Creativity in that PR agency, then moving in-house as Press & Public Affairs Manager for a large disability charity. He launched media campaigns that doubled the numbers of disabled people voting in the UK and created the world’s first ‘easy-read’ newspaper for people with learning disabilities, before moving to Cambodia where he’s spent six years advising commercial and non-profit clients.

Past clients include Microsoft, UNICEF, the BBC, the Olympics, Coca-Cola, Unilever, Fujitsu, UN, and Yahoo.

Jaime began 2019 working at non-profit TLC, developing its first campaigns. In November 2019, “Be An Honourable Warrior” confronted the 30% of Cambodian men who admit to using violence against women. The use of influencers and PR techniques led to a public reckoning across social media and national newspapers. TLC campaigns won nine international awards in 2019 and 2020, but most importantly led to 13,000 women learning domestic violence laws and 25,000 men pledging to end violence.

Despite these successes, Jaime took the difficult decision to leave his secure job in early 2020, knowing he’d mentored two talented young Cambodians and left behind a campaigning blueprint TLC could replicate.

Freelancing allowed Jaime to support organizations at the COVID-19 coalface. He rapidly established paid consultancies with overseas clients including Microsoft enabled him to work pro-bono for independent non-profits unable to pay. In May 2020, he invented ‘Social Distance Football’ with ISF Cambodia. This safety-promoting game was learned by 50,000 young Cambodians online and generated media coverage across four continents, as well as a Platinum Hermes Creative Award.

He also worked with arts/education non-profit, Phare. Having lost 60% of its income when public circus performances were canceled, it faced closure. Jaime proposed a Guinness World Record attempt for the longest circus show to generate media hype and drive people to online fundraisers. The 24-hour show in March 2021 doubled its fundraising target, was viewed by 450,000 online, and generated massive media attention in Cambodia and overseas, winning Gold at the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards.

Jaime’s track record is strong, but he rose to the COVID-19 challenge with the best work of his career. Having fallen in love with Cambodia and worked with several non-profits educating the disadvantaged, he was distressed when school closures began erasing those gains. He wanted to help reduce the damage and declined British Embassy advice to return home.

He immediately offered pro-bono support to education non-profits he knew were effective but struggling. From being a communications manager, he frequently found himself acting as entire communications team - proposing strategy, developing creative ideas, and writing and selling-in press releases.

This work led to UNICEF’s offer to consult on their campaign to re-open schools safely, which led to other COVID-related communications for the UN. As well as campaigns, he wrote and placed a series of thought-leadership articles in national newspapers, championing creativity, education, and children’s needs during/after COVID.

Between January 2019 and now, he created four award-winning communications campaigns with four different organizations, something no other communicator in Cambodia can claim:

• Led hard-hitting, media-driven anti-violence campaign (TLC)
• Collaborated on multimedia storytelling campaign (UNICEF)
• Invented and publicized new safety-promoting sport (ISF)
• Created record-breaking events driven by PR buzz (Phare).

Over six years, Jaime has developed a network of young Cambodian photographers, filmmakers, influencers, activists, journalists and communicators he collaborates with on projects. The awards won have put Cambodia and these remarkable individuals on the global map for creative communications, something which can only help the country’s creative industries in the challenging years ahead.

Since Jaime entered The 2021 International Business Awards®, he continued working as part of a large team of Government ministries and development agencies on the roll-out of COVID-19 vaccines in Cambodia, as a consultant with UNICEF. He provides advice on how to combat misinformation and increase demand for vaccines - Cambodia is now one of the most vaccinated countries in the whole of the Asian region.

He also worked on the successful launch of Generation Future, a new program to find ten talented young Cambodians with ideas on how to change the world. UNICEF will match them with mentors and financial support to turn their dreams into realities.

He assisted with an artistic collaboration between UNICEF and Phare, celebrating the resilience of Cambodian families during the pandemic. This has become a viral hit on social media.

Jaime won the Silver Stevie Awards in 2021 for Communications Professional of the Year. Interested in Communications Awards for 2022?

Winners in Ninth Annual Competition to Be Celebrated During Virtual Ceremony on 29 June 

Winners in the ninth annual Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards, the only awards program to recognize innovation in business throughout the entire Asia-Pacific region, have been announced. The list of Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners is available at http://Asia.StevieAwards.com.

The Stevie Awards are widely considered to be the world's premier business awards, conferring recognition for achievement in the workplace over the past 20 years in programs such as The International Business Awards® and The American Business Awards®. The name Stevie is derived from the Greek word for “crowned.”

The 2022 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards have recognized organizations in 20 nations including Australia, Belarus, Cambodia, China including Hong Kong and Macao, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Nigeria, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, the United Arab Emirates, the United States, and Vietnam. More than 900 nominations about innovative achievements in the 29-nation APAC region were considered by the judges this year in categories such as Award for Excellence in Innovation in Products & Services, Award for Innovative Management, and Award for Innovation in Corporate Websites, among many others.

Among the top overall winners are Telkom Indonesia (Indonesia) with 16 Gold, three Silver, and three Bronze Stevie Awards and Cisco Systems (Australia and India) with three Gold, six Silver, and four Bronze Stevie wins.

Winners of two or more Gold Stevie Awards include Asticom Technology Inc. (Philippines), Brand Head (Beijing) Consulting Limited Liability Company (China), City of Sydney (Australia), DataRobot (Singapore), EdgeVerve Systems Ltd (India), Hotwire (Australia), HP (India and Singapore), iClick Interactive Asia Group Limited (Hong Kong), Kacific Broadband Satellites Ltd (Singapore), HANAROADCOM (South Korea), Megaworld Foundation, Inc. (Philippines), Meralco (Philippines), Motor Culture Australia (Australia), Ooredoo Group (APAC), PT Bank Permata Tbk (Indonesia), Search Opt Media Inc. (Philippines), Shanghai Disney Resort (China), Sino Group (Hong Kong), and TTEC Holdings, Inc. (Philippines). 

Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Award winners were determined by the average scores of more than 100 executives around the world acting as judges in March and April.

“The submissions in the ninth edition of the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards were outstanding this year,” said Stevie Awards President, Maggie Miller. “The judges remarked that the innovation and perseverance demonstrated in the nominations was inspiring. We applaud all the Stevie Award winners this year and look forward to celebrating them on 29 June.”

Details about the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards and the 29 June awards ceremony, and the list of Stevie Award winners, are available at http://Asia.Stevieawards.com.

The Stevie® Awards have announced the Grand Stevie Award winners in the third annual Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards. Grand Stevie winners will be presented their awards at a gala banquet at the Waldorf Astoria Ras Al Khaimah Hotel in the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, 21 May.

The Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards, sponsored by the Ras Al Khaimah Chamber of Commerce & Industry, is an international business awards competition open to all organizations in 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa. The focus of the awards is recognizing innovation in all its forms.

This year more than 700 nominations were considered in the judging process by more than 100 professionals, whose average ratings determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners announced earlier in March. For a complete list of the 2022 Stevie Award winners, visit https://MENA.StevieAwards.com.

In addition to the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Awards, the top winner overall (total number of points conferred by total gold, silver, and bronze Stevie wins) and the highest-scoring nominations are awarded the Grand Stevie Awards, which cannot be applied for directly.

The two Grand Stevie Award winners are:

ORGANIZATION OF THE YEAR: VakifBank, Istanbul, Turkey: VakifBank earned 34.5 award points for the bank’s innovative achievements in remote customer service, human resources, annual reports, videos, social media, and more. The organization won nine Gold and five Bronze Stevie Awards in the 2022 competition.

HIGHEST-RATED NOMINATION OF THE YEAR: “The HOPE Consortium World Immunisation & Logistics Summit 21” event, in a nomination submitted by the HOPE Consortium, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, received the highest average score from Stevie Awards judges (9.4 out of 10) in this year’s competition. The nomination won the Gold Stevie for Innovation in Government Events. The HOPE Consortium is one of the largest and most integrated logistical efforts of its kind to deliver hope and vital vaccines to the global community, formed by a collective of industry-leading local partners.

“We are thrilled to announce the 2022 Grand Stevie Award winners. VakifBank and HOPE Consortium have shown their commitment to innovation and to making the world a better place,” said Maggie Miller, President of the Stevie Awards.

Complete information about the 21 May awards banquet in Ras Al Khaimah is available at https://stevieawards.com/mena/tickets

If you, as a representative of the press, are interested in participating in the award ceremony of the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards on 21 May in Ras al Khaimah, UAE, please contact us at help+MENA@stevieawards.com.

The fourth edition of the Middle East & North Africa Stevie Awards will open for entries in September 2022.

For more information about Stevie Awards other programs; please visit www.StevieAwards.com

Verdigris is an AI-powered smart building management platform that optimizes energy consumption for organizations with data, insights, and automation. Through artificial intelligence and IoT-enabled sensors, Verdigris has reduced energy spending for customers by 20-50%. This not only helps organizations save money but also reduces their carbon footprint. Some of the world’s most recognized companies including T-Mobile, Verizon, and Nvidia use Verdigris to combat wasteful energy usage and spending. The company was founded in 2011 by Mark Chung, Jonathan Chu, and Thomas Chung with a mission to sustain and enrich human life through responsive energy intelligence.

Verdigris has thrived over the past two years, seeing strong demand in terms of customer acquisition and expansions with its latest IoT energy meter. It shipped a record number of systems, won significant deals with industry leaders including T-Mobile and ARM, and announced a global partnership for ABB to use its AI. Verdigris received testimonials from more than two dozen tier one customers, including JLL, Verizon, T-Mobile, E&J Gallo, ARM, and Nvidia.
In 2019, Verdigris introduced Adaptive Automation, an adaptive and autonomous building controls product. Adaptive Automation integrates with building management systems to provide continuous optimization of energy consumption without human intervention while adapting to changing building conditions autonomously. Adaptive Automation takes advantage of technological advances in IoT sensors, pervasive wireless communications networks, and AI to continuously learn and predict building patterns. These capabilities make it possible to deliver optimally efficient building performance.

In the first half of 2020, Verdigris released the EV2 energy gateway, the next generation of the company’s superior IoT energy monitoring hardware. The technology enables a set of highly scalable low-cost energy management capabilities not found in other energy meter solutions at scale, since Verdigris samples each circuit at nearly 8,000 times per second. All at the lowest cost per metered endpoint in the industry.

Verdigris was created to help solve the global problem of energy waste. In just the US alone, 97B sqft of commercial and industrial buildings throw away more than $120B each year in unneeded energy costs. Some estimates suggest that more than $600B is lost each year in these verticals. This energy waste takes a tremendous toll on the planet, amounting to about 15% of carbon pollution globally. The Verdigris smart energy management system aims to improve building efficiency, reduce energy waste, and decrease carbon pollution. Verdigris has helped customers and the marketplace lower operational expenses by optimizing energy spending and automating load shedding during peak times using situationally aware and connected AI to reduce demand charges. Verdigris helps customers make smart decisions about energy, meet mandates for energy reduction and achieve carbon reduction goals.

Verdigris won the Silver Stevie Award in The 2021 International Business Awards® for Achievement in Product Innovation.

Interested in The 2022 International Business Awards?

Ideon Technologies Inc. is a spin-off from TRIUMF (Canada’s national particle accelerator laboratory) and a world pioneer in the application of cosmic-ray muon tomography. Ideon has developed a discovery platform that integrates proprietary detectors, imaging systems, inversion technologies, and artificial intelligence to provide x-ray-like visibility up to 1 km beneath the Earth’s surface. 

By detecting sub-surface muons and transforming the data into reliable geophysical surveys and 3D density maps, Ideon helps exploration geologists identify new mineral and metal deposits with precision and confidence. They drill less and discover more with Ideon – reducing cost and risk, saving time, and minimizing environmental impact while meeting the increased demand for critical minerals that power the clean energy transition. Ideon is also expanding the application of muon tomography to use cases in oil and gas, critical infrastructure, and national security. 

Ideon has spent years in research and development and conducting field trials with customers to prove the science behind muon tomography for subsurface exploration. What they have done since the beginning of 2019 is complete a 50x miniaturization of the hardware they use to detect muon flux -- from the size of a kitchen table to a slim rod that is deployable down industry-standard drill holes. 

This sensor offers unprecedented straight-line imaging capability with high-resolution (5 m) and a new form-factor enabling deployment down industry-standard boreholes (<10 cm diameter) with low power (<10 W continuous power consumption).  They combine this new data source with our proprietary multi-physics inversions and data analysis algorithms to bring diverse datasets together into a cohesive understanding of the subsurface, up to 1 km deep. For our customers, this results in reduced costs of exploration (10x), reduced environmental impact in the exploration phase (x10), increased ability to meet ESG targets, increased certainty and confidence of subsurface understanding (95%+), and increased instances of resource discovery critical to the clean energy transition.

The world's first deployment of this new borehole muon detector was slated for early May 2021. Muon tomography is the only straight-line imaging technology available in the geophysics toolkit today, delivering high resolution and precise location information. 

The COVID-19 pandemic reduced worldwide CO2 emissions by approximately 4%. Even with a massive shift in human behavior, this falls short of the 7.6% annual reduction that the UN says is needed every year for the next decade to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. A dramatic increase in demand for critical minerals is required to meet the world’s carbon reduction commitments. 

The drive to clean energy highlights how broken the mineral exploration process is. In the last 10 years, the industry has been forced to search deeper underground to find new deposits, without any new tools to facilitate exploration. Discoveries are down 75%, meters drilled/discovery is up 187%, and cost/discovery is up 380%. 

They are competing against the status quo -- the industry relies heavily on drilling, often hundreds of holes sunk in a hit-and-miss approach targeting poorly constrained geophysical and geological anomalies. Drilling is the primary cost driver in exploration today, representing 55% (US$6B) of the annual global spend, with drilling volume currently ~40M meters per year. A shift in approach is required to disrupt drilling and realize substantial increases in the sustainable production of critical mineral resources.

Ideon’s unique integrated subsurface intelligence solution for the global mining industry directly reduces the cost, time, risk, and environmental impact involved in the exploration process, while dramatically increasing outcome certainty. Enabling mineral resource companies to confidently extract key insights from vast quantities of data will help them target high-recovery, low-waste deposits, developing the supply chains needed to fuel the energy transition.

Ideon won the Silver Stevie Award for Energy Innovation of the Year in The 2021 International Business Awards. 

Winners of the 2022 People's Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Customer Service, a worldwide public vote, were announced today. Voting was conducted from March 1 through April 1, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in 11 industry categories. More than 32,000 votes were cast this year.

All organizations honored in the Customer Service Department of the Year categories of this year’s Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service were eligible to be included in voting for the people’s choice awards. The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, now in their 16^th year, are the world’s top honors for customer service, contact center, business development, and sales professionals.

More than 2,300 nominations from organizations of all sizes, in virtually every industry, in 51 nations were evaluated in this year’s competition. Finalists were determined by the average scores of more than 150 professionals worldwide in eight specialized judging committees and were announced last month.

This year’s people’s choice winners, who will each receive the coveted crystal People’s Choice Stevie Award, are:

• Airlines, Distribution & Transportation: DHL Express Bangladesh
• All Other Industries: Element Electronics
• Computer Hardware & Services: Linode
• Computer Software < 100 Employees: Nerdio
• Computer Software > 100 Employees: Heavy Construction Systems Specialists (HCSS)
• Consumer Products & Services: Delta Faucet Company
• Financial Services > 100 Employees: John Hancock Signature Services
• Healthcare & Pharma: RxBenefits, Inc.
• Public Services & Education: Curriculum Associates
• Retail:  CarrefourSA
• Telecommunications: PT Telkom Indonesia (Persero) Tbk

Nicknamed the Stevie® from the Greek word “crowned,” Stevie Award winners will be celebrated at a virtual awards ceremony on May 11. Tickets for the event are now on sale. More than 500 Stevie Award winners and their guests from around the world are expected to attend.